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THE TRUE STORY OF A VICIOUS KILLING AND A POWERFUL SURF BROTHERHOOD ANGELA KAMPER & CHARLES MIRANDA
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First published in Australia in 2006 Copyright © Angela Kamper and Charles Miranda 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Miranda, Charles, 1969- . My brother’s keeper : the true story of a vicious killing and a powerful surf brotherhood. ISBN 978 1 74114 603 5. ISBN 1 74114 603 8. 1. Hines, Anthony Gerard. 2. Abberton, Jai. 3. Abberton, Koby. 4. Murder victims - New South Wales. 5. Trials (Murder) - New South Wales. I. Kamper, Angela. II. Title. 364.152309944 Set in 11/14 pt Sabon by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Prologue
vii
PART 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 Brothers Tony Hines The Bra Boys Path of destruction Turning on friends Bra vs Cops The long night Him or me
3 11 26 40 56 69 82 96
PART 9 10 11 12 13 14
2 The day after Closing in The swoop Facing court Jai’s trial Jai’s case
115 128 143 154 169 189 v
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15 16 17
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The verdict His brother’s keeper Sentencing
Acknowledgments
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210 214 219 225
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‘Come on, mate, we’re going for a walk,’ the surfer says wryly as he hoists his dead friend out of the car. He drags him across the sodden grass but the bloody corpse slips from his grasp in the dark. ‘I can’t do this by myself,’ he yells to the woman sobbing uncontrollably next to him. She reluctantly takes one arm and together they drag the body to the cliff’s edge. ◆
Marian Romeo and Tracy Watts have their Wednesday morning routine. There are the science projects to find, the homework to pack and lunches to make before the two Maroubra mothers walk their three respective children to St Mary & St Joseph Primary School on Fitzgerald Avenue. There they usually chat briefly outside the school gates before they each return home to put on a load of their family’s washing, meeting again about 9.30 am to walk their dogs on the beach. It is a routine vii
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the mothers have grown comfortable with over the past three years, but on Wednesday morning, 6 August 2003, their pattern is broken. After an overnight shower, Maroubra wakes to a gentle breeze and hazy winter sun. A large swell pounds the shore, giving some brave surfers the perfect conditions for an early morning challenge, while business men and women line up passively on the beachfront, drinking takeaway coffees and reading the morning’s tabloid. They are waiting for the stream of buses that will whisk them away to their office jobs in the city thirty minutes away. On the quieter northern end of Marine Parade, salty dew on the windscreens of parked cars is drying as quickly as the pools of blood on the road side. Marian’s poodle Chloe is the first to notice the large red puddle on the walking track by the Jack Vanny Memorial Park. Then Tracy’s fox terrier Barney begins tugging at his lead to get closer to the mess. Marian yanks Chloe’s nose away from the chunks of red. Tracy steps closer and the two women notice a trail extending east across the park. The pair curiously follow the trail—40 metres of bloody drag marks painting the grass red—to the rocky cliff edge. ‘Something’s happened here. It’s either a dog that’s been hit and limped away or someone’s been murdered,’ Marian says. ‘A husband who’s killed his wife,’ Tracy chimes in, recalling that she had heard a man had been found hanging from a tree in southern Maroubra the day before. Perhaps the two events are connected, she thinks. ‘Look over and see what’s there,’ orders Tracy excitedly as they reach Mistral Point. viii
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‘No way, I’m not looking over—you do it.’ ‘No, there’s going to be a body, I just know it. I’m not doing it.’ The pair debate looking over the cliff for several minutes before Marian works up the courage, hands Chloe’s leash to her friend and inches forward to the edge. ‘Oh my God, something has happened here, something terrible,’ she says as she stares down towards the raging surf. There is a small pool of blood on a jagged ledge below their feet, and a larger stain in the shape of a torso 15 metres below that. The women both have mobile phones but continue their walk for another half an hour, trying to decide whether or not to call the police with their ‘Cagney and Lacy theory’ of what they have found. They watch all the police shows on television and this is how plots start, but they were never meant to be characters in one. If it really is anything, then surely someone else has already reported it. Tracy was witness to a car accident the previous month and does not want the inconvenience of having to complete another lengthy police statement and be interviewed over and over about what she saw, who she was with and what she thought had happened. She is a mother of four, including a high schooler, and has enough on her plate. Marian also decides against calling police; she is on a pre-paid mobile phone plan and knows the time-consuming call will chew credits. Anyway, she has lived in Maroubra for eleven years and nothing ‘real’ ever happens in the usually quiet village streets. As they walk back to their homes, the women speak only of their find. They even peer into the windows of rusty cars parked along Marine Parade, bordering the ix
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park, hoping to find a clue to back their morning walk’s murder theory. One of the cars belongs to twenty-nine-year-old Bridie Spratt, who later emerges from her unit across the road. Unlocking her rusted 1987 Mitsubishi Colt hatch she notices she is standing in a pool of red. She initially thinks it could be blood, but sees it is ‘everywhere’ along the road and dismisses it as brake fluid from another car or animal blood. She curses and hopes it will clean off her new Pumas as she gets in her car and drives to study group. Three or four other commuters, joggers and dogwalkers have similar thoughts that morning as they inadvertently trample through the mess. Five minutes away at Maroubra police station, Detective Senior Constable Graham Sims trudges up the well-worn stairs to his first-floor office with his first coffee for the morning in hand. It is about 10.30 am and, at the downstairs counter of the Maroubra Road police station, Constable Rachael Adams has told him of a call she has just received—made from a home telephone—from a woman named Marian who reckons she’s found a ‘heap’ of blood at the northern end of the beach. ‘She said it was everywhere and on the road,’ Adams had said over the noisy din of telephones and conversations in the busy suburban station. ‘Righto, I’ll check it out,’ thirty-six-year-old Sims promised, adding with a snort, ‘Probably some idiot fisherman has cut his finger or something.’ Sims walks into the office of thirty-four-year-old Paul Simpkins, the station’s case file manager and a part-time first-grade rugby league referee. ‘C’mon, Paul, you’re always whingeing about working in an office with no windows, how about coming x
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down the road with me to check out some bullshit report about blood? It will only take five minutes.’ ‘Can I take my gun?’ Simpkins jokes as he gets up from his desk to join his colleague. The pair arrive at the scene shortly before 11 am and Sims is staggered by what he finds. Initially he thinks it might be hydraulic oil that has spilled from a passing truck and has begun to crystallise on the roadway, but then he sees a car’s tread marks climbing the gutter and the bloody drag marks extending across the park. ‘Bloody hell, that can’t be blood, it’s everywhere,’ he mutters to himself. This is going to mean door-knocking every household on the strip. He notices a pretty young woman with short blonde hair hurriedly getting into a taxi. ‘I’ll speak to her when she gets home,’ he thinks. Sims calls for backup and within twenty minutes uniformed officers have closed off the area. Over the next 24 hours more than two dozen forensic detectives and general duties police officers converge on the site as overhead the PolAir-3 police helicopter battles for airspace with television news choppers trying to capture the scene. Below the cliffs along the Lurline Bay shoreline, Police Rescue zodiacs engage in a battle of their own with a 3-metre offshore swell making it impossible to get close to the Mistral Point cliff base. Dozens of locals congregate to watch the commotion in their suburb. It is like a carnival, with relaxed surfies and others sitting on the front fences of their beach homes watching the frantic scene of police in blue overalls on their hands and knees analysing the ground, barking out directions and making notes on clipboards. No one is used to seeing anything more than tourists, fishermen or the odd wedding photographic session passing through xi
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their small, scrubby windblown park. An excited media pack forms behind the distinctive blue-striped crime scene tape and demand that police officers reveal what has been found, what they think has happened and when an arrest will be made. Simpkins looks over at Sims and shakes his head. ‘Five minutes? Mate, next time you have something you reckon will take five minutes, don’t come get me.’ Two days after their find, Tracy and Marian sit at a Maroubra coffee shop watching as a helicopter winches what looks like a body covered in tarpaulin wrap. ‘This is just dreadful, they found it, they found it,’ Marian tells her friend. Tracy muses aloud, ‘I wonder if they know who it is?’
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PART 1
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1 BROTHERS
Maroubra Beach has had two major tribes tread on its 1-kilometre stretch of sand. The first was an Aboriginal clan, the Merooberah people; the second came hundreds of years later, a group of surfers known as the Bra Boys. Both had a fascination with the ocean. The Merooberah people believed the pounding surf sounded ‘like thunder’, and the second shared a dream to ride its waves. It wasn’t until the early 1900s following two shipwrecks on the beach, the Hereward and the Tekapo, that white settlement flourished in Maroubra, and it was named after its original inhabitants. Surfing in Australia was in its infancy at this stage; the craze didn’t hit until 1956, when a group of visiting lifeguards from California and Hawaii gave a demonstration of the sport on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Their long boards had fins—unlike the 20-foot ‘toothpicks’ shaped like kayaks and made from balsa and plywood that the locals were used to. These new boards meant surfers could slash back and forth across a wave. The surf scene was further cemented 3
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into Sydney’s psyche thanks to a singer by the name of Pattie Amphlett, who won a small-time talent contest at the surf club. She was spotted by a recording executive and went on to have a very successful international singing career. Little Pattie’s double A-sided ‘Stomping at Maroubra’ and ‘He’s My Blond Headed Stompie Wompie Real Gone Surfer Boy’ was a huge hit in late 1963 and the first half of 1964. By the mid-1980s, large-scale development in the suburb led to a population explosion. This meant the beach was more crowded and, more importantly, so too were the waves. The suburb was split into two parts: the northern end, where developers and wealthier home owners have built properties with long glass windows facing the ocean, and the southern end, which retains its laidback beach lifestyle with its blocks of old public housing, a panel beater and Chinese restaurant on the beachfront. A rifle range takes up a massive piece of grassed land high up on the southern end of the beach. Standing at the top of it you can see the watchtowers of Long Bay Correctional Centre further south, a maximum security prison for hardened criminals. The rifle range sits in front of Sydney’s biggest sewage plant. Some years ago, one of its pipes led to the northern end of Maroubra Beach and released a brown refuse into the ocean not far offshore. The locals named a surf break after it: the ‘dunny bowl’. ◆
The local surfers share a bond as strong as their love of riding waves. They are all brothers, if not by birth, then by experience. Violence was nothing new to the kids in the area. Many have been raised in run-down public 4
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housing and some don’t know their fathers or an education. They are a burden or an interruption to their parents’ daily heroin hits. There are two paths for boys like these: they either follow the road to bashings, vandalism, car theft and suicide that go with the territory, or they stick together and thrive on the unpredictable excitement of the ocean. The Abberton boys are among those without fathers. All three were conceived by different men. They share brown eyes, but you have to search for any other physical resemblance. At fourteen, Sunny has reddish-blond shoulder-length hair, a small mouth, and a cleft on his chin hidden by his pale freckly skin. Jai, who is nearly two years younger, has pouting lips, baggy cheeks and slightly darker reddish-brown hair. Seven-year-old Koby is the most striking of the brothers. Unlike his pale older siblings, he has skin that turns golden brown in the sun and a cheeky smile that allows him to get away with more than he should. The brothers are always competing. Jai follows Sunny, the eldest and best surfer among them, and Koby trails behind. Despite his youth, Koby doesn’t miss a second of the action. The three Abberton boys are constant talkers. It’s easy to pick them in the surf, yelling out to each other with broad Australian accents which cut through the sound of the waves. Their nasal voices whine like buzzing bees; whose board to use, what breaks to surf, and who’s ‘in the shit’ with Ma. Grandpa Jim, a local taxi driver, and Grandma Mavis, or Ma, are their true guardians. Their mother, Lyn Abberton, is hardly ever around; caught up in a cycle of bad relationships and heroin addiction, she is more like an older sister. Her recklessness would end up turning her 5
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children against her, especially Koby who has found it hard to forgive her in later life. ‘There wasn’t much love, I don’t think, to tell you the truth now I look back at it,’ Koby would later recall. Mavis and Jim have moved south from Bondi to Maroubra for a cheaper house. The constant spotlight on Bondi’s colourful beachfront, fast filling up with restaurants and bars, was drawing tourists and celebrities to the area and pushing lower income earners out. In Maroubra, Jim and Mavis can still maintain their beach lifestyle without the crowds. Jim is more of a golfer than a surfer, but he enjoys the social side of being a member of the surf club and, when they were still toddlers, taking the boys out for a swim. With their grandchildren at home, Jim and Mavis have inherited an entire surfing community. Their backyard is surf central on the weekend. More than forty boards—including classic brands like Shane, Jackson and Southern Comfort—are left baking on the lawn until the next big wave. It’s easier for the local boys to leave their gear at the Abbertons’ than carry it from the beach west up a steep hill to their homes on Lexington Place or in the adjoining suburb of Matraville. But Mavis won’t have her backyard full of fibreglass planks without some help around the house. ‘Maah!’ the boys plead when she wants things cleaned up. They need discipline, though. She has opened her home to many of the troubled kids in the area but won’t be walked over. The small but tough woman in her fifties with dark brown hair, pale skin and round eyebrows has won the respect of her boys and their friends. The garage home of the boys is proof of it. Sunny has invented his own graffiti tag: the letters MHC are 6
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scrawled across the walls in black texta and coloured spray-paint. They stand for Ma’s Hell Crew. No matter where their mother Lyn takes them in her rare bursts of maternal responsibility, the brothers always end up back in Ma and Pa’s garage, because that is where they find a sense of belonging. ◆
In 1992, when Koby is fourteen he moves to Lexington Place with Jai and Dakota, his new baby brother. His mother has been on the waiting list for a Housing Commission home for years and has finally been given a three-bedroom unit. The sprawling red-brick apartment estate, built in the 1970s, is home to hundreds of single-parent families, people with disabilities, drug addicts and criminals. But for the boys, it is like living in a palace after the garage. Conditions about the estate are as depressed now as they have ever been. Junkies lurk about street corners and phone boxes waiting for their hits to arrive and police sirens wail in the distance, screaming off to another call for help from a victim of domestic violence. In these conditions, a man in a white suit driving about in a convertible sports car and handing out twenty and fiftydollar bills is not easily missed. Children from broken homes gravitate towards Uncle Phil, as he insists on being called. He can make them feel special if they will make him feel special. Sunny is the oldest of a group of five or six youths who don’t feel comfortable about their Uncle Phil. He sees how Phil collects the boys and takes them to McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, or to the movies or ice skating, and showers them with gifts and money. On one 7
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occasion he takes a group of boys aged twelve or thirteen to his house at Whale Beach, collecting a case of beer on the way. They swim, watch videos, have a barbecue and later get drunk. At least one boy is physically abused that weekend. More than five years later, Sunny would be called to the NSW District Court as a witness to give evidence on a friend’s behalf in the trial of notorious serial paedophile Phillip Bell. One morning, Koby comes home to Lexington Place and tries to get into the unit. He knocks on the door several times but there is no answer, so he climbs up a downpipe attached to the side of the block and tries to get in through the window on the second floor. As he lifts the windowpane and steps over the paint-chipped sill he sees someone run past the lounge. He walks into the lounge room and sees his mother and her boyfriend, along with a few others, playing with syringes. His mother has one in her arm and is just about to take a hit of heroin when she notices Koby standing dumbfounded in front of her. ‘Get out of here, you little shit,’ a man yells when he notices Koby—almost as if he is trying to be moral by not shooting up in front of a kid. But Koby doesn’t move, he just stands there stunned and confused. Then his mother’s boyfriend takes a baseball bat from the corner of the room and comes towards Koby menacingly. The boy runs for the door, fearing for his life. It is the last time Koby ever returns to the housing block. In a state of shock, he runs as fast as he can to the beach. It is the only place to find solace. Sunny is in the water when he spots Koby, hysterical on the shore. Sunny comes out of the surf and Koby tells him what has happened. Sunny cuddles his younger sibling and consoles him: ‘Put it all into your surfing, bro.’ Having experienced his mother’s 8
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worst before, Sunny knows there is no way she will change. She is too far gone. Sunny is Koby’s role model. Offered a sponsorship while he was in Year 11, Koby has been competing professionally for eight years. Jai, too, is surfing professionally, but prefers film and photographic surf trips to competition. When Sunny tells Koby to put all his anger into his surfing, that’s exactly what he does. For the next year, Koby lives at friends’ homes, selling marijuana to make ends meet. But he is unsettled, like many of the kids in the surrounding Housing Commission homes who have come home to similar circumstances. The only thing that helps him forget what has happened is surfing. All he has to think about in the surf is catching the next wave and coming out of the white wash. Sunny has just returned from a trip to Hawaii when he hears of a big swell at a surfing spot called Voodoo, near Cronulla. The three brothers drive south to the dangerous break and immediately hit the water. It is the first time Koby has seen surf of this magnitude. Sitting on the rocks just before they slip into the water, Sunny can see that Koby is a little frightened. ‘Don’t take any waves,’ Sunny advises him. ‘Just get a feel for what’s happening when there’s really big waves.’ The three of them paddle out and Koby sticks to the side of the curling waves. Sets of waves come at them one after the other. They have to either go around them or paddle through them before they curl. Then a large wave comes towards them and Sunny and Jai start paddling. But when Sunny turns around, Koby is still in the impact zone. He knows if Koby doesn’t get out of there, there is every chance he could drown. 9
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‘Paddle, paddle!’ Sunny yells at the top of his lungs. Koby looks at Sunny. He hears his calls, but ignores them. Seconds later, Koby comes surging forward, paddling as fast as he can as if all the anger built up inside him is driving the skinny teenager straight into the daunting mass of water starting to curl in front of him. They all think he is a goner but he emerges from the water unscathed. It is a turning point for Koby, who learns the biggest charger faces the biggest fears. That day in the surf startles Jai and Sunny more than Koby himself, who is now welcome to go out with the older surfers to reefs and beaches other grommets never get a look into.
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2 TONY HINES
‘I’ve known Tony Hines for twenty-three years—ever since I became a policeman.What we’re trying to do is work out what was the myth of Tony Hines and what was the reality.’—Maroubra Superintendent Dave Owens.
Anthony Hines is a dark-haired olive-skinned teenager from Coogee. Like the Maroubra boys, Tony—or Hinesy, as he is known among friends—likes a surf, but he stands out as one of the tougher guys who hang out at the shops on McKeon Street. The Abbertons know not to mess with him. At eighteen, Tony already has a criminal record. While his parents watched him play football for the Wombats at Coogee Oval in the early 1980s, Hines became involved in a fight with a spectator who ran onto the field and attacked him. The fight was broken up but Hines still wanted to settle it outside. When the game ended Tony went up to his parents and said: ‘I’ll be back in ten. I just have to sort something out.’ 11
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They felt powerless as he ran off to do just that. ‘The earth shakes when he fights,’ a friend says. Tony was adopted shortly after birth by longtime Coogee residents Vincent and Beryl Hines. Beryl, generous by nature, had already taken on three other children. She was told that Tony had been dumped in a garbage bin on Crown Street after birth, not far from the women’s hospital in Darlinghurst. A passer-by noticed him and handed him to authorities. Despite his sad beginnings, the baby born on 24 December 1966 is a wonderful Christmas present for the Hines family. Tony is raised in a tidy home surrounded by a white picket fence on Coogee Street, on the border of Coogee and Randwick. Vincent, a World War II veteran, picked up malaria during the war. One of Beryl’s older brothers played football and was a referee for South Sydney. Tony would go to all the games as a kid and sneak into the dressing rooms to listen to coach Jack Gibson’s brief to his players, before returning to his parents in the stand with his own sports report. Most of Tony’s memories of his father are of him being ill. Beryl, who inherited the large property with a long backyard from her father, absolutely adores her son and gives him everything he wants, while at the same time trying in vain to impose some discipline. No matter how many hidings Tony receives he never learns his lesson. His mother brands him her ‘Wild Colonial Boy’. His worried parents enrol him in Marcellin College, hoping a Catholic school run by brothers will sort him out. He only lasts a year, and in that time beat up half the boys in his grade. A month after he is expelled, he comes to the attention of local police when he eye-gouges and chews on the shoulder of a former fellow student before 12
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trying to spike him on a steel picket fence next door to the Clovelly RSL club. He is only stopped from killing the youth by three others who walk out of the club that Friday night and see their friend being savagely beaten by this wild-eyed boy half his size. In the eyes of Vincent Hines, his adopted son has the opportunity to make something of himself and the Hines family name. He can become a tradesman or even study at university. Tony’s older brother Chris is slow and will always be challenged getting ahead in life, but Tony is intelligent, handsome, creative and athletic—he has everything going for him. Yet despite his father’s best intentions, Tony has another agenda. ◆
One afternoon Jai Abberton is sitting on a banana chair in the backyard having a yarn with Ma when he notices someone climbing over the back fence. It’s Tony. He is all worked up and sweaty, huffing and puffing. ‘Go to the post office and see if the bloke’s still alive,’ Tony, still breathing heavily, yells out to Jai. Twelve-yearold Jai doesn’t quite understand what is going on but he obediently rushes around the corner to the local shops at Tony’s command. Mavis knows Tony’s type and is suspicious, but the boys never say no to Tony. Jai finds the local postman lying in a pool of blood and shattered glass on the floor of the post office; he has been thrown through the front window. Hines had stolen his two-stroke delivery cycle and, when the postie gave chase, Hines turned and gave him a beating. The injured postman is hospitalised with a fractured skull, broken legs, severe bruising and deep glass cuts to his back. While he is in hospital, Tony tracks him down 13
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and warns him if he complains to police his family will suffer. When the police try to investigate the matter the postman won’t cooperate, fearing reprisals. He leaves Sydney and moves to the country until he thinks it is safe to return to Maroubra. This is the first of many bashings Jai will witness with Tony. He had learnt from a young age that Tony is not the sort of person you would want to get offside. Once you got to know him, keeping him close and agreeing with everything he says is the only way to stay safe. ◆
A year after the attack on the postman, Jai witnesses another bloody encounter, this time between Hines and three men outside the Maroubra Bay Hotel. ‘We were just on the way back from the surf one day and we noticed a fight over at the pub,’ Jai would later recall. ‘Three fellows . . . He knocked one out and then he knocked the other one out and the third bloke came out of the pub, a big bloke, and Tony ended up kicking him in the head.’ Whether it is Tony getting mixed up with the wrong people or people getting mixed up with the wrong side of Tony, trouble seems to follow him around. ◆
The postman bashing had given Tony the notoriety he needs to be feared as a violent youth. Each vicious assault increases his confidence and cements his power over others. He no longer needs to steal money, clothing or surf wear by smashing up shopfront windows and grabbing anything in sight. Stealing is for amateurs. Tony can lean on his acquaintances for whatever dollar amount he wishes. 14
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In most cases, he only threatens those who can’t afford to go to the police—people he has information on, drug dealers or thieves. By the age of twenty-five he has already built a reputation as one of the fiercest men in the area. In his criminal life Hines has old-fashioned values. Never get hooked on heroin, don’t lag on your friends and face up to your crimes. He is proud of himself and always stands with an upright posture. According to police officers who have the misfortune of dealing with him, Tony is at best an annoying thug they will have to throw out of bars and pubs when he refuses to leave at last drinks. At worst, he can be a violent psychotic menace they wish they could jail and throw away the key. Tony knows he is more the latter in the eyes of the police and for a while he leaves the eastern suburbs area, sure police are out to ‘fit me up’ for a crime. He hopes his absence will allow police to forget him. It doesn’t, and when he finally returns, he is bigger and meaner, and police are more eager than ever to get him off the streets. Now, every time he refuses to leave a pub, police call in heavily armed members of the police force’s Tactical Response Group, a specialist group trained to deal with violent offenders. At one stage, a member of the TRG stands outside the window of a Maroubra pub and points a pump-action shotgun at the window where Tony is sitting in a bid to remind him last drinks have been called and he should leave without the usual threats and abuse directed at bar staff. ◆
Former TRG officer Sergeant Ron Mason doesn’t remember that particular incident, but he remembers a number 15
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of others, including a bloody fight he was forced to have with a drunken Tony outside the Maroubra Bay Hotel. It was March 1990 and Hines was spotted drinking a Crown lager at the Maroubra Bay. He was wanted on warrants for an assault and for questioning on a more recent bashing. When local police officers had positively identified him drinking at the bar, they knew from his record they were not to approach and were to call in the TRG. Sergeant Mason arrived on the scene within the hour, approached Tony and asked him to leave with him. Tony sized up him and the other officers, smiled and said no as he took another sip of beer. A scuffle broke out, much to the amusement of some of the other regular patrons. Tony was eventually put in a headlock and forcibly bundled into the back of a paddy wagon and taken to the cells at Maroubra police station. He was sitting in the station dock, blood on his torn shirt from a cut lip, when another prisoner next to him said he knew how to get revenge on the police. ‘I’ll tell the court I saw them bash you, that I was sitting here and it was police brutality; I’ll go witness,’ he said, eager to help his bigger and more menacing-looking fellow prisoner. Without warning Tony punched him to the ground. ‘You see this?’ he said, pointing to his own split lip, ‘I deserve this. You see that,’ pointing to the man on the ground holding his face, ‘you deserve that.’ Mason was in an outside room typing a statement of the night’s arrest when he heard the scuffle and the exchange. He describes it as one of the more amusing things he had seen. But it summed up Tony. ‘He was a thug, a standover merchant but he also had a sense of, not right and wrong as such, but more a 16
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sense of honour,’ he recalls. ‘He knew he turned it on that night and deserved what he got from us. For him bullshit was bullshit and he was fair dinkum. So when he belted that other bloke he felt he did the honourable thing.’ Mason was preparing to lay charges against Hines for assaulting him and other police during his arrest that night. But he himself was not too badly roughed up and thought he would do the honourable thing and dropped them. Hines respected that and would often say ‘G’day’ when he later saw Mason on the street or at local rugby league competitions. Tony had probably forgotten, but it was not the first time he had had a run in with the barrel-chested TRG sergeant. In the late 1980s, Mason was called to Florence Avenue in Eastlakes. Hines had kidnapped a former girlfriend and kept her at his house for two days. She escaped and alerted police. From outside they called on him to surrender, but he laughed and barricaded the door. After a lengthy stand-off, Mason decided to go in. He charged the front door, which was blocked by a couch and other furniture. As he did, the heavy door slammed shut behind him. ‘I was in there by myself, but in that situation you can never turn your back so I moved on into the house,’ he said. ‘I found Hines in one of the bedrooms pretending to be asleep, but he was really playing possum and I could see he had a hand under the pillow. He said, ‘What are you doing? I’m asleep,’ as I jumped on him and grabbed his hand under the pillow. He was holding a large knife. ‘There was a nasty side to him, no doubt about it, he was very aggressive. Cops would be scared of him 17
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because we all knew he could go the knuckle, you know. He was totally fearless. He was almost like that Monty Python character, the knight, who gets his arms and legs chopped off but still wants more. That was Hines, he would never give up. If I had to arrest him, I would get him in a wrist-lock or whatever and speak nicely and calmly to him to settle him down. I would tell him softly in his ear so the other [officers] couldn’t hear and he would know I’m not showing off or being a hero or whatever, that it was over and even if he could get on top of me it was still over and he would eventually be arrested—that was the way to treat him, and if you got his respect it made things easier.’ Other officers agree but say eventually his meaner side took control. ‘He was always getting caught for assaults, early morning stuff outside pubs and that sort of thing,’ one veteran Maroubra police officer, who asked not to be named, says. ‘But the assaults gradually got really bad, really vicious, there is no doubt about that. In the early 1990s he bit a bloke’s finger off and threw it down the drain so it couldn’t be stitched back, he took to a bloke’s head once with a tyre lever or carjack—that was a dispute with a neighbour—and just street brawls and threats, particularly to anyone who looked the wrong way to any woman he happened to be with. ‘But some of the other stories about him were more myth than anything else. I do remember he once belted a bloke he was with for not stripping off quick enough. They [police] pulled up once to question him about an assault and he stripped off completely and whacked the bloke with him for not doing the same. He was convinced 18
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police were going to try and plant some evidence or something incriminating on him. So he stripped. Well, he appeared later that day in the court wearing nothing but a blanket about him. He was pretty polite and everything most of the time, but I never forget when he came in with that blanket. He never said why he did that . . . A bit paranoid about police, I guess.’ What most police do agree on was that jail time had slowly changed Hines. After each stint he appeared to be bigger in body size and more aggressive towards anyone who so much as looked at him the wrong way. While in prison Tony befriended career criminal and convicted murderer Earl Heatley. The story about the postman bashing had reached the inmates at Long Bay jail. ‘Tony was only a young kid then, people would say to him, “Didn’t the postman bring you any mail?”,’ Heatley recalls in a fit of laughter, revealing his smashed teeth. ‘He’d cop a joke at his own expense if he considered you to be on par with him.’ Fifty-eight year old Heatley was released from prison in April 2004 after two hung juries, two aborted trials and a conviction quashed on appeal on his second murder charge. He doesn’t understand how a man like Hines, smarter than the average crook, ended up the way he did. Despite being adopted, he had had more opportunities than any other inmate. ‘What a waste of a life,’ Heatley remarks. Hines was a good friend to make in jail. Each time he was thrown in, he knocked out any standover men that got in his way. If there was ever any money smuggled into prison he wanted to get his hands on it first. The walls of his cell were full of condensation from the sit-ups and push-ups he’d put himself through day and night. Tony 19
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rarely lost a fight in jail, but when he did it was against three or four men. ‘He could punch hard and he was quick. People who underestimated him made a big mistake. When he did recover he always squared the account,’ Heatley says. It always amused Hines that people would never pick him as a tough guy because he was ‘a good style of a bloke’. He had no major scars and no tattoos to make him appear menacing. (‘Professional crooks don’t have tattoos, the last thing you want is a brand,’ Heatley points out.) But he could change his colours within seconds. Heatley would listen to him go through his list of bashings one after the other, laughing at the surprise his victims showed with each strike. He could take a punch in the face and hardly move, but would invite his attacker to keep going by pretending to be hurt. Then he would go in for the kill. To Hines, Heatley was no threat. They were in a different league. Heatley was a killer, while Hines was a standover man, obsessed with finding out the stories behind some of the prison’s most hardened criminals, unafraid of asking them the most private questions even if it meant copping a clipping over the ear. ‘He never killed anybody in his life because he wasn’t built for that. He collected guns and knives as show-off tools. It made him look ten times more deadly than he was. Most standover men will hunt you down and hospitalise you but they won’t kill you. He was a thug, a basher and a knocker-about of women, but never a killer.’ Another jail mate who does not wish to be identified says his time with Hines in Silverwater prison was the best time he ever had behind bars. 20
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‘He made me laugh every single day,’ the friend says. ‘If you were his friend, you were everything. ‘One time the heaters were turned up too hot and Tony asked the guards if we could have them turned down. The guards did nothing, so he got the entire ward to sign a form saying we wanted them turned down. Nothing was done, so Tony broke all the heaters in the ward. The guards tried to blame him but he was the only one who didn’t sign the complaints form. He knew what he was doing.’ In jail Hines read nearly all the philosophy books in the prison library and loved Oscar Wilde. He often quoted his favourite author: ‘What’s the point of life if you’re not going to be talked about.’ He spent the entire seven months of one prison stint in his Speedos—even in the winter—often annoying the other inmates by singing Elvis songs. And so he went on, in and out of jail. For someone who spoke so highly of his mother and younger sister Rebecca, Tony had a shameful disrespect for women, and this would often land him in trouble. In 1988, Tony met a backpacker at the Coogee Bay Hotel and took her back to a unit he was renting in Lurline Bay. He wedged a knife in the door and raped her. The girl later notified police and Hines was charged. At his trial in the District Court in January 1991, Hines’s solicitor, Chris Murphy, cross examined the young Norwegian woman. She said—with the help of a court interpreter—she went to the police because she was concerned Hines would rape again. She told the court: ‘I think it was at this stage he took the key with the string to the door. He really tried to scare me, like have [sic] lots of ceremonies.’ 21
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‘Lots of what?’ Murphy asked. ‘Ceremonies. Yes, like when he did these things with the door and with the knife and with the key with the string.’ ‘Well hang on, hold it, what do you mean by the word “ceremonies”?’ ‘For me it was like he had done it many, many times before.’ The jury found Hines guilty of two out of the six counts he was charged with. The first conviction was for ‘sexual intercourse without consent, with knowledge there was no consent’ and the second was for ‘having threatened to inflict actual bodily harm by means of a knife, with intent to have sexual intercourse’. He was sentenced to four years and seven months in jail. When Tony was sent to prison in 1991 it came as a relief to many in the local community—including the Abbertons, who had to put up with him getting into fights whenever they would have a night out on the town. Jai and Sunny dreaded the moments when he would turn up at a party or go to a nightclub with them. It often ended in bloodshed. Tony would either beat someone up or they would end up in trouble themselves. He may have given them five years of peace while he was jailed, but when he was released in 1995 he re-entered society a crazier, more violent and well-connected man. Windsor prison, 40 kilometres north-west of Sydney, was where Tony served most of his rape sentence. In the prison gym he worked on building his body to new strengths, not only to maintain a tough image among inmates, but to keep women on the outside interested. On one occasion he sent a photograph of himself to a girlfriend, posing in a pair of blue jocks with his 22
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shoulder-length hair slicked back. It was an image many of the inmates had become used to. They nicknamed him ‘Rambo’ after the 1980s blockbuster film starring Sylvester Stallone. The recipient of the photo, who prefers to remain anonymous, was one of a number of women he kept in touch with. Perhaps they all searched for goodness in Hines’s confused mind, or just enjoyed his bad-boy image. They responded to his letters and the phone calls he made during the early hours of the morning on a mobile phone he had snuck into jail. In his letters to them he enclosed pictures of nude women he had sketched himself. ‘He was the prison system’s answer to Fabio,’ says boxing trainer Johnny Lewis, who first met Hines while visiting the maximum security compound in 1996. ‘He liked to flex up. Undoubtedly Tony fancied himself as a good looker.’ Hines trained hard and Johnny recognised Tony was a standout when he took a group of young offenders through Windsor prison. The youths who visited the prison, all under the age of seventeen, were introduced to a string of hard-core inmates who had committed violent crimes—armed robbery, sexual assault, grievous bodily harm and so on. Some of them would turn their lives around after this exposure, terrified by the thought of being locked up for years in a grey and paranoid environment where inmates were constantly watching their backs. Others would find themselves in the same institution several years down the track. The young offenders program involved a barbecue with the inmates in the prison garden and a boxing exhibition. Hines immediately wanted to be involved. Part of him was doing it because he thought 23
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he could straighten himself up, and the other was just trying to vary the mundane prison routine. ‘No matter how bad someone is, there’s always a certain amount of good in them,’ says Lewis, who has seen many fighters reach enormous heights. The quietly spoken coach has trained boxing luminaries such as Kostya Tszyu, Jeff Fenech and Jeff Harding, the heaviest Australian to win a world title. Accustomed to hard men, Lewis also knew a softer side of Hines that wanted to do the right thing by people. ‘I never saw any violence in him at all, never in any shape or form did he come on strong,’ Lewis says. His family also knew a different side of Tony Hines. Looking back, his eldest sister, Jennifer, who left home when her brother was ten years old, can see no link between his childhood and his later crimes. ‘Why or where Anthony went wrong is something we don’t know,’ she says later. ‘We came from parents who were very kind and loving. Our mother was someone who was straight down the line. We were five children with all different paths. Perhaps he got mixed up with the wrong sort of people. In the end, he made the wrong choices— you live by the sword, you die by the sword.’ She describes Tony as a gorgeous little boy who was very talented and grew up to be loyal to his friends and family. ‘He wasn’t a heartless criminal, I only knew him as my brother,’ she says. Among his nephews and nieces, ‘Uncle Tony’ was full of energy and funny jokes. He loved photography and painting, and was often seen with a camera and tripod taking pictures of surf or women and girls along the beach. Tony was extremely protective of his younger sister, Rebecca. Only a year apart, the two were inseparable 24
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growing up; their older sisters Jennifer and Sharon had left home soon after finishing at Randwick’s Catholic high school Sacred Heart and were already living lives of their own. Like any hardened criminal, he chose not to discuss his life of crime with anyone he cared about, not even his family. They knew he was constantly in and out of jail but they also knew not to ask too many questions. ‘He didn’t talk about what he did but he didn’t lie about what he did either,’ Jennifer says. It was another life that they would never be part of. Hines once told one of his close friends he felt he would die young, and he lived life as if to compress all the energy for a life span of ninety into what would turn out to be a mere thirty-six years.
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3 THE BRA BOYS
‘To handle this life, to stick together, we need something to unite us, and that’s how the Bra Boy tattoo came about.’—Koby Abberton
Just how the Bra Boys formed has always been open to debate, but the most accepted story sees the group born in a perfect barrel wave at a surf carnival in 1994. The Maroubra Surf Association (MSA) was established in 1964 and was one of the biggest and most popular surf clubs on Sydney’s eastern beaches. It did not have regular meetings or a club house but its members, all of whom had to be local, were bonded by a love of surfing and, of course, Maroubra. About eight years after MSA had started it changed its name to Maroubra Board Riders Association, commonly known as BRA. A few years later the fierce rivalry among members saw a breakaway group form under the banner South End Board Riders Association. By 1986 Maroubra had four clubs fighting for wave space, including 26
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the Maroubra Board Riders, South End Board Riders, North Maroubra and Maroubra Christian Surfers. The latter group was made up of the many wayward youths who were sent by their parents or the state to Christian camps for social education. The Christian groups used sport as a way of communicating with youths, and in Maroubra’s case there was really only surfing or, to a lesser extent, rugby league. The surfing fraternity became so big at Maroubra that the clubs had to take turns on alternate weekends to run their competitions. For reasons the locals put down to divine intervention, the Christian Surfers always seemed to get the days with the best weather and surf conditions. While Maroubra had some of the best surfers in Australia through the late 1980s and early ’90s they rarely performed well in national titles. Both the Maroubra Board Riders and South End Board Riders would field teams in annual competitions, but they would knock each other out well before the final rounds. But all that changed in 1994 for the Quicksilver Surf League titles. That year, the Maroubra clubs decided to enter the competition as one united team under the name Maroubra Underground, which was the name of a local surf shop. Then, instead of winning a wave, they were winning two out of three sets to advance to the next level. ‘We combined the two clubs purely for that surf league, the Quicksilver Surf League competition in 1994 in Avoca, and for the first time managed to get through to the Australian final,’ explains current Surfing NSW Inc. Chief Executive Officer and lifelong Maroubra local Mark Windon. 27
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‘That move really united the beach. It was probably the best thing that could have happened as far as the beach was concerned. It got rid of the us-and-them mentality and it was good, and then we got through to the finals again in 1995. ‘It was really those two years that unearthed some talent like Koby Abberton, who was only a kid then; you know, it was ten years ago. One of the guys surfing for us in that era was Tommy Whittaker, who is today currently ranked twelfth in the world. ‘So we were quite divided and didn’t have a great deal of strength, but we came together and surfed under that one name—Maroubra Underground.’ The Maroubra Underground came fourth in that 1994 final, but the placing didn’t matter. The beach was united in triumph and the former rival clubs saw the benefits in that. To reinforce their emergence, the Maroubra surfers hung around till the end of the final to throw eggs at the winners. Many remember the celebrations back at Maroubra. They were finally recognised as a surfing force, and when the team returned the following year, the other associations referred to them as the Bra Boys—the hard-core working-class surfers from the ’Bra. Windon remembers one defining moment that, for him, summed up what it was to be a Bra Boy—and later came to be one of the group’s many tattooed symbols. ‘Koby pulled into a closed set barrel and a little further down the beach there was this photographer. As he pulled into the barrel he stood on the wave and [braced his forearms] and they got a photo of it. And that is how the Bra Boys thing evolved. He was in that tube when he did that, acting smart. I remember seeing Koby and 28
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thinking “Oh you idiot, what are you doing?”, and the next thing they get a really good shot of it.’ When the picture appeared in a magazine some time later, showing Koby’s reckless bravado in posing for the camera in a wave, many Maroubra locals went to a Kings Cross tattoo parlour and had a small etching done. The etching showed Koby’s bracing forearms and the numbers 2035, the Maroubra postcode, which many older surfers, including Koby’s brothers Sunny and Jai, had already stencilled onto their skin. The bracing arms tattoo was only a little over two inches long and looked like some kind of trade union or workers’ symbol. But its popularity with Maroubra’s youth spread as quickly as the reputation of what it meant to surf at Maroubra. The Bra Boys never started out as a gang in the strict sense of the word. Bra Boys were a brotherhood, a tribe, and to be a member meant loyalty, territory and an enlarged (surfing) family. It subscribed to a one-inall-in mentality where you watch each other’s backs; respect your surfing elders and, if one of your mates is wronged, you all hit back with a vengeance. Members take their ties to the community and beach seriously, and to declare yourself a Bra Boy is something of an honour. Yes, members may trade on the fearsome reputation that was to develop later in and out of the water, but it was essentially a sense of belonging for many— particularly those who came from broken homes, like the Abbertons. ‘We didn’t need any markings or tattoos. We knew who we were and we looked out for each other, that was what the Bra Boys had been about,’ one fifty-one-yearold Maroubra surfing veteran said. 29
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Another local surfer who was not a tattooed Bra Boy member says he got on well with the others and never felt the need for that sense of belonging. He knew them and they knew him and there was never any trouble. The surfer, who doesn’t want to be identified, says the worrying thing that developed from the early Bra Boy days was the pack mentality. Some were taking it too far—if you did get into a pub blue with one you’d run because there would be four or five others who, out of some sense of misguided loyalty, would have to also put the boot in. The street youths who also happened to surf gave themselves the fearsome title ‘Maroubra Republican Army’ or MRA. The tag eventually disappeared and its members were absorbed into the greater Bra Boys fraternity. Of course, being protective or parochial is not unique to Maroubra; in fact, surfers in places like North Narrabeen, Angourie, Cronulla and Curl Curl have made it an art form. On a cliff in North Curl Curl a large spray-painted sign warns ‘Locals Only—C.U.B.A’, a message from the Curl United Boardriders Association. Narrabeen locals have been known to resort to violence towards those who drop in on their waves. Windon says the Bra Boy phenomena did get bigger than anyone could have imagined, but the core of the group were good people like Sunny and Koby Abberton, who worked hard within the community to steer wayward youths away from criminal behaviour. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of them are good guys,’ he says, ‘but you get some who are a problem like you would anywhere else.’ A long-time police officer from the Maroubra area agrees. He says the Bra Boys legend was more fiction than fact, and was created more by the media than anything 30
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else. Yes, they were fierce, and yes, they did get into trouble and small-time mischief, but that was it. ‘I would see them and them me and we would say hi and whatever,’ he says. ‘They are not a bad lot but, like in most societies, you get your bad apples. Of course some people call themselves Bra Boys to impress, and they are not.’ Few know better the Maroubra mentality than fortynine-year-old Windon. He was born and bred on the ’Bra beach and is a highly respected community leader. In 1965 he was a foundation member of the Maroubra Tadpoles, which was the forerunner to the current national Surf Life Saving Nippers program and today he works with various youth projects particularly related to surfing. ‘My first memories as a kid were on the beach and I can’t remember anything else,’ he recalls. ‘I’ve lived virtually all my life on the beach. ‘Maroubra has always been a working-class hardcore beach. By hard core I mean the fact that it’s very crowded and to get waves at Maroubra there’s definitely a pecking order, and it takes a long while to earn respect. I think as it’s grown in popularity you’ve got more and more people using the beaches. The local guys are very mindful of the pecking order but you get a lot of people come from outside the area and they’ve got no idea of what’s expected.’ Not knowing the pecking order has led to some assaults and encouraged the fierce Bra Boys myth. Local surfers are as protective of their beach today as they were forty years ago in the 1960s. But some say it is this protective passion, or tribalism, that has seen junior surfers achieve surfing success overseas. 31
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Mark Windon explains: ‘They start surfing when they are really young and have a strong connection to the beach and their club and really can’t get enough competition. The pro teens series is really strong . . . They see the older blokes like Sunny and Koby and want to be like them. By the time they enter the big competitions at, say, seventeen years old, there’s been this long learning curve, like they’ve done a seven- or eight-year apprenticeship and know what to expect. Other countries, like the United States, don’t have that and that’s why Aussie kids do so well.’ ◆
Around this time, a friend sees the potential in the diminutive Koby and gets him a sponsorship deal with Mambo whereby the company will pay for half his surfboards when he competes. Koby, following in Sunny’s footsteps, begins winning school titles. He wins state titles at twelve, fourteen and sixteen years old, and starts to realise his own talent. Koby ascribes both his early successes and those within his family to his greater family—the Bra Boys. ‘The Bra Boys had been around since the 1950s but I think our age of people brought it into a new light; whether it’s good or bad, the tattoo and stuff started in the 1990s. A lot of us back then were all from Housing Commission. We all teamed up, we’d all go to the beach together, we’d all be going through the same situations,’ Koby says. In 1997, Koby has one of his first tastes of being in a deadly surf. It reminds him of his own mortality but also prepares him mentally for what will be one of his greatestever professional challenges during the following year. 32
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By this stage he is riding for More Core Division surf company and they have given him a budget of about $14 000, triggering his dream to travel and ride. He has seen Sunny venture overseas so many times and he is now discovering what the excitement is all about. He is surfing with one of his friends from Coffs Harbour, Lee Winkler, at a shallow reef known as Backdoor Pipeline north of Oahu in the Hawaiian islands. The pair have competed against each other numerous times and even helped each other during competition by giving over a wave, but this day was supposed to be just a bit of fun. A large set of waves descend on them, wiping out Koby first. Winkler sees him go under seconds before he too is wiped out, dislocating his shoulder when he hits the water. Five waves wash over the dazed Winkler, who is unable to move until Koby paddles over and pulls his head above water. ‘Koby came back, dived under and pulled me to the surface. I was slumped over and Koby thought I had gone. He banged me on the chest and I coughed up some water and he got me back to the beach. I was lucky, it was a bad season and unfortunately some surfers didn’t make it,’ Winkler says when recalling the incident. The following year, Koby travels to Tahiti for the World Qualifying Series event the Gotcha Pro in Teahupoo. The quiet township, pronounced Chopu—or just called Chopes for short—lies on the south-west corner of the smaller of Tahiti’s two dormant volcanoes. Freshwater from the mountains several centuries earlier have carved out a labyrinth of reefs and coral atolls that today help form a curious twisting swell with a drastic gradient that sees waves drop from up to 4 metres (12 feet) high to nearly nothing. For years, the area has been known 33
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and surfed by only a select few of the locals, but that all changed in the 1980s when international surfers and bodyboarders heard of the awesome Teahupoo and its heart-stopping waves. In the 1998 Gotcha Pro, Chopes does not disappoint the eighty professional riders who have come to the outpost to compete. Its waves are massive and some riders decide to pull out of the competition before it even begins. From the outset of the first of the heats, the organisers know they have a problem. Top riders are being knocked out by unknowns or are needing to be rescued from dangerous wipe-outs. Two jet skis run relay in and out of the surf day after day to collect surfers who are being dumped on razor-sharp reefs about a tenminute paddle from shore. In some heats only three out of eight riders are completing a set. In the final two days of competition, thirty boards are snapped in half like twigs and organisers momentarily halt proceedings to consult. The swell is simply too large, with 4-metre barrels, and there is a real risk of death or injury. They are some of the most dangerous conditions some riders have ever seen and put Pipeline to shame. The surfers that are left have to be given the option of either postponing competition or relocating the event. Among the final few is a virtually unknown plucky Koby Abberton. He and the others unanimously call for the event to go on. Koby is eyeing the prize money and chasing his demons. He fears failure more than drowning and backs himself to get out of a dangerous situation. On the heaviest days of waves, described by one competitor as ‘awesomely powerful, life-threatening yet perfect’, Koby charges one giant left-hander after another, and each time he comes out the other side 34
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unscathed. On the final wave, he manages to stay alive and upright and, in a controversial decision, is awarded the event over his much-fancied Hawaiian rival Conan Hayes. Many who witness the competition believe Hayes is the clear winner. But it doesn’t matter. The judges hand the trophy and $12 000 cheque to Koby, and he instantly becomes an international surfing star. Suddenly the tags ‘fearless’ and ‘hellman’ are attached to his name as he makes the cover and feature of surfing mags around the world. Another Hawaiian surfer, Johnny Boy Gomes, doesn’t enjoy Koby’s success. He tries to block Koby from catching any more waves in the area by holding onto his leg. ‘You’re not catching any more waves,’ he says to Koby, who is nineteen to his thirty-four. ‘I don’t care what you do to me, if you want to fight we’ll fight when I finish,’ Koby replies. When they arrive on the beach the fight is on and a skinny Koby faces up to Gomes, who is an imposing 110 kilos. Gomes beats Koby, but the fact that Koby stands up to him is in itself a triumph because no one stands up to Johnny Boy. News of the fight spreads as much as winning the contest. Koby is the new kid in town and he isn’t going to take it from anyone. ◆
After winning Chopes, Koby continues to compete in the World Qualifying Series, but only finishes thirtieth or fortieth. He knows why he won in Tahiti: it was the big waves. He realises he doesn’t want to be on a beach surfing the smallest waves in front of the biggest crowds in places like California and Brazil, where more than 50 000 people pack a beach for a contest. He wants to 35
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be on the biggest waves and doesn’t care who is there to witness it. He quits the pro-surfing tour and follows his real dream of surfing not only the biggest waves but the most dangerous reefs in the world, where landing on rocks means splitting your head open or, if you are lucky, just cuts all over the body. When you fall, the wave can pick you up and dump you on the rocks or hold you down for the next one or two waves. The latter could be even more dangerous because in the water it is harder to see how big the wave is. If you are standing on the reef it is much clearer. From the water it just looks like a mountain coming at you. On one occasion in Tahiti, Koby is thrown up so high he can see the real mountains. Then it takes him down and he turns and tumbles with it. Another time, surfing Backdoor in Hawaii, he is knocked unconscious. Then there is Jaws in Maui, Hawaii, one of the biggest waves in the world. When you fall off you are pushed down so deep your ears pop. You have to stay in a ball because it can force you down so hard it can rip your ligaments off. The surfers practise holding their breath in deep water before attempting it. Koby meets Laird Hamilton—the most renowned big-wave surfer and pioneer of jet skiing into massive waves—during a trip to Tahiti. They meet again some months later in Fiji and get to know each other better, and are soon trusting each other to tow them out to the waves. Laird is the best in the world and Koby can only learn more from surfing with him. Laird knows what sort of person Koby is and knows he has it in him. ◆ 36
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Within twenty-four months, Koby is making up to $200 000 a year surfing big waves and being photographed doing it. He looks for locations on the internet then takes his boards and dog-eared passport and heads off the next day. He wants to take big-wave surfing to a new level. Most big wave surfers are a lot older, but at his age he is already one step ahead, gaining recognition and a reputation for being a ‘hell man’ on water. But as Koby’s life is reaching new heights, Jai’s world is falling apart. Jai has a back injury that makes it difficult for him to continue surfing in any professional way and, anyway, he doesn’t like competition. He begins to move into the dark world and he hangs out with a bad crowd of thieves and heroin dealers. He becomes unpredictable and for the first time his mother, who is now clean, is concerned. Koby purchases a home for his mother to live in and look after his younger brother Dakota, but their relationship remains strained and contact between the pair is rare. Koby finds it difficult to forget the past, despite the fact his mother has moved on. In one sense, he might not have become the person he is had he not come out of that difficult situation. ◆
In a jail cell of Long Bay, one of the Bra Boy members who ended up behind bars after drug dealing came across a verse in the Bible that depicted where he had grown up and what it meant to be from the Maroubra hood. Jed Campbell, a scrawny dark-haired surfer, read from Ezekiel 25:17 in the Old Testament:
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Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the Valley of Darkness; for he is truly his brother’s keeper, and the finder of lost children. And, I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers! ◆
The tattoo ‘My Brothers Keeper’ is born from this verse and stencilled around Koby’s neck, his brothers’ bodies and those of a core group of Bra Boys. ‘The whole “My Brother’s Keeper” motto thing pretty much came out of just looking after each other, doesn’t matter what it is, just be there, because there’s a lot of suicides and stuff just around where we live . . . [Y]ou’ve got to just be there for one another and it’s so much easier when you have a whole group of people instead of when you are just by yourself in a bad situation, no matter what the situation is,’ Koby says. ‘Once you’ve got that tattoo you’ve got to wear that for each other . . . You drop everything and you turn up for [the Bra Boys] no matter what situation it is.’ ◆
On Lexington Place in the heart of the tough South Maroubra Housing Estate, Koby meets up with respected Bra Boy elder Nathan Rogers. The twenty-eight year old has achieved much including graduating from university, running a successful business and playing Under 21s rugby league for both St George and Cronulla. But his latest ambition is to fix what he sees going on about him in his suburb. The petty 38
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crime rate is rising and youths, including grommets, are coming to police attention more and more. A series of ‘Bra Boy Only’ street parties—they effectively block a street with makeshift barbecues and cases of beer, anti-social behaviour and public mischief stemming from drunkenness—are seeing police come into the suburb regularly. Nathan enlists the help of Koby, who he regularly spars with in his backyard, to get kids off the street and into sport and comes up with the idea of establishing a youth gym on Lexington Place. ‘I just know where the problems stem from—it’s a lack of supervision and the presence of an authority where, if they play up, there is punishment involved,’ Nathan says. ‘The law is not always the authority these kids respect—it’s the people in their own community who have eyes and ears and know what’s going on in their community.’ When asked who is going to show the way for the younger Bra Boys he doesn’t hesitate. ‘Koby and Mark Mathews are the pioneers of the new generation, they are the ones who are showing discipline, commitment and responsibility, and being positive,’ he says. Nineteen-year-old Mark Mathews has just competed his first year on the World Qualifying Series and is to embark on the World Championship Tour which could see him compete around the world. But like other local surfers, including Jamie Vaculik, he believes there is no place like home. Rogers would eventually have his gym, an institution for Maroubra’s youth. 39
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4 PATH OF DESTRUCTION Prison life was made worse for Tony Hines when his adoptive parents died. Vincent, sixty-nine, passed away in July 1992 and his sixty-seven-year-old wife Beryl followed him in February 1995. Hines never went to his father’s funeral, too ashamed of having prison guards on each side of him as his father was laid to rest. Vincent was always trying to bring his son into line, but his illness meant he was constantly bedridden. For his mother, not even his pride could stop Hines from turning up. It constantly played on his mind that he wasn’t able to spend quality time with her before her death. She had worshipped her son and always praised him. No matter how bad he became, he would always find love from his mother. On the day of her funeral he returned to jail a broken man. When Hines was released in 1996 he tried to turn over a new leaf. He continued his training and his friendship with the boxing trainer Johnny Lewis, who ran a gym in Newtown. He trained there religiously from 40
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4.30 pm each day. It was one of the few places where someone who had spent five years behind bars would be respected. Hines would walk into a room full of aspiring boxers testing their rhythm and technique on speed balls and punching bags hanging about the gym. ‘Who are you worried about?’ he would ask the esteemed trainer when he arrived. Lewis would point out a few young men who needed guidance and Hines was onto them. Some were just starting out in the gym and others needed more than boxing training. They were in trouble with the law and Lewis wanted Hines to talk to them about staying on the straight and narrow. ‘He loved young people and saw it as a way that he could help me out,’ Lewis said. The gym eventually shut down but Hines would still ring Lewis out of the blue and the pair would meet at Bar Coluzzi on Victoria Street, Kings Cross. The cafe is still frequented to this day by local boxers, with photographs of their legends—such as Muhammad Ali—on the walls. There they would talk about fights and football and whatever Hines was into to try to raise money. ‘He always had some business he was into; furniture removals, painting . . . He was trying to come good,’ Lewis says. Hines’s love of photography was no secret. He turned up for Christmas lunch at Lewis’s home and to the birth of the trainer’s son with his camera. ‘He had a really good camera and took some great photos. It was just another gesture that I appreciated.’ While Hines appeared to be mending his ways, another associate of his, who asked to be known only as 41
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Richard, believes jail had made Hines tougher and allowed him to build further contacts in the criminal world. ‘We’d be at a bar and he’d pull out a huge wad of cash and shout everyone—unexplained hundred- and fifty-dollar notes with an elastic band wrapped around them. He would go on numerous trips to Bali, South America and the US. He never worked so he must have been getting it from somewhere. No one was game enough to ask him,’ Richard said. ‘Then he started telling me about what he was up to. I said “Hines, I don’t want to know,” but he knew I wasn’t going to say anything because I kept to myself, so I became a person he would brag to.’ By February 1997 Hines was already involved in a trail of bashings. He beat up a guard inside the Mister Goodbar nightclub on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst. The guard was completing a walkthrough of the top bar when he passed Hines, who elbowed him. When he turned around Hines punched him in the mouth and chin. Police were called to arrest him but the task became impossible as he lashed out at officers, swinging his arms and kicking out with his legs. Eventually it would take six officers to hold Hines down, handcuff him and throw him in a paddy wagon. ‘He hated security guards. All he needed was a few drinks to get into a punch-up with one of them,’ Richard remembers. Less than three months later Hines was at it again at Bondi’s Liberty Lunch Cafe, which faces the beach on busy Campbell Parade. He had been barred from visiting the cafe because of his prior history, but when the manager asked him to leave Hines punched him in the head several times. Police were called after security guards got 42
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involved but, fearing further retribution, the manager didn’t want to take matters further. At the time, Hines was seeing a tall slender woman with strawberry blonde hair. Melissa (not her real name) had taken him on with all his prison baggage but, like anything with Hines, love would turn into obsession. With his short dark hair that naturally spiked up and a confident stance, Hines was a rather attractive man until he became violent. He would shower girls with gifts and take them to the most expensive restaurants in Sydney, then turn nasty if he didn’t get sexual favours in return. One woman who took his fancy was Rachel Gibbins. The pair met in 1997 and soon after conceived their daughter, Lily, who was born on 10 July 1998. Rachel was attracted to Hines not only because of his good looks but by his seemingly generous nature. They would go out to dinner or a bar and Hines would see a busker and give him twenty dollars, or he’d see a beggar and buy him some takeaway food. He was courteous and looked after her. But not long after they met, Hines began a cycle of abusing her until she ran off, then stalking her until she agreed to return to his house. This cycle of abuse would last for a couple of years with Melissa. Melissa had moved into Hines’s Coogee Street home but months later, after he began abusing her, she moved out and into a home in Glebe. The intimidation continued, and he would turn up at her house out of the blue and refuse to leave without having sex. He held her down and forced her to sleep with him time and time again until it became too much and Melissa went to the police. Fearing for her life she moved to Roscoe Street, Bondi, but he tracked her down again. Emotionally battered after numerous threats, the twenty-five year old 43
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continued to allow him back into her life, frightened he would kill her if she didn’t do whatever he demanded. On the afternoon of 10 April 1997 he telephoned her and stated ‘he had been shot in the head’ and needed her help. Soon after he turned up at her apartment and physically carried her out the door. Hines was too strong a man to physically resist. He could take on two bouncers at once, so carrying Melissa was no challenge. He threw her into his car and dragged her back to his Coogee Street home, where he tied her to his bed and threatened her with an axe. ‘I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!’ he yelled, holding the axe over her head. She was allowed to leave the next day but he returned to her home on 12 April, breaking into her unit and raped her in her bed. She escaped and ran down to Campbell Parade, hoping someone would help her. He found her again and threatened, ‘I’ll hire someone to kill you and I’ll go away on holidays.’ Melissa reported the events to police but, terrified of what Hines might do, withdrew her complaints and continued to see him. The pair went on one of Hines’s regular trips to Bali but moments after getting on the plane Hines began to argue with her. He thought she had flushed his passport down the toilet before he got her into a headlock on the plane. ‘You fucking bitch, that’s what you are,’ he yelled at Melissa. ‘Calm down,’ she shouted in a whisper, but her plea had no effect. ‘Calm down, my arse. She’s a fucking bitch, that’s what she is,’ Hines announced to the packed plane, full of holidaymakers in shorts and T-shirts. 44
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What began as a lover’s quarrel was turning into a nightmare for the passengers on board, trying to avoid the escalating confrontation. It was Friday night. Most of them had finished work that day and were winding down for their beach break. A group of women began emptying the row of seats behind Hines and Melissa in disgust as he continued his foul-mouthed tirade. This prompted a stewardess to storm down the aisle from the aircraft’s kitchen. It was Hines’s third warning. ‘Sir, if you don’t quieten down the plane will be grounded and you will be thrown off,’ she said. And that was exactly what happened. Hines and his girlfriend were both escorted off the plane after the pilot made an emergency landing—warning all passengers on board about a ‘troubled passenger’ among them—at Darwin airport on 29 May 1998. The thirty-one year old, still musclebound from boxing training, was handcuffed once again. He was locked up for three nights before appearing in Darwin Magistrates’ Court on 1 June to face three charges of committing a violent act on an aircraft, intimidating aircraft crew and endangering the safety of an aircraft. The following Monday morning, Melissa waited in the court’s public gallery with teary eyes as two sheriffs brought Hines up from the cells. He sat in the dock before the magistrate called his case to be heard in a courtroom full of mostly minor offenders on drink driving charges and apprehended violence orders arising from domestic disputes. His lawyer, Susan Gilmore, sprang from her chair to attract the magistrate’s attention. She revealed there had been an argument and ‘a bit of a disturbance on the aircraft . . .’. 45
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‘That should not have happened and he regrets it,’ she explained to the magistrate, whose attention was on Hines, fidgeting with his mobile phone. ‘He was taken off the plane because of the location of the argument and the element of violence,’ Gilmore continued. As she did her best to defend her client his mobile phone rang constantly in the dock. Unimpressed by the annoying musical tune, Magistrate Anthony Gillies showed no patience. Court proceedings took long enough as it was and he had more than one hundred matters on the list to get through. He instructed the sheriff to take the phone from Hines, who protested, despite the fact that its ring was interrupting his own solicitor’s defence. With the phone gone Hines then began talking over Gilmore as she tried to finish. ‘I didn’t hurt anyone, we just had a bit of an argument. Couples argue all the time; they don’t get arrested,’ he said. Gilmore put up with the unnecessary comments and tried to calm her client down before she was interrupted again—this time by the magistrate. ‘You have already disrupted these proceedings with your mobile phone. Be quiet or you will be taking a trip to the cells,’ Magistrate Gillies warned. Gilmore dutifully continued, explaining that Hines was on a photographic assignment to Bali and needed to get there urgently to fulfil a contract. She said he would take the trip to Bali alone and return to Sydney by 28 June. At this point federal prosecutor Theresa van Gessel pointed out Ansett Airlines would refuse to carry him to Bali after his behaviour on board; they saw him as a risk 46
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to other passengers. She could not say whether Qantas would be willing to let him fly in their planes. With a criminal record spanning over fourteen years, no magistrate was going to look at him kindly. Hines was granted $1000 bail with a surety of $2000. Under his bail conditions he was not allowed to leave the country, was forced to hand over his passport, and would be required to report to the Federal Police in Sydney three times a week. The aeroplane anarchy had drawn more media attention than the pair expected, with the region’s metropolitan newspaper, the Northern Territory News, running their story on 2 June 1998 with a front-page headline: ‘Flight fight: man told not to leave’. It was big news for a newspaper that usually focused on social justice issues and naive tourists killed in crocodile-infested waters. Hines walked out of Darwin Magistrates’ Court in his white trainers and black sunglasses with Melissa on his arm. It seemed the three nights apart had brought them together again. But the violence was far from over. Trapped in Darwin 4000 kilometres from home, his photographic assignment—if there ever was one—well and truly over, the inevitable happened. Five minutes’ drive from Darwin’s centre, at the Trailer Boat Club, some locals were hosting a wedding. It was all very relaxed, in keeping with the tone of the Northern Territory’s capital. At about 6.30 pm, as guests gathered under the swaying coconut palms at the water’s edge, Hines stood by the beach taking photos of Melissa. The couple had been there all afternoon and Hines carried on despite the arrival of the wedding party, unfazed by their presence. 47
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‘When I arrived I saw him taking photographs of a woman with the ocean in the background,’ Geoff Atkins, the groom’s uncle recalls. ‘I thought he was the wedding photographer and I didn’t know if Melissa was one of the bridesmaids. He had a whopping big camera, one of those professional types . . . You could tell he was one of those label jobs,’ says Atkins, referring to Hines’s designer shirt. The forty-eight year old with a small build, but solid enough to hold his own, went to the bar to order a bottle of sparkling wine. Beer was the only alcohol being served at the wedding and he wanted to make a toast to his nephew, Gerard Atkins, and his new wife. ‘The barman asked me what I wanted and I asked for a bottle of bubbly.’ At this stage Hines butted in, asking: ‘Are you some sort of poofter?’ ‘It did not appear as if he was drunk, but he was aggressive and not just joking,’ Atkins said. Sitting next to him was Melissa, who apologised for her boyfriend’s behaviour. ‘Don’t worry about him; he only drinks bourbon and thinks anyone that doesn’t are poofters.’ As Atkins walked back to the reception tables he could hear Hines in the background. ‘You watch,’ he was saying to the seventy-odd guests around him. ‘By the end of the night I’m going to ram this thing right up his arse.’ He had one hand on his tripod. ‘I kept cool because I didn’t want to ruin my nephew’s wedding,’ Atkins explains. He returned to the bar about six times to order more bottles of bubbly for his table, ignoring Hines’s remarks each time. By this stage Hines had moved himself to the 48
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pool table, where he was challenging anyone who wanted to play. About 11.45 pm Atkins decided to leave with his wife Geraldine. They had planned to spend the night at the casino. ‘I noticed as I went past the bar that there were no coins on the pool table and that Hines appeared to have beaten the last challengers.’ Atkins, who was good at the game, asked Hines what odds he would give him. Hines replied, ‘A geriatric poofter like you, I would have to give 7–1.’ ‘Can you cover this?’ Geoff asked, holding a hundreddollar note up in his hand. Hines said he could and brought out a wad of small notes totalling seven hundred dollars. Geoff cleaned up, winning the game while Hines only got one ball in with the second shot. As he headed back to his table, Melissa saw the wad of cash and asked Atkins if he had taken it off Hines. ‘He is not going to be very happy about that,’ she warned. After raising her concerns about her boyfriend’s behaviour, she asked the Atkinses if they would mind her tagging along with them to the casino. ‘I was having a yarn with [Melissa]; I liked her,’ Geoff says. He couldn’t believe she would be hanging around a violent man like Hines. Melissa returned to Hines and told him she was going to leave with the Atkinses. His reaction was predictable. ‘You heard that. The bastard’s put the hard word on my missus!’ He walked up to Atkins, grabbed him by the shirt and king-hit him on the left side of the jaw. 49
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Stunned, Atkins fell backwards onto the ground. The wedding party turned around to see what the commotion was after hearing the pound of Hines’s fist. Atkins, dazed, had no idea that the worst was still to come. At a slow and steady pace Hines kicked him in the head as he lay on the ground, returning thirty seconds later with another kick. The attack sounded like more like a sportsman’s boot on a football. The crowd around him was too frightened by Hines’s rage to interfere with what the plane had brought in. ‘I wasn’t breathing but I was still seeing things,’ Atkins recalls from his blurred memory of the attack. Then Hines performed his final act of violence for the night, picking up his tripod and delivering the blow that would send Atkins into unconsciousness. ‘Stop him!’ cried Geraldine, who had returned from the bathroom to find her husband lying on the ground. ‘I could hear the missus screaming: “Look at him, he’s lost his colour—he’s dying! Why don’t one of you do something about it?” Then for me everything just went black,’ Atkins remembers. Hines ignored the screams, focused on his mission. Geraldine yelled at the top of her lungs and ran towards her husband, trying to rescue him herself. ‘You’re his whore, are you?’ Hines asked, before whacking her across the legs with the tripod to clear his way. One older guest couldn’t bear seeing a man hit a woman and, lifting a chair, warned, ‘That’s enough.’ Atkins’s nephew Robert Butler, twenty-five, then joined in, roaring, ‘That’s my uncle, you arsehole,’ before reaching for Hines. Hines turned around and gave him two bruised eyes. 50
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The club bouncer rushed into the room to break up the fight, not wanting any more trouble on the premises. Hines left as the staff gave Atkins mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while waiting for the ambulance and police to arrive. The injured man spent a night in the Royal Darwin Hospital before being released the next day, sore but with no apparent permanent damage. The Northern Territory News ran the assault on its front page, though without naming Hines, who hadn’t been arrested yet. The headline on Monday, 8 June 1998 read: ‘Tripod used in wild club brawl’. A month later, Atkins was rushed to hospital and doctors discovered he had a brain tumour—the condition was most likely a result of his injuries from the club attack. ‘I knew that he wasn’t finished; I knew that he was nowhere near being finished,’ Atkins remembers in anger. He was flown to Adelaide for a life-saving operation. When Hines fronted Darwin Magistrates’ Court charged with the attack he threatened Atkins, outside the court, one more time: ‘The next time you see me, I’ll be the last person you see,’ Hines warned. ‘Ever since that fight I carried a weapon around with me every hour of the day. I had to be prepared for that moment when we crossed paths again. That man would never stop,’ Atkins says. The Atkins case wasn’t the only matter Hines had before the Darwin Magistrates’ Court. On 23 September he failed to appear in relation to the air rage incident. His defence lawyer, Peter Maley, told the court that Hines, who was originally charged with endangering an aircraft, would plead guilty to an assault charge and was not present because he was suffering ‘severe anxiety 51
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with panic attacks and uncontrollable fear of travelling in vehicles’. His lawyer handed up a psychologist’s report explaining the defendant’s condition. The report stated that ‘any form of extreme travel would be highly detrimental’. Federal prosecutor Theresa van Gessel argued Hines had no trouble travelling in Sydney to report to police as his bail required. Magistrate Greg Cavanah told Maley, ‘This is a wishy-washy report. Let’s hope your client gets less anxious, and get him up here.’ Hines was fined for the air rage. The criminal case against him for the wedding party melee was quashed, but Atkins did win a civil claim after losing his sense of smell and taste, and the hearing in one ear, following brain surgery stemming from the attack. ◆
By now Hines was recognised throughout the eastern suburbs, from Coogee, where he grew up, to Bondi Beach, where he strolled along Campbell Parade barechested in his blue Speedos and sneakers. In 1998 he befriended Jim Nichols—the former owner of a surfwear outlet in the middle of the colourful strip that Hines frequented. In the fifteen years that Nichols worked in the store, Surfs Up, a mix of people from all classes and cultures would visit his shop. One of them was Tony Hines. ‘One moment I would have a sergeant from Bondi police station chatting to me about his kids, then the local rabbi would walk in, and moments later you would see Hines,’ Nichols recalls. Hines would pop his head into the store at least three 52
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times a week when he wasn’t in prison or travelling somewhere. Nichols had no need to ask Hines, who had a reputation for being a standover man, what he did for a living; it was understood. The pair would stand out the front of the store or among the clothing racks talking. Hines had a theory on just about everything in life and those theories would change depending on what mood he was in. After the September 11 attacks on New York in 2001, for example, Hines walked into the store after reading up on Osama bin Laden. Despite the huge death toll which had shocked the world, Hines said, ‘I would rather sit down to a meal with Osama bin Laden than George fucken Bush.’ ‘Hines always supported the criminal mind, no matter what,’ Nichols says. On one occasion, Nichols visited Hines at home before they went for a run on the soft sand that morning. When he arrived at the quarter-acre block surrounded by a white picket fence on Coogee Street he was amazed to see another side to Hines. Inside, his home was decorated with pictures Hines had painted himself: Flower petals that curled as if they were sharp nails painted in dark shades. ‘He would paint peaceful things that were made to look aggressive,’ Nichols remembers. ‘There was a sense of loneliness in the house, like a defiant spirit lived there.’ Hines’s loneliness would increase when, three years after his release from prison, he lost a third member of his family. On the evening of 15 March 1999, a local resident walking along Wood Street in Randwick discovered his brother Chris passed out in a car. His body was half lying in the gutter with the other half still in the 53
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passenger seat. Paramedics resuscitated him at the scene before he was rushed to Prince of Wales Hospital in an ambulance, but the damage had been done. The thirtyfour-year-old short, stumpy, fair-haired ‘opposite of Tony’ had overdosed on a combination of Valium and Mogadon tablets which had been prescribed to him the previous week. He was brain dead from the concoction of chemicals in his system, and Hines and his sisters had to make the devastating decision of consenting to have the life support machine switched off. He was buried days later. The words on his gravestone at Woronora Cemetery read: ‘Blow the gentle breeze my bra physically expired 19 March 1999’. Chris, a more gentle creature than Tony, had loved to surf Maroubra with Hines, who he admired and looked up to. Hines was his brother or ‘bra’. ‘Tony organised the entire funeral,’ Johnny Lewis recalls. ‘He didn’t want anyone to know the full extent that it did hurt him, but it was someone else that he had loved that had been taken away from him.’ Like Johnny Lewis, Nichols saw another side of Tony Hines and was convinced Hines was more mad than bad. On the one hand, he was disgusted by Hines the sexual predator and standover man. On the other hand, he saw a bold energy in the young man. Nichols would mostly see Hines during the day. They would rarely socialise together but one time Hines asked Nichols what he was doing in the evening. He said he was having drinks at the Beachwood Hotel with two flight attendants. That evening Hines arrived wearing a leopard-skin sports jacket, snake-skin pants and leopardskin hush puppies to match. ‘I thought Johnny O’Keefe was walking in the door,’ 54
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says Nichols who was wearing jeans and a T-Shirt at the time. ‘I said, What the fuck are you wearing?’ ‘What?’ Hines replied. It was no surprise that Hines hit it off beautifully with the ladies. As he always did. He was a good looking man and usually ‘drew his target in before showing his true colours’. He wore a Rolex watch. He knew what all the good labels were. When the subject of him being in prison came up one of the ladies asked what he had done time for. ‘A little bit of stand over, a little bit of armed rob, and a little bit of scotch tape,’ answered Hines. The women did not initially understand what the rhyming slang ‘scotch tape’ meant. Nichols, who had pieced it together, was disgusted that Hines had disconnected himself so much from the word rape that he’d even created a nickname for it. ‘He was a sexual predator,’ Nichols explains. ‘He would look at girls in the shop and I would have to tell him to calm down. ‘What I liked about Hines was his rebellious spirit,’ Nichols says. But it was his rebellious spirit that would lead to his undoing.
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5 TURNING ON FRIENDS Hines restores his Coogee Street home to its original condition. He adds French doors at the end of a long hallway that leads to the backyard, rips up the carpet and polishes the floorboards. He is proud of his home, which he has inherited from his mother. To complete his renovations the walls need a fresh coat of paint but Hines, who has an eye for detail, needs help. He drives down to the beach looking for it. ‘Jump in the car I’ve got a job for you,’ he calls out to Jai, who is standing on the sand at Maroubra. The pair go back to Coogee Street and Jai begins scraping away in the bedroom with sandpaper as Hines comes in and out of the room checking on him and rustling through the house. Surveying his handiwork, Jai wipes his brow and looks at the walls in the room then down at the dated dresser in the corner. Two revolvers are sitting on the furniture like ornaments, placed just right side by side. Jai stares at them for a while then back at the bedroom door, 56
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expecting to see Hines in the door frame. He doesn’t know why Hines has placed them there. Perhaps he has put them out with the intention of scaring Jai into doing a good job or perhaps he is preparing to go out later and hold up a store. Who knows? All these thoughts are racing through Jai’s mind as he turns back to his walls. He works quickly, just wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. ‘I just saw them [the guns], quickly you know, and I just kept working,’ Jai would later tell associates. Jai never says a word to Hines about the weapons, and pretends he doesn’t see them when Hines packs them away and pays Jai for the day’s work, reefing off a few fifty-dollar notes from a wad of cash held by an elastic band. Hines would impose on the Abbertons whenever he needed to and, as Jai would later tell a packed courtroom, Hines always ‘treated me like shit’. Jai tries to dodge Hines at all costs, never knowing if his older ‘friend’ is going to turn on him. But Hines continues to invite himself along when the Abberton boys, who are very popular around Maroubra, go out, and he insists on them joining when he has plans. He especially loves taking Koby out to the clubs because of his profile as a professional surfer, and he eventually becomes Koby’s personal trainer. One night a group of them go to Golden Century, a Chinese restaurant in Haymarket that stays open till the early hours of the morning. Moments after walking in, Hines pulls a live lobster out of a tank and throws it on a table, scattering cutlery and an array of bowls and saucers. The family sitting around the table jump out of their seats in fright. The father rises from his seat in protest and Hines knocks him to the ground. Hines just loves to shock. Being unpredictable makes 57
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those around him feel on edge. Other restaurant patrons and staff approach Hines, who shapes up as if he is about to fight, then just grins and laughs before walking out. For the Abbertons, it is just another night with a madman they wish they could avoid. ◆
The surprise bashing of one of Hines’s school friends spreads horror among many of the Maroubra folk who hear about it, including Jai. The friend, whose name has been kept secret by the courts, can only be known as Peter. When Hines is released from prison for the second or third time, Peter tries to steer clear, but Hines’s criminal associates turn up on his doorstep anyway. Days after Hines’s release, Peter visits Hines at his Coogee Street home at Hines’s command. It is time for Hines to be playing shock games again, and he knows that his summons will scare the shit out of Peter. As Peter sits nervously in the living room, Hines pulls out a sawn-off .22 calibre rifle and says ‘Peter, put the posters of the nude girls on the wall.’ Dragging his gaze away from the gun, Peter looks around and sees some well-thumbed men’s magazines and posters on the table. He stands up and, taking some of the pinups, does as he is told, frantically taping the smiling beauties to the wall, not knowing if he is about to get a hollow-point bullet in the back of the head. Seconds after he pins up Miss December, bullets begin smashing into her face and body, chunks of plaster and paint spraying across the room. Hines had at first considered Peter a friend. But something has changed. Hines asks his mate if he can 58
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borrow four or five thousand dollars. Peter is earning good money and can afford to lend him the cash no questions asked. Some weeks later, he requests that the loan be repaid, but Hines refuses. ‘You had sex with my girl; don’t even ask for that money again, you owe it,’ he says. In Peter’s mind the tension between the pair is suddenly explained—and his nervousness around his aggressive friend turns to genuine fear. Hines might have been unpredictable before, but in this frame of mind he is simply dangerous. Peter never goes to the police, fearing he will be killed but he fits bars to the windows and front door of his home just in case of a late-night visit. Peter does eventually get a knock on the door and opens it to see a Hines associate, who menacingly tells him the boss wants to see him. Too scared not to comply, Peter turns up at Hines’s Coogee Street home before Christmas 2000, wondering whether his head will go the same way as the pinups. As he enters the dimly lit house, Hines greets him in the hallway and says ‘Mate, this is all your fault . . . You had sex with my girl . . . I need another $20 000.’ ‘He kept saying, “I know you have [had sex], she’s told me”,’ Peter would later recall. He doesn’t need to guess the consequences of refusing so he goes to his father and asks for $20 000. On Boxing Day, Peter delivers the money. A friend of his drives him to Hines’s house with $19 000 in cash bundled into $5000 wads and stashed in a black plastic bag. As he walks in the front door, Hines’s imposing figure is there to greet him. ‘Have you got it?’ 59
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‘Yes.’ Hines pulls out a gun and sticks it to Peter’s head. Cocking the hammer he says, ‘Walk out the back.’ In the background, Peter can hear a woman’s voice. ‘She was saying, “That’s him, that’s him!” . . . [Then] I saw Hines with a bar coming towards my head,’ Peter would later recall of the day. Hines swings the weight-lifting bar with a running start, hitting Peter from behind. As he staggers forwards, Hines charges again, this time breaking both of Peter’s arms, which are raised to protect his head; he is now bleeding profusely. From next door, a woman yells, ‘If you don’t stop, I will call the police.’ Peter is still conscious and lying on the ground when Hines decides to intensify his friend’s pain by splattering his open wounds with turpentine. When the police arrive, they find Peter lying in a pool of blood in the backyard and Hines, with his hair wet, getting out of the shower. Peter is rushed to Prince of Wales Hospital with severe head injuries. Hines is arrested and taken to Maroubra police station, where he refuses to be interviewed. Police find his DNA on a plank of wood that is covered in blood smears and fingerprints. They later find the black plastic bag of cash in the hallway, sitting against the skirting board of a doorwell. When Hines is questioned by police about the money, he claims he has never seen it before. Police at the time assume the cash is proceeds of drug sales, because both Hines and Peter were known from intelligence reports to be associated with drug deals. Peter doesn’t tell police about the gun, telling them only of the beating. Hines goes to court the next day and is refused bail before being taken to Silverwater prison. 60
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On New Year’s Day, 2001, Jai is in bed with his girlfriend Natalie Roach when his friend Heath (not his real name) phones him. Heath asks him if he could go and pick up ‘Hinesy’s girl’, Rachel Gibbins, and take her to Silverwater to see Hines. Heath pleads with him to do it even though Jai is reluctant to even get out of bed, let alone help his mental tormentor. ‘Do it for Hines,’ Heath begs. Jai reluctantly drives Rachel and her daughter Lily out to Silverwater. When they get to the prison, Rachel goes inside, leaving Jai sitting with Lily in the waiting room. When Hines sees Jai in the waiting room he barks, ‘Go and wait in the fucking car, I’m here to see Rachel, not you.’ Jai is furious with himself for getting into this position. Why did he bother driving Rachel all the way from Maroubra to Silverwater? He does as he is told and as he walks outside looks up at the sky and wonders what the surf is like down at the beach. He would rather be anywhere else. Four days later, Hines is released from prison after being granted bail. Peter’s father, who attends court while his son is still in hospital, is shattered by the decision. Fearing retribution, Peter drops the assault charge after writing a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions. ◆
About three months later, Jai is sitting at home with his grandmother when he receives a phone call from Heath. ‘Mate, you know that time you drove Rachel to the jail?’ Heath asks him anxiously. ‘Hines thinks you’re having an affair with Rachel after seeing you together.’ 61
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‘Fuck, I wouldn’t sleep with her if she was the last bird on earth,’ Jai replies. ‘Don’t go back to his house, do not do it . . . Mate, believe me, he wants to get you.’ Jai can hear the foreboding in Heath’s voice, and knows what happened to Peter. Hines does call on Jai to go for a drive, but Heath’s warning—‘Don’t get sucked in, mate’—echoes clear in his mind, and Jai finds an excuse to be out of the house or uncontactable. He thinks if he rides it out long enough, it will all disappear. After all, how stupid does Hines think he is? He would never sleep with his girl. Fuck, he might as well shoot himself and save Hines the trouble, if that was the case. It isn’t until August that year that Jai realises just how much danger his life is in. Jai is on a holiday in Bali with his Bra Boy buddy Shane Wilkinson when Hines turns up out of the blue. It is their third day on the island when Hines finds them at a club. Hines socialises with the pair for a little while, then disappears to his car. Jai, fed up with the fear and tension, drunkenly decides to follow Hines outside and clear up the misunderstanding. He will tell him he did not sleep with Rachel. Hines is sitting behind the wheel of his car staring dead ahead. It is as if he knew Jai was going to follow him out and is waiting. ‘I heard you think I slept with Rachel,’ Jai says, cutting to the chase. ‘I know you slept with Rachel . . . If you admit it to me, I’ll give you an easy death,’ Hines tells him. ‘No!’ ‘You’re not going to admit it to me? Right, well, let the games begin.’ 62
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Shane has been waiting inside the club for Jai for about fifteen or twenty minutes when his mate finally returns, looking like he’s seen a ghost. Jai is petrified and goes back to his hotel, staying indoors for the next three days before realising Hines is already controlling his life. Even Shane, 7 feet tall and nicknamed ‘Big Bird’, feels intimidated by Hines, but he is more concerned about Jai. Finally, Jai agrees to leave his hotel sanctuary and venture out to another club. Hines again turns up. Jai and Shane leave the club and go back to their hotel and are swimming in the pool when Hines comes rushing in yelling, ‘Where’s the chicks? Where’s the chicks? Where’s the chicks?’ before walking out like a crazed man. It makes no sense—but then, nothing does, Jai thinks. Jai stays at the hotel one more night before packing his bags to return home early. But he can’t escape his fears, and back in Maroubra Hines again seems to turn up wherever he goes, still accusing him of sleeping with Rachel. ‘I’ve come up with a solution . . . If you give me Natalie, while you watch, I’ll wipe the slate clean,’ Hines offers in a conciliatory manner. ‘No fucking way.’ Then the couple bump into Hines at a Bondi bar. Natalie, her hair in braids, is looking radiant. Hines keeps raising his eyebrows at her and talking about her to Jai. It makes the couple feel uncomfortable, so they decide to drink elsewhere. But when they stand to leave, Hines smiles and follows them out. When they stop a taxi, he gets into the front seat. ‘We’re going to Coogee Street,’ Hines tells the driver, before turning around to Jai and reminding of his 63
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slate-cleaning offer. As the cab pulls up in front of Hines’s home, Hines steps out, looking back over his shoulder to Jai in the back seat. ‘Give me Natalie . . . You slept with my girl, it’s only fair I sleep with yours.’ ‘Over my dead body,’ Jai replies, before telling the taxi driver to ‘Go, go, go!’. ◆
By this stage Hines has fitted his house with bars on the inside of the windows—more to make it harder to get out than to stop intruders breaking in. Police note this soon after Peter’s bashing, realising they will need a rescue unit to gain access if any further arrest warrants are issued. And of course, Hines never went long without a visit from police. In November 2001, Hines rents a room at the exclusive Park Hyatt on Hickson Road, The Rocks, paying $10 000 in cash for a four-night stay. He is joined there by a woman he has been dating for the previous two months, but on the last night of their blissful stay things become violent. The couple had been drinking at a bar in Circular Quay. Hines had gone to purchase a drink and, on his return, found another man speaking to his girlfriend. When the couple left the bar, Hines was furious and abused her before storming off. She went back to the hotel, and the receptionist told her that Hines had already returned to the room. As she unlocked the door he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the floor. She broke free and ran to the lift. He then dragged her 30 metres back to their room before letting her go. The woman is seen running out of the hotel in a hysterical state, prompting reception staff to telephone police. The 64
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woman waits for police in the lounge as Hines sits in the hotel room. In May 2002 Hines pays a visit to Byron Bay, where he is already known by police due to an earlier alleged indecent assault. This time he has Koby with him, and as they travel from the Gold Coast to Byron they stop to pick up a woman Koby has befriended. Hines rents an exclusive beach house for the night on Lighthouse Road in Byron Bay. That evening, the three of them go to Rae’s on Watego’s, an upmarket restaurant, where Hines spends $1600 on the meal with alcohol. The three of them stay there drinking until late in the evening. Hines is a regular customer at Watego’s. He has been there once before over the same 2002 Christmas–New Year period, and approximately ten times in the previous twelve months. Each time he purchases expensive bottles of champagne at a cost of $795 per bottle. Hines usually gets his own way. He expects it, particularly when he is picking up the bill. The trio return to their luxury beach house and the woman has consensual sex with both Koby and Hines. But a short time later, Hines becomes aggressive. He picks the woman up and takes her into a room, where he holds her down and inserts his fingers into her vagina and gives her oral sex. She fights him, trying to get away, until he becomes abusive, telling her to leave the house. While she packs her things, he takes hold of her by the arms and shoulders and shakes her violently before she struggles free and runs out of the house. The next day, the police come by and speak to Koby about what had happened. He confirms that they had had sex. Koby tells police that he has known Hines since he was two years old, and that Hines is his boxing and 65
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personal trainer. He says when he is not competing in surfing competitions he spends most days with the older man. The matter goes no further, but is recorded on police files. ◆
About 11 am on 21 July, Hines, Rachel and Lily are at home on Coogee Street with Hines’s sister Rebecca, her three children, and her boyfriend. Hines tells Rachel to get in the car with him and his sister Rebecca. She doesn’t know where they are going. He tells her he will never let her out of his sight as it is her fault he has the Crime Commission and the police watching him. Rachel tries to get out of the car on three occasions but he holds her in place. On the fourth attempt, Rachel manages to get out of the car on New South Head Road in Rose Bay, and runs up to a couple of people in the street and asks them to call the police. Rose Bay police attend but she says she will only talk to detectives from Maroubra. Three years earlier, Hines had been charged with twenty-three counts of aggravated sexual offences, kidnapping and assault offences against Rachel Gibbins. The charges were set down for trial, but Rachel attended the office of the DPP and made a statement saying she would no longer give evidence at the trial against Hines, so the matter was not billed. Now, after Rose Bay detectives take her to Maroubra police station, she tells detectives she recommenced her relationship with Hines in September 2000. She says that during this time he has continued to be violent towards her, abusing her and assaulting her regularly. She tells police that Hines had forced her to withdraw the earlier 66
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charges. The violence and abuse has increased recently, she says between gentle sobs and dabbing of the eyes. Hines constantly accuses her of gang-banging all his friends, despite the fact she is never allowed out of his sight. The increase in violence mirrors the increased pressure Hines is feeling over a drug syndicate and smuggling operation he is financing, and the shadowing of his movements by agents from the New South Wales Crime Commission and undercover detectives. Hines’s financing of a drug ring in 2002 makes him one of the most talked about crooks in town. As a financier it is difficult to finger Hines in the operations. He is one of the few undetected players, but he has lost thousands of dollars and wants them back. ‘Who are these cunts in America that have got my money?’ Hines asks one of his acquaintances as he tries to piece together the failed operation. ‘Every time I was out of the cell I was looking after this cunt, making sure he was going to get Hines’s money back and wasn’t going to roll,’ former inmate Earl Heatley recalls. ‘It was a brilliant scam, if it had come off they would have been talking about it for fuck’n years,’ he says. Desperate to retrieve his money, Hines goes to the United States but is knocked back at immigration because of his criminal record. An associate, who wishes to be known only as Richard, says losing the money took a toll on Hines. ‘The last time I saw Hines he was down at McKeon Street at a cafe. I was having my morning coffee on a Friday about a week before he was killed. He seemed agitated, looking like he’d been up the night before and he 67
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was raving. He said he’d just been deported back from the US and was really pissed off. He asked me how well I knew [name deleted]. He told me he had invested a lot of money with him and that he’d been waiting far too long for a return on his investment.’ The episode is an example of how Hines’s frustrations are getting the better of him. He is used to being in control and now everything is closing in on him. His circumstances not only make him more ferocious but he is now more vulnerable than ever.
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It is a warm Friday night, 20 December 2002, as one hundred police officers from the Waverley command begin arriving at the Coogee-Randwick RSL Club for a Christmas party drink. The night has been talked about within the command for weeks and for many of the officers, mostly aged in their twenties, this will be a chance to talk to senior management in an informal setting and relax with a Tooheys or two. Many of the older men and women are already on leave and planning Christmas holidays with their families, but they come to the party to join colleagues for a final drink for the year. Most of the senior managers are not planning to stay long, but know it is important to mix casually with their troops. Some junior officers are going to be patted on the back for a job well done during the past twelve months, while others are to be told where they are going wrong and what they will have to do to survive another year in the busy eastern suburbs command. All the police intelligence reports are showing that criminal groups are drifting in 69
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from Sydney’s outer western suburbs, and there is no room in the police command for anyone not prepared to work hard. Some constables begin filing into the first-floor bar and are confused by the sea of unfamiliar faces. The strangers wear the same uniform of jeans and T-shirts and brand-name surf wear, but it is clear the mob, some looking like they had been drinking all afternoon, are not part of the force. ‘It’s upstairs, this isn’t us,’ one officer calls out as he leaps into the closing doors of an elevator going up the one flight to the second-floor bar. Others just walk up the well-worn purple-patterned carpet to the venue, passing memorabilia from wars gone by. Most of the visitors are too young to remember the conflicts commemorated on the club’s aqua green and cream walls, or to know any conflict at all. Upstairs the music is loud and the singing is bad, but the drinks are cheap and everyone is having a good time. Police had been unofficially barred from holding functions at the club for four years after one event descended into drunken behaviour and excessive bad language and had to be wound up early. Club managers decided to give the constabulary another chance and had put the incident, in hindsight, down to a couple of troublemakers. On the floor below, about 150 people mostly aged in their late teens are in a party frame of mind as they down bourbon and cokes to celebrate the twenty-first birthday party of popular Maroubra surfer Mark Mathews. He is a hero to some, having recently turned pro, and is generally popular amongst his friends, some of whom are members of the Bra Boys surfing fraternity. The night is 70
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loud and rowdy but for the most part everyone knows each other and it is like a family gathering. There are also a number of parents keeping an eye on things. All talk is of waves, girls, favourite beaches and who is going to Bali over Christmas. The managers of the RSL have catered for two big events on the same night in the dated Carr Street club many times before and their only fear is running out of alcohol for the throng. After all, with a room full of police how could there be any trouble? Duty manager Robert McPake is not so sure. He tells staff he is a little concerned; he knows police and Bra Boys are a bad cocktail mix. He has worked at other clubs in the area and seen the type of trouble the latter group particularly can get into. But as the night progresses there is no trouble, other than some youths refusing to take off their baseball caps, an unwritten rule of respect in RSLs across Australia. A couple of the surfing clique are also asked to leave early after being found staggering about stoned and/or under-age. At 9 pm, club staff begin removing the beer glasses from tables and service areas and start serving beer in plastic mugs. This is a precaution sometimes taken with big groups of youths. Glasses can be used as missiles or stabbing weapons, and it only takes one to start a bloodbath. As another precaution, staff have also removed the two large framed memorials to VC-awarded soldiers Private Thomas Kenny from the 2nd Australian Infantry Battalion and Corporal George ‘Snowy’ Howell from the 1st Infantry. Their images and medals are locked away for the night in an office, along with some tubbed indoor plants which normally stand sentry in the club’s foyer. 71
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Police are told there is a large group of revellers downstairs and are asked if they would like to leave via a rear stairwell. ‘No need,’ they reply, ‘we can all go out the front doors.’ At five minutes to closing, McPake sighs and glances again at his watch. Almost 1 am, almost there, he thinks. It’s been a long night and he has been running between the two functions with barely a ten-minute break. But there has not been any trouble and the forty-five remaining police upstairs, mostly junior officers, file out and the eighty or so Bra Boys also begin to leave without trouble. Some of the police officers want to continue drinking down the road at the Coogee Bay Hotel or The Palace, but others want to go to Bondi, and the talk about where to go next carries on as they queue for the club’s single slow elevator or saunter down the stairs. One packed elevator on its way down stops at the first floor and the door opens. ‘Come on, plenty of room,’ one Bra Boy jokes as he makes like packing a rugby scrum and shoves his way into the cramped space. Some of his stumbling mates try to follow, and as they do a female officer is knocked in the head by a shoulder. A constable standing next to her shoves the drunk surfie back out the doors and onto the first-floor landing, but at the same time is inadvertently dragged out by his shirt. Another officer steps out to help his mate, and it is then he recognises the faces of some of the partying group in front of him. ‘It’s the bloody Bra Boys,’ he says. At the same time, a Bra Boy yells out, ‘He’s king-hit Robbo!’ Constable Tim Allen had had a good night up to this point, but now he is pulled out of the elevator and punched in the nose. He stumbles to the ground over somebody else who has fallen over as a young first-grade football 72
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player, who has been partying with the Bra Boys, stands over him grinning from ear to ear. Allen sees the foot coming and yells, ‘What are you doing? I’m a cop!’ before he is kicked in the head and passes out. Two friends try to pick him up and carry him out as blood streams from his broken nose and a large gash under his eye. His face has already begun to swell as his heavily bruised body is dragged away. Word now spreads back up to the second floor that an officer is under attack and dozens of colleagues rush down to confront a sea of punches. No one can distinguish who is who in the melee except that one group has short cropped hair and the other floppy messy mops. Constable Steve Millard enters the scene and sees someone being thrown across the room towards the bar area, where club duty manager McPake is watching in horror. McPake rushes around and locks all the tills with the night’s healthy takings before, together with fellow staff member Andrew Fitzgerald, helping a youth covered in blood to an empty side bar area. He looks back in time to see someone pick up the club’s large wood and glass Remembrance Stand, clearly intending to hurl it across the room. McPake takes the stand out of the youth’s hand and places it back on the floor, but he realises this war is lost and it is time to beat a retreat. He thinks of Tom and Snowy and is grateful the VC diggers are not hanging on their walls to witness the scene. They will be safe in the office, and his staff should seek safety there too, he thinks. ‘Stay the hell out of here, stay the hell out of here, it’s out of control!’ he calls to the staff who have joined him in the first-floor lobby area. Next to him, one man is ramming another’s head into the gyprock wall, splat73
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tering it with blood, as another is pummelled by two or three fit-looking men. A woman pulls the hair of a man before she is punched in the face, splitting open her lip which begins to stream red. Nearby another man is head-butted before his face is pressed tight against a glass trophy cabinet which, miraculously, doesn’t break. Staff quickly remove the remaining glasses from the bars and people’s hands and move back towards the rear office area. McPake, meanwhile, rushes to the ground-floor foyer and uses the front reception telephone to dial 000. ‘This is an emergency situation,’ he shouts above the screaming coming from the floor and stairs above. ‘This is the Coogee-Randwick RSL. A riot has erupted with people from two functions from the Waverley police Christmas party and a twenty-first birthday. Can you come?’ ‘What the hell are you doing?’ a policeman yells as he rips the phone from McPake’s hand and hangs up. ‘What ya doing, mate? We’re getting killed up there and we are the police.’ McPake doesn’t bother arguing, just runs around the snooker bar towards the cellar where he knows there is another phone. He calls 000 again, but it seems ages before anyone answers and he can again plead for help and describe the ‘fighting pit’. Within twenty minutes the brawl has spread from the first floor to the ground floor and out onto the pink-tiled entrance to the club. Police and others who were waiting outside for taxis to take them home turn and realise there is a fight on, but can’t distinguish who is who. Everyone looks the same: bloody and torn. Constable David Abercrombie turns back into the foyer to see a colleague on the ground being kicked in 74
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the head. Before he can react he is grabbed by two men and pushed up against the wall where he feels two meaty fingers in his left socket trying to pull his eyeball out. On police radios and scanners across metropolitan Sydney a ‘Signal 1’ call sign is given, signalling officers in distress and urging all available police to converge on Carr Street. ‘Officers down, I repeat, officers down.’ Within minutes police crews from Bondi, Maroubra and across the city centre converge on the area. A PolAir helicopter is also dispatched to the scene, lighting up the street below with a large spotlight. Its low hovering sends the already frenzied mob into overdrive. Crowds of revellers, many of them passers-by, cheer and jeer from across the road as a dozen police paddy wagons and ambulances with sirens blaring pull up. Police dogs brought onto the scene are foaming at the mouth and tugging on their leads, barking and baring their teeth. There is confusion at first, but on-duty uniformed police wade in and begin to pull apart bloody bodies still going at each other. As the individual fighters are pulled apart, one quickly says, ‘I’m a police officer.’ The sentence is heard over and over as on-duty police separate the groups and cuff people. ‘It’s like that bloody movie with Bruce Willis, what’s it called? Die Hard—yeah, that’s it, Die Hard,’ says McPake to a colleague as he stands in the foyer and surveys the painter’s palette blur of blue and red flashing lights, sirens and staggering bloody bodies under the constant thud of the helicopter overhead. Maybe some of the old diggers hanging on the walls wouldn’t have minded this sort of action after all, he thinks. At least forty men and women, mostly police, are helped into ambulances which scream away toward the 75
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Prince of Wales Hospital. Police are not sure who to charge, but four are singled out for assault and affray after being positively identified as trouble instigators or being arrested in mid-punch. Officers from the Professional Standards Review Division are called in to investigate their own; some police are reprimanded and cautioned. By the next day, Waverley police station resembles a casualty ward after an overnight shelling, its officers staggering about with cuts, bruises and bandaged abrasions. As talkback radio begins to take calls that suggest police may have started the brawl, Assistant Police Commissioner Dick Adams tells a press conference, ‘I’m appalled . . . It is quite clear that in our society anyone who assaults women, for a start, couldn’t hold their heads up and call themselves a man.’ A number of Maroubra youths are arrested, charged and taken to court but many of the cases are dropped with insufficient evidence. Bulldogs frontrower and high profile Bra Boy Reni Maitua was at the party and almost two years later was found guilty of assault stemming from the melee. The soft-spoken giant, who proudly wears his Bra Boy tattoo on his abdomen, was fined $2000 but he was acquitted four months later when the verdict and fine were quashed on appeal. After he was cleared of any wrongdoing, Maitua described the Bra Boys as just a brotherhood: ‘We’re really just a group of mates that love surfing and we protect our beach . . . from being a Bondi Beach.’ He also added that many Bra Boys go to university or have lawyers for parents. ‘One of my mates who’s a Bra Boy scored 93 in his HSC,’ he told a newspaper reporter. ‘We’re normal people from normal families.’ 76
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Despite his apparent revulsion, Adams still insists the Bra Boys are nothing but a collection of surfers with an element of drunken hooliganism. But Bra Boy members know things have now changed for them. ‘That bloody party is the beginning of the end for us, they won’t ever leave us alone now, you’ll see . . . They will always harass us now,’ one Bra figure says to a mate as they sit on the Maroubra beachfront wall watching a lefthander wave roll in. Like many of their mates, they are sporting black eyes and cut lips from the Friday night party. About a week after the Christmas bash, police launch a random anti-drugs operation on the eastern beaches; one twenty-six-year-old Bra Boy member is arrested for carrying cannabis. The following month, police dispatch twenty officers to a string of pubs along Oxford Street, beginning with the Beauchamp Hotel, after reports that youths identified as Bra Boy members dressed in costume are overturning furniture and stripping naked. Police car patrols are also stepped up in the Maroubra beach area. Less than four months after the RSL incident, the Bra Boys are for the first time listed by police as a ‘gang’, following intelligence reports and recommendations from the police Gangs Squad. They are no longer just a rabble, or larrikin youths flirting with petty crime. They are a crime gang, with members aged between twelve and eighteen years, who just happen to surf. The police intelligence report lists a core group of about twenty members but recognises many others, including men aged in their late twenties and thirties, who have close affiliations. The listing of the gang in the top ten of the state means extra resources to target their activities. 77
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The name Abberton also now appears on the ‘sit rep’ reports into the group. ◆
For Gangs Squad Chief Inspector Ken McKay, listing the Bra Boys as a gang is a victory even if it did come about from the top, post the Christmas party brawl. He had been watching police incident reports from Maroubra mount up since the mid-1990s but despite constant complaints from locals and shopkeepers—and the suburb having NSW premier Bob Carr as its local MP—there was little recognition from his colleagues of the growing problem. Maroubra locals had been claiming gangs were roaming the streets armed with knives and guns and intimidating or robbing people they came across. Youths themselves were claiming they were being stood over by other armed youths and robbed of their mobile phones or wallets. Many police would just shrug, saying part of the problem came about because officers were so good at their jobs in Bondi and Coogee that the disruptive element were being pushed towards the sleepier Maroubra and what little nightlife was offered there by the Maroubra Bay Hotel and The Seals. Sunny Abberton had also been aware of the growing problem and was telling journalists as far back as 1995 that violence was increasing because of gangs coming in from ‘outside’ the area. ‘If any suburb is going to have a drive-by shooting, it’s here,’ he said at the time. This was about the time Maroubra police duty officer Senior Sergeant Tony Day was dismissing claims that there was any gang problem in the area. He agreed that yes, there was graffiti, and yes, a bit of youthful mali78
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cious damage, but nothing more sinister than that. His words were echoed by then Maroubra police Local Area Commander Superintendent Kevin Rafferty, who described the crime rate as no worse than in other beachside suburbs. Abberton’s prediction of a drive-by shooting came true in January 2000 when seven men in a van were driving home from a buck’s night and saw a brawl outside the pub on Maroubra Road. They watched and jeered the group on before becoming involved in a heated verbal exchange with another group of men on the street. As the men in the van drove off they were chased in a Honda by the second group. Van passenger Trevor Fuller rang 000 on his mobile and said they were heading to Maroubra police station. ‘Look, I’m crouched down in the front passenger seat so there’s not a lot I can see but this is exactly where we are and the car behind us is shooting at us,’ he told the operator as a third bullet hit the speeding van. Both vehicles stopped outside the station before the Honda sped away. Police later identified the Honda occupants as alleged members of a Bankstown gang they believed were trying to expand their drug market in the area. The incident was the subject of a police report which concluded that possible gangs were moving into the area and there was potential for a turf war. A turf war with Middle Eastern youths from western Sydney was also cited as the motivation for an attack which saw a local surfer suffer a ruptured spleen after being stabbed with a bowie knife. ‘We have to nip it in the bud before it gets worse,’ McKay had said at the time, as he formally applied to form a strike force to look into the activities of the 79
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Maroubra mob. But that was then and this is now, three years on. McKay is the head of the covert Gangs Squad and finally able to dedicate resources, including a small team of undercover detectives, to look into the group. ◆
On 2 August 2003, Assistant Commissioner Adams meets with fellow Assistant Commissioner Clive Small, who is on secondment to the Premier’s Department, looking into various aspects of crime in the city. They are joined in the large drab Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills by senior police commanders from the eastern beaches. ‘We’ve got to do something about these Bra Boys, I think,’ Small says. ‘We’ve got a real problem here we have to tackle now and really get stuck into.’ Adams disagrees and reiterates his earlier assertion: the so-called Bra Boys are nothing but unruly, bored hooligans who get out of control only when they are drunk. Small then produces a thick report of collated incidents. Some date back to 1996, while the majority are more recent. A few stand out: an attack on police trying to quell a riot outside Coogee’s Palace Hotel in 1998, an all-in brawl near the Maroubra fire station, and a 2000 shooting in Maroubra’s shopping precinct. Throughout all there is a common thread, police intelligence pointing to a link with the Bra Boys. It still carries little sway with the veteran officer Adams. Three days later, the body of a well-known criminal figure is found naked in the seas off Maroubra, and detectives say all indications point to elements of the Bra Boys being involved. ‘Just a bunch of hooligans, eh?’ Small says the next 80
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day to McKay, who shares his view that police have been ignoring an escalating problem. ‘Now we’ll see whether anyone takes this seriously.’
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In April 2003 Jai and Natalie break up. The pressure is too much for Natalie. She would wake up crying, scared that Hines is going to come after her. ‘I know he wants to get me, to get you,’ she tells Jai over and over. After the split, Jai begins seeing Sarah (not her real name, which has been suppressed by the NSW Supreme Court). On 5 August 2003, Sarah pulls into a car wash cafe. She steps down from the driver’s seat of her chunky silver 4WD onto the wet pavement, and hands the keys to the attendant. Behind him, men in soaked red T-shirts bearing the words Crystal Car Wash frantically scrub tyres and wipe down windows under the steady watch of their supervisor. ‘That will be twenty-eight dollars,’ the attendant says directing Sarah to the cafe where another man behind the counter collects the money and passes her a complimentary coffee and a plastic beeper that will flash a red light and beep when her car is ready. 82
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It is about 3.30 pm and Sarah has just come from the solarium, which always makes her itchy. She sits inside the cafe scratching her pink arms, her green eyes are fixed on the line-up outside: hatchbacks, sedans, sports cars and her 2002 model Nissan X-Trail. The blonde, well-groomed twenty-eight year old is finicky about her car. She has it washed here nearly every week, worried that the salty sea air will eat into the paint—one of the few burdens of living by the beach at Maroubra. Sarah had moved into an apartment facing the ocean on Marine Parade six months ago after splitting up with her husband, a well-known figure in the surfing world. At sixteen she had left her rural Western Australian home and travelled to the other side of the country to find work—but she found more than she had bargained for when she met her future husband. At first it was exciting, running with the surfing fraternity. There were parties, surfing, more parties . . . Her husband would spend half the year overseas on professional surfing tours, getting up in the early hours of the morning to ride waves. Together they travelled to Sunset Beach in Hawaii, Teahupoo in Tahiti, the west coast of the USA and to her husband’s favourite waves in Fiji, known to surfers as ‘the restaurants’. They went to every party and she watched him train and cheered for him at every tournament. About fourteen months after they were married, the couple split up and Sarah moved to Sydney from their home on the NSW north coast. In the end, Sarah had lost out to what had brought them together in the first place— surfing. Her husband just didn’t have the time to dedicate to two great loves, and it had been his dream to live 83
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off the waves ever since he learned to surf on his older brother’s broken board. Although the marriage is over, some aspects of it have been hard to let go. Since she moved out of their beach house, Sarah still wears the engagement ring her husband gave her when he proposed. She still drives his car, looks after his books when he’s away, and hasn’t been able to refrain from spending money on clothes, dinners, pubs and parties despite having only a casual job as a food and beverage host with Qantas. Living well beyond her means, she depends on his credit card to afford the apartment by the sea, the frequent visits to the hairdresser and maintaining a tan all through winter. Sarah’s thoughts of the past are broken by a beeping sound; her car is ready to be collected. It will never sparkle like this again. It takes about five minutes to drive to Jai’s house. When she had moved to Maroubra it was all about starting afresh. Going to parties and pubs in the area, regularly drinking at The Palace in Coogee, and the Clovelly Hotel—and getting to know the local surfing tribe. But she doesn’t want anything serious just yet. Jai isn’t really a boyfriend, but she has been seeing him for the last two months, since they had met at a house party in Bronte. Somebody had told her Jai Abberton was at the party that night. She had never met him, but knew his famous brother Koby, who had been on various tours with her husband. Although Koby never really made it on the pro-surfing scene, he had made thousands of dollars from big-wave riding and posing for major surfing and sunglasses brands such as Oakley. Sarah had once chatted to Koby at length while 84
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in Hawaii a few years ago, and he had told her about his three brothers, Sunny, Jai and Dakota. By later that evening, the pair had had a couple of drinks together and Jai introduced Sarah to his mate Ron Reardon. Clean-shaven and a reformed alcoholic, Ron was a short, stocky thirty year old with a freckly face. He was trying to make it in the boxing world. When the party wound down, Jai called a taxi for Sarah and accompanied her back to her apartment. When they reached her unit, she went upstairs to her bedroom to get changed. When she returned, Jai had disappeared, leaving his mobile phone behind. The next day she found a note under her door which read: ‘I left my phone here. I will be in contact. Jai’, and that was how things between them had started. Now, as she drives to Jai’s house, which he shares with his younger brothers and grandmother, Sarah realises that after two months of dating she still doesn’t know Jai well. They have an intimate relationship, but she finds Jai unpredictable and unreliable, the sort of person who will say he is coming over then you wouldn’t see him for a week. She pulls up beside the nondescript cream brick home at Curtin Crescent on the southern side of Maroubra. Bamboo shoots cover the entrance, shielding an outdoor table setting. The house has been there since the sixties and looks unkempt. Jai comes out through the glass front door. He is a little taller than Sarah, who is 5 foot 7, and is muscular, though not like a body builder. The thirty year old has short brown hair and a tattoo on his lightly tanned skin; it runs vertically down his spine between his shoulderblades. It reads: ‘Bra Boys’. He has a crook back from surfing accidents and now limps a little. Jai climbs into 85
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Sarah’s car and they talk about what they will have for dinner as they first drive back to her place to hang out some laundry. It’s 4 pm by the time the pair arrive at the Duke of Gloucester Hotel on Frenchmans Road, Randwick. Jai has eaten there before and liked the food. They order two middies of Tooheys New and a packet of chips before they are joined by Ron, whom Sarah had rung earlier at his home in Eastlakes, and twenty-seven-year-old Heidi, who arrives about 6 pm for dinner. Heidi, a bar manager, has only met Sarah nine months ago through a girlfriend of hers but the pair hit it off instantly and became friends. Heidi has known Jai for seven or so years, having met through mutual friends. The four of them have dinner and share a bottle of red—except for Ron, who hasn’t touched alcohol for more than two years. At 7.30 they finish their meal and discuss where to go next, agreeing to drive Heidi to Clovelly, where she will meet with other friends, then continue to the Coogee Bay Hotel for a nightcap. It is still early and no one really wants to go home just yet, least of all Sarah, who feels like she has wasted the whole day on chores. By the time they reach Coogee and park the car, Ron decides he wants an ice cream and to try to catch up with another friend. He enters the pub with Sarah and Jai briefly to check racing results on one of the venue’s numerous screens, then leaves, promising to join them in about twenty minutes. ◆
For a Tuesday evening, the Coogee Bay Hotel is filling up quickly. Mr M (his name has been suppressed by court) had planned to have an early night, but the unexpected 86
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company keeps him at his local drinking hole into the night. The former footballer, whose looks belie his fortyodd years visits the pub nearly every day after finishing work. He leans against the dark brown wooden bar facing Coogee Bay Road with an old friend. The pair—who have known each other for thirty years—had met in the Sports Bar for an after-work drink more than a thousand times, but this was an evening they would continue to relive over many more drinks to come. The Sports Bar is the smallest section of the large terracotta-painted Federation-style building, which takes up an entire corner block and overlooks the bay on busy Arden Street. It has a TAB, pool tables and poker machines, and is one of the few places in Coogee where you can watch all televised sports at the same time. It is the smokiest section of the hotel, but you are more likely to recognise a local here than in the other three bars, packed with backpackers and tourists. About two hours and six beers later, Tony Hines’s imposing figure appears at the doorway with his daughter Lily. Hinesy is wearing a yellow singlet, blue jeans and a faded brown leather jacket. With his shoulderlength dark shaggy hair and fat moustache, he looks more like an extra from a B-grade seventies movie than the no-nonsense tough guy he is known to be. His image is further softened by the presence of his daughter, who clutches the side of his jeans with her small hand. She looks around the room in awe as she carelessly swings on one foot. Hines has been looking after her all day since her mother Rachel had worked the morning waitressing shift at the Bondi kiosk. Rachel 87
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soon appears and Hines nudges Lily over to her mum, telling Rachel to order for him at the pizza bar across the road and promising to join them in a bit. The pair have split up but still see each other to keep their daughter happy. ‘What are you doing?’ Tony calls out from the opposite end of the room as he walks toward Mr M and his friend. ‘I’m just having a beer, I’m about to head off,’ Mr M replies. ‘Why don’t you hang around and I’ll come back and have a beer with you?’ Hines then walks out and enters the pizza restaurant, taking off his jacket. He is impatient to get back to the pub. He doesn’t say much as he demolishes a couple of slices of pizza, other than admonishing Lily for not eating. Getting her to eat well is a constant battle. Mr M and his mate are still at the bar when Hines returns about half an hour later. Hines, a football fan, enjoys hanging out with Mr M. The pair aren’t best mates, but they have known each other for the last twenty-four years through surfing and football and drinking at the same bars across the eastern suburbs. Occasionally they would have a beer together and talk about football, girls and surfing but tonight Hines has other things on his mind, telling Mr M that he owes the NSW Crime Commission $200 000. Mr M and his friend know better than to ask why, and they just listen as Hines recounts his financial woes. Hines nervously fidgets with his singlet as he speaks, rhetorically asking them how he should settle the debt. Then a smile creases across his worn face and he reaches into his wallet and pulls out two hundred dollars. 88
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‘This is one debt I can pay, though; I haven’t forgotten,’ he says as he hands Mr M the money he had been lent several days earlier. The hours tick by as the three sink several schooners of beer and at one stage a round of tequilas. Through the course of the evening, Hines regularly disappears for ten-minute intervals before returning to continue his drink and conversation. He is a well-known identity in the Coogee area and his disappearances usually coincide with other friends and associates stopping by to talk to him. He loves parading about the bar, plucking at his cotton T-shirts or singlets as if his bulging muscles are uncomfortably restrained by his clothing. Hines returns to his two friends and begins to boast about how age has not tempered his violent streak. ‘At my age I’m still as violent as I’ve always been. When I walk up the street they look at me in a funny way,’ he smiles, enjoying the nods of assent from his friends. Jai Abberton walks into the bar with Sarah at about 8.30 pm. Jai has only recently been allowed back into the drinking hole after being barred some months earlier for causing trouble. Looking around the noisy room he sees Mr M. Then he sees Hines and, nodding at both men, quickly steers Sarah in the opposite direction. ‘Shit,’ he says. ‘What’s that?’ Sarah responds. ‘Ah, nothing. What are you drinking?’ Sarah asks for a bourbon and coke and Jai walks over to the bar to order, leaving her standing at a tall stool table on the left-hand side of the bar next to the TAB. Jai hopes Hines is too drunk to bother coming over to him and Sarah. He doesn’t want a repeat of the inci89
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dent with Natalie, when Hines had demanded Jai hand her over. ‘He is a maggot,’ Jai murmurs to himself before collecting the drinks and returning to the table where Sarah is keeping herself amused watching World Federation Wrestling on one of the bar’s numerous television screens. Suddenly, Jai doesn’t want to be in the bar, but Sarah wants a drink—and besides, Ron will be back soon expecting to find them there. Ron has gone to meet his friend and counsellor Paul ‘Hair Bear’ Chandler. He says he will be coming back in about twenty minutes, so Jai thinks they will have to be there for at least that long. Hair Bear, who is bald, is a psychology professor at the University of NSW and has been a counsellor and friend to Reardon for a number of years. He has given Reardon practical and emotional support and helped him get off and stay off alcohol. As a member of the Maroubra Surf Riders Association, he also knows Jai well. From across the room, Hines stares at Jai and Sarah —particularly at Sarah. He has never seen her before, but he likes what he sees. ‘I’m gonna pull her,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘What’s that, mate?’ Mr M asks. ‘I’m going to end up with her tonight,’ he says looking off towards the couple drinking at a table and watching TV. Mr M smiles. He has seen it all before. It didn’t matter whether a girl was with someone or was dropdead gorgeous, Hines always believed they would end up in bed with him. And sometimes they did. Hines mumbles that he is going to take some ecstasy, but Mr M tells him he will just stick to the tequila. After about twenty minutes, the trio, one by one, join Jai and Sarah at their table, and Sarah is introduced 90
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by Jai as his ‘new girl’. By this stage, Ron has returned, but he is more interested in watching the greyhound racing on the television than meeting anybody. Besides, he knows Hines and he is not a bloke Ron wants to get too friendly with. He has seen Hines turn on people in pubs—strangers or friends, it makes no difference, Hines would turn on them and beat them to a pulp. Hines has that look on his face tonight, a look of violent mischief, Ron thinks. Hines acts as if he isn’t that interested in meeting Sarah, but as he takes her in at close range he likes the look of her even more. He wonders how close she and Jai are, and whether she would go off in bed—preferably with him. As Hines sits down at the new table, Mr M notices for the first time that evening that Hinesy has a darkhandled hand gun tucked down the front of his jeans. Mr M is not overly surprised—he has heard the stories and has seen Hines with a gun twice before while drinking at public bars. The standover man has often boasted of carrying ‘protection’ when he goes out. But the weapon’s presence still startles Mr M, and he tries to draw his mind away from it. By this time, Ryan Stevens has also joined the evergrowing group. Stevens is a little guy who drinks in the hotel nearly every day and is known by security to like a few. He has been drinking heavily on this particular evening, and doesn’t say much until Sarah tries to make polite conversation, asking him about a woman she had seen him with two weeks earlier. He begins describing his ex-girlfriend to the group, concluding by saying that she is a ‘moll’ because whenever she was with him she would flirt with other blokes. Sarah hasn’t been paying too much attention but catches the last word and thinks 91
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Stevens is insulting her since she had been the one to ask where his girlfriend was tonight. ‘You calling me a moll?’ Sarah asks indignantly. ‘Nah, I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about me ex.’ ‘No, you were talking about me.’ ‘You’re kidding, aren’t ya? You know I wasn’t talking about you, I was answering your question.’ ‘What’s going on? What are you talking about?’ Jai interrupts. ‘She thinks I called her a moll but I didn’t,’ Stevens answers. Jai can’t work out what he is talking about but fixes Stevens with a glare before deciding to let it go. Stevens, who by this stage had drunk a fair bit, moves to defuse the situation, offering to shake Jai’s hand. ‘Mate, it is a misunderstanding,’ he says, but Jai says ‘Forget about it’ and refuses to shake his hand. ‘Nah, mate, come on, I didn’t say anything.’ Hines, who has been quietly watching the scene, suddenly rises from his stool and turns to Jai. ‘He wasn’t talking about your girl and if you don’t shake his hand I’ll break your arm. Now shake his hand, shake his fuckin’ hand.’ Jai quickly shakes Stevens’s hand, which should have settled the matter, but Hines still isn’t happy. He turns away from Jai and Sarah to talk to Stevens, swearing about the ‘bitch’ and the moll. ‘Fuck her, anyway, I know I’d rape her anyway. Here, take this and buy us a drink and yourself one,’ Hines says, handing Stevens a fifty-dollar note. He is clearly agitated. Stevens returns with two drinks and goes to hand the change back to Hines. 92
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‘Keep it,’ Hines says waving away the two twentydollar notes and loose change in Stevens’s hand. ‘Nah, mate, it’s yours. Here take it back.’ ‘You fuckin’ keep it, and if you mention money to me again I’ll break your legs.’ Hines turns back to Sarah, who is sitting a few feet away. He stares at her for a while then downs his drink and walks over to the bar. Jai leans across to Sarah and, over the din of the noisy bar, tells her to stick close, that the big guy in the singlet wants to get him. Sarah is surprised—they all appear to be old friends and, apart from the misunderstanding, there doesn’t seem to be any trouble. But after they have have at least three drinks each, she decides she wants to go home and suggests they leave. Jai tells her everything is okay, suggesting they have one more drink. Hines catches the last word and, smiling broadly, suggests they spice up the drinking with a cocktail of ecstasy. He tells the group that you can buy anything you want in Coogee and slams money on the table to put in his order. About twenty minutes later, and no one is sure who or how, a small pile of ecstasy tablets appears on the table. One of the group had gone down to the beach and bought them and put them in the middle of the table. Hines divvies up the haul but Sarah, who is too tired to be bothered sparking up, puts hers into her plastic cigarette packet wrapper to save for later. ‘No, it’s not takeaway—you have it now, I’ve paid for it, you have it now,’ Hines orders, with a hint of aggression, staring deep into Sarah’s eyes. Sarah looks around the table and decides to bite the pill in half and give the other portion back to Hines. She glances over at Jai and sees he has crushed his on the table and is 93
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snorting it off the tabletop, although it appears he is actually pushing most of it off the table and just pretending to inhale it. Jai gives Sarah a reassuring look, so she swallows her half of the pill. After chasing it down with the remainder of her drink, she again tells Jai she wants to leave. As Hines gets up to go to the toilet he brushes his hand along the right side of her thigh, sending a tingle through her body. There is something sinister, deliberate, about the brush past, and she shifts uncomfortably on her stool. Jai, sensing her unease, leans into his girl and tells her to sit closer to him. ‘You stick with me, you’re with us,’ he says. ‘You come and sit over next to me—that guy wants to get me.’ Sarah now realises that Jai is more scared of Hines than she had guessed. Maybe it is the ecstasy, or maybe it was the firm brush across her thigh, but Sarah now understands that the party is not just a group of friends catching up, but Hines standing over their gang, controlling their conversation, their actions and the night. ‘Let’s just go, I want to go home,’ Sarah says to Jai finally. Jai finishes his drink and announces they are leaving. Everyone else at the table seems to have had the same thought and they all nod and stand up. Even Hines, whose eyes have not left Sarah, stands and agrees they should all go. Mr M is one of the first out the door and he heads straight for a taxi which has just pulled up. His wife and son are at home around the corner and he is late already. Ron calls after him, asking which way he is going, but it is too late—the taxi has already shot off towards Carr Street. Ron looks around and decides to hitch a ride home with Sarah, who is walking off up the road with Jai’s arm over her shoulder. Hines lurks alone 94
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behind the dispersing group until Ron falls into step with him. ‘We’re going to root this sheila,’ Hines suddenly says to Ron, who notices that Hines is slurring his words and not walking straight. Ron doesn’t respond to the remark, deciding it is none of his business. Anyway, maybe he has misheard—after all, Sarah is solid with Jai. Jai and Sarah don’t notice Hines until they arrive at her Nissan, parked outside a bank about 50 metres away from the bar. Sarah unlocks the doors of her 4WD and gets in. Jai starts to climb into the front passenger seat but is nudged out of the way by Hines. ‘Get in the fuckin’ back,’ Hines says in a half whisper. Sarah looks over as she puts the keys in the ignition and, to her surprise, sees Hines in the front seat and Jai sitting behind him in the back seat next to Ron. She has only just met Hines and thinks it weird that he now commands the front with her. She looks in the rear-vision mirror at Jai who, with a resigned wave of the hand, says, ‘Just go.’
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Sarah looks over at Hines and sees he is again staring at her. She realises she is drunk and pulls away from her parking spot cautiously. Then she puts on a CD to distract herself from her front-seat passenger. Hines takes the move as an invitation and again brushes her thigh with his palm and fingertips as he moves his hand to the dial of the CD player. Sarah pushes his hand away from the console and he looks at her sternly before a half-smile creases his face. He likes their interplay and her obvious nervousness around him. Sarah tells him to leave the stereo dials alone and looks in the rear-view mirror once more. Ron seems oblivious to the tension in the car, staring out the window as the music blares. Jai, though, looks straight back at Sarah in the mirror, and she realises again how scared he is, how panicked. She breaks eye contact and, looking straight ahead, asks where they are going. Ron suggests they turn right at the roundabout so he can get off near his home. But Hines points straight ahead and tells her 96
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to keep going. She knows where she wants to go— home—but she is hoping Hines will reveal where he wants to be dropped off so that the night will come to an end. There is silence for a moment before Jai finally speaks. But instead of taking the lead and telling her they are going to drop Hines off and head home, he instead mumbles something about owing Hines some money and suggests they should all drive together to Curtin Crescent so he can get it. Sarah is incredulous but says nothing. She is not even sure she heard right. Money? What money? Who owed whom money? Maybe, she thinks, it is for the ecstasy. No, no that couldn’t be it. That was sorted out with a round of drinks. And anyway, Hines was really the only one who wanted the drugs, so it was only right that he paid. So why is Jai wanting to spend any more time with this creep than he has to? As they pull into the driveway of his house Sarah asks, ‘What are we doing?’ ‘He owes me some money,’ Hines says jokingly, already getting out of the car. ‘Yeah, two hundred dollars,’ Jai adds reaching for the door handle. Hines and Jai go into the house, leaving Sarah and Ron behind in the car. Sarah turns around to Ron in the back seat and tells him she is worried about Jai. Ron, who is the only sober person, had noticed the tension in the car after the issue of money came up. He wants out. He’s far from home and it is threatening rain but he still considers walking home. Then he looks at Sarah and realises she is really scared. Before she can ask, he says: ‘All right, I’ll stick with youse, then.’ The pair are sitting in silence listening to the music when the two men return to the car from the house. They 97
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were gone for less than five minutes. Jai again takes the back seat while Hines resumes his position in the front. To make the point, he shifts his seat further back, crushing Jai’s legs, which are now scrunched sideways. Jai mentions something about going back to the Coogee Bay Hotel for another drink but Sarah is now confused and drives blindly towards Meagher Avenue in Maroubra’s south, through the shopping centre near the Sands Hotel, before turning right into Malabar Road. Maybe they are going to drop Hines off back at the Coogee hotel—but that doesn’t make sense. If Jai owed him money, why go all the way home to get it, why not use the ATM in Coogee? Ben Harper wails along to his acoustic guitar on the car’s CD player as they travel along in silence. Ron is edgy now and Sarah’s nerves are at fever pitch, partly because of the half-tab of ecstasy she had taken earlier. It seems to Sarah as if a pact had been made in the house and everyone is in on it except for her. She drives through the set of lights on Fitzgerald Road and slushes to a stop at the next set of red lights on the corner of Maroubra and Malabar roads. Hines’s fingers are tapping nonchalantly on his thigh to the beat of the music as if he is enjoying the tune. But it’s a charade, he is not even listening to the music; he is thinking of his prize for the night. Sarah closes her eyes for a moment and grips the steering wheel tightly as a grinning Hines slowly turns to the right and stares first at the profile of her face then down at the ample curves of her breasts. His eyes track down the length of her body as he hums along to the music. He turns back to face the front as Sarah opens her eyes in time to see the lights turn green. There is 98
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silence in the car, except for the music, and everyone is looking straight ahead. Sarah is midway across the intersection when a short sharp crack rings loudly inside the car. In one full second she looks at Hines—who has an almost comical, exaggerated leer on his face—then back at Jai, who is tightly holding a hand gun, which is emitting a tiny plume of smoke between the seats at headrest height. She swings in her seat to look at Ron, but he is not there. Before the end of that second, she had swung back to Hines, who is holding the side of his head with his right hand as if he were suffering nothing more than a sudden migraine. But then blood gurgles in thick waves from his mouth and he whimpers in small breaths as he continues to stare ahead. Instinctively, Sarah pulls sharply to the side of the road several metres away from the traffic lights and stops the car before three more gunshots ring out in quick succession. This time the shots are deafeningly loud, the third ringing out as she is stepping out of the car. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ Sarah says now through the tears streaming down her face as she stands in the middle of the empty suburban road. She looks back inside the car and sees Hines’s eyes are open. It is as if he is trying to speak, but blood is coming from his lips instead of words. Hines gurgles some more before he slowly slumps forward in his seat, held only partly upright by his loose seatbelt. Sarah, who has never seen a gun before, now stares at Jai. He is holding the smoking antique pistol—a 1914 model .445 calibre Webley & Scott—in his right hand and has a vacant look on his face. Her knees begin to buckle as she staggers backwards into the road. 99
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‘What are you doing?’ Sarah screams above the ringing in her ears. ‘What have you done?’ At a home unit across the road, two young university students, a brother and sister, hear the screaming. There are always noises and disturbances going on in their suburb, mostly drunks coming home along Malabar Road when the bars close, but nothing like this screaming. The lady sounds terrified and the brother, who is watching television in his bedroom, walks into his older sister’s bedroom where she is working on her computer. ‘Did you hear that? Shush, listen, a lady is screaming “Let me go, let me go”,’ he says. His twenty-three-yearold sister listens for a bit, and she thinks she hears the woman say something about God. Then, unconcerned, she turns back to her on-screen assignment and reminds her brother that he, too, should be studying. Back outside, Jai climbs out of the back door of the car and grabs Sarah by the sleeve. He tells her to get into the car but she is crying and trying to pull away from him. Finally, Jai gets into the driver’s seat and Sarah reluctantly gets into the back. ‘What are you doing, why are you doing this?’ she sobs. Jai yells at her to shut up as he screeches away from the curb and continues to drive up Malabar Road towards Lurline Bay. Sarah is now wailing uncontrollably as she tries to brush the blood that is all over the left-hand side of her head and on her grey tracksuit pants and top. As she sits in the back seat petrified, Jai keeps reassuring her, and himself, that he had just done what he had to do. ‘He was going to do it to me, it was me or him,’ he pleads. Jai’s mind is racing quicker than the Nissan he is driving. He has just killed a man. He can hardly believe 100
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it himself. Shot him four times in the head. He hadn’t meant to do it; well, at least not when he had woken up this morning and decided what to do with his day. Killing a man was definitely not what he had pictured he would do when he swung his legs out of bed several hours earlier. Surfing, drinking and maybe even getting a root, yep—killing, nope. His mind flashes back to the days of growing up with Hines. Jeez, he was a tough bastard: ferociously loyal, but vindictive if you crossed him. Shit, Hines had a knack of remembering, and reminding you, of the smallest detail of a conversation, and you never knew whether he had taken it well or not. But in the old days it was fun, you never knew what would happen next with him around. Was he all that bad? ‘Yes,’ he says aloud. ‘Yes, he was,’ he finishes, realising as he says it that he is now thinking of Hines in the past tense. Hines had planned to rape Sarah, he knew that, and he couldn’t let it happen. He isn’t that serious about her, but he is solid, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t let that happen. For the first time that night, he thinks of his brothers, and what they would do in his situation. How would they handle it? He has to think. It’s not easy, though, when someone behind is screaming and crying. Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to think, he says mentally as Sarah continues to wail and yell at him to get Hines out of her car. Hines is swaying from side to side and Jai has to keep pushing his large heavy frame back towards the passenger side window. The windscreen is cracked from at least three gunshots and Jai struggles to see as he drives recklessly on into the night. Blood continues to gush from the gaping bullet wounds in Hines’s head but he is already dead. The 101
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big man, loved by some but feared by most, is slumped limply in the car of his girlfriend’s husband. It’s all too weird, he thinks. For more than ten years Hines’s friends would have bet money he would some day be violently killed, but they had presumed it would be in the barrel-sight of a policeman’s Glock or, at the very least, in a violent pub brawl where Hines would take the life of another before he dropped himself. He’ll die on his feet, that’s what they had said. They had also said that one day he would mess with the wrong woman and a man bigger than him would teach him a lesson. The impact of the bullet has sprayed blood across the seats, windows, steering wheel and console. Jai wipes the blood dripping from the rear-view mirror as he races towards Sarah’s home. He now glances back in the rearview mirror to see if anyone is following but also to see Sarah. He sees nothing: the streets are deserted and Sarah is slumped behind his seat crying into her hands. An acrid mix of gun powder and blood fills the car, and air whistles through a hole in the windscreen the size of a twenty-cent coin. Jai finally pulls up opposite Sarah’s flat, jumps out of the car and runs quickly around to the front passenger door. As he opens it, Hines slumps outwards and Jai grabs his shoulders, saying, ‘Come on, mate we’re going for a walk.’ He pulls on Hines’s motionless body, which falls partly out of the car onto the road. ‘Give me a hand,’ he yells at Sarah, who is still cowering in the back seat with her bloody hands to her face. ‘I can’t do this by myself.’ Sarah brushes her hair, matted in blood to her forehead, with the back of her palm. 102
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‘Why did you do this?’ she asks between sobs. ‘He was going to do it to me because he is a maggot, just shut up, just help me.’ Sarah watches for a moment in shock, eyes open wide, as she takes in properly the fact that Hines is dead. Truly dead. ‘Just help me,’ Jai now says solemnly, looking at her as he struggles to hold up the body. ‘No, no!’ Sarah says as she tries to come to terms with what is happening before her eyes. The man she has been seeing for the last two months has turned into a killer, and now a stranger she has only just met and drank with was bleeding—no, had bled—to death in her car. She remembers that Jai knows jujitsu and wonders whether he would now turn on her. She can’t remember what has happened to the gun. Is it on the floor? What would she do with it anyway? It’s all too much. ‘If you don’t want to help me, then the cops will come soon,’ Jai says in an eerily calm manner. Sarah reluctantly shifts across the back seat and out the door and staggers to Jai’s side. Without another word she grabs hold of Hines’s right side as Jai holds the left. The pair drag the body along the road in front of the car and into the grassy park which abuts the Mistral Point cliff’s edge. Hours at the gym and in the surf had bulked up Hines’s frame, and at 183 centimetres and 94.5 kilos, he is nearly impossible to carry. The grim task is made all the more difficult by the light drizzling rain and the blood draining away from the three bullet wounds to Hines’s head and one bullet hole through the centre of his right palm, from when he had tried to defend himself. 103
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They pull on Hines’s torso, leaving his heels dragging along the grass uphill towards the uneven rocks. The body bounces up and down as it scrapes along the rough surface. Sarah keeps dropping him, taking a breath before lifting him again by the armpits. After what seems like hours, the trio reach the cliff edge. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jai rolls Hines’s lifeless figure over the edge, pushing him off with a foot planted in the middle of his back. Far below, the surf is roaring with life as a king tide pounds the rocks. White foam sprays up every now and then, luminescent in the moon’s clouded pale glow. Sarah hugs herself as she scurries back to her car and climbs into the driver’s seat. She starts the engine, waiting for Jai to come back, but he is nowhere to be seen. He has realised that he has dropped his pocket-knife somewhere and is retracing his steps to find it. Waiting in the car, Sarah can see the headlights of another vehicle driving nearby. She stiffens and, frightened of being seen, decides to drive back to Jai’s house without him. Ben Harper resumes his melancholy croon on the CD player before Sarah kills the music, slamming her hand against the player. She pulls into Jai’s driveway and quickly gets out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. The house is dark and the street quiet as she sits curled up next to a bush and a plastic outdoor table setting, rocking backwards and forwards and sobbing uncontrollably. She stares at her bloody hands again and again in disbelief. About ten minutes later Jai appears on the front lawn and stands in front of her, puffing hard from his run back from the Mistral Point cliffs. He sits next to her and 104
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Sarah begins pounding him with her fists, shaking her head from side to side. He grabs her hands and says, ‘You have to trust me, that guy is a rapist, a murderer, he is just a maggot. It was going to be me or him, it was going to be me or him.’ He tries to hug her but she shrugs him off. Taking hold of her, he walks Sarah into the house before she can pull away from him. Koby can hear the commotion from his seat on the lounge and asks Jai what’s going on. He suspects the pair have had a lover’s fight but then he looks at Sarah, crying, then back at his brother; they are both smeared with blood. Sarah’s crying annoys Koby and he tells her to go have a shower in his ensuite; he wants to talk to his brother alone. ‘What the fuck happened?’ Koby asks, looking into his brother’s eyes, which are wide with fright and emotion. He has never seen him this way before. Jai begins to tell him what has happened, starting from the Coogee Bay Hotel and ending with the moment he rolls the body off the cliff. Koby can’t believe it and just swears through Jai’s emotional monologue. His brother is not a killer. Yeah, he’s been in a few fights before but never anything like this. In the other room, Sarah can only hear snatches of the tale’s recounting but doesn’t really care. She is covered in blood and wants to wash the night away as quickly as possible. She starts to take her blood-stained tracksuit top and bottoms off along with her bloody Puma runners, which had been white when she put them on to go have dinner earlier in the evening. She then rings Ron Reardon on his mobile and, between sobs, asks him to come over to Jai’s house, but doesn’t say 105
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why. Ron knows something is wrong, that something happened during the car ride, and says he will come over. Sarah peels the last of her bloody clothes off and steps into the shower. Instantly the hot water soothes her frayed nerves. She stares down at the drain and watches as blood and other indescribable matter run off her body and swirl once on the tile recess before gurgling down the drain. She is fixated by the sight and stands motionless for several minutes staring, then all but scrubs her skin raw with a bar of soap. By the time she has finished her shower Jai, who has showered in the main bathroom, has come in and taken her blood-soaked clothes and put them in a garbage bag. He then hands her a fresh set of clothing, including a creamy brown men’s jumper and tracksuit pants. She walks out of the ensuite to see Koby sitting in the bedroom looking at her sympathetically. He then gets up and goes into the kitchen to join Jai, where they yell at each other in whispers. Koby is furious at what has happened. Jai just shakes his head and repeats over and over, ‘It was either me or him, you know that.’ It is like a mantra. Me or him, me or him, he says to reassure himself as much as to convince those around him. Sarah follows the men into the kitchen. As the shouting intensifies, their grandmother Mavis comes out to see what is going on, but she is sent back to her room by both Jai and Koby. ‘Nothing’s wrong, Ma, don’t worry about it—just go back to bed,’ Jai says. Then they hear Ron calling Sarah’s name from outside the house. She goes to the front door to greet him. Noticing she has changed her clothes he asks if she is 106
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okay. She gives him a blunt ‘no’ and he realises what a stupid question it was. They then trail back to the kitchen where Jai confirms that Hines has been shot dead. Ron shakes his head and looks hard at Jai. ‘How can you do this to us? This is our life. What are you doing?’ Reardon says. They were mates, but there are some things mates don’t do to one another and one of those is involve them in a murder. ‘It was going to be me or him—he is a rapist, he is a maggot,’ Jai repeats. ‘I got nothing to do with this,’ Ron replies. ‘Anyone asks we dropped him off and we all went home,’ Jai says, looking earnestly if not a little desperately at each person in the room, hoping they understood the gravity of it all. ‘You,’ he says looking at Sarah, ‘dropped me and him [Reardon] off at the beach and just went home. That was it. We never saw him [Hines] again.’ The eyes on a giant relief lamp of Buddha mounted on the wall watch as the group carry on dealing with what has happened. Sarah is tired of it all and goes into Jai’s bedroom and lies down on the bed, shaking. She hears Ron say he is going to catch a cab. Jai moves the car into the small cluttered garage next door to the house before joining her in the bed, lying next to her fully clothed. He tries to snuggle up to her. Neither can sleep and they each stare off into the dark, lost in their own thoughts. Some hours later, as the sun is just starting to stretch its finger-like rays through a cloud-clustered morning sky, Sarah and Jai get out of bed, still fully clothed, walk into the lounge room and grab Koby’s car keys from the table. 107
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Jai sits in the front passenger seat of his brother’s black Holden Monaro and Sarah gets into the driver’s seat. She slowly pulls out of the driveway and, in virtual silence, the pair head back to the corner of Lurline Street and Marine Parade. Jai wants to check that the body has dropped all the way down into the frothing surf while Sarah just wants to go home and curl up in her own bed. Jai jumps out as she pulls up at the curb, telling her he is going to check on the body and see if he can find his knife, which he hadn’t been able to find the night before. Sarah sits in the car for a couple of minutes watching as Jai first picks up the knife and then disappears towards the cliff edge. Despite his insistence that she stay in the car, she gets out and walks across the road to her apartment block. Her mind can’t escape the night before, but as she enters her apartment she is overcome with relief and the familiar smell of her sanctuary. She goes to her bedroom to collect some underwear and changes into a tracksuit and a pair of thongs. She wants to ring someone but can’t think who. What would she say, anyway? She is close to her brother, but doesn’t know how to tell him about what has happened. She returns to the car. At the cliff edge, Jai is wondering whether it will be a fine day or if it will rain again and wash away the bloody trail Hines’s body has left across the park. He is still thinking about how to cover up the trail when he looks down and gasps. Hines’s body is lying on a rock ledge just a few metres from the top of the cliff. He had not been swallowed by the tide as they had thought. Jai looks around hurriedly and begins to swear. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He then scrambles down to the ledge and again stares at his old mate and tormentor covered in blood. He crouches down to feel for a pulse, to check if 108
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maybe Hines had somehow been alive and had struggled back up the cliff face. Then, realising the ridiculousness of the scenario, he simply tries to shove the body off the cliff again. The body seems a lot heavier now than it had the night before, but after some effort it rolls down into the surf, clipping an outcrop on the way. Jai continues to watch for a while after the body has disappeared into the surf. After a number of sets have crashed into the rock face he stands to clamber back up the cliff. As he does so, he realises the body has left a large blood stain in the shape of a torso on the rock ledge. He swears to himself, but he doesn’t believe anyone will ever notice. He knows the area well and this part of the cliff is never used by rock climbers. Sarah is waiting by the car and together they drive back to Curtin Crescent and climb into Jai’s bed, where they try to sleep. But it is hopeless. Then, for the first time, Jai apologises to Sarah. ‘I am sorry about dropping you into all of this,’ he says. ‘It was going to be him or me. I’m just sorry you got messed up in it all. We’ll take it to the grave, no one will ever know. Are you solid with this? Just stick to the story.’ ‘I’m solid, I won’t tell anyone,’ Sarah sobs. ‘No one will go to jail or nothing, you know? We stick to the story. We all left the Coogee Bay and we left him [Hines] near a service station before you dropped Ron and me off and then you left your car parked out the front of your unit.’ They agree they need to get rid of the clothes they had worn the night before and do something about her car. In the meantime, they will use Koby’s car to get around. As they leave the house and walk outside, Sarah 109
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asks where her car is and, when reminded it is in the garage, says she wants to get something out of it. She enters the dark garage and approaches the car from the passenger side. She opens the front passenger door and stares momentarily at the blood-filled seat and dashboard. She thinks about crying again but instead opens the glove box and removes her wedding ring and her engagement ring as well as her passport. She takes one final look around the car before closing the door and scurrying out of the garage. She gets into the driver’s seat of Koby’s Monaro and waits for Jai, who comes out of the house carrying two big plastic garbage bags which he puts into the boot. As they back out of the driveway, Jai pulls another plastic bag from under his jumper. The bag is wrapped around something and initially Sarah doesn’t know what it is but then guesses it must be the gun. She stares down at the bag cradled in Jai’s lap before he tells her they have to get rid of the weapon. Jai directs Sarah through several streets till they reach the Randwick Golf course. Sarah pulls over at Jai’s request and he disappears through a gap in the fence and over towards the fifth tee green, the gun wrapped in plastic hidden under his jumper. Minutes after he leaves, Sarah sees and hears a helicopter roar low over the course and out to sea. She wonders whether it is the police, and if they have found the body. But it is only the Westpac rescue helicopter returning to base from an early morning patient delivery mission, and pilot Stuart Hough is oblivious to the man running across the golf course towards the sea. Jai returns and the pair drive to Jai’s mother’s house, fifteen minutes away in Chifley. Sarah has never been 110
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there before, and under any other circumstances would have been happy to visit her boyfriend’s family home. Jai knocks on the front door and a little girl answers. ‘Is Mum here?’ he asks. The girl shakes her head. ‘Oh, they’ve gone, have they?’ ‘Yeah,’ she mutters. Jai and Sarah walk through the house to the back door and the little girl disappears into another room. They sit on a children’s trampoline in the backyard and Jai talks about dumping the bags of bloodied clothing that are still in the boot of the car. He considers digging a hole in the backyard and burying them, then realises the family’s two golden retrievers would dig them up. The pair go back to the car and Jai pulls the two bags out of the boot. He carries them out to the backyard, opens a shed door attached to the back of the garage on the left-hand side of the house, and shoves the bags under the house through a small opening to be retrieved and dropped off later. Back inside the house they slump on the lounge for about ten minutes in total silence, then Sarah looks at Jai and tells him she needs some sleep. ‘Come on then, we’ll get you home,’ he says. She parks the Monaro around the corner from her unit block and walks back towards her home, avoiding looking at anything along the front street. She takes another shower, but nothing can scrub away what is on her mind. Her thoughts are broken by the sound of Jai calling her name. He has been waiting for her but now wants to get away from the area as quickly as possible. She goes to the back of her building and throws him Koby’s car keys. She shuts her door and takes a deep breath, hoping 111
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the dreadful ordeal is over. Moments later she phones her mother to tell her she will be visiting her in Western Australia. Sarah then books a flight over the internet and quickly packs a bag for what she imagines will be a very long time—if not forever.
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PART 2
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9 THE DAY AFTER
Senior Constables Sims and Simpkins are first on the scene after being passed the telephone message from a colleague about two women who reckon they have found ‘a murder’. Their combined scepticism that it could be a crime scene gives way pretty soon after they arrive at Jack Vanny Memorial Park and Maroubra cliff tops. ‘This red substance is in places thick and congealed. From this, a wide but thinly spread dark coloured trail leads (north) down the roadway towards the garages at 44 Marine Parade . . . drag marks go east over the gutter and a single trail through a gap in a nearby fence to the cliff face,’ Sims records in his notepad shortly after arriving. He looks over the edge of the cliff and in his palmsized notebook concludes: ‘This pool appears to be similar in shape to that of an adult person.’ Some serious shit has taken place here, the men agree before they telephone for backup. One of the first crime scene specialists to arrive at the blood trail is Senior Constable Kathryn Thompson. She 115
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had just been asked to examine a blood mark on some footy field and is now taken aback when she arrives at the scene and sees how extensive it is. It all looks very diluted, whatever it is, probably from the overnight rain. The first thing she does is test whether the red stains are in fact human blood, using the haematics test which detects the presence of Haem, turning green if there is a positive result. She conducts tests along the 4 metres of blood stains on the roadway. Her test card instantly becomes green. She then sees small clumps of blood-matted hair and collects them in small plastic sample bags. In her notebook she records that there is a 4-metre blood stain on the road made up of a main pool of blood and several smaller ones leading to the south. Then there are drag marks in a double line north-east across the roadway and onto the footpath. Then the drag marks form a single drag for another 34.7 metres to the cliff edge. She then sees the two blood stains on the rocks below, the farthest measured at 10.9 metres from the top. Strong winds have whipped up a large swell that prevents police from searching the lower ridges of the cliff face or even getting close to its shoreline by boat. Officers in blue overalls fan out across the unkempt corner of Maroubra in the hope of finding something that can point to what might have happened. ◆
About the same time, in a taxi weaving through the midmorning traffic, Sarah is on her way to the airport. She is physically exhausted and emotionally drained and can barely remember where she is going. She has a small bag that she packed in about five minutes and now thinks of other personal items she should have brought along for 116
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her trip. Then again, forgetting to pack her favourite bikini for a Perth then maybe a Balinese beach is not all that important when you are on the run from police. She had seen the police arrive on the scene and feared they were looking at her. Maybe it was her imagination, but one cop did seem to stare at her for a little too long when she left her home. As the taxi cuts wildly through the traffic, her mind flashes back to the night before, when she was in the driver’s seat. A tight corner here, a sharp corner there, as the car screeched left and right through Sydney’s suburban streets. She saw the person in the passenger seat was dead—or was he dying? How could all that have happened? Maybe it didn’t happen at all. It could have been the ecstasy that she may or may not have taken. Her harrowing thoughts are broken by the taxi driver turning on the radio. He tunes in as an announcer reveals police are looking for a body in Maroubra after finding a suspicious trail of blood. She looks out the window and tears well up. She now has confirmation that it did all happen. Sarah arrives at the Qantas domestic lounge about 12.30 pm to find the gate has closed and she will miss her flight to Perth. She breaks down crying again. It is like one of those dreams you go in and out of, where everything keeps going wrong and there’s nothing you can do to wake from it. She had booked the flight over the internet and doesn’t know now whether she will lose her money. Counter staff see the red-eyed tear-streaked woman and simply book her on the next flight leaving later in the day. Sarah takes her new boarding pass and finds a quiet corner of the terminal in which to sit and wait and wonders whether she should ring her mother 117
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again to tell her she will be arriving later. When she had rung her mother earlier in the morning with the news she was coming over for a surprise visit, there were a lot of questions; too many questions. She’s too tired to do it again. She stares at her mobile phone and decides to call her mother a little later on. She calls Ron Reardon instead. ‘Yeah, I’m scared and angry too. How could he do this to us?’ Reardon says in a desperate voice. He has not slept either and, unlike Sarah, has nowhere to run. ‘Look, just stay safe and take it easy. I’ll call you in a few days.’ Sarah wonders whether she should call Jai, but is not sure what they would say to each other. He had pretty much said it all earlier in the morning—stick to the story, don’t tell anyone, blah blah blah. Would he hurt her if she did tell someone, like her brother or the police? She isn’t sure—she really doesn’t know him that well. She has his mother Lyn’s home telephone number; Jai had told her he would be staying there for the next few days. She wonders what Mrs Abberton would make of all of this. Sarah looks at the crumpled piece of paper with the number scrawled on it. In the end she decides to text Koby with just two simple words: ‘I’ve fled.’ He will pass that on to Jai, she thinks. He does and Jai later rings her for a teary phone call. ◆
On Jai’s mind is what to do with Sarah’s silver Nissan X-Trail parked in the garage at the Abberton boys’ home. After returning to the Curtin Crescent home, he decides he could clean it, maybe even fix it and give it back to Sarah. He opens the door to the car and peers inside apprehensively. It is a mess and it smells. Smells real bad. 118
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He looks around and the image of the night before comes back to haunt him. It is unbelievable now to think it could have happened at all. Too bad, it’s happened and it’s time to get on with it and decide where to next. He walks back into the house and finds a brush and cleaning fluid and, returning to the car, begins scrubbing the leather seats and carpet. But no matter how hard he scrubs the most obvious mark of suspicion remains: the smashed windscreen. He covers the three bullet holes with thick black tape and then tries to work out how to have the windshield professionally repaired. The black tape looks almost as ridiculous as a spiderwebbed cracked windshield. He knows replacing the windscreen means taking the car to a panel beater, which will mean involving other people and attracting too many questions. Then he remembers a bloke he met months ago who fixed his mother’s red Magna and put a front bar and a new guard on Koby’s Monaro after it was involved in a smash. He also remembers Sunny’s little red Charade had been fixed by him when it overheated once. Brian (not his real name) worked nearby. He had a young daughter who liked to surf and hung out with Dakota. Jai saw Brian about a bit at the Sands Hotel and he seemed like a good bloke. ‘A local wouldn’t butt into anyone else’s business. They would get the job done and forget what happened,’ Jai thinks before phoning him about midday. He is desperate. The spray-painter is at the garage working when he answers the phone. After less than a minute of chit chat, Jai cuts to the chase and asks him whether he could get him a front windscreen for a Nissan or a Toyota or something that has been smashed by a brick. Brian is not 119
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really paying attention. He has not spoken to Jai for a while and the call seems suspicious. And besides, in the nine years that he has worked in the same garage, his role has primarily been as a spray-painter. Sure, he did a little panel beating on the side, but Jai knows he is mainly a spray-painter. But who cares, a job’s a job, and there is no harm in ordering in a screen. Yep, not a problem, he says, we’ll order it in. At 2 pm, Jai turns up at the Terry Street workshop. Brian is in the spray booth when one of the other panel beaters comes over to tell him Jai and Koby are standing outside. Still wearing his spray gear, Brian walks outside, happy to use the visit as an excuse for a fresh-air break, and asks the pair what’s up. They ask whether he has the front screen ordered yet. Brian explains that the order takes time and, anyway, he can’t fit it himself because it has to be specially heated. But, he says, it can be fitted tomorrow. Jai insists it has to be done that day and Brian counters with the fact he just doesn’t have the tools. ‘It’s only a little crack,’ Jai says. ‘Come and have a look.’ ‘I’m working at the moment. You’ll have to come and get me after work.’ It is Koby who returns to the workshop about 4.30 pm that afternoon in his Monaro to pick up Brian. The pair hardly speak during the ten-minute journey, with Koby not mentioning a word about the damaged X-Trail. Both men sense something and are content to drive in silence. Koby drops Brian off at Curtin Crescent and speeds away. It is the first time Brian has ever been to the Abbertons’ house and he looks around the front yard. Jai 120
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is waiting inside and watches Brian through the window. Brian goes up to the front door and, after a quick ‘G’day’, the pair walk through the house, past Mavis, who is sitting an arm’s length away from the television, to the garage. Jai unlocks the garage door. The first thing Brian sees is the broken windscreen. He thinks to himself, Fuck me, that’s not fuckin’ brick damage. Are they bullet holes? ‘No, fuck this, no way,’ he finally says aloud. ‘What the fuck happened here? This isn’t a brick—I’m not stupid you know—fuck.’ ‘Yeah, we got into a blue with a couple of blokes last night,’ Jai replies. Brian doesn’t know what to believe. The Abbertons are always fighting so maybe it’s true. Then he thinks that maybe it was the police that had been shooting at them. Brian’s mind is racing now. Shit, the Abbertons have gone too far. They’ve done something, there was a chase and police shot up the car. Maybe a hold-up—nah, not their style. Something else. Maybe the car is stolen. ‘This ain’t a brick, these are bullet holes . . . What’s happened, have the coppers been firing at you?’ Jai doesn’t respond and Brian knows there is going to be trouble and doesn’t want to get involved. ‘I’ve got to get rid of the car,’ Jai finally blurts out, realising that Brian doesn’t have the right tools and training and probably can’t help him with the windscreen. Brian is already turning to leave but remembers he needs a lift. He then notices the ammonia smell—the screw-top bottle is still nearby—and it makes him gag. He walks back outside to catch his breath and notices the Monaro has returned. When he re-enters the garage Jai is standing looking at the car pathetically. 121
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‘I need to get rid of the car. You drive it,’ Jai says. ‘Fuck! No way, no way,’ Brian responds. ‘No way in the world am I driving that car.’ ‘Mate, if you are pulled over I will put my hand up straight away.’ ‘No, I’ve got too much to lose.’ Brian slumps down near the garage door. He doesn’t have a licence—lost it months ago—and won’t even drive to the corner shop to get lunch. He walks everywhere—to the shops, to the pub, to a mate’s place—and now he is being pressured into driving what is possibly a stolen car. Fucking hell, I’ve done the wrong thing. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of these lads, but I should never have got involved; why the fuck did I get involved? he thinks as he stares at the ground, trying to work out his next move. ‘If I can borrow a car, will you drive the other car?’ Jai asks. Before Brian can answer, his mobile phone rings. ‘Where the fuck are you?’ his wife asks. ‘I’m at Jai’s place.’ ‘Get home now, you’ve got a job waiting for you at home.’ Brian suddenly remembers that a woman had dropped off her Mitsubishi Lancer to have the mirrors painted. Brian’s wife curses a little more then hangs up. ‘Come on, we’ll pick up one of my mates and we’ll go. He can drive the car and you can show us how to get to Kirrawee the back way,’ Jai says, remembering there is a boat ramp somewhere there where they can dump and sink the car. ‘No, I’m going home. I’ve got a job waiting at home,’ Brian answers weakly. But he knows perfectly well what 122
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he will be doing next. If it is a matter of letting down an angry wife and some woman with peeling side mirrors or a bunch of aggro surfers, he knows which one he has to pick. Soon he finds himself in the passenger seat of the Monaro with a surfer mate of Jai’s, about nineteen years old, short and skinny with short straight brown hair, behind the wheel. Neither of them introduce themselves; they don’t need to. They are both working towards a common goal under the command of Jai who is following in the Nissan. Jai tells the pair that maybe they should dump the car at the Royal National Park or at a boat ramp at Kirrawee or Gymea Bay—he is no longer sure about where the boat ramp is. Brian is frantic. This is all wrong. He curses himself for being so easily led into doing something he knows is not right. As he points the way to Kirrawee he tries to recall whether he had heard anything on the radio or seen anything on the TV which this car might have been involved in. Was there a police shooting, a chase, a robbery—or could there even have been a murder? There are a lot of dried blood smears about. The convoy drives out of Curtin Cresent and down to Maroubra Road, turning left onto Malabar Road then onto Foreshore Drive. At the busy General Holmes Drive they turn left through the seaside suburb of Brightonle-Sands, pass through Dolls Point and onto Taren Point Road before turning right onto Kingsway. As they pass the corner of Sutherland Hospital and reach President Avenue it suddenly occurs to Brian he is not sure where he is going. ‘Mate, it’s years since I’ve been here,’ he says finally, clearing his throat. ‘I haven’t been here in years.’ The young surfer says nothing but it is clear they are lost, driving aimlessly around suburban streets. They pull 123
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to the side of the road and ask some passers-by for directions, but they don’t know of any boat ramp. Nor do the staff of a petrol station they stop at on Gymea Bay Road. Jai flashes his lights at the car in front and they stop on Maitland Place, Kirrawee. Jai is fuming and, as he storms towards the lead car, Brian gets out and begins to explain that he has not been in this part of town for ages. ‘Fuck you, you fucking said you knew where it was, you fucking idiot,’ Jai growls as he gets in the front passenger seat. Brian climbs limply into the back and the Monaro pulls away to resume its search for the boat ramp. They leave the bloody Nissan behind. ‘I just haven’t been here for ages, it’s not my fault.’ ‘You’re an idiot, you’re a fuckwit, bringing us here. You idiot, you’re an idiot. We’ll have to come back tonight at midnight.’ Brian’s head drops. He wants to go home to his wife and kids. It is now 8.30 pm and they will be freaking out, not knowing where Dad is. He didn’t want to be here now and definitely doesn’t want to come back here, wherever here was, at midnight. They pull into a petrol station, hopelessly lost, at the top of the hill on West Botany Street in Arncliffe. Brian has to pay for the petrol because no one else has money. Besides, he feels he has to after stuffing up and leading them on a pointless drive through the suburbs of southern Sydney. He is then driven back to Matraville and dropped off at the Matraville Hotel. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve done my best, I’m really sorry,’ Brian apologises. ‘Nah, that’s okay, I’m sorry for getting mad. It’s not your fault,’ Jai replies. Brian tells Jai to stay out of trouble. It’s a farewell remark of good luck that Brian thinks restores their 124
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mateship. As he turns to walk away he reaches into his pocket for his mobile to ring his wife to tell her he is on his way home. But then Jai calls out after him, ‘We’ll see you later tonight,’ before he and the silent surfer pull away from the curb and drive off into the night. They do not return that night. On the same night, Lyn Abberton can’t be bothered cooking so she gets takeaway pizza delivered to her Franklin Street home. Dakota and the other kids will like that, a bit of a treat. Close friend Annie Wake is staying there with her children Samantha and Holly. Jai arrives just as the first pizza box is opened, but he looks disinterested and says very little to anyone beyond a mumbled ‘hi’. ‘What’s wrong? You look really pale. Why don’t you come over here with us and have some pizza?’ Lyn asks him. ‘Nothin’, nothin’s wrong,’ he replies before grabbing a single slice and sloping off to his bedroom where he closes the door. He stays with her on average three nights a week and it’s only natural she ask questions. She watches him as he walks off, tucking into the slice before he reaches his bedroom door. She never expects him to tell her anything. She remembers that a few weeks ago she had asked what he did that night, whether he had a girlfriend, and other things most mothers might ask their sons. They used to be able to talk. But Jai just went ‘aggro’—she likes that word—and angrily told her to mind her own business. The boys, the brothers, he will always confide in them, but he will never let her fully into his life. If only things had been different earlier on. Despite his detachment from his family, when he stays 125
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overnight at Franklin Street he almost always sits around the lounge and watches videos with the kids. Tonight he doesn’t and Lyn knows something more than a broken board or an argument with a mate is on his mind.
On the other side of Australia, Sarah arrives in Perth, on her way to stay with her parents in rural WA. The long flight had given her a bit of a chance to have a nap. Strangely, the flight was relaxing; she had felt almost safe, as if nothing and no one could touch her during that five-hour journey. At the airport, Sarah gets a call from her brother on her mobile. She tells him she is staying with their parents for a while. He says he had been hoping to catch up with her in Sydney. The pair speak at least once a week since she moved to Sydney, but this call was different; she sounded agitated. ‘I needed to get away,’ she says. ‘Why?’ ‘I can’t tell you over the phone.’ An hour later—about 11.30 pm Sydney time—she calls him back from a Perth hotel. ‘I had to get away for a while, I’ve seen something and I’m scared ’cause of who they are.’ ‘Have you seen a break-in, or is it something to do with some sort of drug—’ ‘No, worse.’ ‘Go to the police.’ ‘I’m too afraid. If I do you might read about me in the news.’ The next morning Sarah appears on her parent’s doorstep in rural WA. Her father is surprised to see her, 126
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but pleased nonetheless. He asks her what she is doing and she tells him that she just came to see Mum and then breaks down in tears. Sarah’s parents try to talk to their daughter over the next two days, but she bursts into tears at their every attempt. She does manage to tell them her car had been stolen, and a telephone call from Sydney police a day or two later appears to support her story. But they begin to worry when she will not stop crying and begins talking about ‘harming herself’ or just disappearing. On Saturday they take her to see a doctor who prescribes antidepressants and sleeping pills for her distressed state. Sarah continues to tell everyone—her parents, the doctor, the police—that she is upset because of the theft of the car. Her father remains unconvinced, but there is nothing he can do other than wait it out. Something is troubling his daughter and he guesses it is personal—a boyfriend, perhaps, maybe an unwanted pregnancy. For Christ’s sake, it can’t be just about a bloody car, he thinks.
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Meanwhile, the blood-stained car sits abandoned on a Kirrawee street. Brian’s nightmare from the previous night returns when Jai visits his workshop again at midday the next day. Jai stands in the yard for a moment, taking in the scene as if unsure of himself, before walking into the central shed to find Brian standing near a half-stripped car. He asks the spray-painter to come outside for a chat. He then asks him to come and help him find the car, since he has forgotten where they had left it. ‘No way, I’m at work, mate. It’s the middle of the day—you expect me just to stand up and leave? I can’t.’ Brian shakes his head and looks at the ground. Finally, he fetches a street directory and tries to explain where they had been. Jai’s mind is fatigued and he is barely taking anything in. He had just followed the car in front of him and had taken no notice of where they were going. Brian patiently goes over and over it with the street map, explaining where they had stopped. His workmates are getting suspicious. Brian had been acting 128
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strangely that morning, and now here was Jai, looking like one of the wrecks they were working on. Jai finally leaves with the street directory in hand, a finger holding open the page he needs to refer to. Brian unconsciously wrings his hand—as if he had just rid himself of a problem—as he walks back to face his curious colleagues. They ask what is going on but he dismisses their questions, claiming Jai had just wanted a spare part. Two days later Brian reads something about a murder in the Daily Telegraph; the article refers to a body having been found at Mistral Point in Maroubra. He knows he has inadvertently been dragged into something big. As the thought settles into his mind, he is physically sick.
At 9.20 am the day after the blood was found, Sims and Simpkins receive further confirmation from the Division of Analytical Laboratories in Lidcombe that the thick red substance found in the Maroubra park is human blood. ‘Oh shit—it is human,’ Maroubra colleague Detective Senior Constable Andrew Pincham says back at Maroubra police station when told of the lab’s findings. ‘Who would have believed it? There was just litres and litres of the stuff, I thought it had to have come from an animal.’ The other officers around him nod in agreement. He is told DNA tests are being carried out but the results would not be known for two to three days with more than sixty-four samples to be tested. No body has yet been found but Maroubra Superintendent Dave Owens, in conjunction with the State Crime Command’s Homicide Squad, create an investigation team dubbed Strike Force Flaying. At 4 pm, together with 129
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Sims, he briefs junior officers on how they will conduct door-to-door canvassing of the Maroubra area. Sims reminds them of the gravity of the situation, saying the blood is human and there is no doubt they are looking for a body. In his mind, the eerie bloody body-shaped stain he saw on the cliff ledge assures him of the likelihood that there will be the body of some poor bastard thrashing away somewhere in the surf below. The team of detectives begins reviewing Missing Persons lists, initially looking for recent entries from the eastern beaches area, then more widely. That afternoon Radio 2GB is one of the first stations to begin broadcasting that police have found a murder scene but no body. Speculation now runs rife, and people from all over the eastern suburbs come to the park to watch police go through their paces, combing the vast cliff-top area for clues. Several kilometres away, in a seemingly unrelated event, neighbours in Maitland Place, Kirrawee, in Sydney’s south begin talking about the ‘poshy’ car that has been parked by the curb of their small suburban strip overnight. Some residents remember seeing the silver Nissan X-Trail 4WD pull up at about 6 pm the previous evening, and a ‘woman and a couple of blokes’ get out. Some think they are just visitors. Sandra Lee Ayton notices a distinctive large crack spreading across most of the car’s front windscreen, casually patched with black gaffer tape. It does look suspicious and attracts more attention than the shadowy strangers who had gotten out of the vehicle and calmly walked away towards Singleton Place. On that Thursday afternoon, a neighbour calls out to Gina Akkawy to stop her three-year-old toddler Sumaya 130
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from touching the car because there is what looks like a blood smear on the side door. Mrs Akkawy cups her hands against the driver’s door window and peers inside. She notices the car’s ignition is intact and the doors are locked, so speculation that the car is stolen can’t be right. But then she notices the dark stains on the front passenger seat. What are those black chunks of stuff? she asks herself. Another neighbour reports the car and its licence plate to Sutherland police station. Officers there find the vehicle is registered to a promotions company from the NSW north coast. They cannot get hold of the company proprietor, so ring his wife instead. Sutherland police station’s Senior Constable Kym Toomer rings Sarah on her mobile at about 3.45 pm and asks where she is. Sarah replies that she is in Western Australia on holidays and is preparing to fly out to Bali. The police officer tells her that her car has been found in the Kirrawee area. ‘Oh no, has it been stolen again?’ Sarah asks casually, telling the officer her X-Trail had been stolen once before from outside her old home in Rose Bay in 2002. Her voice wavers as she struggles to hold back another flood of tears. It’s all starting to unravel. She thought Jai had gotten rid of the car. How could it have been found so quickly? Toomer explains that the car has a broken windscreen, and is in Kirrawee. She tells Sarah the car can be towed back to her flat at Marine Parade if she likes. The officer then rings Maroubra detectives and speaks with Senior Constable Forsyth and tells him of the car belonging to a woman from Marine Parade found abandoned in Kirrawee. 131
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It’s a routine matter, a minor issue, but it is a crucial telephone call that sets alarm bells ringing. ‘We had a job in Marine Parade, Maroubra, yesterday,’ the officer says, telling his Sutherland colleague that he doesn’t believe in coincidences. He asks Toomer to make sure the car is immediately preserved as evidence. At 5 pm, Sutherland officers are briefed about the car and the possibility that it has been involved in a murder in Maroubra. A number of officers are sent out to speak to residents along Maitland Place and search the street for clues. Detective Sergeant David Neal is among the first to arrive on the scene. The thirty-four year old from the Forensic Services Group gives technical advice and support on getting the most out of crime scenes and evidence. When he arrives at the Maitland Place cul-de-sac where the car had been found, only chalk marks remain, as the car has been taken to a secure corner of Sutherland police station’s basement. He walks up and down the small street, taking notes on the distance of the car from the intersection of Singleton Place and the surrounding bushland. After a short conversation with two detectives, he drives to Sutherland police station. In the basement, the car is surrounded by police tape and remains largely untouched. Neal sees the front windscreen has a lot of black tape covering up three distinctive holes and a web of cracks radiating from them. He notices smears on the outside of the car where someone has tried to clean something off. It tests positive for blood. Blood is smudged all over the side windows, silver door handles and doors. The tyres have also recently been painted black. 132
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An NRMA Road Service crewman helps Neal break into the locked car. As he opens the door he immediately reels back from the strong smell of ammonia inside. He holds a hand to his nose as he recovers his composure. He figures someone has tried to clean the car, but it was a poor effort. Inside the vehicle is like a bloodbath, and the officer turns to a new page in his notebook as he begins to record the extensive splattering. ‘There is a large amount of blood in the front passenger area and centre console,’ he writes. ‘I see that blood has run down the sides of the front passenger seat and into the rear near-side foot well. I see that there is dried blood on the front passenger seat, dashboard, seatbelt, glove box and floor. There is also dried blood on the steering wheel, gear stick and rear near-side passenger window. There is a high velocity blood splatter on the rear-view mirror, front passenger sun visor and roof, and above the front passenger seat near the internal light . . . I see that there is blood staining on the front console cover. I lifted the cover and saw that there was a large amount of blood inside the console cavity which is still wet.’ His description of the blood is lengthy and continues in more detail and includes the finding of a bloody bullet cartridge on the passenger-side floor. In case there has been more than one person killed or injured in the car, he takes swab samples of the blood from numerous places. ◆
About the same time, after earlier receiving an on-site briefing at Marine Parade from officer Paul Simpkins about the day’s events, the Homicide Squad’s Detective Senior Constable Glen Browne and Maroubra detective 133
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Andrew Pincham drive to Dundas to speak with the uncle of the car’s registered owner. He explains that his nephew’s estranged wife, Sarah, usually has the car when he is away, and believes his nephew is travelling overseas at the moment on a prosurfing tour. At 10.45 pm, Senior Constable Brian Barnes from the police force’s Video Operations Section drives to Marine Parade with orders to film the entire scene. Already vital clues have been lost due to the deluge of rain overnight and the number of people who had walked through the area the following day. The skies are again looking threatening as a southerly buster forces a rolling 3 to 4metre swell to crash spectacularly against the cliff face. A generator drones in the background as it powers floodlights brought in to light the area. Some locals are still looking on as police work through the night under the haunting lights and shadows. An hour after arriving and surveying the scene, Barnes begins filming the cliff area and, in particular, the tidal flow over a section of rocks at the base of Mistral Point. The dog squad has arrived and is helping police to follow a clear blood trail to the driveway of number 44 Marine Parade. The digital recording of the frothing Maroubra surf is sporadic, taking in ten minutes every half-hour. The exhausted officer finishes his first taperecording at 3.08 am, then changes tapes and continues filming for another forty minutes. Police later review the footage and see that the high tide never reaches the section of rocks bearing the bloody stain of a torso. This can only mean that the body was either still alive when it fell, or was pushed off the ledge by its killer or killers. 134
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‘Someone went to great lengths to ensure the evidence was swallowed up by the sea,’ Pincham tells a colleague. ‘It’s frustrating that a body could be under rocks just metres away from us but the weather is keeping us from moving forward.’ ◆
The following day, Friday 8 August, fourteen specialist police officers from the Operational Support Group (OSG) search bushland and a recreational park and tennis courts near Maitland Place in Kirrawee. In Maroubra, PolAir again searches Mistral Point’s rocky shoreline, which is inaccessible by foot. Police are still no closer to knowing who or what it is they are looking for, despite discovering a woman’s white thong and a bloody cigarette pack amongst the large amount of refuse gathered from the park area by police. Marine Parade residents have also failed to provide police with any substantial account of what might have happened in the park across the road on either the Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. An off-duty surveillance police officer who lives on the ground floor of one block of flats says he didn’t hear a thing. Neither did neighbour Geoff Dareton, who tells police he only moved into his apartment the day before and slept like a log after shifting a house full of furniture all day. Another resident, Murray Brian, had had a big night out that night and when two officers, a male and a female, knock on his door to ask about the blood on the road outside his unit he can tell them nothing. Local resident Hanap Howe tells police he doesn’t know if it is relevant, but he was reversing out of his garage about 8.30 am on Wednesday morning when he 135
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saw a man standing in the rear of 44 Marine Parade. He describes the figure as about 6 foot tall, of slim build, and wearing a jacket with a hood. Howe thought he might have been a thief and called out ‘Can I help you?’, to which the hooded man simply nodded and continued calling out to someone upstairs and motioning as if to catch something about to be thrown out the window. Mr Howe had continued on his way and thought nothing more of the incident. Police take note and thank him for his time. It could be relevant. No one has reported that before. Mark Bieder, from the police Rescue and Bomb Disposal Unit, arrives at the crime scene about 8.30 am and, after a short briefing with colleagues including the PolAir crew, he and another senior constable begin abseiling down the cliff face. Within minutes the experienced officer finds a man’s size 12 running shoe wedged in a crevice well below the high water mark and about 40 metres north of the crime scene. Describing the shoe to colleagues as being in ‘perfect’ condition—so it has clearly not been in the water long—he decides to concentrate his search in that area and moves sideways across the rock face, guiding himself along with his hands. It is painstaking work but he thinks to himself that this is what being a cop is all about. A detective’s case is only as good as he makes it with whatever evidence he can find. At 9.35 am, Bieder makes his way down to a small cave in the rock face and makes the grim discovery he has been expecting. There in the cave is the naked body of a man. The man’s body is wedged well inside the cave with only the lower half sticking out. It looks bizarre, almost comical, as if it were a stiff shop mannequin stored headfirst in a box waiting for some attendant to dust it off from 136
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last season and dress it up for a new display. Not only is its position unnatural, so too is the white hairless skin. ◆
Ten minutes earlier, a team of police divers—who have been prevented from getting near the scene by a large swell for the past forty-eight hours—are finally able to start searching the ocean below Mistral Point. Diving from police zodiac number 32, Senior Constable Joshua Lisle and his colleagues search a 50-metre underwater radius from the suspected body drop-off point, high above them. Lisle, a qualified diver with three years’ experience in the field, is amazed at the moon-like terrain below the surface of the sea, with large boulders and craters and reefs creating dozens of crevices and small caves. Visibility is at times as much as 8 metres, but then reduces to zero when white water breaks off a wave. He has just finished the first phase of the search when he gets a signal from above that a body has been found. He and another officer swim the few metres from their launch to the scene. After video and photographic evidence is taken of the scene and body, whose upper torso, hands and head have been wedged deep inside the cave, Lisle climbs inside and attaches a rope to the body’s legs. There is nothing dignified about what he is doing, but then death by murder is not usually dignified. The body is hard to grasp and there is no way to free it other than to simply yank it. Together Lisle and a number of colleagues haul on the rope until the body emerges from the cave. They are surprised to find the body is almost completely naked and so badly battered by the surf and rocks it looks like the man has 137
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been skinned. There is very little body hair and few distinguishing features left. The body is placed into a bag and winched by PolAir chopper to the police command post which has been set up at the centre of the park above. The helicopter then winches the divers up. Lisle looks back at the cliffs below and knows he will have to make several more trips back there over the next couple of months as detectives try to piece the find together. When the body bag is detached from the helicopter’s winch and is lying on the grassy verge, police don disposable surgical gloves and unzip it. From afar onlookers crane their necks to see what is going on. They now know police have found something, someone, and want more. Forget television, this is the real thing; CSI Sydney. Despite the lack of fancy gadgets and Armani-wearing forensic police, this is gripping stuff. One of the officers pulls out her notebook and scribbles her observation that the mystery man has a moustache and goatee, and his slimy pale skin suggests he has been in the water for a while. In a brown paper bag placed near the body is a Brooks size 12 US left running shoe which was found near the cliff base. Police abseil down the face of Mistral Point again to look for more evidence, but find very little other than a pack of Benson and Hedges cigarettes. ◆
Fingerprints and DNA tests confirm the body found off the cliffs of Maroubra is rapist, standover man and father of one Anthony Gerard Vincent Hines. A quick check on the COPS computer system back at Maroubra police station reveals a long history of violent crimes, 138
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including up to a dozen serious assaults. Most of the uniformed officers at the station know Hines personally or by reputation after years of being called to attend incidents. Sometimes officers would turn up to a pub where someone had been beaten to within an inch of his life and know it was the work of Hines. But there were never any witnesses. Ten, twenty, thirty people could have been around when it happened, but when police ask around they are all met with the same response: ‘I must have been in the loo when it happened, officer.’ Everybody knows that to testify against Hines is to have an enemy for life. He won’t just bump into you and tickle you up— if you ever cross him, he will actively hunt you down and beat you senseless. ◆
On the day Hines’s body is found, a number of senior officers visit his home on Coogee Street to break the news to his former partner and the mother of his child, Rachel Gibbins. After a short interview they then ask permission to search his belongings. She asks how he died and they simply respond that he was shot. They don’t tell her that after he was shot and thrown off the cliff, the thrashing surf all but totally skinned him as it pummelled his body into the rocky shoreline over and over again. It is neither the place nor the time to go into specifics. Besides, the officers are not really sure of the details, that job belongs to someone else. That someone else is government pathologist Dr Paul Botterill. ◆
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In his deafeningly quiet white-tiled autopsy room, Dr Botterill picks up a clipboard and looks over the first notations on the body in front of him, made by Chatswood’s Forensic Services Group Senior Constable Katie O’Neil on the day it was found and zipped into the blue tarp bag. The notes are short and Botterill was there himself when the body was found, but it’s a ritual he likes to perform before examining any body. From the time those first notes are taken to the time the body is laid out on the bench before him at the Department of Forensic Medicine in Glebe, small changes could take place. As he reads the initial report he looks down and confirms what he is seeing. The body’s head is disfigured, with a portion of skull missing, and there are significant abrasions to his face. The report notes abrasions and loss of skin and flesh along both arms and a notable wound of some sort to the right hand. After a thorough examination, Botterill begins his ten-page report on Hines. Anthony Gerard Vincent Hines Institute Case 03/20880 Coroner’s Case # 1350/03 August 10, 2003 He begins simply enough—male, thirty-six years old, 94.5 kilograms, 183 centimetres tall, circumcised, no clothing on body, found wedged beneath rocks off Maroubra on 8 August 2003. But then he goes into the details of the trauma the body endured before and after it was thrown off the Mistral Point cliffs. ‘In plain terms, autopsy findings included three gunshot wounds around the right ear associated with extensive damage to the skull and face, a gunshot wound to the 140
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back of the right hand, extensive breaking of the bones of the skull and ribs and damage to the outside of the body consistent with being immersed in seawater,’ he concludes, later describing the injuries as ‘abrasions marine movement’. Notably, Botterill finds in his final report that Hines had ecstasy in the bloodstream to a level in the reported and accepted potentially fatal range, as well as a blood alcohol level of 0.143 g/100 ml. ‘As at the time of autopsy the cause of death was believed to be gunshot wounds to the head although the possible contribution of concurrent amphetamine and alcohol toxicity is difficult to assess,’ he records. The experienced pathologist knew the ecstasy and alcohol level in the victim would be seized on by defence counsel should anyone actually be arrested and charged with his murder. He summarises seven key contributors to Hines’s death as the three gunshot wounds to the head, one to the hand, fragmentation of the skull from the gun and cliff fall, abrasions from the surf, blunt force/cliff fall rib fractures, peritoneal cavity fibrous abrasions, ecstasy and alcohol. Close-up photographs are taken to add to the Hines file. ◆
Kiwi journalist Tony Wall has been with the Daily Telegraph in Sydney for only a short time, and a story on the life and crimes of Tony Hines gives him his first chance to demonstrate his writing and investigative skills. After a week he gets his first break when a woman rings him anonymously and says she wants to meet. ‘I will meet you at the wharf at Manly at 10.30 in the 141
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morning, come alone and no photographers. I will have some things for you,’ she says. The burly New Zealander turns up and meets a pretty thirty-something woman. She tells him she is—was—a friend of Hines, that they had dated for a long time, but he had become a bit of a stalker. Even from jail he would ring her at all hours of the night, using a mobile telephone smuggled into his Windsor jail cell, and send her and other women photos of himself wearing nothing but his jocks. And then there were those letters. Explicit yet loving in some, angry and destructive in others. The woman hands some photographs over to Wall, including the one of Hines in his underwear, and then says she wants nothing more to do with the story. Before Wall finishes his weekend feature on the murder he receives a call from another anonymous person, not so friendly as the last, who had also heard the Telegraph was putting together a report. ‘I’m gonna track you down and blow your fuckin’ head off; just let him rest in peace, you maggot,’ the caller says before hanging up. Wall writes his story, a lengthy spread complete with the picture of a gym-honed Hines posing in his underwear, but soon after it is published another pro-Hines call comes in and makes more threats. Then another. Wall hands the story on to another seasoned police reporter, more accustomed to threats and abuse. He then decides Sydney is not for him; he resigns soon after and returns to New Zealand. ‘There’s usually very little mystery and definitely less death threats associated with our murders,’ the Kiwi reporter says with a shrug as he leaves Sydney Airport on a one-way airline ticket. 142
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‘During the time that I have known Jai I have only known him to be a kind and nice person. I have never known Jai to be violent. Jai likes to train and practise jujitsu. To my knowledge Jai has been staying home on weekends and he hasn’t been taking any drugs,’ concluded Sarah in a recorded police interview on 10 August 2003. After making a connection between Hines’s body and Sarah’s X-Trail, detectives fly to Perth to interview the woman. Her father turns up at the police station with her, believing the truth might finally come out. They meet with Browne and Pincham. After a short conversation with Sarah, the detectives call the commander of the Homicide Squad, Detective Superintendent Nick Kaldos, to get approval to offer Sarah an inducement. They realise they are not getting the full story and, as is common practice, can make an offer of prosecution immunity in exchange for information that leads to a conviction. Sarah’s father formally witnesses the offer, which makes it clear that no information Sarah provides to 143
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police can be used against her. At 10.30 pm Sarah starts to describe all that she saw. The interview and typing of the statement finishes at 1 am. She returns to the station the next day at 10 am to provide a buccal swab for DNA purposes. On 12 August, Sarah returns to NSW with detectives Pincham and Browne and is installed in an undisclosed ‘secure’ hotel. The next morning, the two officers and Detective Senior Constable Mark Brabrook, from the State Crime Command, meet Sarah outside her hotel. With Pincham at the wheel, the four drive in an unmarked car to Marine Parade via the junction of Malabar and Maroubra roads. Brabrook videotapes the conversation and completes the recorded driving tour about 2.15 pm. The unmarked police car has tinted windows, as there are concerns for Sarah’s safety if she is identified with police in the Maroubra area. ◆
On 15 August, Sarah flies back to Perth at about the same time that a search warrant is executed on the Abberton family home at Franklin Street, Chifley. There they speak with Jai’s mother Lynette Anne Harvey Abberton about her eldest son. She tells police that he had been at her house on 6 August, which was not unusual since he visited up to three times a week, usually to get his washing done. ‘Jai is thirty years old but I still do his washing,’ she says. Police ask about his mood and his appearance that day, and whether in the past few weeks he had expressed any fears or girlfriend problems. ‘No, he doesn’t tell me anything; he is more likely to 144
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go to his brothers. If I ask him questions he just gets aggro.’ ‘What do you mean by aggro?’ a police officer asks. ‘Just angry, he tells me to mind my own business.’ ◆
On 18 August at 11.50 am, Browne receives a telephone call in his office at the State Crime Command from solicitor Paul Hardin. Hardin says his client Jai Abberton wants to come in and asks if they could meet detectives at 2 pm at the Surry Hills police station, attached to the Sydney Police Centre (SPC) where police expect to charge him. Browne says that would be a good idea and would save everyone a lot of trouble. Shortly before the appointed time, Detective Chief Inspector Mick Sheehy, the case manager of the investigation and officer in charge of tasking duties for the case, speaks with Hardin, who says he is caught up in court with another matter and will be late. He arrives shortly after 2.30 pm and has a chat with Pincham, Sheehy and Browne outside the police station before Abberton saunters over. He is looking at the ground as he walks and appears to be in no hurry. The men introduce themselves with handshakes before taking Jai to an interview room at the rear of the station and telling him what he has been expecting to hear for days. ‘Jai, I want you to understand that you are under arrest for the murder of Anthony Hines. Do you understand that?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘You are not obliged to say or do anything unless you wish to do so, as anything you say or do may be recorded 145
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and may later be used as evidence. Do you understand that?’ ‘Yeah.’ After a few minutes, when it is clear Jai is not going to volunteer anything beyond ‘yeah’ or ‘no’, he is led away to the SPC to be formally charged with the murder of Hines. He is again cautioned about his right to remain silent, and it is Hardin who then speaks on behalf of his client. ‘If I can indicate at this stage that my client, on legal advice, does not wish to participate in any record of interview,’ he says. The police sigh in disappointment, but it is an act, a game they often play. They know he will not be speaking, but the sighs and head shakes are a way of telling a defendant ‘we are on your side, mate, we are trying to help you with this’. After he is charged, police take a DNA swab from Jai and a number of photographs—‘because of information that has been provided to us by a witness,’ they tell him as they ask him to turn left and right and left again. They note his extensive tattooing, including ‘Bra Boys’ on his back, ‘My Brothers Keeper’ on the back of his right arm, ‘Nat’ on the left side of his chest, a design pattern on the inside of his right forearm, and other markings on the rear right shoulderblade. After the formal charging process finishes, a curious exchange takes place between Browne and Pincham and Jai as he sits in the dock waiting for Corrective Services officers to take him to jail. It is the first time Jai gives more than a single-word response, and it is both a partial confession and a hint as to what his later court defence would be. The officers cannot believe their ears and are 146
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excited by Jai’s candid remarks. But the exchange also highlights fears that both police and Sarah have that she will be punished for rolling over and giving evidence against her former boyfriend. ‘Jai, you are probably aware by now that Sarah has given us a statement regarding this matter. She wanted us to pass on a message to you.’ ‘Yeah?’ Jai replies. ‘Sarah wanted you to know that she made the statement telling the truth about what happened that night because she felt that she had to. She did not want to cause trouble for you, and in fact she originally provided a statement to police which did not provide any information about the murder. For some reason she actually seems to care for you and she is concerned about what will happen to you now.’ ‘Yeah, no worries.’ ‘We are also concerned and want to make sure that nothing happens to Sarah because she has made a statement telling the truth. Do you understand what I am saying?’ ‘Yeah, nothing will happen to her, I understand why she did it. She’s all right, eh?’ Pincham then jumps in. ‘No mates of yours will do anything?’ ‘No, they won’t do anything.’ Browne continues, ‘All right, she wanted us to pass on that message, and she actually wants to talk to you at some stage to explain why she spoke to police. She obviously still cares for you and feels bad for you.’ ‘Yeah, she’s the reason I did it, you know. It will all come out at court. He was going to rape her. I had to do it. He pulled out the gun and I got it off him and did it.’ 147
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Pincham: ‘Where did he get the gun from?’ ‘It will all come out at court. I did it for Sarah.’ ‘No worries,’ Pincham says, and Jai is taken away in the Corrective Services van to spend his first night in Silverwater prison. It will be the first and last time Jai will speak directly to police, and is the only time he discusses the case before his trial in 2005. ◆
On 18 August—the same day that Jai is arrested—police diver Joshua Lisle returns to waters around Maroubra but sea conditions are still poor and the search for a weapon is abandoned. The MAC Diving Unit team try again a week later on 26 August, but again the 1-metre swell combined with moderate south-westerly winds makes searching impossible in churned cloudy waters. It is a frustrating time. The rough location of the weapon had been revealed by Sarah days earlier and the State Crime Command has made it very clear that finding it will seal the case for them. Standing on the shore, the dive team look at Randwick Golf Course’s fifth tee green and imagine how far a man’s arm could throw a weapon into the ocean. Although she had stayed in the car and never physically saw Jai throw the weapon, wrapped in a plastic bag, into the sea, Sarah had detailed to police the direction she saw Jai coming from after he had disposed of it. She also mentioned seeing an ‘orange helicopter’ flying over the golf course and circling around at the time Jai was running back to the car. This fact, mentioned in passing, helps police pinpoint the probable location of the weapon. The orange helicopter was the Westpac Lifesaver Rescue chopper. Its flight chart helps police 148
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record a time of probable weapon disposal from the golf course at between 6.55 am and 7.08 am on 6 August. The pilot was interviewed by police and said he saw nothing sinister going on below him on the fairway, but then, ‘I wasn’t looking,’ he adds. Finally, on 13 September, the team of four divers enter the water from an inflatable boat via the Fishermans Road boat ramp at Long Bay. The inflatable is stopped at the eastern-most part of the Long Bay southern headland and adjacent to the fifth tee. There is a gentle 0.6-metre swell and entering the water is easy. Within minutes the divers are searching the ocean floor by hand, four abreast. In less than an hour they spot a revolver 8 to 10 metres east of the rocky shoreline. The weapon is free of any seaweed and marine growth and they know it can only have been in the water a short time. The revolver is later positively identified as a .445 Webley six-shot with ballistics matching it to the murder of Hines. ◆
Two days later Brian reads in the newspaper that a body had been found at the base of the cliff at Mistral Point. He gets a solicitor and voluntarily approaches police. ‘I picked up the paper and I’ve read that it said something about the murder and my heart just dropped in my mouth. I had a gut feeling and I was sick—it said they’d found a car at Kirrawee with bullet holes in it but detectives won’t say whether it’s linked or not but it’s under investigation, but I mean I am not stupid, I put two and two together and I’ve just weighed it up. I’ve just been sick ever since. I’ve just kept bottling it up inside ever since. I haven’t spoken to anyone,’ Brian tells police. 149
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He finishes his statement with a few short words about Jai. ‘No, he’s got a good heart, he’d do anything for anyone. Shit, if you’re broke and you need fifty and he’s got it he’ll buy you a beer. ‘He’s got a really big heart, he’ll help anyone out, that’s why it blew me away. Everyone says it’s just out of character, it would have had to have been a bloody big reason for him to do something like that, like his life in jeopardy or something.’ With testimonies from both Sarah and Brian in hand, detectives know it is time to swoop on their most recognisable suspect—Koby Abberton. Koby attends Maroubra police station with his lawyer, Jason Dimmock, on Monday, 15 September 2003. They are met by Pincham and another detective. After formal introductions, the group moves to an interview room where Pincham introduces himself again for the purpose of the tape recorder. He says he is investigating the death of Tony Hines and formally cautions Koby that anything he says could be used against him later in court. Koby just replies ‘yep’ to his questions. Then came the question-and-answer session that would seal Koby’s fate one year later on 15 October, 2004, when he is committed to stand trial. ‘Can you tell me what you were doing on the night of Tuesday, 5 August 2003?’ Pincham asks. ‘I had a girl over and watched some TV and went to sleep.’ ‘Who was the girl that you had over that night, the fifth of August 2003? ‘I can’t remember which girl it was.’ ‘Was Jai at home that night?’ 150
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‘I think he was home earlier in the day but he wasn’t at home at night.’ ‘Do you know what time he left that day?’ ‘No, no idea.’ ‘Was anyone else at your home that day?’ ‘I can’t remember.’ ‘Can you remember what you did that night after you watched TV?’ ‘I slept with a girl.’ Koby goes on to recall he had no other visitors, the anonymous girl left some time later that night and he didn’t know who came in or out of the house since he slept with his bedroom door closed. He admits he knows both Sarah and Ron Reardon but denies having seen them on the fifth or sixth of August. When asked what he did the next day, Koby replies, ‘Same as every day: went surfing and hung around the shops or beach.’ Pincham then reveals that forensic testing of Koby’s seized Holden Monaro had revealed blood spots. ‘Can you explain where this blood may have come from?’ Pincham asks. ‘No idea,’ is the short reply. There are a few more questions about the Monaro: where it is usually kept, who is the driver and where it was on the night before and after the murder. Koby would have known from the questioning that someone has ratted on him and he is now in trouble. But still he believes the police had nothing solid on him, and anyway he was not part of the murder scene. He is charged a few months later. ◆ 151
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On 3 November, police mount a surveillance operation on the Eastlakes home of amateur boxer Ronald Reardon. At 3.55 pm he is spotted leaving his unit carrying a sports bag over his shoulder. Detective Senior Constable Mark Brabrook follows him to Evans Road and calls out his name. He stops, then realises they are plain-clothes police using the oldest trick in the book of identification—call out and watch the response. ‘I am informing you that you are under arrest,’ Brabrook says to a disappointed-looking Reardon. ‘I believe the charge is concealing a serious offence and other charges related to the death of Tony Hines.’ Reardon explains he was just on his way to see Jason Dimmock, who he has engaged to represent him. He sits in the gutter while his bag—containing two sets of clean clothes and toiletries—is searched, then he is taken away for questioning and charging. ◆
About 150 people attend the Hines funeral and the wake held at his beloved Coogee Bay Hotel—the bar at which he had drunk his last drink. Friends of Beryl Hines, Johnny Lewis and high-profile solicitor Chris Murphy, who had represented him during his rape trial, attend but many others don’t, suspecting police will be there keeping a watch on them. Johnny Lewis, who last saw Hines at a Reardon boxing bout at the Round House at the University of New South Wales, gives the eulogy and says that he is going to write a letter to Tony’s daughter so that she knows the good things about her father and doesn’t only know him from what had been written about him in the press. 152
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Earl Heatley didn’t attend the funeral, but after Hines’s death he surmised that he was killed because he was under so much pressure. Mentally and physically he was stronger than Jai, but in the end he underestimated what his threats and taunts would drive another man do. ‘He was under the stick . . . That’s a racing term for a horse copping a flogging,’ Heatley says. ‘When he was killed he was under more stress than he’d ever been in his life. He went down a rung on the ladder, that’s why he got himself killed.’
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When Jai Abberton first appears in Central Local Court charged with murder on 19 August 2003, Koby instantly becomes the media focus, with Jai’s court appearance only attracting a mention as ‘the brother of surfing star charged with murder of standover man and Bra Boys founder’. Jai makes several appearances in court that year, usually to try for bail or to be present for a brief of evidence swap between the Crown and his defence counsel. But essentially the media is not interested. The attitude is very much that one gangland thug has been killed by another, and the incident means two violent offenders are now off the streets of Maroubra. But all that changes when, almost eight months later on 8 March 2004, Koby appears in Waverley Local Court to face charges of his own. ‘Surfing star’s link to murder—international sportsman accused in Maroubra cliffside killing’ was how the Daily Telegraph reported the event, featuring a large 154
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billboard photo of Koby surrounded by models and wearing his sponsor’s Oakley sunglasses. The Australian newspaper was a little more understated, headlining the arrest with ‘Surf star’s link to murder’ on page 7. Koby initially revels in the attention that is fast evolving into a media circus. Television crews clamber over each other for a shot of the surf star walking in and out of court to splice together with file footage of his bigwave surfing feats for their six o’clock news bulletins. Suddenly, the fearless surfer whose name was barely known outside of the water sports world is big news. In early 1998 Koby had barely attracted more than a few paragraphs in the mainstream press after winning the Tahiti Gotcha Teahupoo Pro. But five years later he will remain in the headlines for all the wrong reasons; his private life will be public property for the next two years. Koby is charged with being an accessory after the fact of murder, in that ‘he did harbour, maintain and assist’ his brother; act with intent to pervert the course of justice by providing police with a false version of events; hinder investigation of a serious indictable offence; and conceal a serious indictable offence in that ‘he did fail without reasonable excuse to bring information to the attention of a member of the police force or other appropriate authority knowing a serious offence’. The court hears that not only has Koby allegedly tried to cover up his brother’s blundering murder, but he himself is a member of a criminal surfing gang, notorious for hindering investigations and intimidating witnesses. ‘He is a senior leader of a criminal gang known as the Bra Boys based at Maroubra Beach,’ Abberton’s charge sheet, presented to Central Local Court, reads. It continues: 155
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Investigators through previous experience of charging members of this gang have found that witnesses are regularly intimidated into not attending court. Police believe this murder to be gang related. In this investigation, the accused along with other males have approached a key witness, pressuring him into supplying police with a false version. This witness is very concerned for his and his family’s safety. The accused is currently on bail for a matter involving the assault of a male at Maroubra Beach. The accused has been convicted of violent offences against police. The court agrees to a bail application on the condition that Koby not associate with any member of the Bra Boys, and that he report daily to police between 8 am and 8 pm. He also has to provide $25 000 in surety, which was a contractual advance from Oakley South Pacific. Another condition is that he is not to approach either Brian or Sarah, whose testimonies given to police a year earlier would later ensure Koby’s charges are found to be worthy of a full committal hearing. The Snickers Australian Open surf finals on Maroubra Beach a fortnight after Koby’s initial court appearance attract a lot more publicity than event organisers would have expected months earlier. Many have come to see six-time world champion Kelly Slater and forty-four of the world’s other top surfers carve up Maroubra’s small and disappointing swell. But others, including the media and a number of uniformed and plain-clothes detectives, have come to watch local entrant Koby Abberton. And as a surfer, he doesn’t disappoint his home-grown crowd. ‘It was good to have a win, especially with so many people watching,’ Abberton says on the beach after his surprise defeat of Slater to advance to the quarter-finals. 156
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‘I don’t care about what’s been going on in the press during the week. As far as I’m concerned it’s all a beatup by the media.’ Despite his resentment, Koby is content to pose for the media, even if some of the shots include him sticking up his middle finger at the camera, rendering the pictures unfit for print. The one-fingered salute is as much to the media as it is to the police who shadow the competition and don’t care whether Koby knows it or not. A few days later, at 7 am on 23 March, Koby hears someone banging on the door of his Curtin Crescent home. He is used to mates stopping by to borrow one of his boards or even coaxing him out of his bed and into the surf. But at his door he finds eight plain-clothes detectives from the NSW Crime Commission armed with a search warrant and an assets-seizure notice. For the next three hours they go through every part of his modest cream-brick home, with Koby unable to do a thing but sit on the couch and watch a video. ‘They went through everything pretty much, every cupboard, every drawer,’ he would later tell the media. ‘They said they were looking for money and they just put a freeze on all my assets and it’s pretty much police harassment.’ Koby, who estimates his income from sponsorship, surfing video royalties and photo shoots to be $300 000 a year, is stripped of his passport, which is later returned as part of his bail conditions. A number of other items are placed in brown paper bags, catalogued and numbered, and taken away in an unmarked police car. He immediately threatens to sue and calls his lawyer. Meanwhile, the media have a field day, with both the star and subject ideal for headline making. ‘Surfer in hot 157
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water says police won’t give him a break,’ suggests the Sydney Morning Herald. The newspaper’s Fairfax stablemate, the Sun-Herald backs this up a few days later with: ‘Koby ready to wave goodbye to freedom’. ‘The only thing I’m guilty of is being a Bra Boy, and that’s all I’ve done wrong in my life,’ Koby tells a Channel 10 news crew which was tipped off to the raid. ‘Whether it’s being at the beach and they’re sitting in a car across the road watching . . . It’s just getting to where I’m gonna take legal action.’ A few weeks later Koby gives Waves magazine an extraordinary account of his life since his arrest and his thoughts on the prospect of jail. They are honest words which show the same determination and stubbornness Koby portrays when surfing the world’s biggest waves. ‘I’ll die before I go to jail for ten years,’ Koby tells the mag. ‘My spirit’s free. If it comes down to it, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve lived long enough. Five years would be all right. Not ten though.’ In a way, his statements can also be read as recognition that the story is no longer a beat-up and that he really could be facing jail time for allegedly being his brother’s keeper. ◆
On Tuesday 4 May, for the first time that any of the newsroom stalwarts can remember, the Daily Telegraph runs a full front-page picture of a surfer battling a Tahitian break. Under the headline ‘Bail out’, the article questions how a man on serious murder-related charges could be allowed out on bail to enjoy the tropics and the freedom to compete in overseas surfing titles. The newspaper reports that the previous week Koby did not appear in Waverley Court for his sentencing for 158
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possessing two fake driver’s licences and driving while unlicensed. The matter had to be adjourned, with his legal counsel telling the court the surf star was suffering glandular fever. ‘His illness did not stop him from on Sunday posting a near-perfect score of 9.43 in his round three heat in the Air Tahiti Nui Trials,’ the newspaper reports. His appearance at the Teahupoo break trials, a forerunner to the Billabong Pro Tahiti championship, also rates an inside editorial and a second article voicing expressions of outrage from the NSW Opposition, criticising the Labor Government’s bail laws. The previous year, Premier Bob Carr had made much fanfare of his ‘toughening’ of the bail legislation to ensure those charged with serious offences remained in remand until their court hearings. The issue is picked up by other media outlets and by the next day NSW Attorney-General Bob Debus is pressured into announcing he will be raising the issue with Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery QC. The fact that Koby later loses his bid to compete against the world’s best in the Billabong Pro after making a fourth-round exit in the competition barely makes the news, even in the sports pages. Koby does make a pretence of being infuriated by the coverage and particularly the Daily Telegraph’s frontpage treatment, but those close to him confide he actually liked his surfing style splashed on page 1. It is a good photograph. As his counsel Jason Dimmock later remarks outside court after one of Koby’s many appearances, for the twenty-five year old it is all about surfing and nothing else really matters. ‘As long as he can keep surfing he doesn’t care really, he’s happy,’ Dimmock says, referring to one of many 159
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disappointing false-start court appearances that Koby would be forced to make. Koby does appear in court on 13 May for a brief mention of his case, and his bail conditions are slightly altered. He is now ordered to give police forty-eight hours notice before any planned travel and is required to provide a full itinerary, including where he planned to sleep each night, movements during the day, and full details of the surfing tournament he proposed to attend. In June, Koby is handed a twelve-month good behaviour bond by Waverley Magistrate Lee Anne Gilmour for possessing the two fake driver’s licences which he told the court were never meant to deceive, and were a harmless joke sent to him by a fan. The fan had apparently wrongly read in a surfing magazine that Koby did not drive and didn’t have a licence. The licences—one of which was a poor-quality imitation and had Koby wearing glasses—were found in Koby’s house when it was raided back in August 2003. Gilmour says it is of ‘grave concern’ someone is able to make forged licences, but there is never any evidence that Koby used them for anything and she believes he has ‘conquered his fear’ and will obtain a legitimate driver’s permit himself.
On 9 June, the evidence against the Abberton brothers is finally made public, with police prosecutor Darren Robinson presenting for the first time, to the Central Local Court, a summary of what police suspect happened on the night of 5 August the previous year. Jai sits in the perspex-glassed dock of Court 2 wearing a dark suit, patterned shirt and an expressionless face as Robinson gives a chilling detailed account of the night. 160
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Outside the dock area, but directly in front of Jai, sits a large grey Samsonite travel suitcase, which Robinson announces contains a massive police brief of events, including 164 statements, contained in five volumes marked A, 1, 2, 3 and 3A. All eyes follow, including Jai’s, as Robinson struggles to lift one of the volumes above his head to highlight to Magistrate Brian Maloney that the briefs he is about to read are indeed as weighty as the evidence. ‘Well, I don’t want all of them,’ the magistrate sighs. It’s going to be a long day. He is then handed an abridged version. Both Pincham and Sims sit at the back of the court and the media sit in the front, straining to hear over the rumble of the underground train network below their feet in a high-ceilinged courtroom renowned for its poor acoustics. The only other person in court trying to hear the evidence is a long-haired work experience student who has arrived with Jai’s defence counsel, Graham Turnbull. No doubt he will have a grand story to tell his mates at school later. Koby, meanwhile, appears in Court 1 next door, and is telling the magistrate there that he should have been competing in the Maldives but felt he had better appear. His case is adjourned in less than two minutes anyway, allowing his older brother Sunny to cross to Court 2 to watch Jai’s case unfold. Throughout the numerous court appearances of his two brothers, Sunny has always been present. Sometimes he arrives with friends and other times alone. At each appearance police try to talk to him, and on one occasion managed to give him one of their business cards with a ‘Call us. We would like to talk to you about your brothers.’ He just smiled, politely took the card 161
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and ran the gauntlet of the media pack. He never speaks to police, prompting some prosecutors to suspect he is somehow planning on becoming a witness for the defence for one or both of his brothers once their trials start. He isn’t. He just doesn’t see the need to talk to police at the moment, and they don’t have any legal reason to compel him to do so. The transcripts provided to court that day read like a crime novel, which in a sense they are. It is all laid out for the media, from the moment Jai, Sarah and Ron walk into the Coogee Bay Hotel to the time Sarah and Jai return to the cliff top to give Hines another shove off the cliff. Graham Turnbull begins his defence with an astonishing early claim. After Robinson has displayed the lengthy briefs and handed an abridged version up to the magistrate to read, Turnbull stands and concedes there is sufficient evidence to confirm his client has ‘performed the act’. ‘I’m not making concessions or no admission in respect of the act . . . But there is enough evidence here in totality to confirm . . . that he did perform the act,’ he says, adding that while there is enough evidence to make the requisite requirement for a committal, he does have a valid defence, which he is not yet prepared to outlay. Detectives Pincham and Sims both take the stand that day and are questioned about their note-taking during the interrogation of Jai. Were their notes taken in an official police notepad or on loose-leaf paper? Who asked the questions and where were people sitting in the interview room? Describe the interview room—5 metres by 3 metres. Who signed which statements and when? The questions prompt Magistrate Maloney to finally ask, ‘Where is all this going?’ 162
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Defence counsel drop whatever issue they are pursuing and move on to give the court tantalising snippets of what Jai’s defence will be. He did fear his girlfriend was to be raped and he was consumed with fears and foreboding. Hines, Turnbull claims, was never lured into the car, and what took place that night had all the ‘hallmarks of spontaneous events where self-defence is evident’. Turnbull touches on Hines’s character ‘as a violent man, a man who did not exercise control’, who had raped, took drugs, was intimidating and by her own admission, a person Sarah feared for both her and her boyfriend Jai’s safety. Turnbull argues that when his character was coupled with differences of opinion on who had the gun that night and what had occurred in the car, it was clear the jury faced many questions. As Hines had fiddled with the car radio on the night of his death, Turnbull tells the court, it was clear he had something on his mind. ‘Tony Hines was creating a firm impression of intimidation and fear and she expresses that at the time,’ he says of Sarah. At 3.15 pm Turnbull sums up by saying his client is pleading ‘not guilty’ and, at worst, he believes over the next few months his client faces the possibility of a lesser charge of manslaughter and should therefore be given bail. He has a stable address in Maroubra and an unnamed ‘well-respected man’ who lives on Parramatta Road will offer a surety on his behalf. ‘His community ties are tattooed between his shoulderblades and down his right arm,’ Turnbull says theatrically, adding that Jai had handed himself to police and is unlikely to be a flight risk. And just in case the thought crosses his mind, Turnbull says his client and backers can offer $500 000 in surety and more in equity and, if needed, ‘could go well beyond that’. 163
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But Maloney is not swayed and denies Jai bail. He says there are many questions unanswered in the evidence that need to be put to a jury. He says there is no doubt ‘the deceased was a very violent man, a standover man’ who evidence shows committed a litany of violent sexual and other assaults on his ex-partner and others. He reminds journalists present in court that there is a suppression order on the identity of Sarah, and orders court sheriffs to escort Abberton back to the cells to await the prison van to take him back to Silverwater. As he is being led away, Jai gives his brother Sunny a forced smile and the thumbs-up sign, then disappears down the steps of the dock to the cells under the courtroom. As Koby leaves Central Local Court that day he too smiles, only briefly, when a court sheriff—apparently a surfer, or at the very least a Maroubra local—rushes up to shake his hand with a ‘she’ll be right, mate’ smile. Koby thanks him and walks out of the Liverpool Street courthouse to face the click and chase of the awaiting media cameras. ◆
Several weeks later, on 22 July, Jai applies in the Supreme Court for bail and this time Turnbull makes his defence case very clear. His client did shoot dead the eastern suburbs standover man, but only in self-defence. He tells judge Terence Buddin his client shot him to protect his girlfriend, who Hines had allegedly planned to rape. Turnbull says Hines used words to the effect ‘I’ll pull her or end up with her tonight’. Hines had also threatened to break Jai’s arm if he did not apologise for some remark he had made. He says Jai will be pleading to the court 164
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that he acted in self-defence and in ‘the defence of others’. Turnbull renews his pledge that a mystery Abberton family friend will offer the court $500 000 surety if his client is given bail. Crown prosecutor Felicity Cain describes Jai Abberton’s claim as ‘self-serving’ and says there is no evidence to suggest that Hines had a gun that night. ◆
On 11 October 2004, Koby enters Downing Centre Local Court in full expectation that charges against him will be thrown out. Unlike his many earlier appearances where he wore sports gear—including a sweat shirt bearing the brand of his sponsor, Oakley—on this day he is immaculate in a black suit and polished black shoes. Even his trademark messy hair appears to be stylishly ruffled. His first disappointment comes when Prosecutor Darren Robinson fails to appear, his absence prompting magistrate Brian Lulham to express surprise that in ‘a matter as serious as this, no one is here from the DPP’. He then adjourns the matter. Half a hour later the parties are back in court with Robinson making humble apologies and blaming new security arrangements in the courthouse. With Sunny sitting a few metres behind him, Koby settles lazily into his chair and stares at his hands as Dimmock begins his case, calling for all charges against his client to be dropped. He tenders a short typed submission and speaks for about twenty minutes, discrediting Sarah’s evidence. He says her evidence initially doesn’t even mention Koby and when she does mention him it’s only to say he told her to take a shower. 165
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So what? That’s not evidence in itself that he is an accessory after the fact of murder. He could have said ‘Go have a shower so you don’t drip blood on my floor’ or ‘Go have a shower because you look a mess’. Dimmock tells the court everyone knows Koby leaves his car keys in a central place so it is questionable to suggest he is somehow complicit in allowing his car to be used. Dimmock’s tendered statement sums up his argument. Any jury would be concerned that the alleged involvement of the accused in the offences charged relies on inferences in circumstances where the accused was living in the same house as his brother. Accordingly there is no reasonable prospect that a jury would commit. At the end of Dimmock’s address Koby looks back at Sunny and receives a nod. He glances over to the media pack, sitting at small writing desks to one side of the courtroom, to ensure they are recording his innocence. All is apparently going well and if it wraps up, he can be back at Maroubra in time to catch the afternoon swell. Robinson’s address is half as long as Dimmock’s, but he tenders a detailed twenty-two page submission outlining the basis of Koby’s charges. He cites thirty cases to back his argument that the accused did go out of his way to hinder police, conceal a crime and pervert the course of justice. ‘There is strong evidence the accused knew what had taken place,’ he says. ‘Taking into account the whole of the evidence, the only reasonable inference to draw is that the accused knew of the facts amounting to the offence committed by Jai Abberton.’ 166
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Judge Lulham acknowledges that the accused is anxious to know the outcome but says he wants more time to read the statements and consider his decision and adjourns the matter for four days. On 15 October Koby again enters court full of confidence. He sits at the bar table with his back to the public gallery peering over his shoulder every now and then to smile at friends as they walk in. Lulham begins the hearing by asking Koby whether he wants to say anything. ‘No, your honour.’ Lulham then begins a lengthy statement detailing why the charges should remain and the evidence should be tested in a trial. During his speech Lulham accidentally refers to Brian as Clark and at least once appears to say Toby instead of Koby to the bemusement of both prosecution and defence. There is also some confusion with dates on police statements. Shortly after the magistrate says he intends to commit the accused on each of the four charges, Koby storms out of court in a furious state surrounded by Sunny and a number of tattooed supporters. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it will be alright,’ Sunny says. ‘No it’s fucked it’s just fucked. I thought these blokes were supposed to be smart, they couldn’t even get the dates right.’ Outside court in the glare of television cameras— including his own TV crew who are filming a short movie of his plight—Koby is reluctant to comment, leaving a friend to give a brief statement. ‘You from the media? I can give you a quote, go and get fucked!’ Koby is formerly arraigned in the NSW Supreme Court on 3 December and again pleads not guilty to all four 167
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charges. It is now set for a show trial with Koby and Jai to face a jury together with their cases being heard as one. Days before the trial is about to begin there is an amazing turn around when the DPP decides to drop the two heavier charges against Koby: that of accessory after the fact of murder and concealing a serious offence. The decision is announced in the Supreme Court on 30 March. While Koby still faces two other charges, this means his matter will be heard in the District Court where a judge is less likely to hand down a long sentence. This would also mean that Jai will face a jury alone and Koby’s matter will be heard by a judge alone and not a jury.
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Jai sits in the dark wooden dock of Sydney’s Supreme Court. He takes short sips of water from a plastic cup and nervously leans back and forth, adjusting his legs each time. He is a little fatter than he was when he was locked up 594 days ago, and looks odd in a blue business shirt, paisley tie and buttoned-up charcoal suit. He would rather throw on a hooded jumper and street pants, like his mates, who squeeze into four rows of public seating, unshaven with long hair and tanned skin. His barrister, Graham Turnbull, leans over the dock in his black gown and whispers in his ear. A potential juror has been called from the more than one hundred people summoned for jury duty who have filled the aisles and remaining court seats from 9.30 am. The call from Justice Terence Buddin’s associate, Anne Cochrane, reaches the back of the room and prompts a casually dressed obese man in his fifties to stand up and make his way to the front. The man struggles to walk up the tiny stairs of the jury box in the old Federation-style court169
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room. A brief conversation with Jai is all it takes for Turnbull to object to the heavy man’s assistance in the trial. The man turns around and exits the courtroom as five other men and seven women are selected to decide on the next ten to twenty years of Jai’s life. The group is chosen on a superficial level—from what experience and research says about their gender, manner and clothing. Perhaps a jury consisting of more females would sympathise with Jai, who was trying to protect his girlfriend from a convicted rapist—or they could be astounded at the way Hines was shot in a moving car and then thrown over a cliff. Jai stands with his chest out and hands cupped in front of him as he is asked by Cochrane how he pleads to one count of murdering Anthony Hines. ‘Not guilty,’ Jai answers, looking at the jury. Television, radio and newspaper journalists, police and supporters in the room all hear his deep crackly voice for the first time that morning. Seconds later he sits down and blinks his eyes quickly, rubbing his lips together and breathing deeply as if in a state of shock, still coming to terms with what is happening. ‘It will all come out in court,’ Jai had told detectives eighteen months ago when he was first questioned over the killing. Now that day in court, 4 April 2005, has finally come. Silver-haired crown prosecutor John Kiely SC begins the police case. Hines’s eldest sister, Sharon, a blonde middle-aged nurse, sits alone in an empty pew behind him and gives Jai, who is facing the jury, a long stare. It is the first time she has seen the man who is accused of murdering her younger brother. The loyal older sister is the only sibling among the three still remaining who 170
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turns up to court each day. She sits metres away from Jai’s clan, including his mother Lyn, Sunny, and a cleric from the Christian Surfers Association who reads from a Bible laid out on the bench in front of him. ‘What is murder?’ Kiely asks the jury in a quiet older man’s reedy voice. ‘That the accused caused the death, the actions were done unlawfully, and with the intention of killing Anthony Hines and causing grievous bodily harm,’ he answers his own question. ‘He [Jai] has agreed that the gunshot wounds were caused by a gun fired by him. He has agreed that the body was found at the bottom of a cliff. Did he do it unlawfully or did he do it with intent? . . . One shot to the head followed by a short break and then three additional shots . . . One shot to the front of the ear, below the ear and one shot behind . . . One shot to the hand . . . The crown has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he did not act in self-defence.’ Kiely slips his black thin-rimmed square glasses on and off as he reads from his notes. Softening his voice again he mentions Sarah (using a code name), a ‘young lady’ who had moved down from the north coast and had only known Jai for a short period of time. He explains that she was driving the car at the time of the shooting and they had taken off from a set of lights when she heard a noise ‘like a cap gun’. When she turned around, she saw Jai seated ‘in the back seat holding a hand gun,’ Kiely says, turning his right hand into the shape of a gun for the jury to see. He then tells them that Sarah, the crown’s key witness, heard a further three shots. ‘The shots this time were really loud and on top of this were ringing in her ears,’ Kiely tells the court. 171
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He slows down his speech and quotes Jai’s explanation after the shooting as Sarah remembered it: ‘“He was going to do it to me, he was going to do it to me, it was either me or him. He was going to do it to me ’cause he was a maggot.”’ Kiely pauses and there is silence in the courtroom before he begins to describe the mess left behind after the killing, detailing the red trail along the grass and the large pool of blood left on the roadside. At this point Sharon, who has tears welled up in her eyes, runs out of the courtroom to the women’s toilets. The thought of her younger brother’s blood spread across a park is too much. Kiely continues. He explains how Jai tried to cover up the shooting: the wild goose chase he took Brian on to try to get rid of the car, dumping the gun and disposing of the blood-ridden clothes. He had even concocted a story that Sarah and Ron could use if they were questioned about what had happened to Hines. ‘“If anyone asks we dropped him off and we all went home . . . stick to the story, I think everything will be okay just stick to the story,”’ Kiely tells the jury. At the Coogee Bay Hotel, Kiely says, a man with the code name Mr M was the only person in the group drinking with Hines who saw a gun tucked down the front of his jeans. Hines had a blood alcohol reading of 1.3, three times the legal driving limit—enough to slow anyone’s reflexes down. Kiely points out Jai never told Sarah on the night of the killing that he killed Hines because he was going to rape her. ‘He was going to do it to me ’cause he was a maggot,’ is what he told her. But when Jai handed himself into police he told them, ‘“Yeah, she’s the reason I did it . . . He was going to rape her,”’ Kiely tells the court. 172
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Turnbull, a forty-five year old, with greying gold hair long enough to poke out from under his wig, stands up to be heard. ‘I’m not going to be involved in an argument, I’m just going to flag these issues . . . He’s in your charge and he’s killed a man and he killed Tony Hines. He’s agreed to narrow the issues,’ Turnbull tells the jury with his open hand pointing at Jai. Jai, who is standing in the dock, is asked by Justice Buddin if he agrees that Hines died between 9.30 pm and 10 pm on 5 August 2003, that the gunshot wounds were fired by him and that the body was found at the bottom of a cliff. ‘Yes, your Honour,’ Jai answers before sitting down. Turnbull invites the jury to look at who Tony Hines was as a person in the community, and Jai’s relationship with him. How Jai’s life was not only threatened moments before the shooting but over several years leading up to Hines’s death. He walks up to the jury box and stands less than a metre from the jury—almost as if he is trying to have a one-on-one conversation with them—and speaks only loud enough to be heard by the judge and those sitting in the front seats of the public gallery. ‘It is not unlawful to kill a man in self-defence . . . The crown must prove beyond reasonable doubt that this young man didn’t act in self-defence . . . What you might be concerned with in relation to the issues here are what did he [Jai] know about the man who was killed?’ Turnbull describes Hines as 183 centimetres tall, weighing 94.5 kilos, and having, on the night of 5 August, an almost fatal dose of ecstasy in his system and enough alcohol in him to be three times over the legal limit for driving. 173
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‘A man suggests in evidence he had a firearm with him at the Coogee Bay Hotel,’ Turnbull points out. ‘Anthony Gerard Hines was known widely . . . as a violent man, a standover man and a rapist . . . That was a reputation which he promoted, which he revelled [in], and which everybody was aware of . . . He [Jai] thought he was dealing with a rapist, a violent man, a standover man.’ He tells them Jai had only known Sarah for a short time. She was not aware of Hines’s threats in the past, and had only met him for the first time that night at the Coogee Bay Hotel. He asks them to consider the state of shock Jai was in after the shooting, why his actions were irrational. ‘He got rid of the body in company with [Sarah] . . . He got rid of the gun . . . He got rid of the car with her full knowledge . . . because, ladies and gentlemen, people can do things for all sorts of reasons,’ he says. Turnbull reminds the jury what Jai told police when he was first arrested and that his story has never changed: ‘Yeah, she’s the reason I did it, you know. It will all come out at court,’ Jai had told the officers. ‘He pulled out the gun and I got it off him.’ Brian is one of the first crown witnesses, along with a group of police officers who worked on the case. He doesn’t want to be there. He’s not the kind of person who dobs people in. He has a wife and kids, and enough grief of his own that he’s busy dealing with, let alone being involved in a murder trial. The tall lanky spray-painter takes an oath and is asked by Kiely about the moment he saw the bullet holes in the windscreen. ‘I looked in and seen the windscreen straightaway I knew it wasn’t a brick,’ Brian replies. 174
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To make the car ‘drivable’ Brian revealed he also re-taped the windscreen cracks and cleaned the door handles and the side of the car with a strong smelling cleaning liquid that Jai was using to make sure the vehicle was clear of his prints. He knew he had got himself into something deep and was in a hurry to get out of there. He could see the blood on the inside of the car. ‘The whole idea was to tip it off the boat ramp and sink it . . . When it came to the end we just couldn’t find it. We decided to park the Nissan and try and find the boat ramp and couldn’t find it.’ Without knowing about the killing, Brian says he felt obligated to help Jai, who had got himself in some sort of trouble. This prompts Turnbull to ask during crossexamination: ‘He [Jai] did apologise, didn’t he?’ ‘When he dropped me off it was what you call an apology,’ Brian replies. ‘It was obvious to you, wasn’t it, that he was under an awful lot of stress?’ Turnbull asks. ‘I wouldn’t say I know him really well . . .’ Brian says. ‘Sir, it was the situation that Jai Abberton never threatened you at all?’ Turnbull asks again. ‘No, not at all, it was never like that,’ Brian finally explains. ◆
The following Monday the jury is taken on a tour across Coogee and Maroubra for a re-enactment of what had happened on the night of the killing and the following morning. Justice Buddin tells the jurors to wear comfortable shoes because the trip will require them to walk on grass. The bus tour includes the jury, the crown prosecutor, police, defence counsel and the judge, who has taken 175
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off his red robe and wig for the day to visit the key sights with them. The group first inspect the Coogee Bay Hotel, which is closed for the morning while they look at where Jai and Sarah first met up with Hines. They then move on to the Abberton home, the scene of the shooting on the corner of Malabar and Maroubra roads, where Hines’s body was dumped at Jack Vanny Memorial Park, where the gun was thrown into the water at Randwick Golf Course, and where Jai hid some blood-stained clothes at his mother’s home on Franklin Street. It seems like the jury is visiting the scenes from a movie script, but it becomes terribly real when they reach the Abberton family home on Curtin Crescent and Mavis comes out to put a bag of rubbish in the bin before going back inside. ◆
Ten days into the trial, and after nearly two years in hiding, Sarah is escorted by police to court. She waits outside the glass doors of the courtroom with detectives Pincham and Browne until she is called by Justice Buddin. It is a tense moment for everyone. She hasn’t seen Jai since the murder and is nervous about how she will handle her emotions. Jai is anxious about what she will tell the jury. The police are also apprehensive. Sarah is their most powerful tool, and they need her if they are to convict Jai. As the courtroom door opens, Sarah looks straight in front of her and avoids all eye contact with Jai, who is sitting about 8 metres away from her as she walks up to the witness box. She wears a black fitted suit and heels. Her now shoulder-length blonde hair is tied back in a loose bun and the sheer stockings on her long legs make a tattoo on her ankle less obvious. A dark-haired man sitting in the front row of the jury wearing a 2GB talkback 176
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radio T-shirt looks her up and down as she approaches the witness box. As she sits down, she fixes her eyes on a young woman sitting in the public gallery who has been employed by the DPP as her support person. The media interest has escalated now, with many reporters returning to the trial knowing the crown’s key witness would be giving evidence. The judge warns them that to protect her identity she has been given a code name. The courtroom is dead silent. ‘Ma’am, on the evening of the fifth of August were you present when a person was shot in Maroubra?’ Kiely asks, calmly trying to lead her into talking about the most traumatic experience of her life. ‘Yes,’ Sarah replies quietly, nodding. She can barely be heard from the public gallery. She starts with the facts that are easy to talk about— how she had made a statement to police, and how she had come to know Jai and formed an ‘intimate’ relationship with him after a short period of time. The questions gradually move to the night of the murder. Sarah’s answers are getting shorter and quieter as it becomes difficult for her to detail the crucial moments. She describes Hines as ‘the man who was shot’, explaining that she had never met him before the night of the murder. ‘I just had a general feeling that the man wasn’t a good person . . . At the time he actually brushed my leg,’ she says, standing up and showing the jury where Hines had touched her on the thigh when he was sitting on the right side of her at the Coogee Bay Hotel. ‘I was getting shivers up my spine the way he looked at me,’ she says. Then she begins to open up about that horrible ride in her cherished Nissan X-Trail. ‘I remember Ben Harper was playing on the CD and we were coming up to a set 177
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of lights when I heard the first shot . . . First of all I thought it was a cap gun . . . I looked at the man that was shot and he had blood coming out of his mouth . . . I just kept saying “Oh my God, oh my God” . . . .’ Sarah’s eyes start watering and her words sound nasal as she recalls Hines’s last breathing moments. ‘Can I have a minute?’ she asks Justice Buddin. He allows her to leave the courtroom for a short break before telling the jury not to concern themselves with her emotions. ‘This is a normal reaction to an unusual situation,’ Justice Buddin says. After the break he assures Sarah, ‘You’re not the only person who’s ever gone through this before . . . It probably doesn’t make it much easier, but your reaction is a completely normal reaction.’ Kiely continues with his questioning, returning straight to the point where they left off, asking Sarah about the moment she saw Hines after he had been shot. ‘It [the blood coming from his mouth] was quite a lot, quite thick in parts,’ she describes. ‘Did you notice by the first shot any movement in the back seat at all?’ Kiely asks. ‘No . . . just facing forward sitting in the car,’ Sarah responds, explaining that she had been focusing on driving and the car was moving when the first shot took place. She then tells the court how she parked the car on the other side of the intersection after the first shot was fired before a further three shots were fired. ‘They were loud . . . the first one sounding like a cap gun . . . for some reason the other ones sounding loud . . . I kept saying “Oh my God, oh my God” . . . about 178
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three times that was all that came out of my mouth,’ she says. By the time the third shot was fired she had climbed out of the car. ‘Did you notice if Reardon was present at all?’ Kiely probed. ‘I don’t have any recollection of him actually getting out of the car at all.’ After the three shots were fired, she says, she looked at Hines who ‘was trying to breathe and kept gasping for air.’ Jai then got into the driver’s seat and she sat in the back seat as they drove to the cliffs opposite her home. Hines body fell out onto the road, ‘just sort of slumped’, when they opened the passenger door. ‘He [Jai] asked me to give him a hand,’ Sarah explains. ‘He just kept saying that he was a maggot and that it was going to be me or him, as in Jai, that was shot . . . I’m pretty sure he was dead at that stage . . . When we went around corners he kept falling from one side to the other . . . I dragged him to the side of the cliff and then he got pushed over . . . I think Jai tried to pick him up first and then I helped him . . . I think he was too heavy at that stage . . . We had one hand under each of his shoulders . . . I think Jai tried to push him off with his foot.’ She says Hines was fully clothed with his leather jacket, singlet and jeans on when he went over the cliff. Justice Buddin looks at the clock and announces a break. Sarah gives a loud sigh of relief and walks out of the courtroom. After the jury has left, one of Hines’s associates who had been sitting in court walks up to Jai in the dock and says: ‘When you get out I’ll show you who’s a maggot.’ The police intervene and walk the angry man out of the courtroom. 179
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Sarah returns to court after the lunch break and begins to tell the jury what had happened when she had arrived back at the Abberton house, describing how she sat in the bush in front of his house until Jai arrived. ‘I was looking down at my hands and I had blood on my hands . . . I asked him what was going on and he sat next to me . . . I think I punched him in the head and body . . . ’cause I was angry and in shock and I was really upset . . . he just tried to hold me and calm me down . . . Then we went inside the house . . . Koby was there inside on the lounge.’ She went into Koby’s room to have a shower. Her bloodied clothes and Jai’s were put in a bag that Jai brought to her. After the shower, she says, she could hear Koby and Jai yelling in the kitchen. ‘Jai was just saying that the man that was shot was a maggot and that he was a rapist and that it was going to be me or him . . . Jai said he was sorry for doing this to me, he said we’ll take it to the grave and I told him that I was solid and that I wouldn’t tell anyone.’ She says Jai told her to stick to the story ‘that I dropped Jai and Ron off at the beach and that I went home and left my car out the front of my house at Lurline.’ ‘Did he say to you in the car he was going to get rid of the gun?’ Kiely asks. ‘Probably . . . this is something that I don’t want to remember . . . He had it [the gun] under his jumper, he took the bag with him so I just assumed that was it.’ Sarah next recounts her tearful conversation with Jai the following day on the phone. ‘He was very sorry for doing it and he apologised . . . He said that he’d go to prison for what had happened.’ 180
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‘At any time on the evening of the fifth of August, did the accused Jai Abberton threaten you at all?’ Kiely asks. ‘No, he didn’t threaten me at any time,’ Sarah says. ◆
The following day Sarah braces herself for crossexamination by Turnbull. ‘No doubt what you saw that night was the most horrific thing you ever saw in your life?’ Turnbull asks, leaning on a lectern. ‘Yes . . . I’m trying to put it out of my mind as much as possible so that I can carry on with my normal life.’ She explains that telling police was the only way she could move on. ‘It was the only way that I could sleep . . . deal with how I felt at the time,’ she says. She explains she had helped dispose of the body and assisted Jai because she was in shock. ‘I think I did a lot of these things because I was in shock . . . If I could have been given the option I wouldn’t have found myself in that situation . . . I didn’t even feel that anything was about to happen except I felt that Jai was in danger . . . The protective thing just took over me and I wasn’t rational at all.’ She tells the court Jai had had nothing to do with going to the Coogee Bay Hotel and that it was a spontaneous decision. When they had left the Duke of Gloucester hotel she had put her arm around Jai and felt no gun on him and had never seen Jai with a gun before. While they were at the Coogee Bay Hotel, Jai had told her to ‘stay close, that man wants to get me.’ ‘I felt fine, but I didn’t feel comfortable with him in the car,’ she says. ‘You got . . . from your knowledge of Jai was that he seemed to be very fearful?’ Turnbull asks. 181
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‘Yes,’ she replies. She repeats that when they had dragged the body to the edge of the cliff she had asked Jai why they were doing it and Jai had replied, ‘It was going to be me or him.’ ‘He said to you if anyone asks why you dumped the body tell them that I threatened you? . . . But you told my friend [crown prosecutor] yesterday that he never threatened you?’ Turnbull asks. ‘Yeah, he never threatened me,’ she finishes. Sarah leaves the courtroom and Jai leans back and rubs his hands through his thick reddish-brown hair with relief. ◆
Rachel Gibbins is standing in the foyer. Kiely tells her to relax before she enters the witness box. Her blue eyes water as soon as she sits down. She talks quietly, almost whispering as she answers questions from Kiely about the last time she ever saw Hines, having dinner with Lily in the restaurant next door to the Coogee Bay Hotel. Turnbull asks her if she knew Jai. ‘Not really . . . I think I met him years ago . . . when I first met Tony, 1997 or something,’ she answers. She then agrees that Jai had taken her to prison to see Hines on 1 January 2001 after ‘Tony organised it’. ‘The fact of the matter was in your relationship with Tony he was extremely protective of you?’ Turnbull asks. ‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘He didn’t like people talking to you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘He would often accuse you of having affairs with other men?’ ‘Yeah.’ Rachel wipes her face with a white tissue. 182
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‘Unfortunately, from time to time you would have to wear sunglasses on your face to cover the bruising?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘You didn’t ask him about his business life?’ ‘I would ask him but he just wouldn’t tell me,’ she says. Turnbull tells the court that on 23 June 1999, Hines was arrested after Rachel had made allegations to police that he had raped, assaulted and detained her against her will, and made various threats to kill her. If she disagreed he would hit her, and the more she would disagree the more he would hit her. She dropped the allegations against him, fearing that if she didn’t she would suffer in future and maybe her child would too. ‘It was the case, was it not, that he would frequently beat you and accuse you of having relationships with people he knew?’ ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘The fact of the matter is that you never had a relationship with Jai Abberton, did you?’ ‘No.’ ‘But you knew that from about early 2001 your husband was alleging Jai Abberton was having an affair with you?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘When he was making these allegations to you he would beat you, is that right?’ ‘Yes.’ ◆
When Dr Paul Botterill enters the stand he gives some of the most graphic evidence in a clear and precise manner. The forensic medicine expert begins to describe the three 183
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gunshot wounds to the head and one gunshot wound to the back of Hines’s right hand. Sharon Hines sits in the front row crying quietly as she hears the gruesome details of her brother’s injuries. ‘There was no brain and there were significant areas of the skull missing?’ Kiely asks. ‘That’s correct,’ the doctor answers. The doctor describes how there is an area of soot around the ear which indicates that Hines was shot at close range, but he could not say how close exactly. During his evidence Jai is sitting in the dock with watery eyes, his head in his hands. Dr Botterill continues talking about the loss of skull fragment, multiple rib fractures from the fall, the scarring inside Hines’s belly and the level of drugs and alcohol in his bloodstream. ‘It’s still possible to have so much blood even in the absence of a heartbeat?’ Kiely asks. ‘That’s correct.’ ‘One could no longer see a normal eye socket . . . there were some moustache hairs present.’ Sharon walks out of the courtroom again. As Dr Botterill continues, Ron Reardon is outside court pacing up and down the footpath waiting to give evidence. The 5-foot tall stocky boxer is occasionally spoken to by Detective Pincham who eventually tells him to come back the following day. Reardon is stressed. He has pleaded guilty to lying to police and is also expected to be sentenced in another court. Ballistics expert Dr Gert Diederik Oosthuizen examined Hines’s body at Glebe Morgue. If a shot is fired at close range then ‘there are hot gasses that leave the barrel. If the muzzle is pressed against the head then all those deposit inside the head, the former 184
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member of the South African police force says with a slight accent. ‘I can’t say with certainty the distance that it was discharged from,’ he continues. He explains that pressing the gun against the skin would act like a silencer. The gun was a 1914 antique .445 calibre Webley & Scott revolver in working condition with a low to medium velocity. He holds the revolver in his hand and the jury moves closer to have a look. He shows them how the double action and single action works on the revolver and then he pulls the trigger. Single action is when you pull the trigger manually. ‘You need about seven pounds of force to fire it,’ he says. The gun was rusted over when it was found because it had been immersed in water. He placed it in oil overnight and it was ready to be discharged again. ◆
Ron Reardon finally makes it to the stand after two days of waiting. He tells the court how on the evening in question he had met up with his friend and counsellor for about fifteen minutes and then returned to the Coogee Bay Hotel to find the group at the tables. When they had left the hotel, Reardon tells the court, he didn’t think Sarah was too affected by alcohol. He says Hines was drunk and kept ‘slurring words’. Sarah and Jai were 15 to 20 metres in front of Reardon when they left the hotel. ‘I walked up towards Tony and we started walking towards the car,’ Reardon says. ‘Did you have a conversation with Tony as you walked towards the car?’ Kiely asks. ‘He said to me as we were walking towards the car 185
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“We’re going to root this sheila”. . . He was slurring his words, sir,’ Reardon replies. Reardon says he assumed that Sarah was dropping him off at his house. ‘I just remember when we got to the roundabout and I asked to turn right . . . Tony pointed straight ahead and said something about picking up some money to go out with.’ He relates how they went back to Curtin Crescent and stopped there while Jai and Tony went inside for a short time, before heading back up Malabar Road. ‘When we stopped at the lights Tony turned his head and told me to get out of here,’ Reardon says. He claims he hopped out of the car at Tony’s demand and then headed down towards the beach to the bus stop there. ‘I heard what I thought to be a couple of backfires from a car,’ Reardon says, explaining that he didn’t bother to look back. Five minutes later he received a call from Sarah on his mobile. ‘She just sounded very upset and said could you meet me back at Jai’s house,’ Reardon says. He went back to Curtin Crescent. He went to the front door and yelled out to Sarah, who told him, ‘Tony’s been shot.’ ‘Was there some talk between Jai Abberton and [Sarah] about a story?’ Kiely asks. ‘No, sir,’ Reardon replies. ‘I was concerned about our lives . . . I didn’t ask anything . . . I didn’t want to know anything.’ Reardon says he never saw a gun on Tony Hines that night and answered ‘No’ when asked if he saw a gun on anyone else. It was now Turnbull’s turn to examine the witness. In July 2003, he began, Reardon was in a boxing match 186
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and he got a bit of a write up in the paper, was that right? ‘A full page, yes,’ Reardon points out. ‘You seemed to be doing all right as far as you were concerned in August 2003?’ Turnbull asks. ‘That’s right,’ Reardon replies, breaking down. He takes a tissue offered to him by a court staffer and walks out, returning a few moments later. ‘Is it fair to say that it looked like there was going to be trouble?’ Turnbull asks. ‘He [Hines] had that look,’ Reardon replies. ‘He looked scary . . . He just had that look, he had a look that frightened me.’ Reardon says he left the car so quickly when Hines told him to get out that he can’t even remember if he shut the door behind him. He says he had never seen Jai with a gun before. After his evidence Reardon is sentenced in the local court where he is given a twelve month good behaviour bond for hindering a police investigation. ◆
Darren Brett Byrnes is walked into court with handcuffs on, and there are sheriffs stationed at either end of the courtroom in case the thirty-four year old tries to escape. He is receiving a 50 per cent discount on his sentence for giving evidence in the Jai Abberton trial and an unrelated murder. This means he will serve a minimum term of four years instead of eight for robbery and aggravated break, enter and steal. He has known Jai Abberton for about fourteen years from playing football with Jai’s friends, and knew Tony Hines for six to seven years. In August 2003, he says, he saw Jai at a home on Lawson Street, Redfern, where 187
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he went to score heroin. Byrnes says when he saw Jai he asked him, in reference to the murder, ‘What about Tony, mate?’ and Jai had replied, ‘Bad luck, fucking scum bag.’ ‘I thought they were friends . . . at first I was a bit taken back,’ Byrnes tells the court. Byrnes then went to inject his heroin in the bathroom and when he returned asked Jai why he felt that way. Byrnes claims Jai told him, ‘“I lured him into my car and I shot him, he was going to rape my girlfriend.”’ For the first time in the trial Turnbull shows no sympathy towards a witness when it is his turn to crossexamine. He asks Byrnes how much morphine he is on each day, how often he sees his daughter if he sees her at all, and if he had previously committed offences while on parole. He suggests that Byrne’s is lying so that he can get a letter of comfort—which can sway the length of a criminal sentence—from a judge for helping police. ‘You hadn’t seen Jai Abberton for about twelve years?’ Turnbull claims. ‘That’s a lie!’ Byrnes replies. When Byrnes exits the stand, Justice Buddin tells the jury they don’t have to take Darren Byrnes’s evidence as gospel. ‘I warn you that such evidence may be unreliable,’ he says. Over the next five days the court hears evidence from a number of Maroubra locals, including Lyn Abberton. Pincham and Browne are called but their testimony is used merely to confirm how they went about gathering their evidence. Then with little fanfare, Kiely stands and announces the prosecution case rests. There is great anticipation as the court waits to hear what will happen next. 188
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14 JAI’S CASE
‘The shot went off so easy . . . I just remember thinking he’s gonna kill us all now, he’s gonna kill us all’—Jai Abberton, 27 April 2005
Wednesday, 27 April 2005: Lyn Abberton is sitting in the third row of the courtroom, twiddling her thumbs as Jai, in a dark grey suit, grey shirt and paisley tie, heads to the witness box. He places his right hand on the Bible and swears an oath, then sits down. In his left hand he grips a silver crucifix on a chain. Jai begins his evidence by telling the jury that he lives at Curtin Crescent, Maroubra, with his grandmother Mavis and younger brother Koby. ‘He’s [Koby] a professional surfer, he travels a lot on tour and he just is there [at home] sometimes,’ he explains with a hint of pride. It is the first time Jai has ever given evidence in relation to Hines’s killing. His voice is deep and youthful as he reveals his version of the events of 5 August 2003, and his early memories of Hines. 189
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‘What did you come to know about Tony Hines during that period?’ Turnbull asks. ‘Pretty violent stuff, you know . . . He’d say come to Bondi but most of us would try to get out of it . . . He would just tell you to do things, not ask you.’ Jai recalls the fights outside the Maroubra Bay Hotel, the postman bashing, the episode in the Golden Century restaurant, and seeing the guns on the dressing table while stripping paint off the walls at Hines’s home. He also explains that Hines liked to spend time with Koby because of his surfing status in Maroubra. ‘I think he wanted to take Koby out to the clubs, you know . . . ’cause Koby was a professional surfer, you know,’ Jai says. Jai says his biggest regret was taking Rachel Gibbins to see Hines in jail because that incident was what had triggered Hines’s threats towards him and Natalie, and may have been the reason behind Hines’s violence towards him after meeting him at the Coogee Bay Hotel on the night of the murder. ‘I walked into the hotel, I saw M sitting over at the table . . . I thought, “Oh shit, Tony’s there,”’ Jai says. ‘I just wanted to have one or two drinks and then get out of there . . . I think I went to the toilet or something and when I got back [Sarah] was sitting down there with Tony . . . From there I think Tony just said “sit down”, you know.’ ‘Have you ever carried a gun?’ Turnbull asks. ‘No never . . . never in my life,’ Jai replies. Jai says he hadn’t told Sarah about any of the problems he had had with Hines in the past because they had only known each other for two months, but when Hines got up and went to the toilet he indicated to Sarah that he was concerned about him. 190
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‘I said “[Sarah] you’ve got to stick close to me, you know this guy wants to get me,”’ Jai says. Eventually they all left the hotel, Jai continues, holding his right arm up to show the court how he was holding Sarah when they walked out and headed for the car. ‘I went there in the front seat and he said “Get in the fucking back,”’ Jai says. ‘I was frightened, I just got in the back . . . I was just thinking, oh no, what’s going on here . . . Someone said, “Let’s go and get a drink.” . . . I said, “Go to my house, I’ve got to get some money.”’ Hines then said ‘Yeah, he owes me some money’ so Jai just played along. Jai tells the court that when they got to Curtin Crescent Jai climbed out of the car and was followed by Tony to the front of the house. ‘He’s grabbing my right arm like that and he swung me around . . . I was trying to get to my grandma’s room . . . he’s just grabbed me and spun me around . . . He looked at me and had the gun in his hand . . . “You’re not fucking getting away this time, get rid of Ronny . . . Get back in the car, we’re going back to my place and we’re scotching her,”’ Jai relates to the court. Hines was using rhyming slang: ‘scotch tape’ for ‘rape’. It was the first time that night he had noticed Hines had a gun. As they walked out of the house, Jai covertly grabbed a knife that was near his brother’s surfboards. Jai tells the court that at the time he was thinking about what Hines’s house was like, with the bars on the inside of the windows, and how on one occasion when he visited the Coogee Street home Hines had turned the music up and said to him, ‘The neighbours can’t hear nothing, I’ve soundproofed it.’ Any screams for help would never have been heard. 191
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Back in the car Jai was desperate to avoid going to Hines’s house so he suggested they go back to the Coogee Bay Hotel. They drove off down Curtin Crescent, through the shopping centre and down to Malabar Road. ‘We came up to a set of traffic lights . . . and the door opened and shut and Ronny had gone . . . ,’ Jai says. ‘Just as the car’s taken off I seen like the gun come back.’ He lifts his hands up and shows how Hines had produced the gun over his shoulder in between the driver’s seat and the front passenger seat. ‘My first reaction was to get it off him,’ Jai says. He describes what happened, showing the court with his hands how he leapt forward with his elbows cocked and wrapped his hands around Hines’s hand which was holding the gun. ‘The shot went off so easy . . . I just remember thinking he’s gonna kill us all now, he’s gonna kill us all . . . “Boom”, it went off so easy you know . . . I was in more shock than anyone . . . I was shocked and scared,’ Jai says before he bows his head and cries. He recalls Hines rubbing the back of his head. ‘I had the gun there in the same position . . . I shut my eyes and just went “boom, boom, boom”.’ he says. ‘She was saying “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” you know. ‘[Sarah] pulled the car over . . . and I just got into the driver’s seat . . . I put the gun in my pocket . . . in my front pocket . . . I remember [Sarah] was screaming and the next thing I knew I was out the front of her house down at Lurline Bay.’ ‘Did you notice if the deceased had a seatbelt on?’ Turnbull asks. ‘I don’t think he did because he just fell out of the car . . . I dragged him over to the cliff and just pushed him over.’ 192
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‘Why did you take his body to the edge of the cliff?’ Turnbull wants to know. ‘I don’t know, I just couldn’t believe what had happened, at that stage I just wasn’t thinking. I was in shock or something.’ Jai agrees that when he got home he told Sarah, and Ron when he turned up, ‘If anyone asks, we dropped him off and we all went home.’ Jai and Sarah had returned to Marine Parade early the next morning because Jai wanted to go and have a look. ‘I never ever killed anyone before and I didn’t know if he was dead or alive.’ Once there, Jai pushed his body over a ledge it had landed on. ‘He went into the water and the water took him away,’ Jai says, reflecting on the moment he last saw Hines. He describes dumping the gun at the cliffs near Randwick Golf Course and says he then dumped the car with Brian because ‘I just wasn’t thinking you know when he was shot. It was just real quick. He’s [Hines] got a lot of criminal friends.’ ‘And then you started to hide?’ Turnbull asks. ‘Yeah,’ Jai confesses. ‘Why?’ ‘Just scared.’ Jai says he went to his ex-girlfriend Natalie’s cousin’s place because he felt safer around Aboriginal people. He says he had no conversation with Byrnes whatsoever. ‘Sir, there came a time when you decided to hand yourself in?’ Turnbull asks his client. ‘Yes,’ Jai replies. ‘Did you seek legal assistance before you decided to do that?’ 193
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‘Yes.’ ‘Why did you kill Tony Hines?’ Turnbull finally asks. ‘I had to. It would have come down to me or him in the end.’ ◆
Kiely now begins to question Jai. It is the first time the prosecution has had the opportunity to cross-examine him. ‘Certainly right up until the time you took Rachel Gibbins to jail you were friends?’ Kiely asks, warming up. ‘Yeah, no dramas,’ Jai replies. He relates how Heath had warned him afterwards that Hines wanted to get him. The crown prosecutor leads Jai through the events of 5 August once more, reminding the court that Hines had ordered ecstasy tablets fifteen to twenty minutes prior to them leaving the hotel. ‘How many in that group at the table actually took ecstasy?’ Kiely asks. ‘I think I remember him taking one and then giving [Sarah] one and then I crushed it up and pretended to have it . . . I just didn’t want to be taking drugs with him,’ Jai replies. ‘You didn’t want to be inebriated, you wanted to have your wits about you?’ ‘Yeah . . . I wasn’t happy to be there . . . I wanted to leave from the second we found him. I wanted to get [Sarah] out of there, I wanted to go.’ ‘Did you lure Tony Hines out and ask him to go to the car?’ ‘Not at all. I was leaving to get away from him.’ Referring to a photo taken from the video camera in the hotel that had filmed Jai and Sarah walking out, Kiely points to a lump in Jai’s front tracksuit pocket and 194
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asks, ‘Tell me, if you look to the right of your left where [Sarah] is, what’s that bulge there, sir?’ ‘From the photo it doesn’t look good,’ Jai replies. ‘It appears, sir, in that photograph you have your right hand holding something?’ Kiely continues. ‘It appears that way,’ Jai says. ‘Was that the gun which you shot and fired and killed Tony Hines, sir?’ ‘No, it wasn’t.’ ‘Were you looking for Tony Hines, as you looked right, as you are shown on that photograph?’ ‘No,’ Jai replies, ‘I was just looking on the street.’ He goes on to plead, ‘My life was trying to get away from Tony . . .’ ‘You’d had enough?’ Kiely accuses. ‘No, I wanted to get away.’ ‘Away by disposing of Tony?’ ‘I wouldn’t throw my life away . . .’ Jai responds, rolling the crucifix around in his hand. ◆
The next day, Jai is again called to the stand so Kiely can finish his cross-examination. Jai relates how he saw Hines at the Coogee Bay Hotel that night and was wary of him, so he thought he would just have a quick drink and leave. ‘The reason you didn’t leave was so that you could stay there long enough for him to get completely inebriated?’ Kiely puts to him. ‘That’s not true at all . . . I just thought we could have this drink and go.’ ‘He was inebriated and drunk wasn’t he?’ Kiely asks as Jai describes their walk back to the car. 195
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‘Yep.’ ‘Why didn’t you take the opportunity at that stage to get away from him?’ ‘I wish I did,’ Jai replies. Jai states he never owed Hines any money and had said he needed to go back to his house on Curtin Crescent to get some money. Kiely asks why he never checked to see if Koby’s car was in the driveway. He could have called Koby for help if need be. ‘I knew if I got to my grandma he wouldn’t have done anything,’ Jai replies. ‘He [Koby] may have been in the bedroom with a girl but I don’t know.’ Kiely questions Jai in a tone that suggests he doesn’t believe Jai would really have sought help from his eightyfour-year-old grandmother, no matter how much Hines respected her. ‘Hines was inebriated, heavily inebriated, wasn’t he?’ Kiely asks. ‘Yeah,’ Jai replies. ‘All that’s said in the lounge room, 10 to 15 metres away from your grandma . . . who he respected?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘When it came time to leave the house, what did Hines do with the gun?’ ‘I don’t know what he done with it . . . He spun around.’ ‘Why didn’t you go back in your grandma’s room?’ ‘He just told me “get back in the fucking car”. I wish I did [go back to Grandma’s room],’ Jai answers as he looks down and begins to cry. Kiely waits a moment before firing his next question. ‘You told us that you were not going to let Hines rape [Sarah]?’ 196
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‘Not if I could help it, no . . . fuck no.’ Jai breaks down in tears and the court sheriff passes him a glass of water. ‘You just picked the knife up and put it in your pocket?’ ‘Front pocket,’ Jai answers, with his nose still blocked from the tears. ‘Reardon’s run off . . . there’s only you in the back seat . . . was it at that stage, Mr Abberton, that you pulled out the gun? Did you push the gun up against the back of [Hines’s] head and pull that trigger?’ ‘No, I didn’t!’ Jai objects. ‘The second I seen it I just grabbed it to get it off my direction.’ ‘No way, sir. In that description, the first shot could not have been at the back of the head,’ Kiely says. ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ Jai replies. ‘After the first shot I seen him rubbing the side of his head like that.’ Jai uses his right hand and rubs under his neck below his ear to show the jury. ‘I thought he was going to kill us and I held the gun there and went “boom, boom, boom”.’ ‘When you closed your eyes and fired the second, third and fourth shot where was the gun?’ Jai explains again that the gun had been between the headsets of the two front seats. The defence counsel, Turnbull, is nervously playing with his silk gown between his fingers. ‘Did you look, after you fired the first three shots, to see what happened to Hines?’ ‘It was just frantic, like it wasn’t real, you know.’ ‘Did you think [Sarah] could’ve been hit from the bullets you fired?’ ‘No.’ ‘You just soared into the driver’s seat to get away as quickly as possible, is that right?’ 197
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‘Yep,’ Jai replies, sobbing. ‘Why didn’t you drive straight to the police station?’ Kiely asks. ‘I just thought “Oh my God” . . . I heard Sarah going “Get him out” . . . I don’t know, I just wasn’t thinking,’ Jai replies. ‘The reason you didn’t go to the police station was because you were the one who had the gun?’ ‘I just drove without thinking, I was just frantic, you know . . . The reason I shot him there was because he just pulled out a gun.’ ‘It was an opportune time, Reardon was out of the car and there were no other cars around?’ ‘No, that’s not what happened, you weren’t there,’ Jai replies nearly yelling. ‘You’ve been at Maroubra all your life, haven’t you? . . . You knew the tracks down the bottom . . . knew where all the cliffs were . . . where you could throw something over?’ ‘Yep.’ ‘Did you drive to Mistral Point knowing that you were going to throw that body over the cliff?’ ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’ ‘Did you say “Come on, mate, we’re going for a walk”?’ ‘I don’t remember saying that . . . I may have been a bit relieved that the last two and half years were over . . . that he didn’t get [Sarah] . . . relieved that I was alive.’ ‘You fired that shot to get that relief, is that right?’ ‘No.’ ‘And . . . relieved that Hines was dead, is that right?’ ‘No, it was sad to be in that position. I was happy that I wasn’t dead, that nothing happened to [Sarah] . . . 198
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No way I would throw the rest of my life away for something like that.’ Jai breaks down again. After some questions about the disposal of Hines’s body, Kiely turns to Jai and Sarah’s return to Curtin Crescent. When they got back to his house, Jai says, Koby came out of the bedroom because the pair were screaming at each other. ‘Yeah, he came out for a little while and he said, “Are you all right?” and I said, “Yeah, I’m all right, brother, go back to bed,’ Jai tells the court. The blood-ridden car was parked inside the garage at this stage. ‘You put it in there to hide it?’ ‘I was trying to hide it all, I just wanted it to go away.’ ‘You were hiding it because you knew that you had murdered him?’ ‘Once I dumped the body off what was I gonna say to the police then?’ Jai puts to Kiely. ‘But it wasn’t “me or him”, was it, because he wasn’t aiming the gun at you, was he?’ ‘It was in my direction,’ Jai replies. ‘What, you reckon he was going to shoot you over the back of his shoulder without looking?’ Kiely suggests. ‘I didn’t have time to think.’ ‘Why did you get [Sarah] to drive . . . Did you want to make her an accomplice so she couldn’t put you in it?’ ‘No, not at all, I just met [Sarah], poor thing . . . Her whole life has probably changed.’ ‘You did it because you knew you’d murdered him and you were hoping he’d never be found is that right?’ ‘I just pushed him over the ledge, I just wanted it to go away.’ 199
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‘The reason you went back down the cliff was specifically to make sure that he finished up in the water . . . is that right?’ ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’ Turnbull takes off his wig and scratches his head, the heat is building up in the courtroom but it’s not only the pressure of the questioning—even Justice Buddin complains the air conditioning is too hot. After the lunch break Jai returns to the stand. He says his underpants were falling down from the weight of the gun so he had to hide it in a tree before returning the next morning to retrieve it and throw it in the water at Randwick Golf Course. ‘I didn’t want to have a gun at my grandmother’s house,’ he tells the court. The cross-examination continues through the morning and on into the afternoon. ‘No, no.’ ‘It was a conscience of guilt wasn’t it?’ ‘I just wanted to get rid of it.’ ‘You knew that area because you surfed . . . you knew all those areas like the back of your hand didn’t you . . . you knew the currents, the tides . . . rips drag you out don’t they, and you rely on that, don’t you?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Is that the gun you threw in the water, sir?’ Kiely holds up a clear exhibit bag containing the weapon. ‘I didn’t see it much, it looks like it,’ Jai replies. ‘Did you know that the blood on the clothes could be linked to Hines?’ ‘No, I just wanted to get rid of them.’ ‘What did you do with them?’ 200
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‘When I went to Kirrawee I put them in some garbage bins . . . just garbage bins out on the road in Kirrawee.’ At this point the police look up in surprise. The dumping of the clothes after he had taken them from under his mother’s place is new evidence to them. ‘You put them in somebody’s private bin or something?’ ‘Yeah . . . I just didn’t think and I saw the bins there and I thought I’ll throw them in the bins.’ After Jai finishes giving evidence Turnbull clenches his fist as Jai sits in the dock. ‘Well done, bro,’ Turnbull says to his client before going on to call further witnesses.
The court hears from Peter, who had been so brutally bashed in 2000, and Heath, who says he had seen Hines with guns. ‘Violent and fight till the death,’ is how Peter describes Hines’s demeanour. Peter breaks down when reliving the Boxing Day beating. He tells the court why he had dropped the assault charge. ‘I wrote a letter to the DPP saying I didn’t wish to go on with the matter . . . I thought he might do something bad or try and kill me.’ Peter says he never told police about the gun. ‘Because the man is deceased now I can reveal what really happened on that day,’ he says. ◆
It is 3 May 2005. The trial has continued for more than four weeks, and the moment has come for Kiely to close the crown’s case. ‘Members of the jury . . . as Mr Abberton sits across the courtroom and looks at you there the crown has accused him of committing murder.’ 201
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He explains the crown has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Jai is guilty of murder. He asks the jury members not to look at the evidence individually but to piece it all together. ‘When you put them all together, it hangs together,’ he says. ‘What you accept and what you reject is a matter for you,’ he says, explaining that we accept and reject things every day of our lives. We choose who to believe and who not to believe. He tells the jury that if they find Jai guilty, the fact that he would go to jail is not their concern, despite the emotion and a lot of powerful drama in the courtroom. ‘When you think of Mr Hines, violent man, standover man . . . you heard the evidence of [Peter], the way he beat [Peter] within an inch of his life . . . He generated fear in just about anyone he associated with . . . you might say he was a one-man crime wave out there . . . But that’s not a test nor can it be . . . you can’t have vigilantes in this community . . . You cannot and must not take the law into your own hands. ‘The crown has to prove the accused has committed the crime of murder . . . the acts of the accused caused the death of Anthony Hines . . . that the acts were deliberate . . . that the acts were done by him either with the intention to kill or the intention to cause grievous bodily harm. ‘The accused in this case has agreed to a set of facts which have been placed before you . . . that Anthony Hines died as a result of gunshot wounds to the head by a gun fired by him. ‘The accused has said he fired the gun, he shot Anthony Hines . . . But did he act in self-defence of himself or [Sarah]?’ 202
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Jai is breathing deeply, moving forward and back, licking his lips and rubbing them together as he listens to Kiely complete the crown case. ‘If you find the accused not guilty of murder then you will go to the question of manslaughter . . . provided that the force he used was excessive.’ Sharon Hines looks at the members of the jury— every one of them—with tears in her eyes. In the last five weeks they haven’t been told who she is, but they have guessed from her reactions in court. She is the one who is silently pleading with them to convict Jai as Kiely attempts to crush the defence case. The prosecutor proposes that far from being anxious and afraid, Jai appeared confident in Hines’s presence on the night of 5 August. ‘We have the fact that the accused has broken up with Natalie Roach and has a new girlfriend . . . he introduces her to Mr M as his new girl,’ Kiely argues. He then points out that Jai sat with Hines from 8.28 pm to 9.47 pm. ‘During that time he’s seen cuddling [Sarah] in front of Hines . . . Is there a new-found confidence?’ ‘Why does he do it? Why does he constantly stay there? . . . He didn’t want to leave at that stage. [Sarah] also says that the conversation between Hines and Abberton was friendly . . . He doesn’t tell her until after about half an hour that “he wants to get me, stick with me”. He watches the ecstasy come and waits,’ Kiely says, raising his voice. ‘He said in his evidence that when he was in the bar “I was taking precautions . . . I was going to keep my wits about me.”’ 203
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Detective Pincham wipes his hand over his face. The other detectives are taking notes. It has been a long eighteen months since Jai’s arrest. The police want a result. ‘Why does he wait all that time? . . . Isn’t that the perfect time to leave when Hines wants the ecstasy . . . [instead, Jai] went through the charade of having it himself . . . There was an agenda here . . . He wasn’t going to let Hines do with Sarah what had happened with Natalie Roach . . . It’s all going to change here and now, and change it did!’ The prosecutor again shows the photo taken from the hotel’s video footage. ‘If you look at the photo you will see where Abberton enters . . . there’s the front of his jumper . . . a bulge there.’ He asks the jury to look at another photo showing the group leaving the Coogee Bay Hotel. ‘You will see that Abberton is looking to his right back down the street . . . Was he luring him up to the car?’ Kiely asks the jury to consider. He counters Jai’s assertion that Hines had pulled a gun on him by reciting a string of names—people who had been with Hines that evening, but who hadn’t seen a gun. ‘Reardon? No gun. Stevens? No gun. Gibbins? No gun. [Sarah]? No gun.’ Mr M, who had been drinking since 4 pm, was the only one who says he saw Hines with a gun, Kiely reminds the jury. Mr M saw a glimpse of the handle but ‘didn’t tell a soul until 25 November. In my submission you would reject that evidence.’ By the time the prosecutor reaches the moment of the shooting itself, Jai is taking slow deep breaths as he listens from the dock. The stress is too much. Kiely’s case is strong. 204
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Kiely demonstrates how Hines had lifted his hand up and rubbed the back of his head. He says Hines had been hit with the bullet at the back of the head. ‘You might think if ever there was an execution this was it . . . no one was ever coming out of that one,’ Kiely tells the jury. ‘He said, “I was relieved after two and half years of the guy.” He tells [Sarah] Hines was “a maggot and it was him or me” . . . And it wasn’t going to be Abberton because he had kept his wits about him [and] he had the gun . . . It was time to finish it and that’s what he did. ‘He killed that man in cold blood . . . He drove down to Mistral Point . . . Abberton knows that point like the back of his hand . . . he’s surfed there . . . When he opens that door, what’s he say? . . . “Come on, mate, we’re going for a walk.” ‘He opened the door . . . “Come on, mate, we’re going for a walk,” ’ Kiely repeats before asking the jury, ‘Does that sound like a panic?’ Kiely continues, arguing that all Sarah heard was that it was ‘me or him’, that Hines was a rapist, he was a maggot—but never did Jai mention anything about doing it for Sarah, that it was because Hines was going to rape her. Kiely, who has an upright posture, is swaying his head from side to side and holding his palms open as if he has nothing to hide. ‘You see, it fits with what he was going to do that night; “it was either him or me” and it wasn’t going to be “me” anymore. No suggestion that he knew that Hines was going to rape Sarah except what he said Hines said to him whilst they were in the house.’ Kiely alleges that ‘the cover up starts’ when Jai leaves the car in the garage, and dumps the gun and the clothes. 205
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‘This is a man who has committed a murder and was covering his traces,’ Kiely says. Kiely tells the jury that Jai goes back to the scene to check that the body isn’t above the high water mark. He knows the tides in the area. ‘Why did he do it? Why did he do all these things if it really was self-defence? ‘Do you think he wanted to involve [Sarah] as much as he could to keep her solid? . . . She was asked the next morning to drive the car . . . Why is he keeping her so close all the time? To make her an accomplice,’ Kiely argues. ‘Why does Abberton wait until the eighteenth to hand himself in if it’s self-defence? He says to the police, “I did it for [Sarah]. It will all come out at court.” . . . Well, it’s all out in court now, the decision is yours. ‘In this case you have no alternative but to bring back an alternative of murder . . . Thank you very much.’
Turnbull moves over to the jury. He takes a different approach, speaking to the jury as if they are friends. ‘We’ve been here for four weeks. He’s in your charge as a member of the community—you’re being asked what he’s committed . . . You weren’t there, I wasn’t there.’ ‘Something happened in that car which provoked a response . . . Why would you have done it in front of a woman that you’ve only known for two months? . . . The facts are: car, main road, Tuesday night, almost a stranger in the front seat. ‘The facts of the matter . . . he was a violent man, a standover man and a rapist . . . My friend has taken the motive out of the evidence.’ 206
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Turnbull asks the jury to look at the prosecution evidence that Jai was carrying the gun before the shooting. They allege he is carrying the gun at the Coogee Bay Hotel after a camera captures him with a bulge in his front pocket. ‘If that’s the best they’ve got on him at the Coogee Bay they haven’t got a lot,’ Turnbull tells the jury. ‘Abberton did not have the gun . . . If he had the gun, would he have kept Hines indoors at Curtin Crescent? . . . It’s not black and white, it’s grey.’
The next day, during Turnbull’s closing, Koby turns up at Jai’s trial for the first time. He sits in the second row with Sunny, wearing a white shirt and grey pants. His short cropped hair is spiked up. Lyn Abberton is sitting upstairs looking down. Jai blows her a kiss and smiles at the other two. He is happy just to see his brothers together. Turnbull picks up from where he had left off the day before. He asks the jury to consider the psychological relationship between Hines and Jai. They had known each other since they were kids, but Hines was always one of the older boys who had ruled over him, just as Hines continued to rule over others as an adult. Ron Reardon thought he was being taken home and was giving directions. ‘“I asked to go right”, said Reardon. “Tony Hines said to go straight ahead”,’ Turnbull repeats for the jury. ‘All the evidence is that Hines was in control. ‘ “Shake his hand or I’ll break your arm.” . . . You’re not getting away this time, we’re pissing Ronny off, we’re going back to my house and we’re scotching her.”’ Now Turnbull repeats Hines’s words to Jai. 207
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Turnbull describes the tension in the car as no one speaks over the sound of the Ben Harper CD. Ron leaves and neither Sarah nor Jai notice. ‘Something weird, frightening, is happening; Hines is in control,’ Turnbull presses on. Standing with his back to the jury Turnbull takes off his wig, showing his flattened hair underneath, almost as if he is transforming into another character. He then reaches down into his pants and dramatically pulls out the gun that had killed Tony Hines. He then points the weapon over his right shoulder, prompting the jury to lean backwards. ‘I had the gun down my pants ever since I started. How does it look when you’re in the same situation?’ Turnbull asks the jury, demonstrating how they had never noticed the gun during the whole of his closing argument. He turns to face Jai while continuing to point the black revolver at them. The members of the jury sigh in relief when he finally places it down on the lectern next to him. ‘Once a gun is introduced into any occasion that means death or grievous bodily harm . . . Ladies and gentlemen, what would have happened if [Jai had] just sat back in the seat and gone back to [Hines’s] home on Coogee Street? . . . We know two people who had gone back to his home in Coogee Street, Rachel Gibbins and Peter. ‘There’s no doubt why this happened: “He was going to kill us all . . . me and [Sarah],”’ Turnbull says, using Jai’s words. Jai had seen what Hines was capable of, the situation was out of his control. 208
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‘Live by the sword, die by the sword,’ Turnbull says. ‘That’s what happened to Tony Hines, and it was his own sword. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.’
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Justice Buddin tells the jury there are two possible guilty verdicts: guilty of murder or not guilty of murder, and guilty of manslaughter. He says it is up to the crown to prove its case against the accused. If they haven’t succeeded, then the accused must be found not guilty of the charge. The first three issues of murder have been admitted by the accused, he says. Anthony Hines was killed, he was wounded by gunshots and the accused killed him. ‘The crown says the accused caused the death with intent to cause grievous bodily harm,’ Justice Buddin says. At this point the forewoman begins crying, distressed despite the fact that the judge has not said anything upsetting. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks her, bringing his directions to a halt. ‘This is difficult,’ she replies, dabbing her eyes. Justice Buddin calls for a short adjournment to allow the juror to recover. The unexpected emotion from 210
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the forewoman has everyone concerned. Have the jury members made up their minds to convict Jai? Does she disagree with them? Or is the forewoman just overwhelmed by the evidence and the importance of coming back with the best possible verdict? Her reaction has everyone talking outside the courtroom. When the jury is called back Justice Buddin continues, going over crucial points of evidence for them to consider. He emphasises the importance of evidence from those who said they saw Hines with a gun prior to the night of the shooting. ‘The crown relies upon this evidence because it provides the accused with a motive,’ he says. ‘The defence relies upon it because of what impact it had on the accused. ‘The crown must prove that it was the accused who had possession of the gun beyond reasonable doubt before you can convict him of murder.’ Justice Buddin’s directions continue for several hours. It is the following day—5 May 2005—by the time he finishes his summing up at 2.50 pm and asks the jury to begin their deliberations. Jai is taken down to the cells, where he is prepared by Turnbull and the rest of his counsel for the possible outcomes. The police are sitting outside the court with Sharon Hines. They too wait, thinking back over the trial and attempting to guess what the jury will bring back. At 3.45 pm, the jury is called from the deliberation room and asked if they wish to continue discussing the case. The forewoman says they wish to continue. The decision for the jury to continue on into the afternoon sparks more questions. Could this mean an early verdict? Why would they be making their minds up 211
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so quickly? Is it a ‘sit on the fence’ decision of manslaughter or will Jai be freed? Perhaps they want a long weekend and finishing on a Thursday would be better than coming back on a Friday? At 4.20 pm the jury returns to the courtroom with their verdict. Jai bows to Justice Buddin as he enters the dock. Turnbull goes over and speaks to him quietly with words of support. Jai rubs his lips together and holds onto his crucifix as hard as he can before standing for the jury. The forewoman, who had become emotional the previous day, stands to deliver the verdict. This time she has a smile on her face. ‘Have you reached a verdict?’ the judge’s associate, Anne Cochrane, asks. ‘We have,’ the forewoman replies, looking at Jai. ‘On the one count of murder, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’ ‘Not guilty.’ There is a small cheer from Jai’s clan, who then brace each other, waiting for the forewoman’s next response. ‘On the one count of manslaughter, do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’ ‘Not guilty.’ Sunny and Lyn Abberton hug and cry aloud with joy, tears streaming down their faces. The surfers sitting in the public gallery give the jury a thumbs-up as they are led out of the courtroom. Jai is standing on his own, his hands in the air to embrace his family, but still constrained behind the boundaries of the dock. He begins to sob loudly, released from the weeks of uncertainty, desperation and angst. The biggest nightmare of his life is over after eighteen months behind bars. Turnbull 212
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walks over to him with a broad smile and clenches his fist. Sharon Hines covers her mouth and quietly cries alone for her brother before leaving the building with police via a back exit. Jai is eventually released from the dock and allowed to walk free through the front doors and onto Sydney’s busy King Street, where a pack of television cameras and journalists who have heard the verdict are waiting to catch a glimpse of the freed surfer. But Jai doesn’t leave the courthouse until he has phoned Koby on his mobile. ‘Koby, what are you doing?’ Jai says over the phone. ‘Who’s this?’ Koby, who hasn’t yet heard the news, replies. ‘It’s Jai.’ ‘Where are you?’ ‘I’m standing out the front of court, that’s where the fuck I am! I’m out the front, I’m not guilty!’ On the other end of the line Koby starts screaming at the top of his lungs and begins shedding tears of happiness with his brother. It’s one of the best moments of their lives. Seconds later, in an unprecedented scene, Jai is greeted by jury members, who hug him one by one before he walks out onto the street. Outside, Jai is swamped by a mob of media shoving microphones and cameras in his face. He holds a crucifix up and kisses it. ‘I’ll never lose my faith in God,’ he says. Jai pushes through the media pack and gets into a waiting taxi that Sunny has flagged down while members of the jury emotionally wave goodbye from across the street. The taxi disappears into Sydney’s peak hour traffic.
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16 HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER ‘Our whole lives I haven’t felt like the police have been on our side and for once I felt like we got some—finally got some justice.’ Koby Abberton, appearing on the ABC’s Australian Story.
Now that Jai’s nightmare is over it is time for Koby to face his charges before a judge in Sydney’s District Court. With a weekend of surfing ahead of him, the big-wave charger is in fine spirits when he strides into the court the Friday morning after his brother is found not guilty. ‘It was one of the best days of my life,’ he says as he sits in the public dock waiting for his matter to be heard. For the next ten minutes he looks about anxiously, waiting for his hearing to start before he suddenly leans forward, as if to confide a secret, and a smile creases his face. ‘I would have wanted to be there to see him get off and that, you know, but I was stuck in Aceh in Indonesia. Been there since Friday last week . . . There was a tremor, 214
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it was like a seven, and we were there in this remote place for ten days. We were offshore in this boat when it hit and it felt like the boat would just snap in half; it was pulling on the anchor. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever felt, I’ve never felt anything like it and I said, “Andy [boat captain] did I just feel that?” Everyone was shaking and it was pretty scary.’ Before court proceedings begin, Koby is told by his lawyers that despite his brother’s acquittal, he still has to face two charges of concealing a serious offence and hindering a police investigation. Police had accused Koby of lying to detectives when he told them he knew nothing about Jai’s involvement in the death and when he denied his car had been used to dump bloodstained evidence. ‘I’m disappointed my charges are still going ahead but I’m happy to see Jai get through. Surfing mags like Tracks haven’t given up on me. They’ve stuck by me and been there for me and my family and that’s been great,’ he tells journalists. The court reaffirms Koby faces two charges and adjourns, with Koby walking from the court shaking his head. Two months later Mavis, who had had a stroke several years earlier, passes away. While many elderly women only have their contemporaries attend their funeral, Mavis is carried into the church in a coffin carried by her grandsons, who are followed by hundreds of young faces she supported over the years. Paul ‘The Bear’ Chandler—the counsellor friend of Ron Reardon—gives the eulogy in memory of a tough woman who had helped so many youths in the area. ‘There was a lot of Bra Boys there that didn’t have anywhere to go for Christmas, so our grandmother would 215
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have Christmas at our place . . . and all the friends from the community that had nowhere to go, they would come to our place,’ Sunny says, praising the one person who had always stood by him and his younger brothers. ‘I think she waited for us all to be out of trouble, you know. She just so happened to die two months after Jai got out and she was always so worried about that . . . So out of everything she’s ever done for us she still was there for us at the very end, and waited till we were all right,’ Koby adds. ◆
The months following Jai’s trial mark a new era for the Abbertons. Koby’s trial is still up in the air, but in September the three brothers go on an unforgettable surfing trip together in a small five-seater plane to a remote part of south-western Australia. Cyclops is one of the country’s most dangerous surfing spots, with 20-foot waves that crash onto sharp unforgiving rocks in only half a foot of water. Later on in the month, Koby sits through a five-day trial in the Sydney District Court. Brian, Jai, Koby and Sarah give evidence. A week before judgment day, Koby appears on national televison on the ABC’s Australian Story, and he tells more than 1.2 million viewers his version of what happened when Jai returned home after killing Hines. He describes what it was like for him when Jai was in jail. ‘I used to cry just thinking of Jai being in jail, you know, a lot. To think of him there instead of in the surf with me like we’ve been our whole lives.’ ◆ 216
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On 24 November 2005, the day of Koby’s judgment, Jai is sitting on a bench in the sun outside Darlinghurst Court, snuggling into Natalie Roach. The pair has rekindled their relationship. ‘I knew he was a rapist the first time I laid eyes on him,’ Natalie—a tall, dark-skinned woman with long brown hair—says of Tony Hines. ‘He was a pretty good-looking bloke—the ladies would have liked him,’ Jai adds. Natalie giggles and they continue to kiss outside court as they speak to us. ‘She’s stuck with me through all this, eh,’ Jai praises Natalie. ‘She came and visited me in prison, she’s been there for me all through it—put that in, eh, and not the other one,’ referring to Sarah. Hours later, Koby enters court accompanied by numerous surfie friends, including Ron Reardon, who arrives slightly late and is greeted by the other Bra Boys. After a lengthy monologue and references to courtcase precedents and definitions of the statutes, at which Koby and his friends look thoroughly bored, Judge Brian Boulton finally reaches a decision. ‘In the present case the accused may well have wished to benefit his brother, his elderly grandmother and his own career,’ he says. ‘Wishing to protect these . . . may be an upright motive, even praiseworthy, but if the intention was to deflect police from investigating a serious crime and shield himself from being an accessory then the intention satisfies section [of the Crimes Act].’ Judge Boulton takes more than an hour to explain to the court why he finds Koby guilty of perverting the course of justice by repeatedly lying to police. He then 217
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lists at least ten answers Koby gave to detectives which he describes as ‘wilfully false’ and designed to mislead. Jai gives evidence during Koby’s trial supporting his brother’s story, but Judge Boulton finds his evidence ‘completely implausible’, incredible and fanciful. When asked at the time where he was the day after the murder, Koby replied, ‘Same as every day: went surfing and hung around the shops or the beach.’ ‘These answers were manifestly false and were intended to deflect police in their case against his brother,’ the judge says. Immediately after being found guilty, the court orders the twenty-six year old to surrender his passport and not make any attempt to leave the country. His defence counsel protest, reminding the court their client travels overseas often as part of his big-wave riding career and he has never before breached any bail conditions. ‘[But] he is in a more invidious position now than he has ever been,’ Judge Boulton says.
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The guilty verdict strikes Koby emotionally and financially. His major sponsor, Oakley, which has supported him through his legal saga for the last two and a half years, decides to drop his lucrative contract, despite publicly claiming they would back the troubled surfer unless he was jailed. By this point he has contemplated a prison term more than a thousand times; it has kept him up all night on countless occasions. The maximum sentence Koby faces for lying to police is fourteen years. As a famous surfer with a reputation as the leader of one of Sydney’s most notorious beach gangs, he would find it hard to survive behind bars. He would be forced to build alliances quickly, constantly watching his back to avoid being bashed by hardened criminals. Any sort of fame or popularity in the outside world rarely wins points in jail, and the well-known surfer would be a perfect target for other inmates looking for a way to build status in jail. ◆ 219
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In February 2006, two weeks before his sentencing, the Bra Boys, first-grade footballers and friends rally around Koby, holding a fundraiser at Randwick Race Course to help him pay his $28 000 legal bill. Any extra money raised will go into the coffers of the Mavis Abberton Foundation, which has been established in memory of Ma, who had taken so many kids under her wing. Professor Paul ‘The Bear’ Chandler, who has watched the boys grow up in Maroubra, is the spokesman for the charity that raises money for underprivileged youths. Three hundred and seventy supporters attend the $150 a head function and Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe, who has met the Abbertons through their shared support for the South Sydney Football Club, entertains the group with his rock band, The Ordinary Fear of God. Prominent Bra Boy Reni Maitua, his Maroubra housemate and fellow Bulldog, league player Willie Tonga and other league players join forces and pull together $10 000 to buy a surfboard hand-painted by Koby. ◆
On 9 March 2006, Koby’s legal team present their case for a lighter sentence. In the witness box, Koby tells Judge Brian Boulton that he was to earn up to $1 million over five years with Oakley and had had a new contract ‘sitting there’ waiting for him to sign until the guilty verdict. The loss of income has crippled him financially, he explains; the bills are mounting up, his cars—including his well-recognised black Monaro—are being repossessed and he will have to sell the family home on Curtin Crescent, Maroubra, because he can no longer meet the mortgage repayments. 220
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‘I had a contract to just travel round the world and surf any location I wanted to go, as long as I took a photographer and video with me. It was to be signed on the first of [January] this year. But when I was found guilty they said “nope, no more contract”,’ Koby says. A suited-up Sunny Abberton follows Koby into the witness box in a last-minute bid to save his brother from going to jail. He tells the court about the Abberton brothers’ harsh upbringing with a heroin-addicted mum. ‘Now let me get this straight—you are all halfbrothers?’ Koby’s barrister, Bill Brewer, asks, wanting Sunny to clarify that they all had different fathers whom they never knew. Although he knows Brewer is technically correct, Sunny fires back: ‘There are no half-brothers in our family.’ The next day Koby walks into Darlinghurst Court followed by an entourage of Bra Boys who fill the public gallery in the tiny room. Wearing a light blue tie, white business shirt and black suit, he sits with his chest out and hands cupped in front of him as Judge Brian Boulton enters the room wearing a wig and robes. There are no seats left in the courtroom, forcing a pack of broadcast and print journalists to sit opposite Koby in the empty jury box. Sunny stands metres away from Koby and gazes at his younger brother as if to say, ‘I’m with you bro’. Koby, who is looking in the other direction, seems to sense his brother’s presence, and turns to meet his gaze. It has been two and a half years since Tony Hines, Koby’s personal trainer, and Abberton ‘family friend’ was shot dead by Jai. At the time, Koby had covered for his brother, telling police he knew nothing about the killing on the evening of 5 August 2003—and now it is 221
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time to face the consequences of his actions. He looks at the judge with a blank face; his friends pray he will not be taken away by the sheriffs. ‘You’ve been found guilty of providing a false statement to police on September 15, 2003,’ Judge Boulton reminds the court before outlining his reasons for the sentence he is about to hand down. He revisits the night Koby was woken by Jai and girlfriend Sarah screaming and covered in blood, a situation Koby could never have imagined he would find himself in. ‘One wonders at the extent of your misfortune,’ Judge Boulton tells the surfer. ‘You had gone to bed, oblivious of matters that were unfolding between your brother Jai and Hines and Jai’s girlfriend, [Sarah]. You were awoken to find Jai and [Sarah] covered in blood and hysterical.’ He points out that Koby was ‘dumped into these appalling circumstances by the foolishness . . . of your brother Jai’, and that he had lied out of ‘misplaced loyalty’, hoping to protect Jai. ‘I don’t think you have the level of guile that would have been necessary for you to intend anything so sinister . . . but Mr Abberton, you were not a child. You knew full well you did not have to answer [police questions] at all. You knew how serious the matter was but you nonetheless chose to mislead the police . . . Despite coming from harsh family circumstances you do deserve credit for overcoming a background of drug addiction and violence,’ Judge Boulton says. With a word of encouragement he reassures Koby, saying Oakley should consider renewing his contract: ‘They may think you are well worth persevering with.’ 222
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They don’t. Oakley reaffirms his contract expired 31 December and would never be renewed. The judge then announces his decision: a nine-month suspended sentence on the condition of good behaviour, expiring on 9 December 2006. The courtroom erupts with clapping from the public gallery, where a group of Bra Boys slap their forearms in a tribal fashion and call out ‘On ya, bro’. Judge Boulton returns to his chambers with no expression on his face, seemingly untouched by the emotion unfolding in the courtroom. Jai, who has turned up midway through the proceedings accompanied by Lyn, is present for the decision and jubilantly hugs his brothers in the courtyard outside. Whatever happened that night is now behind them. For a year, Jai struggled with the knowledge that his younger brother faced jail after he himself had been acquitted— just as Koby had earlier feared he would never surf with Jai again while Jai was imprisoned. A moving wall of reporters, television cameras and microphones follow the three brothers out of the court’s iron gates and Koby yells out with a smile across his face, eyes beaming: ‘Hopefully, I go to the top and get the biggest waves, that’s all I want to do now . . . It’s been two years of hell, I’m just glad it’s finally over and I can do what I want, just finally surf and enjoy my life again.’ Jai, who is standing next to him, adds eagerly: ‘We love each other through thick and thin and we’re glad it’s all over . . . I’m just glad justice has prevailed and now Koby can get on with his life and start surfing again.’ ◆ 223
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MY BROTHER’S KEEPER
The celebration takes place back where the story began: Maroubra. The pub bursts into cheers as Koby walks through the wooden doors of the Maroubra Bay Hotel. He pulls off his tie and unbuttons his shirt, revealing the infamous tattoo that circles his chest: ‘My Brothers Keeper’. After two and a half years, more than sixty court appearances, hundreds of sleepless nights and losing his livelihood, he trusts his creed has finally paid off. ◆
Jai is driving a Hyundai along Cope Street, Waterloo when he is pulled over by police. Officers suspect the Hyundai is a stolen hire car. Jai’s head sinks as he is asked for his drivers licence. He doesn’t have one. It is the ninth time in eight years he’s been caught behind the wheel illegally. It’s not what he needs less than a year after being freed from jail. When his case is later heard in court on 16 May 2006, Magistrate David Heilpern warns Jai he faces being jailed again, but he is spared from returning to a cell. Instead he is banned from driving until 2017, after a six-page letter is tendered from Reverend Steve Bligh of the Christian Surfers’ Association and an emotional plea is made by his solicitor Harry Maarraoui. ‘He spent 21-months in custody [after being charged with Hines’s murder] and because of that he still harbours a lot of psychological trauma from the events that took place. ‘It’s not easy taking someone’s life and he still suffers from that.’
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In writing My Brother’s Keeper, we have sourced material from The Pictorial History of Randwick by Joan Lawrence, the Daily Telegraph, Waves, Tracks, the Northern Territory News, ABC’s Australian Story, police documents, court hearings and personal interviews. Particular thanks to Homicide Detective Sergeant Glen Browne, Maroubra Detective Sergeant Andrew Pincham and Detective Senior Constable Graham Sims. To friends, family and associates of Tony Hines who were willing to trust us with their words under difficult circumstances. Many thanks to Selwa Anthony, Rebecca Kaiser, Jeanmarie Morosin and ABC producer John Stewart for their guidance. We are also grateful to solicitors Paul Hardin, Barry Watterson and Jason Dimmock for helping us where they could and to those Bra Boys and Maroubra locals who spoke to us in confidence so that we could understand the bigger picture. Angela Kamper and Charles Miranda
