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PART 1
Published June 2000 by the ABC
Announcer: Ciara Glennon disappeared from Claremont in the early hours of March 15. On the 3rd April, her body was found at Edlington, north of Perth.
Redrock Hotel (formerly the Continental on Bayview Terrace, Claremont. Both Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon were drinking there with friends before they were abducted and murdered. Photo by Gerald Tooth.
Gerald Tooth: What is the right thing to do when confronted with absolute evil? How important is it to be fair, to maintain the rules of our society as we struggle to overcome terror?
How do we give people peace of mind when there is no protection from what we fear most: a killer in our midst, a killer who's addicted to killing for the sake of it and has found a way to get away with it time and time again? What do we do and how do we do it?
Do we single out those under suspicion and speak their names before we have the evidence to support those suspicions?
I'm Gerald Tooth and you're listening to Background Briefing.
NIGHT CLUB ATMOSPHERE
Gerald Tooth: We're on a footpath outside a Perth nightclub in the affluent suburb of Claremont. Until recently it was called the Continental Hotel.
From this corner there are a string of cafes, restaurants and shops that run two short blocks to the four-lane Stirling Highway. On a busy street about 150 metres away is the area's only other nightspot, The Club Bayview.
In this part of Perth shoe shops outnumber nightclubs by at least two to one, but it's the nightclubs that have made Claremont notorious. Between January 1996 and March 1997 three women disappeared from these streets at the end of a night out with friends.
Announcer: Sarah Spiers was last seen here at the Club Bayview about 2am last Saturday morning. She told her friend she was tired and was going to get a taxi home.
Gerald Tooth: The first, 18-year-old Sarah Spiers, has never been seen again.
St Quentin Avernue, Claremont, W.A. Halfway down is the Club Bayview. Sarah Spiers walked from there to the far end of the street to call a cab. She hasn't been seen since.
Announcer: The missing woman, Jane Louise Rimmer, spent most of Saturday night drinking with friends at the Continental Hotel in Claremont. Police say she declined her friend's offer to share a taxi home when the pub closed at midnight.
Gerald Tooth: 23-year-old Jane Rimmer went missing on June 9, 1996. Her body was found in bushland south of Perth almost eight weeks later.
Announcer: Ciara Ailish Glennon was celebrating St Patrick's Day with friends at the popular Continental Hotel. She left alone, just after midnight, telling friends she was heading straight home, police presume, by taxi.
Gerald Tooth: 27-year-old Ciara Glennon's body was found in bushland north of Perth three weeks after she was last seen alive.
West Australian Police are convinced the crimes were all committed by one individual, a serial killer.
A police map of the movements of people at Calremont on the night Ciara Glennon was abducted. Photo by Gerald Tooth.
They have also told Background Briefing that they believe that another disappearance, that of 22-year-old Julie Cutler almost a decade earlier, in 1988, is connected.
No charges have been laid in relation to the crimes.
While there are a million rumours, very little is really known about what actually happened at Claremont. We don't know how the women were killed, or anything about how they were lured to their deaths.
The ongoing police investigation is characterised by secrecy.
Announcer: A mother and her children picking flowers in bushland south of Perth found the body of Jane Rimmer on the weekend. Police quickly threw a cordon around the area and began a painstaking search for clues. Details of how the 23-year-old died are now a closely guarded secret. All the police will say is they've gained vital clues from the scene.
Signs outside the Club Bayview, Claremont. Photo by Gerald Tooth.
Gerald Tooth: Those details remained a secret, as they did when Ciara Glennon was found. Police have good reason to keep facts like that to themselves, and there is no argument with that. But things have been very different when it comes to details about Lance, their chief suspect.
At this point it must be pointed out that this man is presumed innocent of these horrible crimes. He has not been charged or found guilty of anything.
Lance, who is in his 40s, lives with his parents in a neighbouring suburb to Claremont. Police stopped and detained him on the streets of Claremont at 3am on the 8th April, 1998. They moved in after an intense surveillance operation over some months had observed him in his car regularly following women as they left nightclubs.
On the night he was taken in, detectives questioned Lance for several hours, then released him. Since then, police have searched his flat and his parents' home, twice. They subjected his car to forensic testing. With his consent, they took DNA samples.
At his request he was subjected to a lie detector test and, at a later date, he consented to a day-and-a-half of psychological analysis.
They openly followed his every move 24 hours a day for over a year, until October 1999, sitting outside his house in an unmarked car, following him to work and home again. It got to the stage that Lance would ring the police to let them know when he was doing anything that wasn't routine, like going to a workmate's farewell party.
Bayview Terrace, Claremont (Redrock Hotel formerly the Continental Hotel) Photo by Gerald Tooth.
During the time of surveillance, and since, no other women have gone missing in Claremont. Four others have disappeared without trace in Western Australia, but police are adamant that those cases are not related.
Background Briefing is not suggesting that this man is responsible for any of these crimes.
This is a story about how an investigation proceeded, an investigation hunting for a multiple murderer who is terrorising a city. And about whether the tactics employed are legitimate.
Someone who thinks they're not is President of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman. He describes long-term overt surveillance as outright harassment.
Terry O'Gorman: It's not only illegitimate, but it is something that I would hope that the Conference of Australian Police Commissioners would outlaw. One of the conclusions that I hope will come from this case eventually, is that this particular tactic of exerting overt and very public psychological pressure will be outlawed forever. If this is going to be used, then we are very little different from other totalitarian countries that we quite readily criticise, whose police use similar tactics. They have no place in a so-called democracy. It is the first time I have seen this tactic used, I hope it's the last time.
Gerald Tooth: The West Australian Police refused to make comment about the specifics of overt surveillance used in relation to this case, making instead the general statement that overt surveillance was a legitimate and effective technique for monitoring a person's activities.
The West Australian Government also declined to make comment.
Police Minister, Kevin Prince, refused to be interviewed for this program, saying he would not speak about an ongoing police investigation.
Sign outside the Club Bayview, Claremont. Photo by Gerald Tooth.
It's almost two years since it became public knowledge that the police had a prime suspect in the case. Since then there are only two things the police haven't done in their efforts to solve the crime: charge him with anything; or clear him of suspicion.
This lack of decisive action follows the largest, the most sophisticated and the most expensive murder inquiry Australia has ever seen. It's also the most well resourced because of a funding arrangement unique in Australian policing.
Announcer: Neil Ferris and other business leaders in Perth are so concerned by the disappearances and murders, they've set up a special fund to help support the police. They've so far committed a quarter-of-a-million dollars to the campaign.
Gerald Tooth: Private funds have significantly boosted the investigative options open to police in the hunt for the Claremont serial killer. Associates of Denis Glennon, the father of Ciara Glennon, set up The Secure Community Foundation, after she was found murdered. The initial $250,000 grew rapidly. No-one will say exactly how much has been raised so far, but figures from between $600,000 to $900,000 have been quoted to Background Briefing.
Denis Glennon, who is not formally part of the foundation, explains the initial reason it was set up.
Dennis Glennon: Its purpose was initially to provide additional resources to the W.A. Police for a very substantial public campaign to research and gather and seek any information that could help the police in identifying what happened to Ciara, and the two girls before her.
Gerald Tooth: The result was that nine months after being set up in the wake of the first two disappearances, Macro, the name the police gave the task force hunting the serial killer, had extra money to spend.
Already a massive operation with up to 80 police working on the case at any one time, it now had the wherewithal to launch a sophisticated media campaign.
Announcer: Did you see anything that might help trace Ciara's footsteps?
Gerald Tooth: The initial media campaign brought in more than 10,000 individual pieces of information. The Macro task force was also taking proactive steps as it made the most of the Secure Community Foundation funds to import a range of investigative techniques from overseas.
Some of them had been seen here before, but they had never been used in Australia as part of a formal investigation. For example, lie detector tests, carried out on a machine known as a polygraph.
Macro head, Detective Superintendent David Caporn, welcomed the influence of private funds on his investigation.
Detective Superintendent, David Caporn, head of the Macro Task Force that's investigating the murders. Photo by Gerald Tooth.
David Caporn: Now here is where we go into the non-traditional lines that have been covered, and when I say non-traditional, certainly non-traditional in Australia. Some of the things that we've done are very traditional in other parts of the world. One example being polygraph. Now we employed the polygraph, we've employed it on two occasions. On the first occasion it was to basically look at a group of in excessive of 50 individuals that weren't suspects in the crime but had got to the stage where we'd done as much as we could do on these people and we couldn't eliminate them. So we used it as a screening tool, nothing more, nothing less. There was a lot of conjecture that we were just sitting there waiting for someone to fail it so we could say, 'Well ha-ha, we've got the person that committed these crimes.' Nothing further from the truth.
Gerald Tooth: Later someone did fail and as you will hear the use of the lie detector test has now raised more questions than it's found answers for the Macro task force.
The police couldn't have used it in the first place unless the Secure Community Foundation had agreed to pay for an FBI trained expert to come out from the United States with his polygraph machine, not once but twice.
The first trip was, as David Caporn just said, to test over 50 'persons of interest', as the police call them. The next trip, months later, was to give an exam for one, Lance, the chief suspect.
Terry O'Gorman says Macro should never have gone down that path.
Terry O'Gorman: It certainly is in the interest of the Perth community to have this matter investigated as thoroughly as possible, but what is occurring as a result of this glut of private money available, is that police are using dubious, almost Mickey Mouse investigation techniques such as the bringing over of the lie detector expert, which no police administrator would allow money to be spent on because it's full well known that the results of the lie detector test are not admissible in any criminal court in the USA or Australia.
Gerald Tooth: It's Terry O'Gorman's view that private funding has dangerously skewed the Claremont Serial Killer investigation through the use of policing methods that have the capacity to undermine some of the fundamental underpinnings of our judicial system, such as the presumption of innocence which must be afforded every individual up until the time they are found guilty of a crime by a jury of their peers.
He says private funding is a slippery slope that sees police beholden to their benefactors in more ways than one.
For example, in asking the Secure Community Foundation for funding for certain investigative tools, private citizens on the Foundation's board are made aware of details of the investigation, a situation Terry O'Gorman argues is untenable.
Terry O'Gorman: Now it's that sort of worrying implications for fairness in the criminal justice system that I see arising from private funding of criminal investigations. Of course, if we want to get a conviction at any cost, if we want to get a conviction notwithstanding the possibility of a miscarriage of justice, fine. But if we want a fair trial, if we want a balanced trial, then private community funding of police in particular investigations is a major worry.
Gerald Tooth: For the families of the victims though, there are no such concerns. All they want to see is the killer caught.
Denis Glennon argues that the police investigation is more effective because of the community involvement and that it has created a co-operative approach that's about far more than money. He says it's immaterial whether an investigative tool is made available through private funds or not.
Denis Glennon applauds the way the West Australian Police took up techniques never used in Australia before in their pursuit of his daughter's murderer.
Denis Glennon: They were seen as genuine attempts by the police in Western Australia to resolve the killing of two girls, possibly three, possibly four. So no, I wouldn't see them as being controversial.
Gerald Tooth: There is no question though that Polygraph tests are controversial. In the scientific world Polygraphs are the cause of much division and gnashing of teeth. There is a wealth of research literature arguing that they are unreliable. It's been documented that simple tricks like the self-inflicted pain from pressing down on a thumb tack inside a shoe will fool the machine into giving a false reading. There are books and websites on how to beat the Polygraph.
The unresolved scientific debate is largely the reason that polygraph results are not recognised by any Australian courts.
So, in August, 1998, when it became public that Lance had been given and failed a Polygraph test paid for by the Secure Community Foundation, a storm of controversy broke. The West Australian Police are still vehemently arguing that they had nothing to do with the release of the information.
Macro head, David Caporn.
David Caporn: It was certainly not in our interests, either for tactic or judicially sound, or ethically sound, for us to do that, and there was no win in it for us. I mean I think when you put the facts on the table, no-one could legitimately make a case as to why we would do that.
Gerald Tooth: One person who can think of a few reasons is Terry O'Gorman. Building further pressure on the suspect to make a confession for a start, or further down the track priming potential jurors with information that could help towards a conviction should Lance ever be charged.
Terry O'Gorman: That is a significant piece of highly prejudicial information, which particularly in a small city like Perth where the potential jury pool is quite small, and where this particular series of murders have been understandably very much a community issue, I can't see how any juror who has been living in Perth during the time of this publicity can be expected to forget that fact. Most jurors are brought up on a diet of US television, and US television police shows promote the view that lie detector tests are almost completely definitive.
Gerald Tooth: And it's not just civil libertarian defence lawyers who hold grave concerns about the police use of Polygraphs and the subsequent release of results. West Australian Director of Public Prosecutions, Robert *advertiser censored*, is also unimpressed at police leaking of such juror-sensitive information.
Robert *advertiser censored*: I can't imagine a situation in which the results of a test which itself is not admissible in proceedings, could ever be justified.
Gerald Tooth: Would the actions that they took in this instance jeopardise their whole investigation?
Robert *advertiser censored*: It's not a question of jeopardising the investigation of course, the investigation is probably facilitated I suppose, having regard to their methodology by any pressure put on the particular suspect. My anxiety is the risk that the trial will itself be in jeopardy, and of course that's a different level. But again, my concern is that the investigative techniques must be reasonably fair so as to ensure no jeopardy to any ultimate trial.
Gerald Tooth: In your view, were they fair in this instance?
Robert *advertiser censored*: I've already explained that I don't see any basis upon which one could possibly justify the release of information which in some countries is available to implicate an accused person; In Western Australia where that information is simply not available and not properly ever able to be put before a jury.
Gerald Tooth: It's criticism that has Detective Superintendent David Caporn bristling.
David Caporn: If Mr *advertiser censored* said that, he'd be acting in a void, because we have never released the results of the Polygraph test of the individual we're talking about it, and I know that there's been a lot of discussion between the family of that person and the media, some of which I've seen myself on news reports. The fact that we continue to pursue the particular person and continue to pursue the particular person since the test, there's been a lot of speculation about that, and in an investigation that it is subject to the intense media that this investigation's been subject to, it's very very hard to conceal the fact that inquiries were ongoing about this person. We have never released that result, never would release that result. But we can't walk away from the fact that we're still investigating the person. Now the media are putting two and two together. I mean we can't do anything about that.
Gerald Tooth: You say it wasn't officially released; can you say that it wasn't leaked to the media by police? Because if that information didn't come from the police, where did it come from?
David Caporn: It was certainly not in our interest to release the information as to the results of that person's test, so we never did.
Gerald Tooth: David Caporn.
So how, out of all the tens of thousands of pieces of information being handled by Macro, did the lie detector test result of their chief suspect become public? The story was broken on ABC Television by journalist Sue Short. She told Background Briefing that police sources from outside the Macro Task Force led her to the scoop.
When Sue Short approached Macro to confirm the details, she was not discouraged from broadcasting them. As she was busy editing her exclusive piece for that night's bulletin, the police were equally busy doing their bit to spread the story.
Luke Morfesse was the senior police reporter at The West Australian newspaper at the time.
Luke Morfesse: It may have suited the task force, certainly some people in the task force, that the ABC-TV had broadcast that the suspect had failed a lie detector test, and indeed we were contacted, we were alerted the ABC was doing this story and it may be in our interest to pursue the story.
Gerald Tooth: Police alerted you that the ABC was about to broadcast that story?
Luke Morfesse: That's right, yes.
Gerald Tooth: Which would indicate that they knew that the ABC had been given that information.
Luke Morfesse: Well yes I can't really comment on that, but yes, obviously. I'm not sure how our understanding was how ABC-TV got the story, but they knew, and it suited them for it to have an audience beyond ABC-TV.
Gerald Tooth: So they came to you at The West Australian and said, 'This information is going out on the ABC this evening, we're giving you the same information so it will be in tomorrow's newspaper.'
Luke Morfesse: That's right, yes.
Gerald Tooth: And why do you think they did that?
Luke Morfesse: It's all part of that thing with putting pressure on a suspect.
Gerald Tooth: Journalist, Luke Morfesse.
As a way of ramping up the pressure, it worked. To this point the media in Perth had largely stood by an agreement with the police not to identify their main suspect. But the release of the test result changed all that.
Announcer: In an extraordinary move, the prime suspect in the Claremont serial murder case today publicly professed his innocence. He told waiting media he wasn't the killer.
Gerald Tooth: At this stage the suspect had been overt police surveillance for six months. Suddenly he had a whole new type of surveillance to deal with: a media pack in full cry.
