Robert Farquharson’s lost psychological report revealed

Victoria police commissioned a psychological assessment of convicted child-killer Robert Farquharson and received it three weeks before charging him with triple murder, but the report remained locked away in police files until it was released recently to the Trial By Water podcast.

Police wanted the analysis of Farquharson’s psyche before they conducted a second formal interview with him. They were seeking tips on how to get him to confess to killing his three sons when he drove them into a dam on Father’s Day 2005.

Robert Farquharson’s case was one of the most high-profile and controversial in Victorian history.Credit:

But consultant psychologist Michael R. Davis did not interview Farquharson or any other witness or family member, and based his report only on documents supplied by police. Because of that, he said his report was only useful for investigative purposes and should not be used in court.

With those caveats, he concluded that Farquharson had likely attempted suicide by driving his three sons into a dam on Father’s Day 2005, but then changed his mind and could not save the boys. It was the favoured police theory at the time, but not the one the prosecution argued at Farquharson’s trials.

Davis completed the report in November 2005, two months into one of Victoria Police’s most high-profile and controversial murder investigations, and a few weeks before police arrested Farquharson.

Farquharson insisted the crash was an accident – that he’d coughed and passed out. At his trials, the prosecution argued he had been angry at the breakdown of his marriage to former wife Cindy Gambino, and her starting a new relationship. He had deliberately killed his sons Jai, Tyler and Bailey in revenge, they argued.

Police based this largely on a witness, Greg King, who made three different statements, the final one saying he’d heard Farquharson outlining his plot in detail at a fish-and-chip shop several months before the crash.

Farquharson was found guilty of triple murder at two trials and sentenced in 2010 to at least 33 years in jail. However, a group of scientists, doctors and traffic experts now have serious doubts about that conviction and the police work that led up to it.

Police only disclosed the existence of Davis’ psychological report to Farquharson’s defence lawyers late in the second trial, according to sources speaking anonymously because they are not permitted to make public comment. It was not made public at either trial.

Though it went nowhere, Davis’ report remains the only attempt by either the prosecution or the defence to get to the bottom of Farquharson’s mental state – a fact which experts Tim Watson Munro and Xanthe Mallett said was unfathomable.

Brothers Jai , 9, Bailey, 2, and Tyler Farquharson, 7.

“Given the whole case pivots around his mental state, how is there no [full] psych report? I do not understand,” said Mallett, a forensic anthropologist and associate professor at the University of Newcastle.

Dr Deb Bennett, a psychologist, criminal profiler and 40-year veteran of Victoria Police who had a hand in shaping Davis’ report, told the Trial By Water podcast that in her experience, police investigators often did not want to understand what had really happened.

They were more interested in winning cases and would listen to nothing that seemed to go against that, she said.

“Let’s face it, it’s not about justice. It’s who tells the best story. That’s really what it’s about,” Bennett said.

A redacted version of Davis’ report was released by police to this masthead after a freedom-of-information request.

The seven-page paper is called an “indirect personality assessment” because Davis had not interviewed Farquharson. The documents he was supplied included several statements by witnesses, videos of Farquharson’s police interview and a lie detector test.

However, it appears from the dates of the witness statements on his report that Davis had no access to Gambino’s police statement. Farquharson’s estranged wife supported him for four years before changing her mind and coming to believe he was guilty. Her first statement said, among other things, that there had been no violence or coercion in the marriage.

Davis conceded in his report that, if he had been given different material to work with, it “may have resulted in a different opinion”. As a result, he insisted that his report was “provided as an investigative aid rather than for legal purposes”.

Rob and Cindy Farquharson at the funeral of their three sons.Credit: John Donegan

Davis concluded the evidence for Farquharson’s story of coughing and passing out was “poor”, citing investigators’ theories that the car had been deliberately steered into the dam.

“It appears more likely that this was an intentional act,” he wrote.

However, “if the motive was to punish his ex-wife by killing their children,” Davis wrote, then a certain “level of ‘rubbing it in’ [to hurt Cindy] would be expected”. He did not see evidence of this in Farquharson’s attitude.

“It would appear that if he did intend to kill just his children, he is now experiencing considerable guilt,” Davis wrote.

“Let’s face it, it’s not about justice. It’s who tells the best story.”

Former Victoria Police criminal profiler Dr Deb Bennett

As evidence for the suicide-gone-wrong theory, Davis pointed to Farquharson’s prescription for anti-depressant medication, the fact that the crash had happened on Father’s Day, and the fact that he controlled his emotions.

“Mr Farquharson appears to have a somewhat avoidant personality characterised by controlled emotional expression and brooding … His love for his children was expressed through overprotectiveness and playing sport with them,” Davis wrote in his report to police.

“Mr Farquharson is not an overtly aggressive person and will tend to ‘bottle up’ his anger. He is not easily goaded into responding with aggression and shows considerable control.”

“It is my opinion that an attempted suicide/homicide is perhaps a more likely explanation than homicide. I understand that this is also the opinion of the investigation,” he wrote.

“Mr Farquharson appears to be labouring under a combination of guilt and fear. He is trying very hard to convince himself that he is innocent.”

Criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro said of the report, “there’s some fairly strident statements” about Farquharson’s intent, “and I can say that, having given evidence in the Supreme Court and murder trials on hundreds of occasions over the decades, the one thing you never talk about is intent”.

“No degree of expertise will enable you to say with certainty what was going on in an individual’s mind at the moment that they committed an offence,” Watson-Munro said.

Of the over-control theory, Watson-Munro said, “that’s a sort of false kind of logic, really”.

Xanthe Mallett said that when men were guilty of multiple-child killing, they had always been previously violent and coercive, and there had been an escalation in behaviour leading up to the incident. Farquharson had none of these features.

“Many people get depressed,” Mallett said, “but the fact that somebody has depression would be a minor consideration for me when looking at the seriousness of this crime.”

Bennett, who was then a detective senior sergeant with Victoria Police, met Davis for two hours as he prepared his report in 2005.

She would not comment about its contents, but said in general of the fact that Farquharson took anti-depressant medication that, “other than anti-cholesterol tablets, antidepressants are the largest selling drug in the US”. Did they suggest someone was suicidal or murderous? “Can you imagine?” she said. “No! No!”

After 40 years of working with Victoria Police, Bennett said police often jumped to conclusions based on people’s behaviour in traumatic circumstances.

“Once the leader has deemed that so and so is guilty, then the team, it’s your job to bring that case to fruition,” Bennett said, speaking generally. “They say … ‘We’re keeping an open mind’ … [but] every time I hear that I think, ‘No, you’re not’.”

Trial By Water established that police formed an early view of Farquharson’s guilt because of his unemotional behaviour by the dam while others were searching for his sons, and his strange behaviour in a subsequent police interview in the hospital. Physical evidence at the scene also fuelled their suspicions.

Bennett said most investigations got it right, but some did not. She said in some cases the real focus of investigators was not on understanding people or the circumstances surrounding an incident, but on securing a conviction. This, she said, was regarded by detectives as a win.

“We think the justice system is the balance, the scales being balanced,” she said. “But it isn’t.”

Davis declined to comment, saying he was unable to because the report was the property of police. Victoria Police said in a statement they “stand behind the rigorous investigation” in the Farquharson case and “consider this matter finalised”.