From loose mates to 'persons of interest'

EVIDENTLY, it was the gym that brought them together in Adelaide. But the men who would become notorious as "persons of interest" in the death of Dianne Brimble didn't just work out together: they did some heavy lifting on the party scene, as well.

EVIDENTLY, it was the gym that brought them together in Adelaide. But the men who would become notorious as "persons of interest" in the death of Dianne Brimble didn't just work out together: they did some heavy lifting on the party scene, as well.

Mark Wilhelm, 40, a fitter and turner who left school at Year 10, styled himself a lady's man. On that awful night in 2002 on the Pacific Sky, he was alleged to have given the mother of three the date-rape drug fantasy, before having sex with her in the cramped cabin he shared with three other members of the Adelaide group. Leo Silvestri was in the bunk below.

Wilhelm, 35, faces criminal charges of manslaughter and supplying a prohibited drug, while Silvestri, 44, will be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice, with an indictment to be filed in the NSW District Court to include an alternative charge of hindering an investigation into a serious offence. Another cabin mate, Ryan Kuchel, faces two counts of perverting the course of justice and, in the alternative, two counts of hindering an investigation.

No action is to be taken against the other five men who were originally named as persons of interest by the police.

Exactly what brought them together on the Pacific Sky is the issue of some dispute. Silvestri told deputy NSW coroner Jacqueline Milledge that the eight had had only a "loose" association at home in Adelaide, and would see each other from time to time at the gym or at parties.

Still, they were close enough to go on vacation together. Before boarding the cruise ship in Sydney, the eight posed for a group photograph: Brimble can be glimpsed in the background, oblivious to them, smiling and happy to be embarking on a much-anticipated holiday. Kuchel, 31, has tried to shrug off his interaction with the others as coincidental. "As sometimes happens when you're on holiday, you meet people," he said in 2006.

Two of the men, Dragan Losic and Charlie Kambouris, were well known on the Adelaide martial arts scene. They were billeted in another four-bunk cabin on the Pacific Sky and are not subject to further action. The man who occupied the fourth bunk in cabin 182, the scene of Brimble's death, was Matthew Slade. He gave evidence how he woke, hungover, to see her naked body on the floor of the cabin, with Wilhelm and Silvestri standing very close to her.

At the inquest, Slade said he hardly knew the other seven men before going on the cruise. They turned out to be "wankers", he said. "It was horrendously embarrassing," Slade said in his evidence. "Right from the word go, I'm thinking 'Matt, you've got to meet some other people and quietly separate from these guys'."

One by one, at the inquest, the others in the group appeared humble and contrite in different measures in the witness box. But outside the court it was a different story: on phone tapes recorded secretly by police, a self-pitying Wilhelm represented himself as the victim, not Brimble.

At one point, Silvestri, speaking to his girlfriend, said of the police: "They're not stupid, they're on the right track, they just can't prove it".

Kuchel was taped as telling Silvestri: "All seven of us should get together, sit down at a conference, tell it as it is and get paid one hundred grand each."