Chapter 12
New Witnesses
An inquest is an investigation; it is not a trial where the evidence of witnesses has been disclosed to the other side. In this inquest the taskforce aimed at a specific target, who was kept in the dark and given little or no prior opportunity to investigate or discover untruths or flaws in evidence.
Before Jenny Tanner’s second inquest started, the Tanners and their counsel decided to assist the Coroner in establishing what had actually occurred rather than belittle well-meaning people whose memories were tarnished by grief, time and media influence. The result was that some witnesses escaped the tough cross-examination that they would have been subjected to in a criminal proceeding. The real Jenny was also kept under wraps because the Tanner family resolved not to make public any issues likely to cause harm to her memory or her son.
But from the moment the second inquest started, it became a trial by media, targeted at Denis Tanner rather than at Jenny Tanner and how she died. The resultant Coroner’s finding focused on what Denis and Laurie Tanner might or might not have done, yet made no similar analysis of other witnesses. Even disputed evidence was accepted as fact. I call this mind-closure – a case of playing the man and not the ball.
Fifty-five witnesses listed on the second inquest brief were never called; yet in his finding, the Coroner accepted their statements as truth without any test. In the later Adele Bailey inquest, twenty-four listed witnesses weren’t called.
The motel broker
The Kale Taskforce produced only a handful of new witnesses of value to the second inquest. Former Benalla used-car salesman Kevin Russell was one of them, and in his finding the Coroner accepted Russell’s evidence without question. But additional information bearing on Russell’s credibility as a witness was withheld when he testified and only came to light two months later.
I have known Kevin Russell since 1981, from both sides of the fence. He is a likeable opportunist: at Benalla he was mostly a used-car salesman, but in the mid- to late 1980s he’d worked for a Benalla motel broker, then later worked independently using the licence of another agent.
Before, during and after giving his evidence, Kevin Russell enthusiastically gave interviews to the print and electronic media, including Andrew Rule’s SBS television documentary. He told how Denis Tanner’s size and strength made him a ‘terrible intimidating person’. He said that in 1989 Tanner had been interested in buying a motel and had made an offer on a motel at Parkes. All of this had occurred during the period when Tanner had been compulsorily transferred from Benalla to Melbourne after the Operation Mint investigation (see Chapter 1).
Russell said that he didn’t believe Denis had the capital to buy the motel and that he’d need help from his brother Laurie to raise a deposit. But this wasn’t right. I personally know that Russell became aware of Denis Tanner’s financial position in 1988, when I was selling real estate in Benalla.
When Tanner was first appointed to my old job, he and Lynne had asked me to show them properties in Benalla. One home that I took them to belonged to Kevin Russell and his wife. I introduced them. Without my knowledge, Russell did a private deal to sell his home to the Tanners, allowing Russell to avoid my agent’s fee, but the sale didn’t go through because Tanner was compulsorily transferred to Melbourne.
The point I make is that during this process Russell found out about the Tanners’ assets: Lynne and Denis were both police officers earning good salaries, and each had significant cashable superannuation; they owned a home in Newport as well as a rental house, and had sold Stanleys, their Bonnie Doon farm.
Like the excellent salesman that he is, Kevin Russell transformed Denis Tanner’s predicament with Victoria Police into a business opportunity for himself by attempting to induce them to leave the police, sell up their properties, cash in their superannuation and buy a motel; and selling motels was his business. The Tanners had plenty of capital and equity in property to support a motel leasehold purchase or mortgaged freehold.
Denis Tanner is not one who likes debt. The Parkes motel offer was for the leasehold, but the freehold was also for sale. Kevin Russell, the super-salesman, discovered that Laurie was cashed up from the sale of his subdivided 40-acre Springfield lots, so he went to see Laurie and tried to entice him to try something other than farming, like buying the freehold to the Parkes motel and becoming Denis and Lynne’s landlord. Russell drove Laurie to Parkes to inspect the motel.
However, when Denis’s police career went back to normal as a result of his Police Service Board victory, the motel deal was no longer necessary. Denis recounts in an affidavit that Russell ‘put together a proposal for us to sell our Melbourne properties, then buy his house and his wife’s two Country Road shops in Benalla and Mansfield, which he said my wife could run. He was too full on so we dropped off him.’
Russell told the inquest about having coffee with Denis in Melbourne during this period. Speaking to an SBS journalist, he claimed that Denis had once produced a wad of notes that ‘would choke a horse’, and which he said ‘came from Faggots’. This story was repeated in his inquest statement. It’s worth pointing out that when this coffee-shop meeting supposedly occurred, Adele Bailey had been dead for twelve years.
Denis Tanner acknowledges he did have coffee with Russell once and the conversation could be partly true, because when he was transferred back to Melbourne he’d worked part-time on the door of a Swanston Street gay nightclub known to police as ‘Fags’. If he had more notes than usual in his pocket, it could have been the pay for all the security staff for that week. He acknowledges that he could have used the word ‘Fags’ if he was discussing the nightclub, although he doesn’t recall saying it to Russell. He believes that Russell embellished whatever was said.
Russell told of another colourful statement he claimed Tanner made at a time and venue he couldn’t name: ‘Laurie will do as he is fucken well told – if it wasn’t for me the second slut would have got the lot.’ The Coroner pounced on this, but Denis Tanner emphatically denies any such conversation; he believes Russell embellished something he’d picked up from the Age, where this story was being published almost daily as the police theory of Tanner’s motive for killing Jennifer.
Russell also made another claim that had been in the papers: that Denis had told him he was having a sexual relationship with Jennifer. Coroner Johnstone excluded this claim from the evidence.
When Russell was giving evidence, Mr Gullaci asked for a copy of his police history. He was told it wasn’t available, although in reality it could have been sourced within minutes from a police computer. Russell’s history only came to light two months later, and it rattled the corridors of police command. The information cast doubt on Russell’s credibility, but in his finding the Coroner ignored this, and Russell wasn’t recalled to allow the disclosures to be tested in public.
Russell had history for serious offences, including five recent court appearances for drink driving. Some were pending at the time he ‘volunteered’ his evidence.
In 1991 Russell had lost his licence for speeding and couldn’t be licensed again except on a magistrate’s order. In 1995 and 1996, he again appeared on separate occasions for drink-driving offences, with blood alcohol readings of .137 per cent and .206 per cent, and for unlicensed driving, refusing a breath test, careless driving and fraudulent use of number plates. Although the penalties overlapped, the aggregate result was that he was disqualified from driving for four years and could only be re-licensed on the order of a magistrate.
Russell ignored these court orders and went to motor registration offices in Victoria and New South Wales posing as his own brother. He used his brother’s credit cards, utility notices and birth certificate to pass the 100-point identity test, then swore statutory declarations claiming that his licences had been lost or stolen. He was issued with duplicate driving licences in each state in his brother’s name but with his own photograph on them, and continued to drive using his brother’s identity.
According to later inquest evidence, his drink driving recurred almost immediately. On two separate occasions he was charged with drink driving in Melbourne; in addition he had a serious charge of assault with a weapon (a motor vehicle). He now had a massive problem: in each of these incidents he’d produced the bogus licence and been charged in his brother’s name; his brother knew nothing of this, and neither did the arresting police.
As the court appearances approached, Russell had a dilemma. His brother faced serious penalties for crimes he hadn’t committed. Russell’s other option would be to admit his crimes, including stealing his brother’s identity, and face certain prison.
At this time Denis Tanner was front-page news. Kevin Russell knew him, and he also had a neighbour with powerful contacts – Peter Bell, a former South Melbourne detective who lived in the same apartment block. In his inquest evidence Russell tried to hide Bell’s identity, but eventually the Coroner ordered him to be named.
Peter Bell was well known in the crime department and homicide squad. If Russell had had genuine information to volunteer about Denis Tanner, Bell could and should have contacted the homicide squad, internal affairs, or the Kale Taskforce. But Russell’s problems existed in the traffic department, so Bell rang his friend Assistant Commissioner Graham Sinclair, head of the traffic department, to try to broker a deal for Russell.
He first rang Sinclair on 14 November 1996 and got his attention by telling him that Russell had information regarding the death of Jennifer Tanner. Sinclair explained this in a statement he made after Mr Gullaci exposed Russell’s history:
Mr Bell told me that the person he knows [Russell] has been told by Detective Sergeant Tanner that he killed his sister-in-law to protect a property settlement for his brother who was taken for everything in his first divorce and to conceal his sexual relationship with his sister-in-law.
Mr Bell said this person is a businessman who knows Tanner and knows he is associating with Murphy and other crooked and dangerous cops and he is concerned for his safety. Mr Bell said this person is dark on Tanner because he believes he threw a case or was careless in failing to appear and the case involving sex offences against a child was dismissed.
It is significant that Bell made reference to Denis having a sexual relationship with Jennifer. That same untruth was initially published in the media, sourced from the Inspector Rod Collins affidavit when the Kale Taskforce first sought a media suppression order against the Age. This was the only other public reference that I can find to that claim.
On 24 December 1996 Sinclair took Senior Sergeant Calderbank to Bell’s unit, where they met Russell and Bell. Calderbank took notes, but he didn’t take a statement from Russell for another six months.
One month later, on 28 January 1997, after Russell’s ‘leaked new evidence’ had excited the press, Bell again contacted Sinclair brokering another meeting between Sinclair and Russell. Russell then disclosed his plight regarding his forthcoming drink driving, perjury and prospective false identity charges. Sinclair said that Bell asked directly if he could do a deal for Russell in the impending charges:
Mr Bell stated that Russell was wondering if anything could be done for him by way of leniency, although that wasn’t the word used. That was the impression I got as being one of the reasons why I was approached.
Sinclair noted in his diary: ‘Doubt Russell would have any value as a witness.’ Sinclair was right, except that Russell’s history, motives and his attempts to get off these charges were kept from the Coroner and the Tanners until Mr Gullaci exposed Russell’s history.
Sinclair’s evidence also disclosed that Inspector Newman had been told of Russell’s traffic department plight and discussed it with Commander Rod Lambert of the crime department before Bell’s second approach to Sinclair.
Naturally, all of these senior police expressed righteous indignation and testified to the Coroner that no special deals were done for Russell; but the outcome suggests otherwise. Documents later tendered at the inquest as Exhibit 98 showed that the Kale Taskforce approached Constable Child, who had originally charged Russell; the charges then proceeded under Russell’s own name, not that of his brother. The charge of assault with a weapon was dropped, and no charges were laid regarding Russell’s actions in falsely swearing declarations to obtain the bogus licences and his continued driving while disqualified.
The files produced at the inquest reveal that Calderbank was subpoenaed to give evidence when Russell fronted the court. He told the inquests that he didn’t give character evidence and simply told the magistrate that Mr Russell had been helpful to police in the Tanner murder case. The magistrate got the message, and Russell’s evidence against Denis Tanner was rewarded. He received a fine of $250 for stating a false name and address; a 12-month bond for intentionally causing serious injury; on two .05 charges he got three months’ imprisonment suspended for twenty-four months and was disqualified from driving for eighteen months, which effectively meant that the disqualification period coincided with the expiration of the four-year disqualification period that he was currently serving. The only additional penalty was the $250 fine, and he wasn’t required to apply to a magistrate to get his licence back. Importantly, he didn’t go to jail.
Against that background, the Coroner found: ‘Mr Russell’s evidence is the final aspect that links all of the material on Tanner’s animus, motive, alibis and actions to the conclusion that Sergeant Denis Tanner shot his sister-in-law.’
Sergeant Helen Golding
Policewoman Sergeant Helen Golding was Lynne Tanner’s closest friend and godmother to her three eldest children; at the time of Jenny Tanner’s death, the two women were working together in Melbourne’s western suburbs. During the second inquest Golding was stationed at Geelong, and she and her policeman husband Tony were living at the nearby Inverleigh police station.
After the first inquest, Golding received a copy of the transcript from her brother, who was employed in the Justice Department. When she read it, she thought it odd that the Tanners hadn’t told her about the two bullets or mentioned Ros Smith’s story about Denis Tanner’s visit to Springfield three weeks before Jenny’s death.
In June 1996 Golding read the Sunday Age article and remembered hearing Denis once say that he’d been up to Springfield shortly before Jenny died. The thought nagged her, so she made an anonymous call to the Kale Taskforce. They traced the call and came to see her a few days later, when they pressured her to make a formal statement.
Golding was reluctant to do so and sought legal advice through the Police Association, but eventually made a statement on 13 August. Among other things, her statement claimed that when she’d been visiting Denis and Lynne, Denis had criticised Jenny Tanner and had once called her the ‘town bike’. Denis Tanner says he doesn’t remember saying this, but if this happened it would have been after Jenny’s death, during family discussions about why she committed suicide; they may have been discussing Jenny’s abortions.
The statement also said that Lynne had often commented that she believed Jenny was suffering post-natal depression, but Golding was puzzled as to how Lynne formed the opinion. Golding found it hard to believe Denis when he reported that Laurie had to come in off the land every four hours to change and feed the baby. Denis himself says he knew nothing about this until Laurie told him after Jenny’s death, but as I’ve already shown in Chapter 4, shearing hands at Springfield supported Laurie’s version.
Crucially, Golding claimed Lynne had told her that on the night of Jenny’s death Denis had been ‘out all night’. Hoping to find evidence incriminating Denis, the taskforce persuaded her to be part of a plan: she’d spend the night with Lynne at the Ibis Motel in Melbourne on 4 September, when Lynne was in Melbourne to attend a course. Kale would bug the room, and Golding would tell Lynne that she’d made the statement to get her talking about Denis and Jenny.
Early in their stay Golding told Lynne that she’d made a statement to homicide and gave her reasons for making it:
Golding: But then when I read the stuff that Andrew [her brother] got for me and there was inconsistencies in it and it played on my mind and I would never have thought any more about it, had it not come up in the paper. Never.
Lynne: Keep going.
Golding: And the impression I got from talking to these guys [Kale Taskforce], they obviously think Denis did it as well.
Lynne: Oh well. I guess they do.
Golding: You obviously don’t have a doubt in your mind.
Lynne: Well, no. I don’t and I never did, because I knew where he was and he couldn’t have been anywhere else, so he wouldn’t do that. I guess I…No, I’ve never doubted. Never ever, ever, ever.
Lynne wasn’t perturbed that Golding had made a statement to the taskforce, but she made it clear that she was sure Denis hadn’t killed Jenny. She also said that she was deeply upset that her children were suffering from the exposure:
Lynne: Oh, he wouldn’t have done it. No, no, no, but he wouldn’t – he wouldn’t see his family suffer like that. No…I can’t bear to see my kids suffer and I hate it and it is driving me mad at the moment.
Golding: I know what I’ve done is not going to help.
Lynne: Don’t worry about it. You wouldn’t be the only one…I’m OK, truly. I will never ever hold it against you. You’ve got to live with yourself.
In the eventual Kale transcription of these tapes, the faults were numerous and obvious. The following is just one of many instances where comments about Jenny and her family were omitted or incorrectly transcribed. At one point, Lynne Tanner told Golding of her suspicion that Jenny was involved with another man (variations in bold):
I think that if I was Jennifer’s mum and I would want to know. And I would never let it rest either, would you? You put yourself in that position and you would want to know what happened. But I believe in my own heart there is another person involved. There is a man in her life. I don’t know. I don’t ever stop thinking…You know, she’s come and stay with me and go off and say she was visiting Grandmother. Well, why would she do that?
In the taskforce’s transcript, this became:
I think that if I would be Jennifer and I would want to know. And I would never let it rest either, would you? You put yourself in that position and you would want to know what happened. But I believe in my own heart this is another personal assault, because I know her I don’t know. I don’t ever stop thinking…You know, she’s come and stay with me and said she was sitting there with grandmother. Well, why would she do that?
If the Coroner had listened to the tapes or been given an accurate transcript, he would have discovered that Lynne Tanner’s memories of Jenny often differed from Golding’s. Lynne told of Jenny’s mood swings and reported that Jenny had told her of Dr Geoff Patience’s opinion about her state of mind:
She said, ‘Oh, Geoff said I had post-natal depression’ and I said, well I remember her saying it, and taking days off to look after Sam.
The transcript version muted this quote from Jenny:
She said, ‘I just went for personal depression’ and I said, well I remember her saying it, and taking days off to look after Sam.
Lynne also reminded Golding that both of them had approached a police surgeon about Jenny’s condition; Golding remembered this occurring.
•••
Golding’s participation in the taping of her best friend Lynne gained nothing that was adverse to Denis Tanner. Lynne was emphatic that Denis had been at the bingo and was home immediately afterwards.
At no time during this Ibis meeting did Golding tell Lynne what she’d actually said in her statement; she simply made excuses for giving it. Lynne didn’t think the issue important enough to tell Denis. The taskforce would have known this, because all the Tanner phones and homes were bugged.
A few days after their motel stay, Golding told Lynne on the phone that she was having second thoughts about her statement. Police would have known this from their bugs on the Tanners’ phones.
A series of mysterious and threatening incidents followed. On 10 September Golding claims she received two abusive phone calls at work between 9 am and 10.30 am from a man who called her a bitch. She said the voice wasn’t Denis Tanner’s. At that stage, the only people who knew of Golding’s involvement with the Kale Taskforce were her husband, Lynne Tanner, the taskforce members and maybe others close to Golding or the taskforce. Inspector Newman rang Golding later that day, and she told him of the calls.
That day Denis Tanner’s diary shows that he was in his Benalla office preparing and faxing reports while furiously attempting to arrange a meeting with Assistant Commissioner O’Loughlin about the Euroa drug house debacle. Other detectives’ diaries bear this out. Kale had the ‘Dogs’ on him and would have known his movements; his phone records would also have told them whom he called that day.
Golding’s own phone records could have been used to verify the calls and trace the caller’s number. This investigation wasn’t undertaken, or if it was, it wasn’t revealed to the Coroner.
A fortnight later, on 25 September 1996, Golding got an early-morning call. She was in bed and allowed the phone to divert to the answer machine. It was one of the Tanner children. Five minutes later the phone rang again, and this time Golding answered it. It was Denis; they had a friendly conversation about his kids looking for a home for a puppy.
During her conversation with Lynne at the Ibis, Golding had said that her husband, Tony, was having troubles with his superiors; it was worrying him and he’d gone off sick. Lynne had passed the information to Denis, so Denis took the opportunity of the phone call to have a brief chat with him.
An hour later Denis rang back and again spoke to Tony about his work. Tanner claims that he’d simply called to support a friend. Golding said in evidence: ‘Most of this latter conversation was directed around the problems Lynne had told Denis that he was having at work, but I in my paranoia decided there was a double meaning.’
Two days later Inspector Newman telephoned Golding, who told him about the Tanner calls and faxed details to him. The women remained friends and continued to call each other regularly. All these calls on Tanner phones would have been monitored; in view of Golding’s claim about the abusive calls, her phones should have been too.
On 7 October 1996, Golding received a sympathy card through the mail at the Geelong police station with the words ‘Your Dead’ in rub-on lettering. Late that afternoon, Inspector Newman called her and she told him about the card.
In investigations into mail-related offences, the important focus is when and where the letters were posted. This letter to Golding was posted through the Melbourne Mail Centre and date-stamped Friday 4 October 1996, at 6 pm. Because Kale seized Denis Tanner’s diaries, which police now claim are lost, I can’t confirm where Denis Tanner was when the card was posted, but Kale would know his movements through phone records, their bugs and surveillance on him. The fact that evidence of Tanner’s movements wasn’t given to the inquest suggests that his telephone records don’t place him in Melbourne. Any such exculpatory evidence should have been presented to the Coroner.
Denis Tanner claims that the first knowledge he had of this letter was on 30 October 1996, when he was interviewed by the Kale Taskforce and the phone calls and letter to Golding were put to him. Tanner felt he was being set up and became terse: ‘Don’t put that shit on me. What could Helen Golding ever say to hurt me?’
Tanner describes this in a Supreme Court affidavit: ‘I can’t be positive, but I think that is what caused me to ask my wife if she knew what was going on with Helen Golding, and Lynne then told me about Golding having made a statement. My reaction was what could Golding ever say to hurt me? She knew nothing; there was nothing to know.’
Much later, an official forensic report on the DNA from the stamp on the letter found that more than one person contributed to the DNA source, the major contributor being female and a minor one being male. The female contributor was of the same blood group as Golding, and the report said ‘Golding’s own DNA could not be discounted’. These DNA results weren’t made available to the second inquest or the Tanners’ counsel until two months after Golding had given her evidence. Golding was never recalled, so the issue was never tested at the hearing.
A Kale Taskforce confidante told me that the taskforce believed that Golding had posted some of these letters to herself. I find that hard to accept, but my mind is open, because there is unexplained supporting evidence that wasn’t tested at the inquest.
At Mr Gullaci’s request, the Coroner ordered that copies of Golding’s diary be obtained, but the pages provided to Mr Gullaci referred to the dates when she received each letter. Surely it would have been thought relevant to see what Golding, Tanner and others were doing on the days the letters were posted?
Years later Tanner obtained a few pages of Golding’s diary through FOI. The diary showed that she was in Melbourne when that letter was posted. She’d travelled from Geelong to collect a new police car, and after collecting the new car she spent the weekend in Melbourne.
Supreme Court documents lodged by Operation Trencher claimed that the Kale Taskforce ceased around 2 December 1996, and the taskforce brief shows that they took no witness statements after Thursday 28 November 1996.
On Wednesday 4 December 1996, a Postpak box containing a small knife covered in red paint to simulate blood was posted to Helen Golding at Geelong Police Station (see Image 18). It was addressed using a stencil and posted through the Melbourne Mail Centre. She received it on Thursday 5 December 1996.
Denis Tanner definitely didn’t post it, because on the day it was posted he was in hospital. Early in the morning on 3 December, after working for twenty hours the previous day, he had an accident while riding with his regular cycling group. He broke a collarbone, limbs and five ribs and was admitted to Benalla Hospital, where he stayed for a week. If the letter was posted by someone in Melbourne who wanted to make Golding frightened of Denis Tanner, they wouldn’t have known or anticipated that Tanner would be in hospital at Benalla when it was sent.
Golding has no official diary entry whatever for that fortnight when this Postpak was posted. Her diary is just blank. The day she received the Postpak (5 November) she’d just returned to work and was supervising promotional exams. Her diary makes no mention of telling anybody else about the Postpak until four days later, when Inspector Newman telephoned her during the afternoon.
Strangely, Newman didn’t take a statement from Golding about this horrific Postpak, and it wasn’t handed to the forensic laboratory until 24 December 1996. Detective McKeegan from Geelong was assigned the investigation, but he wasn’t called to the inquest. Forensic tests of the DNA on the stamp and the knife handle produced similar results to the tests on the letter:
More than one person contributed to the DNA source, the major contributor was female and of the same blood group as Golding and that Golding’s own DNA could not be discounted. Another contributor was male.
Again the results weren’t made available to the inquest when Golding was giving evidence.
The one thing that’s certain is that Denis Tanner didn’t post this article; not only was he in hospital, but the male DNA wasn’t his.
On 1 and 3 April 1997, four months after the Postpak was sent, Golding received pre-paid funeral information from three funeral homes. Two were from homes in the northern suburbs and were posted through the Northland Mail Centre on 30 March 1997; the other was from a home in Burwood and was processed through the Eastern Mail Centre at Nunawading on 27 March 1997.
On these dates Denis Tanner was still on sick leave. Again I can’t check any movements that he may have recorded during his leave, but they could be traced through his mobile phone records. Despite a request from Mr Gullaci, the second inquest was not given evidence of any enquiries with the funeral homes or Tanner’s phone records, so the issue of who sent the letters was never addressed. It may be relevant to note that at the time Golding was a member of the Barwon Paediatric Bereavement Program and regularly received mail of this type from undertakers. No statement was taken from Golding, the undertakers weren’t called and the undertaker letters were never handed to the forensic laboratory for fingerprint and DNA checks.
On 8 July 1997, as the second inquest drew near, Golding claimed she received another threatening letter at her home at Inverleigh police station. This was an ‘I miss you’ card and a copy of her office duty roster, which were posted from the Northland Mail Centre on 4 July 1997. I later commissioned forensic document experts to examine the letter and card. They informed me that the text had been printed on a computer using a calligraphy program. At that time and for many years afterwards, Tanner had no computer and no computer literacy skills.
Again I can’t check Tanner’s movements, but they would have been easily checked from his phone records. The taskforce would or should have obtained them, and they should have been tendered to the inquest, whether they were exculpatory or otherwise.
The duty roster enclosed with this letter is massively significant. How was Denis Tanner at Benalla supposed to get a copy of Golding’s Geelong office roster? This question wasn’t addressed at the inquest or in the Coroner’s findings. Golding’s diary shows that she prepared the roster herself on Saturday 28 June 1997 at Geelong Police Station, and that she ‘completed and distributed’ it. An obvious question is, to whom did she distribute it?
A copy would be placed on her own office noticeboard. Other recipients at Geelong would be the watchhouse reception office and her divisional inspector’s office – all places subject to security and to which Tanner couldn’t have gained access. If the taskforce had a security plan in place around Golding or if the threats were being considered genuine, she would have sent a copy of her roster to the taskforce in the Melbourne homicide office. The roster wasn’t a computer-generated document, so a hard copy had to be mailed. She couldn’t have mailed it from Geelong before the Monday, meaning that the taskforce would have received it on Tuesday or Wednesday (1 or 2 July), two days before the copy was posted from Melbourne.
This letter was apparently handed to forensics, but no test results were presented to the second inquest. Victoria Police refused Denis Tanner’s FOI application for access to the results – if they exist. I have had photographs of all of these documents examined by two document experts, who say none of the handwriting is Denis Tanner’s. One reported: ‘There are significant dissimilarities in the writing characteristics of the [Tanner] handwriting standard supplied’.
In respect of these threats the Coroner took the view that although he’d heard no evidence to implicate Denis Tanner, Tanner was the only person with anything to gain. In his finding he wrote:
Whoever was the author of the threats to Helen Golding, such threats were made for the sole purpose of intimidating Helen Golding into silence and, thus, assisting Sergeant Tanner in relation to the second investigation into the death of Jennifer Tanner. In fact, they nearly succeeded as Golding was terrified about giving evidence.
He didn’t consider the reverse situation where Denis Tanner was the person most disadvantaged by these letters.
From the taskforce perspective, if the threats were legitimate, Denis Tanner was the obvious suspect, so surely the taskforce would have taken out a warrant to search his home or office for envelopes, stamps, paper, calligraphy software and other relevant materials for forensic comparison? They should also have examined his phone records and checked their listening device tapes. Yet those issues weren’t mentioned in any search warrants or Coroner’s search authorities issued to the taskforce. If intimidation like this happened to a witness in an investigation that I was running, I would have moved heaven and earth to track the bastard down.
Extraordinarily, no statement was taken from Golding about these threatening letters until she was in the foyer at the Coroners Court, waiting to give evidence, on 13 October 1997, almost twelve months after she’d received the horrific Postpak. The sensational public revelation of these threats first came when Golding was actually standing in the witness box, having her new statement read to her. This courtroom drama came as a massive surprise to the Coroner as well as to Denis Tanner and his counsel.
The letters weren’t mentioned in the police inquest brief, and they were kept secret until Helen Golding was actually called. In his original opening address Mr Rapke only referred to the two ‘bitch’ phone calls and the first ‘Your dead’ card with rub-on lettering. He made no mention of the Postpak, the undertaker letters, the sympathy card, the roster and so on. Denis Tanner, his counsel and the Coroner therefore had no advance notice of these threats.
After Golding arrived at the court, Sergeant Allison took a handwritten statement from her. Her appearance provided courtroom theatre, Rumpole-style:
Rapke: The next witness who I propose to call is Sergeant Helen Golding. She is not in court at the moment, she is present, in fact, making an additional statement, which I understand, is close to completion. Naturally I have not seen it and I have not been in a position to give it to my learned friends for obvious reasons, nor to Your Worship.
When Golding was later called to the witness box, her three statements were read to her, starting with the sensational new one that she’d just made about the knife Postpak, the threatening letters and the Ibis Motel meeting. This new statement was handwritten, so there were no copies for the Coroner or Tanner counsel.
Golding’s evidence was brief. The statements were read, the point made, and Mr Rapke sat down. The evidence came as a bombshell for the Tanners. The media went wild, and the Coroner fixed his gaze on Denis Tanner.
The fact that Golding’s night with Lynne at the Ibis Hotel had been taped was also new to the Tanners and counsel. In any normal hearing, the tapes of this conversation would have been transcribed at the time they were recorded – certainly well before the inquest began thirteen months later. The tapes and transcripts would usually have been part of the inquest brief. The only reason for not disclosing, transcribing or tendering these tapes would be if they didn’t contain material adverse to Denis Tanner.
When Mr Gullaci started to cross-examine Helen Golding, he engaged in a tooth-pulling exercise before eventually extracting from her that the Kale Taskforce had taped the Ibis conversations. Gullaci then called for production of the transcripts and the tapes, but Mr Rapke claimed the tapes weren’t available because they were then being transcribed:
Rapke: The tape is not presently available, Your Worship. In fact, it’s being transcribed at the moment…I’m informed that that process will not be completed before we rise tomorrow. However, I would hope that by the end of today I would be in a position to provide copies of the actual tapes to my learned friends and they, of course, can set about making their own transcript if they have facilities which are better than those which were available to me, as Your Worship’s assistant.
Gullaci: Your Worship, my application is that I do not wish to cross-examine this witness at this [stage] about any other matter until I have that tape…so that I’m in a position to properly assess appropriate cross-examination for this witness. It is my respectful submission that the existence of a tape recording of that particular conversation, with respect, should have been declared prior to this point of the witness being in the witness box, in the interests of justice…
The result was that Helen Golding’s cross-examination was never completed. Mr Rapke didn’t give counsel the tapes by the end of the day. The next day Mr Gullaci repeated his request, but still no tapes. A day later, on 15 October 1997, the Coroner adjourned the inquest for two months, and still there were no tapes or transcripts. Golding was never recalled to complete her evidence.
For the next two months, the media used these sensational untested revelations to besmirch Denis Tanner. But the unfairness didn’t stop there; Lynne Tanner became the next victim.
18 Postpak sent to Helen Golding (inquest exhibit)