Barrenjoey Road book extract: Neville Tween’s stepdaughter opens up
From the age of six, Kylie was molested by her stepfather. Only now has she been able to reveal the actions of the man many believe was behind one of Sydney’s most baffling cold cases, missing girl Trudie Adams, as this exclusive book extract reveals.
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On June 25, 1978, Trudie Adams, 18, went missing while hitchhiking home from outside the Newport surf club.
Her case followed a disturbing number of attacks on young northern beaches women — many of which went unreported or were not investigated.
In 2018, the podcast and documentary series Barrenjoey Road explored why the Adams’ case was never solved.
Now journalists Neil Mercer and Ruby Jones have followed up with a new book, which contains new shocking revelations about the case, including this one about prime suspect Neville Tween.
As the final episodes of the ABC TV and podcast series aired, the emails multiplied. Among them was a message from a woman called Kylie.
“Hi, Ruby, I have been listening to your podcast Unravel: Barrenjoey Road. I may have information regarding your documentary; I knew Neville Tween. I would prefer contact by phone if that is okay please.”
Kylie turned out to be Tween’s stepdaughter.
In her early 40s now, Kylie has bright blue eyes and often pulls her hair back into a tight ponytail. She talks fast, like she might run out of time to get it all out. She’s also funny and sweet, even if the things she’s talking about are neither.
She’d never spoken publicly to anyone about Neville Tween, though she’d thought about Trudie’s friends and family, and all the sexual assault victims and whether or not her information could help them.
When Kylie’s mum, Susan, met Neville Tween on February 14, 1978, Susan was only 19. Kylie’s biological father was out of the picture by then.
Susan knew Tween was married and it wasn’t long after meeting him she found out he had a criminal record, although just what he told her isn’t clear.
The early part of Susan’s relationship with Tween was intense, but then Tween went to jail around 1981 for the 1977 Lismore offences and the 1978 attempted robbery of the munitions factory.
When Kylie was about eight years old, she and her mum moved up the coast to live permanently with Tween.
Eventually, Kylie was encouraged to refer to Tween as “Dad”. And he could act paternal, like when he would warn Kylie not to hitchhike.
The warning was stark. Her stepfather was blunt.
“I was [too] petrified to ever hitchhike,” Kylie said.
Kylie also remembered Neville Tween’s friends. According to her, they would gather in the so-called Den of Iniquity. That was a little self-contained granny flat where Tween and his mates could talk and or smoke dope, indulge themselves. And she remembered (corrupt cop) Mark Standen as “very much a friend of the family”.
And there was something else, something else she’d lived with but only now felt free to speak about publicly.
The first time Neville Tween molested her, Kylie was about six or seven years old and was going to Villawood Public School. This was during the period when he would come to stay with her and her mother, Susan, before they moved to the Central Coast.
On this particular day, Susan had gone up to the shops so there was a window of opportunity. Tween thought he wouldn’t get caught.
“I remember mostly my school uniform and my stockings, you know, those ribbed stockings, navy blue ones. I remember he pulled my stockings down and laid me on my mum’s bed … I remember the bedspread, I remember the walls being green.”
Tween told her not to tell her mother.
“It’s our secret, it’s just kisses cos I love you,” he said.
Kylie didn’t know what to think. Tween was telling her he loved her and cared about her and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, but, Kylie said, “I don’t think I really knew.”
But she knew, even then, that when he said, “Don’t tell Mum,” well, something wasn’t right.
Kylie can’t recall it happening again at Villawood. But it happened again after she and her mum moved to the Central Coast.
“I honestly think it was when he was off his head … on drugs” and “his sexual deviate side needed its fix”, she said.
It only took place when he knew Kylie’s mother was going to be away, or when “he knew I was going to be home alone for a day”.
The abuse continued for years until one night Kylie was at her biological father’s house and refused to go home. She can’t recall if she said anything specifically to her father.
“I think I just refused to go home … I was petrified. Just scared knowing what was going to happen …”
Kylie thought it was at that point that somebody said, “I think we really need to call the police”.
Kylie ended up telling authorities what had happened. The police and the Children’s Court got involved and she was moved from Susan and Neville’s house to live with relatives. But although she was safe from Tween, Kylie was also lonely and homesick. She wanted her mum.
The only way Kylie could go back to live with her mother was if she told the police she’d made it all up. Eventually, the pressure got to her and she did. Court proceedings were dropped and she was allowed home.
Before long, the abuse started right back up again. Kylie believed that Tween “kind of felt safe”, given “I’d already tried once and that didn’t work out well for me … so the chance of me speaking up again … it wasn’t going to happen”.
Kylie said that as she got older the pattern continued. Then, one day, after he’d molested her, Tween started doing something he was suspected of doing to other young girls. He gave her cash.
“Here’s a hundred dollars,” he said.
“To a 12, 13-year-old girl, a hundred dollars is a lot of money to go shopping,” Kylie recalled.
“So in a way, it was another kick in the guts that he was treating me like these women he didn’t want me to turn out [to be], such as prostitutes, paying for your needs.”
Kylie said she used the money to jump on a bus and go to a local shopping centre. She’d buy makeup, pens and pencils and food, like chicken and chips with gravy at Charcoal Chicken.
Tween’s drug use became heavier and he became more erratic as Kylie grew up. She remembers the incident where her stepfather thought Ray Johnson was under the couch, trying to kill him and the time Tween hogtied the teenage boy he’d caught in the backyard.
As the years went on, Kylie grew old enough to know that she could outsmart her stepfather. When he offered her money for sex, she’d pretend she’d recorded him and threaten to show it to her mother.
It wasn’t until Tween was arrested in 2006 and went to jail that Kylie began to feel free of him.
Asked whether she thought Neville Tween could be responsible for Trudie Adams’ disappearance, Kylie said: “I think everything points towards him doing it. I think there may have been something like … the gun went off while aimed at her … I don’t think the intention was to kill her.”
But after Trudie was killed, Tween and his associates would have “had to cover up everything”.
One thing that has always bothered her is that the date Trudie disappeared was just a few days before Tween’s birthday.
“I can see him and someone else going out and partying for his birthday,” she says.
“Back then, even his mates were always looking for a good time, like an excuse to have a good time … So that’s something that’s always got to me, that his birthday is in June.”
Trudie disappeared in the early hours of June 25, 1978. Tween turned 38 the following Thursday.
Despite what she’d been through, Kylie survived. She now has a son, a loving partner and is working on setting up her own business, although things aren’t always easy.
She’s also talked about become a counsellor one day, talking to women who’ve been through a terrible time themselves. She thought that maybe, just maybe, she could help them.
Neville Brian Tween died in jail in Sydney in 2013. Few mourned his passing. Even among the criminal fraternity, he went unlamented. About 20 people, including his family and their relatives, turned up to his funeral.
Edited extract from Barrenjoey Road, by Neil Mercer and Ruby Jones, HarperCollins, out now
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