CHAPTER 8

GRAVES IN GLENEAGLES

In general, serial killers operate in the shadows. Solitary figures, they practise their evil secretively. Their victims are interred in shallow graves or dismembered and disposed of in the quiet of night. Robert K. Ressler, a former FBI profiler and Director of Forensic Behavioral Services International, a Virginia-based consulting company, has studied many serial killers. This, in his opinion, is the profile of a serial killer: the killer is male, white and generally of below-average intelligence. There are few examples of women serial killers.

Husband-and-wife serial killers are even more rare, but there have been some chilling examples. England’s Fred and Rosemary West tortured, raped and murdered 12 victims over a 20-year period, including two of Fred’s young daughters. They buried their victims in the cold ground at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester – a place the media dubbed the ‘House of Horrors’. In 1965, Ian Brady and his live-in lover Myra Hindley were convicted of the murders of five children, whose bodies they had buried on the Saddleworth Moors in northern England.

In Australia there are fewer instances of this bizarre confluence of sadism, sexual perversion and blood lust. But, an instance that few will forget appeared on the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia in 1985. In a plain two-bedroom bungalow, Catherine and David Birnie, a common-law husband and wife, tortured and murdered four young women before Western Australian Police halted their spree. A 16-year-old girl abducted by the Birnies on 9 November 1985 managed to escape from them and alert police, who were already investigating the disappearance of four Perth women in the belief that a serial killer was operating in Perth. When the teenager came forward after her hellish experience, the suspicions of police were confirmed. Heavily armed officers swooped on the Birnie household and quickly arrested Catherine Birnie. Her husband was arrested at work later that same day.

Catherine and David Birnie abducted their victims and drove them to their modest home at 3 Moorhouse Street near the Fremantle docklands, where they then carried out their perverse sexual fantasies. When the couple had had their fill of their victims, they murdered them. Sometimes, they drugged their victims before strangling them. At other times, the pair bludgeoned them with an axe or stabbed them in frenzied attacks. David Birnie had an extraordinary sexual appetite, which included a taste for bondage and sodomy. With Catherine as a willing partner, his perversions led them to prey on young women who were forced to endure acts of sexual depravity.

In the spring of 1986, over a 27-day period, four women disappeared from Perth. Their bodies were later found in shallow graves when police caught up with the Birnies. Twenty-two-year-old Mary Frances Neilson, 15-year-old Susannah Candy, 31-year-old Noelene Patterson and 21-year-old Denise Karen Brown lost their lives at the hands of the couple. Their final hours were spent in terror as the sadist David Birnie repeatedly raped them, his partner at his side urging him on. When the pair showed police the graves, David remarked, ‘What a pointless loss of young life.’

• • •

David John Birnie was born in 1950 in the inner-city Perth suburb of Subiaco. He was the eldest of six children. His family was impoverished, and what little money was available was usually spent on his parents’ desire for alcohol. As a result, from time to time, Birnie and his brothers and sisters were placed in foster homes or in government institutions when authorities considered that their parents could not care for them properly.

Not long after Birnie’s 12th birthday, he was separated from his siblings and placed in a foster home. By this time he had already come to the attention of police and the courts for petty crime, mainly stealing offences. The die was cast for Birnie at this early age. He was on the way to becoming a recidivist criminal, periodically moving from court to prison, and back into the community. Then he would commit further crimes, and the cycle would begin again. But no one suspected that the sickly, pale and frail youth would graduate to murder.

Catherine Birnie was born on 31 May 1951. Before she reached her first birthday her mother died, and so Catherine spent her formative years travelling between the home of her father, who took up residence in South Africa, and the home of her grandparents, who lived in Perth. Her grandparents were impossibly strict and would not permit Catherine to play with other children. She was a lonely little girl, without a mother’s love and desperate for affection.

In 1964, a callow youth moved in next door to her grandparents’ home. Catherine immediately took a liking to him. The slim young man was working as an apprentice jockey, and he offered Catherine the hope of some love in her life. He introduced himself as David Birnie. The two became lovers when Catherine was just 14 years old. Thus began Catherine’s obsessive dependency on David Birnie. But Birnie moved away from the doting Catherine to continue training to become a jockey under the tutelage of trainer Eric Parnham. According to Parnham, Birnie showed plenty of promise as a jockey and could have become a good one if he had stuck at it. But David Birnie was incapable of applying himself to anything else but crime. Parnham was forced to sack his young apprentice when he discovered that Birnie had bashed and robbed an elderly man who owned a boarding house where Birnie had stayed.

Now, without prospects for gainful employment, David Birnie turned to a life of crime. He had found an ally in Catherine and took the young woman with him. Catherine was a willing accomplice in his crimes. She loved Birnie and he knew there was nothing she would not do for him. She proved this repeatedly, perpetrating crimes with her lover. Such was her obsession with Birnie that she would one day willingly commit murder at his urging.

On 11 July 1969, David and Catherine pleaded guilty in a Perth Magistrate’s Court to 11 charges of breaking, entering and stealing. Court records show that the pair had stolen blowtorches and other oxyacetylene equipment and used them in a futile effort to open a safe at a suburban drive-in movie theatre. With his already prodigious criminal record, David Birnie was sent to prison for nine months. Catherine, who was pregnant, escaped a custodial sentence and was placed on probation. Less than a month later, David and Catherine were ordered to stand trial in the Supreme Court on eight further charges of breaking, entering and stealing. The judge handed down a three-year sentence to David and Catherine had her probation period extended by four years.

On 21 June 1970, David Birnie escaped from prison. On the run, his first port of call was Catherine and she did not need to be invited to join him. She was excited at the prospect of joining him; it was an adventure in her miserable existence. Happy at David’s side, she ignored the consequences and the likelihood that she would go to jail if caught. Police caught up with the pair three weeks later and charged them with 53 counts of stealing, breaking and entering, receiving, unlawfully driving motor vehicles and being unlawfully on premises. David was also charged with escaping from custody.

Frighteningly, a police search of their vehicle showed that the pair was driving around with 100 sticks of gelignite, fuses and detonators. Birnie was sentenced to serve a further 30 months in prison. Catherine, who had been testing the courts’ patience for some time, was given her first custodial sentence. Her child, less than three months old, was taken from her and placed in care while she served six months.

When she had served her sentence, Catherine left prison and started to rebuild her broken life. She took her child and went to work as a maid for a family in Fremantle. The son of the family for whom she worked, Donald McLaughlan, fell in love with her, and they married on Catherine’s 21st birthday.

With David Birnie still in prison, his influence over Catherine dissipated and she began to live what appeared to be a normal life. She had six children with Donald. Their first child, a boy named Donald Junior, was killed in a car accident when he was just seven months old. Catherine seemed to take this tragedy in her stride, but as time passed it became apparent that she longed to be with David Birnie. Nevertheless, she remained with McLaughlan for the next 12 years. But, ultimately, their marriage was doomed. Catherine could not cope with the demands of rearing six young children. Her father and uncle also shared their cramped housing commission home in suburban Victoria Park. The house was filthy, and Catherine ignored the children and her duty to them. They were never given enough to eat.

In the midst of this strife, Catherine turned to David Birnie again. She had been seeing him secretly for two years, and Birnie continued to exercise the almost hypnotic power he had over her. In 1985, Catherine simply walked away from her husband, her children and her home and back into the arms of David Birnie. Later that year she changed her name by deed poll to Birnie. Although the pair never married, Catherine became Birnie’s common-law wife.

• • •

David Birnie was heavily into kinky sex and routinely used Catherine as his plaything. He had an enormous pornographic video collection, including numerous movies with bondage and torture as the central themes. He injected cocaine into the tip of his penis and found that he could extend his periods of sexual activity for days on end. His brother James, a convicted paedophile, took up lodgings at the Birnies’ house in Moorhouse Street, Willagee, after his release from prison. He witnessed first-hand his brother’s depravity. ‘He has to have sex four or five times a day,’ James recalled. ‘I saw him use a hypodermic of that stuff you have when they’re going to put stitches in your leg. It makes you numb. He put the needle in his penis, and then had sex. David has had many women. He always has someone.’

David Birnie had Catherine, but that was not enough for him. Increasingly, he spoke of the thrill of abducting and raping young women. He told her that he regularly thought about having sex with women who were bound and gagged while she watched. Ever eager to please her lover, Catherine entertained these sick fantasies. Caught in a vortex of obsession and dependence on David, she became at first a willing accomplice, and then an active participant, in abduction and murder.

Mary Frances Neilson, 22, became the couple’s first victim. On 6 October 1986, Mary had called in to David Birnie’s workplace, an automotive spare parts shop, to enquire about purchasing some new tyres. Birnie told her to go to his Moorhouse Street home later that day. He offered her a bargain price for the tyres but said he would only sell them to her from his home.

Mary was a bright girl who was studying psychology at the University of Western Australia. Her parents were away on an extended holiday in England when she called on David Birnie at the car yard. She was last seen leaving the car yard. Her Chrysler Galant sedan was found six days later in a car park opposite Western Australian police headquarters, dumped there by her killers.

When the unwitting girl arrived at the Birnie house, she was seized at knife point, gagged and tied to a bed. David Birnie repeatedly raped the girl while Catherine watched. Occasionally, Catherine participated too and performed fellatio and analingus on David as he raped the young woman. Mary had seen both Catherine and David throughout the ordeal. There is no doubt that she would have been able to identify them and the house where they lived. David and Catherine knew this. And they realised that she had to die.

The couple drove the young woman to remote bushland at Gleneagles National Park on Perth’s southern fringes. Birnie raped Mary again, then strangled her with a nylon rope attached to a tree branch. When he twisted the tree branch, the rope tightened around her neck. Mary died slowly in front of Birnie’s eyes, then he stabbed her in the chest once. Mary was already dead, but Birnie told Catherine that the stab wound would allow gases and body fluids to escape during the decomposition of the body. David and Catherine dug a shallow grave and placed Mary’s tortured body into it.

• • •

Two weeks later, the Birnies got the urge to commit another murder, and when they saw 15-year-old Susannah Candy hitchhiking along the Stuart Highway in Claremont, they knew they had their second victim.

Susannah was a talented student at Hollywood High School who had a bright future. She lived at home with her parents, two brothers and a sister. Her father was an ophthalmic surgeon. The family lived a happy life in the leafy Perth suburb of Nedlands.

Susannah’s only mistake was getting into the car with Catherine Birnie at the wheel and David sitting next to her. Perhaps she thought that, as the car was driven by a couple, she would be safe. But she was in deep peril. Birnie stuck a knife to her throat and told her not to resist or make a noise. Then they drove back to Moorhouse Street where Susannah was gagged, tied and chained to a bed. Birnie raped Susannah, and afterwards Catherine got into the bed with them and continued the torment. Birnie tried to strangle the young girl, but she struggled and fought so hard that he was forced to defer her murder. He forced tranquillisers into her mouth and made her swallow them. Gradually, the pills took effect and Susannah fell into a deep sleep. She would feel no more pain. Birnie then put a nylon cord around her neck, and implored Catherine to commit murder. Catherine strangled the young girl as her husband watched on. Later she would remark, ‘I didn’t feel a thing. It was like I expected.’

Susannah Candy was buried near the grave of Mary Neilson at Gleneagles National Park.

• • •

On 1 November 1986, Noelene Patterson was having a bad day. She had run out of petrol on her way home from work and was hoping someone might stop and assist her. Stranded on Canning Highway in East Fremantle, the 31-year-old woman looked expectantly at the motorists as they drove by. Maybe someone would be kind enough to give her a lift.

When Catherine and David Birnie pulled up in their car, Noelene gladly accepted the offer of a lift home. The couple seemed friendly enough, and she was relieved that her ordeal at the roadside was over. But, once inside the vehicle, Noelene had a knife thrust up against her and her hands and legs tied. She was driven to Moorhouse Street where she was taken inside the Birnies’ house, gagged and secured by Birnie with chains and ropes to a bed.

Noelene Patterson was a beautiful woman. A former flight attendant, she had worked as a hostess on Alan Bond’s private jet. Sophisticated and charming, she was a popular member of staff at Nedlands Golf Club, where she had been working for the past year.

David Birnie was captivated by Noelene and raped her repeatedly throughout the night without any intention of killing her just yet. Meanwhile Catherine was enraged with jealousy. She feared that Birnie was falling for his latest victim. She implored him to kill Noelene but he refused. He kept her tied to the bed for three days, raping her at will. Finally, Catherine held a knife to her own heart and threatened to commit suicide. Birnie knew then that Noelene had to die.

Birnie forced sleeping pills into Noelene’s mouth and made her swallow them. He strangled her while Catherine watched. Later that evening, they took Noelene’s body to the forest and buried it along with the others.

• • •

Four days later, the Birnies abducted 21-year-old Denise Karen Brown. Denise had been waiting for a bus on Sterling Highway in Fremantle. She was a trusting girl who enjoyed life. A computer operator, she shared a flat in Nedlands with her boyfriend and another couple. She accepted a lift from the Birnies without hesitation. Again, it would seem that Denise felt safe in the company of another woman. She was taken to Moorhouse Street at knife point. Once inside the Birnies’ house, she was chained to a bed and raped. The next day the Birnies drove her to north of the city where they knew they could bury her undisturbed in a remote pine plantation.

On the way to the plantation that afternoon, the Birnies attempted to abduct another girl. Later, the 19-year-old girl told police how she had been approached by the Birnies in their car while she was walking along Pinjara Road, Wanneroo. She had seen a man driving with a woman in the passenger seat. She had looked into the back seat of the car and seen what she thought was a child slumped over. She now realises that this was Denise Brown.

The young woman had instinctively felt that something was wrong and could not be coaxed into the car. She said:

I felt uneasy. I didn’t recognise the car. There was a man driving and a woman in the front seat of the car. The man kept looking down, not looking at me and the woman was drinking a can of UDL rum and coke. I thought the fact that she was drinking at that time of the day was strange. He didn’t look at me the whole time. It was the woman who did all the talking. She asked me if I needed a lift anywhere. I said, ‘No. I only live up the road.'

They continued to sit there and I looked into the back seat where I saw a small person with short brown hair lying across the seat. The person was in a sleeping position and from the haircut, looked like a boy but for some reason I got the feeling it was a girl. I told them again that I did not want a lift because walking was good exercise.

The man looked up for the first time and gazed at me before looking away again. By this time more cars had appeared and I started to walk away but they continued to sit in the car. Finally the car started and did another U-turn and drove up Pinjara Road towards the pine plantation. It wasn’t until I saw a really good photo of Catherine Birnie that I realised who they were. Somebody must have been looking after me that day.

The Birnies drove on to Gnangara Pine Plantation. They dragged Denise from the car, and Birnie raped her once more, then plunged a knife into her neck while he raped her. Catherine urged her husband to stab Denise again and produced a bigger knife for him to use. He stabbed the young woman repeatedly in the neck and chest. By this time she had lost consciousness but was still alive.

The couple prepared Denise’s grave, placed her into it, then began covering the body when, suddenly, she regained consciousness and sat up. Birnie hit her in the back of the head with the blunt edge of an axe. Denise sat up again, but this time Birnie turned the axe around and hit her with all the force he could muster. Denise was finally dead. The Birnies buried the body and left the scene.

• • •

Five days after the murder of Denise Brown, the Birnies abducted a 16-year-old girl. Held at knife point she was driven to Moorhouse Street, then taken into the Birnies’ house and chained to a bed. Birnie raped her repeatedly.

The following day, Birnie left the house, leaving the young girl with Catherine. She unchained her, got her off the bed and insisted that she telephone her parents to tell them she was all right. While doing so, she made a mental note of the Birnies’ telephone number. Later that day when Catherine went to the front door to speak to a caller, the girl escaped from the bedroom window. Half-naked and severely distressed, she ran to a nearby shopping centre. She was then driven to Palmyra Police Station to tell police her astonishing tale. She provided a full description of her assailants, along with their address and telephone number.

Heavily armed police descended on the Moorhouse Street address and arrested Catherine. Birnie was arrested later that day at the spare parts shop where he worked.

The police had been aware of the disappearances of the four women over the past month. As police had no reason to believe the women could just disappear, they regarded their disappearances as highly suspicious. Detective Sergeant Paul Ferguson had already theorised that the four women were victims of a serial killer. He was further troubled to learn that two of the women had contacted friends and relatives to assure them that they were all right. Two letters from Susannah Candy had been posted to her parents from a Fremantle post office. Both letters urged her parents not to worry about her and told them that she would be home soon. Denise Brown had phoned a girlfriend the day after she had disappeared to assure her that she was all right. There had been no further communication from any of the missing women.

When Detective Sergeant Ferguson and his colleague Detective Vince Katich learned that the 16-year-old girl abducted and imprisoned at the Moorhouse Street address had been forced to phone her parents and assure them that she was fine, they suspected that Catherine and David Birnie were responsible for the disappearances of the four women.

Police interrogated Catherine and David Birnie for hours at police headquarters. The Birnies maintained that the young girl had gone to their home willingly. David Birnie acknowledged that he had had sex with the girl, but he maintained that she had consented. Police conducted a thorough search of the Birnies’ house and established that the girl had been there. But, they could not prove that she had been abducted and raped by the Birnies. Detective Sergeant Ferguson knew that he needed a confession. He thought that Catherine might crack under intense questioning, but she persisted in the story that the girl had gone to the house of her own volition. After hours of interrogation, Ferguson tried to bluff David Birnie. He got up and said, ‘It’s getting dark. Let’s go and dig them up.’

Birnie rose to the bait. ‘Okay,’ he replied. ‘There’s four of them.’

When Catherine learned of her husband’s confession, she too dropped her defences. The Birnies agreed to direct police to the site of the graves. The convoy of forensic vans and police cars travelled north 20 kilometres out of Perth to Gnangara Pine Plantation, off Wanneroo Road, where the body of Denise Brown lay. The police were shocked that neither David nor Catherine showed any remorse as they drove towards the scene. They chatted with the officers, unaware of their disgust. David Birnie identified the rough track he had used to drive through the plantation to the spot where he had raped and murdered Denise Brown.

‘Dig there,’ he told police. Within minutes they discovered Denise’s body. Forensic staff went to work at the scene while the Birnies directed police south of Perth to the Gleneagles National Park on the Albany Highway near Armadale. Birnie directed police into the thick bush, and some metres from a walking trail, he pointed to a mound of loose earth, where 22-year-old Mary Neilson was found shortly afterwards. About ten minutes' walk down the track, Birnie pointed out the shallow grave of 15-year-old Susannah Candy.

Catherine identified the burial site of the third victim, Noelene Patterson, whom she despised. Catherine seemed proud of her role in the killings and delighted in showing police where she and her husband had disposed of the body. She spat on Noelene’s grave, still mindful of her husband’s attraction to the beautiful woman.

• • •

On 12 November 1986, Catherine and David Birnie were brought before a Perth Magistrate’s Court, charged with four counts of wilful murder. Birnie was still dressed in his work clothes: a pair of blue overalls with a pair of old trainers. Catherine was led into the court barefoot, wearing a pair of jeans and a beige shirt. They stood passively in the dock as the charges were read out. They did not enter any pleas, bail was refused and they were both remanded in custody. When Catherine was asked to provide a suitable date for her next hearing she stated: ‘I’ll go when he goes.’ It was exactly as she had lived her life.

David Birnie’s trial commenced on 10 February 1987 in the Perth Supreme Court. Media reports of the murders hinted at the barbarous nature of the Birnies’ crimes. The city of Perth was in shock. A large crowd waited outside the court, and as the prison vans drove past the throng, they chanted for the reintroduction of the death penalty and rocked the vehicles. A huge police presence ensured that the mob remained at bay.

Those in the packed courtroom recall that both Catherine and David Birnie appeared dwarfed by the process. In the refined magnificence of the Supreme Court building the couple seemed not to fit in. Other court observers remarked that they appeared ordinary. It was difficult to believe that these two could have performed the violent crimes for which they stood accused.

The diminutive former apprentice jockey, David Birnie, was led in first by a single police officer. He glanced around the courtroom, blinking, seemingly unsure what the fuss was about. He stood in the dock with his head slightly bowed, awaiting the arrival of the judge. Catherine was then led into the courtroom by a male police officer, with whom she fought as she descended the narrow jarrah stairway. Other officers came to assist and became embroiled in the fight. She spat and swore at the officers until she reached the dock and saw Birnie. At the sight of him, she calmed down and took a seat behind him.

David Birnie pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and one count each of abduction and rape. At least the families of the victims were spared a protracted trial. ‘It’s the least I could do,’ Birnie confided to a police officer. Catherine was not required to enter a plea as she was awaiting a psychiatric report to determine her fitness to stand trial. She appeared in court in her role as supporter of her accused husband. During the proceedings she regularly reached forward from her seat and stroked his hand. After her husband was sentenced, she returned to her feral state and was led from the court, kicking and screaming.

Mr Justice Wallace sentenced Birnie to life imprisonment, the maximum sentence he could hand down. He told the court:

The law is not strong enough to express the community’s horror at this sadistic killer who tortured, raped and murdered four women. In my opinion, David John Birnie is a such a danger to society that he should never be released from prison.

Birnie, who was accustomed to dominating women, stood shaking in the dock. The door had just closed on his freedom. According to Mr Justice Wallace, Birnie had forever disqualified himself from participating in society. He was then taken from the court to a waiting prison van. He provocatively blew a kiss to the crowd, at which point all available police outside the court had to struggle to contain the crowd.

Catherine was determined fit to stand trial, and faced the court on 3 March 1987. The psychiatric report declared that she was unable to resist involving herself in Birnie’s crimes. Her love for him was such that she would do anything for him, no matter how grotesque. As she told police after her arrest: ‘I was prepared to follow him to the end of the earth and do anything to see that his desires were satisfied.’ The psychiatrist’s report stated that this was ‘the worst case of personality dependence I have seen in my career’. In the courtroom it was Birnie’s turn to provide emotional support. Throughout the hearing the two chatted quietly together and smiled while the court heard the details of their appalling crimes. Occasionally, Catherine would gently massage Birnie’s arms and shoulders. It appeared that the Birnies were transfixed by each other and content for the court’s proceedings go on around them.

Catherine offered no defence for her role in the abduction and murder of the four women. It is possible that her action in unchaining the 16-year-old girl abducted by them on 9 November 1985, thereby enabling her to escape from their house, which subsequently led to their capture, was a calculated attempt on her part to stop the killing. After she was arrested she had told police:

I think I must have come to a decision sooner or later (that) there had to be an end to the rampage. I had reached the stage when I didn’t know what to do. I suppose I came to a decision that I was prepared to give her (the 16-year-old girl) a chance.

I knew that it was a foregone conclusion that David would kill her and probably do it that night. I was just fed up with the killings. I thought if something did not happen soon, it would simply go on and on and never end. Deep and dark in the back of my mind was yet another fear. I had great fear that I would have to look at another killing like that of Denise Brown, the girl he murdered with an axe. I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

In the back of my mind I had come to the position where I really did not care if the girl escaped or not. When I found out that the girl had escaped, I felt a twinge of terror run down my spine.

I thought to myself, ‘David will be furious. What shall I tell him?'

It took four vicious murders for Catherine Birnie to reach the conclusion that she did not want to kill anymore.

Mr Justice Wallace sentenced Catherine to life imprisonment. ‘In my opinion,’ he told her, ‘You should never be released to be with David Birnie.’ Taken from the courtroom, she turned to take a last look at the man who had held such power over her.

• • •

According to Western Australian law, Catherine and David Birnie were eligible for parole 20 years after they were first sentenced. At the time the two were sentenced, Mr Justice Wallace was unable to mark their files ‘never to be released’.

Catherine Birnie’s love for Birnie remained undiminished. She sent thousands of letters to him in prison and he responded just as prodigiously. They sought permission to marry, but the authorities wouldn’t allow it. Requests for contact visits and telephone calls were similarly been denied. Perhaps this is the most appropriate sentence that could have been handed out to the Birnies: that they would never see each other again.

David Birnie was not well received by his fellow inmates at Casuarina Prison’s maximum security division. He felt the wrath of his fellow inmates on numerous occasions. The convicts’ code that rapists and child killers will invariably be subjected to acts of intimidation and violence was enforced on Birnie. He was bashed on many occasions. He briefly saw the light of day in 1993 when police escorted him around the suburbs of Perth in the hope that he would confess to other murders. To this day police believe that Birnie may have killed on other occasions. He made no admissions and was swiftly returned to his prison cell. David Birnie was found dead in his cell on 7 October 2005. He had been due to appear in court for the rape of a fellow prisoner. He committed suicide by hanging.

Catherine has had her trials behind bars. Memories may be all she has left. On 22 January 2000, Donald McLaughlin, her first husband and the father of six of her children, died suddenly, aged 59, in Busselton, a country town 225 kilometres south of Perth. She sought special leave to attend the funeral, but the application was refused outright. The then Western Australian premier, Richard Court, declared:

As far as I am concerned the Birnies have forfeited their rights for those type of privileges.

She was also refused leave to attend David Birnie's funeral. Her case was to be reviewed in 2010, but on 7 March 2009, the Western Australian attorney-general, Christian Porter, revoked Catherine Birnie's non-parole period. Her papers were marked ‘never to be released'. In March 2010, her appeal of this decision was turned down by Porter.