Excuse 11
‘I was provoked and snapped’
Dear Jamie,
After a lot of heartache, I have decided to leave you because too many things have gone on over the years with you and I feel we would both be happier on our own. I know that you would really try to do anything to keep us together but that is not the point because it’s what is truly in your heart that matters and I know that you can’t help yourself and the real you bubbles to the surface and I don’t like that person.
I feel I need to be my own person and that I let you run my life too much and that I’m stifled. If you said I could do anything I wanted, I couldn’t because I have become conditioned over the years to always worry about what your reaction will be to the things I do and say and therefore am never fully relaxed.
I think doing the renovations brought everything to a head because I just couldn’t get enthusiastic over something that should have been fantastic to do. I still feel young and gregarious but you are so staid and conservative and people only get worse as they get older. I’m not really saying you are a bad person or the way you want to live is wrong, it just isn’t right for me.
I really don’t want to hurt you but you know that you wouldn’t really like the real me and that we would have constant fights and life would be miserable for the kids if I just stayed and did what I wanted regardless of you. You have often said you would be happier on your own with a nice sports car, apartment and not such a great financial burden as us. If you do care for me please let me go without a horrible fight for the kids’ sake. Let’s prove to them that we are better than all the other separated couples that we know. I could hate you so much for some of the things you have done and said to me over the years but I also understand that you are a good person and that you work hard and most importantly that you love our kids very much.
I know you will be mad when you realise I have left for good, but please be reasonable and hopefully see that it could be a new and exciting life for you too without the stress I seem to cause you.
The kids both love you very much and nothing will change them. I want them to share more great times with you and know that we will be decent to each other because of them.
I hope you will understand that in order to live I needed to take an advance on some of our funds so I have transferred some money out and also used the Visa to buy a few things. I feel very insecure at the moment leaving the house, beach house and all our assets in your hands and hope you won’t do anything stupid that will hurt the kids. Please, please be reasonable and amicable and I promise I won’t do the wrong thing by you.
I have asked Sam to come with me as it would be hard to be on my own at a time like this, she is VERY upset and isn’t choosing me over you. Matthew is old enough to make up his own mind. We will discuss what’s best for the kids later. I have not gone into great detail with them as to why I am leaving and certainly haven’t said anything to make them take sides and never will.
Please talk to your friends and think things through before going crazy. I will talk to you on the phone if you are reasonable and don’t carry on and on about the situation or make threats. I hope you don’t mind that I’m taking Archie. I have tried to leave the house clean and tidy and prepared a meal for this evening.
Take care,
Julie
A few weeks after writing this letter, Julie Ramage was killed. The man she had begged to be reasonable—to not go crazy—had strangled her to death. The husband she accused of stifling her—figuratively, at least—had, quite literally, done exactly that.
After bashing and strangling his wife of 23 years, James Stuart Ramage dragged her dead body out to his Jaguar and shoved it in the boot. He went back inside, got a bucket, filled it with water, put in some detergent and cleaned up. He then dumped her Mini behind some nearby shops, walked back home, grabbed some fresh clothes and a spade, and drove nearly an hour to rural Kinglake. He knew the area because that was where Julie used to ride horses. He dug a hole, dumped Julie’s body into it and covered her with ‘sticks and stuff’. He dug another hole nearby, stripped off his killing clothes and shoes, put on the clean ones he had brought along and buried the bloodied ones in the second hole. For a never-explained reason, he also threw a length of rope into that second hole. He did all this between midday and 1 pm on 21 July 2003.
On his way back from burying his wife, Ramage dropped in to the company that was making the granite tops for his kitchen. He discussed the renovation which had so underwhelmed his recently killed wife. For about 15 minutes, Ramage talked about exactly how he wanted the granite cut. As if it mattered. As if by the time the granite was delivered, he would not be in prison charged with murder. The shop assistant failed to pick up any clues that the customer he was talking to had just killed and buried his wife. Ramage then took the car through a carwash. Upon returning home, he had a bath and put on a load of washing. That evening, he went out for pizza with his 17-year-old son, Matthew, and talked about the teenager’s future.
Ramage’s 15-year-old daughter, Samantha, rang to say she couldn’t find her mother. Her father didn’t tell her why.
Ramage then met a family friend, who happened to be a high-profile barrister, at a popular local pub and told him what he had done that afternoon. The Senior Counsel (the new term for a Queen’s Counsel) called in a solicitor, and the three talked for a couple more hours before Ramage handed himself in at a local police station just before midnight. His lawyer announced his arrival, ‘This is James Ramage…James is here to turn himself in for murdering his wife’. The duty officer asked, ‘Where is she now?’ Ramage replied, ‘At Kinglake. I drove her there in the boot of my green Jag this afternoon’.
Later that day, Ramage showed police where he had buried his wife and told them what he had done and why.
Ramage: I just really regret what’s gone on. I wish I could change it. I wish I could go back and I don’t believe I am in this situation.
…
Police: What was the purpose for us to go out to Kinglake?
Ramage: To show you where I stupidly buried Julie.
Ramage said he and Julie had met in their homeland of England. She had followed him out to Australia and, in 1980—when he was 19 and she 18—they returned briefly to England for their wedding before settling in Australia. They did well in their new country.
By the time he killed his wife—when she was 42 and he was 43—they had joint assets of $2.6 million. He ran a successful bath enamelling company, and she was the financial controller of a boutique women’s fashion store. He drove a Jaguar, she the trendiest version of the Mini—a Mini-Cooper—and they shared the family Fairlane. Their home was a comfortable hedge-bordered red-brick house in leafy, well-heeled Balwyn.
A day after killing his wife, Ramage told police he thought that ‘generally’ their marriage had been ‘good going’, that he had no warning she would leave him when he went on a business trip to Korea and Japan about four weeks before he killed her.
Ramage: When Julie left, all my friends were surprised. We had, I thought, a good relationship and so on. As good a marriage as anybody has. We’ve had our ups and downs.
…
Officer: Before you went overseas, what was the relationship like? Was there any trouble in the relationship?
Ramage: Well, it was fine.
Officer: Was there any indication that she was gonna move out?
Ramage: Nah.
Officer: How were you feeling when you rang her and she told you [that she was leaving]?
Ramage: Totally devastated. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know why…I’ve spoken to her just to try and understand why. And I’ve spent the last four weeks understanding why and trying to, trying, trying to fix it.
After returning from overseas, Ramage talked to his estranged wife most days on the phone, as well as having dinners with her on Tuesdays. He went to a psychologist, took up meditation and took his wife to a couple of marriage counsellors.
Ramage: She didn’t like the fact that I was grumpy and nit-picking and that sort of thing and I wanted to understand whether there was anything I could do or whether there was anything wrong with me.
…
Officer: Did you feel like you had resolved anything within yourself?
Ramage: Yeah.
…
Julie did get a lot of things off her chest as far as, you know, what was wrong with the relationship and so on…at the end of the thing he [the counsellor] came up with a solution of, if you like, me letting Julie go as being the one way that she would come back.
Julie liked that and I was comfortable with working with that.
So I suppose we did get to a point where there was a glimmer—to me there was a glimmer—of hope. To Julie it was a possible solution. So, at least it was a bit of a step forward.
Matthew told his father’s trial of his dad’s efforts to better himself in the weeks before he killed his mum—including writing instructions to himself, such as, ‘I must relax and be more carefree’.
Matthew Ramage: I spent four weeks with Dad every night going through everything he could do to improve himself.
Samantha told the trial, ‘She [her mother] was worried he might be angry. That he would do something to try to hurt her, like kill [her] horses or steal the horse float or control the money…or maybe be violent towards myself or her’.
Samantha Ramage: Dad had a temper but I never thought he would kill Mum.
Two days before the killing, Jamie and Julie Ramage went to Geelong to watch Matthew play football for his exclusive private school, Scotch College.
Ramage: We were down at the football and we talked a lot about different things. There seemed to be less—…still a chance—but less of a chance. And she mentioned she was seeing a guy who she liked a lot and so on…which upset me but that, that’s sort of the reality of the situation.
Officer: Yeah?
Ramage: Yeah.
Officer: Was there an argument at that stage or anything like that?
Ramage: No.
Officer: What was your reaction to it?
Ramage:…I just, I just I suppose I knew all, all along. I’ve, I’ve just been trying to find out what needs to be done and how to do it.
Ramage—always the businessman— ‘what needs to be done and how are we going to do it’. He said he thought the home renovations were as important to Julie as they were to him.
Ramage: We’ve talked about it for some time—Julie coming over to have a look at the renovations. We started these renovations back in March [nearly four months earlier].
We’ve both been heavily involved in organising it—particularly her—and I suppose I found it really hard, the last three or four weeks keeping that going and keeping motivated…because we’re not together.
And trying to do everything. I had a week off in the school holidays with Matt and we did a lot of painting and I suppose what I was hoping was when she’d come and have a look and that might help things get back together.
Ramage said that at first Julie was going to look at the renovations on the Tuesday night but when he found he could get some time off work the day before, he suggested she come round for lunch that day instead. She would have a bit more of a chance to check out the changes and they could have a talk.
Ramage said he asked the plasterer to clean up and leave the house before Julie was due.
Officer: What was the reason for having him out of the house at the time?
Ramage: So Julie and I could talk…So we could talk in private…Because if he was around we wouldn’t be able to talk in private but also he would involve himself in the conversation.
Desperate to make a good impression, Ramage arrived early for the meeting with his wife. He brought rolls for their lunch, set the table and then waited. He sat there hoping the renovations would impress Julie, show her how keen he was for their marriage to work. When she arrived just after midday, however, things did not look good when she had just a cursory look at the laundry and family room renovations.
Ramage: With the renovations…it’s so important to me…that was going to look good for Julie. I talked to her about that…She was a little bit offhand on Saturday [at Matthew’s football]—but [that day] she was more harder.
…
When I talked about the renovations, I said, ‘Look you don’t know how hard it is getting to keep this going’ and so on and she sort of made that sort of, you know, ‘wank, wank’ sort of sign and, you know, ‘You didn’t have to do it’, sort of stuff. ‘You should have done those renovations years ago. You had enough money,’ and so on.
So that hurt a lot…because I put so much into doing the renovations and so did my son…and also…having a go at what I have done with the business.
…
And that’s why all this—us splitting up—has been so hard because the family is so important to me.
…
Officer: Obviously she said things that have hurt you, you said.
Ramage: Yeah…After we had that funny thing [Julie making the wanking sign], we sat down…I suppose I just pleaded with her, ‘What do I have to do? What, what can I do?’
She sort of said, ‘You don’t get it, do you? I’m over you. I should have left you ten years ago’. Those sorts of things, that sort of stuff. We changed the subject or I changed the subject, I suppose. We talked about rowing. I went rowing with my daughter yesterday.
And she mentioned…that Sam wasn’t happy…[Julie said something like], ‘I don’t know whether she [Samantha] wants to go round and stay with you as much,’ and so on.
So that, apart from Julie leaving me, she also took my daughter from me and my daughter’s really important to me.
Ramage said his daughter was so important to him that just hours after killing her mother—before the teenager knew what he had done—he asked her whether her mother was right to say she (Samantha) did not want to visit him.
Ramage: I cleared that up with Sam. I spoke to Sam about that last night—about Julie saying that about her—and Sam said that’s not the case. She’s fine with coming around and so on…One thing I want to make sure is that the kids aren’t involved. I mean, yeah, Matt’s still seeing his mum and all that sort of thing.
…
So the thing is between Julie and I, if you like, not between the kids…
And yesterday when she came round to lunch, she was saying things, that thing about my daughter not coming around…I mean that was totally…I wouldn’t say to my son, ‘You don’t go and see your mum,’…And I told Julie, he’s [Matthew] upset and we’ve got to handle it properly. Then…we talked about us…you know, with this guy.
Not long after Julie left her husband, her twin sister Jane Ashton took her to a poetry reading by English-born Australian bush poet, Laurence Webb. Ms Ashton thought her newly single sister and the poet would hit it off and her match-making instincts were to be proved right. A couple of weeks later, just days before she was killed, Julie told her sister she was in love, that Laurence was the love of her life. The day before her fatal meeting with her estranged husband, Julie and Laurence spent a romantic day horse-riding.
Ramage: And I just said…‘Sam’s not happy’ [with Laurence Webb] and then she said, ‘It’s none, none of your fucking business. I’m not with you any more’. And we talk. I said, ‘Well, how, you know, how serious is it with him?’ And she said, ‘I’ve had sleep-overs with him,’ and that really, really hurt.
…
And we talked about, you know, she talked about how much nicer he was and, you know, he rides horses and cares more for her and all that sort of stuff…She talked about going to the Cumberland or something…with him for the weekend and that upset, upset me because, I suppose…She was just being really very hurtful…
It also upset me because…she promised him [Matthew] that she wouldn’t see anybody else…
And then she said…sex with me…‘It repulses me’ and…screwed up her face…she sort of said how much better he [Laurence Webb] was…that he was caring and so on and that sex with me repulses her…
And that’s where I lost it.
Officer: Yeah? How did you lose it?
Ramage: As she stood up, I, I stood up and I hit her.
…And then I just wanted it to stop and that’s when I strangled her and, and you don’t know how much I wish I could change that.
…
Officer: At any time yesterday, did she show any affection towards you?
Ramage: No.
Officer: Did she cuddle you or kiss you or anything like that?
Ramage: No. She was, no. Just belittling me all…
Officer: There’s a bit of swelling and redness there [on Ramage’s right hand].
Ramage: Yeah.
Officer: Is that a result of punching Julie?
Ramage: Yeah.
Officer: How many times did you hit her at that stage?
Ramage: Look. I, I had lost the plot. I remember hitting her once or twice and then just strangling her. I can’t, I, it all, I just don’t, it just all becomes a…
Officer: How hard do you think you hit her?
Ramage: I think reasonably hard…
I just wanted it to stop.
…
She sort of fell to the ground and then, then I grabbed her by the neck.
Officer: Did you pick her up or did you get down on the ground with her and strangle her?
…
Ramage: I can’t remember. I just remember holding her neck.
Officer: What was she doing at that stage?
Ramage: She couldn’t speak or anything because I was holding her neck.
Officer: Was she fighting?
Ramage: She did for a bit but not for long.
…
I just can’t believe it.
Officer: When you had her round the neck…how did she fight you?
Ramage: I really can’t, I can’t remember. I can remember getting off.
Officer: Did she scratch you or punch you or try and kick out?
Ramage: I think she held her hand up. I, I can remember hitting her and then I remember holding her neck. I can’t remember anything else.
…
I just can’t. I’m sorry.
Officer: All right. When did you actually let her go?
Ramage:…I couldn’t believe what I’d done—and I wandered around and then, I dunno. It was just stupid. Then I clean up and then I gotta go and put her somewhere or something. Just stupid. And all the time, I’m thinking, ‘I might as well go. I might as well just call someone’.
Officer:…When did you actually realise she was dead?
Ramage: I dunno. I suppose I just, I just thought because she wasn’t moving, she was dead…
Officer:…Did you check for a pulse or anything?
Ramage: No, no I just…
Officer: Did you attempt any CPR or first-aid or anything like that to try and revive her?
Ramage: No.
Officer: Did you contact anyone else at that time?
Ramage: I just realised—stupid—I should have done something.
Officer: Was she bleeding or were there any injuries that you could see on her?
Ramage: She had some blood on her face.
Officer:…What caused that blood? Do you know?
Ramage: I don’t know. Probably me hitting her?
…
Officer: You removed her from the house…How did that happen?
Ramage: I took her round the back…and put her in the boot of the car.
…
Officer: Did you pick her up or [drag her]?
Ramage: Sort of half dragged her…I put her in the boot and then there was some blood on the floor. So I went back and cleared that up…It sounds stupid…
Officer: How did you clean that up?
Ramage: Just with some…rags.
Officer: Did you use water or detergents or anything like that?
Ramage: Yeah. Like I got a bucket.
…
Officer: Where are they [the bucket and rags] at the moment?
Ramage: Well. They are at the…I left them up where she is.
…
I don’t know what was going through my head with all that ‘cos I remember at the time thinking—I didn’t think, I suppose—I could have one last chat with Matt.
…
I did those things and then I, I, took her car down to Colombo’s sort of behind the shops in Balwyn Road.
Officer:…Why did you take her car down to the restaurant?
Ramage: It was just a stupid thing. I don’t know why I did all of that. I know the whole thing was just stupid ‘cos I knew that I would be…I don’t know. It was just stupid.
…
Officer: When you’ve got home what took place then?
Ramage: I grabbed a change of clothes and then, then took a spade.
…
Officer: What clothes were you wearing?
Ramage: The clothes that I was wearing at the time which had…blood on them.
…
Officer: So you’ve grabbed the spade and the clothing and what have you done?
Ramage: Just driven…I just went up to Yan Yean ’cos I know that area a bit and just drove until I came to that spot and then—I knew I was going to do something stupid.
…
Officer: Why did you go up there?
Ramage:…Julie rides up there and I know up there and just would be. No, no reason.
…
I, I just hated myself.
Officer: What did you do once you got there?
Ramage: Dug the hole and, and put Julie in it and then hated myself and then drove back and all the way there I was thinking I should just go and see someone and then I was gonna go and see Dyson [barrister Dyson Hore-Lacy] who’s a friend, a family friend…
And then I thought, ‘Well I’ll go back and see Matt’, and we went and had a quick meal and then Sam rang up worried about where Julie was and that’s when I thought I’ll go and see Dyson.
Officer: All right. We’ll just get back to…Kinglake and you’ve dug the grave. How large was it and how long did it take you?
Ramage: Not long. It’s not very big.
Officer: Was Julie wrapped in anything?
Ramage: No.
Officer: What did you place in the grave with Julie?
Ramage: I think I just put my jumper in, just her in it.
Officer:…What about your chinos and shirt? Where did you take that?
Ramage: That in, in another hole…Nearby…Just near a tree, just not far.
…
Officer: How long…were you out there in the bush for?
Ramage: Half-an-hour.
Officer: The clothing that you were wearing at that time, whereabouts is it now?
Ramage: There.
Officer: What did you change into?
Ramage: The clothes I took in the car.
Officer: And where are they now?
Ramage:…I just put them in the washing machine.
…
Officer: When you have placed her in the ground, what have you done then?
Ramage: Covered her up with sticks and stuff…Not very well.
…
And I actually went from, well, I had to go to the granite people. They wanted to know how to cut out the granite [for the Ramage kitchen]…I had a couple of questions. So I still went and did that after…
…
Officer: What did you do once you got home?
Ramage:…I basically had a bath and just put a load of washing on.
…
Officer: What occurred the rest of the night?
Ramage:…Matt came home from football practice and I said to him: ‘We’ll go out and have a meal’. So we went down to the local pizza place for a meal…and had a chat. I suppose, to me, having a chat about him and his future and stuff.
…
And we did that and then I came back…Sam had rung me that mum wasn’t around.
…
And then I rang Dyson, this friend of mine, and asked him to meet me…He suggested The Harp pub…That’s where we met and I told him…then that I wanted to turn myself in.
…
He was shocked. He’s a family friend.
Officer: What advice did he give to you?
Ramage: He got Steve [Pica—a solicitor]…I just said to Dyson I just wanted to give myself in and go through what needs to be done…He didn’t really give me advice as such.
Finally the police asked the question.
Officer: What was your reason for murdering your wife yesterday?
Ramage: I just, I, I totally lost it. The first thing I ever…Over the last four or five weeks I haven’t hit. All I’ve done is try to resolve it and I haven’t been angry…Talk to all…Julie’s girlfriends, all our friends. Julie’s even said how fantastic I’ve been and so on with all that’s gone on.
…
In my briefcase there’s some notes or letters. I’ve written her letters. I’ve sent her CDs. I’ve sent her roses. I’ve sent her all that sort of thing…All of which, trying to understand and trying to get it resolved and get us back together.
A man mystified by matters of the heart. The wife’s unhappy? Roses, love letters, lingerie and CDs will do the trick.
Ramage: It’s been absolute hell, you know, every minute of the day, just thinking about wanting to get us back together as a family.
…
Those things that she said—the, the, the expressions…I don’t know whether she was doing it to…I don’t know. It just hurt so much and then I just lost it.
That’s all I can say. I mean I, I regret it. I wish I could go back. I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish I could, I could change it.
I, I don’t understand, I mean, taking her up to Kinglake and all that. It’s just stupid.
In October 2004, a Supreme Court jury got the chance to consider Ramage’s ‘she told me the renovations were a wank and sex with me repulsed her, so I lost it’ killer excuse.
At his trial, Jane Ashton spoke for her identical twin. During cross-examination by Ramage’s barrister, Philip Dunn, QC, Ms Ashton made it clear what she thought of her sister’s killer.
Mr Dunn: You dislike James Ramage, don’t you?
Ms Ashton: Yes.
Mr Dunn: You have disliked him for many, many years?
Ms Ashton: Yes.
…
Mr Dunn: Did your sister in 2003 say she found her husband was controlling her?
Ms Ashton: Yes.
Mr Dunn: Nitpicking?
Ms Ashton: Yes.
Mr Dunn: Grumpy?
Ms Ashton: Yes.
Mr Dunn: She had no freedom?
Ms Ashton: Yes.
Mr Dunn: She felt stifled?
Ms Ashton: Yes.
Ms Ashton told the court that just days before she was killed, her sister had told her she was in love with Laurence Webb. She agreed with Mr Dunn, however, that even after Ramage had been told his wife had found another man, Ramage ‘felt that deep down’ his wife ‘still found him attractive’. Ms Ashton said her sister put off leaving her husband for several months because she did not want to disrupt her son’s final year school studies. She said Julie had also been trying to let ‘Jamie’ down gently because she didn’t want him to become violent. At first, Julie had been impressed with her husband’s reaction to her leaving him.
Ms Ashton: She said, ‘He’s taken it quite well so far’.
Ms Ashton said her brother-in-law phoned her as part of his campaign to win back his wife.
Ms Ashton: He rang me and he was very charming and nice and he said as her sister he valued my opinion and that could I give him some insight as to how he could get her back…
He said he realised that he’d been petty and nasty for most of his life and that despite material gains he’d not enjoyed life very much.
…
He said that he understood Laurence was like him—he was English, he played rugby, he was a businessman—but that he was a nicer version of him. I remained pretty vague and tried to suggest that she just, you know—she’d been married for a long while—and that she needed time and she needed space.
She said Ramage had not been happy with the marriage counsellor’s advice to let Julie go.
Ms Ashton: He rang me and said, ‘I’ve shot myself in the foot’ because it wasn’t the result he wanted.
…
I tried to play it down and reassure him…She was just spreading her wings that…she hadn’t been on her own since she was 17. She was just out there having some fun.
In the days and weeks after leaving her husband—the man who had told her what to wear and even how to have her hair cut—Jane Ashton noticed in her sister a big change.
Ms Ashton: She was happier…it was like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders and I had my sister back.
For prosecutor, Julian Leckie, SC, the reason Ms Ashton ‘lost’ her sister again—and finally—after just a few weeks of freedom, was because her selfish and self-absorbed husband would not accept her decision to leave.
Mr Leckie: He doesn’t like it when it is not going his way.
The ferocity of Ramage’s fatal attack on his wife, the prosecutor said, was shown by her injuries—two black eyes, bruising above her right eyebrow, a bruised lower lip, bleeding on the left side of her head, injured wrists, as well as her badly bruised, strangled neck.
Mr Leckie: He punched her at least twice, perhaps more. He rendered her helpless, lying on the floor and then he gets down—a man as strong as he is—and starts to choke her, literally taking her breath away…
Can there be any real question about what he intended at that moment?
The prosecutor said Ramage’s cleaning up of the blood, the burying of his wife’s body, and his attempts to create a false alibi—by calling in at the granite cutter’s shop and phoning his victim at her work—were the actions of a murderer.
Mr Leckie: All of that…we say is quite inconsistent with someone who now claims…‘I loved this woman and I wanted her back desperately and when she said those hurtful things to me I lost control and killed her’.
…
He renders her no help whatsoever. He treats her body with contempt and he tries to cover his crime.
Julie Ramage was dead and her husband had confessed to killing her, but at his murder trial—via his defence team—James Ramage put his victim firmly in the dock.
The defence dubbed Julie Ramage a liar who had given her husband false hope their marriage was salvageable. By dashing this hope in a horrible and hurtful way, she provoked her husband into losing self-control and killing her—not with murderous intent but in a tragic manslaughter—went the defence argument.
Mr Dunn: This man [pointing to Ramage in the dock] has had a catastrophic blow…We’ve all had friends who have separated, even friends who have separated after 23 years marriage and—as my grandma used to say—time does heal but this was five weeks, this was fresh.
To back up his claim that Julie Ramage had lied to her husband about just how determined she was to end the relationship, Mr Dunn said she had had a couple of secret affairs during the marriage. He did not accept that the secrecy of these affairs demonstrated her fear of her husband.
Mr Dunn: The Crown says, ‘Oh gee, she’s frightened of her husband. She’s frightened he’d catch her having an affair’. Well she shouldn’t have had the affairs in the first place, you might think.
…
James Ramage is clinging like a drowning man to that life raft that says ‘hope’ while there’s stormy seas around him…He’s in that situation because he has been lied to…as part of Mrs Ramage’s strategy.
…
A bit of time and a bit of honesty and none of us would be sitting here today and this tragedy which is going to affect a lot of people…may never have occurred.
But, no, Webb was brought into the picture, she becomes besotted with Webb, and she changed her tune.
To bolster his argument that just before she was killed, Julie had provoked her husband by deliberately being horrible and hurtful, Mr Dunn even risked the wrath of the five women on the jury.
Mr Dunn: Now, can I just stop and talk to the women on the jury. If you’d forgive me. If I’m going in the wrong direction here but this is the sort of thing that men sometimes think. If I’m wrong just throw it away. Okay?
Mrs Ramage was having her period. You will find in her handbag there were some tampons…Now it may be you might think that men tend to think that women get a bit scratchy at around that time. If I’m wrong, dismiss it okay?
…
What happens is that she demolishes the renovations. She dismisses it. She says ‘wank-wank’ about the renovations.
Amongst the horrible and hurtful things that she said to him…is that his daughter didn’t want to see him again…Can you imagine…being told your child doesn’t want to see you?
…
To be told, as this man’s wife told him that the last 10 years ‘I’m over you’…that meant all those walks, all those talks, those cuddles, those kisses, those nice moments were all a sham. This man was gutted by the conversation that took place.
…
This meeting…is the culmination of weeks of lies. This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
…
She said, ‘Sex with you repulses me’ and she screws up her face…Horrible!
…
Every issue of this man’s life is being attacked. His children, his business, his sexuality, his identity, his role as a man, his role as a husband, his role as a father. And why? Because she wants to have her relationship with Laurence Webb—who she has known for 10 days—out in the open.
And he lost it.
Do you find it hard to accept that he lost it? Of course it’s not.
…
This is a tragedy that should never have happened. What it just needed was a little commonsense, a little bit of old-fashioned honesty and a little bit of care and consideration.
Julie Ramage’s family might have thought the person who should have shown a bit of ‘care and consideration’ should have been the one who punched his wife to the ground, got on top of her and strangled the life out of her, but they didn’t get to speak to the jury.
The prosecutor, instead, came to Julie Ramage’s defence.
Mr Leckie: That letter she wrote to him. [Quoted at the start of this chapter.] Is that not a reasonable letter to him?
There is no suggestion in this case, not one iota, of this woman being spiteful, vindictive or nasty. People speak about how she was really quite a pleasant woman, a very nice woman and loyal to him.
…
She is not an abusive woman, or provocative. She did not have that sort of nature. She had good reason to fear, and did fear, this man.
Mr Dunn rejected the prosecution’s claim that Ramage’s secret burial of his wife, his cleaning up the blood, and organising the granite cutting were the actions of a murderer.
Mr Dunn: What he is doing is laying a trail that even the silliest detective could follow.
…
As he said to the police it was just stupid…it was just stupid to bury Julie.
This man has just killed his wife. What a profound, traumatic, unpleasant, horrible thing that would be. His life, whatever you might think, is going down the toilet rapidly. He is not thinking, you might think, at his most rational. Proof positive that this was a spur-of-the-moment loss of control.
According to the defence, James Ramage, ‘was that Monday morning living in hope…When confronted with that crisis he was psychologically unable to deal with it…Yes, he killed his wife but it was manslaughter’.
According to the prosecution, Ramage, ‘might have been angry and upset and not prepared to accept what was clearly the writing on the wall but it never got to the level…where he just lost it’.
Mr Leckie: What the Crown says to you in this case is that you should be satisfied that when he attacked his wife he intended to kill her or at a minimum intended to do her really serious bodily injury. He did kill her in a ferocious attack upon her.
On 28 October 2004—after deliberating for two days—the jury delivered its verdict. Julie Ramage’s mother, Patricia Garrett, broke down sobbing when the decision on the charge of murder resounded around the packed court: ‘Not Guilty’. The jury’s finding Ramage guilty of manslaughter did not console the grieving mother. As Ramage was led out—he had shown no emotion at the verdict—Mrs Garrett hissed, ‘Murdering bastard’. Outside the court, she had her say.
Mrs Garrett: I just feel there’s no justice. Any woman that’s in a relationship where she feels threatened, I tell her not to stay for the sake of the children. Get out…My daughter stayed for the sake of the children and she’s paid the ultimate price. She’s dead.
…
I’m just devastated. She would not have provoked him…my gentle daughter. She knew he was a violent man. She would never have provoked him and that law should be thrown out.
Also outside the court, Julie Ramage’s distraught twin slammed the verdict.
Ms Ashton: Whether you believed she provoked him or not—and I don’t believe that she did—they are saying that women, if they defy a man, can be killed.
The verdict provoked a furious debate about provocation. The head of the Women’s Domestic Violence Crisis Service, Rhonda Cumberland, told the Herald Sun newspaper: ‘Men will talk about this case in violent situations with women. They will tell women that they can say she provoked the violence and all will be forgiven’. Phil Cleary—a former federal politician—used the case to bolster his campaign against the provocation defence. Ever since 1989, when the killer of his 25-year-old sister—her violent partner, Peter Keogh—was found only guilty of manslaughter, Mr Cleary has been calling for the provocation defence to be ditched. In Keogh’s case the jury accepted that he had been provoked into losing control by being told to ‘fuck off’ or ‘piss off’ after he trapped his ex-lover in her car outside the kindergarten where she worked. In an opinion piece in the Herald Sun, Mr Cleary wrote that the provocation defence was barbaric.
It’s an obscenity to argue that men like Keogh and Ramage…are the victims of a woman’s provocation.
It’s not love but power and honour—for these are really ‘honour killings’ that drive the gun, the knife and the fists.
If Julie Ramage’s behaviour was of the kind that might have caused an ordinary man to lose control and strangle her, no woman is safe.
Supporters of the provocation defence, however, said it should not be left to sentencing judges to decide whether to be merciful to those who had killed under extreme stress. That, they said, was something juries—as representatives of the community—should decide.
As the maelstrom of debate prompted by the jury’s verdict swirled around, Justice Robert Osborn gave his verdict in December 2004.
Justice Osborn: I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that you caused your wife’s death with the intention either of killing her or causing her really serious injury…It is clear that after striking her a series of deliberate and heavy blows to the head you then proceeded to strangle her with your bare hands until she appeared dead. Following this you embarked immediately on a detailed and careful series of actions by way of cover-up.
The judge made an oblique attack on the defence of provocation, noting that the prosecution had not asked him to deny the jury the option of finding that Ramage had been provoked.
Justice Osborn: In my view, the Crown was correct to adopt this position as reflecting the current law whatever view I may hold as to the desirability of change to it.
…
Mr Ramage…it is likely that you were provoked to rage and anger by the confrontation with your wife…you were extremely anxious, obsessed and emotionally fraught at the disintegration of your marriage…
Conversely…your wife enjoyed a growth in personal confidence and happiness after her separation from you. She was excited by the new possibilities life appeared to hold for her…She was pleased by the apparently reasonable way you reacted to the separation.
It is likely that at the time of the final confrontation…you were unambiguously told what you feared most was true, namely that the marriage was over and that your wife had found a new lover.
Your reaction was one of immediate and overwhelming brutality by a man considerably larger and physically stronger than his victim.
…
You were, at the time of the fatal confrontation, in a state of extreme and obsessive anxiety and desperately seeking to reassert control over the relationship with your wife. It was in this context that the jury was entitled to conclude it was reasonably possible you were provoked to lose self-control.
…
Nevertheless I am satisfied:
(a) that the attack was carried out with murderous intent;
(b) that it was brutal and required a continuing assault to achieve its end and that;
(c) …the gravity of the provocation…was…far from extreme. It was rather of the character which many members of the community must confront during the course of the breakdown of a relationship.
The judge noted it was Ramage’s first offence, that he had committed it while emotionally distraught and in the heat of a confrontation, that he had admitted the killing and that his life had been destroyed.
He told Ramage, however, that he [the judge] had an ‘underlying concern as to your capacity to function in a non-violent manner within a marital relationship should you re-establish one’.
Justice Osborn: Your offence was the product of core aspects of your personality and it seems to me that these will not easily change.
The judge said he was also not convinced Ramage was sorry for killing his wife.
Justice Osborn: I have no doubt that you feel regret for your actions and the consequential disintegration of your former way of life, but I am not persuaded you have felt or expressed genuine remorse for the brutal killing of your wife and the abrupt termination of her life when she had so much to look forward to.
…
Mr Ramage…I sentence you to 11 years imprisonment for the manslaughter of Julie Ramage. I fix a non-parole period of eight years…
Remove the prisoner.
Outside the court Ramage’s lawyer read out a statement to the media.
Mr Pica: James Ramage remains devastated that by his actions he took away the life of his wife, Julie, whom he deeply loved. His devastation is compounded by the fact that he has caused great sorrow to many people especially Julie’s family and his own children.
With tears in his eyes, Laurence Webb noted that with the time Ramage had spent in jail waiting for his trial, he could be out on parole in less than seven years.
Mr Webb: He has taken from me and Julie a life that we could have had. We were planning a wonderful life.
…
If you can kill someone with murderous intent and be out in six and a half years, then we’d be far better off without provocation.
…
You shouldn’t be able to abuse someone for 20 years and then claim you lost it.
Anyone can lose it.
In January 2005, with Jane Ashton looking on, acting Victorian premier, John Thwaites, announced that the government would push for the abolition of the defence of provocation to murder by the end of the year.
Mr Thwaites: Provocation does tend to lend to a culture where the victim is blamed rather than the perpetrator.
Ms Ashton welcomed the announcement, but added, ‘It’s not going to bring my sister back’.
‘I am not guilty of murdering my wife because I am a male chauvinist pig.’ Domenico Arico never said those words, but that is the gist of what he told the jury in his trial.
His killer excuse—‘my wife provoked me into losing control by refusing to be a traditional wife, by going to university and neglecting her wifely duties’—must surely rank as the most difficult defence to argue in front of a modern, mixed-sex jury.
That the 51-year-old claimed he finally snapped—and killed his wife in a stabbing frenzy—when she bit his ring finger, would surely have made his defence team’s task only a little easier.
•••
Since immigrating to Australia in 1969, Arico thought he could have the best of both his worlds—modern Australia and traditional rural Italy. He thought he could grab the opportunities offered by his adopted country without giving up the old-fashioned attitudes of his Calabrian village childhood.
For 27 years he succeeded. Up until 1996, all seemed right with the world in the eyes of Arico. He was reaping the rewards of years of hard work, determination and diligent saving.
His decision to leave his parents and his three brothers and two sisters in the sleepy coastal village of Palmi as a 19-year-old, to seek his fortune in faraway Australia, seemed to have been a good one. The drastic move was prompted after Arico lost the equivalent of A$3000 when the construction company he worked for went bust. That was a lot of money for a poor farm boy. It was a lot of money for someone who had been forced to leave school at the age of 13 to help his family with the grape farm. Things seemed much more promising in Australia, at least according to reports from his aunt and uncle who were living in Melbourne, so Arico decided to try his luck in the big city on the other side of the world.
He didn’t take much luggage but, tragically, his baggage included the unflinching male chauvinism of Calabrian farmers.
Upon arriving in Melbourne, despite his lack of English, Arico quickly got a job working in a biscuit factory. Three weeks later, he found a job in the building industry. That’s where he stayed for the next 30 years, earning a reputation as a hard worker and working his way up to being a foreman.
Five years after arriving in Australia, Arico married Australian-born and bred Carmel. In the next few years they had two sons and Arico managed to save enough to buy some property. On that he built the house of his dreams, a house he could never have afforded back in the ‘old country’. It might have been in unfashionable Airport West, but as far as Arico was concerned this house in Lana Court was his castle. As his Aussie work colleagues might have said, he had put a lot of ‘hard yakka’ into it.
Everything seemed to be slipping into place nicely. Arico had transported a little bit of traditional Calabria to modern Australia. He was the king of his castle. He had two male heirs and a beautiful, dutiful wife. Okay, so the countryside was not quite the same and the language and attitudes outside his castle walls were different, but inside was his little Calabria. He might have been the king, but he was a benevolent king. When Carmel started to get bored playing the traditional Calabrian housewife, Arico let her start a ceramic business. He even helped out with her business venture.
But in 1996, the castle walls started to crack.
Carmel Arico, who was six years younger than her conservative husband, was bored. Her ceramic business was not going as well as she had hoped, and although she loved painting china dolls, which she sold at Queen Victoria Market and gave away to neighbours’ children, it wasn’t enough. She enrolled in a Victoria University of Technology psychology course.
Arico was later to tell his trial—in Italian—that that was when all his troubles started.
Arico: When she started school she left the family abandoned…She wasn’t doing anything at home.
He complained that when he asked her to do anything—such as the dishes or the cooking—she would reply, ‘You have got hands. You can do it’. He said that she started to yell at him, to show him no respect. If she came home late and he asked where she had been, she would reply, ‘It’s none of your business’. Emboldened by her experiences at university, by seeing how other men treated women, Carmel dared to complain to her husband that she did not appreciate him treating her like a servant. She also felt free to tell him she was not impressed with his gambling habits—hours whittling away his money at the poker-machines.
The king of the castle was under siege. He felt a loss of respect among his friends.
Then in February 1999, the castle walls were breached completely when Carmel, without warning, left him. She took a lot of furniture and set up house in trendier Williamstown.
The sudden breakdown of a marriage, the unexpected departure of a wife after 25 years, is always traumatic, but for Arico the trauma was exacerbated by his traditional Calabrian sensitivities.
Arico: When a wife leaves her husband, the husband loses any respect.
He felt that his work colleagues were ‘looking at me badly’, and felt too ashamed to show his face among members of Melbourne’s Calabrian community.
Desperate to patch up his marriage, Arico tracked down his wife. He managed to persuade her to let him stay over one night a week. In the ensuing negotiations, Carmel’s price to give the marriage another try was high indeed. She would settle for nothing less than the sale of the Lana Court house—the house that had been a castle for her husband, but a prison for her.
Finally, Arico agreed to sell his little piece of traditional Calabria. That really hurt. It also ruptured the family. When the news was broken to their two sons during a dinner at a Williamstown restaurant, one of them, 23-year-old Rocco stormed out. Arico followed his son back to his estranged wife’s Williamstown home and tried to explain why the family home had to be sold to get the family back together. It didn’t go well. Arico got a knife from the kitchen and threatened to kill himself. In the end he fell on the floor weeping.
An uneasy truce over the next few weeks ended on 9 May, when Carmel sprung her husband once again secretly playing the poker-machines. It was the last straw. When he arrived at the Williamstown home, he found most of his belongings in three green plastic bin bags. After a brief argument with his wife, Arico snuck into the house through a side window. He was collecting the rest of his belongings when the police Carmel had called, arrived. Arico calmly agreed to leave and handed over his key to the house, but he was angry. He told his son he could kill his mother for what she had done.
Sacrificing the home he had built had failed to get his wife back.
The next day Arico and his two sons went looking for a new house. When they found a likely one, Arico phoned to tell Carmel. She was not tempted. ‘Keep it for yourself,’ she told him. Still refusing to accept the marriage was finished, Arico called Carmel again suggesting they buy a house in Williamstown, only to be told, ‘Not with you any more’.
Twice that day Arico asked Rocco, ‘Do you think I ought to kill her?’ His son had replied, ‘Don’t be stupid. You are going to mess up our lives as well’.
About 7.30 pm that night—back in the already-sold Lana Court house—Arico told his sons he was going to bed. Once in his room he wrote them a note.
Dear Children—Rocco and Gaetano.
I can no longer put up with what has happened. For this reason I, your father, leave you all that I have. Love each other, both of you, as you are brothers.
I [am] your father Arico, Domenico and I ask your forgiveness.
Then he sneaked out of the house, and took a bus and a train to Williamstown. It took about an hour and a half—including stopping at a pub to drink a can of beer.
He was carrying a knife in a plastic bag with salami and a bread roll. This was, he later said, his work lunch for the next day—in case he got to stay overnight with Carmel. Still, Arico had not accepted his marriage was over.
When he got to his wife’s home, about 10 pm, Arico found that she wasn’t there. So he waited across the road. When she arrived 10 minutes later, he took the knife out of the lunch bag, put it in his back pocket, walked across the road and confronted her just inside the gate.
Arico later told the jury at his murder trial, he was arguing with his wife, gesticulating as he was wont to do, when she grabbed his gesticulating left hand and bit the tip of his ring finger. The bite sliced through the end of the nail and took off some of the skin, and later needed plastic surgery. That’s when the floodgates of all the dammed-up rage at the shame his wife had caused him, burst open. Arico said his mind just went blank. He went temporarily insane. He snapped. He told his trial he remembered Carmel putting his finger in her mouth and her scratching him.
Arico: Then I didn’t see anything more. I don’t know what happened.
Arico’s barrister, Charles Francis, QC, said this ‘savage bite’ caused his client to snap.
Mr Francis: The bite on this finger caused very severe pain. He was already deeply distressed. The bite so provoked him that he lost all control of himself.
Under cross-examination, Arico said he also didn’t remember writing the letter to his sons before leaving for his wife’s home.
Arico: This is my writing but I don’t quite understand what I wrote down.
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Boris Kayser, Arico denied that taking the knife over the street to confront his wife indicated he had planned to use it on her. He replied that he had only taken it out of the lunch bag and across the street, because there could be bad people around that area at that time of night. He also acknowledged that he had remembered some snippets of his attack—like the knife breaking while he was trying to cut Carmel’s head off.
He didn’t remember slashing her 42 times and stabbing her three times. He didn’t remember inflicting deep 11-centimetre-long wounds on either side of her neck—the fatal wounds, the cuts that broke the knife. He didn’t remember that once he took out the knife so savagely that a piece of his wife’s bowel was ripped out and found some metres away, over the garden fence in the gutter. He didn’t remember slicing her back with 16 horizontal cuts. He didn’t remember lifting the waistline of his victim’s pants and slashing her buttocks. (Remarkably, and oddly, despite all the cuts and stabs, Carmel Arico’s clothes were not cut at all.) Arico said he also didn’t remember turning on those who came to help. He didn’t remember pointing the bloodied knife at them and saying, ‘Get back or else I will have a go at you’. He didn’t remember them pleading with him to stop and calm down. He didn’t remember his wife calling out to the horrified audience, ‘Help, help. I’m dying. Help, help’.
It was only when he was walking away and noticed that he was covered in blood that Arico said he realised what he had done. When he got to nearby Newport railway station, he phoned Rocco and told him, ‘Rock, I have killed your mother’, and said that he was sorry. He told Rocco, if his mother hadn’t bitten his finger ‘she wouldn’t be dead’. Arico also told his son he was upset the knife broke during the attack because he had wanted to use it on himself. He told him of the note he had written him and his brother, and asked him for the number of the local police because he wanted to hand himself in.
Then Arico called the triple 0 emergency number and said in an unemotional, matter-of-fact way that he had killed his wife.
A year later, at his trial, Arico broke down in tears in the witness box. While most of his evidence was in Italian, once he turned to the jurors and tearfully talked to them in English.
Arico: I still love my wife. I got her in my heart. I never forget what’s happened. Never.
He said that Carmel’s death was for him the ‘end of the world’.
It took the jury four hours to reject Arico’s claim that he had been provoked into snapping out of control, to reject his ‘shamed chauvinist pig’ excuse, and to find him guilty of murder. When the verdict was announced, the murdered woman’s younger brother, Vince Furina, punched the air in jubilation before hugging their weeping elderly father.
Outside the court, Mr Furina wiped away tears as he remembered his big sister.
Mr Furina: She was a gentle soul…She loved little kids and she was forever giving away little porcelain dolls she made to little kids. It was just her nature.
He said that the four-hour wait for the verdict had been the longest four hours in his life.
Mr Furina: We were absolutely ecstatic [when the verdict was announced]…Finally some justice has been done.
…He’s [Arico] an absolute chauvinist…He couldn’t cope with the fact that if he asked for a coffee not everybody jumped up for him.
Nearly a month later, Justice John Coldrey got to give his verdict. He said he believed the jury would have rejected Arico’s claim that his non-violent wife had triggered the fatal attack on her by biting his finger.
Justice Coldrey: Rather, they formed the view that your finger was bitten and the right side of your face was scratched by a woman desperately trying to defend herself from your knife-wielding attack. Whilst her defensive actions may have further increased your anger and your resolve to kill her, they did not cause you to lose your self-control.
The judge also rejected Arico’s claim that he had been carrying his next day’s work lunch to his estranged wife’s home. He said it was more likely he had carried the food in the bag to make it seem as though the carrying of the knife was innocent.
Justice Coldrey: The attack you made upon Carmel Arico was truly ferocious as you gave vent to your feelings of frustration and anger.
The element of premeditation in this offence is one aggravating feature. Having arrived at your decision to kill your wife, and having left a note for your sons, you travelled a considerable distance across Melbourne and waited for her arrival at the house. Further the attack was both extremely violent and prolonged. It continued despite your wife’s pleas for help and the attempted interventions of neighbours.
Justice Coldrey said that in her university studies, Carmel Arico had found ‘a new dimension to her life’.
Justice Coldrey: She was exposed to a level of freedom and independence she had never before experienced and she desired more of it. You found it difficult to cope with the destruction of order and certainty of two decades of married life.
…
I accept that you still loved her and wished to preserve the family unit. No doubt you were also affected by what you described to the jury as the Calabrian tradition that if a wife left her husband, the husband lost respect and experienced shame within the Calabrian community.
The judge said that he had taken into account evidence from prison priest Father Grant O’Neill that Arico regularly attended the prison’s Catholic Church and had come to understand the consequences of his actions.
Justice Coldrey: Father O’Neill perhaps provides some insight into your situation. He speaks of the problems that occur where wives broaden their experiences and education and husbands, who traditionally expect to make all the decisions and have their wives remain subservient, feel greatly threatened.
In my view, implicit in what occurred in this case is your inability to cope with your wife’s educational attainments and growing desire for independence.
He sentenced Arico to a maximum 18 years jail and set a minimum term of 14 years.
Justice Coldrey: Carmel Arico, like any other woman in Australian society, had every right to terminate her marital relationship, and to do so without suffering fatal consequences.
Covered in his wife’s blood, 83-year-old Albert Hilder Goodwin phoned an emergency operator and said, ‘I’ve done away with me wife’.
Victoria’s and possibly Australia’s oldest killer (at the time of going to press) was a normally placid, retired insurance assessor. For six years—after retiring at the age of 65—Goodwin had worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross, driving terminally ill patients to and from hospitals. Compassionate and calm, he was popular with these frail, pain-racked people. He loved the job, and it took the fracturing of his hip in an accident to stop him helping out.
This quiet, fastidious man told police he plunged a kitchen knife five times into 82-year-old Anne ‘Nancy’ Goodwin because he could no longer take her insults.
Albert Goodwin: I just snapped and I stabbed her. I’m sorry.
I just snapped. I couldn’t stand her any more.
He had killed his wife of 59 years after enduring years of put-downs and nagging.
Albert and Nancy Goodwin’s often turbulent marriage hit rockier waters in its last decade. The biggest snag was Nancy’s deteriorating health. For a proudly independent woman, having to rely more and more on her husband was tough. Painful rheumatoid arthritis made it difficult for her to use her hands. Deteriorating sight meant she needed her husband to drive her around. Osteoarthritis of the spine, the removal of a cancerous kidney in 1990, chemotherapy for bladder cancer, and a weight problem, all made life uncomfortable for Nancy Goodwin. Angry at her increasing dependence, she took out her frustration on the person she depended on most—Albert.
A family friend told the Supreme Court, ‘It would be fair to say that Nancy placed a lot of demands upon Albert. Albert did most of the cooking and housework, however, Nancy would not recognise Albert’s contribution to the running of the household’.
A doctor who treated the Goodwins in the 10 years before Mrs Goodwin was killed, described the stressed and strained relationship of his two elderly patients.
Dr David Doig: Mrs Goodwin was very reliant on Mr Goodwin to do a considerable number of tasks for her. She was extremely frustrated by her inability to do simple matters and often got quite angry at her limitations both in visual acuity and in manual dexterity due to rheumatoid arthritis. She was often quite angry and aggressive towards Mr Goodwin, despite being in social circumstances where people would normally control their behaviour. At no time did I ever see him speak out against her or be angry towards her even though she would often make derogatory and disparaging remarks about him.
Mrs Goodwin’s son, Martyn, said that during his parents’ regular arguments, his mother had taken to calling his father a ‘mongrel bastard’ or ‘mong’, for short. This was her severest insult, her biggest weapon in her war of words.
Mrs Goodwin’s sister, Pearl McKinnon, told the court she thought the Goodwin’s marital problems were triggered by winning $160 000 in Tattslotto about 20 years earlier.
Ms McKinnon: Both of them seemed preoccupied with who owned which person’s money. They won Tattslotto some years ago and I think that is where the money arguments began.
The court heard that the couple had used much of their winnings to pay off Martyn’s mortgage and to move to a new home in Winston Road, Viewbank, in Melbourne’s north-east.
The Goodwin’s war of words really fired up about 10 years before Goodwin killed his wife. Six years into that war, Albert Goodwin tried to flee. In early 1997, after re-arranging the family finances, he suddenly moved out. He flew to Port Macquarie—about 1200 kilometres away, nearly halfway between Sydney and Brisbane—and rented a unit in Wauchope. For several months, he kept his head down telling no-one in the family where he was. Then he re-established the communication channels but only through a solicitor. Nancy flew to Port Macquarie and persuaded her AWOL husband to return.
The truce didn’t last long. In the middle of 1998, at the age of 80, Albert Goodwin told his son he could no longer stand living with his mother and returned to Port Macquarie. Goodwin started legal proceedings to divide the matrimonial assets. Ensconced in his Port Macquarie retreat, away from the home warfront, Goodwin was happier than he had been for some time. Nancy, however, wasn’t ready to surrender. She wrote to her husband and lied that she was dying and had only been given months to live. Once again she flew up to Port Macquarie and persuaded her runaway geriatric groom to return. Going against his son’s advice, Goodwin returned. In a fatal irony, Nancy Goodwin had lured back the husband who was to kill her three years later by lying that she was going to die soon.
Not long after returning to the frontline, Goodwin regularly complained to his son that he regretted returning.
Then on 4 April 2001, Albert Goodwin’s long-bottled-up anger exploded.
Goodwin told police that the day he killed his wife had begun badly. She had accused him of turning their son’s family against her. When he denied this, she retorted by calling him a ‘mong’. Like he had countless times before, Albert did not respond to his wife’s insult. Perhaps he clenched his fist a little, maybe he pursed his lips a bit, but that was it.
In the middle of the afternoon, the elderly couple’s word war heated up. When Albert was in the garden, reading the newspaper, Nancy called out to him, ‘I’ve made a cup of tea for the mong’. When Albert shuffled inside, his wife waved $250 cash in his face. ‘Is this yours, mong?’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘Where did you get it?’ ‘I saved that from my pension. Give it here. Where did you find it?’ ‘In the drawers next to your bed, mong. You can’t hide anything from me.’ ‘You’ve got no right to do that. Give it here’. ‘No way. This is mine.’ As so often before, Goodwin decided to try to solve the problem by fleeing. When he got to the front door, however, he realised his wife was a step ahead of him. She had moved the car and house keys from their normal position. He demanded them from her, but got nowhere. Nancy told him, ‘You’re not getting nothing. You’re just a mong’.
Goodwin went ‘right off’. He grabbed his wife by her jumper causing her to drop the dinner plate she was carrying. ‘Are you going to put that money back and the keys?’ he screamed at her. ‘No. I’m going,’ she shot back. She twisted free and ran out the back door as fast as her arthritic legs could go.
Angrier than he had ever been, Goodwin grabbed a black-handled kitchen knife with a 13-centimetre blade from a carving block in the kitchen, and chased his wife down the side of the house where he grabbed her again. Again he demanded, ‘Are you going to give me that money and the keys which belong to me?’ Nancy wasn’t going to let the long-blade knife in her infuriated husband’s hand force her to surrender or even to retreat. She spat back, ‘No, mong’.
That was it. That was the last time Nancy Goodwin was going to fire off a sneering ‘mong’ at her husband. Albert’s mind went blank and he stabbed her five times in the upper chest.
When Goodwin realised what he had done, he left his dead, bloodied wife—still clutching the $250—and called the triple 0 emergency call centre. He told the operator there had been a tragedy.
Goodwin: I’ve done away with me wife…I stabbed her. My nerves broke and I stabbed her to death, I think.
He told the ambulance driver, he couldn’t believe what he had done, he had ‘just snapped’. He later told police, ‘She refused to give me the money. She refused to give me the keys and called me “mong” again. I mean how much can you take’.
At first Goodwin was charged with murder, but finally the Director of Public Prosecutions accepted his killer excuse—that his wife’s insults and actions had provoked him into temporarily losing self-control. He pleaded guilty to provocation manslaughter.
Nine months after killing his wife—in December 2001—Goodwin shuffled into the Supreme Court with the help of a walking stick, leaning on the arm of his female guard. He listened seemingly impassively to his pre-sentence plea-hearing but moments after the judge left and he was being helped back to his cell, the old man stopped and wept quietly, wiping his tears with a handkerchief.
Psychiatrist Paul Mullen told the court that Goodwin had an obsessive personality. He said he had an intense concern about order and neatness and an intolerance to change. Professor Mullen said Goodwin was ‘a very controlled man who attempts to suppress the expression of anger or even dissent’.
Professor Mullen: He struggled to control his temper despite provocation and maintains a placid and sensible approach in the face of difficulties and demands. Unfortunately such a personality, if pushed beyond the bounds of even their self-control, is prone either to flee from the stressful situation or to explode in totally uncharacteristic violence.
The vast majority of those with these personality attributes will live out their lives without ever being pushed to the point where they explode. Sadly, in Mr Goodwin’s case, when he finally lost control the result was catastrophic.
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This killing arose in the context of many years of escalating interpersonal difficulties between Mr Goodwin and his wife. He is not a man prone to violence, in fact, quite the reverse. In my opinion, it will be extremely unlikely that Mr Goodwin will ever again be placed under such stress that his normally controlled and placid temperament would be driven in the direction of violence.
A psychologist agreed that Goodwin’s killing of his wife was an ‘isolated explosive incident’ and that it did not indicate ‘an ongoing explosive disorder’.
Goodwin’s barrister, Ian McIvor, called on Justice John Coldrey to let his client walk free saying that for such an old, broken man the 254 days he had already spent in custody was enough. He said the only family member who had not cut Goodwin off was his 91-year-old sister who lived in a Sydney nursing home. He said everyone else, including his son and only grandchild, wanted nothing more to do with the killer of their mother and grandmother.
Mr McIvor: It would seem he is condemned for what remains of his life to live in a virtual wasteland.
That one act of rage, according to his son, outweighs all that had gone before.
This prisoner, as far as any of us in this court know, is unique in respect of his age.
There is nothing to be gained by any person or by any part of society by any further incarceration.
Prosecutor Sue Pullen said, although Goodwin’s age was a factor, it should not mean an unduly light sentence.
Eight days later Justice Coldrey agreed and refused to set Goodwin free.
Justice Coldrey: A violent death caused by the hand of an elderly person is no less terrifying or permanent. Mrs Goodwin, herself an elderly lady, might reasonably have expected that the end of her long life would be peaceful and not traumatic.
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The domestic situation with which you were daily confronted was an extremely difficult one and I take that into account, but your circumstances were not as desperate as those confronting battered wives who have the misfortune to find themselves before these courts from time to time.
The judge noted that Goodwin had shown that he had had the ability to leave his wife, and stressed that Mrs Goodwin was not as bad a person as her killer husband claimed.
Justice Coldrey: Whilst it is clear that Mrs Goodwin could be stubborn, argumentative and pig-headed, she was kind, generous, open, loving and protective of those she cared about which included her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law Ann and her granddaughter Kathryn.
He said Mrs Ann Goodwin considered her mother-in-law a friend and a confidante. The dead woman’s granddaughter had told the court her grandmother had been a kind, generous, caring person who had taught her to sew, cook and knit.
Justice Coldrey said Goodwin’s inability to remember stabbing his wife was probably a defence mechanism to avoid confronting a ‘terrible reality’. He said Goodwin regarded his wife’s taunts over the money and her taking of the keys—making it difficult for him to flee—as ‘the culmination of what you regarded as years of verbal abuse, ingratitude and humiliation’.
Justice Coldrey: It shattered the wall of your self-control which had held back years of frustration.
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Over the seven decades since your childhood, you have been a hard-working and productive member of this society, a caring family man and parent and a person prepared to undertake voluntary work in the community.
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You are an old man who up until this event had lived an exemplary life.
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Being almost 84, you are the oldest person charged with homicide to come before this court.
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I cannot overlook the fact that the family you held dear—your son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter—the people closest to you whom you worked to assist and to whom you extended your love, want nothing more to do with you. You are, as your counsel…eloquently stated, condemned to spend your remaining years in a virtual wasteland with what has had great meaning for most of your life, gone forever…It is a punishment far beyond any that this court may inflict.
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This is a unique case and one which presents difficult sentencing problems for any judge. Balancing as best as I can the sentencing principles…and being as merciful as I can…Mr Goodwin, I have concluded that the appropriate sentence be that you be imprisoned for a period of six years. I fix a minimum period of two years and eight months before you become eligible for parole.
There was very little reaction from Goodwin. Maybe just a slight whitening of the knuckles around his cane and the slightest pursing of his lips.