The businessman was home, but he told us very little. He wouldn’t give a statement but said he was a homosexual and had been a friend of von Einem for years. He denied any knowledge of the murders.
Immediately after searching the businessman’s home we went to his shop, a two-storey building on one of Adelaide’s main shopping roads. He had a young man working for him in his shop, also a homosexual. The business operated on the ground floor and administration was carried out upstairs. One of the rear second-floor rooms, however, was not used for administration. In it, a bare mattress was laid on the floor; nothing else was in the room.
That mattress would be able to tell some stories, I thought. Why would he have a mattress in a room of his business premises?
We seized the mattress but there was nothing on it to provide us with any evidence that was going to solve any of our murder investigations.
The businessman’s cars were checked and samples of fibres were taken from the seats, boots and blankets in the cars. Police surveillance was placed on the businessman and he was followed over a lengthy period of time. His behaviour was almost compulsive/obsessive in the way that he would seek out male company. He would open up his business at the same time in the morning and close it punctually for lunch at twelve o’clock for an hour. He would drive his car to Number One beat and see what was happening there before checking out the other beats. At the end of his lunch break he would return to work. Although he lived very close to his business premises, the procedure would be repeated at the end of the day after he closed. He searched daily for young men to pick up.
Whenever he went out to a function at night, the businessman would go home via the beats. I was talking to one of the surveillance officers and he described how he was following our man in the city. This time he was walking along King William Street in the middle of the business district and a young boy was selling papers on the corner of King William and Grenfell Streets. The pedestrian lights turned red and the businessman stopped on the footpath back from the lights so he could ‘perv’ on the boy. When the lights did change for pedestrians to cross the road, the businessman remained where he was. He did not cross the road but remained where he was, perving on the boy. He missed a full cycle of lights before he moved on.
A young homosexual male was another associate of von Einem. He was young and, like most young boys, he was experimenting with life. He was trying out drugs and sex but the sex involved other men. He was of medium height and reasonably good looking. His youth did not prevent him from understanding the sexual desires of men and he accommodated their needs — for money.
This young man met von Einem on the banks of the Torrens at Number One beat on a weekend and, soon after, he moved into a unit at Collinswood, less than four kilometres from North Adelaide and the River Torrens. The unit was one of a number of modern apartment blocks that were being built in the area.
A phonecaller had suggested we should pay the young man a visit. Detectives Peter Woite and David Hunt visited the unit. The flat was the largest unit in a small block of flats. They did not raid the place — we need more information than an anonymous telephone call to kick down a door. There needs to be more evidence than that, such as a person having a criminal record for child abduction.
I interviewed the young man for four hours at the Angas Street police building. He said he was a homosexual but denied being a prostitute, although he did agree that some men gave him money but he said that the money was gifts and not given for sexual favours. He, too, denied knowing anything about the murders. Unfortunately, the visit to his unit and the interview revealed nothing new.
The initial raids were finished. It was time to regroup and consider what we had and what was to be the next move. Des and Ivan, the crime scene examiners, had to sort out the physical evidence, the samples of fibres and material that had been collected from the various locations. The teams of detectives still had a lot of inquiries to make, many relating to von Einem but most dealing with other leads. We were still trying to find evidence of snuff movies, and other names were being followed as potential sources who might know about the murders. Also, there were some interesting observations being made by Des and Ivan. They were showing just how much murder investigation is a team effort.
Von Einem denied knowing or having anything to do with Richard Kelvin when he was first interviewed on 28 July 1983. However, with many police investigations, once the right suspect is found, the case gets stronger and stronger. We now had evidence that von Einem was picking up and drugging young boys but that didn’t mean that he killed boys.
As the weeks and months passed following the visit to von Einem’s home Des Phillips had dried the clothing of Richard Kelvin and searched for trace elements. He handed over tiny fragments of paint, small pieces of coloured fibre and hair to the forensic scientists. Des, Ivan and the forensic scientists were very cautious. The Splatt Royal Commission, which recently challenged the evidence provided by police and forensic scientists, was still very fresh in their minds. However, Des did indicate that the fibres on Richard’s clothing were similar in appearance to fibres from von Einem’s home but he wasn’t the expert. Sandra Young from the Forensic Science Lab
