Chapter 19

Raglan Street

Wendy Watt’s first impression of Michael Guider was that she didn’t want her two-year-old son Zachery to be around him. She couldn’t put her finger on why. She didn’t even know his full name as he’d only referred to himself as ‘Michael’. It was just a gut feeling.

Their meeting had happened one late spring afternoon in 1983. She and her husband, who was also named Michael, were Lisa Harrison’s tenants. They’d actually lived in the old two-storey place in Raglan Street, Manly, before Harrison bought the lower floor at auction earlier that year and moved in with her daughter Amy. The bottom of the converted premises alone featured four bedrooms, which everyone agreed was more than enough space. So, the Watts stayed on and shared the rent.

It was, in fact, Michael Watt who’d first spoken to Guider. He’d been in the lounge room around 4 p.m., heard voices at the front door and poked his head into the hallway. Lisa came in first with one of her girlfriends, followed by Amy and another little girl Watt hadn’t met but presumed was one of her school mates. Guider followed.

Lisa introduced everyone in one group but it was apparent that they were really made up of two: she and her friend, whose name Michael Watt promptly forgot, moved into the kitchen to make percolated coffee while Guider remained in the foyer with the girls. They were excited and quite noisy as the other child, Samantha, had, after repeatedly asking, been hoisted onto Guider’s shoulders. Now, Amy wanted her turn.1

Wendy Watt came out with Zach to see what all the commotion was. Guider explained that he was a friend of Sam’s mum and often babysat and collected her from school. Today he’d picked up both girls and brought them back to Raglan Street.

It seemed like a generous gesture from someone who wasn’t in a relationship with the girl’s mother or related to her, Wendy thought. She could see Sam and Amy were obviously happy to be around the guy but for some reason she preferred her own child not join in.

After the exchange, Guider followed Sam and Amy down to Amy’s bedroom. It occurred to Michael Watt that they were certainly a cosy little party as they stayed inside the room together for up to half an hour before the bloke left.2

***

The second occasion Guider dropped by, the Watts had the kettle on. He wandered into the lounge room with them and engaged Michael in a fairly lengthy and detailed conversation.

The two men quickly discovered they had something in common. Watt had worked as a personnel manager for a large engineering company but spent time in his home state of Victoria as a volunteer ranger at Wilsons Promontory, a highly significant Aboriginal wilderness area located on the southern tip of the Australian mainland. Guider had latched onto the subject and away they’d gone. Another adult, a young American student boarding with Lisa at the time, was also in the room chatting with Wendy Watt but the two men basically spoke one on one.

Michael Watt was a good talker but did most of the listening as Guider told him about his survey work for the National Parks and Wildlife Service and his knowledge of Sydney Harbour. In particular, he explained his involvement in preserving a large group of Indigenous rock carvings in the hills above Bantry Bay near Frenchs Forest. The collection of engravings had included images of people, animals, fish, shields, a canoe, boomerangs, stone axes, snakes and even a whale. As a result of the effort, a local highway, the Wakehurst Parkway, was diverted either side of the site.

As he told his story, the girls came in and out of the lounge room, with Sam at one stage lingering long enough for a ‘bounce’. This involved Guider holding her by the hands and crossing his legs as she straddled his right foot, which was elevated, and rocking up and down.

Wendy’s attention was now focused on what was being said too.

The harbour was a complex place, Guider went on. There was another out-of-the-way spot between Bradleys Head and Chowder Bay at Mosman that he knew of, where a certain creek emptied into the ocean and there were carvings of fish on the rocks. They were only visible after the full tide or a big storm when the sand had been washed away, exposing a small cave, he said. Guider reckoned he knew of heaps of similarly obscure places. There were locations out there where ‘people could disappear and you’d never find them again’, he warned.

Wendy found the remark faintly spine-tingling: one second the bloke had been talking quite passionately about how beautiful the harbour was and the next there was definitely a menace in his tone.

Before the visit was over, Wendy Watt would have another reason to feel unnerved by Guider’s peculiar manner. With her husband briefly out of earshot, he’d explained to her that his general interests extended well beyond the environment and that he was an avid reader on all sorts of subjects. Among them, she was certain he’d said he collected newspaper cuttings of stories about rape.3

There was a third and final time the Watts saw Guider before leaving Manly and moving back to Melbourne in mid-1984. It was early one Saturday evening, between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Samantha was over, visiting Amy again. Lisa had arranged to go out somewhere and Guider agreed to babysit both girls for her. He’d travelled by public transport and run late. By the time he arrived, Lisa and two of her friends had already gone. Guider came in through the front door instead of his usual entrance via the rear, and then went on to the lounge room.

Michael noticed that, like he often did, Guider was wearing blue jeans, brown work boots and a khaki shirt. He also had a green zip-up jungle jacket on, which appeared to be weatherproof.

The Watts too, were getting ready to eat out and they crossed paths only by half an hour or so.

Even though Lisa was apparently still out, Wendy and Michael didn’t recall seeing Guider later that night when they got in. It may have been that he’d gone off somewhere in the house to go to sleep. However, he apparently didn’t stay the night either, as he wasn’t around the next morning when they woke.

***

In early 1999, the Watts’ days at Raglan Street seemed to them to have been a lifetime ago. For the best part of the past decade, they’d been living far away in Australia’s northern-most capital, Darwin, taken there by Michael’s work. They knew of Sam’s disappearance after reading about it in the Women’s Weekly while still residing in Melbourne in September 1986 and had even tried unsuccessfully at the time to make contact with Sydney police. But they’d heard little more about it.

In the wake of fresh publicity generated by the formation of Harrisville, however, Michael Watt reasoned that he perhaps should again attempt to report what he and Wendy knew. As a couple, they had occasionally discussed not so much their outright concerns about Guider but at least the sense of unease they shared about him.

As it happened, Michael had been walking past the central Darwin police station after leaving his office one afternoon and noticed a missing persons display. Sam’s face, of course, was among them. The second call he placed was patched through to an appreciative Neil Tuckerman, who’d already spent some time trying to locate him. He and Steve Leach packed their bags and flew to Darwin.

***

There was still no smoking gun but everywhere Harrisville looked, there seemed to be more pieces of the puzzle to collect.

Andrew Chadwick had taken a room with Lisa soon after the Watts left, in December 1984. In the intervening 15 years his memory had faded some but he was able to tell Tuckerman and Leach that he’d met both Samantha and Tess at Raglan Street and also come across Sam’s stepfather, Tony Thexton, there once or twice.

Chadwick said Lisa had introduced him to Guider, as well.

‘This is Michael,’ she’d said. ‘He’s going to sit Amy tonight. Isn’t that nice?’

Chadwick added that he’d then asked Guider, ‘What do you want to do that for?’ and that he’d replied, ‘I just like children.’4

Chadwick would recall Guider babysitting for Lisa on at least two other occasions when a friend of Amy’s was visiting and that he’d stayed until the early hours of the next morning. Chadwick said he remembered Sam stopping overnight several times and the girls being fond of dress-up games.

Tuckerman and Leach also discovered that throughout the period in which they were interested, Lisa Harrison had been seeing a bloke named Cliff Allan. When they found him, he had quite a bit to say, too.

When he’d first met Lisa and Amy, they’d been living on The Esplanade at Eastern Hill, where the Manly ferry came in, Allan explained. The detectives knew exactly where he meant because it happened to be just across the road from where Guider molested the two girls by the water’s edge before he was caught in 1996.

Allan said that in the latter half of 1982 he’d begun an on-again-off-again relationship with Lisa, which had continued into 1983, when she’d bought the lower floor of Raglan Street. At the time he’d been residing across the harbour, just below Kings Cross.

He said he knew of Michael and Wendy Watt but had only ever said hello to them in the hallway when Lisa first moved in. After they left, he’d taken up residence himself and begun helping Lisa with some restorations that she’d been planning. While they hadn’t altered the internal structure of the old house, Allan said they’d stripped the wallpaper and painted throughout, and then replaced some of the flooring.

He confirmed that he’d met a number of Amy’s school friends as well as their parents and that Samantha was among them. She’d definitely come to visit and stayed the night at least twice that he knew of. On one occasion this had also involved Lisa and he going out and Guider coming over to babysit.5

Allan reckoned he lived at Raglan Street for about 12 months and saw Tess Knight twice. Once had been when she’d dropped Samantha off, and the second time when Lisa, Amy and himself had delivered Sam back to Bondi after a stay.

Allan also met Anissa Morel. Her parents had been French immigrants and her father was a pastry chef at a hotel in the city. He said he believed the family had some sort of connection with Amy’s father, Alex.

Anissa had come to stay one night and her parents , Lisa and he had gone out together, Allan said. In fact, it was one of the times Samantha had been visiting too and all three girls had stayed behind together and Guider babysat them. He estimated that the group left around 7.30 or 8 p.m. and returned home by 1 a.m. Lisa would have telephoned Guider to arrange things and he would have arrived, say, early evening.

Allan said he couldn’t remember how many times he’d otherwise seen Guider at Raglan Street but probably three or four, in the afternoon when he’d arrive in an old Holden HQ sedan. Allan had not had much to do with him as he’d been introduced by Lisa as an existing friend or associate of hers. She’d informed him that Guider was ‘on call’: that was, if ever they wanted to go out, he’d be available to do the babysitting.6

Allan said the two men had really shared little in terms of common interests. He’d perhaps asked Guider a few questions about photography because he often had his camera with him – a single lens reflex 35mm – but they’d spoken only occasionally.

In June or July of 1985, Lisa and Allan had taken an overseas trip. The previous month, they’d taken Amy to New Zealand to stay with his sister while they were away, and in between they’d also held a dinner party at Raglan Street. The renovations were pretty much completed and it was time to kick back a little. They’d invited quite a few friends and decided also to serve cocktails and martinis. He couldn’t be sure but believed Guider had been among those who’d attended.

Allan was also pretty helpful when it came to identifying some of the numerous and assorted happy snaps the detectives were still trying to sort through.

The older woman in one of the images of Amy’s fifth birthday party at Delwood Beach in February 1983 was Lisa’s mother, he told them. Two of her flatmates from Eastern Hill were on the right-hand side in the same shot and Amy’s father, Alex Christos, was also there, along with a red-haired woman in the foreground who was his then girlfriend.

There was another photo showing Lisa in the water with Amy on her back and another girl beside them who was somewhat obscured. Allan said it was Sam, no question. Some other pictures of Guider and Amy together, where she was wearing a pink tutu, were taken on the same day, he added but he couldn’t say who had taken them.

Allan was also familiar with the photographs of Anissa and Samantha in the row boat because he’d been the person who’d designed and built the craft. He’d often had to move it from one room to the next while he was working on the house.

The image of Anissa beside the fork had come about because it had been used to toast food in the fireplace and the girls would often eat their meals in front of the hearth on the floor, Allan said.

While he’d had little to do with Tess, Allan confirmed that he’d met her ex, Tony Thexton, a number of times and was aware that he sometimes busked on Manly Corso dressed as a clown. This was something Michael Watt had mentioned to Tuckerman and Leach as well. In fact, he said he’d seen Thexton working his act on a couple of occasions – once down at Circular Quay and another time after he’d packed up and gone over to the Corso on the ferry. Samantha had been with him too, both times.

Thexton was an interesting character. In August 1986, he’d been involved in a theatrical production called The Creator. Sam had a part in the play and had stayed with him the weekend of the 16th and 17th and then gone to rehearsal with him on the Monday evening, the night before she’d disappeared. After the practice, she’d been collected by Tess.7

Wayne Mathes and David Donohue had regarded Thexton with sufficient suspicion to have called him in and interviewed him in March 1997. Tuckerman, Leach and Sly had long since discounted him as a suspect but were still keen to learn as much as they could about his affiliation with Raglan Street in terms of explaining the extent of Sam’s presence there too.

According to Allan, by the time he’d moved in with Lisa and Amy, Tess and Tony Thexton had separated; he’d stayed on in Manly and she and Sam had moved back to Bondi. Sam, however, was naturally close to Thexton and would often visit him of a weekend. At the same time, Thexton had become friendly with another of Lisa’s friends, Louise. It meant they perhaps saw even more of Thexton and Sam than they had before. It was an unorthodox arrangement to be sure but it explained a lot.

Cliff Allan added that he and Lisa had flown to Honolulu on 22 July 1985. They too had separated, while travelling, and he’d not returned to Raglan Street.