SA Supreme Court to hear trial of Dieter Pfennig, accused of abducting and murdering Louise Bell in January 1983
THE possibility that anyone other than former teacher Dieter Pfennig abducted and murdered Louise Bell is “one billion to one”, a court has heard.
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THE possibility that anyone other than former teacher Dieter Pfennig abducted and murdered Louise Bell is “one billion to one”, a court has heard.
In the Supreme Court on Monday, prosecutors outlined a raft of forensic, photographic, DNA and witness evidence they say solve one of the state’s most enduring cold cases.
Dieter Pfennig, 67, has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder.
He is standing trial before Acting Justice Michael David today — 32 years, five months and 27 days since the little girl vanished from her Hackham West home.
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Pfennig stands accused of breaking into Louise’s bedroom, which she shared with her sister, and abducting her on the night of January 4, 1983.
Prosecutor Sandi McDonald, SC, said the evidence would prove beyond reasonable doubt that the long-missing little girl was dead and Pfennig was responsible.
She said witnesses would match the German-born teacher’s accent to that of a man who made phone calls to one of Louise’s neighbours, claiming responsibility for the crime.
She said they would also match him to a man who took a taxi driver on a “bizarre” drive-by of key locations in the case two months after Louise’s disappearance.
The key evidence, she said, would come from Louise’s pyjama top, which was left folded by the neighbour’s letter box in the days after the crime.
Ms McDonald said that top contained not only the “one in a billion” DNA match to Pfennig, but also trace evidence showing it had been immersed in the river where he liked to canoe.
She said that top was ripped in such a way that it appeared as if someone had “attempted to remove it from a child, particularly if her hands were bound”.
In her opening address, Ms McDonald said Pfennig had spoken to many people about Louise, calling her a “pretty girl” and responding to one person’s questions with “there goes my alibi”.
She said Pfennig claimed to have a daughter named Rachel — he did not, that was the name of Louise’s sister — and commented how you “ never see anyone on the streets” of Hackham West at night.
Ms McDonald said that Pfennig had confessed to two separate fellow prison inmates, at different times, long before the DNA match was made.
He allegedly told one inmate he could not reveal where Louise’s body was and claimed her death was an accident — he was smoking cannabis at the time.
He allegedly told the second inmate he saw no point in confessing to police. “Pfennig said ‘I know I’m not going to make it out of prison, why should I should bother?’,” Ms McDonald said.
The alleged abduction was not discovered until early the next morning when Louise’s mother, Diane, realised she was missing.
Subsequently, cleaner Raymond John Geesing — who lived 500m from the Bell’s home — was charged with murder and convicted on circumstantial evidence.
He served 16 months’ jail before his conviction was overturned, and the reopened case has been a focus of SA Police’s Major Crimes Investigations Branch ever since.
In November 2013, Pfennig was charged with Louise’s murder after a pyjama top, found on a neighbour’s lawn two weeks after her disappearance, was DNA tested.
Giving evidence, Louise’s father Colin Bell confirmed the pyjamas that yielded the DNA match had belonged to his missing daughter.
He said he knew that because the manufacturer’s tag had been removed — Louise asked that be done because the pyjamas, which were a Christmas present, had been itchy.
Mr Bell described his daughter as a shy and obedient girl who loved reading and music and was uncomfortable around strangers.
He said the family’s plans prior to Louise’s disappearance involved shopping, a picnic and a trip to see the movie, ET.
He said he checked on Louise and her sister in their shared bedroom multiple times on the night of her disappearance because the girls were “having a dispute” over Louise playing music on her new cassette recorder.
Mr Bell was the last person to see Louise.
“Louise was still awake but she didn’t respond when I said goodnight to her.”
“It was my usual habit to kiss them, but I can't remember whether I did or not that night.”
He described a frantic scene the next morning when his wife discovered Louise was gone, her window was open and fly screen was “flapping in the breeze”.
He checked a neighbour’s pool and the school for Louise but never saw her again.
“I went back inside and said to my wife there was obviously something terribly wrong and I called the police,” he said.
The court has heard that street lights on Meadow Way, where the Bell family lived, switched off at 1am in 1983.
Former milkman Bryan Riddle said he delivered to the Bell home around the time of Louise’s disappearance.
He said that he had to jump tent wires that had been strung across the concrete path to collect money and leave bottles.
He said that on the morning following Louise’s disappreance, those wires had been moved and “bunched together” on the lawn area.
Hackham West resident Robert Troveridge gave evidence that he saw Pfennig “walking the streets” at 11pm “half a dozen times” prior to the disappearance.
“I couldn’t see what he was doing apart from just walking up and down the streets,” he said.
“When I saw him outside our window, I would watch him to see what he was up to ... he would eventually go away.”
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