Fatal Ride

The Murder of Taxi Driver Wendy Bell

Sydney cab driver Wendy Bell was planning her exit from the job.

A gregarious woman who liked a beer and a good laugh with friends, 59-year-old Wendy had been paying off a little unit in Port Macquarie, NSW, and was ready to take life a bit easier. The cab-driving game wasn’t as enjoyable as it used to be. She had seen it change over the years. Taxi drivers were being bashed far too regularly and the recent murder of a cabbie at Collaroy Plateau, a northern beachside suburb, had unnerved her. Ezzedine Bahmad, a father of seven, had been stabbed and slashed 37 times before having his throat cut by Richard William Leonard in 1994. Leonard was aged just 21 when he murdered Mr Bahmad, and in a separate incident, another man Stephen Dempsey. Leonard was sentenced to life imprisonment, never to be released.

Wendy had even stopped working nights because she felt unsafe. While she loved the job she had done on-and-off for years since university, especially the social aspect of chatting with the customers, Wendy expected to be in her new locale soon.

On 4 May 1995, Wendy had been invited to go sailing with a good friend from the Manly 16ft Skiff Sailing Club. Wendy was a passionate sailor and loved being out on the water. At the last minute, she cancelled, opting to drive her taxi that day. Her upcoming move would mark the end of a 12-year stretch driving for Manly-Warringah Cabs and she wanted to make as much cash as she could to start her life on the NSW north coast.

Michael Shand Walker was waiting for a cab that same day. Walker, a Scottish migrant, had planned his trip for a long time. Walker was a published author – he once had a short story called Fatal Distraction published in Family Circle magazine under the nom de plume Naomi Sands. When he climbed into Wendy’s cab late that morning, the events that followed could have been straight out of the plotline of a novel.

A father of two, Walker, 42, was a conman who tried to make his fortune from insurance rip-offs. Walker had taken out four insurance policies on his life, worth a total $783 000 and he planned to cash in on these by faking his own death.

An innocent cab driver was to be the main character of Walker’s elaborate plot. He planned to hire a taxi driven by a male of similar height and build to himself and direct him to drive to Mona Vale Cemetery where he would murder the poor cabbie.

Walker had chosen Mona Vale Cemetery, in Sydney’s north, because he knew of a dip in the road there, where a vehicle would not be visible to passers-by. He had even earmarked a gravestone to use for his ruse.

Walker planned to shoot the cab driver, and disfigure the body and face to make it hard to identify. He then planned to put his jewellery and a medical bracelet that said he had a middle ear condition on the corpse. Walker had even plotted how he would dispose of the body: He would place the body in a surfboard bag, along with a briefcase of his personal papers. Dressed in similar clothes to the body, Walker would catch the last Manly ferry from Circular Quay and at some stage of the journey, dispose of the dead cab driver overboard so that the body would be chopped up by propellers. A spare change of surfer-type clothes would be on hand for Walker to change into, but not before he imagined he would sit next to an elderly couple inside the ferry, complain of feeling sick and then go outside for some air. He figured that by leaving his briefcase inside the ferry and making sure he was first off when it docked, he could disappear and begin a new life.

Walker had sorted out his will and changed it so that the monies from his life insurance would be paid into an estate, and not to his estranged wife. An uncle in Scotland, George McBean, was to act as executor of Walker’s will, though the man didn’t know it yet. Uncle George would only find out about what his nephew had done on arrival in Australia.

Walker believed he had planned everything. One of the life insurance policies even paid out an extra $100 000 if the policyholder died on public transport. He had stolen identity documents from a man staying in the same Sydney hotel and before he left his home state of Queensland, Walker had bought a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver.

Waiting at the taxi rank on 4 May, Walker was planning a ‘dry-run’ of his murderous scheme. But nothing went right that day for Walker and tragically for Wendy Bell, a split-second change to his step-by-step plan cost her life.

Walker had planned to get in the cab in front of Wendy’s but someone else got there first. It wasn’t until he sat in the front seat of the next available taxi that he saw that the driver was a woman.

In that moment, Walker decided to kill her anyway. Testimony from a fellow prisoner, who turned police informer for the case, revealed Walker’s split-second thinking. Walker told his fellow inmate, ‘I thought, “What the hell, I’m here now. I may as well take her for a dummy ride.” ’

Walker made small talk with Wendy, and asked her to take him to Mona Vale Cemetery to visit a relative’s grave. Walker even asked her to stop at a florist’s on the way so that he could buy flowers for the grave. Meanwhile, the revolver was hidden in his briefcase. During the course of their chat, Wendy revealed that she didn’t have any children or immediate family in Sydney. In Walker’s mind this was a green light for his crime – she wouldn’t be missed.

On arrival at the cemetery, Walker took the gun out of his briefcase and concealed it behind the bunch of flowers. Although he was sitting beside her, Wendy wouldn’t have been able to see what he was doing because the open briefcase hid his actions. Walking back to the cab after his faux grieving, Walker planned to shoot the unassuming taxi driver at the secluded spot. However, in a momentary reprieve for Wendy, a funeral procession drove past and Walker hopped back into the cab instead.

Complaining he felt ill, he asked Wendy to drive him to a doctor. He even asked her to pull the cab over so he could get out and be sick, and he pretended to vomit on the side of the road.

When Walker re-entered the cab he got in the back seat, saying to Wendy that he didn’t want to breathe all over her.

Walker was becoming agitated because his plans were going awry. And Wendy, who was attuned to human behaviour after driving cabs for so many years, was beginning to get concerned. She was driving Walker from one place to another, with no proposed end destination; the bill was already $42 on the meter. Then something only Walker and Wendy would know prompted her to hit the taxi’s internal alarm, which sent an alert to her base that she was in danger. Perhaps it was a discussion about how Walker would pay the cab fare that led to her anxiety about where this cab ride was headed.

Witnesses reported seeing the cab driving erratically and heading towards Dee Why Police Station, no doubt in an attempt by Wendy to get help. Before they reached the police station, Walker shot Wendy in the back and tried to commandeer the vehicle. The cab stopped abruptly when Wendy was shot and in a panic, Walker jumped out of the vehicle. As he pushed Wendy from the driver’s seat, her foot became wedged on the accelerator and the car took off again. Walker was trying to steer the car with his hand through the window but was being dragged alongside. At 12.22 p.m., the cab smashed into a tree right outside the police station. Shocked onlookers surrounded Walker and held him for the seconds it took police to arrive.

Walker confessed on the spot to police that he’d killed Ms Bell, extending his fingers to imitate a gun.

While in custody awaiting his trial, Walker escaped from Long Bay Correctional Centre and was on the run for several weeks. He made his escape on Friday, 3 May 1996, in a laundry truck and it was only noticed he was gone when he failed to attend a late afternoon assembly.

A week after his escape, the most recent photo of Walker was published in newspapers in an attempt to locate him. Authorities feared Walker would try to harm himself or someone else. They also thought he may head to Queensland, and they were right. He was recaptured a few weeks later on the Gold Coast.

More controversy followed for Walker when in February 1998 he sacked his barrister after learning he had driven taxis 25 years ago to make extra cash while studying law. The trial was postponed for a few days while Legal Aid organised alternative defence for him.

Walker’s estranged wife Robyn gave evidence at his committal hearing that he had plotted to kill on at least one other occasion. Mrs Walker told the court that in 1993 her husband suggested the pair take out life insurance policies. It was Mrs Walker’s death he planned to fake with a sensational plan to blow up a plane and make it look as though the pilot’s body was hers. He had concocted a scheme to take a ‘lovers’ holiday to a secluded spot on Stradbroke Island. According to Mrs Walker the pair did a ‘trial run’ of the plan in 1994 and her husband packed a picnic hamper complete with a semi-automatic gun and soft drink bottles filled with petrol.

It was just the two of them – the pilot had wandered away to sit on the beach while his chartered passengers enjoyed an hour’s romantic time together. Mrs Walker said her husband became agitated when he noticed a tent at the spot and realised they were actually not alone. She said she convinced him to put away his gun and that he was acting ‘crazy’.

Mrs Walker said that even on the return home, her husband was talking about another scheme involving a helicopter pilot. She told the court that it was at this point that their relationship fell apart and she left, taking their two children with her.

During his trial, Walker’s defence said the death of Ms Bell was caused by his warped state of mind – he suffered from depression, Meniere’s disease (a condition of the inner ear) and an addiction to prescription drugs. Walker also claimed the gun discharged ‘by accident’ and that he did not even know how to properly handle a firearm. When asked by prosecutor Mark Tedeschi to explain the safety measure on the gun, Walker appeared to recoil from the weapon he had been handed and told Mr Tedeschi, ‘I don’t want to touch that.’ Walker would not even look at the gun. He denied he had fired the gun three times in the cab. Mr Tedeschi said that something ‘much more sinister’ must have occurred to make Ms Bell drive her cab at speed to try and get help at Dee Why Police Station. He said that she must have felt sheer terror in the moments before she died.

Walker was found guilty of murder by a jury. At his sentencing hearing he told the judge, ‘I’m not a taxi-driver-stalking monster.’

Walker was sentenced to a maximum of 19 years in prison.

On 23 March 2000, Walker appealed against his sentence. His lawyers submitted that certain information from a police informer – a fellow prisoner – should not have been admitted into evidence. Walker also wanted the jury’s verdict to be deemed unreasonable (based on some of the evidence from the police informant), and set aside. The appeal was dismissed.

Walker’s maximum 19-year sentence expires in September 2016. His 14-year minimum non-parole period ended in September 2011.

He was transferred to a Scottish prison in March 2011 in an approved international prisoner transfer under Australia’s International Transfer of Prisoners Act 1997.

The Scottish Prison Service confirmed Walker’s transfer but due to the country’s data protection laws, could not say which prison he was transferred to or whether he has been paroled.