CHAPTER 12

THE PACK

Textbook sadist and rapist, 18-year-old John Raymond Travers was a psychopathic time bomb with a short fuse waiting for the right moment to explode. It happened in Sydney’s outer western suburbs on 2 February 1986, when Travers and his gang extinguished the bright light of Anita Lorraine Cobby in an unprecedented attack that left a nation asking how such a thing could happen. The abduction and murder of Anita Cobby is arguably the most barbaric crime in Australia’s history. So gross was the violation to the 26-year-old Sydney Hospital nursing sister that newspapers could only hint at her injuries. Talkback radio switchboards lit up for weeks with callers demanding the reintroduction of capital punishment.

Travers and his gang, which consisted of Michael Murdoch, 18, and brothers Les, 24, Gary, 29, and Michael Murphy, 33, abducted, tortured, raped and murdered Anita Cobby and left her to die concealed in high grass in a paddock in Prospect in Sydney’s western suburbs. Even hardened detectives were shocked by the violent nature of the crime. But those who were acquainted with Travers knew what he was capable of. Many other victims had witnessed his cruelty and perversion first hand.

• • •

John Travers was the eldest of seven children and grew up in the blue-collar district of Mount Druitt in Sydney’s western suburbs. His father, Ken, drove buses and left the family home when Travers was a young boy. His mother, Sharon, struggled to cope with bringing up her children and developed an eating disorder that rendered her morbidly obese. By the time Travers was in his early teens, his mother weighed in excess of 120 kilograms and could not easily move around the modest home. Forced to remain in bed for most of the day, Sharon was unable to attend to her own basic needs, such as going to the toilet or washing herself, let alone tending to her children.

Travers was left to his own devices, which invariably led him to crime. Before he was a teenager, he had been in and out of institutions after being caught for petty crimes, including stealing offences. His first conviction was for possession of marijuana when he was just 12 years of age. He was an alcoholic at 14 and roamed the streets of Sydney’s outer west, stealing and robbing to pay for his addiction.

The most disturbing aspect of Travers’s personality was his apparent sadism. He kept two bull terriers that he named ‘Arse’ and ‘Cunt’. He regularly tortured the animals by kicking them in the testicles or applying lit cigarettes to their anuses. The tormented creatures became too vicious to control, but they continued to do their owner’s bidding and were known to attack people unfortunate enough to be walking past Travers’s home.

There are numerous stories that recall Travers torturing other animals. His mother remembers him killing kittens for kicks. Others recollect attending a barbeque in Mount Druitt. Travers brought a sheep to the party. Shocked onlookers witnessed him sodomise the beast, and as he prepared to climax, he pulled the sheep’s head back and killed it by cutting its throat. The word around the working-class suburb was that Travers regularly engaged in bestiality, and there are reports of him having sex with pigs, sheep and chickens.

Generally, the objects of Travers’s attacks would end up dead. Employed briefly in an abattoir, he had learnt how to prepare a carcass for the dinner table. He would often steal pigs, sheep and chickens from nearby farms and cut their throats with a sharp knife. His family thought he was doing the right thing by providing some food for the poverty-stricken household. The reality is that Travers obtained perverse pleasure from killing animals.

In his mid-teens Travers began directing his cruelty towards humans. Often in the company of Michael Murdoch, he used to loiter outside public toilets and bash and rape women and homosexuals. The victims were too terrified to report the assaults to police.

Michael Murdoch and Travers were as thick as thieves during their teenage years. Michael James Murdoch was the same age as Travers and doted on him. It is thought that the pair enjoyed a homosexual relationship, but both denied it. Murdoch had been in trouble with the police from an early age, racking up his first criminal conviction for possession of marijuana at 14 years of age.

Travers and Murphy used a homemade tattoo kit on each other and by the time they were both 16 years of age, they were covered in permanent scrawls and childlike pictures. As always, Travers went one step further: he asked Murdoch to tattoo his face. From then on, he had a blue teardrop under his left eye. He thought it made him stand out from the rest of the delinquents he knocked about with, but the tattoo would only serve to assist his victims to identify him to police. He also had tattoos on his penis and it is likely that Murdoch put them there.

Travers’s reputation was a magnet for many young criminals in the Mount Druitt area and by the time he was 17, he had a motley crew of hangers-on who saw him as the leader of the gang. He was an inveterate coward, but his gang members saw him as a hero, performing crimes against people and property at his whim. Some of the gang members would come and go, but the three Murphy brothers remained constant members of the clique. The oldest was Michael Murphy, known as Mick to the other gang members. A career criminal, he had spent most of his adult life behind bars.

• • •

Born in 1953, the eldest of the nine Murphy children, Michael Patrick Murphy had fallen into a life of crime as a young boy. Six weeks before the murder of Anita Cobby, Murphy had escaped from Silverwater Jail while serving a 25-year sentence for 33 counts of breaking, entering and stealing and larceny. He had additional time added to his sentence when he had attempted to escape from lawful custody. Just prior to Christmas in 1985, the heavily tattooed Murphy succeeded in escaping from prison with an accomplice in tow. He linked up with Travers, Murdoch and his two brothers, Les and Gary, not long afterwards. He remained on the run until he was captured in July 1986.

Like his older brother, Gary Stephen Murphy was a habitual criminal with a long criminal record stretching back to his youth. He had convictions for receiving, assault, car theft, breaking and entering and escaping lawful custody.

Leslie Joseph Murphy was born in 1962. He was a scrawny boy who looked harmless enough. However, he had a string of convictions, including for sexual intercourse without consent and car theft. He too had spent much of his adult life behind bars.

Gary considered himself to be a good fighter but often ended up on the floor, nursing a black eye or broken nose after coming off second best in a bar-room fight. Michael was known as a person to avoid, but this had less to do with his tough-guy image and likely more to do with his extensive criminal record and his reckless attitude to his own safety and the safety of others. Les had a reputation as a loudmouth and would often get into fights. His less-than-imposing physique ensured that he was often at the receiving end of a hiding. The fights he started frequently ended up with Les being dragged away, kicking and screaming, to avoid further punishment.

On their own, the three Murphy brothers were craven weaklings. When the three were together or were in the company of Travers and Murdoch, they grew strength in numbers to form a violent combination that would lead to murder.

• • •

In 1985, Travers had come under the scrutiny of New South Wales Police for raping and assaulting a young woman in Toongabbie, near his home in Mount Druitt. The woman had gone to police and told them of her ordeal. She was able to provide police with a detailed description of the heavily tattooed 18-year-old youth. She recalled her attacker having a teardrop tattoo under his left eye.

Travers was cunning enough to know that the police were on his trail, so he fled to Western Australia. With several cohorts, he settled in Mandurah, south of Perth, for a few months while the police continued to search for him. While in Mandurah, Travers started a homosexual relationship with a 17-year-old youth. The poor fellow was clearly out of his depth.

One night Travers and his gang went to his young lover’s home and brutally assaulted and raped him. They took Polaroid photographs of the young man being bashed, raped and slashed with a knife. Left in agony and covered in blood after the assault, the young man made it to the local police station and provided a detailed statement. The Western Australian Police arrested two of Travers’s gang, but he avoided capture and fled back to Sydney.

• • •

Twenty-six-year old Anita Lorraine Cobby was a nurse at Sydney Hospital, attached to the hospital’s distinguished microsurgery department. An attractive young woman, she had been a beauty-pageant winner and had at one time considered a career as a model. She chose to avoid the catwalks and the spotlight, preferring to pursue a career in which she could help people in need.

Anita had grown up in the working-class suburb of Blacktown, in the heart of Sydney’s western suburbs and just a short drive from Mount Druitt. She was raised in a loving family environment. She had a younger sister, Kathryn, born five years after her. Their mother and father, Grace and Garry Lynch, provided both girls with every support and undying affection. Grace was a registered nurse, and although she was in semi-retirement, she continued to do the odd shift at the local hospital. Garry was a graphic artist who had worked with the Royal Australian Navy until he had retired some years before. The family enjoyed holidays together, boating on the Nepean River.

Anita was a very popular student and was in the best academic group at her local high school. In her final year she received good marks but had yet to determine what she wanted to do with her life. Aged 20, she was encouraged to enter a Miss Australia beauty quest by a family friend. Anita was convinced that the pageant was not simply a beauty contest: it was an opportunity to raise money for the Spastic Centre. When she agreed to enter herself, her family threw their support behind her and was regularly seen in the local area, selling raffle tickets and raising funds for people with intellectual disabilities. The Lynch family managed to raise $10,000, and Anita, with her dark hair, broad smile, almond-shaped eyes and infectious laughter, was crowned Miss Western Suburbs Charity Queen. The then-premier, Neville Wran, was present at the pageant and was photographed congratulating Anita on her success.

While Anita briefly enjoyed the attention the pageant win had given her, it was clear to her family that she wanted more from life than a career in which she lived by her appearance. She wanted to pursue a career in which she could help people. She chose to enrol in nursing and began her training at Sydney Hospital. While she trained at the hospital, she met and fell in love with John Cobby, who also had his sights set on becoming a nurse. John was three years older than Anita but the two seemed to be a perfect fit. Within weeks of their meeting, they fell in love. The romance blossomed, and Anita and John were married in a church ceremony in March 1982.

The happy couple were the envy of their friends. They shared interests in music and sports and studied together. With their nursing training completed and still in their youth, they went on an extended overseas working holiday. They spent the next two years travelling around the world, stopping only to live and work in Coffs Harbour on the north coast of New South Wales. They returned to Sydney in 1985.

Anita and John’s marriage fell apart shortly afterwards. They maintained their dignity throughout this difficult time. And while the couple remained close friends and communicated regularly by telephone, they were unable to reconcile their differences.

Heartbroken, Anita went back to the family home in Blacktown to live. With her experience and qualifications she had no difficulty finding work. She was offered a position back at her old alma mater, Sydney Hospital, and she quickly accepted it. She sought to overcome her personal problems by working long shifts at the hospital. When she did socialise, she would go to the movies with work colleagues. When she returned home by train from the city to Blacktown Railway Station, she would give her father a call and he would come to pick her up. Her father had told her that, no matter what time of day or night, he would always be happy to collect her from the station and spare her the long walk home.

• • •

Anita had finished a shift at the hospital at 5.30 p.m. on Sunday, 2 February 1986. She decided to go with two of her friends and work colleagues to grab a bite at a Lebanese restaurant in Redfern. Her two friends, Lyn Bradshaw and Elaine Bray, accompanied her to the restaurant. They had all been friends since their days as nursing students and enjoyed each other’s company. Working together in the wards at Sydney Hospital had made them even closer friends. They shared a couple of bottles of wine and after their meal, Lyn dropped Anita at Central Station to catch the train home. Anita could have stayed the night at Lyn’s home if she had wanted to, but she told Lyn and Elaine that she wanted to go home. They saw Anita walk up the ramp to the busy railway station. They would never see their friend again.

Anita did not contact her father on that night. Garry Lynch would have happily jumped in his car for the short drive to the railway station. He had always told his daughter that she should feel free to call at any time. He knew that she was responsible and could take care of herself in most situations, but he preferred collecting her from the station. He would feel at ease knowing that his daughter was safe. It became a ritual. Anita would call him from the station, and within minutes, he would be in his car and on his way to collect her. But this night he did not receive a call. It appears that Anita decided that she did not want to bother her father. She stepped off the railway platform and onto the darkened streets. As it was a Sunday night, the streets were quiet.

Garry Lynch thought that his daughter might have stayed with friends that night. Sometimes, she did. After a long shift at the hospital, she might stay with one of her workmates, returning to the hospital the following day to commence another long shift. Garry was not worried that he had not heard from his daughter on the evening of 2 February.

The following day, Garry received a telephone call from the duty sister at Sydney Hospital, wondering why Anita had failed to turn up for her shift. When he learned that Anita’s workmates were at work and that they too had not heard from her, his concerns grew. He telephoned his wife. Had she heard from Anita? He contacted Anita’s husband, John, and asked him if he had seen or heard from her. Then he made a series of increasingly desperate phone calls to places Anita may have been. He continued to draw a blank.

By the afternoon Garry and Grace were beside themselves with worry. With John Cobby providing assistance, they checked hospitals and Anita’s long list of friends. Garry reported his daughter missing to the Blacktown Police on the evening of 3 February 1986. A tense atmosphere prevailed at the Lynch home in Blacktown. They waited by the phone for news, any news, of the whereabouts of their daughter.

On Tuesday, 4 February 1986, John Reen contacted police. A farmer with land in Prospect, he had checked his paddocks that morning. John Reen’s farm was only a few minutes drive from Blacktown Railway Station. Reen recalled that he had been awoken by screaming late on Sunday night. While he was walking through the ‘boiler paddock’ – so-named because that was where he kept his older stock – he noticed that the cows were crowding in a strange manner. Later, he saw that the cows had remained in that same odd position, encircling something on the ground concealed by the undergrowth. He went to investigate and discovered a body of a woman. John Reen told police that it looked like she had been murdered.

Police raced to the scene. What they saw would remain indelibly etched in their memories. The woman had been savaged. She had been dragged through a barbed wire fence, causing deep cuts over her body. She had been punched and kicked repeatedly, and had bruising on her face, shoulders, groin, thighs, legs and breasts. Her throat had been cut twice, almost severing her head from her body.

Garry and Grace Lynch had their worst fears confirmed when Detective Sergeant Ian Kennedy and Detective Constable Garry Heskett knocked on their door later that day. When Detective Kennedy showed them Anita’s wedding ring, they knew that police must have found their daughter. Garry accompanied the detectives to the morgue. Sobbing and barely able to stand up, he confirmed the body as Anita’s.

• • •

A taskforce to investigate Anita Cobby’s murder was established at Blacktown Police Station. Detective Sergeant Graham Rosetta and Detective Constable Kevin Raue joined the taskforce. Their knowledge of the local area and the criminals who moved within it would be critical to the success of the investigation. The brutality of the murder and the sight of Anita’s grieving family provided the experienced investigators with a steely resolve. The taskforce would not stop until the perpetrators were safely away under lock and key.

Media reports of the murder of Anita Cobby omitted certain gruesome details. News editors determined that the extent of the barbaric crime would be too much for the general public to take. Journalists, hardened by years of reporting every type of crime, recoiled at the information passed to them by police. One journalist stated:

I have covered a lot of shockers in my time. I thought I could not be shocked anymore. But what I heard and saw about the murder of Anita Cobby will go to the grave with me.

While the public had been spared some of the most grievous outrages of Anita’s murder, their reaction was swift and uncompromising. Polls taken by radio and television networks indicated that, overwhelmingly, the public favoured the reintroduction of the death penalty for the perpetrators of this awful crime. Two days after Anita’s body was found, the New South Wales Government posted a reward of $50,000 for any information that may lead to the conviction of the killers. Within several days, the reward was raised to $100,000.

Due to the apparent random nature of the crime, police had little to go on initially. Anita’s body had been stripped naked, and her clothes were not left at the scene. There was little physical evidence available in John Reen’s old boiler paddock. Scrupulously, the police commenced the long procedure of checking the whereabouts of local criminals, with particular emphasis on sex criminals. Detectives interviewed Garry and Grace Lynch, John Cobby and Anita’s two workmates, Lyn Bradshaw and Elaine Bray. But they still had no direct leads. Had Anita been abducted outside the railway station? At this stage police were unsure.

Several days later, two Blacktown residents, Linda and John McGaughey, came forward and gave police their first break. They told a story of seeing a dark-haired woman being dragged into a car on the night of Sunday, 2 February. They reported that they had seen the woman struggling and screaming. The car she had been dragged into had driven away with its lights off. The woman was still screaming as the car drove off. The two witnesses thought the car was a grey Holden Kingswood.

Linda and John’s brother, Paul, had arrived home shortly afterwards with his girlfriend, Lorraine Busher. Armed with a description of the car, Paul McGaughey and Lorraine had driven around the local area, looking for any sign of the dark-haired girl. They had also driven around Blacktown Station but found nothing. They had then driven around to Reen Road, which Paul knew to be a notorious spot for joy riders. They had seen a parked grey 1970 HJ Holden, but had not examined the vehicle closely as it was not the car Linda and John had told them they had seen earlier that night. Paul and his girlfriend had searched the area for two hours before returning home.

The information provided by the McGaugheys lent support to the theory that Anita had caught the train to Blacktown and had been abducted nearby. A week later, on Sunday, 7 February, police organised a re-enactment of what they understood to be Anita’s movements. Police Constable Debbie Wallace, dressed in the type of clothes Anita had worn on the evening she had disappeared, caught the 9.12 p.m. train from Central Station to Blacktown Station. She got off the train and began the half-hour walk towards the Lynch home. Police watched her every move from a distance in unmarked cars. A number of cars pulled alongside Constable Wallace, and they were interviewed afterwards, but it was determined that these people had nothing to do with Anita’s murder.

Now a week into the investigation, police had few leads and little concrete evidence by which to identify Anita’s killers. The taskforce continued to pursue all avenues of inquiry in an attempt to get a break. They could not understand why Anita had not telephoned her father on the evening of 2 February to request a lift as she often did. Perhaps she had walked from Blacktown Railway Station and hailed a taxi coming past. As a result all taxi drivers who had been in the Blacktown area on 2 February 1986 were interviewed by police. Nothing came of it.

The police grew weary at the tedium of their inquiries, but they remained ever vigilant, knowing that soon they would get a break in the case.

• • •

Two days later an unidentified man approached the taskforce with information. He told police that he was aware that three men had stolen a Holden and sprayed it grey. They had taken the mag wheels from the stolen car and replaced them with standard wheels to avoid detection. The man told police that the three car thieves were John Travers, Michael Murdoch and Les Murphy. All three were known to police and had a reputation for violence. The informant told police that Travers often carried a knife. He was terrified that the information he had given to police may lead to reprisals from Travers and his gang. Clearly, he was terrified of the gang, and of Travers, in particular. Police assured him that they would take all necessary steps to keep the information he had provided confidential.

Travers had already been designated a person of interest by police in the course of their investigation into Anita’s murder. While he had no conviction for sex crimes, he was being sought in relation to the rape of the young woman at Toongabbie eight months earlier. The victim had given police a description of the assailant, adding that he had a tattoo of a teardrop below his left eye. Police in the Mount Druitt and Blacktown area had been searching for Travers for months. But he had gone to Western Australia, and police inquiries had failed to make an arrest. Now they had information telling them that Travers was back in Sydney.

The police started searching Sydney, looking for Travers and his gang. They concentrated on all the gang’s known haunts. With a huge reward on offer, several informants came forward with information indicating where Travers and his gang may be holed up. A huge police contingent executed a raid on a house in Wentworthville, a nearby suburb. Bursting into the modest home, heavily armed detectives arrested Travers and Murdoch. They had been sleeping together in bed. A search of the property revealed a bloodstained knife. Travers told the police that he had used it recently to slaughter a sheep.

Police arrested Les Murphy in a simultaneous raid on a house in Doonside. A search of that property revealed mag wheels and car seat covers belonging to the 1970 HJ Holden car reported stolen several weeks before. Murphy had placed the wheels and the seat covers on his own car.

The police interviewed Travers, Murdoch and Les Murphy at Blacktown Police Station. All three admitted that they had stolen the car but denied any knowledge of the murder of Anita Cobby. In spite of the men’s denials, the police strongly suspected they were responsible for the murder. Now the taskforce had to build a case. They hoped that if they presented Travers and his gang with incontrovertible proof of their involvement in Anita’s murder, then at least one would crack and provide a detailed confession. Members of the taskforce interrogated Travers, Murdoch and Les Murphy in regard to the whereabouts of the stolen vehicle. The men all refused to provide any details and claimed to be unaware of where the vehicle was. Police knew that the vehicle was the most crucial piece of physical evidence and hoped it would provide a detailed bank of forensic evidence directly linking Travers and his gang with Anita’s murder.

Travers was held in custody, pending further inquiries in relation to the rape of the young woman at Toongabbie and numerous other sex offences in the area for which he was a prime suspect. Murdoch and Les Murphy were charged with car theft and released on bail. The police continued to interrogate Travers, but he maintained that he knew nothing about Anita Cobby’s murder. Later, Travers requested to see a visitor and gave police the telephone number of a woman whom he wanted to speak with. Police contacted the woman and questioned her at length about her relationship with Travers.

This woman, who became known as ‘Miss X’, told police that she was terrified of Travers but that Travers had, for some reason, decided to take her into his trust in the past. As a result she found herself being regaled with the most appalling stories of Travers’s crimes. She told police that, eight months earlier, he had told her about the rape of the 17-year-old youth in Western Australia. She said that he had delighted in telling her about the vicious attack and provided every sordid detail. He had even shown her the photographs of Travers and his gang raping, stabbing and bashing the young man. Travers had told her that he wanted to cut the young man’s throat while he was being raped. He had tortured and killed so many animals in his life and with such callous disregard that, now, he wanted to feel what it was like to take a human life. ‘Miss X’ was sickened by Travers’s confessions but did not go to police for fear that he may one day seek revenge.

‘Miss X’ was a former heroin addict. She told that police that she was terrified of Travers and his gang, and initially she was so stricken with fear that she refused to assist police with their inquiries. But, when assured of her safety, she agreed to do what the police asked.

So ‘Miss X’ arrived at the police station armed with a couple of packets of cigarettes for Travers. She was fitted with a recording device and ushered into an interview room where Travers sat waiting. He told her everything, going into minute detail about how he, Murdoch and the three Murphy brothers had abducted Anita Cobby and how they had raped her repeatedly. Travers told ‘Miss X’ that it was he who had cut Anita’s throat in the boiler paddock. ‘Miss X’ was clearly sickened by what Travers had told her. She told the police that Travers seemed to be proud of his role in Anita’s murder.

Meanwhile, Les Murphy and Michael Murdoch had been kept under constant surveillance since their release from police custody two days earlier. After Travers’s discussion with ‘Miss X’, Murdoch was arrested at his mother’s home. Les Murphy was found in a suburban home, hiding underneath the blankets of a bed while two women lay beside him.

True to form, Murdoch and Murphy refused to accept any responsibility for Anita’s murder. They blamed Travers for the crime. They had simply gone along, they said. Travers was the killer. Police told Travers about the statements they had obtained from Les Murphy and Murdoch, pointing the finger directly at him. Travers made a full confession. He gave them all up – Murdoch and Les, Gary and Michael Murphy.

Travers, Murdoch and Les Murphy were all charged with the abduction and murder of Anita Cobby. They appeared at Blacktown Local Court and were remanded in custody. It had been just 22 days since Anita had been murdered. A large group of people gathered outside the courthouse to get a look at the three accused. News of the unspeakable nature of the crime had circulated throughout the community, and there was much talk of the mob taking matters into their own hands. Police were obliged to provide a substantial guard for the trio.

Now the focus of the taskforce turned to Michael and Gary Murphy. Descriptions of the two brothers were circulated throughout the media. It would only be a matter of time before they were behind bars.

The police received information that two men answering the description of Michael and Gary Murphy were living in a townhouse in Glenside, a southern suburb of Sydney. Members of the Tactical Response Group, detectives and uniformed police, as well as the police helicopter, swooped down on the property. They arrested a young woman leaving the townhouse. She told them that the two Murphy brothers had left. The police raided the house in any case. When they marched through the doorway, they found the wanted fugitive, Michael Murphy, calmly watching television. He was arrested without a struggle. Gary Murphy made a futile break for it and ran out the back door, only to be confronted by an army of police. He was so frightened at the prospect of being arrested that he wet his pants. He was photographed being escorted from the Glenside townhouse with urine staining his faded blue jeans.

Both brothers were taken back to Blacktown Police Station and charged with the murder of Anita Cobby. Again, a large crowd of about 2000 people stood outside Blacktown Local Court and hurled abuse at the accused men. And, again, police were on hand in number to prevent the situation from getting out of control.

Travers and his four followers faced committal hearings in July 1986. All five pleaded not guilty, but the committal proceedings were merely a formality. On the basis of the evidence police had obtained, including Travers’s confession, the magistrate determined that all five had a case to answer. They were remanded in custody until their trial commenced in March 1987.

• • •

On 16 March 1987, the crowds spilled onto the streets outside the New South Wales Supreme Court. The public was keen to see Travers and his gang face the music. Within minutes of the trial commencing, Travers changed his plea to guilty. He would throw himself on the mercy of the courts.

Murdoch and the three Murphy brothers continued to plead their innocence. Friends and family of Anita were forced to submit to further injury by sitting through an emotionally exhausting 54-day trial, every minute of which acted as a constant reminder of the torment and violence Anita had suffered.

Then, the unthinkable occurred: Mr Justice Maxwell was forced to abort the trial after the court was made aware that Michael Murphy had been identified in the media as an escaped felon. Mr Justice Maxwell determined that this might be prejudicial to Michael Murphy receiving a fair trial. The jury was dismissed and a new trial date was set down for a week later.

When the trial was properly underway, the jury discovered that it was the statements of the five accused that were most damning. The prosecution would present a raft of forensic and circumstantial evidence linking the five accused to Anita’s murder. But it was the admissions of Travers’s gang that would sway the jury. In the signed statements provided to police, a clear notion of the circumstances of the abduction and subsequent murder of Anita became clear. All five had been directly involved.

Travers and his gang had been drinking at the Doonside Hotel on the afternoon of Sunday, 2 February 1986. Drunk and out of money, they decided to go for a ride in a car that Travers had stolen a week earlier – a 1970 HJ Holden. All five had discussed various illegal methods of obtaining money so they could continue drinking. As they drove along Newton Road, they spotted a woman – Anita Cobby – walking away from them, with her handbag slung over her shoulder.

The gang pulled up alongside Anita, and Travers and Murdoch got out of the car and grabbed her. In spite of her protestations, the men dragged her back to the car and threw her into the back seat. Within seconds of the abduction, the gang ordered Anita to remove her clothes. She refused, and screamed and yelled at her assailants, but they continued relentlessly. Travers and Murdoch started ripping off her clothes and punched her in the face repeatedly. Anita was held hostage in the back seat of the car while they purchased petrol with money stolen from her handbag. After the car left the petrol station, Travers and Murdoch raped Anita at knife point while the three Murphy brothers ransacked her handbag in the front seat.

The car stopped in Reen Road, and Anita was thrown from the vehicle into a deep gutter. Travers and Gary and Les Murphy raped her again. Gary Murphy forced Anita to fellate him. All five men dragged Anita into the boiler paddock. They forced her through the barbed wire fence, causing long, deep cuts all over her body. As Anita screamed for mercy, Mick Murphy raped her while Murdoch forced her to give him oral sex.

After enduring this unspeakable violence and violation, Anita was then sodomised by Les Murphy. Travers raped her once more. Murdoch and Gary Murphy attempted to force Anita to fellate them again, but they were interrupted when Michael Murphy stormed in. He raped, bashed and kicked her in an uncontrollable rampage. Les kicked her several more times in the head. Finally, with their violent urges sated, the five members of the pack simply walked away, leaving Anita barely breathing and now semi-conscious.

The gang went back to the car and had a casual discussion as to what they should do with their victim. Travers made the point that the woman would be able to identify them all as she had heard them refer to each other by name. He considered that the police would be onto them in days. ‘I’m going to go back and kill her,’ Travers said. ‘She’ll never give us up. I’ll slit her throat.’

Murdoch and the three Murphy brothers did not object to Travers’s suggestion. They urged their leader to do the deed. ‘Yeah, she’ll see us all in the shit,’ Murdoch stated. ‘Go on, go back and do it.’

Travers calmly climbed the fence and walked back down to where Anita, still semi-conscious, lay. He pulled her head back, made two deep incisions from ear to ear, and then walked away, leaving Anita Cobby to bleed to death in the boiler paddock. As he walked back to the car, the sadistic Travers ruminated on the enormity of what he had done. It was just like killing one of the animals he had slaughtered, he concluded. Now, covered in Anita’s blood, he looked down at his hands and smiled. He could not wait to get back to the car and brag about what he had done.

According to Murdoch’s statement, Travers got into the back seat of the car and Murdoch asked him what it was like to take a human life. ‘It didn’t feel like nothing,’ Travers told him. ‘I didn’t feel anything at all.’ He provided the gang with vivid details about the murder. They all sat entranced, laughing and asking questions about how their leader had killed the woman. The pack continued joking about their appalling crime until they arrived at Travers’s house where they went inside. Travers was soaked in Anita’s blood and the others carried the signs of their involvement in the murder on their faces and hands. They gathered up Anita’s clothes and belongings from the car and took them into Travers’s backyard. Murdoch set fire to Anita’s clothes in an incinerator. The gang then sat around drinking beer while the fire disposed of the evidence, until Travers went inside to wash up. His mother was lying on the couch. She wondered why he had blood all over him, and he told her he had killed a dog that had tried to attack him. His mother was satisfied with this, and Travers went outside again to join the others. Several days later, Murdoch and Travers took the stolen car to a remote clearing in the bush and set fire to it.

Cowards to the end, Murdoch and the Murphy brothers made unsworn statements from the dock, claiming their innocence. By providing unsworn statements, they could not be cross-examined. Gary Murphy had the temerity to claim that he was not even in the stolen car on the night Anita Cobby was murdered. He had been drinking that day, he said, but he could not remember whom he was with. Michael Murphy acknowledged that he was in the car when Anita was abducted but, he said, he was so appalled by Travers’s and Murdoch’s behaviour that he did not move out of the car, registering his protest in silence. Gary Murphy found religion in the dock and asked God and the jury to believe that he did not have anything at all to do with the rape and murder of Anita Cobby.

• • •

After hearing all the evidence, the members of the jury retired to consider their verdict. They deliberated for nine hours. The jury returned with its verdict on 10 June 1987. Michael Murdoch and Les, Michael and Gary Murphy were all found guilty of the abduction and murder of Anita Cobby. Travers had previously pleaded guilty to his involvement in the matter. Mr Justice Maxwell remanded the gang in custody until 16 June 1987 when he would hand down his sentence.

A packed Supreme Court was hushed when Mr Justice Maxwell sentenced Travers and his gang on 16 June. He stated:

There is no doubt that apart from the humiliation, the degradation and terror inflicted upon this young woman, she was the victim of a prolonged and sadistic physical and sexual assault including repeated sexual assaults, anally, orally and vaginally. … Wild animals are given to pack assaults and killings. … This is one of, if not the most horrifying physical and sexual assaults I have encountered in my 40-odd years associated with the law. The crime is exacerbated by the fact that the victim almost certainly was made aware, in the end, of her pending death.

Throughout the long trial, the prisoners, albeit to a lesser degree in the case of the prisoner Murdoch, showed no signs of remorse or contrition. Instead they were observed to be laughing with one another and frequently were seen to be sniggering behind their hands.

Mr Justice Maxwell handed out life sentences to all five of the gang. He went on:

The circumstances of the murder of Mrs Anita Lorraine Cobby prompt me to recommend that the official files of each prisoner should clearly be marked ‘never to be released'. If the Executive deems it proper in the future to consider their files, then I would echo the advice proffered, in a case in which the facts were not entirely dissimilar, by a former and distinguished Chief Judge at Common Law, that the Executive should grant to the prisoners the same degree of mercy that they bestowed on Anita Lorraine Cobby on the night of 2 February 1986. I do not think the community would expect otherwise.

In May 1989, the High Court found that Leslie Joseph Murphy hadn’t received a fair trial as evidence pertaining to his intellectual capacity had been omitted. In August 1990, he was found guilty of the murder of Anita Cobby for the second time and sentenced to life imprisonment again. His papers were not marked ‘never to be released’ as the September 1989 ‘truth in sentencing’ legislation saw to it that all prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment would stay behind bars forever.

• • •

Travers and his gang have not had a happy time in prison. The prison code of punishing rapists and those who murder young women has been enforced. Every one of Travers’s gang has been attacked and savagely beaten. The gang members have had their opportunity to prove their courage behind bars. Each has failed. They are, after all, cowards.

John Travers was last heard of when he attempted to escape from a New South Wales Corrective Services security van transporting him between prisons. His escape attempt using a cutting implement to get out of the van was foiled when he was spotted by a guard. He was returned to maximum security at Goulburn Jail and remains there with the likes of Ivan Milat for company in the state’s most notorious prison. Murdoch and the Murphy brothers remain incarcerated in maximum-security wings within New South Wales prisons.

John Raymond Travers, Michael Murdoch, Les Murphy, Gary Murphy and Michael Murphy will never be released, no matter what the circumstances.