- A witness has told police he saw a man lurking outside the home of a mother of three just minutes before she was brutally murdered in her own home.
The witness, who the Herald Sun has chosen not to name, said a hooded man had waited for Kylie Blackwood to return to her Pakenham home before entering the house.
The witness said he watched the man walk directly to the 42-year-old’s McCaffery Rise home about 15 minutes before she arrived. The next time he saw the man was about 20 minutes after Mrs Blackwood returned home.
The witness claimed he saw the man rushing down the street away from Mrs Blackwood’s home.
He said he had provided a detailed description of the man and helped create a sketch.
The Herald Sun has chosen not to publish a further description of the man at the request of police.
Homicide Squad Detective Inspector John Potter last week said it was possible the man was not involved in the murder.
But he could not be ruled out until he had been interviewed by detectives.
Mrs Blackwood was killed between noon and 3:40pm on August 1st. Her body was found by her twin 11-year-old daughters who ran to a neighbour’s house for help.
Police have said the man was seen about noon walking along Mccaffery Rise near the Blackwood family home.
He has been described as wearing a grey, striped hooded top, dark trousers, a black cap and sunglasses.
Police are continuing to search for CCTV footage from surrounding streets, in the hope the killer may have been caught on video.
Detective Inspector Potter last week refused to rule out that the sickening attack was the result of a burglary gone wrong, but could not say if anything had been stolen.
Sources said Mrs Blackwood’s devastated husband, real estate agent Peter Blackwood, has told police he believed nothing had been taken.
Police refused to comment on the claims yesterday and maintained the investigation was continuing “as previously indicated” – Jon Kaila & Wayne Flower

- Only hours before, a kitchen is used to make a family dinner. But with the kids fed, bathed and in bed, it now becomes a fully operational, clandestine drug lab.
Everything from the oven, dishwasher, kettle, sink and fridge are used to manufacture amphetamines.
But Victoria Police are now getting tough with proposed new laws for mums and dads who risk the lives of their children with drug labs.
Figures show that Victoria reported the biggest jump in illegal labs detected with 99 discovered between 2011 and 2012 – up from 63 the year before.
Amphetamines are the most common drugs being made, with 71 labs found to be making the drug last year.
Also being made is GHB, homebake heroin and pseudoephedrine extraction.
Pictures obtained by the Herald Sun show drugs being made in filthy garages, sunrooms, sheds and kitchens with the rundown rooms littered with chemicals, drug-making equipment, discarded cigarettes, electric works and dangerous wiring.
Clandestine Laboratory Squad Detective Senior Sergeant Bradley Nichols said it could be time to confront teens and show them where the drugs were made and what they were really putting into their mouth for a cheap thrill.
“This is what I try and tell people, especially the young kids who have been taking drugs at rave parties. If I brought you here and told you that I cooked a Sunday roast in those conditions, would you eat it? No, you wouldn’t. But kids are popping pills because they have an idea that a tablet comes from a chemist. Reality is far from different,” he said.
“You have to get it out of your head that it’s a big pristine lab with Bunsen burners and scientific glassware and a chemist in a white coat and glasses.
“There are some in all of society who think, ‘it won’t affect me, it won’t hurt me, I’m invincible’ and unfortunately that’s not the case.”
Detective Senior Sergeant Nichols revealed police were in talks with the Office of Public Prosecutions and legislators to toughen the law for people who manufacture drugs with children around.
“Even though I have seen quite a few I’m still surprised at the amount of people who are doing this in a suburban street, a lot of them with families,” he said.
“They have kids asleep in the bedroom and they cook in the kitchen at night. They are cooking dinner, feeding the kids, bathing the kids and put the kids to bed and they manufacture drugs in the same house. We are starting to see a fair bit of that.”
International organised crime gangs are running drug labs in Victoria and bikies have been linked to illegal drug labs.
The elaborate drug dens are often secured with CCTV cameras, there are guns and knives on the property and some homes are even booby-trapped, presenting police with more challenges.
The chemicals are so volatile with the amateur set up, that they can blow at any point.
Detective Senior Sergeant Nichols said serviced apartments were an increasingly popular option for drug dens, and people used fake IDs to get the rooms.
“You can have a couple of suitcases for all your equipment,” he said – Aleks Devic

- A woman tried in vain to save her husband from a fatal house fire in Victoria’s south-east on Saturday night.
The arson squad has launched an investigation after the fire, which began in the kitchen of the north Wonthaggi house at 9:30pm.
When the fire started, the woman fled the house to call emergency services.
After realising her husband was still in the bedroom, she tried to go back into the Gordon Street home, but the thickness of the smoke blocked her, a CFA spokesman said.
Fire brigades put out the blaze and rescued the man from the bedroom. They began CPR on him until paramedics arrived but were unable to revive him.
A CFA spokesman said the man’s death was caused by smoke inhalation – Herald Sun

- Australia’s elite special forces will help train afghan counterparts next year but will not carry out raids against the Taliban – effectively bringing to an end Australian combat duties.
Defence announced yesterday that Australia had struck an agreement with international coalition partners for special forces and other army personnel to train and advise the Afghans during 2014.
It is the first time the government has confirmed that the SAS and 2nd Commando regiments would no longer perform combat roles next year – and further cements the winding down of Australia’s involvement. It means Australia’s combat duties will end for the time being when the base at Tarin Kowt in Oruzgan province closes by December, bringing home more than 1000 troops.
Defence confirmed in a statement to Fairfax Media: “Australian Special Forces will not have a combat role in Afghanistan in 2014.”
However, the government is leaving open the possibility that, under e right agreement with the Afghan government, special forces could perform a counter-terrorism role in 2015 and beyond, as well as provide training.
Forty Australian soldiers have died fighting in Afghanistan – David Wroe

- Rocks were turned, ground was shifted and scrub combed as the two-year investigation into the disappearance of Boronia schoolgirl Siriyakorn “Bung” Siriboon turned to a reserve less than two kilometres from her home.
Police and State Emergency Service crews on Monday started searching the Old Joes Creek retarding basin and surrounding parkland.
The reserve spans about 22,000 square metres, according to Melbourne Water, and police say the search could continue for days.
Bung left her home in Elsie a Street, Boronia, about 8:30am on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011.
She was seen by a neighbour a short time later in Elsie Street, walking towards Albert Avenue, but did not arrive at school that day.
She has not been seen or heard from since.
The reserve is less than two kilometres from where Bung was last seen. The small area of dense bush, with the creek flowing from east to west, is surrounded by houses and is popular with walkers, locals say.
But heavy overhead vegetation hides much of the reserve’s floor from the view of the houses that back onto it.
One local said it was a popular walkway between Army and Dorset Roads.
Cadaver dogs from the Queensland police are assisting in the search.
Police spent most of Monday focusing on an area only about 80 metres from Army Road and 30 metres off the path on the north side of the reserve.
“Taskforce Puma detectives are searching the Old Joes Creek Retarding Basin in Boronia as part of the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Siriyakorn “Bung” Siriboon,” police said in a statement.
“The search is one of a number of searches conducted by investigators during the lifespan of the Taskforce, which was established in October 2011,” police said.
The search comes more than a year after police announced a significant development in the case.
Homicide Squad chief Detective Inspector John Potter revealed in June last year that a witness had come forward to say they had seen Bung about 130 metres from her school on the morning she went missing.
Inspector Potter also said at the time that police believed a local person was responsible for her disappearance. The sighting was significant because it suggested that the 13-year-old intended to go to school that day, rather than go somewhere else, he said.
As search teams crowded the creek’s end near Army Road by mid-afternoon, children walking home from the local school paused to watch.
Authorities began packing up just before dusk, with the search to resume on Tuesday morning – Dan Oakes, Niño Bucci & Rania Spooner

- Police have refused to comment on reports a man has been arrested over the disappearance of Boronia teenager Siriyakorn “Bung” Siriboon.
As police spent a second day searching a reserve near her home for clues, it was claimed a man had been arrested recently and questioned over the case.
Channel 10 reported he was released from custody soon after.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said no comment would be made on specifics of the case.
Detectives from the Puma Taskforce and State Emergency Service volunteers on Monday started searching the Old Joes Creek Retarding Basin as part of the 26-month investigation.
Homicide Squad head Detective Inspector John Potter said a number of bones had been extracted yesterday but they were found to be animal bones.
Pieces of clothing taken from the soil were unable to be linked to the baffling case, but further analysis would be conducted on each item.
“To date, we’ve found nothing of any note. We have seized some items which we’re currently examining, but we don’t believe they are of any significance or connected to this case,” Detective Inspector Potter said.
He would not comment on what had prompted the search.
“We’re not particularly convinced it’s very credible information, but we need to search this area. I can’t go into specifics about the recently of the information,” Inspector Potter said. “It’s an area that we’ve come to because we’ve received some information that may help us in our investigation.”
Inspector Potter said while Old Jones Creek reserve had been previously searched by Puma, a number of local reserves had been scoured over the past two years.
“This forms part of our strategy to continue to leave no stone unturned for Bung,” he said – Erin Marie

- The search for answers started with a grisly promise yesterday.
A policeman stood hunched in a creek bed with a sealed plastic bag. Inside the bag appeared to be a bone.
It was a tick after 9am.
Over the next hour, there would be more bags and more bones.
It was 26 months since Siriyakorn “Bung” Siriboon vanished on the five-minute walk to school in Boronia.
Was this the start to mapping the end of her life, here in Old Joes Creek a Retarding Basin, where the whine of chainsaws yesterday conspired with the toll of a nearby school bell?
Apparently not. The bones were animal, explained Detective Inspector John Potter, a few hours later.
As for the excavator, bobcat, cyclone fencing, cadaver dogs, police officers and dozens of searchers behind him?
Do not assume the police were responding to “credible information”, he said.
Indeed, as if to tamp down expectations, Potter opened up new possibilities when he floated the “reward” word.
By dusk yesterday, kids scrambled in the tiny playground across the road.
Joggers and dog walkers discovered the reserve and walking path were locked away for another night.
Bung’s mother, Vanidda, would again go to sleep not knowing.
Some passers-by were curious – after all, a 13-year-old girl vanished one morning within 130 metres of her school, seconds from a road that sends drivers batty for its peak-hour congestion, in a suburb of children’s chatter and bird calls.
There have been no comparable abductions before or since. Bung was here, then she wasn’t. All we now know is that we still don’t know.
No physical evidence so far uncovered points to her remains being in a park 800-odd metres in the opposite direction to that she was walking the day she disappeared. In the weeks after Bung’s disappearance, local parents drove or escorted children to school.
Power poles were pasted with Bung’s smiling face.
She was a “sweet girl” with no secrets. This only heightens the puzzle.
The world smoothes over its wrinkles – yesterday, a toddler rode her scooter, unaccompanied, along the footpath of Harcourt Road, where Bung was last sighted.
He outside blinds of Bung’s home, however, were pulled to full extension, despite the sun’s weak glare from the opposite horizon.
The cars in the driveway hadn’t moved in 24 hours.
The family is said to hope Bung is still alive.
There has been no shortage of offers of help, not only from 900 callers to Crime Stoppers, but local residents telling searchers that dogs are let off the leash in the reserve.
One resident yesterday said there was a big fox population in the area.
The resident offered his own theory about Bung’s fate – doesn’t everyone have one? – but then he trailed off. “I just don’t know,” he said.
The question is – who does? – Patrick Carlyon

- A man charged over a number of sex assaults is being hunted by police after failing to appear at court.
Dion Hayes, 39, from Campbellfield, did not turn up to Melbourne Magistrates Court last month and detectives are appealing for help to find him.
He is believed to be driving a white Ford Transit van with Victorian registration plate PCU-738. Police also believe he may have shaved his head and be heading to Western Australia or Queensland – Crime Stoppers

- James “Whitey” Bulger, the Boston mob boss who became one of the most wanted fugitives in the US, has been convicted of a string of 11 killings and other gangland crimes – many committed while he was said to be an FBI informant.
Bulger, 83, showed no reaction upon hearing the verdict, which closed a case that not only transfixed the city with its grisly violence but exposed corruption in the Boston FBI and an overly cosy relationship between the bureau and its underworld snitches.
Bulger was charged primarily with racketeering, a catch-all offence that listed 33 criminal acts.
Among them were 19 murders he allegedly helped orchestrate or carried out during the 1970s and ’80s while he led the Winter Hill Gang, Boston’s ruthless Irish mob.
The racketeering charge included acts of extortion, conspiracy, money laundering and drug dealing.
The jury decided Bulger took part in 11 murders, along with almost all the other crimes and a laundry list of other counts including possession of machine guns.
White-bearded Bulger could receive life in prison when sentenced on November 13th. But given his age, even a modest term could amount to a life sentence.
During the two-month trial, federal prosecutors portrayed him as a cold-blooded, hands-on boss who killed anyone he saw as a threat, as well as innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Then, according to testimony, he would take a nap while underlings cleaned up.
Bulger was accused of strangling two women with his bare hands, shooting two men in the head after chaining them to chairs and interrogating them for hours, and opening fire on two men as they left a restaurant.

- A former policeman is the prime suspect in a murder.
Homicide Squad detectives are focusing on the man, an officer for more than a decade, who knew Brenda Goudge, 61. She was found in a swimming pool at her Wantirna South home in July 2011.
The married father, with whom Mrs Goudge was known to have been arguing for months, has been questioned and is the only suspect.
He lacks an alibi, telling police he fell asleep in front of the TV at home. He has twice refused a lie-detector test.
“We believe Mrs Goudge knew her attacker and we believe there is a person…or persons, that know exactly what happened,” Detective Inspector John Potter said.
“We have spoken to certain individuals that we would regard as persons of interest…but we are unable to proceed without that crucial breakthrough.”
A $500,000 reward has been offered for information leading to a conviction.
“If anyone is involved as an accessory, an indemnity would be considered against prosecution,” Detective Inspector Potter said. “That will include someone who might have assisted after Mrs Goudge’s death, perhaps to dispose of certain things or cover up…or provide false information.
“There’s one, possibly more people, who know what happened. And we’re hoping this reward money will encourage them to come forward.”
Police say it is likely the killer got into the home through the back door under cover of darkness and attacked Mrs Goudge in her bed as she slept.
The grandmother’s body and all the bedding were found dumped in her pool the next day by her daughter Rebecca, 31, and a colleague.
It is believed chlorine destroyed crucial evidence.
“We haven’t been able to identify whoever is responsible from the scene,” Detective Inspector Potter said.
Police forensically tested a silver 4WD vehicle owned by the ex-officer, which he sold after Mrs Goudge’s death.
The man lives close to where detectives believe items belonging to the killer may have been dumped.
“We are looking for a number of items,” Detective Inspector Potter said. “Somebody can help us. Somebody knows exactly what we want – and why, probably,” he said.
“We are talking about a 61-year-old woman, a mother, a grandmother, a person who is well regarded within her community, her business and her family.
“She didn’t deserve this; her family didn’t deserve this.
“For the sake of this family…we need to find out exactly what happened and we need the person who knows to call us,” he said – Jon Kaila

- A man who admitted to swindling the National Australia Bank out of hundreds of thousands of dollars is now considering suing the bank, a key investigator says.
Daniel Saunders spent almost $500,000 on hotel suites, high-end fashion, restaurants and gambling from February to May in 2011.
He claimed he withdrew the money by exploiting an ATM flaw. NAB is now treating it as a criminal matter because Mr Saunders remains on the run from police.
Detective Leading Senior Constable Clayton Bickerton said he’d viewed an email Mr Saunders sent to a legal firm, asking it to consider his claim for damages over the mental distress the spending spree caused him.
“It’s akin to stealing someone’s car and asking them to buy you a new one,” said Detective Bickerton, from the Maroondah Crime Investigation Unit.
Mr Saunders is also alleged to have stolen $21,000 from a restaurant where he worked.
Police believe Mr Saunders has fled to Queensland, but they have few leads – Herald Sun

- Two friends of Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have pleaded not guilty to charges of trying to obstruct a federal investigation by destroying evidence. Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, both 19, faced three counts of obstructing justice and aiding and abetting.
Prosecutors allege the pair, when they learned Tsarnaev was being sought by the FBI, went to his dormitory and took his laptop and a backpack containing fireworks and Vaseline. The backpack was later recovered from landfill – The Age

- The way Daniel James Grieef told it, the morning his wife was found dead, it must have been a robbery gone wrong.
He told sceptical detectives his wife, Linda, must have been killed by a burglar who’d broken in after he’d left for work.
This story tallied neatly with the fact that the front door lock had been damaged. But it didn’t explain the scratches on Grieef’s face.
At first he said he’d fallen off his bike. Then he switched to the “real story”, saying he got the scratches in bed with Linda two nights earlier.
He claimed he’d left the house between 5:30am and 6am to go swimming before work. But (he said) he hadn’t had enough money to get into the pool and so went straight to the city to work. There he’d had a telephone conversation with his five-year-old son, who told him he could not “wake mummy”. Grieef said he thought something was wrong and rushed home to find his wife dead.
As the police questions grew more persistent, he changed his story, saying he and Linda had come to blows after she told him she didn’t love him anymore. He said she’d fallen off the bed and hit her head and he’d panicked because it looked bad. The police were not convinced. It seemed to them Grieef was a persistent liar but not a good one – a metaphor for the life of a man who wasn’t what he seemed.
They charged him with murder that night.
So what sort of monster batters his wife to death then leaves her body for their tiny children to find while he tries to set up an alibi?
In the case of Daniel Grieef, a good-looking young man – open faced, friendly and fit. When he and his wife, Linda, and their two angelic-looking children posed for a photograph, they looked as wholesome and attractive as if they’d been cast in a television commercial.
When Linda needed the family car, he’d ride his bike from Ferntree Gully to the city. From a distance, he looked the model husband and father. The trouble with Grieef was that behind the white teeth and wide smile was a flawed man struggling to conceal years of systematic embezzlement.
Early one morning, 10 years ago last week, his deceptions turned into a homicide. It was no random timing. It happened the same day he was supposed to produce the money he owed a friend who’d lent him $28,000. The loan had been to repay the company Grieef had left suddenly after a shortfall was found in its books two years before.
Grieef had been forced to repay his former employers $35,000 to square up – all the while insisting it had all been a mistake. The truth is he was lucky the company had chosen to save itself the embarrassment of taking a once-trusted employee to court for stealing its money.
Sometime before dawn on August 6th, 2003, Grieef started arguing with Linda.
They had been married four years but had been together more than 10. He was 30; she was six months younger.
As far as anyone knew, Grieef had never been violent before. But every financial deception was a step closer to being exposed, disgraced – and prosecuted. He’d presented a false front, now it was set to collapse.
Linda had kept up appearances but must have started to question the stream of excuses her parents had already suspected, then detected, in her husband’s smooth, smiling assurances.
Grieef boasted about buying their house at Old Belgrave Road in Upper Ferntree Gully. In fact, his in-laws, Pieter and Annette Van Der Hoek, owned it and rented it to the couple because they didn’t seem to have any money.
Earlier, Grieef has persuaded the Van Der Hoeks to “invest” in a share-trading scheme. As a self-styled financial analyst, he played the stock market on their behalf – and made regular glowing reports about profits in their account. But when his mother-in-law asked him to transfer money into a bank account to earn interest, he made excuses for months until she gave up. Annette suspected her handsome son-in-law was in a financial mess. But she could not have imagined he would kill her daughter and mother of his children. She wonders if her daughter had finally fronted Grieef about the mystery of where their money went.
She and her husband have brought up their grandchildren. The two, now teenagers, live as normally as possible in tragic circumstances. As their grandmother says, “they lost both parents that morning”. She wonders how much they remember of the morning they found “Mummy” bleeding and put on Band-Aids on her body as they waited for “Daddy” to come home.
Grieef was sentenced to seven years for manslaughter in 2005. Prosecutors dropped the murder charge in case he was acquitted. They believed he beat Linda unconscious, then smothered her.
With time already served, Grieef was released in 2010. While in jail he tormented the Van Der Hoeks by mounting court actions for access to the children – effectively to force them to visit him in jail.
He completed a cooking qualification inside and now lives walking distance from Crown casino. Which is ironic, says Annette Van Der Hoek. She believed Grieef had a secret addiction that drove him to steal from his employer, his friends and family – each theft taking him closer to killing Linda.
He was not addicted to drugs but to gambling – Andrew Rule

- The family of murdered police informer Terence Hodson and wife Christine have been given hope of an inquest on the unsolved execution-style slayings.
The State Coroner, Judge Ian Gray, has written to the Hodsons’ daughters, Mandy and Nicola, telling them they can argue for an inquest at a hearing next month.
The family have been fighting for a fresh investigation into the double murder, which police have linked to corruption within the force.
Under recent powers given to the State Coroner, witnesses can be compelled to give evidence.
Police believe Hodson was killed, along with his wife, because he was to give evidence against former police officer Paul Dale and another police officer over corruption matters.
Mr Dale was charged with Hodson’s murder until the case was dropped following the 2010 murder of Carl Williams in Barwon Prison.
Charges against a co-accused, career criminal Rodney Collins, who was alleged to have been the hired hitman in the May 2004 killings, were also dropped.
Collins is serving a life term for the double murder of Ramon and Dorothy Abbey.
In May last year the Hodson sisters along with their brother, Andrew, were considering suing Victoria Police for failing their parents.
Hodson had given police information about an Oakleigh burglary he was involved in with corrupt police.
Then detective David Miechel, who was caught at the scene with Hodson, was jailed over the botched burglary.
Charges against Mr Dale were dropped after the Hodsons’ death.
Lawyer Alex Lewenberg said the Hodson children wanted to know why their father was not offered the same level of police protection as similar witnesses.
He said they we anxious to have an inquest.
“They are happy to assist the Coroner in any way they can, he said.
“What we are concerned about is why is it a major witness – which is clearly what he was – was not protected?
“What lack of thinking potentially caused the death of their parents?”
There are concerns an inquest could hinder the police investigation into the murders – Anthony Dowsley

- Long before kids collected hundreds of friends through Facebook, Vicki Reid had a handful she thought would remain her mates forever.
In the days when Berwick was more country than outer Melbourne, the kids from the local high school spent their spare time together, gossiping, listening to music on their parents’ record players and watching Countdown every Sunday night.
“We would just hang out really, go to the movies, sit around, talk, that sort of thing,” Vicki, now a mother of three, recalls. Sometimes they would head to nearby Akoonah Park with that generation’s version of an iPod – a giant battery-operated “boom-box” that played their home-recorded cassettes.
But like most school friends they eventually drifted apart. Some left the area while others developed new social circles.
Except one: a lively 14-year-old named Catherine Linda Headland, who remains frozen in time. Thirty-three years ago this month somebody stole her future and stole from her friends their last shred of innocence.
For she would be one of four women whose bodies were found in scrub in Tynong North.
It was about 2pm on December 6th, 1980, when a man dumping animal remains saw what he thought was a human body, and then another. He called police, who discovered the bodies of Catherine Headland, Ann-Marie Sargent, 18 and Bertha Miller, 73.
It would take a further two years to find a fourth body on the other side of Brew Road – Narumol Stephenson, 34 – a woman abducted from Northcote in November 1980.
The killer, or killers, have never been found and Tynong North remains one of Australia’s most chilling mysteries.
Catherine lived with her parents and older brother. She was devoted to her friends but also to her horse, Prince, which she rode every chance she had. The family emigrated from Lancashire in 1966 when Catherine was one and had lived in Allan Street, Berwick, for five years. Catherine was popular at school and loved competing with her pony in local gymkhanas.
Her mother Hazel was adamant that she had to contribute to the upkeep of the horse and to do so she had to take on some part-time work.
She was given an ultimatum: get a job or they would sell Prince.
For three weeks, she had worked part-time at the Fountain Gate Coles supermarket and Thursday, August 28th, 1980, was to be her first mid-week shift, from noon until 4pm.
Hazel was employed at the same supermarket and arranged for her to work extra shifts during the August school holidays – not that the teenager was grateful. She would rather hang around with her mates than work on the supermarket register.
That day Hazel left home at 8:30am leaving her daughter 70c for the bus fare.
During the morning the friends met at the home of Catherine’s boyfriend, John McManus, who had been ill.
She told her mates that she didn’t feel like going to work that afternoon and that she wanted to give up the job because it was stifling her social life.
They watched morning television and played records before McManus walked her to the gate as she headed off to catch the bus. Before she left she said to her friends: “Goodbye, I’ll see you after work.”
She saw the bus go past towards Beaconsfield at 11:10am and knew she had five minutes to get to her stop at the corner of Manuka Road and the Princes Highway.
There were many alleged sightings of Catherine, which would later confuse the initial investigation.
A bus driver told police he picked in a girl fitting Catherine’s description and a blonde girl at the Peel Street bus stop, 800 metres from Manuka Road. But police found “there is no evidence she caught the bus”.
Friends claimed to have seen her and the blonde girl at Narre Warren about 2:30pm that day, but the blonde associate was never identified and police were to treat the Narre Warren sighting as unreliable.
But if she had gone to Narre Warren and had only 70c, she might have decided to hitch-hike home, a common practice at the time.
The regular bus driver in the area told police he believe he had seen Catherine hitch-hiking along the Princes Highway on previous occasions.
What probably happened is that she accepted a lift from a stranger who had already decided to use the Tynong North scrub as his dumping ground. He knew it well as he had left Bertha Miller there 18 days earlier after he abducted her near her Glen Iris home as she waited for a tram to take her to church.
When Catherine Headland reluctantly left her friends she was wearing a thin leather strap on her ankle. The girls from Berwick High wore the straps from one of their fathers’ leather bootlaces as a sign of friendship. Vicki remembers wearing hers on her wrist.
Police used that friendship strap to help identify the body when she was found at Tynong North more than three months after she went missing.
“When she disappeared we were just shattered. We knew she hadn’t run away, it wasn’t in her nature,” Vicki says.
“We knew someone had taken her away but we couldn’t really comprehend what had happened.”
When police found her, “We were just so angry we wanted to find out who did this.”
But no one has. There is an old man who remains a suspect. Devoutly religious, he has always maintained his innocence, but there are intriguing links between him and at least six unsolved murders – the four at Tynong North and two in Frankston.
Allison Rooke, 59, disappeared near her Frankston home on May 30th, 1980, and Carmel Summers, 55, went missing in the same suburb on October 9th, 1981. Both bodies were found in Frankston North bushland.
The man once lived in North Frankston and also lived and worked near Tynong North. He agreed to two polygraph tests and was found to be lying when asked questions about the Tynong North and Frankston murders.
But he is not the only suspect and after 2000 people have been interviewed and 11,400 pages of notes taken, police remain split. They maybe searching for one killer or as many as three.
It is possible that it is a coincidence Stephenson was found in the same area and the Frankston women may have been taken by another man.
What appears certain is that Miller, Headland and Sargent were all the victims of a serial killer.
A detailed analysis by the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence indicated the three bodies found together at Tynong North had been placed there by the one killer. It also showed a series of marked differences with the other three murders.
“The person(s) who placed the bodies near the sand quarry off Brew Road, Tynong North, took care in the way he/they placed the bodies…Such care was not shown in the placement of the bodies of the other three victims.”
The report concluded that the offender(s) “had given some thought to how and where they might dispose of a body and suggests that he/they may have planned to commit a particular offence if and when the opportunity arose”.
The Frankston victims and Stephenson were left within 50 metres of busy roads. “This suggests that the three were placed at the first available suitable location known by the offender(s).”
What is certain is there will be a link to the old sand quarry where the bodies were found and the killer. He knew the remote area well and suspected the bodies would never be found. In one case he sawed off branches to use as cover.
He knew the location and planned his moves well before he took his first victim.
Covering the case back then, it was clear from the beginning that this was no random drop. Well off a road and 200 metres down a hidden track, it had been carefully selected. And the police were up against it. The killer had months’ head start, there were no forensic clues and no sightings of the women being abducted. And one was an elderly woman while the other two were teenagers.
What we still don’t know is, why did he start and why did he stop?
Did he learn he was a suspect? Was he interviewed and not charged or was he jailed for another offence?
Certainly one name often mentioned is Raymond Edmunds, known as “Mr Stinky”, who murdered Shepparton teenagers Abina Madill and Garry Heywood in 1966 but was not arrested for the murders until 1985.
Police believe he committed at least 32 rapes and remains a suspect in several murders spread over nearly two decades.
Edmunds has refused to speak to police but confided to a fellow sex offender that he had killed “dozens” of women. “If I told them everything I’ve done, they’d neck me,” he said.
The Headlands kept to themselves after Catherine’s body was found, preferring to grieve in private. Eventually it became too much and they sold up and moved.
Vicki Reid doesn’t drive near Brew Road very often as it always brings back so many sad memories – even so she thinks about her teenage friend nearly every week.
A few years ago they put up a little plaque for her in nearby Akoonah Park – the same park where she loved to hang out with her closest mates.
Of Vicki’s three children, the eldest is Catherine, named after the friend she lost 33 years ago.
“I just wanted her to live on.” – John Silvester

- The daughters of Melbourne gangland execution victims Terence and Christine Hodson will now get their chance in open court to tell the state coroner why an inquest should be held into their parents’ media.
After fearing an inquest would not be held, state coroner Judge Ian Gray has told the sisters he will hold a mention hearing next month for them to make submissions on a number of possible issues.
These are expected to include any proposed witnesses, the court’s ability to “compel” a witness to give evidence, and the concern an investigation not compromise any criminal prosecution.
The women’s lawyer Alex Lewenberg was recently told that Mr Gray would invite his clients and any party to make submissions about whether an inquest should be held.
The couple were shot in their Kew home on May 16th, 2004, after Mr Hodson turned police informer to implicate serving Drug Squad detectives in serious drug offences.
Those charges against former Detective Paul Dale were withdrawn after the killings.
Mr Dale was later charged with the murder of Mr Hodson, while Rodney Collins was charged with both, but these were withdrawn after Carl Williams – who had implicated both men – was murdered.
Mr Dale has denied all charges and allegations. Collins is serving a life sentence for another double murder.
Mr Lewenberg said on Friday his clients – Mandy Hodson and Nicola Komiazyk – were “most anxious” to hear an explanation from police why their parents allegedly were not afforded the protection other witnesses such as Mr Hodson had not been provided – Steve Butcher

- In her deep research into sex crimes on cruise ships – and also the very particular and distinct culture on board these floating mega-liners – Dr Jill Poulston, a tourism academic, saw a few written lines from 1928 that piqued her interest.
She read Hotel Life and Personality by American sociologist Norman Hayner; he studied the way 1920s people behaved in hotels. It was a “moral holiday” guests booked in for, Hayner wrote. The “bonds of restraint” could be released – especially sexually. Poulston saw a strong connection to cruise ships in Hayner’s ideas about hotels.
Cruising is in the middle of a world-wide boom. It grew 4.5% last year! according to industry analysts Cruise Market Watch, to a global value of $US36 billion ($39 billion). In Australia, almost 700,000 passengers went on a cruise last year in an industry worth $830 million. In 2011, passenger numbers here grew by 34%, making it the biggest market outside the US.
But as outlined in a recent Australian parliamentary report into crimes at sea – called Troubled Waters – it is also a paranoid and defensive industry, “acutely sensitive to customer perceptions and concerns, particularly relating to health and safety”.
Bad cruise news is never far away, especially around safety, health and crime. The Brimble case in 2002 remains in the memory of most as a horrific crime. Brisbane mother Dianne Brimble died in 2002 on board a P&O cruise ship called Pacific Sky, which now sails renamed and out of sight through European ports. Brimble was administered fatal levels of the party drug Gamma Hydroxybutyrate and photographed. While an inquest identified eight people of interest, no manslaughter convictions were able to be secured; they were able to move possessions out of their cabins during the investigation while Brimble’s family waited four years to get her fare refunded.
Serious issues around the ship’s party culture were raised along with questions over the complexity of laws at sea, treatment of the victims’ on-board family, availability of drugs and alcohol, on-board security and the preservation or otherwise of the crime scene.
Most recently was the mysterious couple-overboard case of paramedic Paul Rossington and Kristen Schroder from the Carnival Spirit near Sydney, in May. Last month an Italian court jailed four crew members and a company manager over the 2012 Costa Concordia sinking in which 32 people died.
In February this year a Carnival ship called Triumph lost power after an engine room fire – 4200 passengers drifted for days in the Gulf of Mexico with raw sewerage seeping through the walls and carpets.
The chairman of the parliamentary standing committee, Labor’s Graham Perrett of the Brisbane seat of Moreton, says the cruise industry, which is largely self-regulated, has made some improvements since Brimble’s death.
But his committee’s recommendations to the industry were extensive. It included giving passengers brochures with safety information, mandatory reporting of all crimes with data kept by the Australian Institute of Criminology and improved protocols around crime scene preservation. It also recommended the new government vote in favour of better evidence collection methods for crimes and missing people at an International Maritime Organisation assembly in November.
Submissions to the committee revealed police have scant data on crimes at sea. The Australian National Council on Drugs said it had no data on cruise ships.
Self-regulation of a multimillion-dollar growth industry, Perrett says, makes him very wary. “When people investigate themselves and when the results of those investigations can be made public and harm those doing the investigation there is the opportunity for cover-up,” he says.
“The ball is in the court of the cruise ship industry now. They have to be guided by the actions of the worst, not just the good behaviour of the best. Are they crossing their fingers and hoping the Brimble-type scenarios are from the past? Or are they changing their processes and procedures to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
Poulston, the head of the hospitality department at the Auckland a University of Technology and an associate director of the New Zealand Tourism Research Institute, goes back to that concise phrase of Norman Hayner’s from 1928 – the “moral holiday”, for both crew and passengers. “They enter a cocoon,” she says. “People go into a different mode.”
With Professor Ross Klein, an American sociologist and administrator of travel advisory website Cruisejunkie, she has written a report called Sex At Sea: Sexual Crimes Aboard Cruise Ships. It was submitted to the parliamentary standing committee. She says the cruise industry has sexualised romance and often bases marketing on the idea that a cruise has sexual possibilities.
The names of cruise ships – Adventure of the Seas, Allure of the as was, Carnival Ecstasy, Carnival Fantasy, Diamond Princess, Island Escape – can be suggestive and contain subliminal sexual messages, she says.
The crew play their part. She says they (“young adventure seekers and migrant workers”) can also feel immune from the laws of the real world. Uniforms, she says, create a power imbalance in an already sexually charged atmosphere.
According to data obtained through freedom of information from the FBI in the US by Klein and used in the Sex at Sea report, one cruise operator with 22 ships had 92 sex-related crimes in 2008, an average of four per ship. Poulston says crime on cruise ships in general is “significantly” more common than on land, a charge cruise operators deny.
The same FBI data revealed that most perpetrators were male crew members and most victims were female passengers and the most common location for alleged sexual crimes was the passenger’s cabin.
“No police, no elected representatives,” she says. “A cruise is a commercial town away from everything else with people determined to have a good time.
“Everything is unnatural.”
The Australian industry is dominated by the world’s largest cruise company, Carnival Corporation, nicknamed “Carnivore” by its detractors. Based in Miami, it owns the P&O, Cunard, Princess, Carnival, Holland and Costa Lines. The Costa Concordia infamously crashed into a reef and partially sank off Italy last year.
In recently announcing the arrival of another 2600-capacity ship, the Carnival Legend, to sail from Sydney from next month, the company’s director for Australia and New Zealand Jennifer Vandekreeke said: “There is a great fit between the Australian personality and Carnival Cruise Lines, both being playful, outgoing and fun loving.”
The second major player in Australia is Royal Caribbean, the world’s second-largest cruise company. It outlined big ambitions for Asia and Australia in its annual report last year.
The overwhelming majority (86%) of passengers on cruise ships departing from Australia are Australians; popular two-week routes include the South Pacific, New Zealand and around the Australian coast. Cruising is cheap. A 10-night Carnival Pacific Islands cruise from Sydney next month visiting Fiji, Noumea, Lifou and a “mystery isle” is $1390 for a mid-priced “balcony” room.
Dianne Brimble’s husband, Mark Brimble, has become a lobbyist for cruise ship victims since her death, heading up the Australian arm of the International Cruise Victims group.

- One of Australia’s top professional punters, flamboyant Sydney identity Stephen Fletcher, is under investigation for using police to run secret gambling accounts and obtaining betting information suspected to have been leaked by Victorian and NSW jockeys or their associates.
Fairfax Media can reveal the NSW Police Integrity Commission is probing Mr Fletcher’s association with a small number of NSW detectives, including a homicide squad officer whose offices were recently raided by investigators. The PIC has also travelled to Victoria to conduct inquiries.
The police officer’s account with gambling agency Betfair has been seized by the PIC along with multiple betting accounts linked to Mr Fletcher, who bets on behalf of several wealthy, high-profile Australians.
The revelation of the inquiry by the PIC – which has the power to tap phones and hold public inquiries – will alarm several high-profile Sydney and Melbourne sporting, legal and business identities who associate with the multimillionaire Australian punter.
It will also cast a shadow again over the racing industry as it involves allegations of well-placed insiders trading in information not available to the general public. Fairfax Media has separately discovered that an associate of Mr Fletcher, Melbourne man Ben Joyner, has for several years spruiked his ability to obtain inside information from jockeys he associates with, and claimed that he had inside mail on horse More Joyous before the running of the now infamous All Aged Stakes.
The PIC inquiry is focusing on allegations that Mr Fletcher maintained an inappropriate relationship with members of the NSW police force which may have involved financial inducements. The NSW police force is responsible for investigating illegal betting and racing and sports corruption in that state. The PIC probe could also expose Mr Fletcher’s secretive betting operations and ties to prominent racing figures.
The PIC inquiry spans at least two states, with investigators having spoken to Victorian racing stewards along with other racing industry figures.
Mr Fletcher’s betting on the NRL, tennis, thoroughbred and greyhound racing has previously been investigated over allegations he received inside information or acted improperly, while NSW stewards have previously referred his activities to the police over suspicions Mr Fletcher has operated as the state’s biggest SP bookmaker.
The Betfair records seized by the PIC include an analysis of Mr Fletcher’s highly suspicious betting activity in relation to a top Melbourne jockey. The analysis suggests Mr Fletcher may have been getting inside information that the jockey could not win certain races.
Over six weeks in early 2012, Mr Fletcher risked more than $200,000 to win around $70,000 when he successfully bet that this jockey could not win in more than 12 races.
Several of the horses Mr Fletcher gambled on to lose were highly rated by bookmakers, including a second-favourite horse on which Mr Fletcher risked $45,000 by betting it could not win. Some of Mr Fletcher’s gambling patterns were mirrored in betting accounts held under the name of police officers.
Mr Fletcher has denied being leaked inside information or having any improper dealings in relation to the Melbourne jockey.
Fairfax Media can reveal that a business partner of the Melbourne jockey last year stated in text messages that he had leaked inside information to punters in Sydney about the jockey’s riding activities, an activity banned under the rules of racing and which may breach criminal laws.
The jockey’s business partner is minor racing identity and convicted criminal, Ben Joyner, who stated in text messages he sent an associate this year that he had leaked inside information from jockeys to Fletcher. One text message from Joyner stated that he had leaked information to “several guys” in Sydney turning over hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
Mr Joyner also boasted via text messages that he had been given inside information about the outcome of the now infamous All Aged Stakes – the race which led to a NSW stewards inquiry involving the Waterhouse racing family earlier this year – with Mr Joyner texting a Melbourne punter prior to the race that he had been told that trainer Gai Waterhouse’s horse More Joyous could not win the race.
Mr Fletcher and Mr Joyner have both confirmed they had business dealings in 2012 when Mr Joyner ran a Vanuatu betting agency, betJack, bit both have denied any wrongdoing.
Fairfax Media has decided not to name the Melbourne jockey – who in 2011 and 2012 had extensive business dealings with Mr Joyner – because there is no evidence the jockey knew of Mr Joyner’s activities.
Mr Fletcher is Australia’s most flamboyant sports betting figure, with contacts among top AFL, NRL and racing figures – former AFL star Brendan Fevola once owed Fletcher $20,000 – as well as friendships in the business and legal world, including with top NSW prosecutor, Margaret Cunneen.
In a 2011 case, Mr Fletcher successfully fought a move by Queensland stewards to ban him from racecourses and placing bets after they uncovered a series of bets that suggested jockey Bobby El-Issa was telling Mr Fletcher which of his horses couldn’t win.
Mr Fletcher became part of gambling folklore in 2005 when he and another punter legally manipulated the price of a greyhound called Lucy’s Light from $1.10 to $13 shortly before the race started. The pair walked away with $700,000 – Nick McKenzie & Richard Baker

- Hundreds of Australians accessing pornography online have been caught – some quite literally – with their pants down by cyber criminals who fraudulently claim to be members of the Australian Federal Police.
Using viruses known as ransomware, foreign gangs are filming users of adult websites by activating the webcams on their private computers.
The viruses lock the desktop and post an incriminating image of the person on their screen, before warning they have breached federal laws relating to child pornography, copyright or privacy.
The victims are instructed by the hackers to pay a fine of $100 or $199 using a credit card or money transfer service. If credit card details are handed over, further frauds often occur. If the fine is not paid within 72 hours, data files on the computer can be encrypted or wiped.
The AFP and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have been inundated with calls from victims of ransomware, which include the ukash, reveton and trojan.ransomlock viruses.
“We’ve taken some very interesting calls; some people are very open, while others swear they have been hacked using Facebook.
“We had one bloke who was almost in tears, because they were caught in their underpants,” said an AFP source.
Originating in Russia in 2009, the virus has swept through Western Europe, Canada and the United States, using different logos of different local law enforcement agencies to lend credibility to the scam.
AFP cybercrime operations manager Commander Glen McEwan has issued several warnings about ransomware, which has evolved over the past six months to evade detection by some anti-virus software, spam filters and firewalls.
“Unfortunately, members of the public are still being affected by this scam. The Australian community is reminded that the AFP does not solicit funds and this message is not associated with the AFP in any way,” Commander McEwan said.
He urged victims to report any cyber fraud to the ACCC website scamwatch.
The Australian Crime Commission recently identified ransomware as a new frontier for cyber gangs and an emerging threat to Australia’s 12 million internet subscribers.
“Organised crime groups without strong technological skills are able to obtain ready-made malicious software packages online, to help them commit a range of offences, or there are those who will provide packages to organised crime for a fee,” according to an ACC report released last month.
In February 2013, Spanish police and Europol arrested 11 people linked to a global ransomware operation, including a 27-year-old Russian man suspected of creating and distributing the virus.
Sean Kopelke, technology director with IT security firm, Symantec, has identified 16 different versions of malware linked to organised crime gangs in Russia, Europe and the Middle East.
A recent Symantec study of one virus found that 68,000 computers were infected within a month with 2.9% of those ensnared by the scam, making payments of almost $400,000.
Mr Kopelke said the viruses were often spread through advertisements on adult websites. He urged internet users to regularly upgrade security software, exercise caution with unfamiliar websites and avoid opening links of advertisements from unsolicited sources.
“If you do get caught, accept these are fake and the AFP is not monitoring your computer. Stop using your computer and research the virus. There are programs online that can be loaded on a USB stick to remove malware,” Mr Kopelke said – Cameron Houston

- Princess Diana might have been killed by a member of the British military, according to new information passed to police.
Scotland Yard said yesterday it was “scoping” the information – which surfaced in the second court martial of Sergeant Danny Nightingale, an SAS sniper convicted of illegally stashing a pistol and 338 bullets in his bedroom – to assess its relevance and credibility.
It is understood the allegation was made by the parents-in-law of a former soldier known as “Soldier N”, Nightingale’s former housemate, and reported to the SAS commanding officer in September 2011.
It is believed the information was passed on to the Metropolitan Police via the Royal Military Police before the start of Nightingale’s trial.
A statement issued by Scotland Yard said the Metropolitan Police Service was “scoping” the report.
“The assessment will be carried out by officers from the specialist crime and operations command,” it said. “This is not a re-investigation.”
Police said they were not prepared to discuss the matter further, and a royal spokeswoman said there would be no comment on the matter from Prince William, Prince Harry or from Clarence House.
Princess Diana, her lover Dodi Fayed and chauffeur Henri Paul died after their Mercedes-Benz crashed in a tunnel in Paris, after leaving the Ritz Hotel on the morning of August 31st, 1997.
The hearing into the deaths of Diana and Dodi lasted more than 90 days with evidence from around 250 witnesses.
The inquests concluded on April 7th, 2008, with a jury returning a verdict that the “people’s princess” and her lover were unlawfully killed.
After the hearing, Metropolitan Police said it had spent $13.78 million on services arising from the Operation Paget investigation from 2004-06 and the inquest.
Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Steven’s Paget investigation was launched in 2004 at the request of Royal Coroner Michael Burgess, who was overseeing the upcoming inquest into Diana’s death.
The former top policeman published his report in December 2006, rejecting the murder claims voiced by some, including Dodi’s father, Mohamed al Fayed.
Lord Stevens’s investigation found Diana was not murdered by British spies nor by the Duke of Edinburgh, and she was not pregnant nor engaged to Dodi – Herald Sun