Ray Dowd also kept his options open with his assessment. He suggested an alternative hypothesis: that much of the mutilation was done to reduce the possibility of identifying the victim. If the victim could be identified, then a suspect who was close to the victim could be identified. He argued the possibility that the cutting up was to disguise the identity of the body but the offenders’ resolve weakened as their gruesome task continued. Ray suggested that, in the end, they just wanted to get rid of it.
Ray was keeping his options open, which was fair enough, as criminal profiling was in its infancy. However, I had doubts about Ray’s alternative hypothesis. The tying of the body together with clothesline, stuffing it into plastic bags and taking it to Mutton Cove still indicated resolve and organisation enough to complete the disposal. Also, Neil Muir’s head had not been butchered in any way. His facial features were clearly intact. It was very likely he could be identified from his head alone but that wasn’t needed. Neil Muir’s fingers were left with his body and they were used to obtain fingerprints, which identified Neil. The killer could have easily disposed of them separately.
Ray Dowd also considered the possibility of a payback killing for Neil’s drug debts around town. This could not be ignored; nor could the idea that Alan Barnes’ murder was a payback killing. All of these theories expanded the possibilities that Major Crime had to cover. The motive for Neil Muir’s killing was not clear, and lack of a clear motive did not help lessen the number of areas to check for suspects.
Prosecutors like to prove a motive in murder cases. This helps ‘sell’ the case to jurors. If the jury can see that a murder happened because of a jealous rage, to cover up a rape or a robbery to get money for drugs then the case is much stronger. The law doesn’t require the police or prosecutors to prove a motive but it is better if they do. Motive helps convince the jury that the accused committed the crime.
Milton Kelly, the head of the Psychology Unit, followed with another report on 4 September 1979. Milton was not a police officer but he had many years’ experience in the police organisation. He considered Ray Dowd’s report and clarified several points. Milton stressed that the offender may not be mentally ill — may not be pyschotic. Milton Kelly did not discount the possibility of the killer being mentally ill but he extended the possibilities. He felt that if the person was not mentally ill, he would very likely be an extremely sadistic psychopath — a person with abnormal social behaviour.
He felt this because of the deliberate and controlled way the killer mutilated and disposed of Neil Muir. He theorised that the acting out of sexual or violent fantasies might have absorbed the person to such an extent that the butcherer may not have related to the corpse as another human being. He considered that the killer might not openly display a violent or aggressive personality and considered that the murderer might be seen as polite, gentle and passive to other people. The person would be seen as conventional and his personal habits characterised by neatness and cleanliness.
Milton listed the characteristics of a psychopathic person as:
• Non-conformist
• Egocentric and selfish with a lack of loyalties
• Having no conscience and no anxiety or remorse for his actions
• Manipulative
• Incapable of love and affection
• Impulsive
• Incapable of learning from past experiences
• Callous and sadistic
• Possibly charming and likeable
• An accomplished liar
A psychopath can receive a lot of sadistic or sexual pleasure, or a combination of both, from torturing and mutilating his victims. Milton said that the offender might not know a victim and the person might be selected at random. However, Milton also had a bet each way. He gave an alternative view that the victim may have been well known to the killer and that Neil Muir was dissected to punish him for real or imagined insults.
All of this information did not help Lee Haddon get any closer to his killer. The killer could be mentally ill, but he also could be a psychopath. Also, there was the possibility of drug debts, which Lee was already aware of and, finally, the offender may have been an associate or a stranger. This comment was not to denigrate the police psychologists but we had to keep our options open. As I said, criminal profiling was very new.
The pressure on detectives to solve the Neil Muir murder was always present but hadn’t risen to the extent to which people were being stressed. Lee Haddon was working on the Muir matter and things began to look promising when one person came to the attention of the police. Two telephone calls were received about a person who could have killed Neil Muir. This time the calls were not anonymous. Two druggies were prepared to give statements, and their names and who they thought might have done it.
That person, they alleged, was Peter Leslie Millhouse, a doctor from Mount Gambier in the south-east of the state. He was forty-five and single. He claimed to be a distant relative of Robin Millhouse, flamboyant Attorney-General with the Liberal government, Army Reserve officer and, after he left politics, a judge. The doctor was a general practitioner with degrees in medicine and surgery, although he did not do much surgery.
Millhouse lived in rented accommodation and drove
