Chapter 3

Impossible Goodbyes

It was about 1.00 a.m. on Friday, 21 August when Christine Simpson awoke with a start. She and Peter had lain down on their bed, fully clothed and exhausted, an hour before and must have dozed off. It had been the first time they had stopped since Ebony had disappeared. It took a moment for Christine to realise that half the lights in the house were out. Someone had also turned out the front porch and verandah lights. She was acutely aware that Ebony would be too scared to return through the dark to the house. Ebony had never wanted to go and feed the chickens in the evening. She was always worried about what lurked in the dark.

‘There is nothing there when it’s dark that isn’t there in the day,’ Christine would scold.

Christine’s mind drew a picture of her home’s long circular driveway, surrounded by trees. She was sure that if someone had kidnapped her daughter and now dumped her out the front, she’d be too frightened to walk down without the lights lit on the front verandah. It was very dark at night. Christine got up and turned all the lights in the house on. There were friends and relatives asleep everywhere. The lounges, chairs and floor were covered with familiar faces. Yet all the police appeared to have left.

‘There’s no police here. They’ve all gone!’ Christine panicked, shaking Peter awake. Earlier there had been plenty of them parked in front of the gate. ‘Nobody’s here. They’re not looking for Ebony any more. Get up. They’ve all gone.’

Peter and Christine walked up to the front gate with a torch. There didn’t seem to be any police there either. Just then, a car came around the corner. Peter ran madly out onto the road, forcing the driver to slam on the brakes to miss him. When the car stopped, he glared at the driver and passenger.

‘Get out of the car!’ Peter demanded, peering in. Wordlessly, he scoured the interior of the car. He asked, ‘Can I look in your boot, mate?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ the man replied. No one was arguing.

Peter checked the boot and went back to talk to the men. They’d been at work at the local chicken farm down the road and had heard about a little girl being missing. Christine walked back inside the house, tears rolling down her face. She couldn’t believe that nobody cared, that no one was looking for her daughter. It was almost 36 hours since Ebony had disappeared.

 

Most of the police involved in the case were at that moment gathered in Wirrimbirra Sanctuary, on the outskirts of Bargo, around the dam in which it was thought Ebony’s body would be found. The water in the dam was muddy. Visibility was nil. A decision had been made that it would not be searched until 10.00 the next morning, as divers couldn’t be organised until then. However, Detective Sergeants Foster and Pateman felt uncomfortable with this decision. Although they knew the chance that Ebony was alive was remote, it was an icy night and they wouldn’t have liked to find her body, somewhere remote from the dam, the next day. If she had managed to crawl out, and it was a big if, then she may not have survived the night.

The dam was shallow enough for a person to wade in and search with his or her feet. Rescue Squad members Constable Bill Morris and his partner volunteered to go into the water, fully clothed, and search for the little girl. They had no protective gear so they entered the icy water with ropes tied around their waists and used their feet to feel for her. Everyone on the embankment watched as they made slow deliberate sweeps of the floor of the dam.

The first thing Constable Bill Morris noticed was that the water was bitterly cold. Now, after 20 minutes, he was acutely aware that he and his partner had to get out of the water. Underneath his overalls his legs had gone numb. Just a little longer, he reminded himself, knowing that if they eliminated the dam from their inquiries the police could concentrate on the bush. It was decided that they would do one last sweep of the dam. Constable Morris had been in the rescue squad for four years, and during that time he had recovered a number of bodies from waterways, but nothing like this. Chest deep in water, he felt his boot step on something strange. Earlier he’d thought he had found her, but it had been a rock or something, a false alarm. This time he was absolutely sure.

Standing on the embankment, Crime Scene Examiner Whayne Day warned his colleague to bring her up slowly. It was important that no forensic evidence be lost.

‘I actually reached down and pulled her up,’ says Constable Morris. ‘I just remember her head come up, staring me straight in the face and I dragged her straight out to the side of the dam.’

A quick check for vital signs was made by Crime Scene Examiner Day, in case Ebony had somehow managed to survive. The little girl was terribly cold, her body blue and full of rigor mortis. Leaves, dirt and a slimy film coated her mottled skin.

Constable David Berry watched from the outskirts. Until then he had expected to find her alive. ‘When we didn’t, it was like a bomb being dropped on you. Everyone was working hard and trying to get a result so that we could get to this young girl … There were a few police who shed a tear that night,’ he said.

While the dam was being searched, Detective Sergeants Pateman and Foster had escorted Garforth back to his house so he could provide them with the clothes he had been wearing at the time of Ebony’s murder. The clothes would be thoroughly examined, along with the clothes taken earlier from his laundry. When this task was completed, Garforth was subjected to another formal interview during which it was learned that Ebony’s body had been found.

At the dam the police investigation continued concurrently. Taking out his camera Crime Scene Examiner Day began to take photographs of Ebony’s body. He noted that her upper clothes were intact but that her pants were down around her ankles. Both her wrists and ankles were bound with ligature. Earlier, he had been able to match the shoes of the man who had brought them to the dam with the prints at the water’s edge, despite there being footprints from a fox that had visited the site later. It was part of Day’s job to make plaster casts of the markings.

The constable watched as a Government Medical Officer pronounced the little girl deceased. Neither he nor the doctor could get a temperature reading from her body or the dam. The thermometer began at five degrees Celsius, which was higher than they needed.

Stripped to almost nothing the two members of the Rescue Squad huddled in front of their truck. Draped in blankets and close to a heater, they tried desperately to warm themselves.

‘It was absolutely bitterly cold,’ says First Class Constable Morris. ‘(I had) just grabbed a couple of blankets … I sort of looked back. I remember looking at her briefly on the side of the dam, and seeing the electrical wiring around her arms and legs ... The young girl … was on the banks in the mud, on the side. ... I just remember you could tell she was a pretty girl even when she was dead.’

It was decided the Search Coordinator, Inspector Jim Baillie, and his partner would tell the Simpson family that Ebony had been found and was dead. The police officers drove to the Simpson house and parked at the end of the driveway. Inspector Baillie had had to ensure that the girl who had been found was definitely Ebony before he came to tell the family. He had carefully checked the body against her description. It had been her. He now looked out into the murkiness at the huge German shepherd they would have to pass. Carefully, they alighted from the car, and walked up the driveway and across the grass towards the verandah. Peter Simspon was waiting for them there.

 

Friday, 21 August 1992, 4.00 a.m.

Christine was standing at the kitchen window, staring out, when a police car pulled in. Her eyes dulled with exhaustion, she had felt for the past 36 hours as if she were watching herself from the outside. It had to be a dream. Over and over she had tried to grasp the reality that it was her little girl who was missing. She peered through the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of relief in the faces of the police officers – a smile, anything that would tell it was all over … that it was okay.

As Christine ran out onto the verandah towards the police officers, she could just catch snippets from the car radio: ‘… pink school bag … white sneakers … blue uniform …’

‘Have you found her?’ she cried, stopping beside Peter who had hurried outside from another room within the house moments before her.

‘Yes.’

‘Is she dead or alive?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Did they hurt her?’ Christine screamed, as she fell down onto the verandah. ‘Did they hurt her?’ All she wanted was to hold Ebony and somehow bring her back to life. She could hear them telling her Ebony was dead, but she didn’t want to hear it.

Margaret flew out of the door to her sister. Her heart had gone cold as soon as she’d heard Christine’s cry. Moments earlier she had been aware that Christine and Peter had gone to greet the police just outside the door.

‘Did they hurt her?’ Christine cried in anguish again and again. ‘Did they hurt her?’ Each time one of the police officers gently said, ‘No.’

Peter had been the first one out on the verandah. He had never given up hope that his little girl was okay, but as the police car approached he’d had no doubt that something was wrong. The police had walked down the last part of the driveway, past a parked car, across the grass toward the verandah. This is it, he had thought, steeling himself for the worst. His stomach had lurched as he heard the news. It had been the worst feeling he had ever felt in his life: overwhelming helplessness. Everything around him had become hazy. He had been only vaguely aware of the police officers who stood beside him and had been totally unaware of who was awake or asleep in his house at the time. Then, as he always had in a threatening situation, suddenly he became focused. He had absorbed that he was never going to see Ebony again but that he still had a wife and two sons. It had become clear to him: he had to concentrate on what he still had. He had to be there for his family. Later on he could lose it completely.

Peter now watched as Christine fell to the verandah floor, shrieking. She was acting out what he wanted but wouldn’t allow himself to do. Soon the boys would be awake and he would need to tell them about their sister. He wouldn’t make the mistakes with them that he had made in the past.

 

Christine continued to sit motionless in the kitchen at Arina Road in the seat she was placed in after learning that Ebony’s body had been found. Her own body felt paralysed by her brain. She was in a big black hole that, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get out of. All she could do was travel sporadically from memory to memory of her daughter, her first recollection sparked by the chair in which she now sat.

Christine had cooked the family’s dinner the night before Ebony had disappeared, while Ebony had sat in that same chair and talked about her day at school. She had been a chatty girl. Sometimes, says Christine, ‘She’d say, I’ll make tea tonight. We’d cook and she would put it on the plate … She’d do it like a decoration, you know. She used to be so proud of that.’ Glancing across the room Christine’s thoughts turned to the day she had been angry with Tasman and had been slamming everything around in the kitchen. She had caught sight of her daughter out of the corner of her eye. Standing with her hands on her hips, Ebony had quipped, ‘Is that really necessary?’ Her question had made Christine smile. Everybody had calmed down.

Now Christine thought about the mornings. Each morning, when she took the nine-year-old to school, she’d let her out of the car and say, ‘Be good, be nice and if you can’t be nice, be kind.’ Her little girl would declare, ‘You say that every day, Mum. The same thing.’ Ebony was right, but Christine hadn’t said it that morning, the morning Ebony disappeared. That morning, Christine had had to talk to her teacher and had stayed until ten. ‘I remember giving Ebony a big kiss in front of her friends before I left,’ says Christine. ‘I said to her, See you this arvo. And I never did see her again.’

Christine’s mind returned to the moment when the police had told her Ebony was dead. She had begged them to let her go to her daughter. ‘They said, You can’t hold her, and I said, Just let me hold her because I’m her mother and if I hold her she might come back to life,’’’ remembers Christine. At that moment she had needed to hold Ebony, more than she had ever needed anything before. They hadn’t allowed it. Christine shuddered, feeling asphyxiated. Ebony’s killer had been the last one to hold her little girl.

Margaret looked over at her sister. She appeared to be in a trance. Inspector Baillie also glanced over at Christine from across the room. He had asked for a doctor to come and give her a sedative because she was so distressed. He and his partner were now making cups of coffee and staying for support.

Within 20 minutes of delivering the awful news to Peter, Inspector Baillie was forced to ask him to come and identify Ebony’s body. The identification had to be done as soon as possible for forensic reasons. Peter was standing outside with his brother Warren and brothers-in-law, John Neville and Barry Edwards, when the Search Coordinator broached the subject. He said: ‘It is important that someone identify Ebony’s body now. Do you feel you can accompany us to Camden Hospital?’

Peter’s mind raced. Zac and Tasman were still asleep and didn’t know the news. Somebody would have the task of telling the boys about their sister and he knew inside himself that it had to be him. It was imperative that he told them and only him. He had been in his early twenties when his mother had died from a stroke. His father had been so devastated by her death that the burden of telling his two brothers, then aged ten and 11, had fallen on his shoulders. Although an adult, Peter hadn’t felt much like one when it came to death and grieving; despite this he had put aside dealing with his own hurt and begun to make decisions on behalf of his brothers.

‘I remember driving them in my car to an isolated beach situation,’ says Peter, ‘a pier ... and sitting there and telling them that their mother had died.’ The elder of the two had been strangely quiet while the younger brother was openly distressed. It had been the hardest thing he had had to do until now. Their terrible pain and sadness, their loss, had stayed with him. He closed his eyes. He could see their faces. They were a nightmare painted in his mind.

Peter was aware that after telling them he had made the mistake: he had decided that his brothers were too young to attend their mother’s funeral. He had been adamant, when his father asked him, that his brothers shouldn’t go. He had seen the pain on their faces. In hindsight he’d been wrong. His grandmother, with all her wisdom, had been livid when she discovered they weren’t at the funeral. Furious, he had questioned her right to make such a performance at his mother’s funeral; after all, he had reasoned, she was only her mother. As a result his brothers never got to see their mother lowered into the ground. They never had the finality of a funeral. He would not make the same mistake with his sons.

‘When the boys have woken and I’ve told them about Ebony,’ he replied to Inspector Baillie’s request.

‘I’m sorry but we need to go now, Peter,’ Inspector Baillie explained. ‘Detective Hardy is awaiting your arrival at Camden Hospital.’ Peter couldn’t understand the urgency. He needed time to think about it. The boys were asleep. He knew he could go straight into their room, shake them awake, and then if they asked him, ‘What’s the matter?’, he could say, ‘Ebony’s been murdered and I’ve got to go.’ But that wasn’t the way he wanted it. By the same token he didn’t want to identify his baby girl but he felt he had to.

‘Is there someone else who can perhaps go in your place?’ asked Inspector Baillie.

Barry looked at his brothers-in-law one by one. There was a long silence. ‘Okay,’ he consented. ‘I’ll go.’

Now Peter was angry. He was facing a real dilemma: he didn’t want anyone else to identify Ebony, but he couldn’t abandon his boys. He grudgingly acquiesced. The men climbed into John Neville’s car and set off for Camden Hospital. Peter was left alone on the verandah, watching them leave. He sat, feeling numb. He had decided to wait until his sons woke of their own accord before telling them about Ebony. This was the worst day of his life. The days his kids had been born were the best.

Peter’s first born, Zac, entered the world at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane. He had been working in Queensland. Despite thinking he knew a lot about childbirth, when Christine had told him her waters had broken, he had asked her what she meant. She then told him in no uncertain terms that she was in labour and needed to get to hospital. His ute had been parked around the side of the house, but there was no petrol in it. He had gone into a blind panic and fuelled the truck before taking her to hospital. It had been at least half an hour’s drive on a pretty rough road. ‘It would have been terrible for her,’ says Peter. ‘It was a bench seat and the seat was just awash with water.’

As Peter sat in his reverie, at Camden Hospital Barry and Warren left John and were escorted to a viewing room, just off from the main entrance. Inside the room were a number of police officers, including Detective Hardie and hospital staff. Somebody gestured that only one of the men should approach the trolley where Ebony lay. Barry glanced at Warren, who appeared to hesitate and then stepped forward. The next few minutes were like a dream.

‘I was almost in a trance, like my feet weren’t touching the floor, when I was walking over to her,’ Barry says. ‘When I saw her I was just, I suppose some sort of shock set in … and it numbed me.’

A blanket had been pulled up almost to Ebony’s chin. Above the blanket was the innocent face of the little girl he had watched flit around in her new swimmers the Christmas before. She was a joy of a child. Always dressed in pink. She was right at that pink stage, gorgeous. Before him now her face and hair were covered in mud and leaves. Her hair, still wet, was swept back to show her little white earrings. Barry stepped towards Ebony and one of the police officers stepped forward too.

‘It dawned on me then,’ says Barry, ‘that he was pretty close by to see that I didn’t touch the body.’

Detective Hardie showed him where to sign the statement of identification and the three men began the 40-minute trip back to Bargo.

 

On the morning of 21 August, just hours after Ebony’s body had been formally identified, Andrew Garforth had his first taste of the public’s anger about what he had done when he appeared briefly at Picton Courthouse.

‘Keep looking over your shoulder, you bastard. ’Cause you’re going to get yours!’ came a shout. ‘Yeah, in jail!’

‘Die! Die!’ screamed a woman.

‘Go on, tie his arms and legs and see how he goes! Come on, get him out here,’ cried a man’s voice, as another local lifted a sign saying, ‘Hang the Bastard.’

‘Bastard.’

Picton Courthouse was awash with people yelling abuse as the 29-year-old was bundled past. The crowd of nearly 200 had gathered quickly that morning as news of Ebony’s death had spread.

‘You’ll get yours!’

‘Stinking low-life mongrel,’ the crowd called.

‘Bring him out here. Bring him out here, the bastard!’

‘Flaming mongrel!’

A huge media contingent filmed a short, thin figure dressed in black jeans and a leather jacket and cloaked in a white towel being led from the police cells through the crowd and into the courthouse next door. The police officers on duty had trouble keeping the crowd at bay, their efforts no match for the insults, flying rocks and eggs that exploded on the courthouse roof. The gathering surged forward to enter the building, but within moments was turned away.

‘The court’s full,’ the police repeated. ‘No more. Please move back. The court’s full.’

Inside a packed gallery of locals heard how the defendant had snatched Ebony on her way home from school. ‘He grabbed her from behind and put her in the boot and drove off to a dirt track in Charles Point Road, Bargo,’ Police Prosecutor Adam Sutton stated. ‘He took her from the car to the edge of a nearby dam. He bound her hands behind her back with wire. He bound her feet with wire and then sexually abused her.’

The courtroom erupted with noise. Garforth stood, his head hung low as Magistrate Ian McRea attempted to regain control of the gallery.

‘The defendant then threw her into the dam while her feet and hands were still bound,’ Sergeant Sutton proceeded. ‘He then left his victim struggling in the dam, crying for help.’

The mood in the courtroom was black. Magistrate McRae remanded Andrew Peter Garforth to appear in Bowral Court on

12 October and formally refused bail. The magistrate also recognised the intense feelings of the crowd before him and cautioned them that, until Garforth had faced trial, no pre-sumptions of guilt could be drawn.

Detective Sergeants Col Pateman and Steve Foster had been up all night. After visiting the dam and eliciting Garforth’s statements, they had prepared the facts for the Picton lab report. At about 4.00 a.m., they had been able to go home for a shower, but had had to go straight back to the station. Now, following the court proceedings, it was time to go and tell Christine and Peter Simpson what had happened to their daughter, or at least what they knew so far. As the two policemen sat down, the parents made it clear they wanted to know every detail.

 

On Wednesday, 19 August 1992, at 4.05 p.m., Ebony Simpson disembarked from her school bus not far from her home. Slowly, she wandered past a number of her neighbours as she began the 400-metre stretch to her front gate. At the bend in the road stood a thinly built man, with dirty mouse-brown shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. His name was Andrew Peter Garforth. The bonnet and boot of his car were open and he was purportedly putting oil in the engine. These were the same man and car that Christine had described to the police during the investigation, a 29-year-old unemployed labourer, who had recently moved into Pheasant’s Nest Road with his de facto.

As the nine-year-old circumnavigated the car, the father of two grabbed her and bundled her into the boot. He then closed the lid and drove the car to a dam, about seven kilometres away, turning the music up so that no one could hear the little girl’s cries. Alone, parked near the water’s edge, he carried Ebony from the boot and sat her on the front seat beside him. His children’s safety seats were in the back. For 15 minutes the petrified child pleaded with him to let her go.

Still allegedly unsure about what he would do with her, Garforth went to his boot and tore out some speaker wire. Dragging Ebony to the embankment, he bound her ankles together and her arms behind her back. He pulled down her tracksuit pants and knickers and digitally penetrated her for some time. When he was finished, he picked up Ebony by the pants between her ankles and the front of her pink parker and swung her like a rocking horse until he sent her hurtling into the water. Turning, he filled her school bag with rocks before throwing it to join her. Ignoring the child’s pleas for help, Garforth left the nine-year-old bound and struggling for her life in the freezing water and drove away.