18

Murder in Paradise

Barrie John Watts’s lust for schoolgirls was so overpowering that in order to save their failing marriage, his wife, Valmae, promised to help him kidnap and sexually assault a young girl in school uniform. Although it wasn’t discussed, if their lustful joint venture resulted in murder, so be it.

It was little wonder that Barrie Watts was tiring of his wife. A once reasonably attractive woman, she was now a fat, frumpy, bleached blonde. Both were habitual offenders with extensive criminal records for petty crimes and larceny. Watts and Beck were introduced by mutual criminal associates in Perth in 1986. They fell in love, and were married soon after. Beck, 44, a grandmother from the six children of her two previous marriages, was 10 years older than her husband.

The athletic Barrie Watts was Valmae Beck’s obsession, and she did as he desired. Beck had done it hard for the best part of her life, and had kept bad company for as long as she could remember. But Barrie Watts would lead her down a path of evil that she could never have imagined.

An orphan from Townsville with a birth name of Beck (the name his wife took when they were married), Barrie Watts took the name of the family who raised him. He left home at 16 and moved to Perth, where he built up an impressive record – for just about every crime in the book bar murder. But that was only a matter of time.

When Barrie Watts and his new wife decided to pack their possessions into their white Holden station wagon and start a new life in Queensland, Beck was on bail for false pretences and Watts was on bail for armed robbery. In 1987 they arrived in Queensland and stayed with relatives at Lowood in the Brisbane Valley.

Watts’s constant hunger for young girls had put the marriage under enormous pressure, and Valmae Beck lived in constant fear of losing the man she adored. So when Barrie Watts put it to his besotted wife that she could keep the marriage alive by helping him with his desire to have sexual intercourse with a young virgin, she was only too happy to help, irrespective of the consequences.

Beck told police later: ‘He always said that he’d just once like to rape somebody, especially a virgin, to feel what it was like. I didn’t feel I had the qualities to hold a man and I was terrified that Barrie was going to leave me for a younger woman.’

With Beck at his side and approving her husband’s every move, in November 1987 the pair began cruising the beaches and parks of the holiday resorts along the north coast of Brisbane in search of a victim. On Friday, 27 November, they ended up on the Sunshine Coast at Noosa, one of the most famous holiday resorts in the country.

An hour and a half’s drive north of Brisbane, Noosa offered the perfect lifestyle for sun and surf-loving Australians and overseas tourists who wanted to escape the claustrophobia of the city. It was also the perfect place for a young couple to raise a family, far from the constant perils of the big smoke.

Barry and Lynda Kingi moved to Noosa from New Zealand in 1982 to give their children Joss, then aged 3, and their daughter Sian, then aged 8, a better lifestyle. Barry worked as a contract linesman and the young family settled quickly into what they considered the perfect environment.

In November 1987, with her thirteenth birthday coming up just a few weeks away on 16 December, Sian Kingi was one of the prettiest and most active students at the Sunshine Beach State School at Noosa. A slender, shy, suntanned blonde, Sian excelled at jazz ballet and sports. She had friends throughout the district and was extremely popular with her classmates.

Sian met her mother after school on the afternoon of Friday, 27 November 1987. Sian, still in her school uniform – sky blue and white striped tunic, white joggers and white socks – and carrying an olive-green nylon school backpack, had a facial with her mum and then they went shopping at Noosa Fair.

Lynda Kingi recalled later that her daughter appeared a little upset that afternoon. She told police, ‘Sian seemed a little worried about something. I think it was because she had broken a special vase at home. The vase belonged to a close friend and I told her she would have to apologise.’

After her trip to the beautician and the shopping with her mother, Sian, who still had her bike with her, decided to ride home while her mother walked. Sian rode through the local park, as she had done many times before. A group of her school friends playing tennis at a nearby court saw her ride by at around 5.30 pm. From there she disappeared.

When Sian hadn’t arrived home in time for dinner, her mother went looking for her. In Pinnaroo Park, just a couple of minutes away from where she had left her mum, she found Sian’s bike. A group of picnickers who arrived at 5.40 pm recalled seeing the bike lying on the ground but had no recollection of seeing Sian. They did recall seeing a white Holden station wagon in the area at the time.

A blond man in his early 30s had also been seen in the area at the time. Two weeks earlier a man of similar description had tried to abduct a 9-year-old girl in the same area. As soon as the word was out that Sian Kingi had gone missing, three other people came forward and said they’d seen the white station wagon.

Lynda Kingi told police that there was no way her daughter would go off with a stranger. She had warned Sian repeatedly about talking to people she didn’t know – let alone getting into a car with anyone. Besides, Sian was athletic, and could easily outrun anyone who tried to abduct her.

Mrs Kingi had no way of knowing that it wasn’t a man who had approached her daughter: it was a short, friendly woman with bleached blonde hair.

By Monday, with still no sighting of Sian, six detectives from Brisbane joined the search – there were now 16 officers working around the clock on every lead that came in. Hundreds of volunteers searched every inch of the park where Sian was last seen. Nothing was found. Not the slightest clue as to what may have happened to her.

Every police agency in Australia was put on the alert for a cream or white 1973/74 Holden Kingswood station wagon with curtains, a sun visor and mag wheels. It could be being driven by a blond-haired man in his early 30s.

A window dresser’s mannequin dressed in the school uniform that Sian was last seen wearing was put on display outside the Noosa police station and then at the Sunshine Coast Shopping Centre. Things didn’t look good.

On the morning of 3 December, Sian’s body was found by a local resident. She had been dumped on the embankment of a shallow creek in the Tinbeerwah Forest near Tewantin, about 20 kilometres from where she had last been seen alive. There had been no attempt to hide the body.

The official police statement said: ‘Sian Kingi was found lying face up under a tree next to a rainforest stream. She had multiple stab wounds to the chest and had possibly been raped. We found her schoolbag and books nearby. Sian was still dressed in her school tunic but her underwear was found in the creek. It is an extremely vicious murder.’

The head of the investigation, Detective Senior Sergeant Neil Magnussen, warned locals that they had a monster in their midst. ‘We have a maniac on the loose in the Noosa area,’ he warned. ‘It is highly likely that he will kill again. No young woman should be allowed out of sight until this matter is cleared up.’

Police thought they had a breakthrough when a garage proprietor at nearby Coolum Beach reported that a blond man driving an old white Holden station wagon had called in and left a tyre for repair, saying that he would call back later and pick it up. Police put the garage under surveillance, but the man never came back.

On 11 December, there was a report from Ipswich, about 20 kilometres out of Brisbane, that a 24-year-old woman had escaped abduction at knife-point at the Ipswich Shopping Centre from a man and a woman driving a white Holden station wagon with black and white number plates.

With the field now narrowed to only about 6000 1974 Holdens with the old black and white number plates, police set about investigating every vehicle of that description that could have been in the area at the time.

For the first time in the investigation police now realised that a blond man may not be who they were looking for. The couple in the attempted abduction at Ipswich matched the description of a couple seen acting suspiciously at Pinnaroo Park when Sian went missing perfectly. The man who had told police about the suspicious couple had a clear memory of the incident, and when interviewed by police again he said he recalled that the car wasn’t from around the district. It had black and white West Australian plates.

Initially the police had no reason to suspect that a couple could be involved. No woman would be party to the rape and murder of a schoolgirl. But as hard as they found it to believe, it was looking more of a possibility as each hour passed.

At last police had a breakthrough. Task force detectives abandoned the theory about the blond man in the white station wagon and concentrated their efforts on finding the car with West Australian plates and a man and woman inside. The descriptions of the car and the couple were circulated nationally. All they could do now was wait.

A report came in from a policeman in Lowood, who said that the description fitted a couple who had stayed with friends there and had recently headed north. Their names were Barrie John Watts and Valmae Faye Beck. A check revealed that they had both skipped bail on serious charges in Perth.

Detectives now knew they were on the right track, but when a report came through that Valmae Beck was a mother of six and a grandmother, they found it even harder to believe that she could be involved.

The friends Watts and Beck had stayed with gave police a postcard they had received from the couple the previous day. It was postmarked The Entrance, a holiday resort on the NSW central coast, about a one and a half hour drive north of Sydney.

Watts and Beck were arrested at a motel at The Entrance on 12 December. Two days later they were extradited to Queensland, where they were questioned and charged with the murder, rape, sodomy and deprivation of liberty of Sian Kingi. They were also charged with unlawful assault, causing bodily harm, attempted rape and the attempted murder of the woman in Ipswich.

When Watts and Beck appeared at the Noosa Heads Courthouse the following day they were greeted by an angry crowd of about 150 locals waving placards saying ‘No air for this pair – hang ’em’ and ‘If they’re guilty, I’d hang them’. The crowd yelled ‘Hang the bastards’ as the heavily guarded prisoners were led across the courtyard from the police station to the courthouse.

Watts and Beck didn’t enter a plea. They sat stony-faced in the dock as the prosecutor told the court that Valmae Beck had signed a confession about her involvement in the murder of Sian Kingi and the knife attack on the woman in Ipswich. Both were remanded in custody.

At their committal hearing at the Noosa Magistrate’s Court on 5 April 1988, Valmae Beck did not enter a plea; Barrie Watts pleaded not guilty. The court heard that Sian Kingi’s throat had been cut through to the spinal cord, and it was possible she had been strangled with a rope or a cord. Many of the knife wounds inflicted on the schoolgirl’s body had punctured her heart and lungs.

The court also heard taped conversations between Watts and Beck that had been secretly recorded as they awaited trial in adjoining bugged cells. A chill came over the court as the officer who recorded the conversations, Constable Matthew Heery, told of one of the conversations: Beck said to Watts: To commit rape is one thing, but to kill someone in cold blood with no compassion is something else. Watts replied: I wanted to do it again. Remember, you wanted to do it again as well.

Watts and Beck were committed to stand trial, and remanded to the Supreme Court in Brisbane.

Because Valmae Beck had pleaded guilty to all charges except murder and Barrie Watts had pleaded not guilty to all charges, their trials were held separately. At her trial, on 13 October 1988, the court heard for the first time the bugged conversations between the pair as they waited to be charged:

 

Beck: We’re going to jail for life, Barrie.

Watts: You’ve turned into a really, really staunch wife. A real good wife, good loving wife. You hung me. Good on you. Top wife.

Beck: No jury in the land would have found us innocent. You know it and I know it.

Watts: No one seen us pick her up and throw her in the car. No one seen us in the car and no one seen us kill her. I wish I was dead.

Beck: So do I. Have you got any ideas?

 

The court heard that Valmae Beck told police that on the day of the murder, on her husband’s instructions, she spoke to Sian Kingi in the park and asked her if she had seen a small French poodle. As she engaged the schoolgirl in conversation (Sian was sitting on her bike), Watts grabbed Sian from behind and bundled her into the back of the station wagon, where he taped her hands and mouth as Beck quickly drove the car away to a secluded forest area.

After they arrived at a creek, Beck watched as Barrie Watts raped Sian for about half an hour and then forced her to put her school uniform back on. Watts then lay the girl on her face, put his foot in the middle of her back and strangled her with a belt from Beck’s dress.

When she saw her husband stabbing Sian about the chest, Valmae Beck took her dog to the other side of the car so the animal couldn’t see what was going on. She said it was too horrible for her pet poodle to witness.

When she returned to the murder scene, Watts had dragged Sian’s body down to the creek and was cutting her throat. They left the body where it lay and returned to Lowood, where they had a bath, watched TV and went to bed.

It took the jury four hours to find Valmae Faye Beck guilty of all charges, including murder. In sentencing her to life imprisonment with hard labour, Mr Justice Kelly told the prisoner that she was ‘a callous and depraved woman’. He added, ‘No decent person could not feel revulsion at what you did. And you a mother with children of your own.’

At his trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court in February 1990, Barrie Watts pleaded not guilty, claiming that his wife committed the murder on her own and he knew nothing of it until they were picked up. But his wife’s evidence was damning, and after an overnight deliberation he was also found guilty on all counts.

In sentencing Barrie John Watts to life imprisonment, Mr Justice Kelly described him as ‘a thoroughly evil man devoid of any sense of morality. In my opinion you should never be released.’