‘Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.’
—Voltaire
BARRY would never have said his life was perfect or worry-free. He was sixty years old and he had leukaemia. The man he lived with, his partner of two decades, had AIDS. But despite the constant presence of illness, Barry’s life, on the wrong side of middle age, was settling into a nice peace. He owned his own home in the vibrant inner-Melbourne suburb of West Brunswick. He had carefully gathered wealth, owning nine properties (inherited and earned) and assets estimated to be worth almost $1 million at 1991 values. His real name was Francis Arnoldt, but to most he was Barry.
Barry and his 49-year-old partner, William King, had recently returned from a trip to the United States. They would potter around the house together and watch current affairs shows on TV. They would cook meals and deliver them around the corner to King’s 83-year-old father.
Barry would go for late-night walks, stop for a drink in a bar, then later meander back home. On Monday 6 October 1991 he went for one of these late-night walks but never returned. Leukaemia would never get the chance to end Barry’s life; a far more abrupt intruder would claim that role.
As the sun rose the next morning his mutilated corpse was discovered splayed in a pool of blood in a Brunswick park less than 2 kilometres from where he lived. There were multiple stab wounds to the victim’s upper body. His trousers were pulled down to his knees, but his underwear remained in place. Police said the area was a known ‘beat’—a public area where sections of the gay community meet for covert anonymous sex with strangers. It is not known whether Barry was still intimate with his dying partner William King, whether he was attending beats like this one or whether he was simply attacked as he walked through a park.
Police cordoned off the scene. Homicide detectives attended. And as word leaked out, the local gay community became concerned the slaying could be the work of a homophobic killer who could strike again. Detectives probed the death but had no eyewitnesses, no weapon and no real leads.
There were tensions between the police and the gay community during the investigation. (These were not short-lived. Several years on, in 1994, Victoria Police would controversially raid Tasty, a gay nightclub, and strip-search 463 patrons, leading to damages payouts from the force of up to $4 million.) Police complained that the gay community were not helping them with their enquiries while sections of that community were worried that their members were being harassed over what could actually be a homophobic crime.
But eventually the trail went cold and other killings with more fruitful leads got priority. A year became two, became three, became four, became half a decade. The Barry Arnoldt case fell to the bottom of the pile, destined to remain another unsolved mystery. Whoever was responsible looked like they were home free. The park murder became one of the most enduring crime conundrums of the 1990s. For five years police had no leads in what had become known as the Brunswick ‘thrill kill’ of an ageing man.
FOR THE best years of Jamie Koeleman’s life—from twenty-eight to forty-one—he has been stuck behind cold stone. The fresh-faced former aged care worker confesses to being a storyteller and a fantasist but swears he is not lying when he says he is no killer. ‘I am innocent of Barry Arnoldt’s murder,’ he said recently, ‘and it hurts beyond comprehension that I have been convicted. My depression gets pretty bad. I often wake up asking myself if I am still alive.’ His trial and conviction still trouble legal experts but his earliest prospect of freedom remains years away.
Koeleman, who is also gay but did not know the victim, was a cleanskin with not one prior criminal conviction when his third jury found that he was Barry Arnoldt’s killer. He regularly smoked marijuana but his only brush with the law had been a one-time caution for changing the price tag on an item in a supermarket.
The jailed man’s supporters have petitioned the Victorian Government for mercy, saying he has been locked away for more than 4000 days but is guilty only of boasting and bravado. A petition of mercy can lead the Governor to issue a pardon, reduction of penalty, suspension of sentence or release from prison. Koeleman’s supporters say the lack of blood, DNA, witness or weapon evidence at his trials were startling. Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls has said that plea is being carefully considered. The petition of mercy process recently saw the posthumous pardon of Colin Campbell Ross who was wrongly hanged for the 1921 ‘Gun Alley’ rape and murder of a young girl.
But for the moment the central mystery of Barry Arnoldt’s slaying still hangs in the air. Is a brutal killer compounding his crime with lies? Or is an innocent man in jail because he is gay and told stories?
IN APRIL 1997, Jamie Koeleman visited his ex-boyfriend Jamie Martorana at his work for one of their regular catch-ups over a cup of tea. The pair discussed sex, as usual, leading Koeleman to tell what he later described as a story cobbled from news reports—one he would regret for the rest of his life. Friends said the two Jamies were competitive in most things—even their fantasies.
Koeleman said he stabbed someone to death in a park ‘just like the movie Cruising’ after the man gave him oral sex. Koeleman later claimed he was simply trying to outdo his ex-boyfriend and elicit details of how far Martorana had gone in pursuing his own stalk-and-rape fantasy—a detail denied by Mr Martorana in court.
Just weeks before telling the story Koeleman had seen the 1980 Al Pacino film Cruising, about a killer who trawls New York’s gay clubs for victims. In the film Pacino plays a young undercover police officer who masquerades as a gay man in a bid to catch a thrill-killer. Koeleman had little idea a real life version of the character would soon be crossing his path.
Jamie Martorana mulled on Koeleman’s story for days before relaying it to his stepfather, Peter Cleeland. Mr Cleeland, a former policeman, was then a federal member of parliament. He died recently from motor neurone disease. The MP brokered a meeting between his stepson and the Homicide Squad. Police persuaded Mr Martorana to wear a hidden recorder at his next meeting with the other Jamie.
The pair went rowing on the Yarra River but Martorana, while wired up, failed to extract a detailed confession from Koeleman. He did, however, manage to set up the second limb of the police plan to catch their man.
Martorana arranged for Koeleman to meet an ‘intriguing’ and ‘kinky’ gay guy called ‘Mark’—really an undercover cop. ‘Maybe there’s potential there for something interesting,’ Martorana said. The trio met for lunch and a week later Koeleman and ‘Mark’, wearing a wire, had a second lunch alone. Koeleman, worded up by Martorana, understood his date to be a kinky, sexually violent fan of ‘B&D’—bondage and discipline—and ‘S&M’—sado-masochism. Koeleman had smoked marijuana before both meetings and the lunch conversation was mutually intimate and flirtatious.
‘Mark’ said he was in town to play, and spoke about how knives pushed his buttons. The undercover officer teased Koeleman with scant details of a revenge he supposedly took on a lover who cut him during kinky sex but then played coy, saying he was not sure if he could trust Koeleman. It was a lure to get Koeleman to reciprocate with his own violent fantasies and stories. Later ‘Mark’ said of his purported victim, ‘He would’ve gone to hospital. I think they would’ve needed a sewing machine on him.’
Koeleman obliged and repeated the story he had told Martorana. The undercover officer arranged, under the guise of mutual fetish, for Koeleman to take him to the crime scene and discuss details of Arnoldt’s murder.
On a Saturday morning in May 1997—a month after telling his story to the other Jamie—Koeleman answered a knock on his door. Six Homicide Squad detectives informed him that he was under arrest, took him to the St Kilda Road police headquarters and charged him with murder. At his interview Koeleman immediately told police he made up his grisly tale from media reports. In the thirteen years since, he has not changed his story.
THE prosecution case against Jamie Koeleman rested on his so-called confession to the killing. But it was far from the traditional interview-room statement to police.
In Koeleman’s story he had said the killing occurred as the man in the park gave him a blow job that led to ‘the mother of all orgasms’ in the other man’s mouth. So police and prosecutors pursued their investigation and trial of the murder as a sexually motivated homicide—a case built around a suspect. It was in stark contrast to earlier theories that Arnoldt’s death may have been a gay hate crime. But, jarringly given the alleged sexual nature of the crime and the details in Koeleman’s confession, no identifiable sperm was found on the victim or at the scene.
Doubters say there is much more to the murder than the Koeleman-as-thrill-killer theory. They point to the involvement of an MP in the pursuit of Koeleman and the fact that the wealthy murder victim had announced plans to change his will before his death. Koeleman supporters claim they have faced mysterious threats and harassment to stop their campaign to clear the prisoner’s name. They say Koeleman’s recorded comments were a clear blend of fantasy, news reports, gossip about the murder in gay circles and scenes from the film Cruising.
Koeleman’s boyfriend since 1990, Chan Uoy, said he had to move on after Jamie was sentenced but still talks with him, visits him in prison and believes him to be innocent. ‘Knowing him as a person, Jamie is a gentle person,’ Uoy said. He said Koeleman’s first tale was a result of the competitive rivalry between the two Jamies. ‘My Jamie says he bashed someone in a park, the other Jamie responds with “Oh, is that all?” … and so my Jamie says “But he died”.’
At court ex-boyfriend Martorana said he did not really believe Koeleman’s thrill-kill story when it was told to him because Koeleman had told him ‘bullshit stories’ throughout their relationship.
Family, friends and former clients testified that Koeleman was a gentle giant, famous for his tall tales told with a straight face. Family photos feature Koeleman as a teen in a shopping centre talent quest, a Victorian College of the Arts dance student and a tuxedo-wearing performer at the then Swagman theatre restaurant. He was a natural-born show pony. ‘Jamie is an entertainer and that’s who he is, and he’s always pretended to be something else that he never was,’ said his sister, Helen Koeleman.
Koeleman’s defence barrister, Sean Cash, cousin of former
Wimbledon champion Pat, argued that police fashioned the confession they wanted from his client using leading questions.
But there were elements of Koeleman’s statements that convinced police the show pony was also a killer. The dead man had received five stab wounds—to his back and then, the judge said, through the heart—as the victim staggered. In his recorded statements to the undercover cop, Koeleman had mentioned the number five among others. But at various times Koeleman said he stabbed his victim ‘two times’, ‘two or three times’, ‘twice in the chest’, ‘seven times’, and ‘I think it was about five times’. Police saw it as damning that Koeleman had pointed to the right-hand side of the pavilion, not the left, when asked by ‘Mark’ where he went with the victim. That was the correct location where the crime happened.
Supporters say much of the so-called confession was random and inconsistent. Koeleman said he drove to the scene of the crime, whereas in fact he had no access to a car at the time. He then said he fled the scene on foot. The victim was wearing a fawn jacket. Koeleman’s confessions said the man was wearing ‘a sweater’ and on another occasion a ‘brown jacket’. He told Martorana at the time of the murder that he was living at an antique shop with his sister, when he was actually sharing a Pascoe Vale flat with two friends. On the drive to the park Koeleman wrote down ‘Mark’’s car registration number because he was scared something could happen to him. Once arrested, Koeleman gave police immediate permission for his blood sample to be taken.
Supporters also say Koeleman’s account of wearing a leather jacket on a rainy night and wiping the knife blade after seeing terror in his victim’s eyes were all details ripped straight out of Cruising. Chan Uoy said he and Jamie had watched the film for the first time five and a half years after Arnoldt’s murder—it shaped his fantasy talk, but on no timeline could it have led him to kill.
Legal experts said that, even if Koeleman was the actual killer, it was remarkable that a jury convicted him as guilty beyond reasonable doubt. ‘I’m not completely comfortable with this conviction. I’m troubled by a number of aspects of it,’ said Associate Professor Andrew Palmer of the University of Melbourne Law School. ‘I would not myself personally feel comfortable with him being convicted on a confession given, in those circumstances, the absence of any matching of the known objective circumstances and the details of what he said.’
According to witness statements, the dead man had discussed his plans to make changes to his will so that his two West Brunswick properties would go to charity. In a police statement Arnoldt’s partner, William King, then a gardener running a lawn-mowing business, said Barry had told him of his planned will changes on the Sunday before he was killed.
MELBOURNE businessman Frits Maaten—like Jamie Koeleman, a gay man of Dutch origin—spent a decade poring tirelessly over the details of the case and lobbying on the prisoner’s behalf. Maaten said he has received threats for his efforts and believes a police conspiracy and homophobia have been the twin corruptors driving the investigation of Koeleman.
‘One poofter dead. One poofter in jail. Two less poofters to worry about. It’s all very neat and tidy,’ Maaten said in an interview. ‘At the coroner’s inquest an officer said “Despite being a homosexual, Mr Arnoldt was still well liked.” I got a phone call at a gay venue I was running and the voice said “If you don’t stop your justice for Jamie bullshit, we’ll raid your pub.” It gave us a bit of a fright.’The forager believes that the assumption the killing was sexual misled police into pursuing a gay killer.
Documents show that a detective gave forensic investigators nine knives and a pair of shoes for testing the day after the murder—years before Koeleman became a suspect. Who the seized items belonged to, and whether that person was a police suspect, has never been revealed. Victoria Police have refused all interview requests on the Koeleman case, releasing only a brief statement. ‘Investigators are required to place all available evidence before a court of law and it is then a matter for the jury to decide the ultimate outcome,’ Homicide Squad Inspector Steve Clark said.
Maaten’s theory that Koeleman was not the killer goes further. He hypothesises that the victim was not killed where the body was found. He believes Arnoldt may never have left home that night until he was moved after being killed. He also believes the Brunswick park was not a gay beat as claimed.
Maaten places great store in the fact that Arnoldt wanted his partner William King to receive rental income from his properties while he lived, but for the properties to go to Catholic charities when King died. Arnoldt never got the chance to change the will and King inherited their home and other assets. When King died six years later from AIDS-related illnesses, his estate went to his relatives and not the charities.
Others have emerged with doubts over the Koeleman conviction and their own compelling theories about Arnoldt’s murder, including an alternative suspect. One who doubts the official verdict is a former Transit Patrol officer who claims he once arrested a criminal he believes is the real killer in the Arnoldt case. The former officer, Ray Gardiner, said he arrested a criminal called Paul John Odgers in the early 1990s when he was wanted for a stabbing robbery in a public toilet in a Fitzroy park—only 3 kilometres from the Brunswick park where Arnoldt’s body was found. Odgers has angrily denied from prison that he had anything to do with the Arnoldt murder. Police have said he is not currently a suspect but do not rule out the possibility he could become one in the future.
Gardiner says there were striking similarities between Odgers’ stabbing robbery and the killing of Francis Arnoldt. He said Odgers made his robbery victim get down on his knees in the Fitzroy park public toilet before stabbing him four times. Odgers, a violent career criminal from a young age, was released from Pentridge on 5 October 1991—two days before Arnoldt was found dead. He is currently in jail for tying a 17-year-old boy to a chair in a suburban home and knifing him to death in 1996 before burying the body under the house.
The judge in Odgers’ murder trial found: ‘There is no rational motive for your actions … It may be that your aggressive and uninhibited behaviour was the result of the ingestion by you of alcohol, marijuana and tablets and that this caused you to lose the plot.’The presence of stab wounds on Arnoldt’s body was hotly contested in the trial due to the prosecution argument that Koeleman had mentioned the magic number “five”. Particularly in dispute was whether a wound to the chest was two gashes—from a killer stabbing twice—as claimed by the crown expert, or a solo wound from a single stabbing lunge.
A pathology report by renowned forensic pathologist Dr Byron Collins, commissioned by Maaten, has recently been added to the materials being considered by the Justice Department in relation to Koeleman’s conviction. Dr Collins considered materials, including copies of autopsy photographs, and found: ‘There are significant physical characteristics of this wound which are inconsistent with a version indicated by Mr Koeleman, namely two separate stab wounds involving the front of the chest.’
KOELEMAN’S first trial was abandoned because the jury foreman knew one of Koeleman’s brothers. A second resulted in a hung jury, with insiders saying ten jurors found him not guilty but two were not convinced. When the third trial commenced, court attendees were witness to the unusual sight of the accused murderer attending court each day from home as a free man. The jury had heard testimony that Koeleman’s ex-boyfriend, Jamie Martorana, had a room containing a torture rack, knives, sex toys and electrodes.
It’s possible Koeleman’s third jury spotted in the dock a stone-cold killer. It’s also possible they were disturbed by the seedy circles in which he moved and took a simple dislike to him. Cross-examined, Koeleman showed either his intellect or his cunning by accurately contradicting the prosecution on a point of medical evidence.
Today Jamie Koeleman’s once youthfully confident face is home to a pair of haunted, weary pale blue eyes. He has served part of his sentence at Fulham prison near Sale, gardening, exercising and teaching burly inmates how to make soft toys for their kids. He was recently moved to Loddon Prison near Castlemaine in central Victoria, where he continues to cross off his days, sending loved ones Christmas cards to mark the passing of another year.
Koeleman says that when the enormity of his situation hits him he breaks down and cries. While locked up, the prisoner—who is one of twelve children born to Dutch immigrant parents—lost his father. Given day release for the funeral, he used a stuffed toy to hide the embarrassment of his handcuffs.
His sentencing judge said that, on the surface, Koeleman had a good character but that it masked a deep and dark desire. ‘That fantasy involved the sacrificing of another human being to your sexual desires,’ Justice Cummins said. ‘You decided to go cruising, to select another homosexual and to kill that person as part of a self-centred sexual experience.’
If Koeleman is truly the killer of Francis ‘Barry’Arnoldt, he would clearly rather serve a full sentence than admit it. But if, as a growing number believe, Koeleman was just a kinky and compulsive show-off who told the wrong story, he would have to be one of the most unlucky people in the world.