Bizarre crimes behind myth of ‘serial killer capital’
DUBBED the “murder capital”, this city is home to crimes that fascinated and appalled. They’re not just stories — real people suffered. We must confront these evils, writes Sean Fewster.
HOLDING a badge doesn’t make you a good person, and wearing a patch doesn’t guarantee you’re a bad person.
It might seem a strange lesson to some, but it’s one easily learned when you’re the son of a police officer and the nephew of a bikie.
When you’ve seen both sides of the divide, from a very young age, labels mean far less to you than actions and intentions.
My father was, indisputably, one of the good guys, as was my uncle — some of the people they knew in their respective worlds were far less so.
I was left with a fascination for the forces that influence our decisions, the combinations of background, experience and beliefs that drive us.
Stereotypes and myths were unwelcome, as were blinkered views — seeing only the good in things, or only the bad, led unerringly to uninformed opinions.
A naive outlook? Maybe. It’s a view on life that’s been sorely tested over the 16 years I’ve worked as a court reporter in Adelaide.
Make no mistake: the concept of Adelaide as a “murder capital” or “serial killer capital” is a demonstrable myth, easily disproved.
The truth is more unsettling — it is the nature of Adelaide’s crimes, not their number, that makes us stand out.
The unique political, social and economic factors that create a Beaumont children disappearance, or a “bodies in the barrels” murder spree, play just as big a role in other offences.
Many of the crimes I’ve written about make no sense, their perpetrators undeserving of empathy.
Dieter Pfennig kidnapped and murdered two children — Michael Black and Louise Bell — decades ago, yet will not reveal the location of their bodies.
Jean Eric Gassy went from psychiatrist to assassin, determined to hunt down and kill those he blamed — in his delusion — for his fall from grace.
Mark Rust escalated from sex pest to serial killer, ruining the lives of multiple women and killing two — Maya Jakic and Megumi Suzki — for no reason at all.
Then there are the unmitigated tragedies, where lives are lost or destroyed through recklessness, stupidity or mental illness.
Victims like Lewis McPherson, Adeline Yvette Wilson-Rigney, Amber Rigney and Korey Mitchell could all have been saved had authorities acted sooner to save them.
Zahra Abrahimzadeh would still be alive today, had police not failed so spectacularly at keeping her abusive husband at bay.
Women like Gwenda Savcic and Noreen Weetra would have been spared taking fatal, final action against their destructive spouses had they been helped and protected.
Cy Walsh, Vicky Wagner, Beverly Eitzen and a host of others, affected by mental illness, should have been treated sooner — but they were not, and lives were lost.
No crime has made as little sense to me as the death of Chloe Valentine, so cruelly neglected by those who should have loved her above all else.
I will bear the scars of that case for the rest of my life — but my pain is immaterial compared with that of family members, victims and survivors of crime.
No matter how fascinating we as an audience find these cases, no matter the voracious public appetite for “true crime”, it must never be forgotten these are real stories about real people.
Moreover, they are the stories of people who so often go unheard — silenced by suppression orders, court process and unfair compensation laws.
Our fascination must fuel our understanding of all aspects of our state’s criminal nature — the good and the bad, the heroes and the villains — and, in turn, our empathy.
Burying our heads in the sand, ignorantly “defending Adelaide’s reputation”, does us as great a disservice as does propagating the “murder town” myth.
Just because there is, within our City of Churches, a terrible darkness does not mean we are bad, awful or deserve to be shunned.
But if we refuse to confront that evil, understand its perpetrators, learn from our mistakes and comfort victims, then we are far worse than any City of Evil could ever be.
City of Evil, presented by Anthony LaPaglia, premieres on Channel 9 and 9 Now on Sunday, September 9 at 9.30pm.
Sean Fewster is the Chief Court Reporter for The Adelaide Advertiser.