In my mind, however, Richard wearing the dog collar presented a problem for Brian Martin. If Richard was ‘normal’, why was he wearing a dog collar around his neck? Brian Martin asked his father about it.
‘Did Richard have a dog collar with him when he left?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where was it at the time he left?’
‘He put it around his neck.’
‘You have a dog?’
‘Yes.’
‘Had he [Richard] ever worn the dog collar before?’
‘No.’
‘Were the boys messing around with it before they left?’
‘Richard was the sort of boy who . . . he was a boy who liked to play around. After cadets, for instance, he would march for us in the lounge room; he would march up and down and send everything up, like a comic. He was a comic and I just took him, putting the collar around his neck, as just one of his tricks, just being silly.’
Brian Martin took this point further with Boris.
‘Had one of you been fiddling with the dog collar at Richard’s home?’ Brian said.
‘Yes, he was fiddling with it when he was on the phone.’
‘What did he do with it?’
‘Put it around his neck.’
‘Did he speak to you about it?’
‘He thought he was Joe Cool.’
‘Did he ask you what you thought of it?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you say?’
‘“You look ridiculous”.’
‘Did he wear it down the street?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it seem to fit or was it tight?’
‘It just fit him perfectly.’
‘Did you see him take it off?’
‘Yes.’
‘When was that?’
‘At the bus stop.’
‘What did he do with it?’
‘He was trying to put it around his knuckles.’
All of this evidence — from his parents, his best mate and another guy who saw him at the bus stop, reiterated that Richard was happy on that evening. He was not worried about things. His girlfriend said that he was okay on the telephone immediately before he left for the bus stop. He was a normal boy of fifteen. He was due home for dinner and was going to watch a movie with his parents that evening.
As the days went by, witnesses presented evidence about finding drugs in Richard’s body and the visit to von Einem’s home on 28 July 1983 when the drugs, including Mandrax, were found. Harry Harding from the Forensic Science Centre told the court that the hairs found inside Richard’s underpants were identical to von Einem’s. Sandra Young gave evidence about the fibres that Des Phillips found on Richard’s clothing matching von Einem’s passageway carpet, bedroom carpet and bedspread. Geoffrey Robinson, senior scientific officer in the Home Office in England, came to Australia to support Sandra’s evidence and he gave additional damning evidence.
Brian Martin put von Einem’s alibi to the scientist and asked about fibre transfer and ‘the persistence of fibres’ — the ability of fibres to stick to another material.
‘The bedspread was of medium shedability on the top or upper side, the bedroom carpet was of low shedability, the hall-lounge carpet was of high shedability and I think I have already told you the Toyota car seat was of medium shedability. You have said that the factual situation I put to you was not a likely situation for the fibres found. Can it be considered a possible explanation for the fibres found?’
‘Possible did you say?’
‘Possible.’
‘I would say impossible.’
This was a sensational statement. An eminent overseas scientist was saying that von Einem’s explanation about Richard being in his house was impossible. He was saying von Einem was a liar.
Brian Martin continued.
‘Just on that. In the United Kingdom do you have a practice or a cut-off period at which no fibre identification is attempted?’
‘Yes, as a general rule of thumb one wouldn’t examine clothing for contact fibres if the known contact was probably three days prior to the clothing being recovered.’
‘What is the basis for doing that?’
‘This is the figure of retention times recorded in the publications and one’s personal experiences of recovering fibres.’
‘That is, that it would be most unlikely to find fibres from a contact more than three days after the contact?’
‘Yes, assuming the clothing had been worn normally during a period of three days it would get extremely unlikely to find any remaining fibres.’
Von Einem said that he picked up Richard on 5 June 1983, took him home and then dropped him in the city on the same day and didn’t see him again. This meant that the fibres from his home and cardigan transferred to Richard on the Sunday night he went missing.
Geoffrey Robinson was saying that when Richard was found, eight weeks later, he should have had no or very few of the fibres from von Einem’s environment on his clothing. This is what we found with fibres from Richard’s home environment. There were only two fibres from his home left on his clothes. The same principle should have applied to the fibres from von Einem and his home. After eight weeks, there shouldn’t have been that many fibres on Richard’s clothing. What the international expert was saying was that contact with Richard was within three days of him being dumped — von Einem was with him at about the time he was murdered! The case against von Einem was getting stronger and stronger.
Also, there were no fibres from the maroon seats of the Toyota, which von Einem said he was driving that Sunday night. The seats in the Toyota had characteristics which indicated ‘medium shedability’. That finding indicated that Richard Kelvin wasn’t in the Toyota as von Einem said. That made it more likely he was in another car — possibly von Einem’s Falcon sedan, which he sold a week after Richard was dumped.
Von Einem could have remained silent during the trial and Barry Jennings would have argued to the jury that they could not be sure that he was guilty of murder and should acquit him. He should have the benefit of the doubt. The law allowed this to happen. He had two other choices — to give sworn evidence from the witness box or to give an unsworn statement from the dock. The
