‘We just had to hope.’
By Ian Silk
IT was a peculiar mix of emotions. You didn’t want to be there, because the reason you were there was so terrible. But this terrible thing having happened, you had to be there.
We had endured the shock, the grieving; the rising tides of hope and inevitable waves of disappointment of a two-year investigation. Then came the relief of the arrests and, finally, this trial, which would deliver either a measure of justice or despair for us all.
As the family and friends of Gary Silk and Rod Miller, we had our own assigned place in the courtroom – only metres away from the judge, the barristers, the jury, and the accused killers. The two slain policemen they talked about every day were our sons, our husbands, our brothers, our brothers-in-law, our mates.
We were participants, but not players, in the trial. We wanted to help justice be done – but observation from close quarters and emotional, rather than vocal or physical, involvement, was the extent of our role.
We came to know the court like we know our own homes. Too cold in winter, stifling in summer. The finely-painted wall features. The ornate ceilings 13 metres above us. The carvings on the panels of the jury box. This is the scene in Court 12 on any day of the four months of the trial.
At the front sits the judge at his elevated bench, his associate directly below him. Facing him from the floor are the legal teams. At one end of the congested front bar table is the prosecution team – they carry our hopes. At the other end, the representatives of Bandali Debs, ‘the first accused’.
At the back bar table are the lawyers for Jason Roberts – ‘the second accused’ – the division reflecting the defence’s strategy of emphasising that these proceedings involve two simultaneous trials, and that each man stands accused separately.
Against the back wall of the court, immediately below the elevated public gallery, the two accused sit in the dock separated by a prison officer. Their families sit on a bench in front of them. More guards sit outside the dock for extra security.
The jury sits in two long rows along one side wall. We – the Silk and Miller families – watch them from our bench stretching along the opposite wall. On the bench in front of us are the detectives of the Lorimer taskforce – in their uniformly slick dark suits, one of the court security officers dubbed them the Eddie McGuire Taskforce, and it sticks. In front of them, the media.
Justice Philip Cummins, robed but not wigged, with his diamond stud sparkling in his left ear, presides over the trial with a particular authority. He has an avuncular manner with the jury and witnesses, but directs a withering blast at any counsel he thinks has over-stepped some legal or procedural line.
He recalls passages of evidence in an instant and pounces with relish on any inconsistency in argument. Engaging with counsel in discussions of law, he demonstrates extraordinary clarity of thought and logic. He exposes flawed and fallacious arguments and swats them aside as he bores in on the real issue at hand.
We wonder what his thoughts are. He must be forming a view one way or the other. Does he think they are guilty? He gives away nothing, and is scrupulously fair to the two accused.
On some days, particularly in the pre-trial hearing before the jury is sworn in, a thesaurus would have been handy, given the judge’s penchant for words rarely heard in everyday conversation.
‘Lacuna’; ‘importune’; ‘putative’ – a number of us emerged from this trial with, among other things, an enhanced vocabulary.
The other key players are the barristers – the three senior counsel leading their respective teams were the major participants in the trial.
Jeremy Rapke, QC, is the main Crown prosecutor. Tall, bearded, bespectacled. With a quiet manner and an even quieter voice, he exudes reason, precision and logic. And yet, on occasions, the beast within is unleashed – we glimpsed it when the defence called a witness, a technical specialist, one of just four witnesses called to support their case. (The prosecution brought 157 witnesses to the stand.)
The man’s testimony was comprehensively filleted by Jeremy Rapke. No shouting, no bullying, no personal humiliation – just focused, relentless questioning based on what must have been exhaustive research on that expert’s field of knowledge. His grasp gives some inkling of the hours he and his team from the Office of Public Prosecutions – including Kim Voulanas and Kylie Burns, and counsel assisting Peter Kidd and Justin Serong – have spent being briefed by Paul Sheridan, the head of the Lorimer taskforce, his deputy, Graeme Collins, and other taskforce investigators. Of the months spent speaking with witnesses and developing the structure of this mammoth case and the legal argument to be presented.
Chris Dane, QC, for Debs, has an entirely different courtroom persona. Tall and imposing, with a slight stoop and glasses perched on the end of his nose, he has a theatrical air. Arms thrash about, voice booming one moment, and falling to a practised, barely audible whisper the next.
He pillories the police, accusing them of a conspiracy against his client. Detective Inspector Graeme Collins is ‘Collo’ talking ‘nonsense’ and telling ‘lies’. He attacks Detective Sergeant Dean Thomas – ‘Thommo’, he dubs him – who was responsible for overseeing the transcription of the long hours of conversation picked up by listening devices that were so crucial to this case.
He enjoys colourful phrases and tortured metaphors – even employing Cinderella’s ill-fitting slipper as an ill-fitting description of the case against his client. We never quite warm to him.
Ian Hill, QC, for Roberts, is by contrast a slightly Rumpolian character. Short and squat, he has a considered and deliberate manner and a moustache he likes to stroke when deep in thought.
On behalf of his client, he takes an apparently deliberate low-key role in the case. He argues that Roberts is an innocent who has become caught up in the investigation simply because of his relationship with Debs. The evidence is to the contrary, but will the jury go with it? He is a methodical and deliberate cross-examiner – eyes wide, eyebrows arched as he delivers probing questions. Like Dane, he criticises some of the detectives – albeit for alleged incompetence rather than for engaging in some ill-defined conspiracy.
It is difficult for us to stomach, hearing these officers we have come to know and admire for their incredible professionalism belittled, and to have their competence and integrity questioned. But, with both accused choosing not to testify, we have to accept that their counsel will rely in part on such tactics to help their cases.
This knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to listen to the confected outrage against the ‘conspiracy’, ‘lies’ and ‘incompetence’ of these outstanding officers.
The extent of the desperate search for a defence is ultimately demonstrated in the closing addresses. Both defendants claimed not to be present when Gary and Rod were murdered. But Debs’ counsel fascinatingly tells the jury that if they accept the prosecution’s argument that Debs and Roberts were at the murder scene, then his client (hypothetically speaking, because he wasn’t there) acted in self-defence after Roberts fired the first shot at Gary, and Rod had shot back.
And when Debs twice shot Gary as he lay prone on the ground (again, hypothetically) this was not ‘murder because he would have already been dead’.
We wonder how the jury might respond to these hypotheses given that both accused have adamantly claimed not to have even been at the scene. But then that is what we have done every day – looked across at the people who will decide the case, and tried to get inside their heads.
We are like a group of Psychology 101 students trying to assess the body language of strangers. Some of the jurors didn’t take any notes for weeks at a time, others appeared to be frustrated Hansard writers – they never stopped writing. Have those not taking notes already made up their minds? And if so, in which direction?
The jury members chose to sit in the same seats every day. With about three weeks to go they came in one day sporting large grins. They decided to change the seating arrangements significantly. In the next session they reverted to their old seats.
There is much speculation about the seating changes. Did it mean they were bored? Was it some kind of message? Did it show that if they were prepared to act as one on that minor issue, then they were all of a similar mind on the direction of the case – but if so, which way?
Trying to make sense of what the jury is thinking is a pointless exercise. We just had to hope. The evidence looks compelling enough to us. But we are hardly objective, and who can tell what is going on in the minds of these 15 strangers.
Whenever there is a break, we file outside the court for a chat, and share our conjecture over the jury, our observations, our fears, with the Lorimer detectives and the prosecution team. We have grown close over the months of investigation and trial. We swap stories about our families, our post-trial holiday plans, our footy teams.
But we are not the only regulars in the courtroom. Members of the defendants’ families also attend almost every day.
We watch Debs’ daughters – gazes fixed steadfastly forward, smartly dressed, straight-backed, legs crossed, hands together in their laps. It’s hard to reconcile this image with what we know about them. Some of these apparently demure young women are the same people we hear on tape discussing possible tactics for derailing the Lorimer investigation, including murdering more police officers. Finally, after 113 days of the Supreme Court case, comes the verdict. Debs and Roberts, both guilty. Then the sentence: life imprisonment.
Closure? Not really, in that ‘closure’ indicates a finality that can never occur when any life is cut short in such tragic and dramatic circumstances. But if not ‘closure’, at least the end of a chapter – a pause from which to move on. And not just for the families and friends.
This is also a great verdict and a vindication for the Lorimer taskforce and the scores of other police involved in this extraordinary investigation, which began on August 16, 1998. The verdict is also a just reward for Jeremy Rapke and his team for so expertly crafting such a mammoth case.
And, finally, after the bitter disappointment of failing to bring the guilty to account for the shootings of two young constables in Walsh Street, South Yarra, 15 years ago, here is a verdict to gladden the hearts of all police officers and the community. Police killers will be caught, and will be punished.