Chapter 21

Statues

Coupled with the nauseating slides recovered from Girraween, Anissa Morel’s retelling of what had happened at Raglan Street would constitute powerful evidence.

During the interview with Tuckerman and Sly, she estimated Guider had assaulted her as many as ten times while she stayed overnight as Amy’s guest. At least half of these assaults she could substantiate in detail. Samantha, she said, had been present not just once but a number of times.1

While the 21-year-old had gone 12 years without telling anyone her horrible secret, the realisation that she may one day have to was never far from her mind. To his surprise, the Queensland copper given the task of calling on Anissa at Harrisville’s request was greeted with the matter-of-fact statement, ‘I know why you’re here; it’s about Michael Guider.’

Sitting down with the two Sydney detectives who’d dashed north to meet her just days later, Anissa described how Guider had concocted a series of games for all three girls to play that involved first being plied with lollies or ice-creams and Coca-Cola. Afterwards, he’d warned them not to tell anyone about the treats as there’d be trouble and they wouldn’t be allowed them any more.

Anissa said in one of Guider’s favourite charades, each of the girls hid in different rooms of the house. He would then set about finding them one by one, assaulting them as he went. She remembered thinking at the time how hopeless he was at discovering them because he always took so long.

There was also a preliminary game called ‘statues’ whereby Guider would expose himself, talk about how ‘mummies and daddies’ had sex, and indecently touch them while they stood motionless for as long as they could, pretending to be petrified.

One night, Anissa said, she had been invited over by Lisa only to arrive and find Guider there but neither Amy nor Sam. Lisa had then gone out for the night, leaving her alone with him. She said he’d given her something to drink, taken her into the main bedroom and sat her on the quilt. She estimated that he molested her for up to 20 minutes but conceded she really had no idea exactly how long she was under sedation; it may well have been longer.

There were numerous other encounters that involved Guider touching or rubbing her genitals, or worse. Each time, Anissa was left feeling confused about whether what had happened was right or wrong. Soon after, she began having a recurring nightmare about someone looking through her bedroom window at night before somehow getting inside and trying to touch her feet as she slept.

Tuckerman and Sly felt everything Anissa had to tell them was consistent with their observations of the slides. Now, as they asked her to view some of the images herself, she said she thought she looked rather odd because she was wearing a nightie but also had her best shoes on with socks pulled up and a jumper tied around her waist. She’d obviously been dressed up. She said she also felt she looked weirdly ‘happy’.

‘I’ve got a big wide smile and very red cheeks and my eyes look slightly glazed and dopey,’ she told the two investigators. ‘It’s unusual for me to be smiling that broadly in a photo. I was always very conscious of a gap in my front teeth as a child. Normally photos would be taken and my mouth would be very closed.’2

Tuckerman and Sly knew what Anissa was saying was potent stuff but to achieve the desired result in court, the details would need somehow to be corroborated by a second witness.

That was the hard part. The only other living person who’d so long ago shared Anissa’s torment and shame didn’t want to go back there.

***

The decision to subpoena Amy Harrison – along with her mother – before the crime commission wasn’t taken lightly. The reality was that she was as much a victim as Anissa and Sam. Under different circumstances and in an open court, she would have been entitled to decide for herself whether or not she wanted to testify.

However, Tuckerman, Leach and Sly had come to the conclusion that they needed to push on. They accepted it would be painful for Amy to emotionally revisit Raglan Street but they needed to force her hand. Despite her ordeal, she and Anissa had survived Guider’s predation whereas Samantha ultimately had not, and the current investigation was about bringing Sam’s killer to account – even if it meant stepping on toes.

Key to the strategy was the theory Amy had almost certainly at some stage already revealed details of the abuse to certain members of her own family. This being the case, the detectives reckoned, it would be reasonable to have the commission question her about what she had told them.

After leaving Sydney in 1986, Amy had apparently spent some time in Melbourne with her maternal grandmother. She also had an older half-sister living there – Lisa’s first daughter from an earlier relationship – with whom she’d shared a close confidence.

Naturally, the Harrisville team figured the elder Harrison girl was someone they needed to speak to directly and, in early 1999, made arrangements to journey to Victoria. Lisa, however, had other ideas. As soon as she got wind of the trip, she lodged a written complaint against the strike force with the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, alleging that the three detectives were harassing her family.

It wasn’t the kind of thing police headquarters wanted trouble with. It responded swiftly to the beef by sending one of its assistant commissioners, Christine Nixon, to conciliate. Nixon, who would later become chief police commissioner of Victoria, met personally with Lisa and prominent libertarian lawyer Joan Locke. Tuckerman and Leach were subsequently hauled in and made to attend managerial counselling. Never mind that they were trying to investigate a homicide, the planned interview in Melbourne was also canned.3

Yet not all was lost – there was a trade-off. Unlike NSW Police, the all-powerful crime commission didn’t need to concern itself with responding to grievances, observing individual rights or bowing to oversight bodies. Controversially, legislation guaranteed it carte blanche to examine whatever and whoever it thought necessary.

So it was that while the complaint was still being resolved, the crime commission considered Harrisville’s existing proceedings application and in July simply ordered Lisa and Amy Harrison to its hearing rooms.

As part of the process, both women begrudgingly supplied statements of evidence prior to their appearances. They were then required to verify them, detail by detail, in the witness box. Both mother and daughter continued to resist but were quickly made to realise there was no use trying to gloss over the more contentious parts of their testimony or avoid answering questions.

At one point during the hearing, the commission’s director assigned to the proceedings, John Giorgutti, advised Amy she’d quite clearly agreed during her earlier police interview to having been either indecently or sexually assaulted by Guider up to ten times, just as Anissa had. To now come before them attempting to downplay the same assertion in testimony was simply unacceptable, he warned.

Despite the rigorous rules of engagement, Lisa and Amy refused to yield entirely. When shown the explicit close-up photos taken by Guider and asked to the best of their ability to identify who they depicted, they agreed Amy featured prominently and that many also showed Anissa. Otherwise, they insisted, they were unable to say who else was in them.

Watching from the sidelines with his colleagues, Darren Sly likened the proceedings to ‘a dentist extracting teeth’.4

Asked about her relationship with Samantha, Amy confirmed that they’d been good friends. Yet she claimed she really couldn’t recall her ever staying overnight at her home. As for Guider, she said she remembered him visiting Raglan Street and, yes, playing the statues game but little more.5

Like almost all of Guider’s victims, Amy said she had no recollection of the abhorrent photos he’d taken of her, which showed her either asleep or unconscious. Challenged on what they represented, however, she finally dropped her guard. She knew Guider had violated her and always had, she spat.

Then came the payload. Asked directly whether she’d ever told anyone about what had happened to her, Amy conceded that she’d discussed it with her mother soon after they’d moved from Manly to Yamba on the NSW North Coast. At the time, she was still eight years old.

‘I can’t recall how specific I was with details,’ she complained. ‘My mother asked me if I wanted to go back to Sydney to fight the matter and I said I didn’t. After that time, I didn’t want to talk about Guider.’6

When Lisa took her turn, she had no choice but to agree Amy had spoken to her about the molestation in July 1986 – the month before Samantha disappeared.

‘She told me around this time about a game called statues that Guider played with her,’ she said. ‘I asked her about whether she wanted to discuss the matter further. We both decided to put it behind us.’7

In explaining why Guider had not been exposed as a sexual deviant and a suspect in Samantha’s disappearance way back in 1986, it was explosive stuff. Yet it still didn’t bring Harrisville any closer to actually placing Samantha at the scene of the Raglan Street assaults let alone confirming her as one of Guider’s victims. Lisa, in fact, remained emphatic that Guider had never been allowed to babysit Sam at her home and that Samantha had never slept over. She even denied Guider was in the habit of bringing lollies and drinks when he visited.8

Yet there was no doubt Lisa’s disclosure before the commission had damaged her credibility. It was now on record – and by her own admission – that she’d known about Guider’s criminal activities for a very long time but never come forward and reported him. It was true Lisa was entitled to be protective of Amy’s wellbeing but by concealing what had happened to her daughter she had also effectively denied Anissa a voice for 12 long years and was now standing in the way of justice for Sam.

It was also clear that Lisa’s denial that she had left the three girls in Guider’s care ran squarely in the face of what everyone else from Raglan Street had said was so. If and when it came to a courtroom showdown, Tuckerman, Leach and Sly knew it would strain reason for a jury to accept that she was being truthful.

***

The next phase of Harrisville’s strategy took considerable planning. The idea was for Guider to be brought from Lithgow to the Sydney Police Centre by truck on 18 July. Tuckerman and Leach would then spend the entire following day interviewing him in the bowels of the concrete bunker before sending him back on the 20th regardless of whether or not they decided to charge him with any further matters. There would be little scope for setting up a direct sting before the interrogation. However, an undercover officer fitted with a wire and posing as another prisoner would share his overnight cell at the SPC and then ride back to the Blue Mountains with him on the 21st. One of the guards, also in on the ruse, would hint to Guider that the operative was a child sex offender by remarking to him at some point that ‘Birds of a feather, mate, stick together’.9

Thankfully, the NSW District Court would be helpful enough to grant permission to allow Guider’s cell in Lithgow to be bugged while he was away so that any conversations he might have in the fortnight after the interview could be recorded as well. In all, the listening device warrant would cover a period of 21 days.

The detectives had also done their homework on who Guider was most likely to strike up any sort of conversation with once back in his regular surroundings. The key was enlisting one of his fellow inmates to help steer the talk towards why he’d been carted off to Sydney and whether it had anything to do with Samantha again. The candidate they chose was a double lifer named Edwin ‘Suitcase’ Street, who’d been convicted four years earlier of strangling his 42-year-old de facto wife and then stabbing dead the 25-year-old live-in girlfriend he’d replaced her with, just 12 weeks later. He’d stuffed the bodies of both women in suitcases.

Coincidently, Street had buried the first of the unfortunate pair on Berry Island at Wollstonecraft where Sam, Amy and Anissa had spent their cruising holiday on Alex Christos’s yacht in early 1986. Guider too was intimately familiar with the spot, as he’d spent some time exploring the array of Aboriginal carvings and middens located there. Later, he also took his Gore Hill grave-digger mate, Rod Margetts, and showed him what he’d found.

Aside from his never-to-be released status, Street was a curious character known for his unflinching obsession with the Princess of Wales. In the lead up to the second anniversary of Diana’s 1997 death, the Daily Telegraph had released a special pictorial series on her life and he’d indicated to Tuckerman and Sly that he’d be willing to help them anyway he could if they’d get him some copies.

***

The SPC interview of 19 July 1999 lasted eight hours. Guider was asked 1688 questions, which, combined with his answers, generated 277 pages of transcript. He was in a talkative mood. Unlike the responses he’d produced during the Junee interview two years earlier, though, this time they actually contained material a prosecutor could take to a jury.

Guider began by falsely declaring, as he previously had, that he’d met Samantha on only two or three occasions. This time, however, he told the two detectives he’d been aware of the fact that she and Amy Harrison were best friends.

Challenged on the scrapbooks that had been recovered at Girraween, Guider acknowledged they were his and claimed he’d been mistaken in believing they’d been destroyed along with his other material. Like the many others he’d kept, he’d compiled them because they represented matters of interest to him, he said. He then trotted out his tried and trusted gibberish about being concerned that the police hadn’t looked for Samantha in the right places and that her disappearance was a mystery he was personally determined to solve.

Of the Girraween happy snaps, Guider pointed to one depicting Sam and Anissa in the row boat.

‘This one had moved and gone to live over at Bondi,’ he said. ‘Now, I never visited her at Bondi. I never, you know. I only ever saw her at Manly.’10

Neil asked numerous questions about the storage facility and the lewd photographs they’d been able to identify of Anissa and Amy. Guider admitted he’d also taken them and that they’d been shot at Raglan Street but he quickly added that he’d not taken any such images of Sam.

No problem, his two inquisitors were just getting warmed up.

Steve now took a handful of the pornographic close-ups from the thousands they’d collected from Girraween and Castle Cove and laid them out directly in front of Guider on the table.

‘Why would you have taken indecent photographs of all these young girls but none of Samantha?’ he asked.

‘[They] did ask me that and it should be in that record of interview,’ Guider replied, referring to his 1996 police interview. ‘If ever I [was] interviewed about Samantha I told them that I didn’t.’

Pressed on whether he would have or not had he the opportunity, Guider conceded that ‘I probably would have if I got to know her long enough because most of my crime was done by associating with the family’.11

As openings go, it was slight but one Tuckerman opted to take by challenging him on the real reason he’d been at Raglan Street the night the boat slides had been taken.

‘A number of people have told us that on this particular night you were left in charge to babysit Amy Harrison, Anissa Morel and Samantha Knight,’ Tuckerman said. ‘This was in mid-1985 and you were left with all three girls alone for a period of approxi­mately five hours. Do you wish to say anything about that?’

When he got no immediate response, Tuckerman followed on.

‘You would have to agree that you minded her, that is, Samantha Knight, a few times,’ he said. ‘Is that right?’

‘No,’ Guider replied. ‘I told you I met her on two occasions that I can remember and I don’t remember minding her.’

‘You met her on two or three occasions, that being Samantha?’ Tuckerman persisted.

‘Well, two, three, I’m not going to split hairs over one, one thing, but what I’m –’

The detective interrupted the answer, insisting, ‘Well, we think it’s important. Do you remember saying that?’

Again, the question was referring back to the answer Guider had offered during his interview two years earlier. However, Tuckerman now switched tack; concocting a fake allegation and forcing Guider to deny it, he was hoping to bring a little old-fashioned cage-rattling into play.

‘You told me you touched all three of those girls, Anissa Morel, Amy and –’ he began reciting.

It was now Guider’s turn to interject. ‘No, I didn’t touch all three,’ he protested. ‘I touched Anissa and Amy.’

‘Come on,’ Tuckerman badgered.

‘No, no, I do not have a recollection of sexually assaulting [Samantha] whatsoever. I met her briefly on one occasion. Well, they say I was there for a length of time but I don’t remember being there for a length of time but if that’s what they say. No … but I said … I didn’t touch Samantha.’

In the past, Guider’s denials had been enough to get him through the odd tight spot. But hard work and perseverance on Tuckerman and Leach’s part had seen to it that they now had something more than bluff and bluster to throw at him.

They produced the two indecent photographs identified by Anissa as showing herself and a second girl wearing red tights. The unidentified child wasn’t Amy because there was no distinctive mole on her inside thigh, Steve explained. This, he put to Guider as he looked him in the eye, left only one girl not accounted for – Samantha.

When asked if he wanted to say anything about the proposition, Guider replied with the most telling five words of the interview.

‘It looks bad, doesn’t it?’12

Nevertheless, Guider stubbornly maintained that he didn’t want to retract his position. Instead, he tried manoeuvring to buy himself a little more time.

‘I think we can, what we can do is continue on and I’ll try and think if I can remember anything more about this and then we’ll come back to it,’ he offered.

Two could play that game, Tuckerman and Leach thought. They agreed to let it slide for now but all three men knew there was no way they were going to leave the room that evening without returning to the subject. It would just come down to how long it was going to take.

With line after line of questioning running its course, Guider finally made his move. Cleverly, however, he did so unprompted, the implication being that he was willing to address the issue without being forced. Yet this in itself wasn’t half as conniving as what he actually had to say.

‘It’s just come to me, can you write down please, [the name] Bryce?’ he asked out of the blue. ‘Put down Bryce with a “y”, I think. Ellen.’

When asked whom he was talking about, Guider matter-of-factly replied, ‘That must be the other girl in the photograph showing the genital area.’

The two detectives exchanged looks. Neither believed for a second that the girl in the red tights was anyone except Sam but they were now obliged to find out who and where Ellen Bryce† was just to prove she wasn’t who Guider claimed she was. That was, of course, providing she was a real person.

Whichever way they looked at it, Tuckerman and Leach now had a heap more work to do.

***

On the electronic surveillance front, the first meaningful recorded chat between Guider and the undercover officer known to him as ‘Sam’ had whirred to life around 10 a.m. that morning, before the interview.

While in the SPC holding cells together, the operative had made it known that he’d been charged with indecent assault but he hadn’t openly said the matter involved a child. He complained to Guider that the police had confiscated his computer and photos, the strategy being that Guider would naturally assume that he was referring to a child sex charge.

‘It must be God’s handiwork that I’m here because I was in for a similar thing,’ Guider had said. He also told ‘Sam’ he felt empathy for him.13

Returning to lock-up after the interrogation had finished about 9 p.m., Guider resumed his conversation with his new acquaintance, the pair chatting until about midnight when they both decided to turn in for the night.

During one rather cryptic exchange, Guider had alleged that the police officers he was dealing with upstairs told him he could plead guilty to manslaughter. In effect, if he hadn’t meant to do ‘it’ then ‘it’ would be viewed as an accident.14

Sam’s response to the comment had been to ask, ‘What are you talking about?’

Guider had then apparently laughed and said, ‘The different term for murder, I guess.’

‘Oh, you didn’t mean to do it,’ Sam had said. ‘It was an accident.’

‘But I haven’t done anything, that’s the whole point. I’ve not done anything,’ Guider replied.

The following morning, both men set off in the Department of Corrective Services van headed for Lithgow. Sam was again wired with the Magra listening device. Their conversation between 11 a.m. and 1.35 p.m. was recorded but, again, Guider said nothing that could be construed as an admission.

In the coming days, Harrisville monitored conversations in Guider’s cell around the clock, keeping a log and producing transcripts as they went.

On 20 July there had been an item on the TV news about Samantha’s disappearance and his reaction had been to proclaim, ‘I’m innocent.’ The next day, he was again recorded briefly denying involvement in the case, and on 24 July as saying, ‘I believe I’m fucked, I know I haven’t done it.’15

Around the same time, Guider told another visiting inmate one of the coppers who’d interviewed him in Sydney had been ‘trying to make out accidental death by using drugs’.

Edwin Street had been on hand to prompt several of the exchanges and also facilitate Guider’s access to the Sydney newspapers. The two men usually shared the wing in which they lived with 13 or 14 other inmates and Guider was typically the last of them to receive their communal copies of both the Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald. However, if there was something in either edition he thought his mate needed to see, Street would slide the copy straight under his cell door.

It seemed everything that could have been done to catch Guider out, was. Somehow, though, he remained just out of reach.

Yet at least the strike force had come away with enough evidence to charge him anew with multiple counts of sexual assault pertaining to the Raglan Street attacks, even without Amy and Lisa Harrison’s proper co-operation. It was a way to get him back into court and under the microscope while they plotted their next move.