Suspect priest Father Anthony Bongiorno told boys of Maria James murder
POLICE wrongly thought a priest was the person to tell Mark and Adam James their mother had been murdered.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
POLICE mistakenly believed the family priest was the most appropriate person to tell Mark and Adam James their mother Maria had been murdered.
Which is why Father Bongiorno visited the boys at school within hours of their mother being stabbed to death in her Thornbury bookshop in 1980.
Detectives didn't know it at the time, but it has since emerged that Fr Bongiorno may have murdered Ms James.
Mark James, who was 13 when his mother died, has since reflected on the unusual behaviour of Fr Bongiorno when he broke the news to him about his mother.
Priest's link to bookshop slaying
“One of the aspects of his behaviour is he didn't seem to display sorrow or shock,'' he said.
“There wasn't the warmth or the emotional connection or bond that should be present between a priest advising a young boy that his mother had been murdered.''
Cold Case squad has hot arrest prospects
Homicide squad detective Rowland Legg questioned Fr Bongiorno at the time of the murder, not as a suspect, but as the family priest.
He asked Fr Bongiorno if Ms James attended confession and if so had anything been divulged by her which might assist in the homicide investigation.
“Fr Bongiorno became irate and stated he couldn't disclose whether or not James had attended confession, let alone what she may have said during it,'' Det-Sen-Sgt Legg said in a statement to his superiors in 1980.
Sen-Sgt Legg then asked Fr Bongiorno if the fact Ms James was dead made any difference to his position.
“At which he became even more offensive,'' he said.
Why police never give up on a cold case
Former homicide squad chief Brian Ritchie took a Bible with him when he tried to persuade Fr Bongiorno to help police with their inquiries in 1980.
He opened the Bible and quoted parts of the gospels to him that suggested Fr Bongiorno should offer assistance.
But Chief Inspector Ritchie's Bible quoting ploy failed to sway Fr Bongiorno.
Cold Case Files - Behind our database
The priest again refused to say if he had taken Mrs James's confession, or whether anybody else had provided information in the confessional that could be of assistance.
A 1998 television show that re-enacted the Maria James murder prompted a flurry of new information about the unsolved crime.
Several people rang Crime Stoppers and suggested Fr Bongiorno knew something about the murder.
The then Premier, Jeff Kennett, received written information in 1998 that nominated Fr Bongiorno as a child molester. Mr Kennett passed the letter, which contained a photograph of Fr Bongiorno, to police.
That helped prompt police to speak to Fr Bongiorno again about the Maria James murder. He came into the homicide offices and appeared more helpful this time.
Fr Bongiorno told police he didn't know the identity of the killer and that no person had confessed to him in the confessional.
Bizarrely, he then suggested to police that a possible motive for the murder was that Ms James had been working as a prostitute from the rear of the bookshop.
Police thoroughly checked Ms James's background and activities and found no evidence of her ever working as a prostitute.
Mark James was disgusted when the Herald Sun recently revealed to him that Father Bongiorno had falsely accused his mother of being a sex worker.
He said such an accusation could not be supported and was behaviour quite contrary to his mother's ethical standards.
“Anyone who knew my mother would tell you Bongiorno's allegation is quite absurd,'' Mr James said.
“It makes you wonder if it was a diversionary tactic to take the attention away from him.
“Bongiorno's bizarre accusation simply adds weight to the general suspicious and inconsistent nature of his behaviour since the murder of my mother.''
Mrs James, 38, died after being stabbed 68 times on June 17, 1980.
As a rookie homicide detective, it was the first murder case Det-Sen-Sgt Ron Iddles worked on with other detectives - and now, as head of Victoria Police's cold case squad, he is still working on it and chasing up a promising new lead provided just last week by Ms James's son Adam, who was 11 when his mother was murdered.
And solving it could be as easy as the sister of the now-dead Father Bongiorno providing a DNA sample.
A simple swab of the sister's mouth with a cotton bud would enable police to find out if suspicions by Mark and Adam James that her brother killed Ms James are correct.
Her DNA would contain enough identifying characteristics to show if he was involved in stabbing Ms James to death in her bookshop.
While Sen-Sgt Iddles would like to solve every case he has worked on, identifying the killer of Ms James would be particularly satisfying for him.
It was Sen-Sgt Iddles who searched out exhibits from the Maria James crime scene in 2001 in the hope advances in technology would enable scientists to identify and extract DNA.
They got lucky and Sen-Sgt Iddles is now confident they now have the unknown killer's DNA stored on the Victoria Police DNA database.
Since then, Sen-Sgt Iddles has painstakingly tracked down more than a dozen suspects and eliminated them on that DNA evidence.
Fr Bongiorno is the only suspect left whose DNA has not been compared with the DNA the killer left at the crime scene.
That comparison could be done if Father Bongiorno's sister would agree to provide her DNA, but she refused a request from Sen-Sgt Iddles to do so.
The only other way to get his DNA is to dig up his body. Mark and Adam James hope the new evidence Adam has provided to Sen-Sgt Iddles is sufficient to warrant the exhumation of the priest's body.
Adam James wasn't questioned by police at the time of his mother's death, due to advice from his carers that doing so would be too distressing.
His brother Mark, who was 13 when his mother was murdered, said yesterday he had raised the issue of Fr Bongiorno with Adam recently and Adam had revealed information he had never spoken about before.
“What he told me implicates Fr Bongiorno in the death of my mother and is new evidence that Adam and I believe warrants digging up Bongiorno to get his DNA so we know one way or the other if he is a murderer?''
“I have asked Adam why he didn't tell anyone else about this in the 33 years since mum was murdered, but I don't think, with his intellectual disability, he realised the significance of it.''
The James brothers believe their mother confronted Fr Bongiorno over issues Adam raised with her and that could have led to the Catholic priest murdering her.
Mark James yesterday appealed to Fr Bongiorno's sister to provide her DNA, but if she continues to refuse he wants police to exhume the disgraced priest's body.
“This is dramatic new evidence provided by Adam certainly provides a motive for Bongiorno murdering mum.
“I doesn't convict him, but it points the finger pretty good.
“All we need to know for sure if Bongiorno murdered mum is his DNA, either from his sister or by exhuming his body.
“Surely we, mum's sons, deserve for one of those things to happen. We need to know one way or the other.''
Mark James praised Sen-Sgt Iddles and his crew for the vigour with which they are continuing to pursue the murderer of his mother 33 years on.
“It would mean a lot to me, and the other surviving members of the family, to have the killer identified - dead or alive,'' he said.
“I believe the investigating police would also receive a great sense of satisfaction for their collective persistence on this and other cases.''
The Herald Sun first revealed Father Bongiorno was a suspect in the murder of Ms James in 2007.
That publicity resulted in new information being provided to police in relation to 10 other suspects.
“Over the past five years there have been 10 people who have been nominated as persons of interest,'' Sen-Sgt Iddles said.
“We have gone to those people. They have all voluntarily given their DNA and they have all been excluded.''
Although Father Bongiorno was acquitted in 1995 of paedophile charges involving three boys aged 8 to 10, the Victorian Government's crimes compensation tribunal accepted evidence of his paedophilia in 1997 and some of his victims were compensated.
One of the compensated victims told the Herald Sun in 2007 that Fr Bongiorno sexually abused him for two years.
Fr Bongiorno died in 2002 at the age of 67.
He worked in the parishes of Maidstone, Brunswick West, Fawkner, Thornbury, Reservoir North and Brunswick between the late 1960s and 1995.
Mark James yesterday appealed to Fr Bongiorno's sister to co-operate with police by giving a DNA sample.
He said it was a shame police didn't have the power to force Fr Bongiorno's sister to provide her DNA.
“You would think she would want to know one way or the other whether her brother is a murderer. I certainly do,'' Mark James said.
If police do end up exhuming Fr Bongiorno's body then it will not be the first time they have used DNA from a dead suspect in the case.
Sen-Sgt Iddles said DNA was taken from the body of prime suspect Peter Keogh just days before he was cremated in 2001.
Keogh killed his former partner Vicki Cleary in 1987 by stabbing her outside a Coburg kindergarten.
Ms Cleary, 25, was the younger sister of former federal MP and VFA footballer Phil Cleary.
Keogh was interviewed in 1980 as a suspect in the Maria James murder, but was eliminated after his then partner provided him with an alibi by claiming he was with her when Mrs James was killed.
Nearly 20 years later, Mr Cleary told police he had received information challenging the alibi.
Cleary also told police Keogh had confessed to getting away with the Thornbury bookshop murder.
Keogh, 53, killed himself in 2001 while police were investigating Mr Cleary's allegations.
The then State Coroner, Graeme Johnstone, approved a homicide squad request to get DNA from Keogh's body.
The Herald Sun revealed in 2007 that the DNA comparison proved Keogh did not kill Ms James.
The gut of Sen-Sgt Iddles tells him Ms James knew her killer.
It also tells him the murderer didn't visit her with death on his mind.
All the evidence suggests it was an opportunistic crime committed in the heat of the moment - probably after an argument.
She was neither robbed or raped.
The fact the killer used a knife from Ms James's kitchen to stab her 68 times suggests he didn't come armed.
Fitzroy town clerk John James was listening on the telephone when his former wife was attacked by the killer in her Thornbury bookshop about noon on June 17, 1980.
She had a good relationship with her former husband and often rang him if she needed assistance with something, or wanted to talk to him about their two sons Mark and Adam.
Ms James rang Fitzroy Town Hall about 11.50am on the day she died and tried to speak to John James.
She was told by her former husband's secretary, Isabella Fabris, that he was not at his desk.
Ms James said: “There's someone in the shop. Tell him to ring me.''
Her former husband rang her back about five minutes later.
“Maria answered the phone and said `hang on please','' Mr James said in his statement to police.
“I then held on and while doing this I heard discussion in the background and then a bit of a scream and then there was more discussion and then silence.
“I then started to get edgy and started to whistle into the phone to attract someone's attention.
“I could then still hear the conversation in the background and I couldn't hear the exact words but Maria was talking fairly loudly.
“I then heard a second scream. I then really thought something was wrong so I decided to go to the shop to see what was up.''
Mr James took about 15 minutes to get to the shop at 736 High St, Thornbury.
The front door was locked and a customer was standing outside.
Mr James and the customer looked through the window and both saw movement of the curtain that separated the shop from the rear living quarters, as though somebody was peeking through it.
Really worried by this time, Mr James went round the back and climbed through the kitchen window and started yelling, “Is anybody home?''
He opened the back door in case he needed to run out in a hurry.
“I then crept along the passage and on the left is my son's room and I glanced in there and couldn't see anything,'' his statement to police said..
“I then reached over and turned the light on in her room and I saw her on the floor.
“Her eyes were open and there was blood all over the place. I knew she was dead.''
Mr James ran to a neighbour and phoned police.
He then went back to the front of the shop and was stunned to find the previously locked door was open and there was a woman customer browsing the bookshelves.
It appears certain the killer was still in the shop when Mr James arrived and left through the front door as Mr James was climbing in through the back window.
The killer left Ms James, fully clothed, lying on her back with her hands tied in front of her with twine.
Sen-Sgt Iddles said he was convinced Ms James knew her killer and the crime scene, which he attended, indicated as much.
“They are actually sitting down having a cuppa. There were two cups found on the counter,'' he said.
“It's somebody she is comfortable with.
“For whatever reason, an argument has taken place.
“The killer has grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her in the heat of the moment.
“It was a weapon of opportunity, rather than a planned weapon. It wasn't a planned murder.
“I don't subscribe to the theory she was tortured or the ropes suggest it was some sort of bondage fantasy, a murder with a sexual motive.
“I believe she had an argument with somebody she knew. That person didn't go there with the intention of harming her.
“There was a lot of hatred and anger.
“Where you get multiple stab wounds, and you are talking 68 stab wounds here, that's a lot of anger and some emotional connection.
“It was a frenzied attack.''
Sen-Sgt Iddles appealed to anyone with information on the Maria James murder to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
