Chapter 25

The Colour Purple

The trial Cindy had dreaded for so long surprisingly gave her a new focus. She began to think it might yield answers; maybe it would uncover the missing piece in a dreadful jigsaw puzzle and complete a picture she hadn’t been ready to see before.

The whole truth and nothing but the truth, she thought.

It was 10 May 2010, and Cindy felt imbued with strength as she stood in the corridors of the Supreme Court, waiting for her name to be called. She smoothed her purple top and black pants as she chatted anxiously with Anne O’Brien.

Cindy wasn’t wearing the locket Rob bought after their children’s deaths – the one with the photo of the boys. She’d come to see it as a poisoned chalice, handed to her by the man who’d deliberately stolen everything she lived for. The thought of it was a sickening reminder of Rob’s deceit.

Cindy’s name was finally called. ‘Bring it on,’ she murmured, her anger washing over her, as she braced herself for the task ahead.

‘Remember, Cindy, I’m right behind you,’ Anne reassured her. ‘You can do this.’

Cindy remembered how last time around she’d been Rob’s voice. She’d spoken up for him while he sat in the dock, mute. She’d spoken for him when she told everyone what a loving dad he was. She’d protected him by deliberately failing to mention his more unpleasant behaviour and the disrespectful way he’d treated her.

But today, Cindy would be a voice for her children. They’d been robbed of a voice in this painful fight for justice. She hadn’t been there to protect them that awful night, but today she’d speak for them. Her eyes were open, and she wouldn’t make the same mistake. The thought propelled her into the courtroom.

It had been agreed that she could give her testimony from a seat in the body of the court rather than the intimidating witness box. As she took her seat, she stared across to the defendant, who carefully averted his eyes, furrowing his brow and concentrating on his chubby hands to avoid her angry gaze.

Cindy hadn’t seen Rob in person since he’d been led from the court to the cells in 2007. Now, she took the Bible in her hand, glancing at his downturned head, and swore the oath. And nothing but the truth, she thought. She noticed Rob was fidgeting, as he always did when he was nervous.

Cindy began by speaking of her relationship with the accused. When Mr Tinney asked her about the marriage, her lip curled almost instinctively into a snarl. She shot a glance at Rob, not even realising she had.

The evidence turned to Cindy’s resentment over Farquharson’s failed business venture and the debt he incurred. The troubled marriage began ‘going downhill fast’, and she’d finally ended it in November 2004, asking Rob to leave the house.

‘I think he knew it was coming,’ Cindy told the court. ‘He thought I was having an affair at the time and I wasn’t.’ She said he’d finally sought counselling, but it was too late.

The jury then heard how the defendant had struggled to cope with the breakup. He was irked about his financial situation and bitter about living back at his father’s while Cindy moved on. He was particularly resentful over her refusal to sell the newer family car, leaving him with the old one. He’d also been reluctant to take his children overnight, particularly Bailey, who was still in nappies, but in the end he’d agreed.

‘Rob was always a “woe is me” person,’ she said. His glass was half empty. ‘He always looked at what he didn’t have and not what he did have.’ He was forever ‘whingeing and moaning’ and was never happy.

Mr Tinney turned his attention to Cindy’s second police statement. He prompted her to tell the jury about Rob’s constant name-calling, and she described the cruel teasing that drove Jai to lash out at his father. She said it greatly distressed her family to watch Rob treating his children like this.

‘It was as if all four of us were his possessions,’ Cindy told the jury. ‘He was protective of us all…but it is hard to describe, with the kids, because he had this love–hate relationship.’

She told the jury how Rob had explained his refusal to discipline his children. ‘If I was really angry, I wouldn’t know when to stop,’ he’d said. ‘I wouldn’t know how far I’d go.’

But it was Cindy’s account of Father’s Day that the jury really wanted to hear. She recalled dropping her children off at Rob’s father’s home, waiting while he opened his gifts, and asking him to bring them back by 7.30 p.m.

‘It’s the biggest regret of my life, asking that question,’ Cindy wavered, breaking down in tears. Some of the jurors were close to tears themselves when she told them how she’d said goodbye – not knowing this was the last time she’d ever see her boys.

‘I gave them all a hug. I said “I love you” to Jai and Tyler, and Bailey’s last words to me were “Cuddle, Mum.” And I cuddled him and I left. And that was the last time I saw them alive.’

Her voice shook as she recounted Rob’s arrival on her doorstep. ‘I was dumbfounded,’ she told the court.

Stifling sobs, she described the dash to the dam and recalled how Stephen had arrived behind her in the darkness. Stephen had sworn at Rob when he asked for a cigarette, she said. Rob had spoken of having a coughing fit and a blackout. She remembered him standing with his arms folded, watching everyone else as they frantically searched for the car and the children. He’d made no attempt to help or do anything at all.

‘In general terms, how would you describe his demeanour?’ Mr Tinney asked.

‘Like he’d lost his pushbike,’ Cindy replied, glancing angrily at Rob.

On her third day of evidence, the jury heard the covert tapes of her phone conversations with Rob in the days after their children’s deaths. She broke down when they were played. Was that really her voice comforting Rob on the end of the line, telling him she accepted their children’s deaths were a terrible accident? ‘I do defend you and I do believe in you,’ she heard herself saying from a lifetime ago. ‘I know in my heart of hearts that you would never harm those boys.’

What on earth had she been thinking? Hearing those tapes for the first time, she could tell that Rob’s only concerns were for himself. He talked about how bad he felt; how tough it was for him. She’d been so drugged, she hadn’t even noticed that he’d barely paused to inquire about her health, and not once had he apologised for the pain he’d caused her. He sounded sorry all right, but only for himself.

By the time Cindy had completed her evidence-in-chief, she felt absolutely furious, but the comfort and support she’d given to Rob in her state of denial were poised to be used against her.

Cindy’s spine stiffened as Peter Morrissey rose to his feet.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked Cindy. His tone was more matter-of-fact than concerned.

‘As right as I’m going to be,’ she retorted defensively.

‘Are you angry with Robert Farquharson?’ he asked bluntly.

‘Yes,’ she snapped.

The barrister pointed to a camera on the wall of the courtroom. ‘See that?’ he asked. ‘When you gave evidence on Friday, you were asked whether you were married to Mr Farquharson. Did you bare your teeth at him? Did you look over at him and show him your teeth?’

‘Possibly,’ Cindy answered. ‘If it’s on camera, obviously.’

After more than three years of pleading with Rob to answer the questions that ate at her soul, no wonder she’d snarled in response to that question, baring her teeth like a wounded animal at the man who’d inflicted such hurt on her. It had been an impulsive, unconscious reaction.

Mr Morrissey glanced from the witness towards the jury, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

‘Do you have a psychiatrist named Dr Ajeet Singh?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Cindy. She was then questioned at length about her depression and her heavy medication. It was subtle, she realised, but Morrissey was attacking her credibility, attempting to make her sound like some crazy woman who couldn’t be believed.

Cindy agreed she was on medication – lots of it. There was no doubt she was depressed. Who wouldn’t be? And, yes, she’d spent four years as a patient of Dr Singh. ‘But I have also recently been told by him that he has never seen me so switched on and aware.’

Mr Morrissey suggested that Cindy’s psychiatrist had observed that she’d been in denial in the early days of her treatment. ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ she agreed. Dr Singh had suggested that her denial had been damaging her ability to deal with her grief and to heal.

‘For the state you’re now in, you blame Robert Farquharson, correct?’ pressed Mr Morrissey.

‘That’s correct,’ she said.

‘You hate him?’

‘I hate him for what he’s done to my life,’ she said, directing an angry gaze at Rob.

‘And it is your wish that he be convicted of murder?’

‘Correct,’ Cindy replied honestly.

Mr Morrissey then grilled her about her sudden change of heart. He reminded her about her original police statement and the testimony she’d given under oath, both at the committal hearing and at Robert’s first trial.

Hadn’t she said back then that his client was a devoted dad who lived for his kids? Wasn’t he the man she said had a heart of gold and was extraordinarily close to his children?

Cindy bristled. Yes, she’d said all that. But she’d been in denial.

Mr Morrissey asked her to remain seated as some important footage was played to the jury. Cindy watched herself testifying on video at Rob’s first trial. She was defending him. How stupid and naïve she’d been, she thought, seeing her drawn face on the TV screen. She looked as numb then as she’d felt inside. Talk about blind faith!

When the video finished, Mr Morrissey resumed his probing. ‘Did you also appear on a national TV show called 60 Minutes?’

‘That’s correct.’ The interview had aired two weeks after Rob’s first trial.

The jury glanced from the witness to the distraught mother on the screen saying, ‘I don’t want my children to be remembered as those three little Farquharson boys, murdered by their father.’

Cindy’s stomach lurched as the screen shifted to the footage of her three beautiful children, splashing happily in the bath, full of life. That home video continued to haunt her. Her sobs echoed around the court, leaving some jurors visibly shaken, and the judge called a brief recess so the distressed witness could compose herself.

When the court resumed, Mr Morrissey turned his attention to my interview with Cindy for Woman’s Day. He zeroed in on the quote where she’d referred to her ex-husband as a kind, loving dad.

‘Did you say this?’ he asked bluntly.

Cindy agreed she had.

‘And did you say this: “If his children are looking down, they’d be devastated seeing what their father is going through, especially Jai.” Did you say that?’

‘I believed it was correct at the time,’ she answered.

‘In all that material you did not once say, “He treated me and the kids as possessions”. At no time did you say he had a love–hate relationship with the kids.’

That was correct, Cindy agreed.

So, Mr Morrissey asked, was Cindy now saying this because she’d decided to hate her ex-husband?

‘I have not said I hate Robert,’ she explained. ‘I said I have hated him for what he’s done.’

Mr Morrissey turned to the subject of his client’s persistent coughing during their relationship. Was it severe?

Not severe enough to take his breath away and cause him to black out, she snapped.

‘You’ve changed your evidence, haven’t you?’ pressed Mr Morrissey. He reminded her that at the previous trial, she’d given sworn evidence that her ex-husband’s cough was out of control and took his breath away.

Cindy now held her own breath: ‘Yes, but there’s also been a big piece of the puzzle that’s been put in front of me in the last six months,’ she said. ‘Of course I’m changing my evidence. I’ve had five years to think about this. He killed my kids.’

Mr Morrissey went back to her previous evidence. ‘There was no boy who lost a bicycle in your evidence last time, was there?’

‘No,’ she agreed. But with hindsight, that is exactly what he looked like.

There was another tape Mr Morrissey wanted the jury to hear – an audio­tape of Cindy’s emergency call on the night her children drowned. Mr Morrissey addressed the judge. ‘I believe by agreement with the parties, Ms Gambino can be excused from listening to that,’ he said.

‘No,’ Cindy announced. She’d never heard that tape before. ‘I would like to hear it, please.’

But as soon as she heard her own guttural wails of grief, she was plunged right back into that night of nightmares. Her legs felt wet and her heart pounded as she heard herself panting, racing up and down in the long grass, searching for her children.

That night, Rob had watched in silence from the fence near the dam. Now he watched in silence from the dock of the Supreme Court.

Tony McClelland’s voice could be heard in the background.

‘I want my babies,’ Cindy’s voice cried. ‘There’s the fence – they must have gone in here!’

‘Hello, it’s the police, Cindy. There’s people on the way to help you, Cindy.’

The whole time the tape played, Rob kept his head down, muttering to himself.

Cindy blinked at him through her tears. You wanted to see me suffer, she thought. You watched my face as you delivered that ghastly news, and you watched my pain again down at that dam. You watched it through the last trial, and now you’re watching it all over again. You did this to me, you bastard.

‘Oh my God!’ wailed Cindy on the recording. ‘Come on! Please help me!’

Tony McClelland’s voice came on the tape again, telling the operator. ‘It’s fine, they’re here…they’re here.’

But things weren’t fine, the listeners knew. The tape came to an abrupt end, leaving an uneasy silence hanging in the court.

When the court resumed next morning, Cindy’s anguish hovered in the air. But as Mr Morrissey had warned, there was no place for emotion in this trial. He had a job to do, and the jury’s job was to listen to the evidence.

Overnight, Cindy’s pain had given way to rage. With the adrenalin surging, she was prepared for combat again.

Mr Morrissey now had a new line of questioning. He asked about the lockets Rob bought for himself, Cindy and the boys after their deaths.

‘I no longer wear it because I don’t believe in him,’ Cindy said flatly.

‘And could I ask you this as well,’ Mr Morrissey continued. ‘In recent times as you’re aware, someone has chiselled Robert’s name off the grave of your children.’

The hairs prickled on the back of Cindy’s neck in a flash of fury and disbelief. She knew exactly where this was going. ‘Don’t…’ she practically snarled in reply.

But Mr Morrissey was undeterred. ‘Stop and listen…now, you don’t wear the locket and I’m asking you this: what have you got to say about your role, if any, in chiselling his name off the grave?’

Cindy’s rage temporarily blinded her as she tried to focus on Mr Morrissey’s question. ‘Oh, you disgust me!’ she almost screeched.

‘What’s your answer?’ Mr Morrissey persisted.

Cindy’s reply came as a yell. ‘That’s my children’s final resting place. That was my children’s headstone. I paid for that headstone. He owes me money for that headstone. And I can’t help it if my children’s father’s name was Robert Farquharson. I would never, ever do anything like that to my children. How dare you!’

Cindy was astounded at this dirty tactic, and she couldn’t believe she was screaming across a courtroom at a prominent lawyer.

Yet her cross-examination was far from over. Mr Morrissey now turned his line of questioning from her children’s grave to their funeral. Hadn’t she attended her children’s funeral, supporting her ex-husband, who she’d already publicly declared was an innocent man?

‘Of course I did, but he sat on one side of the church and I sat on the other side of the church. We were separated,’ she replied crossly.

‘Well, could the witness be shown this?’ Mr Morrissey asked, producing a photograph. Cindy knew which photograph it would be. It was the heartbreaking photograph that had appeared in the newspapers after their children’s funerals, depicting Cindy and Rob, leaning on each other in their grief as three tiny white coffins were carried from the church towards the waiting hearse. Cindy was clutching her Bible to her chest in utter desolation.

Just the thought of that image now sickened Cindy. She couldn’t bear that photo and what it now meant to her. Two parents united in their grief, one of them a killer who had caused that grief.

Cindy stared blankly at the proof of her unimaginable suffering, taking in her empty, tear-stained face and Rob’s crocodile tears.

‘I am so familiar with that photograph I will never forget it,’ she spat, furiously screwing it up and tossing it to the floor in disgust. For a split second, she’d contemplated hurling it into Peter Morrissey’s face, but she caught herself in time. The floor would do.

Mr Morrissey handed her a photocopy of the same photo and again insisted she study it.

It felt obscene that anyone would expect her to examine this reminder of Rob’s callousness. This time Cindy flatly refused to look at the photograph.

‘Your Honour, I don’t need to see that photograph,’ she said angrily to the judge.

If Cindy had been manipulated once – conned into posing for that awful photo, duped by Rob’s incredible account of events – she wasn’t going to be manipulated again. Obviously Mr Morrissey intended to show the jury how naïve she’d once been to illustrate how unreliable her evidence now was.

But the judge instructed Mr Morrissey to move on. The photo was tendered as evidence, and Cindy’s bubbling anger was defused when the judge called an early mid-morning break.

The defence resumed by demanding to know why Cindy had refused to allow her ex-husband to comfort her at the dam that night. ‘What do you expect?’ she snapped. ‘He’d just killed my kids.’

The defence repeatedly suggested that she was exaggerating her evidence to cast her ex-husband in the worst possible light and ensure he was convicted of triple murder.

She strongly denied this. Five years had changed many things, she explained. She’d previously failed to mention all the intimate details of her relationship with Rob and her observations of his bizarre behaviour on the night because she feared the revelations might be damaging. She’d been in denial.

‘What mother would fathom that her husband could do anything like that to their children?’ she said. ‘The last trial was very much a blur to me…I was very sheltered from the last trial.’ All she could remember was the verdict. But she now believed Rob was guilty, and she wanted him convicted and jailed.

After three harrowing days giving evidence, Cindy plodded towards the public gallery. As she passed the dock, she turned her head away from Rob. Too guilty to look me in the eye, she thought.

She was sitting beside her parents when Mr Morrissey raised an issue he wanted to discuss in the absence of the jury.

After the jurors had filed out, Mr Morrissey jumped to his feet. He wanted to direct the judge’s attention to the number of people in court who were sporting the colour purple. He claimed this was an attempt by Cindy and others to influence the court. It was a subtle show of support for the bereaved mother.

Mr Morrissey called on the judge to ban Cindy from sitting in the body of the court, ‘displaying a pageant of agony and pain’. Her distressed appearance wasn’t helpful to the defendant.

Mr Morrissey also asked the judge to ban others from wearing purple for the remainder of the trial. He argued that purple was associated with the logo of the Alannah and Madeleine Foundation, a national charity to support children who were victims of violent crime.

Cindy shook her head in disbelief. She didn’t know anything about the foundation or its symbolic colour. She’d chosen purple because she liked it.

The judge was clearly unimpressed by the defence’s requests, and refused to ban the grieving mother or the colour purple from the trial. At the same time, he warned those present that the court must focus on doing its job.

‘I will not have the jury distracted by other things happening in the court,’ he said. ‘The last three days in this courtroom have probably been as harrowing as any days I have ever spent in my entire career, and I’m sure the jury feel the same.’

The jury filed back in and took their seats, unaware of the arguments unfolding in their absence.

Good job, Cindy thought, that the prosecution team’s purple ribbons hadn’t been on show. Mr Tinney had kept his in his pocket, pulling it out at the end of each long day and casting a smile towards Cindy as he ran it through his fingers. When Mr Tinney’s wife slipped into the public gallery to hear the evidence, she wore her own purple ribbon as a show of support.

Cindy glanced again at her ribbon as Stephen took the stand. Again he told the jury about Rob’s desperation to save his failed marriage. In a clear, calm voice, he said there had been no romance between him and Cindy during her marriage. He hadn’t wanted to be a scapegoat during the breakdown of her troubled relationship with Rob.

He said he’d told Cindy, ‘We’re platonic friends. We’ll stay that way until you organise your divorce, if that’s what you choose. And once that’s done, if we’re meant to go anywhere then we can look at it then. Other than that, things will stay as they are.’

Stephen told the court that Rob was ‘down in the dumps’ after Cindy ended the marriage. The newly separated father lived a few doors from Stephen and used to visit seeking advice on how to win his wife back. ‘I had different beliefs to him, so it was difficult,’ Stephen said.

He related an incident when Rob turned up at Stephen’s house and found Cindy there. He confronted Stephen in the back yard, saying, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Stephen was roasting chicken and offered him some, but Rob became abusive. Stephen recalled, ‘I spun him around and walked him to the front gate of my property. Basically I just said, “Look, I can’t help you any more. I don’t really want you to come back. Let’s just leave it at that.”’

When Mr Tinney’s questions turned to Father’s Day 2005, Stephen gave a bit more information about Rob’s behaviour than he had the previous time. He recalled that when he arrived at the dam, Farquharson was standing in the long grass close to the fence, and the first thing he said was ‘Have you got your smokes?’ Stephen had replied, ‘Smokes, what are you talking about? Where are your kids?’ Rob said he didn’t know.

Stephen turned to the judge. ‘Am I allowed to say, Your Honour, that I felt that strange?’

‘No, you’re not,’ replied Justice Lasry. ‘You’re just being asked to describe what you saw, Mr Moules, OK?’

Mr Tinney steered the witness back to his conversation with the defendant. Stephen said, ‘At some stage he said to me, “I blacked out and when I woke up the car was in the water.” Then he claimed he’d had a coughing fit and blacked out. I couldn’t understand the coughing fit and blackout bit. I said on at least a couple of occasions, if not maybe more, “Where are your children?”’ Farquharson had said he woke up and the car was in the water, and it started to sink.

Stephen added that when he asked what had happened, ‘Almost every response that I received from the accused was, “I don’t know.”’

Mr Tinney asked Stephen about Farquharson’s demeanour. ‘He wasn’t what I would say hysterical,’ Stephen replied. ‘He was more vague, I think, than anything else.’

‘Was there anything to indicate that he was actually upset?’

‘Not clearly, no.’

Stephen described how he’d raced down to the dam and dived to try to find the children. Later, after the emergency workers took over, he went up to his parents’ car, where Cindy was sitting in the front passenger’s seat being comforted by his mother. ‘At no stage did she really stop being hysterical,’ he recalled.

Mr Tinney asked what the defendant was doing during this time.

‘He was standing like this,’ Stephen replied, folding his arms across his chest. ‘As a boss would overseeing a project in works…basically folded arms, just looking…towards the dam.’

‘Did he have the appearance of being upset?’

‘No.’

‘Was he crying?’

‘Not that I recall.’

Mr Morrissey’s cross-examination began by focusing on Stephen’s conversation with Geoff Exton later that night.

He quoted from Exton’s record of the conversation, which had Stephen saying, ‘Where the hell’s the car? How the hell could you leave the kids?’ Farquharson had said, ‘I blacked out. I’ve got this flu. I blacked out.’ When Stephen had asked, ‘What happened?’ Farquharson responded, ‘I told you, I blacked out, I woke up and I was in the water and all of a sudden the car started to sink.’

‘Do you agree you said that to Mr Exton on the night?’ Mr Morrissey asked.

Stephen nodded. ‘I would have said something to that effect, yes.’ He couldn’t recall the exact wording because he’d had a few conversations with Robert that night.

Sergeant Exton had noted down that Stephen said to Farquharson, ‘You had time to get the kids out.’ Farquharson replied. ‘No, I didn’t.’

Mr Morrissey asked, ‘Do you agree you passed this information on to Mr Exton?’

‘I could have,’ Stephen responded. ‘But I was also extremely confused.’

Mr Morrissey then told Stephen he wanted him to listen to the tape recording of Cindy’s conversation with the emergency services operator.

As well as Cindy’s voice, Mr Morrissey said, there were some male voices in the background. The tape was indistinct, but he wanted to ask Stephen if any of those voices were his.

After the tape had been played, Mr Morrissey asked, ‘You did hear there, didn’t you, the voice of Mr Farquharson saying he tried to get them out?’

‘I heard his voice,’ Stephen conceded. ‘I didn’t clearly hear him say he tried to get them out.’

Mr Morrissey asked Stephen if he had forgotten.

‘It’s possible,’ Stephen acknowledged.

‘You don’t remember him saying, “I’m soaking wet, look at me”, is that correct?’

‘As a matter of fact I do, and I turned around and said, “Get out of my fucking face before I fucking kill you.”’

Mr Morrissey asked, ‘Did you mention the word “bullet” – “there’s a bullet for you” – when you arrived at the situation? Did you say anything about a bullet or a gun?’

‘Not that I recall, no,’ said Stephen. He told the jury it was not in his personality to say something like that.

In re-examination, Mr Tinney asked Stephen how he was feeling when he was initially interviewed by the police at the dam. ‘Overall, I was feeling despair,’ Stephen said, ‘because I was unable to do anything about the current situation that had just unfolded in front of me. I was feeling rather confused because some of the things I had observed over the course of the evening had made me feel very uncomfortable.’