Excuse 1: ‘I was exorcising demons’

Excuse 1

‘I was exorcising demons’

When Joan Vollmer let out one final groan and died, her devoutly Christian husband was pinning her to a chair and two family friends had their fingers in her mouth. The 49-year-old’s eyes were also being held open—to make sure she watched as a bible-wielding 22-year-old exhorted a demon to name itself and go to the foot of the Cross.

The story of how and why this pig farmer’s wife died must be one of the strangest tales told to an Australian court. The weird goings-on at Mrs Vollmer’s modest piggery during an oppressively hot week in January 1993, included:

• a man running around—and over—the farmhouse waving a sheet of Gladwrap plastic clingwrap;

• a Holy Communion of blackcurrant cordial and brown toast;

• flower beds being dug up;

• the destruction of a greenhouse and;

• the smashing of black ceramic cats, a jewellery box, various trinkets, chimes and a music box —later dumped in a steel bucket, a tractor tyre and a large steel drum.

The admissions

Joan Vollmer’s death may have had its strange—even blackly comic—aspects, but police could have been forgiven for thinking it would be relatively easy to bring those responsible for her death to justice.

For a start, four people admitted they were with her when she died. Mrs Vollmer’s husband, Ralph; friends of the family, Leanne Merlyn Reichenbach and David Andrew Klingner and; 22-year-old Matthew Paul Nuske were quick with their admissions. They freely acknowledged holding Joan Vollmer down—even as she screamed and cursed, even as she struggled and kicked, even as temperatures hit 40˚ C.

At the moment his wife died, Ralph Vollmer told police he was clamping her left leg between his legs and pushing down hard on her left arm. Nuske, according to Vollmer, was holding down her right arm. From behind, 29-year-old Klingner, was holding her eyelids apart. He was also prising open her mouth by wedging his thumb behind her lower teeth and pulling down as hard as he could. Reichenbach—a not insubstantial 31-year-old mother of four—was using her legs to pin down Mrs Vollmer’s right leg. She was also pressing a finger down on the stricken woman’s tongue.

Thus immobilised, thus bizarrely restrained, in stifling heat, Mrs Vollmer died at about 4.30 pm on 30 January 1993.

Klingner—a contract grain harvester—gave the police a disturbing description of Mrs Vollmer’s last moments. She had, he said, breathed heavily and frothed at the mouth before groaning like a bull.

Klingner: A couple of groans came out of her and, yeah, then she relaxed for a very short period of time and then her face. Oh, she had this hideous expression on her face. All her, you know, sort of cheeks were sucked in, and her chin and her face turned a real bright purply colour and then went white all in a matter of a few seconds and then Leanne, from where she was, could feel that she’d stopped breathing.

Reichenbach said that in the 30 minutes before Mrs Vollmer’s death, she had pushed and prodded her. First, she pressed her hand against Joan’s womb. After a while—ignoring Joan’s curses and screams of ‘You hurt me’ and ‘Help!’—she moved up her abdomen and pressed again. Next, she pushed against Joan’s left breast and then massaged her throat. All the time Mrs Vollmer was struggling—kicking at her tormentors, pulling their hair. Finally, after Klingner forced Mrs Vollmer’s mouth open, Reichenbach put her fingers inside and pressed a finger against her tongue. As she was doing this, according to Reichenbach, Joan let out a ‘growl’ and stopped breathing.

Ralph Vollmer described the dying moments of his wife of three years.

Vollmer: It was a pretty hectic time there, the last few moments…there was no more pushing or poking or anything like that…it was only a matter of prying her mouth open so Leanne could put her finger on the tongue…[seconds later] her lights went out.

Vollmer, Reichenbach and Klingner not only told police they were with Mrs Vollmer when she died, they acknowledged that throughout the preceding week they frequently restrained her on the floor and on a chair. They prayed and read the Bible to her for hours on end. They regularly slapped her, tied her to the chair and tied her feet to floorboards with stockings. After she wriggled free, they even nailed those floorboards together.

The three readily, even eagerly, agreed with police that Mrs Vollmer had suffered more than reasonable force, particularly on the day she died.

Reichenbach said the pressure she applied to Mrs Vollmer’s womb and stomach would have been enough ‘possibly’ to cause a normal person to wince. She said in normal circumstances the force she used to push Mrs Vollmer’s left breast ‘being a tender area, may have hurt…but not to an extreme extent’. She had applied ‘reasonable force’ to Mrs Vollmer’s throat—enough to ‘possibly hurt’ a normal person. Reichenbach, however, denied the pressure she applied to Mrs Vollmer’s neck could have killed her.

Policeman: Are you aware of any injury that that throat massaging caused to Joan?

Reichenbach: No.

Policeman: Do you think—speaking on a realistic level—that massaging someone’s throat is a dangerous sort of act to undertake?

Reichenbach: It could be. If too much pressure is applied. Yeah, I guess so.

Policeman: Do you think you applied excessive pressure?

Reichenbach: I don’t think so, no.

Policeman: See, Leanne, as a result of Joan’s death a medical examination was carried out, and the cause of Joan’s death has been attributed to compression on her neck.

Reichenbach: Uh huh.

Policeman: Do you have anything to say about that?

Reichenbach: It surprises me.

Policeman: Why does it surprise you?

Reichenbach: Because to my knowledge, I wasn’t aware that I was placing that much pressure on her throat.

Reichenbach did, however, tell police that while she was pressing on Mrs Vollmer’s throat, she noticed her face ‘did not have the sweet look of the real Joan’.

When Klingner was asked how much force he thought Reichenbach was using while massaging Mrs Vollmer’s throat he replied: ‘Well, I did it a couple of times myself and there was quite a bit of force’. Asked whether the same thing would have hurt someone else, Klingner replied: ‘I’d say there would be discomfort there for sure’. When police told him Mrs Vollmer had died from a cardiac arrest triggered by a serious throat injury and asked whether the pressure he and Reichenbach had applied to Mrs Vollmer’s throat could have had ‘some effect on that throat injury’, Klingner replied: ‘It’s possible’. He even appeared to confess to what amounted to ‘dangerous act’ manslaughter.

Policeman: Do you also acknowledge that by applying force or pressure—no matter, you know, what variants —to the throat of an individual in itself is a dangerous act?

Klingner: I concede that, yeah, sure.

That concession prompted police to charge him with manslaughter.

Asked how much pressure Leanne Reichenbach applied to his wife’s neck just before she died, Ralph Vollmer told police: ‘I don’t know but I don’t think it was very gentle’. He also said, to open Joan’s mouth, Klingner had had to use ‘quite a lot of force because she was very, very strong’. He acknowledged what he helped do to his wife in the hours and days before her death could have hurt her badly. ‘I would have expected at least some broken limbs,’ he told police.

Vollmer: Several things could have been broken. Arms, broken legs, all sorts of things as far as I can tell because, you have got no idea how forceful she was, how strong, and what it took. To just hold one arm took the full force of me. I could barely hold it.

He even admitted that while Joan was being restrained he had ‘cracked up’ because he thought she was being treated ‘a bit rough’. He told police he walked away for a while because he could not believe it was ‘God’s will to hurt my wife like this’. He said, however, he returned to restraining Joan after realising he was being weak by letting doubt get in the way.

Asked if he thought his wife could have been seriously hurt by what was done to her, Ralph Vollmer told police: ‘Oh yeah, yes indeed. Very much so’. Asked if he would have been hurt very badly if he had been treated in the same way, Vollmer told investigators: ‘My word!’

The excuse

But, if police thought these statements amounted to confessions to Joan Vollmer’s manslaughter and that guilty pleas or a quick trial would follow, they were to be proved very wrong. Vollmer, Reichenbach, Klingner and Nuske were to come up with a doozy of a defence—a classic killer excuse.

Yes, they said, what they had done to Mrs Vollmer would have seriously injured a ‘normal person’, but they had not been dealing with a normal person, they had been dealing with an evil spirit. They were not guilty of manslaughter, they swore, because they had been exorcising demons.

Reichenbach said she had pressed on Mrs Vollmer’s womb, ‘Because that is where the demon had a hold’. Mrs Vollmer was struggling, according to Reichenbach, because demons had control of her body, not because she objected to being pinned down and prodded by people who had forced her to watch her treasured garden and trinkets being destroyed.

When she pushed on Mrs Vollmer’s abdomen, Reichenbach insisted, she had been making demons feel uncomfortable, not Joan Vollmer. She said she had massaged Mrs Vollmer’s throat because the demons had ‘grabbed hold’ there. She had pushed quite hard with upward movements either side of the Adam’s apple because the demons had a particularly strong hold. Indeed, according to Reichenbach, the demons—a mother and her daughter—were holding hands and dancing inside Mrs Vollmer. She said she had felt the Lord leading her to ‘just put a finger on her tongue to encourage the demon to leave’. The effect of this? ‘The demon growled through her’. Finally, she said, ‘Through prayer and the power of God, the demon, two demons left her’.

What to police was clear evidence of manslaughter—the dangerous force used against Mrs Vollmer—was, to these ‘wannabe’ exorcists, evidence of demon possession.

Vollmer told the bemused police that what was done to Joan ‘would’ve hurt my wife terribly, but it wasn’t my wife’.

Vollmer: We weren’t dealing with my wife any more. This is the whole point. See, I wouldn’t allow anything like that to happen to my wife. You can’t believe that. She wasn’t my wife. She was an evil spirit that needed to be dealt with.

It was too severe. She—was—she is a reasonably fragile woman. She would not have been able to take that. There’s no way.

Trying to keep the case in a realm he was used to, that he could understand, a police officer asked Vollmer: ‘So what you’re saying is, your wife was being subjected to high levels of force. She’s resisting violently as well. Is that what you are saying or not?’ Vollmer took things back to the spiritual realm: ‘The evil one was doing this. I didn’t say my wife was’. He repeatedly insisted he and the others only did what they did because they loved Joan.

Vollmer: My one concern was for her to be set free of the bondages she was under.

When my wife was there she was never subjected to any ill-treatment whatsoever. She was subjected to—by all of us—great love and compassion and understanding. It was only when the manifestation of the evil one became dominant that any force was used.

He said when his wife’s ‘lights went out’ he felt the demons being exorcised.

Vollmer: The spirits were released. I felt the spirits released. Matthew [Nuske] was saying, ‘They’re released’, and Leanne was confirming it and life just went from her then.

…

I know you think I’m a little bit round the bend…but you will change your mind in a very short time. I believe God is going to raise my Joan…and she is going to be much more beautiful on the inside and much more beautiful on the outside.

He said that the day after his wife stopped breathing, when she felt ‘quite stiff and cold’ and a strong odour filled the room, he realised, ‘God was going to do a complete resurrection job on her. New body, new soul’.

That Vollmer and his fellow ‘exorcists’ genuinely believed his wife would come back to life, appeared to be backed up by what they did after Joan Vollmer died. When mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage failed to revive the lifeless woman, Reichenbach lay on top of her. She was trying, Reichenbach later said, to pour God’s spirit into Joan—just as Saint Paul had done to a young man who had fallen asleep and fallen out of a window while listening to one of his interminable sermons.

While lying on top of Mrs Vollmer, Reichenbach told her fellow ‘exorcists’ she was having a vision in which Joan was refusing to enter a tomb. Klingner later told police Reichenbach had said that in her vision Mrs Vollmer was ‘walking on the road back toward us and got three-quarters of the way’.

Unfortunately, that was when the vision ended.

Klingner told police that after this, ‘for quite a while’, all four of them sat around Mrs Vollmer singing ‘songs of victory…proclaiming God’s victory over the situation’.

Reichenbach: We laid her on the floor and, of course, we were a little shocked at what had happened, and the Lord was speaking to Matthew [Nuske] saying he would raise her up—which is very biblical—and we believed in God’s power…and we prayed for a while and we felt the Lord telling us just to wait. We did feel a slight heartbeat in the pulse in her throat.

Klingner told police of a vision he had, which was to prove at least partly accurate. He said the Lord had sent him a vision that the authorities would be told what happened to Mrs Vollmer and it would make national and international headlines. He said in the vision the Lord had revealed that those involved might be charged but that God would then raise Mrs Vollmer from the dead to ‘show that He is victorious in this day’.

So convinced were Vollmer, Reichenbach and Klingner that Mrs Vollmer would rise alive and free of demons, police and doctors were not called for two days. (Nuske left soon after his exorcism subject died, returning to his job as a golfcourse greenkeeper in Melbourne.) Even as Mrs Vollmer’s corpse rapidly decomposed under blankets in her bed in the heat, even as the stench of death overwhelmed the farmhouse, the self-proclaimed exorcists still believed she would get up and live.

The day after his wife died, Vollmer reassured his 30-year-old son, Gary, that his stepmother was ‘resting comfortably’, having not had much sleep for a few days and that she would be ‘fine’ when she woke up. Also on that day another friend of the family—77-year-old Leah Clugston—visited the farmhouse. She went there to ‘lay hands’ on Mrs Vollmer but had only done so reluctantly.

Mrs Clugston: When I was ranting at the Lord…the Lord said to me to go and lay hands on her…I said, ‘No, not me’ but there is no salvation without obedience so I went.

Finding Mrs Vollmer lying ‘cold’ on a bed almost completely covered in blankets, Mrs Clugston put her hands on the dead woman’s forehead and said three times: ‘In the precious name of Jesus, rise and walk’. Then she got another message. ‘The Lord told me to go home,’ Mrs Clugston said. So she did.

After his wife’s bizarre death, Vollmer had two good nights’ sleep and stuck to his normal farming chores. There was, after all, no cause for alarm, no reason to mourn and no reason to call anybody. Joan would soon wake up, freed of her devils. Life would go on.

It was only on the third day after the exorcism attempt that a local pastor was called in and a doctor and the police were notified. When police arrived—gagging on the stench of the decomposing body pervading the farmyard—Vollmer said he was ‘on a high type of thing, because I was so very excited about the prospects of the return of my wife’.

The police caution—about having the right to silence, etc. —had, he said, ‘no meaning to me because I strongly and firmly believed that my wife was going to reappear any time. All this exercise was a waste of time’.

Vollmer was so convinced of his wife’s imminent return he welcomed television crews and journalists to his modest farm—at Antwerp, near Horsham, in Victoria’s ‘Bible belt’ north-west—to witness the miracle. On the eve of Mrs Vollmer’s funeral, 5 February, Ralph Vollmer was upbeat in a television interview.

Vollmer: Everybody’s going to see. It’s going to be on television across the country. I believe the Lord took her life for a specific reason. He wants to raise her up so the world can once and for all see God is alive and that His mighty power is real because we live in an unbelieving world. I have no doubt about that.

He said there was no chance his wife would not be resurrected before the funeral.

Vollmer: It’s not a possibility because we’ve got God’s promise…thousands of people are praying for her. She will look the same so everybody can see it’s her and not something I dreamed up. They [the doubters] will change their mind tomorrow.

A card next to Mrs Vollmer’s grave read: ‘Hope to see you soon’.

It wasn’t to be.

As hordes of media looked on, Vollmer stood by his wife’s grave, outstretched palm reaching to the sky, eyes closed, silently praying. Finally, as Joan Vollmer’s coffin was lowered, grief-stricken he gripped his two sons’ arms.

Minutes later, he seemed to accept her death.

Vollmer: Yes, she has gone to heaven. Maybe she didn’t want to come back it was so beautiful up there.

We are human and we do make mistakes. Sometimes we confuse God’s voice with our own. My mistake was I believed that she was going to be raised this very day and I was wrong.

I really mean this. Out of this, God’s name is going to be glorified because people have been hearing His word and the Gospel in the last few days as I have been talking about Jesus.

People will realise there is more to life than chasing the mighty dollar. I will continue to preach the mighty, mighty word of Jesus.

Vollmer said he looked forward to seeing his wife when he died.

Still, just in case God did, after all, do a ‘complete resurrection job’, Vollmer left Joan’s grave unmarked with not even a flower hole for those who wanted to pay their respects. It took a year for him to accept she was almost certainly not going to be resurrected…at least not before Judgement Day.

Unlike most accused killers, these four were eager to talk. Leanne Reichenbach’s faith even led her, at first, to refuse a human lawyer.

Policeman: You may communicate with or attempt to communicate with a friend or relative to inform that person of your whereabouts. Do you understand these rights?

Reichenbach: Yes.

Policeman: Do you wish to exercise any of these rights before the interview proceeds?

Reichenbach: Well, I have already rung my husband. That’s good. Thank you.

Policeman: Did you want to communicate with a legal practitioner?

Reichenbach: No. He’s already here.

Policeman: What do you mean by that?

Reichenbach: God.

Eventually, though—like most accused—all four not only had human barristers but they all refused to give evidence on oath at their trial. But before that trial—in September and October 1994—they volunteered a great deal about exactly why they thought Mrs Vollmer was possessed and by what.

The problems started, according to Vollmer, shortly after he and his wife returned from a six-day charismatic Christian convention in Adelaide. At first Joan was just restless. Then things got stranger.

On Friday, 22 January 1993—eight days before Mrs Vollmer died—Vollmer told the Herald Sun he came home to find his wife roaming the farm paddocks.

Vollmer: She was doing a strange dance waving her arms and calling out. I tried to get her to come back inside but she would not listen. She began swearing at me using foul language and even speaking like a man.

Alarmed, Vollmer called a fellow charismatic Christian friend—John Reichenbach—for help. The pair prayed as Mrs Vollmer’s condition worsened.

Vollmer: She became very violent. She was walking around the kitchen knocking things off the shelves and screaming. I could not talk to her. She was not herself, but when you told her to sit down in a commanding voice she did that.

The next day Leanne Reichenbach joined what was to be a week of ‘spiritual warfare’. She telephoned like-minded charismatic Christian friends Leah Clugston, Kathleen Nuske and David Klingner in South Australia. When Klingner arrived the group decided it was God’s will that John Reichenbach return home to care for his and Leanne’s children.

For days the ‘exorcists’ restrained Mrs Vollmer. Hour after hour, often into the early hours of the morning, they prayed for her. They read the Bible to her. They played Christian songs to her. They quizzed her, slapping her if she gave the wrong answer. Sometimes their exorcising continued while Mrs Vollmer slept. They even tried carrying out a Holy Communion despite not having any red wine or communion wafers. They made do with Ribena blackcurrant cordial and brown toast. Solemnly consecrated, of course.

Leanne Reichenbach told police that in the days before Mrs Vollmer died, Joan had been violent to whoever was reading ‘the Word’ or praying with her. She said the only way to control her was to hold her down. Reichenbach said she had not felt threatened by Mrs Vollmer’s actions or curses because: ‘I know where I stand in the power and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His power and authority is much greater than the evil one’s’. She said that on the day she died, Mrs Vollmer became aggressive because she could not tolerate hearing the Word of God.

Klingner told police of ‘lustful demons’ causing Mrs Vollmer to take off her underwear and blow kisses at him. He said she lay on the kitchen floor for about an hour acting as if she was having a sexual orgasm. The gruff farmer said he believed the demons were doing all this to test his male ‘weakness of lust’. When it ‘dawned’ on him that Satan was gaining strength through Mrs Vollmer’s orgasms, he prayed aloud that Jesus’ rock would be ‘put over her sex organs’.

This went, according to Klingner, far beyond outrageous flirtation. Joan even acted as though she was giving birth. In between being prayed to and Bible-read to, she had also told them, Klingner said, that in the past she had given birth to babies called Salt, Sugar, Pamela, Pamela Joy and, ‘possibly’, David.

Joan’s bizarre actions in the week before her death confirmed Klingner’s long-held suspicions about his friend’s wife. He told police he had suspected Mrs Vollmer was ‘under demon influence’ the first time they met—at a Christian gathering on New Year’s Eve, 1992. His evidence for this astonishing belief? Mrs Vollmer had not joined in the enthusiastic ‘Praise the Lord’ singing so popular with charismatic Christians. While all about her were raising their arms and belting out worshipful songs, Mrs Vollmer had had her arms crossed. Also, Klingner noticed she had a ‘really blank expression’ and her eyes were ‘rolling around their sockets’.

Still, despite being convinced he was dealing with a demon-possessed woman, Klingner was not completely unaware of how the non-charismatic Christian world might see Mrs Vollmer’s actions. ‘Some psychologists,’ he said would call it ‘schizophrenia or something like that’.

Ralph Vollmer supported Klingner’s claims of his wife’s sexual outrageousness during her last week. He told police one of the many personalities his wife displayed was one called ‘Jezebel’. Jezebel, he said, had tried to undress and seduce Klingner. He said Joan had also been very jealous, suggesting he and Leanne Reichenbach were ‘doing this and that’ with each other.

John Reichenbach told his wife’s trial that Mrs Vollmer would sometimes speak like a small child and say her name was Baby Joanie or Baby Princess Joanie. Once, while he read to her from the Bible about Jesus exorcising demons called ‘Legion’ from a man, he said Mrs Vollmer, ‘threw herself back and took on an aggressive, harsh appearance’. She had grunted and then said in a ‘deep, dark’ manly voice: ‘I am Legion’.

Mr Reichenbach said he became convinced Mrs Vollmer was demon-possessed several days before she died, when she walked out of a prayer session at about 11 pm and was found three kilometres up the road. He said he was even more certain when, while he tried to pray to her she did housework. She said her problem was her husband and told him: ‘Leave me do my housework and you keep praying’. He said that during that week his wife had discerned well over 10 demons possessing Mrs Vollmer. These included ‘mischief-making’, ‘accusing’, ‘destructive’ and ‘play-acting’ demons. By screaming out ‘22, pisspot’ when she saw Nuske for the first time—a few hours before she died—Mrs Vollmer had revealed ‘supernatural knowledge’, Mr Reichenbach said. Nuske, he pointed out, was 22 at the time and, he claimed that he (Nuske) had had an alcohol problem in the past.

In a letter to local Christians, Leanne Reichenbach told of Mrs Vollmer being restless a couple of weeks after returning from the trip to a charismatic Christian convention in Adelaide. She wrote of Joan constantly going in and out the house and neglecting her ‘house duties’ as well as being found kilometres from the house. In the letter, Reichenbach said she decided this showed that Mrs Vollmer’s demons were not coping with the ‘prayer etc.’ in the house.

Leanne Reichenbach’s other evidence of demon possession included that Mrs Vollmer:

• acted like a child—laughing and giggling;

• refused to sit unless asked to do so in Jesus’ name;

• pushed things onto the floor and upturned pot plants;

• talked about colours, numbers and letters;

• pretended to play the piano and sing;

• changed her personality quite often;

• was restless and did not tire except for falling asleep while the gospels were being read to her—‘The thing in her could not cope with the Word being read and so put Joan to sleep,’ Reichenbach commented;

• made hand and feet signals, ‘and also different body movements and incantations’;

• expanded her stomach so she looked four to five months pregnant;

• spoke of expressing milk, got ready to go to hospital, rang the hospital and even went through the actions of giving birth;

• refused to look at anyone, and tried to shut her eyes—something the ‘exorcists’ refused to let her do, forcing them open so she could see Christ represented in those around her.

Reichenbach told her fellow Christians that moments before Joan Vollmer died it became apparent to her that two demons had lodged themselves in Joan Vollmer’s throat. She did not say how she knew this. Reichenbach also did not explain how she knew that another demon was ‘holding this one back’ or that it was ‘also attached to the womb’ or that these two demons were a ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’. She just said in her letter that ‘through discernment from the Lord and confirmation, it was believed’ the two demons were ‘holding hands’ while lodged in Joan Vollmer’s throat. Reichenbach wrote that just before she died, Joan Vollmer breathed heavily, frothed at the mouth and ‘growled’.

But it wasn’t just how Mrs Vollmer acted in the hours and days before she died that convinced Leanne Reichenbach a demon or demons were to blame. She wrote that Joan told her she had been ‘dedicated to the devil’ as a child.

Reichenbach told the Herald Sun: ‘They put demons into her…and when we pushed them out there was nothing left. Her soul died 46 years ago’.

Joan Vollmer’s past—at least, according to what her husband told police—was bizarre, ghoulish, nightmarish and desperately sad. For police it must have seemed like a B-grade horror movie. In front of them they had a quietly-spoken pig farmer with a shy smile and brilliantined hair. But he was also a man who told them with the straightest of faces that he became convinced his wife was demon-possessed two years earlier when he looked at her eyes.

Vollmer: They were almost glowing, almost glowing like coals. I only saw it for a moment…I became really frightened.

This was a seemingly salt-of-the-earth sort of chap, a slow-talking character who could have stepped off the set of the Vicar of Dibley. But this was no harmless fool, this man freely admitted to helping hold down his wife while she died and what he told them about her past, Edgar Allan Poe would have been proud to dream up. According to her husband, this pig farmer’s wife had been baptised in the name of Satan as a child. That was when, Ralph Vollmer said, the ‘real Joan’ died. The police heard that Joan Vollmer had been selected for a specific purpose in the satanic spiritual realm, a purpose that she did not reveal before dying. Vollmer said his wife had told him her father was born in India and that he had been involved in the occult and demon-possessed. Her mother, he said, had given birth to a couple of babies but that these had been sacrificed to Satan at birth. Arguably, Mr Vollmer’s most horrifying and tragic claim about his wife was that she had been given a baby girl, whom she had been told she had delivered by Caesarean birth. Vollmer said his wife had been given hormones so she could breast-feed the baby but that a few years later she had handed over the young girl to some men so they could do ‘occultic things’ with her. (Joan Vollmer’s sisters angrily rejected all this as absolute nonsense. Erene Vivian and Dorothy Smith said Joan and her seven siblings had had a normal, happy, childhood.)

Nuske told police when he first arrived at the Vollmers’ farm he could ‘sense the evil and…was getting the shivers’. He said soon afterward God told him ‘in a silent voice’ to run around the farmhouse seven times with a piece of Gladwrap to form a shield to keep the demons out.

Leanne Reichenbach spoke to the Herald Sun a couple of days after Joan Vollmer died.

Reichenbach: Before he [Nuske] entered the house, he ran round it seven times with a piece of Gladwrap. He also went over the roof because the Bible says God will make a hedge and it was a shield to protect the house from the evil one on the night and day the session was going on.

Nuske said he had travelled the four or so hours to the Vollmers’ from his Warrandyte home after his mother, Kathleen Nuske—one of Leanne Reichenbach’s ‘true Christian’ friends—asked him to help with an exorcism. He said that after running around the farmhouse with the Gladwrap he ordered the destruction of Mrs Vollmer’s rockery and garden beds as well as her greenhouse. Nuske told police that after being told Mrs Vollmer spent a lot of time in her garden, he had decided that was where she had been worshipping Satan.

While Mrs Vollmer was forced to watch her lovingly nurtured rockeries and her diamond-shaped flower beds dug up, her greenhouse destroyed, and her trinkets and ceramic cats smashed, she screamed out in anger, astonishment, confusion and frustration. Rather than stopping the ‘exorcists’, or even making them pause to reconsider their actions, however, Mrs Vollmer’s strong protests just bolstered their belief she was demon-possessed.

The trial

The legal battle over Joan Vollmer’s strange death was waged over 45 days from 27 September 1994, in a nondescript face-brick court building in the conservative farming town of Horsham, 300 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. Day after day, Ralph Vollmer—mostly in a light-blue jacket and dark blue trousers—gripping his worn, leather-bound Bible with its multitude of Post-it notes and liberal yellow highlightings, would quietly enter the dock. Sometimes he would even nod polite recognition to us journalists who were there with him day in day out, even though our coverage of the sensational trial could not have been making his life any easier. Wielding their Bibles next to him were Leanne Reichenbach, mostly in floral Keeping Up Appearances, meet-the-vicar dresses; the balding, moustachioed, outdoorsy ‘blokey’ Klingner; and Nuske in his mum-knitted pullovers.

This was a take-no-prisoners clash between charismatic Christianity’s medieval universe of demons and angels and the modern ‘a little religion is all right in its place’ attitude. It was a trial where the answer, ‘Because the Lord told me to’ became commonplace; where there was po-faced talk of demons dancing on tongues; where Bible texts and a 16th century Catholic Church treatise, ‘Instructions to the Exorcist’, were tendered as evidence.

And then there was 78-year-old Leah Clugston. Just as everyone thought things couldn’t get any stranger, just as a modern, mostly secular legal system was reeling from talk of dancing, hand-holding demons and Gladwrap-wielding ‘exorcists’, white-haired Mrs Clugston shuffled unsteadily into the witness box. Things started normally with Mrs Clugston quietly giving her name and some personal details. She told the court that in the week before Mrs Vollmer died, Reichenbach regularly phoned her to confirm that the exorcism was ‘the Lord’s work’.

Mrs Clugston said she had anointed Nuske a few days before Mrs Vollmer died, to try to help him ‘deal with those demons’. She said Nuske had told her that demons had once knocked him down at home. He also told her that after he teased some demons the Lord told him he ‘had a big mouth’.

Mrs Clugston told the court that on Saturday 30 January, Reichenbach phoned and told her Joan had been ‘slayed in the spirit’. Mrs Clugston explained she took this to mean Mrs Vollmer was ‘nearly unconscious’. Mrs Clugston said she told Reichenbach she believed Mrs Vollmer would be resurrected.

The next day—after getting a message from the Lord to go to ‘lay hands on Joan’—she went to the farm, put a hand on the lifeless Mrs Vollmer and commanded her three times to ‘rise and walk’. Mrs Clugston told the trial that as well as noticing that Mrs Vollmer was cold she saw bruises on her cheek. Two days later (Monday, 1 February 1993), when she realised ‘the Lord wasn’t going to raise her from the dead’, she called a church minister.

This evidence from Mrs Clugston was extraordinary enough, was difficult enough for a modern jury to deal with, but it was nothing compared to what then happened. Asked if the Lord had given her some sort of sign confirming Mrs Vollmer’s exorcism, Mrs Clugston’s elderly, fragile, slightly bowed body suddenly jerked erect and she boomed out: ‘The Lord is doing it now. I don’t normally talk like this’. Asked what was happening, Mrs Clugston’s whole body shuddered as she said, ‘He’s pouring power through me’. She slumped forward in the witness box, paused and then continued in her normal voice that she could not remember what the Lord had told her during the week of Mrs Vollmer’s exorcism.

A short time later, Mrs Clugston once again jerked upright, shuddered and boomed out: ‘They were doing exactly what the Lord wanted them to do. They were in perfect with the Lord’s command [sic]’.

Nuske’s mother, Kathleen Nuske, told the jury she had asked her son to join the exorcism of Mrs Vollmer because she believed he had a ‘discernment of evil’. She said she had asked her son after her friend Leanne Reichenbach phoned to say they had reached a ‘stalemate’ in their battle to deliver Mrs Vollmer of demons. Mrs Nuske said she thought Matthew could communicate with ‘the Lord’ and might have ‘some answers’. Asked about Mrs Vollmer’s calling out of ‘22, pisspot’ upon seeing Nuske, Mrs Nuske said that when her son was younger she believed he drank too much alcohol. Under cross-examination, however, she acknowledged that as a ‘pretty square’ Christian she did not tolerate drinking alcohol and that Matthew probably had not drunk any more than any of his peers. She told the court her son was no longer a golfcourse greenkeeper, as he was at the time of Mrs Vollmer’s death, and was now studying to be a missionary at a religious college in Perth.

One of Mrs Vollmer’s Salvation Army friends, Roma Cariss said that nine days before Joan died, her hands had felt icy cold—despite the hot weather. She said she watched her friend tear buds off newly arranged flowers, constantly set and unset the dining table and continually go to the window, saying somebody was out there.

To try to persuade the jury that an honest and reasonable man could believe in demon possession, the defence called one of Melbourne’s busiest exorcists—Father John Shanley.

In a lilting Irish brogue, the priest told the trial he had performed up to ten exorcisms a week since he first exorcised three demon-possessed people at a Gippsland Christian rally in 1978. Fr Shanley said that in his 16-year exorcism career he had been ‘pitched’ against walls and almost throttled with his own priestly stole. He told of exorcising a demon from a 15-year-old girl while she lay on her back ‘frozen cold’. He said he had knelt down and said prayers over her while others shook her. After a while he felt ‘something like an electric shock shoot up my arm’. Shortly afterward the girl revived. The priest, from the sleepy seaside resort town of Lakes Entrance, said one of the worst instances of demon possession he had seen was of a priest whose ‘belly used to blow up so big the inside of his navel would turn inside-out’. Fr Shanley said the priest’s head also ‘used to blow up’, he would use ‘filthy language’ and would threaten to murder Fr Shanley. The priest said the crucifix he used to use in his exorcisms had been broken so many times by demon-possessed people he had been forced to tie it together with rubber bands. Fr Shanley said he had eventually given up using that crucifix and turned to a bigger, unbreakable one. He said, however, he feared this heavier crucifix might be thrown through a window.

Fr Shanley produced a document he said Pope Paul V had published in 1757—’Ritual of Exorcism’. He said parts of these ‘Instructions to the Exorcist’ came from third and fourth century documents. A 1990 English translation of the Latin document advised exorcists: ‘The possessed should be tied down if there is any danger of violence’.

The exorcist instructions put before the jury included:

1. The priest, who is about to exorcise those tormented by Evil Spirit, must have the necessary piety, prudence and personal integrity…not relying on his own strength but on the power of God.

2. To perform his tasks correctly, he should be acquainted with approved authors on the subject of exorcism.

3. Above all, he must not easily believe that someone is possessed by Evil Spirit. He must be thoroughly acquainted with signs that can distinguish the possessed person from those who suffer from a physical illness. The signs of possession are when the subject speaks unknown languages with many words; when he clearly knows about things that are distant or hidden; when he shows a physical strength far above his age or normal condition.

4. The Exorcist should interrogate the subject, asking him what he feels in his spirit or in his body. In this way he will find out what words disturb Evil Spirit more than others.

5. Let the Exorcist note for himself the tricks or deceits that evil spirits use in order to lead him astray…

6. Sometimes Evil Spirit betrays its presence and then hides. It appears to have left the possessed but the Exorcist should not desist until he sees the signs of liberation.

7. Sometimes, also, Evil Spirit throws up every possible obstacle in order to stop the possessed from submitting to exorcism or it tries to persuade him that his affliction is quite natural…

8. Some Evil Spirits reveal an occult spell but the Exorcist must be aware of…witches or warlocks or sorcerers or any others beyond church ministers.

9. Sometimes Evil Spirit leaves the possessed in peace, so it seems to have gone away. Innumerable are the stratagems and deceits.

10. Our Lord said there is a species of Evil Spirit that cannot be expelled except by prayer and fasting.

11. The possessed can be exorcised in a church. If the subject is ill, he can be exorcised in a private house.

12. The possessed must be encouraged to pray to God, to fast and to get spiritual strength from the Sacraments.

13. The possessed should hold the Crucifix in his hands or have it out in front of him.

14. The Exorcist must not make speeches or put questions out of curiosity. He should command the unclean spirit to keep silent and to respond only to what is asked. And he must give no credence to Evil Spirit if it claims to be the soul of some saint or of a dead person or to be the Good Angel.

15. Questions he must ask are: the number and name of the possessing spirits, when they entered the possessed, why they entered him. He should…admonish those who are present…not to take any notice of what Evil Spirit says.

16. The Exorcist should perform and read the exorcism with command, authority, great faith, humility and fervour. And when he sees the spirit being tortured mightily, he should multiply all these efforts. Whenever he sees some part of the possessed person’s body moving or pierced or some swelling appearing, let him make the Sign of the Cross and sprinkle Holy Water.

17. Let him pay attention to the words and expressions that disturb Evil Spirit most and repeat them, always increasing the punishment. Let him persevere until he is finally victorious.

18. Let the Exorcist beware not to offer any medicine to the possessed…all this he should leave to the medical doctors.

19. If he is exorcising a woman, he should have with him some reputable women who will hold the possessed when she is tormented and shaken by Evil Spirit. The Exorcist should be mindful of scandal.

20. During exorcism, the Exorcist should use words of the Bible. He should command Evil Spirit to state whether it is kept within the possessed because of some magical spell or sorcerer’s symbol or some occult documents.

21. If the possessed person is freed from Evil Spirit, he must be diligent in avoiding sinful actions and thoughts. If not, he could give Evil Spirit occasion for returning and possessing him.

Vollmer’s barrister, Charles Francis, QC, told the jury his client was a humble man of little education who had an ‘honest and reasonable belief’ that his wife was possessed by demons when he saw ‘inexplicable physical changes’ in her in the week before she died. Mr Francis said exorcism was an ancient and widely accepted Christian practice. He told the jurors to read Luke, Chapter 8, where Jesus exorcises demons from a man into a herd of wild pigs, which then jumped off a cliff and drowned. He said there was a ‘very real possibility’ Mrs Vollmer had been demoniacally possessed. Mr Francis said his client was a charismatic Christian (Christians who wanted direct interaction with the Holy Spirit).

Apart from trying to get the jury to believe in demon possession—or at least that the accused genuinely believed Mrs Vollmer was possessed by demons and that it was a belief reasonable people could hold—the defence maintained the jury could not be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that what the accused did to Mrs Vollmer had caused her death. It said her death could have been a ‘horrendous fluke’. It told the jury the prosecution could not rule out the possibility that Mrs Vollmer was one of 0.1 per cent of the Australian population with a super sensitive carotid sinus in her neck.

The jury learnt that there were two reported cases in Australia of people dying when somebody innocently and lightly stroked their necks. The stroking stimulated the carotid sinus, causing it to send the wrong blood flow message to the brain and triggering a cardiac arrest. The jury heard that the same thing happened to a solider when his girlfriend stroked his neck while they were on a dance floor soon after his return from World War II. He fell down dead. The other instance was of a baby dying after its mother stroked its neck.

The defence told the jury that instead of being killed by its clients, Joan Vollmer could have died in any of these ways:

1. Stimulation of the carotid sinus (the wall of the internal carotid artery), which caused bradycardia (slowing of the heart beat) leading to cardiac arrest.

This resulted from:

(a) massaging of the neck; or

(b) pressure applied to the neck when attempting to open Joan Vollmer’s mouth; or

2. Asphyxia by compression on the neck leading to cardiac arrest.

3. Pressure on the palate by touching it causing bradycardia leading to cardiac arrest.

4. An asthmatic attack causing asphyxiation leading to cardiac arrest.

5. Strenuous physical activity by the deceased prior to death causing:

(a) lactic acidosis; and/or

(b) other chemical imbalance, leading to cardiac arrest.

6. Bradycardia already present when resuscitation was attempted, which then caused cardiac arrest.

7. Acute viral myocarditis leading to cardiac arrest.

8. Heatstroke (possibly associated with partial dehydration) causing cardiac arrest.

9. An epileptic fit or sudden convulsion leading to cardiac arrest.

10. Cardiac arrest alone.

11. Various combinations of causes 1 to 9.

12. One or more of causes 1 to 9 exacerbated by stress resulting from hypomania and/or exacerbating factors.

For the prosecution, Joan Vollmer’s death had nothing to do with demons. She died, it said, from a cardiac arrest triggered by a three millimetre fracture of the thyroid cartilage in her larynx. That cartilage was fractured when either Leanne Reichenbach or David Klingner, or both of them, pressed dangerously hard on her neck at about 4.30 pm on Saturday, 30 January 1993. It said all the defence’s explanations for her death were extraordinarily remote possibilities.

The prosecution accepted that Reichenbach and Klingner had not intended to kill or seriously injure Mrs Vollmer—otherwise they would have been charged with murder—but it insisted they be convicted of manslaughter because both should have known they were performing a dangerous act in massaging Mrs Vollmer’s neck in the way they did, on that hot day. Vollmer and Nuske should also, the prosecution said, be found guilty of manslaughter because they were part of it all.

In his closing address, prosecutor Peter Jones said Mrs Clugston had gained some notoriety as someone who could communicate with God, but he said her supporters were just trying to bolster ‘up their own religious prestige’.

Mr Jones: If you really had that power…you’d never work again. You’d go to the racetrack and get the straight six. You’d get millions. It’s just not real.

He said that the four accused had used Joan Vollmer as a guinea pig to test their extreme religious beliefs.

Mr Jones: It’s just total and utter disregard for her. All in the name of this exorcism.

Mr Jones said the exorcism had been a case of, ‘anything goes because it’s all in the name of the Lord and we’re right’.

Mr Jones: I am not here in any way to criticise religion…but…they had no consideration for Christianity, they went right past that. They were on a frolic of their own and an unlawful frolic.

He said an exorcism did not need physical force of the kind used against Mrs Vollmer. Klingner apparently acknowledged as much to police. After putting to Klingner that demonic deliverance only involved passive prayer, not physical contact, a police officer asked: ‘Do you understand that that’s actually the case?’ Klingner replied: ‘Yeah, yep’. Asked why physical force would be needed during a demonic deliverance, Klingner replied: ‘Don’t have an answer to that one’.

The prosecutor also pointed to a letter, signed by John Reichenbach, which had been sent to local Lutheran pastor Roger Atze two weeks after Mrs Vollmer died. In it, John and Leanne Reichenbach and Klingner asked for forgiveness. The letter began:

Dear Pastor Atze,

In relation to our involvement in recent events, we would like to express our sorrow and seek your forgiveness where we have acted in the flesh outside the will of God. We recognise that we can and do make mistakes and need God’s grace and forgiveness.

They acknowledged some questions raised by the exorcism may ‘never be answered’ and that ‘as humanly possible’ they had ‘sought and acted upon’ God’s will. Under cross-examination John Reichenbach strongly denied that the letter was asking for forgiveness for Joan Vollmer’s death. He said they were, instead, seeking forgiveness and apologising ‘more for the situation that came out of it’. He said many of their friends had ‘copped it’ thanks to the ‘distorted picture portrayed in the media’. Pastor Atze told the court that Reichenbach and Klingner had been excommunicated from the Lutheran church.

Mr Jones said Mrs Vollmer had acted strangely in the days before she died not because she was demon-possessed but because she was mentally ill. Maybe, he said, she had played along with her tormentors in the desperate hope that if she told them what they wanted to hear they would leave her alone.

The court heard that a little over two years before she died, Mrs Vollmer was treated for ‘hypomania’ at Ballarat’s Lakeside Mental Hospital.

The American Psychiatric Association’s ‘bible’—Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition)— defines hypomania in the following way:

…a hypomanic episode lasts at least four days and can last for weeks or even months. During it a person has a ‘persistently elevated, expansive or irritable mood’. They can feel the need for less sleep, be more easily distracted, feel that their thoughts are racing and become more talkative. They might also have ‘excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences’. Sufferers might go on unrestrained buying sprees, take on foolish business ventures or indulge in risky sexual indiscretions.

A psychiatrist who treated Mrs Vollmer at Lakeside in 1990, Dr Michael Connellan, told the trial when he examined Mrs Vollmer ‘she had flitted from topic to topic’, was constantly getting up and walking around the room, thought police were following her and was paranoid about ambulances. He said Mrs Vollmer had also told him she had done an oil painting for her husband, but that Ralph Vollmer then told him she had actually painted his car. Under cross-examination by Mr Francis, Dr Connellan conceded that some of the things Mrs Vollmer did in the days before she died—such as speaking in different voices—were different to the hypomanic symptoms he had seen in 1990. He agreed that during his examination of her, Mrs Vollmer had not ‘taken on the appearance of being pregnant for a moment’ as the accused claimed she did in the days before she died.

Psychiatrist Dr Anthony Hardman told the trial that Mrs Vollmer left Lakeside in October 1990, largely cured of her hypomania. He said Joan and Ralph Vollmer were told the drugs she was to take would not have an immediately obvious effect, but she should continue taking them for at least a year or risk a relapse in about two years. Despite this warning, two days later Vollmer decided his wife’s medication was not working and stopped giving it to Joan. He turned to prayer instead. When Joan appeared to get back to normal soon after this, Vollmer assumed it was his prayers that had done the trick.

According to the prosecution, Joan Vollmer’s behaviour in the days before she died was simply a relapse of her hypomania. It was the unfortunate fulfilling of the psychiatrist’s prediction, his medical prophesy. It was caused, not by demons, but by not taking her medicine.

Before the end of the trial, Judge Graeme Crossley ruled there was not enough evidence for a jury to properly convict Nuske of manslaughter, so he was acquitted of that charge. He reminded the jury before they began deliberating that it was ‘not unlawful to engage in an exorcism’ and that to find the accused guilty they would have to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they had gone beyond merely carrying out an exorcism.

Just a couple of hours later, the jury announced its verdicts to a packed courtroom. At first it looked like good news for the accused when Vollmer was found not guilty of manslaughter, but then he was declared guilty of recklessly injuring his wife. He showed no emotion. The declaration that Klingner was guilty of manslaughter, drew gasps of shock and then sobs from his heavily pregnant wife, Belinda. Klingner was grim-faced. Shortly afterward Belinda collapsed into her newly convicted husband’s arms. When Leanne Reichenbach was declared guilty of manslaughter, she blanched, appeared to be momentarily unsteady on her feet and her eyes brimmed with tears. When Nuske was found guilty of false imprisonment (as were the others), he appeared stunned. His dreams of being a missionary had been seemingly dealt a devastating blow.

In the pre-sentence plea-hearing, Judge Crossley heard Klingner’s QC say that his client had had to sell his tractor to pay his legal costs and had $7.60 in the bank. He also heard that Reichenbach’s parents had disinherited her and told her not to contact them any more. Her sister had sent back unopened, the Christmas cards she had sent.

Just before Judge Crossley sentenced the four, on 1 December 1994, a statement from two of Mrs Vollmer’s sisters—Erene Vivian and Dorothy Smith—was read out to journalists outside the court. It said:

We would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.

Our childhood was that of a normal Australian family growing up in wartime and post-war years. There were eight children and whilst we were not wealthy, we had riches in other ways.

We were happy children and were taught good manners and sound moral standards.

Any reference to such things as demonic possession in Joan’s childhood are absolute nonsense. People who grew up with us would know this.

To say that it has been a stressful time for members of our family, to have to listen to all the lies about Joan without being able to reply, is an understatement.

Now, we just want to recover our privacy and get over this ordeal.

Finally, it was Judge Crossley’s turn to give his opinion, his judgement. He told those in the dock that their ‘bizarre and quite extraordinary’ bid to exorcise demons from Mrs Vollmer had put her through a ‘cruel, painful and quite horrifying’ ordeal. He said Mrs Vollmer had been subjected to ‘considerable pain and very great indignity’. ‘All this occurred while your captive violently resisted and fought for her freedom,’ the judge said.

He did, however, accept these killer exorcists did what they did: ‘honestly believing that it was for her [Joan’s] own good and she was truly possessed’. The judge said the four’s belief that Mrs Vollmer was demonically possessed explained what they had done but did not excuse it.

Judge Crossley: It may well be that the religious zeal of your companions…as the exorcism proceeded fuelled the frenzy of your own religious zeal and exultations to the point that the process ultimately culminated in the death of Joan Vollmer.

He told the two convicted killers: ‘The treatment of Joan Vollmer at the hands of you, Reichenbach, and you, Klingner, was rough, unwarranted and absolutely unjustified.’

The judge said the jury’s verdicts showed that modern Australia expected those with religious convictions to show restraint. ‘The civil law does not allow, in this country, excesses in the name of religion,’ he said.

He sentenced Vollmer to 12 months’ jail but suspended all of it for two years. Nuske, too, walked free with his three-month jail term also being wholly suspended. Klingner was ordered to serve an immediate three months’ jail with 15 months of his 18-month term suspended for two years. The sentence, merciful as it was, appeared to come as a complete shock for Klingner and his wife. Once again Belinda wept but this time inconsolably. Long after guards led her husband away, her sobs could be heard. For her ‘enthusiastic’ key part in the fatal ‘exorcism’ Leanne Reichenbach got the sternest sentence. She had to serve four months with 20 months of her two-year sentence suspended for two years.

Nearly a year later, Victoria’s Court of Appeal rejected appeals by Vollmer, Reichenbach and Klingner. The three judges rejected the applicants’ claim that the jury had wrongly found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they should have realised what they were doing to Mrs Vollmer, in the hours before her death, was dangerous.

Court of Appeal: The behaviour of the applicants after the death—sitting around the kitchen table praying for resurrection while the decomposing body of the deceased gave off an offensive stench—serve to demonstrate the degree of irrationality of the applicants…

The demons, then, had to be expressed by firm massage from the abdomen up, the mouth had to be prised open to allow their exit, the deceased’s eyes to be forced open so that she could see the Cross.

These considerations might be regarded as tending to show that the applicants did not realise that their actions would probably cause serious injury—that they were so blinded by their zeal that reality and, with it, realisation was obliterated.

The question then arises whether, having regard to their own admissions concerning the extent of the force applied to the deceased and to the harm which they well knew might have been caused to her had she been ‘normal’ and not possessed by demons, the applicants can be heard to say that they did not realise that they would probably cause her serious injury but only the demons within her.

The questions so raised are unusual and difficult. However, in the end we are not persuaded that it was not open to the jury to find the element proved.

There before the applicants’ eyes was the deceased, struggling, but tightly held on various parts of the body, being subjected to what can fairly be described as a throttling process, when more than slight force was applied (and on the evidence admissible against Klingner, hissing and groaning) in what turned out to be the last gasps of life.

We think the jury was entitled to be satisfied that the applicants must then have had the relevant knowledge, but were so driven by their zeal that they regarded the end as justifying the means.

The judges ruled it had been open to the jury to find that ‘the force applied to the deceased’s neck, which resulted in her death, was unlawful’. The judges also rejected claims by Reichenbach and Klingner that their sentences had been too harsh.

Court of Appeal: In our opinion, the judge was entitled to impose custodial sentences for what was properly described as a ‘very serious crime’.

Barristers for Reichenbach and Klingner argued that Judge Crossley should not have put so much emphasis on the need to deter others from committing similar crimes when deciding on the sentences to impose. They argued that there had been no evidence that other similar exorcisms were being performed in Australia. The judges disagreed.

Court of Appeal: People must be discouraged from believing that in the name of religion, they can behave in the outrageous manner of the applicants.

They threw out the appeals and ordered Reichenbach and Klingner to be taken into custody to finish their jail terms.

Outside the court, one of Mrs Vollmer’s sisters—Erene Vivian—welcomed the decision.

Ms Vivian: I can’t put into words my feelings and the feelings of my family, but people must be discouraged from this sort of thing.

People must realise that it was a horrible crime.

Flushing Out Demons

As with Joan Vollmer, there was no mystery about who killed three-year-old Samani Amete. It was his mother.

Matalena Amete killed her son by standing on his chest and pouring water down his throat—lots and lots of water. Six times Mrs Amete emptied a two-litre cordial bottle full of water into the boy’s mouth. The 34-year-old mother of five drowned her toddler son on the garage floor of her cousin Penetito Mika’s modest Sydney home on 17 June 1999.

While Samani screamed and struggled, spluttered and gagged, his mother kept on pouring the water. His Uncle Mika, aged 37, kept on forcing his mouth open and his 35-year-old aunt, Siniue Sagato, kept on pinning one of his hands down. Even one of the boy’s sisters helped hold down her baby brother.

Finally, a yellow substance seeped out the boy’s mouth and nose and he died. His mother then put her heel on his face. She hit his head and throat and rolled him onto his stomach. She stood on his back. She declared: ‘Just leave him there for a little while because his soul is with Jesus’.

A little later she picked up her baby boy and hugged him. She drove him to the family home and then back again. To try to warm up her dead son, she immersed him in a scalding hot bath. She even poured boiling hot water from a kettle into his eyes and mouth. Finally, one of the boy’s sisters called an ambulance.

Samani had died—aged three years, seven months—while his dad was in New Zealand at the funeral of his father, Samani’s grandpa.

As with the Vollmer case, what seemed a clear-cut—if bizarre—case of murder, turned out to be anything but—thanks to exorcism. Once again ‘demon deliverers’ posed a conundrum for the legal system.

A few days after her son died, Matalena Amete signalled that this was going to be no ordinary homicide trial. She told a magistrate, ‘I believe in my heart Jesus Christ is my lawyer’, before apparently sinking into a trance.

Unlike the Vollmer case, the exorcism defence in this case came with an extra twist—insanity.

The day before Samani died, Amete’s 12-year-old daughter, Melissa, saw her mother convulsing and apparently speaking in tongues during a service of their local Samoan Assembly of God church at a girl guides’ hall. After asking for special prayers and a blessing, Amete had fallen to the floor salivating and vomiting and saying words nobody understood. She was taken to a faith healer who smeared her face and body with a green liquid made from chopped up privet leaves before returning her to her five children the next morning. The healer’s leafy concoction was supposed to drive away the devil.

A few hours after Mrs Amete was reunited with her children—Deborah, 14, Melissa, 12, Simon, 7, Samani, 3, and Josephine, 2—things took a bizarre and, ultimately, fatal turn. Mumbling something about her children being covered in the blood of Jesus, Mrs Amete ordered them to get down on the floor and pray. The children lay on the floor in the shape of crosses. Mrs Amete rubbed Deborah’s face in the carpet. She pinned each of her children down, forcing them to drink water from a bottle, while repeatedly saying things such as: ‘This is the blood of Jesus’ and ‘Get that devil out of her’. Deborah managed to struggle away from her mother’s stranglehold just as she felt herself blacking out. She saw her mother fall to the floor salivating and talking nonsense.

At first Mika and Sagato opposed their relative’s exorcism plans, even threatening to call police, but they changed their minds and decided to help Matalena in her quest to rid her children of demons. Maybe, as a Supreme Court judge later suggested, it was their lifetime exposure to ‘intense religious conditioning’ that caused this tragic change of heart. The same judge, however, pointed out that exorcism was not part of the regular belief of their Samoan Assembly of God church.

The exorcising of the children was halted for a time when Sagato’s mother and a male friend arrived and told them to leave Simon alone—just as his mother was trying to pour water into the young boy’s ear. The respite did not last long. Mrs Amete re-gathered everybody in the garage a short time later. Again the visitors stopped the weird goings on, this time taking two of the younger children to the safety of their home. When they had left, Mrs Amete organised another prayer meeting…of sorts.

That was when Samani made his fatal mistake. Frustrated and baffled by his mother’s strange demands, the three-year-old yelled abuse at her in Samoan. Instead of bringing her to her senses, however, this only managed to convince Mrs Amete that her son was demon-possessed. ‘He’s the only one that’s got the devil in him,’ Mrs Amete told her ‘assistant exorcists’, Mika and Sagato. Melissa was sent to get some more water while Mrs Amete, Mika, Sagato and one of the girls pinned down the screaming Samani and his mother started her deadly exorcism.

Almost a year later—24 May 2000—New South Wales Supreme Court judge Greg James accepted Mrs Amete’s plea of ‘not guilty by reason of mental illness’ to the felonious slaying of Samani. For the same reason, she was also found not guilty of the ‘assault occasioning actual bodily harm’ of Deborah and for assaulting Melissa, Simon and Josephine. Justice James said he accepted psychiatric evidence that when Mrs Amete killed her son and injured her other children, she was suffering acute schizophrenia. The judge said Mrs Amete heard voices commanding her to do some of the bizarre things she did.

Justice James: For at least a few days, if not weeks prior to these events…[Mrs Amete] was suffering from a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind such that she did not know that what she was doing was wrong and was labouring under the delusional belief that her son was possessed of the devil.

…

She believed at the time that what she was doing was right and did what she did with intent to save her son and her family from the evil one.

The judge ordered Mrs Amete to be detained in a psychiatric hospital, and not to be released unless the Mental Health Review Tribunal was satisfied she no longer posed a serious threat to herself or anyone else. Justice James said an appalling tragedy had overtaken Mrs Amete’s family as a result of her mental illness.

In August 2000, Justice Michael Grove had to deal with Mrs Amete’s legally sane exorcism assistants—Mika and Sagato. The parents of four—including one child born since Samani’s death—pleaded guilty to Samani’s manslaughter. The judge said he accepted that they had not meant to harm Samani but that they should have realised they were helping his mother do exactly that.

Justice Grove: Each of the prisoners, at the time, had a sincere belief in the existence of demons and, although they might have had some reservations about what was being done to exorcise [Samani]…they nevertheless went along with it.

That they did so, I think was a result of a combination of lifetimes of conditioning to a variety of beliefs, their relatively unsophisticated background and their holding, over a long period of time, of beliefs that can only be described as relatively primitive.

In a pre-sentence hearing the judge was told that Mika was a ‘good-hearted man of average intelligence with strong but simplistic religious beliefs, particularly about the way that evil forces penetrate and influence human beings’. He heard that the ‘fairly insular’ nature of Mika’s church with its emphasis on spiritual phenomena and the preservation of Samoan culture ‘probably caused difficulty in enabling him to deal effectively with the stresses and tensions of a modern industrialised society’.

The judge noted that as a result of their involvement in Samani’s death, Mika and Sagato no longer had custody of three of their four children. After finding the couple ‘deficient to a considerable degree in parenting skills’, child protection authorities had taken away their older children, leaving them only the baby. The judge noted that both were remorseful for their actions, were determined to revise their religious views to ensure nothing like it happened again, and were going to parenting classes.

Justice Grove said that, after comparing the case with the Vollmer case, he had decided to sentence both Mika and Sagato to two years jail, but let them walk free by wholly suspending both terms for two years. The judge stressed, however, that if they stopped going to child protection parenting classes they would have to serve their sentences in jail and that the killing of a defenceless child was an especially serious matter.

Justice Grove: No civilised community can tolerate fanatical beliefs…[even if they are] based upon religion or, more accurately, upon misinterpretation and misapplication of religion.