The future comes soon enough.
– ALBERT EINSTEIN
In jail you don’t write anything down. Why? Because your cell is searched regularly by security staff and they read everything you have written. That wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so gossipy and didn’t speak “in confidence” to other crooks. The screws well may deny that this happens but in fact it takes place with monotonous regularity. Further, if you are sitting writing anything down, some of the more dangerous crooks who have a fearsome reputation will walk in, pick up what you are writing and start reading it.
When I gave evidence against Dupas, the Dupas lawyers made a great deal about the fact that I had written nothing down. This is why. To be found out and then face the consequences was, frankly, not worth the risk. Yes, I made notes about all sorts of things, but they were all innocuous – recipes, books I wanted to read, new addresses from people who had written to me – absolutely nothing that could be even remotely connected to life in the unit. In addition to the reasons above, I was not intending to hang on to events that happened in jail. I just wanted to erase it all, get home, go and work on a mate’s farm and stay under the radar. That obviously hasn’t happened.
Because I kept no notes, I have no exact recollection of dates but I do know about the specific nature of the incidents that were to unfold, simply because of the profound impact they had on me.
One morning Peter Dupas and I were walking up and down in the chook pen and we were just chatting – about what, I can’t remember. The chook pen is separated from the garden by a cyclone fence. Other units also used the garden. There were three protection units and they were given access to the garden at different times. It was one of the Sirius West units that had access to the garden on this particular morning. Sirius West is divided into two units: one for blokes who need general protection or from whom the rest of the jail needs protection, and the other for sex offenders and paedophiles.
On this particular morning as we were walking up and down I had not a care in the world apart from the fact I was yet to serve four years of my minimum sentence, which never cheered me. A young bloke appeared at the cyclone fence, looking straight at us. He said nothing until Dupas and I walked towards him. As we got near the fence he said to Dupas, “Are you Peter Dupas?” We stopped. Dupas said “Yes.” The young bloke, who was a Greek-looking boy, early twenties, straight darkish hair, slim build, let rip with a tirade of abuse. He claimed that he was some relative of Mersina Halvagis. He knew that Dupas had killed her and if he ever got the chance he would kill Dupas himself. This abuse was completely unexpected.
Having been a lawyer for many years and cross-examined probably thousands of people, I was good at judging when people were shocked and wrong footed. Dupas stopped dead in his tracks and was clearly flabbergasted, stuck for a word. This kid kept berating him for a good thirty seconds to a minute. I know that doesn’t sound like a long time but try standing there copping abuse for that period and see how long it is. The kid then abruptly walked off. Dupas was stunned. He turned to me and said, “How does that cunt know I did it?” It was clear to me that this was an admission that he had killed Mersina Halvagis and that he couldn’t work out how this kid could know.
I had gathered that Dupas was probably the only suspect for this murder, even though I had not read much about it in the paper. As a criminal defence lawyer, you are required day after day to look at police forensic photos depicting the most awful and violent crimes. You look at them in a clinical fashion, much as I imagine a surgeon would look at a patient opened up before them on the operating table. Then you close the book of photos and the matter is expunged from your mind until next time you need to refresh your memory by looking at the photos again. It’s a defence mechanism you develop over many years because, if you took this work home with you, you would not see the distance. Hence, it was always my policy never to read articles in the newspaper about murders or other crimes. I didn’t watch it on the news and I certainly didn’t see films or watch television with anything to do with cops and robbers, violence, murder or anything else that might remind me of my job. Yet, in the case of Dupas’s arrest for the murder of Nicole Patterson, it was almost impossible to avoid the media coverage, and it started up again on his subsequent conviction.
After I started working in the garden with Dupas, he invited me more regularly into his cell to speak to him, usually about the garden but sometimes about other things. It became obvious that he wanted to get some advice about all the cases that were still pending against him and he was most unhappy with the representation he had received from Legal Aid on the Nicole Patterson trial. As I’ve said before, it’s amazing how many innocent blokes there are in jail.
Dupas kept saying that he hadn’t killed Patterson. To me that was merely a defence mechanism: he had shut the murder out of his mind to the extent that he no longer thought of himself as the perpetrator of the crime. One thing belying that, though, was his body language. Whenever he talked about either Nicole Patterson, Margaret Maher or Mersina Halvagis, he would become sweaty and begin to shake. If he was sitting down on his bed he would start by sweating and shaking, then he would clasp his hands together. In the more advanced stages of his distress, he would place his clasped hands between his knees and press hard together. The last straw came when he started rocking backwards and forwards with his hands clasped, and on one occasion he even became a little teary.
I thought more than once, while he was in this state, that he was going to blurt out an admission to me. But such was his defence and denial mechanism that all of a sudden you could see the curtains come down over his eyes. He would sit back and unclasp his hands, and that was the end of the conversation. He had shut it out of his mind. Yet one thing Dupas couldn’t shut out of his mind was the slow and steady progress the police were making in their investigations of the murders of both Margaret Maher and Mersina Halvagis.
I saw just how dangerous this man was one evening when we were sitting at the table having our dinner. A young bloke who had been in the unit for a few weeks walked by and Dupas started mumbling to himself, cursing him and saying he was going to “get” him. Dupas was highly agitated, with the sure signs of sweating and shaking, and I asked him what was wrong. He replied that he was going get this kid and he was going to kill him for something he had said about Dupas to somebody else in the unit which got back to him. I can’t recall the particulars of the perceived slight that could have ended with a death; I just know that, at the time, I thought what an insignificant comment to die for.
Dupas was like a terrier with a rat: he kept on and on between the time of our meal and lock down, which was a couple of hours, about how he was going to get this kid in the morning. The young man’s cell was next to mine on the upper tier and Dupas was immediately underneath. He virtually never came upstairs because he had a bad knee and he told me on more than one occasion that it pained him to walk up and down stairs.
On lockdown muster you do not have to stand by your cell doors, you can stand in the doorway and can actually be watching the TV as long as you are visible. That night I deliberately stood away from the door and as the screw came and counted me and started to lock the door I whispered that I needed to speak to him urgently after lockdown about a potential incident. Once you are locked down nobody can see any other cell from any part of the unit, let alone anything that goes on inside. The screws came back and quietly opened my door and asked me what the problem was. I told them what Dupas had said. The young man was moved instantly and I did not see him again.
Immediately on let-out the next morning, as I was walking toward the stairs, Dupas came hurtling out of his cell. He had something in his hand which looked like a shiv and started to fly up the stairs, totally out of character. I said, “What are you doing, Pete?” He said, “I’m going to get that cunt.” I said, “Well, I think he’s gone, I’ve just walked past his cell and it’s still locked and there’s no one there.” Dupas stopped and was visibly deflated at that comment. He then turned without a word and hobbled back down the stairs and into his cell. He did not even come out to the garden that day. Dupas had clearly been stewing on this all night and had worked himself up into such a frenzy that he was going to kill this kid, no matter what. That, to me, was indicative of what he was capable of and this was probably how he had killed before. He had worked himself into such a state that he was capable of anything.
At Dupas’s trial for the Halvagis murder I was cross-examined up hill and down dale about the fact that the defence had tried unsuccessfully to locate any record of the young man being moved. The answer to that is simple. The jail system is so badly run, records are almost an afterthought. (A prime example of this relates to the record of lockdowns which I discuss in my previous book.)
Apart from these isolated incidents life dragged on. Dupas and Camilleri continued to hate each other and there was the odd punch on, knifing, rape, sexual assault, all those things that go to make up normal life in jail. The officers rarely get involved. On one occasion, I heard a crashing noise behind me and turned around to see two blokes punching on and they were punching each other flat out. I looked towards the screws station: one was sitting there eating his dinner, the other was standing with his arms folded. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The two combatants literally punched each other to a standstill. They had been fighting so hard and for so long that they could not raise their arms one more time against each. Then the screws locked the unit down, grabbed the two protagonists and took them off to the slot. Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted! The duty of care clearly does not exist behind closed doors.
On one occasion, I remember, Dupas deliberately left the pitchfork in the garden. Camilleri had obviously seen him do it and later that afternoon, as I looked out my window into the garden, there was Camilleri with the pitchfork trying to stab another prisoner with it. Unfortunately for Camilleri this prisoner was in protection to protect the rest of the jail from him. Camilleri fights like a girl, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, so he was no match for this bloke, armed with a pitchfork or not. I am pleased to report that the other prisoner promptly disarmed Camilleri and gave him a belting. The pitchfork still did not come inside. Once again, there was no officer out there watching what was going on. Nobody had the faintest idea what had happened. The whole fight had taken place without anybody knowing and it wasn’t until Camilleri came in with a bloodied face that it became apparent there had been a fight. The other bloke walked in and denied any knowledge of any fight – end of the matter.
Mention of the pitchfork reminds me of the young Greek man who featured at the start of this chapter. A week or so after the abusive incident through the chook pen fence, Dupas was standing in the vegie garden rolling a smoke. I was working in the garden with him. I looked up at him and he was staring at a window in the Sirius West cell block. He became agitated and began shaking and sweating. The sweating wasn’t from exertion, either, I hasten to add. I said, “What’s wrong Peter?” He said, “I know where that cunt lives.” I said, “What are you talking about?” “That young bloke that abused me through the fence,” he said, “I know which cell he lives in and I know when he goes for his medication. I’m going to get him.” I didn’t try to talk him out of it and this time I said nothing to the screws.
The next day, however, I did become concerned, because as we went out to do the gardening, Dupas took the pitchfork and put it behind a native shrub which was growing right next to the pathway along which the other unit would walk to get their medication. I saw him put it there and he said to me, “You’d better make yourself scarce. I’m going to get that bastard this morning.” I went to the other end of the garden and pretended I’d forgotten something inside. I then went back into the unit and told the supervisor, not the screws, what was going to happen. For once, the staff moved quickly and the young man was not taken for medication. He was moved promptly to another jail.
The interesting thing about all this is that, there was no note of the transfer and Dupas was not even questioned by the screws. That was indicative of how scared everybody was of him, the screws included. He ruled the unit, but not by power; rather, he exuded his usual quiet, menacing intimidation. Dupas is “in” forever, so it is to the mutual benefit of the screws and Dupas that they try to make life easy for all concerned. It also makes Dupas easier to handle.