Into the Darkness by Robin Bowles

Author:Robin Bowles
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: TRU000000, SOC004000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2016-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

THE COPS

I checked with the police media unit to see if the guy in the lift had been identified. The release I was looking at, headed ‘Image Released Regarding Death in 2010’, had been distributed twice already. This one was dated 15 April 2013. The media officer told me there’d been no result.

I thought that was puzzling. If you were the bloke in the lift, wouldn’t you want to rule yourself out?

*

The next witness was Detective Senior Constable Justin O’Brien. Although he was fairly junior, not four months out of detective training school at the time of Phoebe’s death, his evidence was important because he was one of the first on the scene, along with his partner Clare Hocking and their supervisor, Sergeant Graeme Forster. Justin had also spent a lot of time with Ant on the night, standing at the door of the small room in Balencea where he was being comforted by family and friends, accompanying him to and from the St Kilda Road complex, and remaining with him while he gave his statement there.

O’Brien had made a few notes about Ant from his observations on the night. Galbally tried to get them excluded, describing them as ‘singularly unhelpful’ because they included the observation that Ant didn’t appear to have actually shed tears. Galbally likened this to the ‘Lindy Chamberlain effect’, where the media used the fact that the bereaved mother hadn’t wept as a sign of her guilt.

Galbally told the Coroner, ‘It can’t assist you and is the fodder of novelists. They are observations made an hour or two after Mr Hampel has been told of his partner’s death. And there are other witnesses who describe his upset, distraught state.’

The Coroner wasn’t convinced. He thought the comments could be relevant, given that they’d been made by a police officer with experience of these things. Nobody else objected. His Honour told Galbally that the comments might not be helpful to his client, but he was mindful to admit them.

‘The question, Your Honour,’ Galbally responded, ‘is not as to whether it’s helpful to Mr Hampel, the question is as to whether this evidence is helpful to you.’

‘Having regard to that consideration, this application is refused,’ the Coroner said.

It didn’t take Ms Siemensma long to get around to O’Brien’s contentious statements. He’d stood in the doorway of the room at Balencea noting Ant’s comments between 9 p.m. and 9.58 p.m. on the night of Phoebe’s death. They were read out one by one. Ant had said: ‘I’m so lucky I didn’t fight with her last night … I made her dinner and tucked her into bed … She was still sleeping when I left … I shouldn’t have gone to work … She wrote all these notes today like she was drunk ... I could smell vodka and there was a broken glass and that’s what she writes when she’s drunk … I don’t know what to do now … We could have worked it out … I didn’t

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