The cold case detectives who never give up
DETECTIVES working in the unsolved homicide unit are time travellers, investigating long-ago murders that will not be closed until the perpetrators are caught.
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WAYNE Joseph Castle was a middle-aged loner with a bad back, a disability pension and a secret.
Fortysomething Castle lived with his mother in the back blocks of Sydney’s crumbling inner-city public housing, and after she died, he lived alone. He was a nervous sort of guy, always looking over his shoulder. Neighbours put it down to him smoking too much weed. But Castle was paranoid for a reason.
Thirteen years earlier, he had killed someone.
He hadn’t meant to. He wanted the woman’s handbag, but she struggled so he hit her and bang! Her head hit the concrete. He fled.
The cops were suspicious; they had ATM footage of Castle near the scene. He’d handed over a pair of shoes — not the ones he’d worn on the night, but they didn’t know that — and been forced to appear at a coronial inquest, but no charges were laid. Lucky for him, it’s not illegal for a man to be in the laneways of Newtown, in Sydney’s inner west, at night, and there was no other evidence … not yet, anyway. Not that he knew of. He cast another look over his shoulder.
Castle might have been a loner, but he was not alone. Across Australia, there are hundreds of men like him, possibly a few women, too, who have gotten away with killing someone. In New South Wales, the unsolved homicide unit has between 600 and 700 cases on its tracking files dating back to the 1920s, and even though some of the killers would be dead now, and some living far, far away, those cases will not be closed until the perpetrators are caught.
“People need to know we will never give up,” says the head of homicide, Detective Superintendent Mick Willing. “It might not be physically possible, but where we can, we will, and it’s important for perpetrators to know that one day you might get a knock on the door. People who are murdered should expect that someone is out there talking for them, trying to find out what happened for them, and if it takes 30 years, or 40 years, then so be it.”
The 35-odd men and women who staff the NSW unsolved homicide unit have an unusual job. They might look like any other detectives, but actually they are time travellers, daily transporting their minds back years or decades to whenever an unsolved murder took place.
Once we have a DNA profile, it will get processed and run through the database, and every now and then it will be run through again.
They begin with whatever they have inherited from the original investigators: a mountain of paper from the days before computers, when everything was written down; names of witnesses; an exhibit or two, if they are lucky — hopefully one that is still in good shape, was stored properly and has not been repeatedly contaminated over the years before DNA tests.
In the lab, police scientists examine the physical evidence, trying to draw out its secrets. In their Parramatta offices, the detectives transport themselves back to another era, and apply modern policing techniques to old crimes. “It’s like bringing today’s thinking and applying it to the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s, to when these murders occurred,” says Willing.
Time can be an enemy. Exhibits decay. Witnesses die. Memories warp. “Things are lost, destroyed inadvertently because of lack of foresight that 30 years down the track, we would have this amazing technology that can identify people through their DNA,” says Detective Chief Inspector John Lehmann.
But time can be an asset, too. Relationships change, loyalties shift, and a girlfriend who lied to the original investigators might be less willing to protect her former lover. The passing of time has also delivered a technological revolution. DNA testing is not the only innovation; there’s new surveillance technology, crime-scene equipment and more sophisticated undercover methods.
Police must bring all these to a cold case, because time is an asset for the defence, too. Lawyers can argue evidence is contaminated, or suggest witnesses have befuddled memories. DNA is a godsend, but it’s not enough.
It’s important for perpetrators to know that one day you might get a knock on the door
In 1992, the naked body of Filipino prostitute Pia Navida was found in bushland on the outskirts of Sydney. Her head had been viciously beaten with a rock. Police took swabs from her body and fingernails. But those were the days before DNA testing; there were no suspects and the case went cold.
In NSW, all DNA records from unsolved crimes are regularly run through the national database, which grows every time someone is charged with a serious offence. In 2011, it linked the swabs to three men. One of them was Steve Matthews. The match alone would not have been enough to convict Matthews, as he could have engaged Navida’s services as a prostitute, but not killed her. So police had to dig deeper.
They interviewed Matthews’s old neighbours, his workmates and tracked down an ex-girlfriend. “She told us he had divulged that he had killed a person by smashing her head with a rock and dumping her in the bush,” says Lehmann. “That wasn’t something she was willing to go to the police about before. Who knows why? Maybe she was loyal to him, or she might have thought he was just talking rubbish.”
Matthews was partially blind and on a disability pension when police came knocking. The DNA and his ex-girlfriend’s testimony combined to create a compelling case, and in 2014 Matthews was sentenced to at least 16 years and three months in prison for Navida’s murder.
Unlike his younger colleagues, Stephen Horn doesn’t have to imagine what the police force was like in the 1960s. He was there.
Detective Senior Sergeant Horn has been an officer for 49 years, and has worked in forensics since 1974. In those days, he was usually the only forensics officer on the scene, accompanied by a fingerprint specialist. With his Linhof camera in tow, complete with enormous negative and bellows, he would visually examine the crime scene, make sketches and take photographs. He would note shoe prints and look for blood, fibres or seeds, sometimes taking samples to a specialist at the CSIRO for identification.
Nowadays, he has a 360-degree camera, with a 3D printer that creates a model of the crime scene so accurate that it can be used in court. There are lasers that can identify whether a vehicle has been resprayed, chemicals that can detect trace amounts of blood, and ground-penetrating radar.
The most important forensic tool, however, is DNA. When police decide whether to actively reinvestigate a case, they consider all the information they have, but one of the most crucial questions is whether there are any exhibits, “and, if we have any, can we get them re-examined now for DNA?” asks Horn.
Some exhibits are decades old. Police still have clothes from the murders of two young women at Wanda Beach in 1965. “But if there’s DNA, we don’t know who it belongs to,” says Horn. “It could be a police officer. We need to get DNA samples from previous investigators to eliminate them. Once we have a profile, it will get processed and run through the database, and every now and then it will be run through again. Maybe it will get a hit, maybe never, if the offender is dead, or has left the country, or never offends again.”
It won’t go away. TV series CSI has 40 minutes to solve a case. Sometimes we have 40 years
Even decades after a crime has been committed, what’s known in forensic science as Locard’s principle — that the perpetrator will bring something to the crime scene, and take something away — still applies. “Every contact leaves a trace,” said the pioneering French forensic scientist, Edmond Locard.
“If that case remains unsolved, sometime down the track someone else will look at it again, and there might be better technology. It won’t go away. [TV series] CSI has 40 minutes to solve a case. Sometimes we have 40 years,” says Horn.
Five years ago, Wayne Castle made a friend. His name was Doug. We don’t know how Doug befriended Castle, and we don’t know why he won his confidence, but we do know something that Castle didn’t know at the time: Doug was an undercover police officer.
In 2008, police formed a task force to further investigate the death of Jennifer Smith, a 32-year-old freelance journalist who was found dead in a Newtown alleyway, in January 1998. They tested the samples taken from her fingernails. The results confirmed officers’ long-held suspicions: the DNA matched the samples from Castle’s shoes.
Police began electronic and physical surveillance of Castle. They launched an undercover police operation. Police never reveal details about these operations, so we don’t know why Castle felt compelled to reveal his secret to Doug. But on April 18, 2011, they had this conversation.
Castle: “She fell and hit her head, and she died. That’s it.” And a few minutes later: “You’re the only c**t in the world that knows that I did it. The only one in the world.” Doug: “How does that make you feel?” Castle: “Well, relieved.” DNA plus a confession was enough to convict Castle of manslaughter. He will be eligible for parole in January.
There’s no relief for Smith’s family, however. Her mother, Dale, is broken. “I have recurring nightmares and flashbacks … of Jen lying on the footpath pleading, ‘Help me, help me,’ and no one did,” she said in a victim’s impact statement tendered to court.
Smith’s father died before her killer was found. Her siblings struggle. Castle’s handwritten apology, tendered to the court, meant nothing after so many lies over so many years. “Had he admitted guilt then and there, we may have been able to make peace with the situation and move on, but instead he chose to lie and leave us in the dark, with no resolution and many unanswered questions,” Smith’s sister Rebecca told the court.
When we told him we were arresting him for murder, there was shock and horror on his face
Grief is something unsolved homicide detectives deal with every day. Grief, and questions. There are up to 700 cases on the team’s books, yet since 2008, 16 have been solved. That’s two a year. Three dozen detectives can only do so much, but solving old cases is not just a matter of time and resources. Some have left enough clues for detectives, and some haven’t. And when detectives look through those hundreds of files to choose which case to investigate next, the number of clues is everything.
“What makes a difference?” asks Willing. “The existence of exhibits. Was there a person of interest at the time? Are there witnesses still alive? That sort of thing.” The decisions police make about which cases to reinvestigate can be confusing and upsetting for families. “Why aren’t we working on their son’s murder compared to that guy’s murder?” says Willing. “That’s a really difficult thing. We have to have rules and standard operating procedures, and we’ve got to stick to them as best we can.”
There may be only two convictions a year for the unsolved homicide team, but they are satisfying ones. The unit’s first arrest, back in 2008, was of Paul Armstrong, who killed his HIV-positive lover, Felipe Flores, in 1991. Police arrested Armstrong in Tasmania, his new home. “This guy had thought he’d gotten away with it,” said Lehmann. “He thought he was arrested over other matters — he was quite a violent person. When we told him we were placing him under arrest over the murder of Felipe Flores, there was shock and horror on his face. It was something that sticks with me.”
Sometimes the offenders have turned over a new leaf. In 1987, David Stracey was driving a stolen car when his friend leaned out of the window and grabbed an elderly woman’s bag. She hit her head and died. He kept the secret, but it weighed heavily. He went into drug rehabilitation and rebuilt his life, marrying, having children and setting up a successful business. When detectives came knocking 23 years later, his new life fell apart.
His wife knew about his drug history, but not about the crime. His children knew about neither. His arrest was splashed across the front page of the local paper in the tiny town where they lived. According to the sentencing judge, Mrs Stracey “found it hard to accept that the David we have lived with and known for so many years would have been involved in something like this”.
Police are not going to be able to solve every murder on their files. Time will continue to be both a friend and an enemy — technology will improve, but witnesses will die. The unit’s strike rate might never get beyond two per cent. But one thing they can do is ensure those hundreds of people like Castle are trapped in the misery of paranoia.
“That’s at least satisfying to a degree,” says Lehmann. “If you are not going to be able to solve a case, maybe at least that person who is responsible for that murder will be looking over their shoulder for the rest of their life.”
Originally published as The cold case detectives who never give up
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