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ʻRemember the Ziggy Pohl Case’

Not long after noon on 9 March 1973, Canberra police received a call informing them that 35-year-old German immigrant and carpenter Siegfried ‘Ziggy’ Pohl had just found his wife Joyce dead on the bedroom floor of their Queanbeyan flat. When detectives arrived, Pohl told them he had left home that morning at about 9.30 am. His wife had been cleaning the stove as she waved him goodbye.

Though Pohl had difficulty expressing himself in English, he told investigators that when he returned home for lunch at midday he found that there was a hole on the inside of the locked front door. He also noted that one corner of the blanket on the bed was ‘a little bit dented’; his wife’s underpants were on the floor in the bedroom; the underpants were wet; the gas heater was connected; the gas was turned on, but the heater was not ignited; there was a slight odour of gas in the air; the study door was open; the rotisserie motor in the oven was operating; parts of the stove were still in the kitchen; the radio was on; Joyce’s body was lying between the bed and the wall of the bedroom furthest from the bedroom door – he only noticed it when he picked up his wife’s panties and pantyhose and put them on a chair which was near the end of the bed. Joyce’s body was lying full length, face up, with her head at the bedhead end, her arms down by her sides and her legs straight. Her dress was hitched up and her genitals were exposed. A shirt was knotted around her neck. The back door was unlocked. The laundry door was open. The laundry was unoccupied. Pohl said he lifted his wife’s body from the floor up onto the bed and undid the knotted shirt and removed it.

When detectives arrived, they noted several things that did not match Pohl’s story. First, the panties and pantyhose were intertwined, giving the impression that they had been pulled off in one movement. On picking them up from the floor they noticed that they were completely wet, ‘as if they had been immersed in something’. They examined the spot where Pohl said he had found them. There was no dampness. Also, the carpet runner in the hallway was pushed back past the entrance into the bedroom, as if a body had been dragged on it; there was no smell of gas in the flat; and the bed was in a state of disarray, inconsistent with Pohl’s description.

The police asked Pohl if he had noticed anything missing from the flat. He said he thought a container of 50 cent coins and a watch were gone. Police observed that next to where Pohl said the coins had been taken from were other coins and items of jewellery. A drawer contained jewellery that was more valuable. Where Pohl alleged the watch had been stolen, another more expensive watch had been left behind.

At Queanbeyan police station, Pohl gave a more detailed account of his story. There were further inconsistencies between this and his original story. In his official statement, Pohl told police he had left for work at about 7.40 am. He returned to the flat at around 9.30 am. He saw his wife cleaning the stove. He left again at about 9.40 am. During the morning he visited the Queanbeyan Council Offices, a car repairer and a factory. Pohl said he returned shortly before noon. He looked for his wife for up to 20 minutes, he estimated, before finding her body lying beside the bed. He then knocked on a neighbour’s door. Getting no response, he drove to the nearby house of another neighbour, Carl Meyer, who accompanied him back to the flat and into the bedroom, where he made a brief observation of Joyce’s body. At 12.05 pm an ambulance was called. Then the police.

An ambulance officer arrived at 12.15 pm. Pohl said that he thought his wife had only just stopped breathing. When first interviewed by police, at 12.35 pm, Pohl told them about his discovery of his dead wife and gave details of his movements that morning. These were later confirmed as correct. He said he had pulled his wife’s skirt down, having found it pulled up over her waist. He also said he had turned off the rotisserie. He confirmed that the back door was unlocked, and added that when he picked his wife’s body up from the floor and lay her on the bed it sounded as if she was breathing. He mentioned hearing the girl next door calling for her dog at the time.

Pohl’s sister, Margaret Pohl, told police she visited the flat at around 11.40 am on the morning of the murder. After getting no response at the front door, she entered by the rear door, which was open. Not locating Joyce and finding the study door shut, she left after about five minutes.

As the flat hadn’t been ransacked or burgled, authorities believed Pohl had killed his wife between 9.30 am and 9.40 am, concealed her body and then gone about his business in order to create an alibi. According to their theory, Pohl had come home at around 11.50 am and – not knowing that his sister had visited – created a murder scene. He made a hole in the front door to look as if there had been a struggle, disturbed the carpet in the hallway and the bedclothes, placed his wife’s wet underwear on the bedroom floor or on the chair in the bedroom, placed the gas heater in the hallway, opened the study door, and turned on the rotisserie and the gas heater.

With this theory and other incriminating circumstantial evidence, police took Pohl into custody. Despite the fact that they were unable to find a motive, he was charged with murder and held without bail.

At his trial at the Central Criminal Court beginning 28 October 1973, the court heard that Johann Ernst Siegfried Pohl was born in Germany on 2 April 1937. One of four children, he moved to Australia when he was 20 and eventually started his own business. He wed Joyce on 1 November 1971. Everyone said their 16-month marriage appeared to be a happy one.

For their first witness, the Crown called Margaret Pohl, who told of her visit to her brother’s flat on the day of the murder. She said she arrived at about 11.45 am. The garden had been watered. The clogs Joyce usually wore were wet and sitting on the patio. The front door was closed. Margaret knocked; receiving no answer, she looked through the kitchen window. She saw dishes in the sink and heard the radio playing.

She entered the flat through the unlocked back door. She walked through the bedroom, into the hall and towards the front door. In the kitchen sink she saw dishes or parts of the stove and noticed that the stove door was half open. She said she did not hear the rotisserie operating. In the hallway, covering part of the floor, was a small carpet runner. ‘It was lying on the floor the way it should be, straight,’ she said. She said she didn’t see a gas heater in the hallway. The bathroom door was open. The study door was closed.

Margaret told the court that she looked at the bed to see if Joyce Pohl was there. She noticed the bed was ‘straight and made’. She saw no panties or pantyhose on the floor. She noticed no unusual odour. She did not see the body. Asked how long she was in the flat, Margaret said ‘It could not have been more than five minutes because I was more or less running all the time; I was in a hurry.’

Margaret’s observations of the flat that day weren’t lost on the jury, who compared them with Pohl’s description of the murder scene.

A neighbour named Mrs McGann told the court that at about 11.55 am on the day of the murder, she drove down Booth Street and saw a man she later identified as Pohl walking from the side of the flat. She stopped her car because of a pothole and looked up at Pohl. He was staring at her. She stared back. She believed he was walking and not running.

Carl Meyer told the court that on the day of the murder Pohl approached him and appeared to be upset. Pohl said to him, ‘Something has happened to Joyce and I want a doctor or an ambulance.’ Meyer asked to see Joyce. He noticed that her face was discoloured. Meyer said, ‘It seemed to me that her lips moved slightly … as though she was gasping for breath. Well, just a very slight movement of the lips.’

Government medical officer Dr Arthur Gillespie told the court he examined Joyce’s body at the murder scene and concluded that the victim had died of strangulation carried out by means of a piece of wide material wrapped around the neck and tightened by a hand being placed between the neck and the material, and the material then being turned to apply further pressure. Dr Gillespie thought death had occurred at around 9.45 am, almost the exact time Pohl said he had returned to the flat.

Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against Pohl was a letter Joyce had written but hadn’t posted. Dated 27 February, about 10 days before the murder, it read in part:

 

I am not so happy here – and that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been writing to anyone. So don’t be surprised if you find me back home or left Australia for some other place.

I just don’t know what to do. I am all mixed up. I wish I had someone to talk to who could give me some advice. I don’t think marriage is good for me – oh mummy – wish you were here with me and could offer me some advice. Tell me what shall I do – come home or make a go of it. Mummy I am only thinking of you (not of myself) what will people say and what you will have to bear up if I did come home.

 

According to the Crown, the letter was enough motive for Pohl to murder his wife. In its summing up to the jury, the Crown seemed to have a watertight – though circumstantial – case. The jury found Johann Ernst Siegfried Pohl guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

When asked if he had anything to say, Pohl told the court in broken English that he did not murder his wife. He said he had believed that if he told the truth he would be set free. He now had little faith in the Australian justice system.

During his time in prison, Pohl took courses in engineering by correspondence and worked in various prison joinery shops. He had few visitors apart from his brother. Regarded as a model prisoner, he maintained his innocence at all times.

Pohl was released on licence on 25 February 1983, almost 10 years to the day after the murder of his wife. But the story wasn’t over yet.

On 8 September 1990, a man entered Queanbeyan police station and asked to speak with the most senior policeman available. Shaking noticeably, the man appeared nervous. He was taken into the sergeant’s office and given a seat. He gave his name as Roger Graham Bawden. He said he was 40 years old. He then said, ‘I killed a woman here in Queanbeyan 16 or 17 years ago. I’ve been living with it all this time and it’s been hell. I’ve been having nightmares every night and I’ve come up from Melbourne to confess to the murder.’

Bawden’s victim was Joyce Pohl.

On the day of the murder, Bawden said, he had left his home in the nearby suburb of Cook to go to the Fairbairn RAAF base, where he worked as a cook. He was married, and he was anxious and depressed because he had no money – he had lost it all gambling.

Bawden said that at some point during that morning he had decided to break into a house and commit a robbery. Without knowing why, he went to Booth Street, Queanbeyan. He saw a woman in her garden. To the best of his recollection, he said, the time was between 9 am and 10.30 am. He parked his car around the corner in Atkinson Street and walked back to Booth Street, where he struck up a brief conversation with the lady.

Bawden then returned to his car, waited for a short period and went back to the house. By this time the lady was nowhere in sight. He went to the front door of the flat and knocked. When she answered he forced his way in. He then slammed the door shut because he noticed a dog barking and running across the road towards the door.

Bawden’s struggle with the woman continued until he forced her to the floor of the lounge room. Using a shirt, he strangled her by twisting it around her throat. He then dragged the dead woman along the hallway into the bathroom. After that, he dragged or carried her body into the bedroom, where he dropped it on the bed. In an attempt to conceal the body, he then placed the dead woman on the floor between the bedroom wall and the bed, and tried to push the body half under the bed. He felt panicked and desperate. He made a half-hearted attempt at robbery, taking a container of 50 cent coins from a cupboard and a watch from a shelf. He said he turned on the gas as he left the premises.

Bawden had admitted to several things that only the killer could possibly know, so the police were forced to admit that they had made a mistake. An innocent man had spent 10 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit.

Ziggy Pohl was eventually pardoned and compensated with a sum believed to be around $1 million. Pleading guilty, Roger Graham Bawden was sentenced to eight years in prison, two years fewer than Pohl had served. Bawden is now a free man. Ziggy Pohl lives in Sydney’s southern suburbs. He has never remarried.

To this day prosecutors remind their over-zealous apprentices that in law all is not always as it seems by telling them to ‘remember the Ziggy Pohl case’.