Debi Marshall: My meeting with softly spoken, charming murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem
Crime author Debi Marshall found herself sitting face-to-face with brutal convicted killer Bevan Spencer von Einem. He was softly spoken, charming and intelligent. He was also a psychopath.
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Paul, a lifelong friend of convicted killer Bevan Spencer von Einem, has made good his promise to try to organise a meeting between us.
Staunchly loyal to the man he describes as “extremely caring with a great sense of humour and no streak in him that would suggest he could murder someone”, it is not a description with which police or victims’ families agree.
To get in to see von Einem, I have to use my real name, Debra, as opposed to my writing name, Debi, to pass security.
Relationship to prisoner? Friend. Paul assures me that von Einem is very keen to speak to me but warns that cameras will pick up his every word.
Von Einem is housed in the highest security section of Port Augusta Prison.
He has been incarcerated for almost four decades and eked out dreary days here for the past 10 years.
Now 73, and with type 2 diabetes, he was recently moved into the old-age unit.
On the advice of a criminal profiler, I am bereft of make-up or jewellery. Don’t let him under your skin, she warned me. I am not allowed a camera or mobile phone and am reminded of Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, visiting Hannibal Lecter.
I must give him no opportunity for distraction.
Expecting the security of a glass partition between us, I’m shocked to find there is nothing. I am 157cm tall, and at 184cm, he towers over me.
We sit at a low table with four stools bolted to the floor, our knees almost touching. There is only one other visitor in the room and a handful of guards behind us, guns strapped in holsters at the ready.
Von Einem has a face the colour of putty, short grey hair and deep brown eyes, alert as a dingo’s, behind large glasses.
That distinctive distended chin under a bulbous nose.
Softly spoken, charming, intelligent. He swoops to kiss my cheek before I turn away and proffer my hand instead.
He stares, appraising me – his first visitor in seven years.
Von Einem speaks: memories of a brutal Germanic father who terrorised the children and his lovely mother, impotent to stop the violence.
Of being raped, aged seven, by his father’s drinking buddy; when his father found out, he did nothing.
“Tell me about your friend, known in Adelaide as the ‘wealthy businessman’ whose name is suppressed and who, it’s long been rumoured, may have been a member of ‘The Family’,” I ask.
“I haven’t seen him for years and years,” he shrugs. “And I don’t know The Family because I was not involved with them.”
The first denial but not the last.
“What about the witness who told authorities you had admitted to being involved in the disappearance of the Beaumont children.” His lips purse.
“He was a jail snitch,” he says. “Everything he said about me, he did it for the money. I didn’t do it.”
On the second visit the following day, he is tense and guarded when I ask him about Richard Kelvin.
I realise, with horror, that the charming man from yesterday is gone, replaced by an unsettled psychopath who could strangle me with one hand.
“What’s your message to the world, Bevan?”
“Well, I’m not a killer, for starters,” he says. “I didn’t do it. Yes, I picked up hitchhikers but I didn’t harm them. And they didn’t have any evidence for (suspected Family victims Alan) Barnes and (Mark) Langley. I’ve never, ever met them.”
On my attempted third visit, I receive a phone call from the prison telling me the visit has been cancelled and that I will receive a letter telling me why.
That letter never arrives.
The Frozen Lies podcast launches on Tuesday.