Perhaps even this person did it, I was thinking as I typed B’s words on the blank pieces of paper rolled into the typewriter.
Von Einem’s partner continued to tell me his story.
‘After about ten minutes they were complaining that they were too pissed to drink and Bevan said, “Take the Rohypnol” and that would sober the kids up. That is what he said to them to get them to take the tablets. They were small white or yellow tablets about the same size as diazepam. Diazepam is Valium. I know that they were Rohypnol because I asked him what they were and he said “rollies” and I saw the word “Rohypnol” on the bottle.’
In the years that B knew von Einem, our main suspect was living in a unit at Campbelltown, one neighbourhood away from von Einem’s suburb of Paradise. Von Einem moved to Paradise in the early months of 1983. B described how they took boys back to the unit. They could do this, he said, because von Einem’s mother was away every second weekend. She would go and visit a cousin, Beryl Alcorn, at Lower Hermitage, a country area just outside Adelaide’s suburbs in a gully at the bottom of the Adelaide Hills.
B said the unit comprised two bedrooms, lounge, kitchen, bathroom and small laundry. It was one of three units built nearly at the end of a no-through road and the unit was the last in the block. They drove up the concrete driveway alongside the units and stopped outside the front door to carry the boys inside.
‘We drove down the driveway and turned left and parked. The back door of the car ended up right next to the front door of the unit. It made it easy to carry the kids into the unit . . . Bevan took the kid by the arms and I had the legs and we carried him into the bedroom, which was Bevan’s, and we put him straight onto the bed with his head on the pillow . . . We brought the second one in the same way and dropped him on the lounge room floor. I then went back into Bevan’s bedroom because he asked me to get [the boy] undressed.’
B continued to tell his story to me. He knew a lot about a side of von Einem that was very sinister and sick.
‘Before we undressed him [the one in von Einem’s bedroom], he showed me his pill collection, which was on top of shelves on the opposite side to his single bed. He had Rohypnol, Mandrax, Valium, Palfium and I think that there were a couple of other jars there but I cannot remember just what they were.’
B’s comments about the different type of drugs fitted with what we knew about von Einem. During the visit to his home on 28 July 1983, we found those assorted drugs in his carry bag and the Mandrax and Noctec hidden on the ledge behind the mirror of his cupboard in the bedroom. I was mentally comparing what B was telling me with what we knew to be true to check the truth of his story.
Von Einem used to live in a unit when Detective Rod Hunter spoke to him about Alan Barnes. That checks out.
‘Kippers’ and I better have a look at that address.
He did have a Falcon before getting his new car. That checks out.
The drugs check out.
B continued to describe what they did to the two drugged hitchhikers in von Einem’s unit.
‘We took one shoe and sock off each, were both helping each other, and left his shirt. He was lying on top of the bed, and we both went out and undressed the other one in the lounge room. Bevan then went into his bedroom and closed the door.’
I thought that it was interesting that the two of them undressed each boy. They didn’t undress them separately. If von Einem was involved in the murders, he was big enough to carry the boys by himself but here he was working with another person to undress someone. Here he was picking up boys, drugging them and then undressing them with help from another person.
‘I did not touch the one in the lounge room. I would have but he wasn’t good looking and he was rolling around as though he was going to be sick.’
He wasn’t good looking and was going to be sick! What a casual way to tell me what he did. B was talking to me in a very matter-of-fact way. There was no indication of guilt or remorse.
You haven’t got a guilty conscience about any of this, I thought.
Then B’s story became even more astonishing and grotesque.
‘When I went in the young blond [guy] was still on the bed; he was facing the wall and his knees were drawn right up to his chest. Bevan was kneeling on the floor next to the bed. Bevan was holding a torch up the boy’s arse and he pulled this rod out of his arse as I walked in the door. Bevan’s light was off but I had the light on in the lounge and that threw light into the room. As I said, as I opened the door I saw Bevan pull this crochet needle-type
