The front door on the left of the cottage opened to the passageway and rooms spread from the right-hand side of the passageway. The passageway ran the full length of the house to the courtyard garden out the back. The backyard was run down and uninteresting. A clothesline ran down the side of the rear yard, the lawn was overgrown but a large plane tree filled the opposite side and provided the dull yard with some colour.
Peter Millhouse was an alcoholic and his life was complicated even further by his homosexuality. He had realised that he was a homosexual in puberty and, as his preferences developed, he found he was having sex with men who were not well known to him. He would hang around hotels in Hindley Street and although he looked for company, he was a loner with few friends.
Doctor Millhouse had known Neil Muir for about four years but Lee found no evidence, statements or photographs to prove they had actually had sex. Neil Muir chased Millhouse for drugs but no evidence could be found to show that Millhouse supplied them to him. However, at the time Neil Muir was killed, Doctor Millhouse was worried that he might be in trouble for supplying prescriptions to other druggies.
Neil Muir initially was thought to have disappeared on that Sunday in August 1979. Doctor Millhouse and Neil Muir were together on Neil’s last Sunday. He was drinking with Peter Millhouse at the Hope Inn Sports and Social Club in the inner western suburb of Ridleyton. The old club was like Neil Muir and Peter Millhouse — all of them were showing signs of neglect. The long rectangular building was clean and neat but had seen better days. Its front fence of galvanized pipe and wire mesh was bent and broken.
After more investigation, Lee Haddon learned that a bouncer in one of Neil Muir’s regular haunts had seen him on the Monday. The bouncer at the Mediterranean Hotel knew Muir as a regular. He had seen him with Dr Millhouse on the evenings of Thursday and Friday, 23 and 24 August 1979. They were at their usual table in the front bar, next to the jukebox, drinking schooners of beer. On the Monday — the day before he died, Neil Muir was by himself back at the Mediterranean Hotel.
Neil Muir arrived at about 1.30 in the afternoon wearing a long sleeved shirt with his brown corduroy jeans. His hair, goatie beard and moustache were worn exactly as shown in the photograph that Lee Haddon was using to show to people. Neil sat at his usual table and drank schooners until the waitress said to the bouncer:
‘One drunk sleeping at the table.’
The bouncer went to Neil Muir, picked him up and took him to the street.
‘I’m going mate. I’m going,’ said the quiet druggie and he swayed down the street heading for Morphett Street.
Neil Muir was next seen dressed in a garbage bag laying on the rocks of Mutton Cove.
In the days following Neil Muir’s murder, Dr Peter Millhouse was on a bender. However, this did not stop him contacting well-known criminal lawyer, Peter Waye, about his problems. He sought legal advice on that Friday and on the next day, on the advice of his colleagues, Dr Millhouse booked himself into Osmond House, a rehabilitation clinic in the eastern suburbs.
On 3 September 1979, Lee Haddon spoke with Dr Millhouse at Osmond House. The doctor produced his letter from Peter Waye saying that he didn’t want to answer any questions. Obviously, this made Lee Haddon even more suspicious.
Crime scene police examined the untidy house of the doctor. Witnesses were found who said that large garbage bags, similar to those used to clothe the body of Neil Muir, had been in the house. The yellow cord that tied him together was the same type that is used on clotheslines that are extended out and attached to a pole. That type of cord was no longer on the clothesline. A type of twine had replaced it. But the bags and the clotheslines were very common and were in the homes and backyards of many thousands of people. Also, Lee could not prove when the line was changed. It may have happened well before Dr Millhouse moved into the house. Witnesses were not clear in their evidence about the clothesline. All of this did not help Lee with his circumstantial case.
When Lee searched the doctor’s home, initial testing of the bathroom indicated blood had been on the floor but it could not be grouped because of the use of cleaners on it. Grouping of the blood would have told whether or not it was the blood of Neil Muir. Doctor Millhouse had a cleaner at the time and that she cleaned the bathroom at about the time of the murder and she said that she wiped away marks on the wall similar to blood spots.
A Bandaid was found with the remains of Neil Muir. Its sticky paste held some fibres and they were sent to forensics for examination and Anna Parabyk, analyst from the Forensic Science Centre, compared the fibres with those from a rug in Millhouse’s cottage. Although she could not say that they were from the rug, they were similar in every respect.
On 20 November 1979, Dr Millhouse was working in the country town of Whyalla.
