Peter Seymour - Seven Bones

TWO WIVES, TWO VIOLENT MURDERS, A FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

TWO WIVES, TWO VIOLENT MURDERS, A FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

www.bigskypublishing.com.au

PETER SEYMOUR & JASON K. FOSTER

Copyright Peter Seymour & Jason K. Foster 2011

First published 2011

Copyright remains the property of the author and apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

All inquiries should be made to the publishers.

Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd

PO Box 303, Newport, NSW 2106, Australia

Cover design and typesetting: Think Productions

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Seymour, Peter.

Title: Seven bones : two wives, two violent murders, a fight for justice / Peter Seymour & Jason K. Foster.

ISBN: 9781921941146 (pbk.)

Subjects: Keir, Thomas Andrew.

Strachan, Jean Angela.

Canonizado, Rosalina.

Murder--New South Wales--Case studies.

Murder--Investigation--New South Wales.

Murder victims--New South Wales.

Trials (Murder)--New South Wales--Sydney.

Other Authors/Contributors: Foster, Jason K.

Dewey Number: 364.152309944

CONTENTS

A cold-blooded killer sat in front of me, eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, body stiff. He knew he was a killer, I knew he was a killer, but his desperate attempts to convince the world of his concocted innocence had pulled a thread, and the camera was rolling on it. Thomas Keir was many things, but innocent he was not. His guilt seeped so heavily from his pores you could almost smell it under the harsh camera lights.

Getting away with murder is quite a clever thing, and Thomas Keir thought he was smarter than everyone else, including the police. He had carefully fabricated what he thought was a believable story that explained the disappearance of his young wife Jean, who had not been seen since 10 February 1988. He was the last person to see her, and with no body, he thought his my wife ran off with another man theory was holding with the police and the media. It may have held longer had his second wife, Rosalie, not been found strangled and burnt to death on their marital bed just three years later. Keir was the last one to see her alive too.

It was 1991, and Keir played distraught husband in the media, where he wrote a tearful letter which he subsequently dropped around the local neighbourhood in an attempt to find her killer. His unlucky in love victim line was played to the hilt, even though human bones other than Rosalies had been discovered in a search of his backyard. Everyone had their suspicions. He was charged with Rosalies murder, but was acquitted in 1993, much to the surprise, and disappointment, of everyone.

DNA technology was at that time simply not up to the task of extracting an identity from the seven small bones. Police knew they had their man, but it would be a waiting game. In the meantime, his fabricated media existence was about to pull a thread.

In 1994, I ran a story on Channel Sevens Real Life about Asian brides being over-represented in murder statistics, and ran a list of names where the husband was implicated in the crimes. I ran Rosalies name in that list and Thomas Keir sent us several letters of protest threatening to sue. It was not until the Executive Producer Gerald Stone received a call from Keir demanding to see a separate, inconsequential story we ran a few weeks later that our ears pricked. Keir said he had seen his missing wife Jean in the background of the file footage taken on Bribie Island. He wanted to show us.

By now, Stone thought the man was acting very strangely. We did our homework. Here was a man who had virtually stalked his first wife from age fifteen, whose possessiveness included lopping photos in half if they showed too much of his wifes leg and demands to his mother-in-law Christine to alter her daughters swimsuits to reveal less breast and leg.

Christine told me she knew what a mother knows in her heart that her daughter was dead and that her son-in-law was to blame, but she had to play the game for the sake of her grandson, Jeans little boy. She knew what police knew too, but no-one could risk another acquittal, and that meant waiting.

We treated Keirs dealings with us at Channel Seven as a case of him doth protest too much and invited him in to show us his missing wife in the footage. She wasnt there, of course; he was mistaken.

Then I conducted an interview that said so much on so many levels, and his non-verbal communication spoke volumes. In fact, Keir refused to look me in the eye at all, and when I asked him why, he said, Oh, Ive got a crook neck! It was pathetic.

Like a scene from CSI, we had the tape assessed by a forensic psychologist, who pointed out that Keir had never actually denied killing Jean. When asked if hed killed Jean in a jealous fit of rage, he replied, It didnt happen like that.

However, he would not elaborate on how it had happened. Indeed, when I confronted him about the extraordinary coincidence that both his wives had ended up dead, he merely put it down to sheer bad luck.

To kill someone is a very significant event. To cover it up and live a lie must have been exhausting for Keir, and he felt compelled to test whether his fabricated innocence was still holding, but the human body is a lousy vessel. Guilt eventually seeps out one way or another, but looking guilty is not a crime, or grounds for a conviction.

Seeking justice through the correct channels would prove an exercise in fortitude, patience and resilience for the dedicated police involved and Jeans family, all of whom endured three long court cases.

There has never been any justice for Rosalie.

Fear.

It was an all-to-familiar feeling for Jean Angela Keir, but shed never known it like this, as it hungrily devoured the only part of her soul she still possessed. She shook. She shivered. The butterflies gnawed away at the insides of her stomach; anywhere else would have been better than here. Hed created that fear and she hated him for it. No, she despised him. How had her life come to this? What was she talking about: it wasnt her life any more - it was his. No single aspect remained beyond his control. Her identity had totally vanished, lost in his psychopathic jealously.

Who am I? Shed always ask herself this question, but it never seemed to have an answer. Whenever she looked in the mirror, the reflection staring back at her was a ghost, an emaciated and thin stranger, an unrecognisable version of herself. Her delicate, porcelain skin had turned a pale grey, and her long, brunette curls had lost their shine and lustre. Her eyes had changed from a deep brown to a fiery red from an eternity of tears. Theyd become hollow somehow. Her smile, her beautiful smile, had evaporated. Everyone, her mum, her dad, her friends, had all told her that her special sparkle had disappeared.