Chapter 5
Last words
The case of the missing counsellor, Christine Redford
‘She’s just slipped off the edge of the earth. Whether something devious has happened to her I don’t know.’
In her late eighties and living with cancer, Elizabeth Redford doesn’t expect to see her missing daughter, Christine, again.
‘You’ve got to let go,’ she tells the rest of her family. ‘Move on.’
But Christine’s younger sister Carol can’t move on. She needs to find out what happened to Chris – not just because she is worried about her safety and wellbeing, but because it plays on her mind that their last words were spoken in anger.
•••
‘Christine cared about people,’ her sister Carol Redford says, ‘just not her own family.’
It’s a blunt statement but missing people, like anyone else, have their flaws as well as their good qualities. In Christine Redford’s case, one of her greatest qualities – the way she cared about people she didn’t know that well – may have proven her fatal flaw.
As a teenager, it wasn’t drink or drugs that Christine experimented with; it was spiritualism. ‘It was her whole life,’ Carol, who’s eighteen months younger, says. ‘She scared us when she was about seventeen. She joined a church that was too alternative. It was like one of the cults that were around at the time that were taking people’s family members. Fortunately her interest in that lasted less than a year.’
It was just the beginning, however, of Christine’s thirty-year flirtation with new-age groups and churches. ‘I’m not exactly sure what she was searching for,’ Carol says. ‘She would go from one group to another group. They were always based around spiritualism.’
Carol recalls the first time she attended one of these group meetings, at her sister’s request. ‘This particular group was very Americanised, where you tell each other five things you like about yourself,’ she explains. ‘But Chris went into much more spiritual groups after that. I suppose she was searching for herself, trying to work out what she wanted to do in the future.’
Whatever Christine chose to do, though, would be hampered by chronic pain because as a teenager, she fell into her father’s backyard mechanic’s pit and injured her back.
Her sister thinks Christine’s injury might be what sparked an interest in ‘energy healing’. ‘Chris apparently was a very good healer,’ Carol says. ‘She was a hands-on healer and did kinesiology as well.
‘My brother and I went to another group with her where you took a flower and the healer did a reading for you based on which flower you took. Chris healed someone there. She’d always do it for people she didn’t know.
‘She only did healings for friends and families, though, when she was asked,’ Carol adds, almost as an afterthought.
Over the years, the jobs Christine took were also focused on healing. She worked as a medical lab technician, as a carer for a blind student, and as an untrained bereavement counsellor.
There was love in her life too – but never for long. ‘She was engaged twice,’ Carol reports, ‘once when she was eighteen or nineteen and the other time when she was in her mid-thirties. They split up because I think she was afraid of getting married…commitment and all that.
‘She only lived with one guy and that was a long time ago too.’
Sadly Christine had to retire from full-time work in her forties because the pain in her back had become crippling. As a result, she sometimes used a walking frame.
Eager to lead as full a life as possible, however, Christine volunteered for the Salvation Army for a while but when that became too much, she spent most of her time either at home, offering counselling to those in need, or at her latest church group. ‘I don’t know anything about the last one she was with,’ Carol says, concerned about her sister’s habit of flitting from group to group.
Before she disappeared, Christine lived in a small flat in the Adelaide suburb of Kensington Gardens. ‘I’d only been to her place in Kensington twice,’ Carol says. ‘I didn’t actually know much about her life at the end and I kept her at arm’s length.’
Carol kept a distance between herself and her sister ever since they had a heated argument at a family get-together. It pains her to remember that the last time she spoke to Christine they had a blue. ‘The October before she went missing we had a family weekend at Port Willunga and Chris and I had a fight,’ Carol recalls. ‘I took her home and that was the last time I spoke to her.’
The argument was over a family matter that Carol is at pains to discuss. ‘I thought she treated Mum badly and used her,’ she says. ‘It was all about Mum.’ The fight troubled Carol constantly and even though she and Christine hadn’t been close since they were teenagers, she ultimately wanted to get their relationship back on track.
But it wasn’t to be because ten months later – in August 1998 – Christine Redford was reported missing.
Christine’s closest friend, Yvonne White, was used to the fact that Christine sometimes kept to herself for months at a time, but she knew something was wrong when Chris failed to contact her after a serious, scheduled operation. ‘Yvonne certainly thought it was unusual,’ Carol says.
Christine’s real-estate agents also thought it was unusual that they too hadn’t heard from her and went around to check up on her on Monday 3 August 1998. While there was no sign of Christine, everything appeared in order, so the real-estate agents left it at that.
Still unable to contact Christine the following day, however, Yvonne called the police and reported her missing. Her gut instinct was right because when the uniformed police from Norwood turned up at her place, it looked like Christine hadn’t been there for a while.
‘And then they’ve realised this was a bit of a concern so they contacted us at the Adelaide CIB,’ David Sheridan, then a detective senior constable, recounts. ‘The case was initially given to us because she’d apparently disappeared off the face of the earth.
‘The uniformed police had been to her unit and found nothing untoward. Her handbag and purse were there. The only thing missing was a set of keys.’
The lack of clues was most unusual and there was nothing about Christine that helped police to pinpoint her whereabouts. ‘We were talking about a person who was not really mobile, who used a walking frame quite a bit because of debilitating back pain, and relied on public transport to get around.
‘The uniformed police checked her bank accounts but there was no activity.
‘As well, the person who reported her missing hadn’t heard from Christine in over a month so she could have been missing for quite a while, which put us behind the eight ball to begin with.’
When David inspected Christine’s apartment for himself, he agreed with the Norwood police that besides a pile of mail in the letterbox, nothing appeared out of place. ‘It was spotless,’ David remembers. ‘We got our people to spray luminol around the place [to find traces of blood] but there was nothing there.’
Wherever Christine had gone, it was without her walking frame, but that probably wasn’t entirely unusual. ‘We found out that it was used at times when her back got particularly bad,’ David says.
The investigators scoured every inch of Christine’s flat, going through her drawers and reading the documents inside. But again there was nothing there to tell them where she’d gone.
‘We then went and spoke to her friends and acquaintances and no-one could give us any guidance there either.’
David learned quickly, however, what made Christine tick. ‘Looking around the unit and speaking to friends, it was clear that she was a very spiritual person. She was into crystals and things like that.
‘A lot of her friends were like-minded and they had an interest in the holistic, alternative lifestyle.
‘Phone records revealed that the last person Christine spoke to, on Tuesday 30 June, a month before she vanished, was a male friend from a spiritual group. But there was nothing sinister about that,’ David states. ‘We actually found about three blokes she’d had an association with over the last four months. We spoke to them too but there was nothing there to raise our concern.’
David and his team also spoke to Christine’s former colleagues, as well as the organisations where she used to volunteer as a counsellor. Again, all they came up with was confirmation of Christine’s character. ‘If she saw someone who was not travelling well she’d go up and talk to them. She was always helping people,’ David says.
In fact, David’s overriding impression of Christine was of someone who was motivated by concern for others but could retreat into her shell for months. ‘She was a lovely lady and very caring,’ he says, ‘but if she didn’t like something she’d just withdraw.
‘She did have fallings-out with people but the pattern was that she’d just withdraw into herself, she wouldn’t communicate, then she’d come back to them.’
But not this time. So was it possible Christine might have harmed herself? ‘There’s no diagnosed depression that I remember coming across,’ David says. If anything, Christine was known for her cheerful smile and strong, lively personality.
‘We went to her bank where we found out she was on an invalid pension,’ David explains. ‘She used to withdraw her pension all in one go and all the staff knew her. She cared about their feelings,’ he says plainly, ‘and she was a bit of a chatter.
‘She’d even sidle up to a person at a bus stop and if there was anything wrong she’d be willing to help them out or guide them or just chat to them. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d follow someone back to their place if they needed help …’
A police officer since 1978 and a detective since 1987, David Sheridan knows how to run a thorough investigation, but this one has left him stumped. ‘To this day I have absolutely no idea,’ he says. ‘People have suggested she could have just picked up and disappeared but I find that hard to believe. She had no other way of creating an income other than the benefits and she had a bad back.
‘So early on we were at a dead end. We couldn’t find any enemies whatsoever. We didn’t have a direction.
‘But what happened to her could be something untoward.’
That’s what Christine’s family thinks too, though at first they hoped there was a more innocent explanation. ‘It was a case of, “She’s probably gone to Sydney or Melbourne”, ’cos she’d go away on retreats and then pop back,’ Carol says. ‘So it wasn’t unusual – we figured she’d just gone off to try something else. But when Major Crime began investigating, it was a different story.
‘We didn’t know how we could help. We didn’t know her friends so there was no-one for us to ring.’
Carol doesn’t rule out that her sister’s disappearance may have had something to do with the spiritual circles in which she mixed and thinks there’s a remote possibility that Christine may even be hiding out with such a group today. ‘She may have found something [a new religion] that she didn’t want others to know about or thought they’d disapprove of,’ Carol says.
Carol is more worried, however, that Christine might have met an untimely end at the hands of someone she counselled who was emotionally or mentally ill. ‘She could have said the wrong thing in a counselling session, who knows? And if you’re going to counsel people with problems, there is a risk there. And if you’re willing to travel to help those people, there is a risk there too.
‘And she wouldn’t have told anyone where she was going …’
Carol doesn’t rule out that a man – someone unknown – may have had something to do with her sister’s disappearance either. ‘If she is missing and it’s her choice…if she’s living a new life…then that’s her choice. She could have chosen to change her life completely…she could have met someone …
‘Or she could be dead.
‘Mum is very philosophical,’ Carol continues. ‘She has a spiritual side too and has just said to me, “Stop. Accept what’s happened. Move on.” But I’m a very emotional puppy…I’m a very emotional person. And every eighteen months or so something triggers it and I go through a bit of an emotional trauma trying to work out what happened to her.’
One of the events that triggered deep sadness for Carol came after she finally mustered the strength to clear out Christine’s flat and have a garage sale. A caring person herself, Carol gave some of Christine’s furniture to an emergency women’s shelter down the street. ‘Then several weeks later I drove around to find it all dumped on the ground…that was hard.’
Even harder to deal with is Carol’s memory of the last time she spoke with her sister. ‘It’s terrible when the last time you see someone you have a fight. It’s just not the way you want things to end.’
‘I really feel for that family,’ David Sheridan says, aware of Christine and Carol’s final, unfortunate exchange. ‘They’re still in no man’s land and don’t know what’s happened.
‘We’ve done so much stuff with the media for more than ten years – releasing Christine’s photo and creating posters – but nothing has ever come up.
‘We’ve even used new technology to age her face to show what she might look like now but that hasn’t turned up any information either.’
Nevertheless, experience tells David that in missing persons cases you can expect the unexpected. ‘The problem with missing persons is that they can disappear off the face of the earth for twenty years and then suddenly come back.’
And that’s what Carol Redford wants, more than anything. ‘I think if Chris was around now, things would be better between us.
‘As you get older, something tends to click. You learn not to be so precious.
‘If she ever comes back I’ll tell her so.’