Crime Week book extract: Dead By Friday - How lust and greed led to murder in the suburbs, by Derek Pedley
CRIME WEEK PART 5: Michelle Burgess controlled men with sex - leading to the contract killing of Carolyn Matthews. What was her deadly attraction?
THE 2001 contract killing of Carolyn Matthews shocked SA, with the mother stabbed in her kitchen over her husband's affair. Read an extract from Derek Pedley's book.
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SHE was up at 4.15am and hard at work before dawn, toiling non-stop all day, without complaint. But she couldn't concentrate, nor control the worry and fear consuming her mind and her life. For Carolyn Matthews, there was not a moment's peace during her last day on Earth.
At 6.35am, she arrived at the West Lakes home of her business partner, Judith Roberts, where a converted garage served as workshop and headquarters for Bedspreads Plus, their soft furnishings business.
Carolyn had joined the business about seven years earlier, and they were both directors. She worked between 8.45am and 3.15pm each weekday while the kids were at school, and usually took a break during school holidays. But during the first week of these July holidays, Carolyn had been working like a Trojan, helping get some difficult jobs out of the way.
After her 12-hour days on Monday and Tuesday, she was back again at 9am on Wednesday. Not because she had to work, but because Kenny, 16, Shane, 13, and Daniel, 12, were "pissing her off", she confided to Judith, before setting about making some bed linen for the rambunctious trio. A decade later, an adult Shane confirms his mother's statement. "We were the devil's children," he admits.
Judith knew Kevin Matthews had been demoted at work recently, for "disciplinary reasons", Carolyn told her. It was a surprising admission. Despite working together closely, Carolyn was a private person and personal talk was rare.
"I didn't pry into Carolyn's private life and she respected mine," Judith later told police. "This was one of the reasons our relationship worked so well. We never overstepped the mark with each other and our business was successful. We worked the hours we wanted and generated a respectable income."
But Judith had known her business partner for 20 years and she also knew Kevin's work dramas were just the tip of the iceberg; Carolyn was a deeply troubled woman. She'd told her she had been getting calls claiming that Kevin was having an affair; and Kevin claimed he was receiving calls saying Carolyn was doing the same. She also said there had been phone threats against Kevin. Carolyn said she didn't believe the affair claims, but sounded far from convinced. The demotion was also a financial blow for the family.
Carolyn had no idea where all their money was going, but their finances were now in a dire situation, despite her hard work and the $1700 that she brought in each month from the business. Judith told police that her business partner was stressed, sleeping poorly and depressed about weight gain caused by the bout of glandular fever a couple of years previously.
On the morning of July 12, Judith and Carolyn worked quietly and conscientiously, pausing for lunch at 12.15pm. Carolyn sat eating her pumpkin soup, bread and leftover mince chow mein, pondering Kevin's offer of a short holiday - if two days at a West Beach caravan park qualified as a holiday. Did he think that a weekend away was going to convince her that it was over with this woman, after all the lies of the past 12 months?
She didn't know what to think. She also didn't have time to. There was still much work to be done. Carolyn finished her lunch, and returned to her labours for the afternoon.
Judith says: "We had a little bit of stress about work, people ringing up about jobs for which fabric had only just arrived and we were scheduling the work as best we could."
Around 10.30am, a friend of the Matthews family, Anne McKenzie, was visiting a branch of her family's business on Port Rd in Woodville, to pick up a tool. She dropped into Beaurepaires in Port Adelaide to say hello to Kevin and found him subdued and monosyllabic. She later told police: "He didn't appear to be his usual self."
On the same morning, in Craigmore, David Key and Michelle Burgess were discussing how and when they would end Carolyn Matthews' life.
Key frightened Michelle's two children. Aged eight and four, they were in their bedrooms while their mother casually plotted murder with her lover.
Key says: "We were just sitting there talking, discussing how Carolyn Matthews is going to be killed. At one stage, Michelle's talking about cutting the brake lines on her van. I said: 'No, you've got to think of the kids as well'. And she's … 'fair enough', we were just generally talking, going through scenarios of different things. How, you know, certain other murders, how people got the murder done, how they got away with it."
Shortly after, Key was rummaging in the car for cigarettes when he came across Michelle's divorce settlement cheque. Key says he'd been haranguing Michelle all week to put it the bank. Security cameras at the Commonwealth Bank branch in Gawler recorded Michelle Burgess entering at 12.34pm that day.
Key later told police: "Michelle said: 'Just stay in the car with the kids while I put the money in the bank'. I got sick of sitting in the car waiting, so I grabbed the kids and locked the car up and went into the bank. I seen her sitting there talking to the bloke."
The security camera footage showed the two adults and two children leaving the bank at 1.01pm.
Over the next few hours, they criss-crossed the city, seemingly aimless, but Michelle already knew how she wanted the day to unfold.
If she could feed Key enough drugs and bullshit, he would do as she told him - and Carolyn Matthews would end up dead. Michelle's mother Angela Goldup, who lived in Holden Hill, says her daughter rang her at 11am that day to ask if she could drop off the kids, but didn't say exactly when she would be around.
Key says: "We drove around to my mum's house in Davoren Park. I went and made coffee for me and Michelle, mum made a cup of tea. The kids were with us. We were there 15 minutes to 30 minutes. I drove them to see Sandra (Hendy, an acquaintance of Key's) a couple of streets over in Charmouth St, Davoren Park. I introduced Michelle to Sandra.
"We had a yarn for about half an hour, also caught up with Jason Colenso (a friend of Key's who would later become a willing participant in the unfolding drama) and a few other people. I drove around Davoren Park, Elizabeth, Smithfield, Elizabeth South, just generally driving around, looking for Mark English, to buy some pot, but couldn't find him."
Crown prosecutor Steven Millsteed, QC, later queried Key on his priorities that afternoon: "Was this (buying cannabis) a big deal? You had a quarter of a bag and plenty of speed and plenty of ecstasy."
Key explained: "When you get low on one thing, you want to go around and top up so you've got plenty of everything. It's the same when you're getting low on milk. You instantly think to go down straight away and buy a litre of milk to top up, so you've got plenty there. It's the same thing."
Key, Burgess and the children drove out of Gawler in Michelle's red Toyota Seca. Nearing the outer suburbs, they stopped at the Smithfield Hotel drive-through to buy six UDL cans for Michelle and six Woodstock bourbons for Key. "Then we just went out driving around. Drinking and driving", says Key. But their apparently aimless day was about to take on a purpose.
At 1.17pm, a call was placed from Kevin Matthews' mobile phone to Michelle Burgess' mobile phone. Phone records show another four calls were made from Matthews' phone to Burgess's phone between 2.29pm and 3.40pm that day. There were a total of 14 calls between Burgess and Matthews' mobile phones, and her home phone, between 6am and 12.23pm.
Key says: "She wouldn't say what the calls and text messages were about. I called her everything under the sun. She still wouldn't let me in on what was going on. I kept telling her that two heads were better than one if you've got a problem. She kept telling me not to worry about it. Finally she admitted: 'I'm talking to Kevin, if you really want to know.'"
The only exact phrase that Key recalls her saying on the phone is: "Calm down. I'll get it sorted. Just calm down".
Then later, she says: "I've got to go down and see him."
Key: "See f**king who?"
Michelle: "I've got to go and see Kevin. He's losing the plot, I've got to go and talk to him."
Key says: "(She later admitted to me) Matthews was stressing out and sending messages saying he was going to knock himself. Being real pathetic and sending stupid messages."
Key: "What are we going to do with the kids?"
Michelle: "Just drop them off at my mum's."
Key: "All right, how do I get to your mum's?"
Burgess gave him directions and a short time later they arrived in Holden Hill. Key says she asked her mother if she could leave the children while she did some Christmas shopping (It seemed a little early for Christmas shopping, and Mrs Goldup would later claim her daughter said she was going to buy tyres.) They were only there about ten minutes. Both Michelle and Key used the toilet, with Key seizing the opportunity to inject amphetamines.
Quizzed later about his drug use on the day, Key explained: "I'd had dope, I'd had speed, I also dropped an ecstasy tablet. My daily routine, every morning I get up, that's what I have, just to get me going." He estimated he'd had four to five joints - two in the morning before leaving Michelle's home, and two outside the bank. He put the cost of his weekly drug habit at $1800.
He later told police: "I had speed when I was on the toilet earlier that day in a needle. I had a speed bomb in a Tallyho paper outside the bank. Four or five points, I had half an eight ball on me. About 1.30-2pm (at Michelle's parents' home), the ecstasy tablet went in with the speed. I was pretty hyped up."
After they left the Goldups' home in Holden Hill, Key says: "When we were driving, we were still arguing and stressing and still getting phone calls and messages. We stopped and Michelle said: 'We've got to find a phone box. We have to find out what his problem is.' So she rang him from a phone box." Key drove them to Beaurepaires on Port Rd, Port Adelaide, arriving shortly after 5pm. Frustrated by her lack of answers and pumped up by the drugs and alcohol, he drove aggressively and dangerously, screeching to a halt in the car park.
He says: "Michelle told me to stay in the car. I thought: 'f**k that' and I got out of the car. I had a cigarette that had dope in it and leaned up against the car smoking it. She walked inside and started talking to Kevin."
Key watched them walking backwards and forwards, from the office to the tyre showroom, pushing each other aggressively. Their arrival had not gone unnoticed across the driveway at the Ultra Tune branch.
Manager Glenn Smith later gave a colourful account to police of what he saw that afternoon: "When that man got out and started hanging at the back of the car and eyeballing everybody …. I come out of Scotland where it's pretty tough and you get a bit of a radar. The hair on the back of my head went up, he started eyeballing me …. He looked like a vulture.
"He was standing up, kind of puffing his chest out, he had a bit of attitude about him. You know, he was kind of keen to stare everybody down, like he came there in a bad mood. My mate Darren went over there (to Beaurepaires). He was working on a car on a hoist and when he seen the red car come in, he got a bit excited. He got in a bit of a flap and started cursing."
Darren Bland couldn't believe what he was seeing. He'd heard the rumours at work that his former boss Kevin Matthews was having an affair with Michelle. Since Kevin had recently arrived as manager at the adjacent Beaurepaires, Bland had seen him pacing and smoking outside, engrossed in conversation on his mobile phone for hours.
Bland had already had a word to Kevin about the rumours on several occasions, but Kevin insisted it wasn't true. And yet here was Michelle, turning up again like a bad penny. He needed to sort this out. He marched across to the Beaurepaires showroom, where Michelle appeared to be arguing with Kevin, and yelled threateningly: "I want to talk to you before you leave."
Michelle ignored him and he left, intending to give her a mouthful when she exited.
Bland still had his own issues to sort out with her. A mutual friend of theirs was getting married soon and both Bland and Darren Burgess were in the bridal party. Bland was convinced that Michelle had told her ex-husband about their affair in an effort to start trouble between them at the wedding. Key eyed Bland belligerently as he stalked back to his own workshop, where his manager also watched him cautiously. He resumed work on a car, while continuing to keep tabs on the drama next door.
Key says: "This man turned around and walked back out and stared at me as if to say: 'Well, who are you and what are you doing here?'" I followed him with my eyes, all the way back to his work. Michelle waved me in. "It's got to be done tonight," Michelle said to me.
A detective who later took a statement from Key seized on the importance of these words, halting Key's ramblings and insisting he repeat Michelle's exact declaration for the record. "What do you think she meant by that?" he asked.
"The murder of Carolyn Matthews. I was sitting back thinking about it. How we gonna, how can we do it without getting busted, without leaving any sort of trail? As soon as she said 'It's got to be done tonight,' I turned around to the bloke, which I now know is Kevin Matthews, and asked him if I could use his phone. He said: 'Yep not a problem'. He turned the phone around. I rang Scott Rose and said to him: "Hey buddy, can you come down tonight? Because it's on … but he said: 'No I can't come down, I haven't got a car'. I said: 'Alright then, sweet, not a problem' and that was the end of the call."
Key says his original plan was to "leave Carolyn Matthews - tie her up and put her in the van, and take off and leave it on some side road and make it look like a car accident. Cut the brakes, put her in the front seat, tie her hands to the steering wheel.
The detective asked: "When did you decide to do that?"
"That minute."
"Why did you ring Rose?"
"I wanted someone there, to be with me, to come down and give me a hand."
"To do what?"
"To get her to come out of the house so we can put her in the van and take the van and her away and do it away from everything."
"Are you talking about Carolyn Matthews?"
"Yes."
"So you wanted Scott Rose to come down and help you murder Carolyn Matthews, or assist you in some way?"
"Assist in some way. All I was going to do was grab her, put her in the car and burn the vehicle."
"Was there any further conversation after the phone call?"
"Yes. About the kids at the house. I turned around and I've said to Michelle, I've gone, 'What are you gonna do about the kids?'"
"(She said): Oh, Kevin will take them to the video store. By the time he gets back, it'll be done. (She) didn't think much of it. It was 'yeah, not a problem'. After that, um, I think we left, I'm pretty sure we just left after that."
"Did Michelle give any instructions to Kevin?"
"Just to go and pick the kids up and take them to the video store."
"She said that to him?"
"Yes."
"Did he hear that?"
"Yes."
Key's call to his friend was made at 5.21pm. Matthews and Burgess's heated conversation at Beaurepaires lasted about 15 minutes and they left around 5.25pm. At the same time, Kevin Matthews picked up his office phone to call home.
KENNY MATTHEWS had woken that morning when his mother came into his room in the pre-dawn darkness. His brothers, Shane and Daniel, would usually rise around 4.30am, four days a week, to head off to the Seaton swimming centre. But Kenny wasn't that keen, especially during school holidays.
"I'm too tired," he sleepily told his mum.
She laughed.
"I just wanted you to know what it's like for your brothers when they have to get up," she told him, before letting him drift back off to sleep.
Daniel and Shane got up and Carolyn dropped them at the swimming centre at 4.50am, returning home for a shower before her long day at work. Kevin Matthews picked up the boys and dropped them back home around 7.30am, before he also left for work about 8am. Daniel watched a movie and played on the computer until about 9.15am, when Kenny got up. With swimming out of the way and both parents at work, the boys were left to a day of their own typically teenage devices - playing on the computer, watching movies, spaghetti on toast for lunch and for Shane, a quick trip to the deli down on Military Rd for some hot chips. By the time their mum arrived home around 5pm, they had even ticked off the list of chores their father had left.
Daniel later told police: "Mum came in and said hello and started to unload the top tray of the dishwasher in the kitchen and asked me to put out the garbage. I was kind of busy because I was still watching a movie and didn't take too much notice. Mum was grouchy that the dog hadn't been let outside all day and asked us to let him out."
Kenny told police: "I was playing on the computer when mum came home. I remember her saying she had made an appointment for a haircut the next day. Everything seemed normal. At 5.30pm, I heard the phone ring and Shane answered it. He told me to get ready because dad was coming home to take us to the video store. I hadn't changed from my pyjamas so I went to my room and put on some shorts and a top. Shane and Daniel went out the front of the house and were mucking around. At about 6.15pm, when I'd gone back in the house, I heard one of the boys say 'Kenny, Dad's here' and I went straight out. I left the house without saying goodbye to mum."
An adult Shane remembers: "It was school holidays and our treat was we got to go to the video store and that didn't happen very often. If we were good during the day and didn't ring up mum at work and bother her all day, then we would get videos. Usually it was something that was set up before - if you can be good for the next few days, you can get videos and watch videos all day. But this time, I just got a phone call in the afternoon and it was dad and he's, like: 'Grab the boys and wait at the front gate, we're going to the video store'. And I said: 'No worries, cool'. I hung up the phone and mum was sitting at the computer. I said: 'We're driving to the video store'. And we went and waited out the front but we were waiting and waiting. I was expecting him to be five minutes."
AS KEVIN rushed to close up the Beaurepaires premises, Darren Bland crossed the driveway again, intent on grilling him about Michelle. Matthews, clearly distracted and in a hurry, reassured him that they weren't having an affair and said it "had been taken care of". It certainly had. He got into his company ute and drove away to set up his wife's murder. He arrived home at 5.40pm to find Shane and Daniel waiting patiently on the front lawn.
Shane remembers: "He finally rocked up and we jumped in. We were only small boys so we could fit in (the front of) the ute. I remember he was drinking a UDL. Just as we jumped in, he had just put his phone into the glovebox. We drove to the video store at West Lakes."
A few minutes earlier, David Key and Michelle Burgess had a screaming match as they drove to Nambucca Avenue.
Key told police: "We were yelling at each other about how it's gonna happen, about how things were, about the consequences. (I told her) she should be thinking about our lives, you know, what's going to happen if we get busted, if we get caught. Spend the rest of your life in jail. Never be able to see your kids again."
Questioned later by detectives, Key was asked what he thought would happen when they arrived at the Matthews' home: "We left Beaurepaires to go down to Carolyn Matthews, down to her house, to kill Carolyn Matthews. I was pretty sure Michelle was going to do it because she was pretty arced up."
Detective: "Why did you think she was going to do it?"
Key: "Because I really didn't want to do it. I really didn't want to f**king, to kill a woman. It's not my style … I got a sore arm though. (Michelle) hit me in the arm because I kept calling her names, I was stirring her up, tormenting her."
Detective: "Why?"
Key: "Because I didn't want to do it. Because I didn't want to kill Carolyn Matthews. I called her a bitch, a home wrecker, I tormented her about her own personal life. I said straight out: 'I wonder why Darren left you? Because you're so much of a bitch.'"
Detective: "Did Michelle say anything else on the way to West Lakes Shore?"
Key: "(She said): 'The sooner she's dead, the better.' All my plans flew out the window as soon as she took over."
Detective: "What was her plan?"
Key: "Kill her and just walk away."
Detective: "And how was she going do that?"
Key: "Most probably stab her or f**king shoot her or something."
Detective: "Did she tell you?"
Key: "No."
Detective: "How did you think things were going to develop when you got to West Lakes?"
Key: "I was either going to strangle her or kill her, just stab her to death, one of the two. We had no gun. That was what I was looking for. I would rather f**king, if I was going to kill someone, I'd rather just get it done quicker, quick and painless. Michelle went there with the intention to kill her. I was basically just along for the ride, because I didn't want to kill her. I'd rather just scare the living shit out of her, not actually harm her."
Pressed again on exactly why he was going to kill Mrs Matthews, he says: "Being under the influence of alcohol and drugs plus my past history, you tend to, you know, forget about a lot of things. I'm not sure if I was exactly told the reasons."
Burgess and Key drove down Military Rd and turned left into Nambucca Avenue. As they passed No. 5, Burgess pointed it out. They drove to the end of the street and turned into Mooloola Way, doing a U-turn so the car faced back towards the entrance to Nambucca Avenue. Burgess was relentless in her provocation, and insults and threats poured from her mouth.
Key: "She started threatening me. She started saying, f**king: 'You bail out now I will make sure you'll never be able to find, you'll never be able to get a female again'. She brought up about me being charged with rape. Brought up about the armed robbery that was done in the Barossa, the house break, the forgery. She was getting aggressive, calling me names like a coward and an idiot who would never come to anything. She said I was a soft cock, I needed to get myself out of the clouds and do a real crime, make a name for myself. An armed robbery, break and enter and forgery is nothing. Do something real, kill someone, prove your point, prove that you are a man, not a sook. If this doesn't happen tonight, it's over."
It was too much for Key. He got out and sat on the bonnet of the Corolla. The car's suspension creaked as Michelle joined him, still ranting. Key tried to ignore her as he watched Kevin Matthews' Beaurepaires ute drive down Nambucca Avenue, then exit a couple of minutes later. Burgess immediately began walking towards the Matthews' home. Key says he followed, claiming he was stung by the rape-charge taunt. (The charge had been dropped).
Key: "I'm not going to have this. She called me a dirty rapist. We walked in from the street on the left hand side, we walked about a quarter of the way up (Nambucca Avenue) and we crossed the road, walked across the front lawn of the house and walked in (to the home's front courtyard)."
AFTER THE boys had left, Carolyn continued with the evening's rituals, changing into a tracksuit. She finished up some business invoices on the computer, then went into the kitchen, picking up the recycling tub and walking the short distance to the front door. Carolyn paused in the doorway, startled, as the woman she knew her husband was having an affair with strode across the courtyard towards her. There was also a scary-looking man in blue jeans, black boots and blue jacket. His face was screwed up in anger. He walked straight up to her.
"Is your name Carolyn Matthews?"
"Yes," she replied warily. Key showed her the murder contract written by her husband.
"Is this your picture and address?"
Carolyn took the piece of paper and read it. We will never know if she recognised her husband's handwriting.
"Yes," she answered again, handing the paper back to Key, wondering where this was leading. Key himself had little idea and in that moment of indecision, Michelle seized the opportunity. She lunged forward and punched Carolyn in the face, knocking her off balance. She stumbled back into the screen door, and Burgess hissed at Key: "Grab her, get her inside".
Carolyn reeled, her right cheek stinging from the punch. Key bundled her past the timber screen near the front door, which was filled with surf lifesaving photographs, medals and memorabilia. In the dining area, he roughly pushed her into a seat at the table.
"Sit," Key ordered. Carolyn complied, terrified and still utterly clueless as to what these people wanted. She knew it must have something to do with Kevin, but they weren't making any sense.
"Please, tell me what I've done wrong," she begged Key. But each time she tried to stand up, he shoved her back on to the chair.
"Shut the f**k up, don't say a f**king thing," he spat at her. Key could see Burgess ducking down and reaching around, clattering in the kitchen drawers.
"Dave, bring her here."
Key reached down and grabbed Carolyn's arm.
"Stand up."
Carolyn reluctantly allowed herself to be pushed into her tiny kitchen, where Key shoved her into the corner. He turned around and kicked one of the drawers shut. Michelle was standing next to it, brandishing a Wiltshire knife with a 20cm blade.
Key would later explain lamely to detectives: "I was under the influence of alcohol and drugs, you know. I didn't want to do it but that (the knife) put me in a situation … it reminded me of a situation with my grand … with my father, when he put a knife to my throat. I felt that I was under pressure."
Burgess ordered him: "Now kill her."
"You f**king do it."
"No, you do it. If you wanna be with me, you prove to me how much you love me. Kill her. If you don't kill her, you'll never see any sort of payment and you'll never see me, you'll never see anything. I'll have you knocked. Now kill her."
Carolyn was shaking. What must have gone through her mind as this surreal scene unfolded in front of her? In such a small room, with two people blocking her only exit, there was no way for her to escape. Exactly who did what over the next two minutes will never be known; but there is no doubt that at some point, Key took the knife from Burgess's hand and he lunged at Carolyn. Then his frenzied, brutal blows began.
"Please! No!" Carolyn begged.
But Key couldn't hear a word. He was consumed with anger, a lifetime's worth, and was unleashing it all on an innocent woman he did not know for reasons he did not understand.
"I started stabbing Carolyn. Twice in the chest. She started going down and I stabbed her once in the back, and the right-hand shoulder, pulled the knife out, threw her back up, pushed her against the wall and just went ballistic at her. I can't remember how many times I stabbed her or exactly what happened. I just went bloody ballistic. I'd already stabbed her five or six times when she went down."
But Carolyn Matthews was not out. She grabbed desperately for a frying pan on the stove top and waved it in front of her chest.
"That's how the knife actually got bent, because I stabbed the frying pan. I didn't hear a thing. I didn't even hear Carolyn Matthews f**king begging for her life. I just blanked out. I couldn't hear nothing."
Forensic pathologist Dr John Gilbert later found 41 separate injuries on Carolyn's body, some delivered with "moderate to severe" force. His report says they included abrasions to her forehead; a 22mm long wound over her left cheek, 12mm deep; bruising and swelling to her left cheek; an abrasion to the right lower jaw; an abrasion over the lower lip; a 22mm stab wound to the left forearm, above the wrist; Two 7cm wounds on the left wrist and palm; a 5cm stab wound to the left hand; stab wounds to the fingers; and stab wounds to chest which penetrated the left lung, 18cm deep; a kink in one wound suggested a change of direction of the blade - the depth was 17cm.
The cause of Carolyn Matthews' death was multiple stab wounds to the chest, resulting in injuries to both lungs, leading to their partial collapse and bleeding into the chest cavity. The most significant wound involved the penetration of a large pulmonary artery in the right lung. One of the stab wounds also penetrated her heart. Death resulted from rapid blood loss from the heart and lung injuries. Dr Gilbert noted that injuries of this type cause faintness and dizziness within a matter of seconds. He also found that it was "very doubtful that rapid medical intervention could have prevented the death once the injuries were inflicted."
When it was over, when Carolyn Matthews lay covered in her own blood, slumped on the floor of her kitchen, the last of her life slipping away, Key finally stopped, standing over her with the bent knife clenched in his hand. Still emerging from his frenzy, he had no idea if this woman was alive or dead, but he knocked the frying pan away from her chest anyway.
He explained to police: "It had my prints on it, so I had to take it."
Key claimed Burgess had remained standing in the doorway, careful to avoid the blood spatter that covered the room like macabre graffiti. But serious doubts would later be cast on whether Burgess was a bystander or a participant in the physical act of robbing Carolyn Mathews of her life.
Key: "I turned around and looked at Michelle and she just stood there, pale, as if to say "f*****k".
"Get the f**k out of the house," he spat at her.
Key: "And she ran as fast as her fat legs could take her. And I'm staring at Carolyn Matthews, in the corner bleeding like a stuffed (sic) pig, and I'm thinking to myself, what the f**k have you just done, you f**king idiot?"
"Think quick," Key told himself. This was a daunting challenge at the best of times. Loaded with drugs, alcohol and adrenalin, and covered in his victim's blood, even he could dimly comprehend the seriousness of the situation he had just created.
"You've got no gloves on, you're standing in her blood, do something. I kept telling myself I had to do something. I had to f**king get the f**k out of the house … You got to wipe the knives, got to get out of the house."
He grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen bench, mopped the blood from his face and hands and grabbed the knife. He slipped the towel into his pocket, gathered up the frying pan, the murder weapon and two other knives he'd seen Burgess touch.
"I grabbed all that because it all had fingerprints and everything over it, especially my fingerprints. That's when I walked outside. I must have got a little bit lost. I had to stop for two seconds and work out where I was going. I found the doorway and walked out, still sort of like in a daze."
He pulled a grey sock from a clothesline in the carport and wiped down all three knives, before discarding them near bushes next to the front courtyard's path. This would later cause detectives to consider - and discard - the theory that the arrangement of the knives was staged as some kind of serial killer signature.
Key continues: "I wiped the frying pan and threw that on the ground and put the sock in my pocket. I walked back out, scuffing my feet along the lawn trying to get the blood and shit off my boots. I walked to the end of the street. I was about to cross the street when I realised the car wasn't there. So I just turned straight around and it was on my left. I took my jacket off and turned it inside out. Jumped in the car, the driver's side. Michelle's …. she's sitting there killing herself f**king laughing. She was f**king … she was killing herself laughing. It was a vicious, cackling laugh. 'Now you're under the thumb' sort of laugh. It's the sort of laugh you give someone when you can get them to do anything you choose. Then she said: 'Well done, about time someone had enough balls to kill her'."
"Shut the f**k up or you're next," Key growled, pausing to roll a cigarette between his bloodied, shaking fingers and trying to regain some kind of composure before driving off. They had been in the street barely 10 minutes. Burgess's laughter continued, further riling Key.
"What the f**k are you laughing at?"
She smiled malevolently, replying: "You stupid c**t. You're under the thumb, you're all mine."
"And then in the middle of her laughing, she said she had to go to the toilet. I've gone: 'Well, we'll go down to Grange (beach).' And she said: 'All right.'
So Key drove away, Michelle Burgess still sniggering at the horror she had just orchestrated. Shock, confusion and dread were about to consume the safe, middle-class suburb of West Lakes Shore - how and why had such evil been visited upon a happy and respected family?
KEVIN MATTHEWS collected his boys from outside their home at 5.40pm, then made a beeline for the drive-through at the Leg Trap Hotel in West Lakes. He paid for four cans of UDL Scotch and cola at exactly the same time that his wife was valiantly fighting for her life. Michelle's endless phone calls had already driven him to drink a couple of hours earlier, before the confrontation at Beaurepaires. He'd bought a bottle of Scotch at the Alberton Hotel's drive-through at 3.39pm, but figured he'd need a drink or two more before the afternoon was over. Shane Tidswell remembers that he and his brothers bolted into the video store, but their dad, usually a big movie buff, remained in the ute. He gave the boys $20 and told them to come and grab him if they needed permission for an M-rated movie.
"I guess that would have taken about 15 minutes, finding what we wanted to watch, paid for it and jumped back in the ute, and went home. It was a normal day. But there are the things that I look back on now - that he didn't jump out of the car and he put his phone in the glovebox."
At 5.58pm, the computer at the West Lakes Video Ezy recorded the boys' selections - The Kid, Charlie's Angels and The X-Men. At 5.59pm, as they were leaving the shop, there was a three-second phone call from a public phone box at 489 The Esplanade, Grange, to Kevin's mobile - a signal to say the job was done.
What went through his mind as he drove home? He knew his wife was dead and they were about to walk into a murder scene. Whatever his thought processes, somewhere on that journey, he came to the conclusion that the three boys crammed into the ute cab next to him would walk through the front door first. But the trio noticed nothing unusual about their father's behaviour.
KEY AND Burgess had arrived at Grange beach at about 5.55pm. Burgess was about to call Matthews on her mobile, but Key, who used to live in the area, pointed to the nearby phone box. He got out and headed for the beach, telling Burgess: "I've got to go down and wash my face, try and calm myself the f**k down." Burgess, meanwhile, went to the phone box to make the shortest but most important phone call of her life.
Key: "I followed the footpath down to the sand and walked down the side of the jetty on to the beach. I dug a bit of a hole in the sand so it could fill with water and I washed my face and my hands to get the blood off me."
Key was oblivious to the grim irony as he washed Carolyn's blood from his hands and face with water from the ocean she loved so much. It had already soaked into his clothes and he didn't bother trying to remove it.
"I walked back to the car and (Burgess) was sitting on the bonnet having a cigarette. She said she still had to go to the toilet, so I took her to the shopping centre on Grange Rd, heading back towards Adelaide."
A frustrated Angela Goldup, whose Thursday night shopping ritual at Tea Tree Plaza was being delayed, rang her daughter at 6pm. She later told police it was to find out if Michelle wanted her to give the children dinner, but it is more likely that she asked how much longer her "shopping trip" was going to take - was she coming back for her kids or not? She tried again at 6.37pm when there was still no sign of them. She had only met Key once, earlier that month, when Michelle had brought him to a family birthday party and introduced him as a "friend". Mrs Goldup would later admit: "I didn't like him, he scared me."
Key says: "We went and picked up her kids from her parents' place and went home. I think it was after 7pm when we got to her mother's place. I stayed in the car."
Burgess's father Keith would later quiz her about that night in a phone call: "I want to ask you this straight-out question - I want a straight answer."
Michelle: "Yep."
Keith: "I was very disturbed to hear that you were driving around with a whole heap of guys on that Thursday night."
Michelle: "I … what?"
Keith: "You was driving around with a bunch of guys, wasn't ya?"
Michelle: "Yeah, Dave was with me, Jason (Colenso) was with us, there was a whole group of us."
Keith: "They're a bunch of no-hopers. I'm sorry Mish, but I got to tell you how I feel. And to me they're a bunch of no-hopers and I want to know how you got mixed up with them."
Michelle: "I just met Dave through his sister Kathy at school."
Keith: "I'll tell you what puzzles me. Now I keep going back to it. That night you flew back to our place at about 7 o'clock while we were waiting for you. You wouldn't let me see who was in the car and took off like a rocket with the kids. That concerned me because I know how long it takes to get from A to B. And that concerned me. You were not involved. If you were involved you're a stupid f**king bitch and that's all I will say."
Michelle: "Thank you."
When they arrived home at Michelle's villa in Bluebush Court, Craigmore with her children, Key grabbed his jacket and told Michelle to wash it. She threw all the clothes they'd been wearing that day into the washing machine and put his boots in the bathroom. She later took her Adelaide Crows football jacket, which rarely left her shoulders, to the drycleaners.
Key says: "Halfway through the shower she came in, and said: 'What do we f**king do now?' And I said: 'I don't f**king know. You're the one with ideas.'
"She said again: 'What do we do now?'
(Key said) 'You're the one that's taken over this little episode. If you'd let me figure out something it would have been clean, not so messy, you stupid bitch.'
"I wanted to have a go at her. I felt myself arcing back up inside."
Key worked out his frustration by cleaning the car interior, going through it with disinfectant. Michelle came out and followed his cue, emptying the car of McDonald's detritus and toys. After dinner, Key says he "tormented" Michelle's children - who would both be haunted by the brief period he was in their lives - until they went to bed.
Scott Rose later told police: "At 11pm on July 12, I rang Dave to see if he was coming around. He said he was busy, but had done the job and was cleaning up and was going to a party. I didn't ask him what he meant by the job and didn't take much notice. He said something about having used something of hers back on her, but I couldn't work out what he meant. I had been drinking all afternoon. The next morning, I heard about the murder on the radio and thought that Dave had something to do with it."
But Key was in no mood to go out that night. He set about demolishing half a carton of beer and a bottle of Scotch with Michelle's help and fell into a drunken, dreamless sleep. The nightmares would come later.
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From Dead By Friday - How lust and greed led to murder in the suburbs, by Derek Pedley. Wakefield Press
Available at the News Shop at 31 Waymouth St, Adelaide, at the specially discounted price of $19.95. For country orders, call 8206 3317.
To order the book, click here, visit your local bookshop or Wakefield Press, 1 The Parade, Kent Town. To buy the ebook, click here
Derek Pedley is a news editor at The Advertiser and a true-crime writer. He has more than two decades of experience as a reporter, sub-editor and news editor in Western Australia and South Australia. He is also the author of Australian Outlaw - the True Story of Postcard Bandit.
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MORE CRIME WEEK STORIES
PART 1: The cases that horrified South Australia
PART 2: A horrifying discovery in Snowtown (book extract)
PART 3: The postcard bandit's final prison break (book extract)
PART 4: SA's most intriguing unsolved mysteries
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