Rachael Brown - Trace: who killed Maria James?

TRACE

Rachael Brown is a broadcast journalist. In 2002, after graduating from RMIT, she began her career with the ABC, where she has held several postings, including Europe correspondent from 2010 to 2013. In 2008 she won her first Walkley Award for Best Radio Current Affairs Report, for her investigation into the Victorian Medical Practitioners Board whose negligence contributed to the sexual assaults of a dozen women.

Rachael is the creator, investigator, and host of the ABCs first true-crime podcast, Trace , which won the 2017 Walkley Award for Innovation. The podcast also won two 2017 Quill Awards: for Innovation, and for Best Podcast. Rachael lives in Melbourne, Victoria.

Scribe Publications
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First published by Scribe 2018

Copyright Rachael Brown 2018

The publishers gratefully acknowledge receiving permission from ABC Commercial for the use of selected transcripts from Trace and the photograph of Mark James (taken by Jeremy Story Carter) that appears on the inside front cover.

This book addresses some distressing stories and themes. If it raises concerns for readers, they can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

9781925713091 (Australian edition)
9781911617853 (UK edition)
9781925693218 (e-book)

CiP records for this title are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.

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To the fighters. To Maria.
To her sons, who couldnt forget.
To a detective who wouldnt let go.
And to all the silent heroes.

Contents

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Part IV:

Part I
The Police Investigation

June 1980

He doesnt know it yet, but this one will bury its hooks into him.

He arrives at 736 High Street, Thornbury, with a lot more to prove than the other detectives. This is his first homicide case. Ron Iddles takes mental photographs of the crime scene. Click . The front window: every square inch plastered with book jackets. Click . Bookshop interior: shelves upon shelves of second-hand books. Click . Lounge: two empty coffee cups on a table. Another small table with a broken leg. Click . Kitchen: chopping board on a counter. Beside it, a dirty footprint. Nearby, an open cutlery-drawer. Click . Bedroom one: a red rotary-dial telephone, the receiver out of its cradle. A turntable with a pile of LPs, the majority of them Elvis. Click . Bedroom two, across the passage: the victim, female, at the base of a bed, head closest to the door, legs pointing towards a wardrobe. Right leg bent at the knee, right calf and foot pointing outwards. The victims shoes have been kicked or taken off. Multiple stab wounds, to the chest, neck, and back. Hands tied with twine. No apparent bruising on the wrists. One pillow at the victims head, and another at her feet. Heavy blood stains on the carpet and on a corner of a bed quilt. Some smearing further along the carpet, and on the wardrobe. A lock on the back of the bedroom door.

Ron Iddles is 100 per cent certain of two things. The killer is someone the victim knew and was originally comfortable with. Frenzied attacks usually point to a relationship possibly an intimate one, but definitely some kind of connection. The coffee cups, too, back up this theory.

This end to Maria Jamess life is the start of Ron Iddles dream job. Hes waited for this break since he was a boy rushing through his milking and hay-carting chores on his parents dairy farm in Victorias north-west so hed be in time for Homicide . He used to sit glued to the 1960s TV series, in awe of actors John Fegan and Leonard Teale, who would march down the steps of Victorias Russell Street police headquarters in their pork-pie hats and proceed to solve cases every week in under an hour. If it wasnt Homicide , it was Columbo , the seemingly forgetful but cunning American TV detective. From him, adult Ron has borrowed his trademark crumpled jacket. Hes bought himself a London Fog overcoat, so through all the dark nights to come, Ron will be the one in off-white amid a sea of black and blue.

He cut his teeth on the mean beat of Collingwood, where the only people who moved after 1.00am were crooks, police, and prostitutes. Here, as a green 19-year-old, he took on the feared members of the Painters and Dockers Union. And he drew a line that would come to define the rest of his decorated career, shooing away a bribe from a local justice of the peace to fix something up. Compassion would later bud in various shades of grey, but in terms of duty, his world has been black and white from the get-go.

Now a plucky 25-year-old, Ron has a lot riding on this homicide job. The core crew members are his boss, Senior Sergeant Brian McCarthy, then Sergeant Jack Jacobs, Senior Constable Roland Legg, and himself, Detective Senior Constable Ron Iddles. R. Iddles. Riddles a befitting name for a mystery-solver. For now, his job is to find out who killed Maria James.

April 2016

1.00pm Coroners Court w Ron

Diary note, 21 April 2016

I lean over the crime scene photo-booklet in a stark white meeting room at the Coroners Court of Victoria. Its thin cardboard cover is in Victoria Police blue, and the 25 photographs slide along a plastic binding-comb. The early photos are interiors of the second-hand bookshop at 736 High Street, Thornbury. Next to a sign, Tales of war and adventure, novels jostle on the shelves piles and piles of them, stacked not with their spines out, but flat, so more can be crammed into the heaving bookcases. These and the book covers plastering the front window choke the room.

The stores counter has a sign in front, No smoking. A little note, 30 cent exchange, hangs beside a door with a white curtain separating Maria Jamess bookshop from the home she lived in with her two young sons. Behind this door, and down a passage, is the kitchen, where everything is in meticulous order, except for a cutlery drawer that gapes like an open mouth. On the kitchen bench, an onion sits on a chopping board, beside a newspaper cutting about an upcoming dinner dance. Hanging from the wall is a wilted fern and a banner with the proclamation, Mothers are the most wonderful people in the world.

Off the passageway, on the left, is the bedroom of 11-year-old Adam, Marias youngest son. Boats sail across the wallpaper. On a dresser is a Bata Scout shoebox school shoes perhaps? a stack of Elvis records, and a mirror with a magazine cut-out of the crooners face taped to it. Underneath is a red telephone, the handset resting idly beside it. In the bedroom opposite theres a sea of 1970s floral, on the bedspread, curtains, and wallpaper. All mismatched. Darker blotches add new blooms to the carpet and quilt. Elvis Presley looks on from a framed photo on a bedside table. Above the bedroom door is a reprint of Gustav Klimts painting The Kiss . And below Klimts testament to lovers lies Maria James, at the base of her bed.

I wince at Marias bruised face in the autopsy photos. Her left eye is slightly opened; the right, swollen and closed. Her skin looks puffy and translucent. Her scalp is missing some clumps of her dark hair. I wonder whether this was the killers doing, or the pathologists. Ive seen post-mortem photos before, during my days as a court reporter. Some days, during those grim prosecution sessions aimed at swaying a jury, Id look; other days, Id drift. Common journo distractions were newspapers, Sudoku, doodling, or scratching ones initials into the Supreme Court media desks. I have no doubt this would have looked disrespectful to those crammed into the rigid wooden pews of the public gallery. But once you see, you cant unsee. And these pictures can creep into your dreams, so sometimes its best not to look.