64

The Mad Scientist

On Tuesday, 13 September 1983, a sewage treatment worker spotted the severed right middle finger of a woman’s hand on the crust of effluent at Tasmania’s Macquarie Point Sewage Plant. At 9.45 am that day, Dr Rory Jack Thompson had reported that his estranged wife Maureen was missing from her home in West Hobart’s Hill Street.

The Thompsons had moved to Australia from the United States in 1974. They lived in Perth and Sydney before settling in Hobart in January 1983. Maureen, 37, looked after their two children – 3-year-old Rafi and 7-year-old Melody – while her 41-year-old husband, a specialist theoretical oceanographer, worked with the Tasmanian CSIRO.

Despite a happy start, the union had soon deteriorated. Rory became moody and demanding. He would beat Maureen savagely – often in front of the children. Only when she started to fear for her life did Maureen finally accept that her marriage was over. She moved out of the family home a couple of months before Rory reported her missing.

Maureen explained her predicament in a letter she sent in mid-1982 to the Domestic Violence Review, a study conducted by the Tasmanian Department of Community Welfare. ‘He would intimidate me by yelling at me in public. But the hitting and kicking was usually done at home,’ she wrote. ‘Once, over a discussion of a tennis match on television, he yelled at me, “How would you like to be kicked in the stomach?”

‘Usually he would lose his temper and grab me at the base of my neck and begin shaking me while pushing me backwards and haranguing me loudly. I would be petrified and go numb. He would accuse me of provoking him, of not backing down, and many times I didn’t know what the argument was about.’

With the assistance of the State Social Welfare Department, Maureen moved into the house in West Hobart. ‘I was treated as a real person and not just another case by the staff of the Social Welfare,’ she said. ‘And with their organising skills and funds, I was able to … begin a new life.’

But her husband had other ideas. He would later tell a court that in the 12 months before the break-up he had thought of several ways of murdering his wife. The previous year he had decided to bury her alive in the backyard. He even tried to dig a hole, but his small shovel was useless on the hard ground. Still, he carried a length of rope with him at all times – in case he should get a chance to garrotte his wife.

As Maureen was broke – she had no access to her husband’s high income – Social Welfare organised a special benefit for her as well as the Supporting Parent’s benefit. Maureen was as happy as she could be under the circumstances; she took a part-time teaching job and left the children at a day-care centre or with babysitters.

She felt that she was now in control, and had a restraining order against her husband. The situation mellowed. The couple began talking again. Maureen even allowed Rory to take the children for one day and night per week: he picked them up on Saturday and dropped them back on Sunday. But the pain of losing his children slowly grew inside Rory.

After the sewage worker found the severed finger, authorities called in leading pathologist Dr Royal Cummings. He visited Maureen’s home the following day. He found bloodstains on the hallway wall and pieces of human tissue in the bathroom. There was a large bloodstain by the bed.

Thompson told police he had not seen Maureen since noon the previous Saturday, when he had collected his children. He said he had returned to his wife’s home later that day and found a note on the door saying she would see her children the following day (Sunday) at 3 pm. According to him, he returned the next day with the children but there was no sign of Maureen, so he took them home again with him.

A witness reported to police that Thompson told her Melody had gained access to Maureen’s house on the Monday to get fresh clothes, and that Thompson had told her (the witness) he wished his daughter had not gone into his wife’s home ‘in case she may have seen something’.

When told that his wife may have been murdered, and that the severed finger found in sewage could belong to her, Thompson appeared uninterested. He denied having anything to do with her disappearance and possible death. He told police that he hadn’t loved his wife since she had left him and taken their two children. He said that on the night police alleged Maureen had been killed, he had been in Kingston, and arrived home at about 9 pm. He put the children to bed and went to bed himself at about 10.15 pm. He said he woke the next day at around 7 am.

Three days later, Thompson came to the CIB office at about 5 pm and asked for his car, which police had taken charge of for testing. He said he wanted to take his children camping. Police told him they hadn’t completed their tests – they also alerted detectives to his intentions.

They had good reason to worry – the day before this request, Thompson had told Detective Inspector Ernest Roffe and Detective Sergeant Richard McCreadie that the ‘good Rory’ would not have killed his wife but the ‘bad Rory’ was still dominant. He also told investigators that he was concerned the ‘bad Rory’ could have been involved in his wife’s death and may have cut off her head because he could not stand her looking at him while she was bleeding.

Roffe was convinced Thompson had murdered Maureen, but he didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest. He also believed Thompson could be contemplating murdering his children and committing suicide. A close watch was kept on his home. The following night Rafi and Melody were taken away by uniformed police while their father watched. They were placed in the care of the Social Welfare Department.

Thompson broke down the next day under intense police questioning. He confessed to his wife’s murder and took authorities to a bush grave that contained her remains. The next day the sewer pipes in the backyard of the Hill Street house were unearthed. Investigators found another 83 pieces of human body and tissue inside – Maureen had been cut into pieces and flushed down her toilet.

Dr Rory Jack Thompson told police that at about 10.30 pm on Saturday, 10 September 1983, he tucked an extra blanket on his sleeping children and put on a long wig that covered his face, as well as a scarf and mascara. He dressed in paint-splattered overalls covered by a thick wraparound skirt. In his carry bag he put the leg of a chair, rubber and cloth gardening gloves, a plumber’s drain-clearing plunger, a meat cleaver, two knives, an oxyacetylene torch kit, two hacksaws with three spare blades and a garrotte made of orange rope. He then drove to his wife’s house and climbed over the back fence. He waited in the garden until he saw her go to bed.

Entering through the back door with his daughter’s key, Rory’s first intention was to bash Maureen’s dog to death with the chair leg he had brought. But the dog was asleep and didn’t stir. Thompson told police his initial plan was to garrotte his wife because he had heard it was a quick and quiet method of murder. He had even practised it several times at home on a doll. But Maureen woke up after he pulled the quilt from her face. She said, ‘Rory.’ He struck her twice over the head with the chair leg, which he then dropped. Maureen picked it up and hit him over the head with it. She started to scream. Thompson then grabbed his wife by the throat and throttled her. He knew brain death from lack of oxygen occurred after around four minutes. Using Maureen’s bedside clock as a guide – he later recalled it was 11.06 pm – he continued to strangle her for six minutes. But Maureen didn’t die. At that stage he felt a mild compassion for his wife. As she lay in his arms groaning, he cradled her and said, ‘Maureen, I’m sorry it had to happen this way.’

The wounds to Maureen’s head had created a pool of blood in the carpet at his feet. There was also blood all over the sheets. Thompson carried his wife into the bathroom and placed her in the tub. He then cut open her stomach and cut her throat before turning on the shower and tap to wash the blood down the sink. Using a meat cleaver and hacksaw, he cut his wife’s body into small pieces and sat there for several hours flushing them down the toilet, until it became clogged. Finally, he cut his wife’s head from what was left of her torso and burned it in the fire.

Thompson spent the next hour trying (unsuccessfully) to get the bloodstains out of the carpet. He also washed the sheets and remade the bed. He then washed the blood-soaked pyjamas his wife had been wearing and put them in the dryer. Then he bundled Maureen’s charred head and what was left of her torso, along with his rubber gloves, into garbage bags and buried them and his bloodstained clothing in a hole he had dug at Lenah Valley earlier in the year. He later complained to authorities that some of the bags were messy and broke open. Thompson then drove home in his underwear in the freezing cold and got into bed without arousing the children. He woke at 7 am.

At his trial, which began on 23 February 1984 at Hobart Criminal Court before Mr Justice Everett, Dr Rory Jack Thompson pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife Maureen. He said he wanted to plead for mercy – and told the jury they had the power to acquit him. Thompson said he would never do anything ‘like that again’ and asked to be released so he could go back to his marine research where he could do more good for society than he could in jail. He said that putting him in jail would not bring back his wife or children – they had been sent back to America to stay with relatives.

Under examination from his counsel, Mr P. Slicer, Thompson told the court that as he had been planning to dispose of his wife down the toilet, he had practised chopping up a side of lamb and some soup bones. He said the lamb had already been cut up when he bought it, but he had cut several pieces off to see if they would flush.

Under cross-examination by prosecutor Mr A. Jacobs, Thompson said he had never felt that killing his wife was the wrong thing to do. It wasn’t until about a month after her murder that he realised most people would disapprove of what he had done and that it was both illegal and immoral. He was then asked if he was aware that it was a person he had killed, not an animal. Thompson replied, ‘No more than a person working in a slaughterhouse saying “This is a sheep” before slaughtering it.’ When asked if he felt any emotion when he killed his wife, Thompson said, ‘Oh, a mild pity. No strong emotion.’

Court-appointed psychologist Dr Christopher Williams reported that in his view Thompson was highly intelligent but suffered from a personality disorder. This raised the possibility that he would be unable to resist committing murder when the urge to do so came over him. But acting as a Crown witness, Hobart psychiatrist Dr Ian Burges-Watson told the jury that in his view there was no evidence to suggest that Thompson suffered from a psychotic illness that would affect his power to think. Still, he agreed that Thompson did suffer from a severe personality disorder. He added that he did not agree with earlier evidence that Rory had a borderline personality disorder that could be tipped into a psychotic state, or that he suffered from probable residual schizophrenia.

Five days into the trial, and after all of the evidence had been heard, Thompson accepted that the Crown had proved its allegation and told the court that he had murdered his wife. He was allowed to read a two-page statement to the jury after the trial judge had ruled it improper for his counsel to include it in his closing address. ‘I, and everyone who mattered to me, have been badly hurt by my inappropriate actions,’ he read. ‘I have learned not to do that again. I now realise that I am a person of special importance, (and) although I did not know much about God or Christ, I often prayed for guidance. If I’m ever lucky enough to get a caring wife again, considering for her will be more important than self-righteousness. I don’t recommend murdering people; it doesn’t work very well.’

Thompson’s counsel said that his client’s only defence now was that he was insane at the time of the murder. After six hours of deliberation the jury returned with a verdict of not guilty on the grounds that Dr Rory Jack Thompson was indeed insane when he killed his wife and cut up her body.

Rather than sentence him to specific time in prison, Mr Justice Everett then instructed that Thompson be dealt with as a mentally disordered person, and ordered him to be incarcerated in the hospital section of the overcrowded Risdon Prison until a decision on what to do with him was made.

In June 1984, the Tasmanian attorney-general, Mr Pearsall, declared that Thompson’s period of detention at Risdon was to be indefinite, and that he could only be released by the governor if and when the governor was satisfied, on advice, that detention was no longer required for the public’s protection.

In 1990 the Mental Health Review Tribunal recommended that Thompson be released to an appropriate mental institution, but Premier Michael Field’s Labor government overruled the decision. In September 1992, Premier Ray Groom’s Liberal government turned down a similar recommendation, which resulted in an appeal to the Supreme Court: three judges there ruled in 1994 that even though Thompson had never actually been convicted of a crime, his detention was not illegal. He stayed at Risdon.

By this time Thompson had changed his name to Jack Newman by deed poll, and written a book titled Mad Scientist. He also kept in touch with the outside world and continued to conduct research. He had published more than 50 scientific papers and patents for a 3D television system and a solar oven were pending. But apart from his academic achievements, during the years of incarceration, Thompson/Newman found another love – gardening. The gardens became the pride of Risdon, and Thompson/Newman was encouraged to indulge his passion. Soon he was spending most of his time outdoors, alone in the fresh Tasmanian air with his beloved plants.

In 1995, legislation aimed at setting him free was tabled in parliament but came to nothing. In July 1999 – with his freedom in November that year a certainty – Thompson/Newman was working in the gardens outside the prison gates … and casually walked away from Risdon Prison. He managed to catch a bus into central Hobart, withdraw money from an ATM and buy a plane ticket to Melbourne before he was arrested. Charged with escaping lawful custody, Thompson/Newman told the court that he escaped to prove a point: ‘Either I’m insane and therefore not responsible, or I’m sane and being held unjustly, the same as a political prisoner,’ he said.

Thompson/Newman wasn’t given a sentence for the escape, but all his privileges were revoked. He was made to spend time in solitary confinement away from his research books and garden.

On 17 September 1999, he was found dead in his cell. He had taken the laces from his shoes, tied them together and attached one end to an air vent in his cell. The other he put around his neck.

Dr Rory Jack Thompson left two suicide notes, the contents of which have never been revealed.