Chapter 13

Jumping at Shadows

John Lewthwaite escaped from prison around lunchtime on Monday, 25 August 1975. Gwen heard about it when her father rang and told her he was out. All her fear and panic returned, her chest tightening as she remembered how he had hidden in the bushes waiting and watching before he killed Nicole. Her daughter’s murderer had escaped with rapist Michael Riley, murderer Paul Oehlers, armed robbers Maxwell Mastenbroek and George Johnson and repeat burglar Gary Cooper.

The Hanns family got dressed and drove around to the shops in Liverpool. They bought a newspaper. The headlines screamed, ‘Maniac Hunts Boy, Ten; Mum in terror as police put guard on home’. Anthony wanted to know where the police were who were guarding him. His mother could barely respond. She was petrified. If she were to believe what the newspapers were saying, the entire New South Wales Central Coast was in terror. The news report said police had mounted one of the largest manhunts for fugitives in the state’s history. Anyone within a 150-kilometre radius of Morisset had been warned by the authorities not to open their doors to strangers. Tracker dogs, an Irouois helicopter from Williamtown Airforce base and 100 police reinforcements had joined the 60 uniformed police and detectives who had been searching throughout the night. She read on. Roadblocks had been set up on all the roads leading out of the Wyong area. Trucks, caravans and cars were being searched. The police were broadcasting that the men were ‘extremely dangerous’.

The question at the forefront of Gwen’s mind was whether Lewthwaite would return for her son. He had come after him once. She would always remember that, the night he murdered Nicole, Lewthwaite had really been after Anthony. He had seen him only briefly two years before that attempt. Gwen needed to protect him from harm.

At 9.30 a.m. on Tuesday, 26 August, six police cars with tracker dogs sped to a cottage at Awaba on the Central Coast. A householder had reported a disturbance there, and it was thought that two of the escapees had been sighted. Shortly afterwards, three police officers overpowered Lewthwaite and George Johnson. The convicted armed robber had been trying to hitch a lift when he was spotted. Lewthwaite was in nearby scrub. The two had used a ladder belonging to a Public Works crew to escape from Morisset mental hospital’s maximum-security wing. They had travelled only eight kilometres before their recapture.

Gwen and Peter’s relief was overwhelming.

With time, life gradually became manageable again for the Hanns family. Gwen began to see a psychologist who encouraged her to talk about Nicole, and finally the day came when she could talk about her without crying. Not long after Nicole’s death, she had gone to a hypnotist, a Dr Burrows, begging to have her daughter wiped from her mind.

‘It wasn’t that I wanted to forget Nicole or anything,’ says Gwen. ‘I just wanted to forget the pain that went with losing her.’

Dr Burrows had refused. Instead, he had put her under hypnosis to help her relax. The management of her grief had come a long way since then, although Nicole’s murder still influenced many facets of her life.

Despite her history of dressing in quality clothes and shoes, since her daughter’s death, Gwen found herself going to cheap shops and buying inexpensive dresses and plastic shoes. Her doctor finally coaxed her into buying better clothes, but she couldn’t bring herself to buy them outright. Rather, she justified the expense by purchasing them on lay-by and paying them off over a number of weeks.

However, whatever Gwen thought about herself, not everyone shared her thoughts. At the end of 1977, the Welfare Department granted her two more children for adoption, a four-year-old boy and his two-year-old sister. The next seven years came and went with some degree of normality. Gwen and Peter still felt that there was a huge hole in their lives, but they built a new life with their three remaining children.

Then, in 1985, everything came to a grinding halt once again.

At 1.00 a.m. on Wednesday, 17 April, Monica Tranter listened carefully to the news. At midnight, she could have sworn she had heard a story about John Lewthwaite escaping from day release. She had been busy doing laboratory work and hadn’t really been listening. But there was no mention of Lewthwaite this bulletin.

‘I thought, That can’t be right. Did he say Lewthwaite?’ remembers Monica. ‘Then I listened again to the next news and it wasn’t on. I thought I was hearing things.’

Monica was certain that Gwen would have heard if Lewthwaite were on the run. At 5.00 a.m., the story was played again. John David Lewthwaite had escaped from Long Bay Jail after failing to meet his psychiatrist. He had been on unsupervised day leave and had been at large for at least 16 hours. Monica dropped everything and raced to Gwen’s house. When she got there, journalists were starting to arrive outside. Gwen had only just been told. Anthony could see that his mum was in a state. He rang his work and told them he wasn’t coming in that day. They only needed to listen to the radio or read a newspaper to find out why. The 19-year-old had even been quoted in one paper for statements he had made the previous evening. He thought this was a hoot, considering he had been drinking with friends and none of them had spoken to a journalist.

Gwen could neither eat nor sleep. Even knowing there were police guarding both the front and rear of the house didn’t put her mind at ease. Lewthwaite was a local boy, and he knew exactly where to find them as they hadn’t moved. When she thought about what Lewthwaite had done to her family, she felt angry. She had been reluctant to give her full love to her two youngest children when they were first adopted because she was scared – scared she would lose them too. They had had to come to her for love as she couldn’t initiate hugs or kisses. As a couple, she and Peter had argued often since Nicole’s death, something that they had never done previously. Both had taken anti-depressants, Gwen more consistently. Neither could escape the memories of the hours surrounding their daughter’s murder. In addition, all the ‘happy days’ had become sad. Family birthdays, Christmas Day and Easter were all different. And now he had escaped.

Gwen arranged for both her daughter and younger son to be carefully watched at school. She had been on her way to talk to the principal when a journalist had chased the car up the road, trying to get her story. When she got home, Gwen could actually feel her nerves jumping. She went straight to the doctor’s. Her blood pressure was up. By Wednesday evening, Anthony had had enough – he joined his friends at their local pub.

On Thursday, the newspapers carried the story that the New South Wales Opposition Leader, Nick Greiner, was calling for the police minister’s resignation. He had reportedly acknowledged that Lewthwaite had been allowed out of jail unsupervised on at least 17 occasions. It was also stated that he was the tenth prisoner to escape in 1985 alone. The judge who chaired the Release Licence Board was accepting responsibility for the decision. Later that day, everyone thought Lewthwaite had been found when the group of police guarding the Hanns’s house jumped into their cars and sped away. Someone from Sydney’s inner west had called claiming to have seen Lewthwaite in the area. It was been a hoax. No real harm had been done, but knowing the police had been called away while Lewthwaite was out there left Gwen feeling vulnerable.

On the Friday, Anthony escaped again for a drink at the pub with some friends. Later, at a friend’s house, he heard on the radio that Lewthwaite had been recognised by a psychiatric nurse at Morriset and caught. He knew he should go home to his mother. As he had been drinking and his friend didn’t have a phone, he decided to walk home. It wouldn’t be a long walk. His house was only two or three miles away, on the other side of the canal. The canal was pitch black, and Anthony could hear someone following him. He knew Lewthwaite had been caught, but he also knew that he wasn’t imagining the footsteps behind him. He swung around and looked down. It was a dog. He raced over his back fence and into his house.