Missing Wonnangatta campers: Dam camera may explain Carol Clay, Russel Hill disappearance
CCTV from this obscure camera location could help investigators solve the missing Wonnangatta campers case.
The hills are alive with the sounds of outsiders quizzing locals about the Wonnangatta mystery. For high country people, questions about the missing campers’ fate are getting old, and so are most of the answers.
But some things keep coming up. Road contractors working north of Wonnangatta at the time when Russell Hill and Carol Clay vanished in March last year still wonder if investigators have pegged who’s who in the Landcruiser being driven “erratically” in the area at that time. The boss of two bulldozer crews tells Deadline his men were startled by the Landcruiser, which “came roaring” up the track from the Wonnangatta direction before news broke that the pair were missing.
Usually, people drive carefully past machinery working on the narrow roads in steep country, or pull over for a chat, but not the unknown Landcruiser driver: the vehicle swerved around the bulldozers at speed and kept going, doing the same when passing a second crew working further north, near Catherine Station.
It was a third bulldozer crew, working for another contractor, that would recall later that diesel had been siphoned from their machines around that time, a petty crime known in areas where a length of clear siphon hose is regarded as a credit card.
There is nothing firm to link the diesel thieving with the “rogue” Landcruiser but a possible motive comes to mind, apart from cheap fuel: a secret fuel theft might allow the thieves to get a long way from the mountains without having to buy fuel at the nearest town, where service station security cameras and cash card transactions might later identify them to homicide investigators.
Theft isn’t murder but where there’s smoke there’s often fire — as in the sort that burnt out the missing pair’s camp in the hours after they were last seen or heard.
It’s human nature that people who commit big crimes often commit small ones.
Law-breakers break laws.
The late “Chopper” Read, who studied criminality in the Bluestone College — the old Coburg campus, not Melbourne Grammar — pointed out that a bank robber like “Jockey” Smith could have $100,000 under the bed but still risk being pinched for pinching bread and milk.
In fact, it was Jockey shoplifting a few dollars worth of stuff he didn’t need that turned into a confrontation then a manhunt that led to him being shot dead after he pulled a gun on a surprised local policeman at Creswick.
The point being that whoever is behind the disappearance of the missing pair might well have redlighted themselves with a lesser offence along the way.
People who commit stupid murders do other dumb things, too.
But homicide investigators tend not to. Which is why locals trust that detectives long ago checked the web cameras set up on the wall of the Lake Buffalo dam.
It is one of three main routes in and out of the Wonnangatta area and odds are that if the baddies came in from the north, or left that way, there’s a good chance they’re on camera.
DEAD WEIGHT IS A HEAVY SCENE
The only people who have to carry bodies without the assistance of an undertaker’s trolley are killers and police.
One of the lessons young cops learn early in the concrete jungle is to grab the shoulders of a deceased, as opposed to the legs, because of the extreme smells released from north to south.
The other thing cops and killers learn is that the fresher (and floppier) the body, the harder it is to carry more than a few steps at a time. In other words, the folk wisdom about the difficulty of carrying “dead weight” is dead right. Anyone who doubts this should try carrying a body — preferably a live one merely pretending to be dead — and see how far they get.
The point of all this is that despite the fact there’s a huge wilderness marked on the map in eastern Victoria, in reality the only place anyone is getting rid of bodies is within a few metres of a track accessible by vehicle. They are so awkward that no-one is carrying them a kilometre into the wild.
The examples of this are many but a standout is the Wales-King case. After towing the bodies of his mother and her husband in a rented trailer from suburban Glen Iris to bushland way past Marysville, Matthew Wales dragged the corpses a few metres and buried them in a classic shallow grave so close to the track that a passing ranger noticed it as he drove past three weeks later.
Like all lazy, nervous wrongdoers bumbling in the dark, Wales did not dig the hole deep enough, then compounded the error by heaping up dirt in a mound and rolling rocks onto it. It might have been more obvious if he’d got the Giannarellis to make a marble tombstone, but not much.
Bottom line: if the bodies of Russell Hill and Carol Clay are still in the high country, they won’t be far from a track.
GOOD COP, BAD COP
Back in 2014 the then top cop Ken Lay set up Taskforce Salus to investigate complaints of sexual assault, harassment and predatory behaviour in the force. It was never going to be a picnic, given that the big blue gang makes the average AFL football club look like a boy scout convention.
Getting police to investigate themselves because no-one else is up to the task has some merit — but it’s also guaranteed to produce more toxic fallout than Chernobyl.
You don’t make omelettes without breaking eggs, so Salus has made plenty of internal enemies. One keen grenade thrower from inside “the job” — a 30-year veteran about to quit — has been sending remarkably detailed dispatches from the front. Let’s call him Mr Blue, Tarantino style.
“I have previously provided you with many examples of Taskforce Salus operating outside the law,” he begins his latest, neatly-typed letter. He then goes on to claim that a Detective (first name Steve) was “bullied to suicide by Salus” and cites four members by name and rank who will vouch for his claim.
Mr Blue further states that another suicide victim (first name Tony) “topped himself” after “Salus raided Warragul and bullied half the staff”, over which there is “civil action $ afoot”.
He says a former Ballarat Detective has received a $250,000 payout after allegedly being bullied by Salus investigators. But what he’s most upset about is the fallout from the Dean/Dani Laidley debacle, in which serving police officers have been charged over leaking photographs of the former North Melbourne coach after she was dragged into custody.
Mr Blue names a Salus investigator who has charged fellow police over the Laidley mess, claiming that the investigator has himself been accused of “the exact same offences — the unlawful access and release of information as well as misconduct in public office.”
Whereas the target of the Salus investigation (a “highly decorated, old school veteran Detective”) was “bullied into retirement,” the lucky Salus investigator has allegedly been granted the favour of being demoted only slightly.
Much dirty linen will be aired in coming court cases, Mr Blue predicts.
He concludes: “Watch this space as it will become a live issue at committal and will cause a massive blow up at Command, and hopefully the media.
“Start poking the bear now. If someone gets the ball rolling on Salus, you will get dozens of members prepared to speak out — just what they need after Lawyer X. It’s big.”
The bear can consider itself poked.
Originally published as Missing Wonnangatta campers: Dam camera may explain Carol Clay, Russel Hill disappearance
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