JOHN SILVESTER
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11th Legal Reporting Awards Reporter of the Year, Best Report in Print, and Best Report on Radio John Silvester won Best Report in Print for "Anatomy of a Murder" and Best Report on Radio with John Burns and Ross Stevenson at 3AW Breakfast for the OPI hearings. May 2008 |
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Anatomy of a Murder  Exclusive report - In prison, disbarred lawyer Andrew Fraser became the confidant of Victoria's most notorious serial killer, Peter Dupas. What he learnt would make him the prosecution's star witness. John Silvester reveals his chilling encounters. By John Silvester HE HAD heard so many confessions before. Desperate suspects wanting the hardened lawyer to produce that magic get-out-of-jail card from his well-worn book of tricks. He was no stranger to prisons. His clients - accused police killers, underworld gunmen, fallen footballers, failed billionaires and successful drug dealers - would call him after their arrests, at any time of the night or day. But this was different. This time the lawyer could not give advice, then drive home in his gunmetal grey, two-door Mercedes before uncorking a vintage red to dull the day's memory. This was different because the lawyer was also an inmate and the confession was from a serial killer who shared the same high-security cellblock. There would be no immediate escape. He would see the killer again and again - every day for 15 months. And he would have to hide the truth. Until now. The lawyer - or, more accurately, the former lawyer - is Andrew Fraser, who was serving five years for cocaine trafficking. The killer is Peter Dupas, who was serving life for murder. As a convicted drug dealer, Fraser had resigned himself to never entering a courtroom again. But he did return to the Supreme Court - not as an advocate but as a star prosecution witness whose pivotal evidence led to Dupas' conviction yesterday for the murder of Mersina Halvagis a decade earlier. She was just 25 and tending her grandmother's grave at the Fawkner Cemetery on November 1, 1997, when she was ambushed from behind and stabbed to death in what police described as a frenzied attack. Detectives compiled a suspect list of more than 100 but eventually had only one left - the man with dead eyes and no conscience whom police say has killed as many as six times. Without Fraser it is unlikely that Dupas would have ever been charged with the Fawkner killing. While homicide detectives had built a compelling case against the serial killer, Director of Public Prosecutions Paul Coghlan, QC, was not convinced it was enough to put before a jury. In November 2005, he opened the murder inquest saying, "Much of the evidence in this case will revolve around Mr Dupas." But he added that there was insufficient evidence to sustain a murder charge. There was no forensic evidence, no eyewitnesses and, most importantly, no confession. Throughout decades of stalking, attacking and killing women, Dupas rarely spoke of his crimes. Police who have interviewed him say he retreats within himself and then, shaking and sweating, denies the undeniable. But having a top lawyer in his division was too tempting. He began to open up, in halting half sentences, at first seeking advice and later implicating himself - admitting facts that only the killer could know. When Fraser agreed to give evidence of the jailhouse confessions, it persuaded Coghlan to charge Dupas with the murder. "Without Fraser's evidence of Dupas' confession there would not have been a prosecution," he told The Age. The irony of detectives relying on the word of former solicitor was lost on no one, as Fraser was the lawyer police loved to hate. Tough, relentless and a courtroom street-fighter, he left many detectives bruised after bare-knuckle cross-examinations. "I was never a great academic lawyer but I liked a fight and could think on my feet," he says. Some were delighted when he crashed and burned through his $1000-a-day cocaine habit. In December 2001 he was sentenced to a minimum of five years after pleading guilty to being knowingly concerned with the importation of cocaine, trafficking cocaine and possession of ecstasy. Discredited, disbarred, broke and soon to be separated from his wife, Fraser was a low-risk prisoner - he was a first-time offender, was not violent and was not an escape risk. He could at least expect to spend his sentence in a medium-security country jail. But someone (he blames old police enemies with long memories) wanted him to do his time hard. Intelligence was fed into the system that his life was at risk and he needed protection. He was taken in shackles to Sirius East, the maximum-security protection division of Port Phillip Prison that housed up to 38 of the most detested and dangerous inmates in Victoria. "It was for the worst of the worst and I was stuck there. It was not a place where I belonged." He would spend all his waking hours with inmates such as double murderer Raymond "Mr Stinky" Edmunds, Bega school-girl killer Leslie Alfred Camilleri and Dupas - serving life for the murder of Nicole Patterson, whom he stabbed to death in her Northcote home on April 19, 1999. He soon saw the quality of the company when he met his first roommate. He was an obsessive pedophile who chain-smoked butts scavenged from bins. Quickly the lawyer learned the dos and don'ts of life in maximum security. "You mind your own business, don't ask too many questions and try not to make enemies." He would never queue for food "because you could be stabbed in the neck by the inmate behind you". If he missed out by being last in line he would slip back to his cell where he kept his survivor's food stash - tinned fish, cheese slices carefully wrapped in hoarded newspaper plastic and dry biscuits. On his first day in the unit he was about to go back to his cell to avoid alienating one of the division's hard men by sitting in the wrong seat at meal time when he heard a voice call, "Sit here, Andrew." It was Peter Dupas. Dupas and Edmunds ran one clique and Camilleri the other. By sitting with one crew he risked alienating the other and within a day he learned the potential consequences. "Camilleri chested me on the second day and said, 'I should kill you'." The incident confirmed what Fraser already knew. "The place was full of psychopaths. To me it was just a matter of staying alive." They were to become the jail's odd couple - the ex-lawyer and the suspected serial killer. They became the division's gardeners and could be seen nearly every day, pottering around the division's small vegetable patch. At night they would sometimes sit and watch gardening programs on television and read up on horticulture. For Fraser it was a distraction and gave him a chance to get outdoors where the former schoolboy athlete could breathe fresh air. But he had also identified Dupas as a brooder and a schemer. The sort of inmate who could take a set against you, then seek revenge with a sneak attack. Fraser thought it was safer to treat him as an ally than an enemy. "Dupas is probably the most dangerous and unpredictable person I have ever met. He is quite spooky, very quiet and you have no idea what he is thinking." While Dupas had a flabby body and his criminal record shows he attacked only defenceless women, Fraser found the killer to be surprisingly powerful. "He had enormously strong fingers. He could open stuck jars and would twist wire in the garden that others needed pliers to manipulate." Fraser had no real interest in Dupas' past. The former lawyer was determined to live in the present - his plan was simply to survive each day until his release and then try to salvage something from the wreck that had become his life. But as time dragged on, he was slowly sucked into Dupas' mind - learning almost against his will about the serial killer's crimes. It began when they were both in the small, wire-covered exercise yard known as the Chook Pen when a "Greek-looking" prisoner rushed over and starting yelling abuse at Dupas from outside the fence. According to Fraser, the inmate called Dupas an animal and blamed him for the Halvagis murder. "The verbal attack was out of the blue and Dupas was clearly shaken by it. Dupas then said, 'How does that c--- know I did it?' " Fraser remains adamant Dupas was clearly admitting guilt rather than just questioning the exchange. A week later Fraser saw Dupas standing in the vegetable garden staring at a window in Sirius West. "He was starting to shake, a sure sign he was agitated. I asked him what he was looking at and he told me he now knew which cell the abusive one was in and he was going to try and knock him." A few days later Dupas confided he knew the prisoner had a doctor's appointment and "he was going to jump him then kill him". He warned Fraser, "It would be better if I was elsewhere as he did not want me involved. He took the garden fork and put it where it could not be seen near the pathway." Fraser decided to break his promise of minding his own business. He quietly tipped off a prison guard and the medical visit was cancelled. POLICE had long suspected Dupas was a serial killer. They believe that Dupas - who first attacked a young mother who lived next door when he was a 15-year-old schoolboy, then stalked women for the next three decades - had killed at least six times. Detectives say he murdered Helen McMahon (February 1985), Renita Brunton (November 1993), Margaret Maher (October 1997), Mersina Halvagis (November 1997), Kathleen Downes(December 1997) and Nicole Patterson (April 1999). But Dupas had always maintained his innocence and launched an appeal (that failed) against his conviction over the Patterson murder. "In jail the etiquette is that you never ask another prisoner what they are in for; to be nosey is to invite violence," Fraser said. "I did not ask Dupas any questions as I didn't want to be attacked." But one day at the back of the small work station a group of the long-termers were discussing their crimes. Edmunds admitted killing Garry Heywood, 18, and Abina Madill, 16, in Shepparton in 1966 and said he regretted what he had done but was paying the price. A serial sex offender said he was soon due for release but expected he would re-offend. Then Edmunds said, "What about you, Pete?" According to Fraser, "Dupas hesitated and all was quiet. He then haltingly admitted killing Nicole Patterson." "The place was full of psychopaths. To me it was just a matter of staying alive." It showed that despite suggestions, Dupas did not have a mental condition that enabled him to "forget" his crimes. He was evil and cunning rather than compulsively disturbed. The 30-year legal veteran saw that Dupas showed no sign of remorse. "His attitude was what's done is done and not to worry about it." But Dupas did worry when he learned the homicide squad was far from finished with him. In September 2002, police interviewed Dupas over the murder of Margaret Maher, 40, who was found dead near the Hume Highway at Somerton on October 4, 1997. "When he came back from being questioned he was rattled and came straight to my cell," Fraser said. Dupas had good reason to seek urgent legal advice. Detectives had told him they had DNA evidence that incriminated him - there was a glove at the scene that linked him to the crime. (Dupas was charged and later convicted of the murder.) Dupas left the interview convinced he would be charged with both the Maher and Halvagis murders. Under immense pressure, the quiet and suspicious convict began to break his habit of non-disclosure. He confided to Fraser that there was no forensic evidence at Fawkner and none "with the old Sheila down the road". Fawkner was clearly the Mersina Halvagis murder scene and the old lady was Kathleen Downes, 95, who was murdered in her nursing home not far from where Dupas had lived at the time. After Dupas was charged with the Maher murder he handed Fraser the police brief of evidence to read. In their conversations, Dupas continued to gradually implicate himself in the Fawkner murder. "Dupas repeated he left no forensics at the scene and no one, not even the deceased, would have seen him as he attacked her from behind as she was either kneeling at or bending over her grandmother's grave - a frank and surprising admission." One day Fraser went to the multiple murderer's cell - remembering to remove his shoes before he entered as every day Dupas would paint the concrete floor of his cell with floor polish. As Fraser began to review the brief, Dupas put his fingers to his lips as a gesture to remain quiet. He then pointed to the intercom that he believed hid a police bug. "He sat on his bed, hands folded tightly and tucked between his legs. He trembled and sweated and started to rock back and forth as he did when he was agitated. "He then got up and took a kneeling position like a victim. He then stood up, became bug-eyed and began flailing wildly with repeated stabbing gestures. When he finished he sat back calmly and started watching the television in his cell. I was just stunned. I put it to the back of my mind. I just wanted to survive." At the time, police had deliberately held back the information that Halvagis was kneeling over her grandmother's grave. Only one person could have known - the killer. Later, while he was weeding the garden patch, Fraser found a homemade knife from a sharpened metal table-tennis brace. He called over his gardening partner. Dupas took the knife from Fraser and moved it up and down. "He started to sweat and looked (at) me with a very strange look on his face. I was apprehensive at this time and he uttered one word 'Mersina' and handed the knife back. "I have no doubt he was telling me he killed Mersina with a similar knife." Fraser dumped the knife in a bin but was so concerned he checked the next day to see that it had been emptied. In June 2003, Fraser was moved out of the division into the mainstream of Port Phillip and then to Fulham at Sale. Two years later, in June 2005, he was summoned to the guard post at Fulham. At first he thought the meeting would be connected with one of the snippets of petty prison politics that helped pass the days, until an officer leant over and whispered that a homicide squad detective was on the phone. "I knew exactly what the call was about before anyone spoke," Fraser said. On the line was Senior Detective Paul Scarlett who had spent more than a year reinvestigating the Halvagis case and unearthing several new witnesses who identified a man fitting Dupas' description inside the Fawkner Cemetery in the days and hours before the murder. He had checked prison records and knew that Fraser had spent more than a year in the same division as Dupas. His prison sources had told him Fraser had acted as the suspect's unpaid jailhouse lawyer. The homicide detective made the call with no real hope of a breakthrough. "I was furious with him, actually. I couldn't believe he would help someone like that. I expected the call to be short. I thought he'd tell me to get lost and hang up." But when Scarlett introduced himself on the phone, Fraser simply asked, "What took you so long?" Scarlett asked if he could help in the Halvagis case and Fraser said, "You'd better come and see me." Scarlett drove to Sale that night and was inside the prison the next morning. Dupas had finally made admissions, not to an old prison lag but to a trained legal professional who had dealt with criminals for nearly 30 years. It was the breakthrough moment. Police hoped they now had an outstanding witness who would not be intimidated by the court process and could provide a unique insight into Dupas. But why had Dupas broken his lifetime habit of refusing to implicate himself? Perhaps he felt that as a solicitor Fraser was bound by client-lawyer confidentiality. But Fraser was a former lawyer and Dupas was never his client. It was an admissible confession and one that could be put before a jury. No longer was Fraser the hated lawyer who had derailed many of their investigations - he was the man who could help them finally solve a murder and give the long-suffering Halvagis family just a little peace. Fraser was keen to cut a deal and the police were prepared to accommodate him. He wanted out and told Scarlett it was "a ride there for a ride back". But it took more than a year to get federal clearance to move Fraser's release date just two months. He was freed in September 2006 although he still had to report regularly to the parole board. JAIL has done nothing to knock the sharp edges off Andrew Fraser. He remains argumentative and his sentences are littered with the slang he learned from underworld clients. He is outspoken, opinionated and apparently without remorse for throwing away a career, a reputation, a small fortune and a marriage over a decade-long addiction to cocaine. But scratch the surface and the wound is still raw. He loved his job, loved the spotlight and had wanted to be a lawyer since childhood - following the path of his grandfather and uncle. His client list is gone, many murdered in Melbourne's underworld war. (He admits to having liked Lewis Moran, who was killed in the Brunswick Club in March 2004. "He was an old-style crook who would wear it when he was guilty. I saw him when he left jail and I said 'See you later'. He said that no I wouldn't. He knew what was going to happen.") Fraser, 56, refuses to play the victim. He knows he can only blame himself for his fall from top lawyer to convicted criminal. He was at the top of his game in the early 1990s when he was offered cocaine at a party. He saw it as another trapping of success rather than a trap and, like thousands of others, became an occasional ("about once a week") user. But by 1999 he was hooked - with a $1000-a-day habit and only just managing to hang out until the end of the court day before using again. "I was out of control. I have been stupid. I have damaged my family and myself but no one else. I didn't attack anyone and I didn't steal from anyone. This has been self-inflicted and I just hope people can use my case to show that drugs can bring anyone down." His wide circle of mates has narrowed and the long lunches shortened. "The silence from some people I thought were friends has been deafening." But he has learned to value the loyalty of a few above the backslapping of many. Fit and drug-free, his days are filled with early-morning runs, hard labour on a friend's farm, making up for lost time with his children and writing his memoirs, Day in Day Out. The Halvagis case created a dilemma for the long-time defence lawyer. Angry at his treatment in jail and believing his sentence was excessive, he enjoyed the irony of the very authorities who destroyed his career finally needing him. But there was never any doubt that he would give evidence - even though he knew the defence would try to destroy his credibility as the key witness. The past that he desperately wanted buried would be exhumed - his excesses and drug history would again be news. Experienced prosecutors say that if Fraser's testimony had been negated the case would have sunk. Defence lawyers claimed that Fraser was motivated only by money and that he fabricated the confessions to claim the $1 million reward offered in the Halvagis case. They claimed he was a self-serving liar who saw Dupas as a way to regain the respectability he lost when jailed over drugs. The jury examined Fraser's credibility, returning during yesterday's deliberation to ask questions about his testimony. Fraser says he was unaware of the reward until after he was contacted by police. "I didn't have the faintest idea. I just wanted to do my time and get out. You just put one foot in front of the other and try to get through each week." The expert negotiator says that if he was motivated by the reward he would have contacted detectives and tried to cut a deal long before they rang him. The reward was first offered in February 2005 and Fraser did not make a statement until June - when Senior Detective Paul Scarlett approached him. "Dupas is the worst sort of human you can imagine. I didn't seek to trap him I just wanted to do my time and slip out under the radar. But once he talked, I had no option but to stand up and be counted." As he speaks his mobile phone sounds. The ring tone is from the classic Warren Zevon song Lawyers, Guns and Money. "I'm a desperate man, Send lawyers, guns and money, The shit has hit the fan." Published in The Age: Friday, August 10, 2007
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