Chapter 28

Charged

Wednesday, 22 February 2001, began as a slow news day. On its front page, the Sydney Morning Herald was running a second-hand Pauline Hanson yarn. The previous weekend, the controversial One Nation leader had been lampooned for calling for an inquiry into conspiracy claims surrounding the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. The theory, which was plainly ludicrous, alleged gunman Martin Bryant had somehow been put up to the rampage by the federal government as a way of justifying new gun laws. Now, four days after Hanson’s bizarre grab for attention, there was apparently renewed outcry.

Beside the story was another recycled piece about two Australians who’d been detained for breaching Indian airspace in their six-seater plane.1

As the city’s journalists began arriving for work around 8 a.m., however, it emerged that something real was brewing. Assistant NSW Police Commissioner Graeme Morgan, head of the state’s elite crime agencies branch, issued a bulletin announcing that he was about to hold a press conference on the steps of the Sydney Police Centre. A dour figure at the best of times, Morgan rarely spoke to the press, so it was presumed he had something newsworthy to divulge. He didn’t disappoint.

A 50-year-old man already in custody would shortly be appearing in Sydney’s Central Local Court, he began. He had been charged with the murder of nine-year-old Bondi schoolgirl Samantha Knight more than 14 years ago. The arrest had broken one of the most baffling cases ever to have confronted NSW Police. Morgan hadn’t named him but there was no doubt who he was talking about.

The Daily Telegraph, the only paper in town that still put out a same-day edition, splashed with the announcement as an exclusive, while talkback switchboards jammed as the details were disseminated across the country’s radio networks.

‘After a lengthy and protracted investigation by officers attached to Strike Force Harrisville, the man was conveyed to the Sydney Police Centre overnight, where he was spoken to by detectives and charged,’ Morgan was quoted as saying. ‘This morning’s events are the culmination of a meticulous investigation which commenced in 1986 and was reactivated again in 1998.’2

As Sydney’s late summer humidity began climbing, the media ruck that had assembled minutes earlier scrambled to their vehicles for the ten-block dash to Liverpool Street ahead of Guider’s arrival.

Having decided to sidestep the official hoopla, Phil Cornford was already there, around back of the nineteenth-century complex, waiting at a gap in the fence for the corrective services truck to pull into the yard. He’d attended enough press conferences in his time to know they sometimes weren’t where the money was. In this case, he’d brushed Morgan to get a first-hand look at Guider being escorted into the court’s holding cells.

For his trouble, he snared a glimpse of a man radically trans­formed. Guider had never been athletic but Cornford now gauged him as bordering on obese. His hair – grey, ragged and thinning – reached his shoulders, and his face was hidden behind a long, flowing salt and pepper beard, which came down to his chest. Dressed in green prison denims with his hands cuffed in front, he’d looked fleetingly in the direction of a hovering photographer before shambling indoors. The image would be flashed ad nauseum on television screens over the next 24 hours.

Inside Courtroom 2, available space was at a premium. Every chair at the huge wall-side timber table permanently reserved for media types was taken, the handful of bench seats set aside for the public were also packed and still more journalists stood and waited, pens in hand.

Tess, Sam’s dad, Peter, and grandmother, Babette Knight, sat quietly to one side with Neil Tuckerman and Darren Sly.

Guider’s role in the proceedings was reduced to a 90-second cameo. No plea was taken and he wasn’t required to speak.

Yet with the community’s demand for answers perceived to be high in the extreme, Magistrate Ian Barnett decided to break with convention and allow DPP solicitor Sean Fliegner to hand up a two-page statement of police ‘facts’. The document outlined the allegations against the accused and, once tendered, became public property. Made available for the waiting press corps to read and copy, it would therefore provide the basis for one of the year’s biggest court stories.

First things first, though. Tess agreed to make a short statement outside. With the wheels of justice now in motion there was little she could really give voice to without prejudicing the case. Even so, everyone present gathered in anticipation of at least something to quote.

‘We would like to say thank you to the investigation team and thank you to everyone for their ongoing interest in this matter,’ she said, with Peter at her side. ‘At this moment it is before the court and we can’t comment any further.’3

It was a case that had called out for a prosecution to take place, Fliegner added. The police had been very diligent and patient and it was now up to a jury to decide what would happen.

According to the fact sheet, Guider had met Sam when she was five and soon began babysitting her and two of her playmates. He’d been friendly with the mother of one of the other girls and minded them at sleepovers at the woman’s house in Manly. He’d also admitted to assaulting and taking pornographic photographs of various children over more than 20 years and his victims had included Samantha’s two friends.

It was also alleged that witnesses had seen Guider walking with Sam on Bondi Road the day she disappeared. ‘Samantha appeared comfortable in the man’s company and did not struggle or resist him in any way,’ the statement read.

Guider had indicated to a number of people that he’d given Sam too much Normison and that she had died accidentally. Medical records showed he’d regularly bought the stupefying prescription drug, including a purchase made the month before Sam’s disappearance.4

Guider was taken back into custody and ordered to reappear in court in May when it was likely a date would be set for a committal hearing. At this point, the evidence against him would be presented in full and tested before another magistrate who would determine whether or not it was sufficient to warrant proceeding to trial.

The following morning, the allegations tendered to Barnett were carried on page one across NSW. It was a major story interstate and reported overseas as well. The news also brought out the feature writers. The Australian set aside a thousand words to retell the long, sad tale of Sam’s disappearance; the Herald did the same to complement Cornford’s hard-nosed account up front, while the Telegraph spilled its mixture of news and analysis over two pages.

Two days later, senior Fairfax reporter Frank Walker came up with a fresh take, managing to track down one of two girls who’d left Bronte Public School with Sam the day she vanished.

Now 26 years old, Bianca Monsonego explained that she and classmate Christy Anderson had initially believed Sam to have been snatched in the street after falling back during the walk home. ‘One moment she was behind me,’ she said. ‘I turned around a few moments later and she was gone.’

All three girls had called into a milk bar on the corner of Belgrave and Murray Streets to buy some lollies. Samantha had been right behind them, Monsonego said.

‘She was just a few steps back as we crossed into Jackaman Street but fell behind a bit as we walked up the street. We walked around the corner into Avoca Street, but when we looked behind us after a bit, Sam wasn’t there.’

The truth, of course, was that Samantha had simply taken a different route, arriving in Imperial Avenue a short time later.

However, Monsonego said the stroll still haunted her: ‘It runs over and over in my mind like a slow-motion movie. No, not like a movie … more like a series of flash photos running in slow motion.’

Fourteen years on, Sam’s abduction continued to affect her and others of the Bronte Public kids, she lamented. ‘Whenever we meet we talk about it as though it was yesterday and it still hurts. Some of us are married with children of our own.’5

The Sunday Telegraph was able to produce an equally moving piece based on interviews with one of Samantha’s class friends, Tara Catsanis, who, as a tribute, had named her baby daughter Samantha.

***

On 3 May, Michael Guider was scheduled to come before Central Local Court again as part of a routine check on the progress of the charge against him. He was called up from the holding cells below the courtroom, however, he refused to appear.

Tess Knight was again in attendance. Yet resident magistrate Paul Cloran said he was prepared to overlook Guider’s no show and adjourned the case for routine mention again until 7 June. The prisoner, he said, could also be excused from attending in person on this date and would be permitted to appear via video link.

In December, the court would hold a preliminary hearing in readiness for the beginning of committal proceedings on 8 April 2002. During the months in between, both sides would need to spend their time wisely in preparation for what was expected to be an intense showdown.

In total, the prosecution would call upon 38 witnesses to give evidence. Apart from the main players in the saga, a number of lesser lights would also have important roles to play: grave digger Rod Margetts, garden hand Phillip Black and long-time boarding house resident John Price among them. Solicitor Deborah Healey would also be added to the list of those among the last to see Sam before the abduction, such as Rosemary Kinna and Virginia Carroll and her eldest daughter, Jessica. Expert witnesses Paul Westwood and Graham Starmer would be recruited to testify, and, as well, there were the police officers who’d worked on earlier investigations like Phil Vickery, Christine Bowyer, Kayleen Button and Dave Donohue.

From Raglan Street, Wendy and Michael Watt, and Cliff Allan would provide crucial evidence along with Anissa Morel and Lisa and Amy Harrison, despite their expected hostility.

As things turned out, Peter Bulgin would have something of value to offer too, although he’d do so with some reluctance. While working at Quad Cleaning between 1980 and 1986, he agreed, Guider had told him he knew the first aid centre inside the bank branch they cleaned contained the drug ether, and he had asked him to help get him some.

When he had asked why, Guider had told him what he’d been doing to the children he babysat and said he wanted to try ether and see how it worked on them. Bulgin said he’d refused, but later Guider had told him he’d managed to acquire some ether anyway.

Bulgin would testify that after Samantha’s disappearance, Guider became obsessed about the case and revealed to him in late 1987 or early 1988 that he knew the girl through a friend of her mother’s who lived in Manly. He’d shown Bulgin a slide depicting three children standing together, apparently at a birthday party. He told him the kids were Samantha’s friends.

There had also been a number of times that Bulgin had visited Guider at Kirribilli when he’d shown him images of children who appeared to be ‘doped out’ and in various states of undress. Bulgin would say Guider had told him he’d met the kids through their parents, or in some cases a parent, but had been careful not to reveal any locations or identify any of them to him. Some of the children, Bulgin estimated from the images, were less than five years old. He believed Guider’s interest in them had been of a sexual nature.

Bulgin would claim he’d chosen to speak up about what he’d seen and been told because he regarded Guider’s behaviour to have been ‘morally wrong’. Under cross-examination, however, he himself wouldn’t exactly come up smelling like roses. Asked about his own dalliances with nude photography, he agreed that in 1987, he had taken some shots of a 14-year-old girl who he’d been interested in. But he insisted that they had not been pornographic.

Bulgin was also forced to deny that he’d ever offered Guider money to supply him with naked images of the Clarke sisters. What he did say, though, was that Guider had told him about having ‘knocked out’ both girls with sedatives and photographed them while babysitting them for their mother.6

One witness who wouldn’t be taking his place in court was Tony Thexton; whether because he didn’t want to be found or simply couldn’t be, Neil Tuckerman and Darren Sly weren’t able to locate him.

It was time too, for the two investigators who had toiled so tirelessly to bring the matter to fruition to write up their own statements and prepare to weigh in from the witness box. More than two years after his first, Steve Leach also penned a second statement on 29 November from the Netherlands, in order to tidy up his considerable involvement in the case.

By the end of 2001, everything would be in place.