Richard was lying on the ground on his left-hand side facing a blackboy bush. He was curled in the foetal position with his legs tucked up, almost nursing fronds of the bush. His head was bent forward, accentuating the arch of his curved back, with his arms to the front. His hands were almost on his stomach. He was wearing the same jeans and T-shirt that he sported when he disappeared. The Channel Nine logo stood out on the rear of his T-shirt, and the dog collar had been returned and was sitting firmly around his neck. If he didn’t die there, it looked like one person had carried him to the blackboy bush with one arm under his legs and one arm under his arms before they placed him on the ground. If two people carried him into the bush, it would have been more likely that they would carry him by the arms and legs. If that was the case, when he was put down on the ground the body more likely would have been extended rather than in the foetal position.
I was familiar with the area. When I was riding police motorcycles, it was a boom time in motorcycle sport and a group of us formed a police motorcycle club. We rode the trails of Mt Crawford Forest. Within the forest, there were fire-trails that were large enough to take a motor vehicle and smaller tracks only large enough for walking or riding motorbikes.
If the killers had gone into the forest and dumped Richard, he probably would never have been found. Obviously, the abductors were not that concerned whether or not Richard was found. After the Alan Barnes and Neil Muir murders, they changed their modus operandae (the way criminals do things). With Alan Barnes and Neil Muir, the killers had a vehicle to take their bodies to water and dump them, hoping that they would disappear. The modus operandae for Peter Stogneff and Mark Langley was to use a vehicle and then dump them alongside a bush road. Richard Kelvin’s dumping was similar to Peter Stogneff’s and Mark Langley’s. If the same people were involved, they had changed because dumping into water hadn’t worked.
‘I’ll go with the body to the post-mortem.’ Trevor said, more as a quiet order rather than a request. ‘Can you tell the Kelvins that Richard has been found?’
Thanks very much, I thought. But I wasn’t going to argue. Trevor was the boss — but what a job, telling Rob and Betteanne that their son’s body had been found.
As with the other boys, Richard was taken in that same white van to the Forensic Science Centre where Dr Ross James performed the autopsy.
Trevor followed the van. Police are concerned with what we call the ‘chain of evidence’. For example, when a body is found one of the detectives stays with the body to make sure that evidence is not contaminated. It is one way of stopping defence solicitors saying that something happened to the evidence from the time it was found till the forensic scientists took over.
No-one from the police likes attending post-mortems and some police say that there is no need for the investigating police to watch the body be cut open. They argue that the pathologist’s report provides the information required by the police. But pathologists look at things differently from the police. Their emphasis is on the body and what might be wrong with it. The police perspective revolves more around the cause of any injuries and how they may have happened. Did a glass or wooden object cause the split anus? Were the saw marks made by a right- or left-handed person? This aspect is changing as pathologists have more and more knowledge about investigations but individual approaches are still different.
Dr James found that Richard had been undressed and redressed, and that he had the same injury to his anus as Alan Barnes, Neil Muir and Mark Langley. The forensic scientist could not say about anal injuries to Peter Stogneff because only his skeleton was found.
One job police hate more than attending a post-mortem examination is telling loved ones that a member of their family is dead. If the message is about a child, then it is even more difficult. Trevor got the better of the two jobs but it was a more efficient use of our time to do it that way; time is always important during a murder investigation.
I rang the buzzer on the wall outside Rob and Betteanne’s home.
I didn’t have a plan for how I was going to tell Rob and Betteanne. I had done it before, as all police officers have done in their careers, but telling a parent or a child that a family member has died is never easy.
On reflection, Rob and Betteanne must have realised that it would be a miracle if their son were still alive. There had been no ransom note. The chance that he had been kidnapped and was still alive was unlikely. As parents, they believed he had not run away, although parents can never be completely sure about these things.
All the indications were bad. Richard was happy with his new girlfriend and she had not heard from him. As well, there had been a run of terrible murders of young men. It all pointed to demons lurking in the city. Any news now would be bad.
Rob and Betteanne took me into the dining area and we sat down at their table. They didn’t say anything and they let me lead the conversation.
I told both of them that we thought we had found their son. A boy had been found alongside an old airstrip near Kersbrook.
‘We think that it is Richard,’ I said and paused before continuing. ‘The clothing is the same but we won’t be 100 per cent sure until the identification is done.’
I still remember the conversation to this day. Why didn’t I say ‘the boy’ instead of ‘it’? I thought at the time. I
