The Lost Girls by Ava Benny-Morrison

Author:Ava Benny-Morrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC Books
Published: 2019-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

21 October 2015, 1 pm

‘Can you tell me how it is you know Karlie Jade Pearce-Stevenson?’

Detective Sergeant Darryn Gunn sat opposite Holdom in a small interview room at Cessnock Police Station. They were seated at either end of a table with barely a metre between them. A video camera recorded the conversation from one end of the windowless room.

Over the course of Detective Gunn’s twenty-seven-year career, he couldn’t count on two hands how many homicides he’d investigated. Despite the mystique and prowess associated with working in the NSW Homicide Squad, it was a job he carried out without ego or fanfare. His work was serious and at times grim, but he was personable. He organised the social committee events for his colleagues, who knew him as a down-to-earth bloke who worked hard but knew how to have a good time.

The task of interviewing Holdom fell to Gunn, who was running New South Wales’ portion of the investigation. Ever since police had identified the skeleton found in Belanglo State Forest as Karlie Pearce-Stevenson, Gunn had spent every day learning everything he could about her, Khandalyce and Holdom. He had the best knowledge of the suspect and was best placed to interview him.

Detective Brevet Sergeant Rod Huppatz from the Major Crime Investigation Branch in South Australia had flown up to New South Wales to take part in the interview. The detectives had different areas they wanted to focus on, and had discussed their individual strategies before walking into the room.

‘Um, I met her in Alice Springs as a friend and then was in a relationship with her for about eight weeks,’ Holdom told the detective within the first few minutes of the interview. ‘Um, yeah, that’s it. Oh, we had a fight at me cousin’s house ’cause she owed me cousin board. She left her cards with us as payment, she took off. Ah, she left Khandals with us for about a week.’

It was a surprisingly frank answer to receive early in an interview; it felt like Holdom was pre-empting the questions and explanations police were looking for.

‘Is there anything you can tell me about your relationship with Karlie?’ Detective Gunn asked.

‘It’s just, yeah, I don’t know what you’d call it, just was a way of escaping, I think, for me,’ Holdom answered. ‘Just like, yeah, after the accident, didn’t know what to do. I was sort of scared, sort of thing. She was sort of there to comfort me.’

Holdom began to explain how he first came to meet Karlie, but he was delving into dangerous, possibly self-incriminating territory. Detective Gunn warned him that whatever he said about criminal activity could be used against him so he should be mindful. Holdom was a man with a long and documented history of lying to get himself out of tight spaces. He’d forged a criminal career committing unsophisticated frauds and ripping people off; anything he said during the interview would have to be verified and compared against the statements of others. Problem was, there were a lot of people who had a lot to lose by telling the truth.

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