Killing Time Read online

  The future comes soon enough.

  – ALBERT EINSTEIN

  In jail you don’t write anything down. Why? Because your cell is searched regularly by security staff and they read everything you have written. That wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so gossipy and didn’t speak “in confidence” to other crooks. The screws well may deny that this happens but in fact it takes place with monotonous regularity. Further, if you are sitting writing anything down, some of the more dangerous crooks who have a fearsome reputation will walk in, pick up what you are writing and start reading it.

  When I gave evidence against Dupas, the Dupas lawyers made a great deal about the fact that I had written nothing down. This is why. To be found out and then face the consequences was, frankly, not worth the risk. Yes, I made notes about all sorts of things, but they were all innocuous – recipes, books I wanted to read, new addresses from people who had written to me – absolutely nothing that could be even remotely connected to life in the unit. In addition to the reasons above, I was not intending to hang on to events that happened in jail. I just wanted to erase it all, get home, go and work on a mate’s farm and stay under the radar. That obviously hasn’t happened.

  Because I kept no notes, I have no exact recollection of dates but I do know about the specific nature of the incidents that were to unfold, simply because of the profound impact they had on me.

  One morning Peter Dupas and I were walking up and down in the chook pen and we were just chatting – about what, I can’t remember. The chook pen is separated from the garden by a cyclone fence. Other units also used the garden. There were three protection units and they were given access to the garden at different times. It was one of the Sirius West units that had access to the garden on this particular morning. Sirius West is divided into two units: one for blokes who need general protection or from whom the rest of the jail needs protection, and the other for sex offenders and paedophiles.

  On this particular morning as we were walking up and down I had not a care in the world apart from the fact I was yet to serve four years of my minimum sentence, which never cheered me. A young bloke appeared at the cyclone fence, looking straight at us. He said nothing until Dupas and I walked towards him. As we got near the fence he said to Dupas, “Are you Peter Dupas?” We stopped. Dupas said “Yes.” The young bloke, who was a Greek-looking boy, early twenties, straight darkish hair, slim build, let rip with a tirade of abuse. He claimed that he was some relative of Mersina Halvagis. He knew that Dupas had killed her and if he ever got the chance he would kill Dupas himself. This abuse was completely unexpected.

  Having been a lawyer for many years and cross-examined probably thousands of people, I was good at judging when people were shocked and wrong footed. Dupas stopped dead in his tracks and was clearly flabbergasted, stuck for a word. This kid kept berating him for a good thirty seconds to a minute. I know that doesn’t sound like a long time but try standing there copping abuse for that period and see how long it is. The kid then abruptly walked off. Dupas was stunned. He turned to me and said, “How does that cunt know I did it?” It was clear to me that this was an admission that he had killed Mersina Halvagis and that he couldn’t work out how this kid could know.

  I had gathered that Dupas was probably the only suspect for this murder, even though I had not read much about it in the paper. As a criminal defence lawyer, you are required day after day to look at police forensic photos depicting the most awful and violent crimes. You look at them in a clinical fashion, much as I imagine a surgeon would look at a patient opened up before them on the operating table. Then you close the book of photos and the matter is expunged from your mind until next time you need to refresh your memory by looking at the photos again. It’s a defence mechanism you develop over many years because, if you took this work home with you, you would not see the distance. Hence, it was always my policy never to read articles in the newspaper about murders or other crimes. I didn’t watch it on the news and I certainly didn’t see films or watch television with anything to do with cops and robbers, violence, murder or anything else that might remind me of my job. Yet, in the case of Dupas’s arrest for the murder of Nicole Patterson, it was almost impossible to avoid the media coverage, and it started up again on his subsequent conviction.

  After I started working in the garden with Dupas, he invited me more regularly into his cell to speak to him, usually about the garden but sometimes about other things. It became obvious that he wanted to get some advice about all the cases that were still pending against him and he was most unhappy with the representation he had received from Legal Aid on the Nicole Patterson trial. As I’ve said before, it’s amazing how many innocent blokes there are in jail.

  Dupas kept saying that he hadn’t killed Patterson. To me that was merely a defence mechanism: he had shut the murder out of his mind to the extent that he no longer thought of himself as the perpetrator of the crime. One thing belying that, though, was his body language. Whenever he talked about either Nicole Patterson, Margaret Maher or Mersina Halvagis, he would become sweaty and begin to shake. If he was sitting down on his bed he would start by sweating and shaking, then he would clasp his hands together. In the more advanced stages of his distress, he would place his clasped hands between his knees and press hard together. The last straw came when he started rocking backwards and forwards with his hands clasped, and on one occasion he even became a little teary.

  I thought more than once, while he was in this state, that he was going to blurt out an admission to me. But such was his defence and denial mechanism that all of a sudden you could see the curtains come down over his eyes. He would sit back and unclasp his hands, and that was the end of the conversation. He had shut it out of his mind. Yet one thing Dupas couldn’t shut out of his mind was the slow and steady progress the police were making in their investigations of the murders of both Margaret Maher and Mersina Halvagis.

  I saw just how dangerous this man was one evening when we were sitting at the table having our dinner. A young bloke who had been in the unit for a few weeks walked by and Dupas started mumbling to himself, cursing him and saying he was going to “get” him. Dupas was highly agitated, with the sure signs of sweating and shaking, and I asked him what was wrong. He replied that he was going get this kid and he was going to kill him for something he had said about Dupas to somebody else in the unit which got back to him. I can’t recall the particulars of the perceived slight that could have ended with a death; I just know that, at the time, I thought what an insignificant comment to die for.

  Dupas was like a terrier with a rat: he kept on and on between the time of our meal and lock down, which was a couple of hours, about how he was going to get this kid in the morning. The young man’s cell was next to mine on the upper tier and Dupas was immediately underneath. He virtually never came upstairs because he had a bad knee and he told me on more than one occasion that it pained him to walk up and down stairs.

  On lockdown muster you do not have to stand by your cell doors, you can stand in the doorway and can actually be watching the TV as long as you are visible. That night I deliberately stood away from the door and as the screw came and counted me and started to lock the door I whispered that I needed to speak to him urgently after lockdown about a potential incident. Once you are locked down nobody can see any other cell from any part of the unit, let alone anything that goes on inside. The screws came back and quietly opened my door and asked me what the problem was. I told them what Dupas had said. The young man was moved instantly and I did not see him again.

  Immediately on let-out the next morning, as I was walking toward the stairs, Dupas came hurtling out of his cell. He had something in his hand which looked like a shiv and started to fly up the stairs, totally out of character. I said, “What are you doing, Pete?” He said, “I’m going to get that cunt.” I said, “Well, I think he’s gone, I’ve just walked past his cell and it’s still locked and there’s no one there.” Dupas stopped and was visib
ly deflated at that comment. He then turned without a word and hobbled back down the stairs and into his cell. He did not even come out to the garden that day. Dupas had clearly been stewing on this all night and had worked himself up into such a frenzy that he was going to kill this kid, no matter what. That, to me, was indicative of what he was capable of and this was probably how he had killed before. He had worked himself into such a state that he was capable of anything.

  At Dupas’s trial for the Halvagis murder I was cross-examined up hill and down dale about the fact that the defence had tried unsuccessfully to locate any record of the young man being moved. The answer to that is simple. The jail system is so badly run, records are almost an afterthought. (A prime example of this relates to the record of lockdowns which I discuss in my previous book.)

  Apart from these isolated incidents life dragged on. Dupas and Camilleri continued to hate each other and there was the odd punch on, knifing, rape, sexual assault, all those things that go to make up normal life in jail. The officers rarely get involved. On one occasion, I heard a crashing noise behind me and turned around to see two blokes punching on and they were punching each other flat out. I looked towards the screws station: one was sitting there eating his dinner, the other was standing with his arms folded. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The two combatants literally punched each other to a standstill. They had been fighting so hard and for so long that they could not raise their arms one more time against each. Then the screws locked the unit down, grabbed the two protagonists and took them off to the slot. Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted! The duty of care clearly does not exist behind closed doors.

  On one occasion, I remember, Dupas deliberately left the pitchfork in the garden. Camilleri had obviously seen him do it and later that afternoon, as I looked out my window into the garden, there was Camilleri with the pitchfork trying to stab another prisoner with it. Unfortunately for Camilleri this prisoner was in protection to protect the rest of the jail from him. Camilleri fights like a girl, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, so he was no match for this bloke, armed with a pitchfork or not. I am pleased to report that the other prisoner promptly disarmed Camilleri and gave him a belting. The pitchfork still did not come inside. Once again, there was no officer out there watching what was going on. Nobody had the faintest idea what had happened. The whole fight had taken place without anybody knowing and it wasn’t until Camilleri came in with a bloodied face that it became apparent there had been a fight. The other bloke walked in and denied any knowledge of any fight – end of the matter.

  Mention of the pitchfork reminds me of the young Greek man who featured at the start of this chapter. A week or so after the abusive incident through the chook pen fence, Dupas was standing in the vegie garden rolling a smoke. I was working in the garden with him. I looked up at him and he was staring at a window in the Sirius West cell block. He became agitated and began shaking and sweating. The sweating wasn’t from exertion, either, I hasten to add. I said, “What’s wrong Peter?” He said, “I know where that cunt lives.” I said, “What are you talking about?” “That young bloke that abused me through the fence,” he said, “I know which cell he lives in and I know when he goes for his medication. I’m going to get him.” I didn’t try to talk him out of it and this time I said nothing to the screws.

  The next day, however, I did become concerned, because as we went out to do the gardening, Dupas took the pitchfork and put it behind a native shrub which was growing right next to the pathway along which the other unit would walk to get their medication. I saw him put it there and he said to me, “You’d better make yourself scarce. I’m going to get that bastard this morning.” I went to the other end of the garden and pretended I’d forgotten something inside. I then went back into the unit and told the supervisor, not the screws, what was going to happen. For once, the staff moved quickly and the young man was not taken for medication. He was moved promptly to another jail.

  The interesting thing about all this is that, there was no note of the transfer and Dupas was not even questioned by the screws. That was indicative of how scared everybody was of him, the screws included. He ruled the unit, but not by power; rather, he exuded his usual quiet, menacing intimidation. Dupas is “in” forever, so it is to the mutual benefit of the screws and Dupas that they try to make life easy for all concerned. It also makes Dupas easier to handle.

  Chapter 7

  The Wheels Start to Fall Off

  I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.

  – EDGAR ALLAN POE, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

  On 4 October 1997 the body of Margaret Maher was found dumped by the side of a road in Somerton, an industrial outer suburb of Melbourne. She had been stabbed repeatedly in a frenzied attack and her left breast had been cut off and jammed in her mouth. Police had a long and arduous journey ahead of them before Peter Norris Dupas was convicted of her murder on 17 August 2004. The prolonged investigation was testimony to the tenacity of the Homicide Squad.

  The murder of Nicole Patterson took place on 19 April 1999 but Dupas was arrested and convicted of her murder before the Margaret Maher trial and it was for the death of Nicole Patterson that he was serving a life sentence without a minimum when I first met him. During that period, the Homicide Squad cleverly leaked to the media the fact that they were now investigating Peter Dupas for the murder of Margaret Maher. This had the desired effect: it completely destabilised Dupas to the extent that he started seeking me out and asking veiled questions about the Homicide Squad, police procedures and other such matters.

  As I’ve said in my statement which is reproduced later in this book, Dupas is quiet, suspicious, introverted or introspective, socially inept and reticent. Even when he is discussing matters that he is really interested in, like the garden or the vegie patch, he does not talk in flowing phrases, but rather grabs that are short and separated by long breaks. I would describe his speech as disjointed – it seems to follow his thought process. Yet, even considering his usually disjointed speech, it was clear to me that the coppers had rattled him well and truly. The questions he asked me were halting, short or without any particular start or logical finishing point. But it was clear to me that he was asking about the Maher investigation and he was seeking my opinion without him specifically stating as much.

  Even if you don’t read the papers or watch TV or films in jail, it is impossible to escape what is going on with other prisoners and their court cases. The minute there is talk of a new investigation, the whole jail system is abuzz with it and everybody seems to “know” what’s going on, even if most of this “knowledge” is wildly inaccurate and ill-informed. Certainly, everybody has an opinion. The entire system seems to thrive on speculation and innuendo, which, if repeated often enough by enough prison officers and crooks, eventually takes on all the gravity of Holy Writ. You can imagine the situation in a small unit such as Sirius East, where everybody lives in everybody else’s pocket: the Dupas investigation was big news.

  The police duly followed through on their media leak and served a Section 464 application on Dupas. Section 464 of the Victorian Crimes Act allows police to take a prisoner before a court and seek an order that they be granted more time to interview that prisoner in relation to offences other than those he is in custody for. The application really got to Dupas. He came to see me and showed me the Section 464 application. It was nothing out of the ordinary, except that it was for the murder of Margaret Maher. I told him of his rights and advised him that it was his right to decline to be interviewed and that the magistrate had to ask that question and record that answer. I reiterated to him the standard advice that I had given thousands of people over the years in my capacity as a criminal lawyer – that you are not obliged to answer any questions or make any statemen
t but be under no misapprehension that anything you do say will be taken down and will be used in court.

  As I have said, Dupas was very, very unhappy with the service (or lack thereof) that he had received from Victorian Legal Aid during the Nicole Patterson trial, so I referred him to a private practitioner who I understand appeared for him on the Section 464 application.

  I can clearly remember that it was late in the evening when Dupas returned from the 464 application hearing. He appeared at my door on the upper tier – which, as I’ve said, was most unusual. He was deeply distressed. He told me that he thought he would be charged not only with the Margaret Maher murder but maybe even with the Mersina Halvagis murder as well.

  There comes a time in your life when you have to decide whether you’re in or you are out. For me the time had come for me make my decision to try and find out more about what Dupas had been up to and I gently tried to get more details from him. The most obvious question was: What new or extra evidence did they have for the Maher murder? He said there had been some new forensic evidence, namely a glove, which as far as the Crown were concerned, linked him by DNA to the Maher murder. The glove had been found in the immediate vicinity of the body, it was a single glove, it was Dupas’s glove and it had his DNA on it. I told him that if that was the case, he was in real bother.

  That was when he blurted out: “I left no forensic evidence at Fawkner.” That comment, as far as I was concerned, was a “voluntary admission against interest” (or potent evidence against the accused) that he had murdered Mersina Halvagis at Fawkner Cemetery. To me, the admission was clear and unequivocal. Then Dupas immediately volunteered that he had also left no DNA evidence on “the old sheila down the road”. This was clearly a reference to Mrs Downes. Dupas had been living in Moonee Ponds at the time of her murder, “down the road” was Brunswick, and Brunswick was where Mrs Downes lived in the nursing home. Dupas was clearly admitting that he had murdered her too and that he had been sufficiently careful to leave no DNA linking him to the murder scene.