Friday 18 March 1994
The last day of Anna-Jane’s life began normally. Henry and Anna-Jane now shared a new pseudo-Federation duplex in Magill which she owned thanks to a loan of around $30,000 from her father. The property was one of the causes of tension between Henry and Anna-Jane’s parents, who felt he was bringing little of financial value to the relationship.
Henry left for work at the regular time of 8 am as did his fiancée, but Anna-Jane’s day was to be a tumultuous one. Since first meeting Henry she had taken the position of Acting Professional Conduct Director with the Law Society, one of the pillars of the South Australian legal community. In the course of her duties she had ordered a raid on the offices of a lawyer by the name of Linden Fairclough who was facing allegations of fraud. The raid took place on Friday 11 March, exactly a week before her death. Fairclough had claimed the raid was undertaken with no search warrant, which meant the seizure of his files was illegal. Fairclough was later convicted of workers’ compensation fraud and perjury. He was eventually struck off as a lawyer for a number of years. He protested to Anna-Jane, and says he had numerous telephone conversations with her during that week, three of which took place on 18 March.
Anna-Jane had other, less stressful, conversations that day. In the morning she met with a friend, Sarah Taylor, for coffee. Sarah and Anna had joined the firm Nyland, Haines & Co. at the same time and the two had remained close. Sarah later said Anna was in a happy mood that morning and was eager to talk over her wedding plans. As it was Friday Anna-Jane also mentioned she had arranged to meet Henry for a drink after work. Both women spoke again on the phone during the afternoon and at 4.30 Anna-Jane’s closest friend, Lucinda Reu, whom she had known since she was 11, dropped in to see her. Again Anna-Jane was keen to discuss her wedding but Lucinda explained her visit was just to let Anna-Jane know she wouldn’t be able to join the couple for drinks after work that evening as she had something else on.
The Norwood Hotel is an impressive Victorian building on the north-east corner of The Parade and Osmond Terrace, just east of the city. In 1994 it was a fashionable pub, without being pretentious, smack in the heart of the trendy, cosmopolitan suburb of Norwood.
When Henry entered the front bar at about 5.40 pm he immediately saw his blonde fiancée wearing a smart two-piece grey suit and sitting on a bar stool next to a pedestal table. Anna-Jane had a half-finished glass of chardonnay in front of her and was mildly miffed when Henry suggested it was just house wine; she enjoyed the finer things when she could afford them and knew the difference between quality and ordinary. They sat and talked for a little over an hour enjoying a basket of potato fries, during which time Henry consumed three glasses of wine and Anna-Jane at least four.
Both arrived at their Magill home around 7 pm having driven in their separate Volvos from the pub. Henry changed out of his work clothes with the intention of doing some study for a management course he was undertaking. In the meantime Anna-Jane called Sue, her sister-in-law, to confirm their arrangement to take their dogs for a walk later that evening. Sue was another who had contacted Anna-Jane at her Law Society office that afternoon to discuss the hen’s night they were planning.
Having changed into green trackpants, a striped blouse and her Reeboks, Anna-Jane left the house and drove to Sue’s place at Burnside. The two then piled the dogs, Sue’s Jasper and Anna-Jane’s spirited bearded collie Jordon, into her Volvo and headed to the nearby Newland Park on Lockwood Road. Their conversation along the way was unremarkable except for Anna-Jane’s comment that she had come dangerously close to hitting parked cars when she was overtaking on the drive to Sue’s house. Sue later said that while she could smell alcohol on Anna-Jane’s breath she didn’t consider her to be drunk. It was an event which in the days to come perhaps should have received closer scrutiny. After about half an hour in the park Anna-Jane drove Sue and Jasper home and headed back to Magill.
According to Henry, Anna-Jane returned a little after 8 pm and the two discussed wedding arrangements. Anna-Jane asked Henry whether he’d had second thoughts about not asking his mother to the wedding. Having raised the subject, she asked him when he’d last visited his mother. It had been five or six weeks, although he had rung her from time to time. Anna-Jane suggested he should call in to her house nearby, knowing Henry would get ‘an attack of guilts’10 if he left it much longer. He resolved that he would see Eileen.
Anna-Jane complained of being tired and having an aching back and told Henry that while he was visiting his mother she might run a bath and have a soak. It was not unusual for Anna-Jane to take an occasional bath; in fact, one of her girlfriends noted that she had been particularly pleased when she moved in to the earlier share house in Parkside because it had a large free-standing bath.11 The one in the compact bathroom in her Magill home was considerably smaller.
Henry says he picked up his car keys and left between 8.20 and 8.30 pm to visit his mother’s Hectorville home. If he’s to be believed, it was the last time he would see Anna-Jane alive.
Henry arrived around 8.35, stayed 45 to 50 minutes and left Eileen a bit after 9.20 pm. He left having dealt with the matter of her not attending the wedding. A few moments later he swung into Homes Avenue, parked in the driveway behind Anna-Jane’s Volvo sedan and was greeted at the door by an ebullient Jordon, though there was no sign of Anna-Jane.
On unlocking the front door his greeting was met with silence. Noticing the absence of any outside light, suggesting she wasn’t watering the garden, he again called out but still there was no response. Having walked down the carpeted hall to the kitchen, he turned to check the lounge then headed back up the passageway towards the bedroom. He’d already noticed the light was on in the bathroom but that was not unusual as Anna had a habit of leaving lights on all over the house.
The bathroom had two entries. It could be accessed from the hallway, on the right as one walked from the front door, or as an ensuite from the main bedroom at the front of the house. The bathroom itself was a small cream-tiled L-shaped area. If entered from the hallway the vanity unit was on the left with a glassed-in shower cubicle on the immediate right. Directly ahead was a small bath which ran along the back wall, with a shell-style soap dish, prominent taps and a water spout halfway along, ten centimetres above the lip of the bath. The tiled floor was narrow and ended at a sliding door which opened onto the adjoining main bedroom. On this night Henry, noticing the light, paused in the hall and pushed on the partially open door. There, slumped in the bath, was Anna-Jane.
When the paralysing shock of seeing his fiancée lying limp in the bath subsided, the first things that struck Henry were the bluish pallor of Anna-Jane’s skin and her glassy eyes. He says he felt a mixture of confusion and panic. She was facing towards the bedroom and was slumped to her right, her mouth and nose submerged.
Henry rushed to her side and, while ensuring he kept her head above the water, tried to slip his arms under her body and lift her out of the bath. An injured back, the awkward manoeuvre and the slippery floor meant her lifeless body was too heavy to lift in that way. He found it was impossible to simply lean over and scoop her up. He then tried to pull the plug out of the bath but with her body covering it that too was not possible. Henry finally found that by leaning over the back of the bath, though the vanity unit blocked direct access, he was able to slip his hands in from behind and lift under her arms. He hugged her back to his chest and dragged her around as he backed towards the bedroom door, sliding it open with his foot. He said in his official statement, ‘I held Anna tightly to my chest. She did not make a sound or any movement at all.’12 As she came out of the bath her legs slid across the lip of the bath and flopped onto the floor. Struggling to keep his balance and not let her wet body slip from his grip he finally laid her down on the carpeted bedroom floor.
Henry Keogh’s version of what happened in these frantic minutes is all we have. In his statement to police, he said:
The first thing I did after lying her down was to place my hand on her throat to feel a pulse. I wasn’t sure at first whether I felt her pulse or not but my heart was racing so fast I just didn’t know. I tried on the other side of her neck. And this time I didn’t feel anything at all … I pulled Anna over onto her left side, extended her neck to try and make sure the airway was clear …13
Henry had once been a volunteer with St John Ambulance and was qualified in first aid. His mind was racing, trying to remember the ‘ABC’ of emergency response: Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Having tried to clear her airway as best he could he pinched her nose and proceeded with mouth to mouth, followed by compressions of the chest. Water emerged from her mouth but he saw no vital signs. The woman who had exuded life now lay inert on the floor, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, her mouth gaping and silent.
Having no way of clearing whatever blockage was in her throat and feeling increasingly desperate, he put her in the coma position and ran to get the phone and the phone book. ‘I couldn’t remember if it was 111 or 000, I was confused and panicky.’14 When he got no response he rang 11440, the direct number for the ambulance service.
At 9.32 pm his call was picked up. The operator tried to calm him then relayed the information to the available units and passed on the following message to police: ‘… just got a call from a very distressed guy, his girlfriend has had an accident in the bath … didn’t get any history on her ’cause he is doing resus[citation] on her at the moment.’15 While help was on its way Henry recommenced CPR.
Twenty-four-year-old St John A mbulance officer Kerrie Stevenson was the first to arrive at the door. She was hurriedly led into the bedroom by a distressed Keogh, who instantly dropped to his knees. Stevenson would later say in a witness statement, ‘This man stayed hunched over the woman and was crying. We asked him to step aside. He went outside to another room’.16 After setting up a monitor and checking for vital signs it was immediately clear Anna-Jane was clinically dead. The ambulance officer noted there was no blood or vomit in the bath.17
When Stevenson’s colleague, Paul Murgatroyd, checked Anna-Jane’s airways then tried to ventilate her, fluid and vomit came into her mouth. He noted there was a significant blockage in her air passage. Further attempts to defibrillate Anna-Jane proved fruitless.
It fell to Kerrie Stevenson to break the news to Henry, who by this time was in complete shock, standing by the breakfast bar adjoining the lounge room with his hands covering his face, crying. Distraught as he was, he heard the terrible words, ‘I’m sorry, there is nothing more we can do, she has passed on.’18
During this time police began to arrive. First to get to Homes Avenue was Constable Andrew Horan. He was on a solo mobile patrol when he received a call at 9.35 pm to attend the Magill residence. As he pulled up in the quiet suburban street he saw two ambulance crews standing at the rear of their vehicles. Before he had opened the car door, a second police vehicle turned into the street behind him. Constable Horan climbed out and spoke briefly to the medics before passing through the well-kept garden up the slate-tiled steps and into the house.
Horan looked down the hallway and was led by one of the medics to the bedroom door which was on his right at the head of the hall. He cautiously peered in. Anna-Jane lay diagonally across the floor on her back; her skin had a pale translucence and her empty eyes were open, staring upwards. She was by now covered to her shoulders with a white blanket. Her heels were resting on the tiled floor of the ensuite, her body was sprawled on the carpeted bedroom floor and her hair was wet. In a later statement, Horan said he saw Henry Keogh kneeling beside the body: ‘He had his head on her chest and was crying.’19
The two officers who arrived just after Constable Horan – Constables Lynda Tyson and Brett Williams – took charge until more senior police pulled into the street. It was their first fatality. The scene that confronted them matched the description from Constable Horan: Anna’s body stretched across the floor, beside her a tearful Henry Keogh. Constable Tyson, when later called to give evidence in court, said, ‘He was very upset. He was crying. Yes, he was very distressed at the time when I first saw him.’20 Numerous other police officers, including those from the Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB), arrived soon after and the scene began to resemble that of a major catastrophe.
Among the hardest things Henry Keogh had to do that night was call Anna-Jane’s parents. He didn’t delay. He dialled their number very soon after making the call for an ambulance. At the other end was her father Kevin, who later testified:
Shortly after 9.30 pm the phone rang. I answered it. It was Henry Keogh. He sounded very distressed and he said, ‘Kevin, please come around’ … He repeated that and I said ‘Henry, what’s wrong?’ and he just said, ‘Please come around,’ and so I put the phone down and I said to my wife, ‘There’s something wrong, I think Henry and Anna-Jane must have broken up,’ and we got in the car and went around …21
When Kevin and Joanne Cheney arrived, nothing about the scene that confronted them was suggestive of a lovers’ spat. The street was awash with blue and red flashing lights from ambulances and police cars.
As they hurried to the front door their way was blocked by a police officer informing them they couldn’t enter. ‘My daughter lives here’22 was all Kevin could manage. They were ushered in and Kevin immediately addressed one of the ambulance officers; the conversation was brief but devastating.
‘Is my daughter alive or dead?’
‘I’m very sorry, sir, she’s dead.’23
Each police and ambulance officer who had entered the house noted Henry Keogh’s distressed state. The one notable exception was Constable Patricia Walkley. She was an officer of 23 years’ experience and had spent the previous 11 years stationed at the Coronial Investigations Section at Divett Place in the city. Her principal task was to attend the scenes of sudden deaths and manage the transportation of bodies back to the morgue.
The Forensic Science Centre out of which Walkley operated was a dysfunctional and somewhat eccentric organisation, and had been for many years. Well before the Royal Commission in 1984 into the deficiencies in forensic science which had led to the wrongful murder conviction of Edward Splatt there were serious problems with the structure, accountability and scientific inadequacies of the organisation. Improvements were made but the centre continued to operate autonomously.
Walkley drove to the house alone in the Coroner’s van, arriving at half-past ten. After a hasty briefing from Detective Moulds of the Holden Hill CIB she walked inside and found her way to the bathroom. She noticed the bath was still full of water; she dipped her hand in and felt it was lukewarm.
Walkley then turned to the bedroom where the body of Anna-Jane lay. Bending over the body, she removed Anna-Jane’s jewellery and undertook her own inspection, which included sniffing Anna-Jane’s hair and noting the scars from a breast reduction procedure. It was then Henry Keogh walked back into the room. He knelt beside his fiancée and, according to Walkley, muttered, ‘Oh Anna, oh Anna.’24
Inspector Peter Giles was present with other officers at the time and heard Walkley ask those around her, ‘Excuse me, who is this?’
Constable Tyson replied, ‘Henry Keogh, the fiancé.’25
Keogh left the room a minute later. Though this was Patricia Walkley’s only personal contact with him, she was later to describe him as an ‘evil, evil man’.26
Walkley’s role in what followed cannot be underestimated. All the officers present had treated the death as non-suspicious. The various officers noted in their statements there were no signs of violence, no blood and no tangible injury to either party. The ambulance officers reported a blockage to the oesophagus which prevented breathing and which explained Anna’s lack of response under CPR. It was only Walkley, after conferring with the Cheney family, who floated the notion that the death may have been deliberately caused. It was a proposition which was to steadily gain at least circumstantial support.
Anna-Jane’s house rapidly filled with medics, police officers and shocked relatives and friends. The Cheney family were there – Kevin and Joanne were joined by Anna’s brother, Marc, and his wife, Sue – as were Henry’s father, Henry Senior; his stepmother, Avril; and Anna’s friend Lucinda Reu. All crowded into the dwelling.
Around a dozen people had entered the bathroom and bedroom that evening. Later that night, when all the police and medics had left, Kevin, on his wife’s suggestion, emptied the bathwater. No one had taken samples from the environment in which Anna had died. It was one of many lost opportunities to preserve the integrity of the scene and evidence which could never be recovered. The removal of Anna-Jane’s body from the house was itself an awkward operation because the steps and the configuration of the property made it difficult to get the barouche past the front verandah. The body was manhandled from the house, gripped by the shoulders and the ankles and carried outside.
Finding an accurate account of the next sequence of events is difficult. Very scant notes were kept. Most of the witness statements were taken months after the incident and lack adequate detail. Certainly the witness statements prepared by the Cheneys were written well after Keogh had been charged with murder.
Kevin Cheney, when describing the events of that night, said: ‘Henry was there at this time sitting at the table in the dining area with his head in his hands, weeping. I was rather surprised when Jo went to him and comforted him.’27 The statement hints at the resentment that was simmering below the surface. By the time the witness statements were prepared there was no reason to disguise the dislike they’d felt for Keogh.
Henry declined offers from friends to spend the night elsewhere. He chose to remain at home. He cleared up the mess and even vacuumed the floors, which some thought was peculiar. His explanation was that he couldn’t bear having to maintain some façade of composure or to replay the events over and over again by answering repeated questions about what had happened. He felt leaving the scene was somehow committing to the fact that Anna-Jane was never coming home.
According to Keogh, the days following Anna-Jane’s death were a blur, and he was in no emotional state to have what he’d said or did scrutinised too closely. But once suspicion was aroused, the scrutiny intensified.
Friends and family shaken by the news arrived at the Magill house early the next morning to console and support Henry. His brother Michael turned up first and other friends dropped in. One of those to phone the house was Kathy Lehman, a work colleague of Anna-Jane’s from the Law Society. Kathy affectionately referred to Anna as her ‘baby boss’, there being 12 years’ difference in their ages. Her recollection was that Anna was a joyful person who would hop, skip and jump around the office when she was happy.
On that Saturday morning, Kathy made the call expecting to hear the bright, chirpy sound of her friend’s voice. Instead it was Michael Keogh who answered the phone. In sombre tones he delivered the shattering news. It was a brief conversation. All she heard was that her friend had passed away, drowned in the bath. Kathy says she was stunned, unable to physically move or make sense of what she’d heard. She later recalled her reaction when speaking to Sunday Mail journalist Shane Maguire:
It was the first time in my life I lost it. I just sat there and cried. It was just such a shock. You don’t expect to ring a friend to stir her up about something light-hearted and find they are dead, gone.28
Sometime that morning Henry and Michael visited their mother to inform her of the dreadful news. Eileen described the meeting as traumatic, with Henry ‘falling into her arms and weeping’.29
Around 3 pm Henry was required to make another bleak journey. It was to attend at the Cheney family’s home to meet with a representative of White Lady Funerals. It was during this meeting that Henry became aware that Anna’s body had been placed in the hands of the Coroner and an autopsy was likely to be conducted the next day.