10

The Bizarre Case of Ziggy Pohl

Shortly after noon on 9 March 1973, police received a phone call to tell them that 35-year-old German immigrant Siegfried (Ziggy) Pohl had just come home to his tiny two-bedroom flat at 2/30 Booth Street in Queanbeyan, ACT, to find his wife, Joyce, dead on the main bedroom floor.

When the detectives arrived Pohl informed them that he had been home that morning until about 9.30. The last time he saw his wife alive, she was cleaning the kitchen stove as she waved him goodbye. With what little command he had of the English language Pohl told the investigators that when he returned at midday for lunch he observed the following:

• There was a hole on the inside of the front door, which was locked.

• One corner of the blanket on the bed was ‘a little bit dented’.

• His wife’s panties were on the floor in the bedroom. They were wet.

• The gas heater was connected.

• The gas was ‘on’ but was not ignited and there was a slight smell of gas.

• The study door was open.

• The rotisserie motor in the oven was operating.

• Parts of the stove were still in the kitchen as if the deceased had been interrupted in her work of cleaning the kitchen stove.

• The radio was on.

• His wife’s body was lying between the bed and the wall of the bedroom furthest from the bedroom door. He only noticed it when he picked up his wife’s panties and pantyhose and put them on a chair which was in the bedroom near the end of the bed.

• The body was lying full length, face up, its head at the bedhead end, the arms down by its sides, the legs straight and the dress hitched up, exposing the genitals. A shirt was knotted around the neck. He said the body was dressed in the same blouse that his wife had been wearing when he last saw her at 9.30 am.

• The back door was unlocked. The laundry door was open and the laundry was unoccupied.

Ziggy Pohl told the detectives that he lifted his wife’s body from the floor up onto the bed and undid the knotted shirt and removed it. Detectives noted that the panties and pantyhose were intertwined, giving the appearance that they had been pulled off in one movement. On picking them up from the floor the detectives noticed that they were completely wet ‘as if they had been immersed in something’. They examined the spot where Pohl had said he had found them and found no dampness.

There were also a few other things that didn’t add up. The carpet runner in the hallway was pushed back up past the entrance into the bedroom as if a body had been dragged on it. There was no smell of gas in the flat. The bed was in a state of disarray, inconsistent with the description that Pohl had given when he saw it at about noon.

The police asked Ziggy Pohl if he noticed that anything was missing from the flat and he told them that he thought a container of 50-cent coins and one of his watches were missing. The police observed that next to where Pohl said the coins had been taken were other coins and items of jewellery, and in a drawer below was more valuable jewellery. Pohl showed the police the place from where he alleged his watch had been stolen. There was another, more valuable, watch left behind.

At the Queanbeyan Police Station Pohl gave a more detailed account of his arrival home. Again there were inconsistencies with his original story. In the official statement Pohl told police that he had left for work at about 7.40 am. He returned to the flat to pick up some plans at around 9.30 am and that was when he saw his wife cleaning the stove. He left again at about 9.40 am, and during the morning visited premises where he was doing work which included the Queanbeyan Council Offices, a car repairer and a factory.

Pohl said in the statement that he returned a little before noon and described looking for his wife for fifteen or 20 minutes before discovering her body lying beside the bed. He went outside and knocked on the door of Flat 3. Upon getting no response he drove to the nearby house of a neighbour, Mr Carl Meyer, who accompanied him back into the bedroom, made a brief observation of the body, and then, at 12.05 pm called for an ambulance. Then he rang the police.

When an ambulance officer arrived at 12.15 pm, Mr Pohl told him that he thought his wife had just stopped breathing. When first interviewed by police at 12.35 pm Ziggy Pohl told them of the discovery of his dead wife and gave details of his movements that morning which were later confirmed as correct. He said that he had pulled his wife’s skirt down, having found it pulled up over her waist when he first discovered her. He said that he also turned off the rotisserie. Mr Pohl confirmed that the back door was unlocked. He also added that when he picked his wife’s body up from the floor and lay her on the bed it sounded as if she was breathing. He mentioned hearing the girl next door calling out for her dog at the time.

Joyce Pohl’s sister-in-law, Margaret Pohl, who enjoyed an excellent relationship with her brother-in-law and his wife, told police that she had visited the flat at around 11.40 on the morning of the murder and after getting no response at the front door, entered by the rear door, which was open. Having not located Joyce Pohl and finding the study door shut, Margaret Pohl stayed only five minutes. Some of her observations in that short time she was in her brother’s home would prove to be critical.

By eliminating the possibility that a casual intruder had murdered Joyce Pohl – as the flat hadn’t been ransacked and seriously burgled – the police were left to conclude that Ziggy Pohl had killed his wife in the ten-minute period between 9.30 am and 9.40 am, concealed her body and had then gone about his carpentering business to create an alibi.

At around 11.50 am Pohl had come home – not knowing that his sister had been at the flat in the meantime – and created a murder scene by making a hole in the front door to look as if there had been a struggle, disturbed the carpet in the hallway, disturbed the bedclothes on the bed, placed his wife’s completely wet underwear on the bedroom floor or on the chair in the bedroom, placed the gas heater in the hallway, opened the study door, turned on the rotisserie and turned on the gas heater. Armed with their theory and other incriminating circumstantial evidence they had gathered, police took Ziggy Pohl into custody, where he was charged with the murder of his wife and held without bail. The only real problem with the case was that they didn’t have a motive.

At his trial at the Central Criminal Court beginning 28 October 1973, the court heard from defence counsel that Johann Ernst Siegfried Pohl was born in Germany on 2 April 1937. He was one of four children, having two married sisters living in Germany and a brother, Werner, who had come to Australia in 1951. From 1959, for a period of fourteen years, Werner had operated a joinery business in Canberra. Pohl’s father died in 1947. In Germany Ziggy had completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter/joiner/cabinet maker and was fully employed up to the age of 20 when he resigned his employment to come to Australia. He had never come to the notice of police in Germany.

In 1958 Werner Pohl sponsored his younger brother’s immigration to Australia. Werner described his brother as an excellent cabinet maker. After arriving in Australia Ziggy Pohl worked initially for the same firm as his brother – Donald and Hopkins in the ACT – and thereafter for various persons as a carpenter and, finally, in his own business at the time of his wife’s murder.

There is no evidence to indicate that prior to his marriage Ziggy Pohl had any serious romantic attachments. His English was very poor and he seemed hardly the romantic type. He had, however, corresponded with a number of overseas penpals and in 1971 he travelled to Hong Kong where he met his future wife, Kum Yee, and her family for the first time. Ziggy eventually brought Kum Yee back to Australia with him and they were married on 1 November 1971.

For a short period prior to their marriage, Kum Yee occupied Flat 1, 30 Booth Street and upon their marriage she and Pohl occupied Flat 2. The new Mrs Pohl, who went by the name of Joyce, worked with Lumleys, an insurance broker in Civic in the ACT and remained employed there up until her death. Everyone who knew the couple said that their sixteen-month marriage appeared to be a happy one.

For their first witness the Crown called upon Mrs Margaret Pohl to tell in detail of her visit to the Pohl’s flat on the day of the murder. Margaret Pohl told the court that she had taken her son to hospital for surgery for appendicitis and later that morning she called to see Joyce because her son was fond of her and she wanted to tell her what had happened. She said she arrived at the Booth Street address at about 11.45 am and saw that the garden had been watered and the clogs that Joyce usually wore were on the patio and were wet. The front door was closed. She knocked on it and, on receiving no answer, looked through the kitchen window where she saw dishes in the sink and heard the radio playing.

She went to the back of the building and entered the flat through the back door, which was unlocked. She walked through the bedroom, into the hall and towards the front door. She looked at the front door and into the kitchen. In the kitchen sink she saw dishes or parts of the stove and noticed that the stove door was half open. She did not hear the rotisserie operating. She was adamant that it was not on. If, contrary to her assertion, the rotisserie was operating, then the only explanation she had for not hearing it as Ziggy Pohl claimed that he had just a few minutes later, was that the noise of the radio had drowned it out.

The Crown pointed out that to have made these observations Margaret Pohl would have had to have been not more than a metre from the front door. She said that she definitely saw no damage to the front door. She was asked: ‘In the course of going through the place did you notice any marking inside the front door at all as is shown here on this exhibit [the damaged door] in court?’ She said in reply, ‘None. I can say 99 per cent that the mark in the front door was not there at that time. I remember because I specifically looked at the door, if it was open or not, because I thought she went out the front and I would have noticed that hole for certain if it would have been there when I was there.’

Margaret Pohl went on to tell the court that in the hallway, covering part of the floor, was a small carpet runner. ‘It was lying on the floor the way it should be, straight,’ she said. She said she did not see any gas heater in the hallway, the bathroom door was open and the study door was closed. Margaret Pohl told the court that she looked at the bed to see if Joyce Pohl was in it. The bed was covered with an eiderdown which tended to stay hollow if anything was laid upon it but she noticed the bed was ‘straight and made’. She saw no panties or pantyhose on the floor in the bedroom and was emphatic if they had been there she would have seen them. Joyce Pohl, she said, was normally very clean and tidy. She noticed no unusual odour. She did not see the body. When asked how long she was in the flat, Margaret Pohl replied, ‘Could not have been more than five minutes because I was more or less running all the time; I was in a hurry.’

The Crown was quick to summarise Mrs Pohl’s observations during her flying visit:

• There was no hole on the inside of the front door.

• The carpet was straight.

• The bed was made.

• There was no underwear on the floor.

• She did not notice a gas heater in the hall.

• There was no unusual odour in the flat.

• The study door was closed.

• She did not hear the rotisserie motor.

• The back door was unlocked.

• The radio was on.

• The stove was in much the condition as described by Pohl.

Margaret Pohl’s damning observations weren’t lost on the jury as they compared them with Ziggy Pohl’s description of the murder scene when he arrived home to allegedly find his wife murdered.

A Mrs McGann told the court that she lived on the corner of Booth and High Streets. On the day of the murder, at about 11.55 am, she was driving down Booth Street and saw a man who she later identified as Mr Pohl walking from the side of Flat 3 towards the trees at the front. She stopped her car because of a pothole and looked up at Pohl. He was staring at her and she stared back. She was quite certain he was walking and not running.

Carl Meyer was a neighbour of the Pohls who lived in nearby Atkinson Street and had a key to Flat 1 in the Pohl’s building. He told the court that on the day of the murder Ziggy Pohl approached him and appeared to be upset and said, ‘Something has happened to Joyce and I want a doctor or an ambulance.’ Mr Meyer asked to see the deceased and on seeing her noticed her face was discoloured. Meyer said, ‘It seemed to me that her lips moved slightly … as though she was gasping for breath. Well, just a very slight movement of the lips.’

Mr Meyer made a call for the ambulance from Flat 1 at 12.05 pm. As he was doing so he was approached by Pohl who said words to the effect of ‘Joyce has stopped breathing’. At 12.11 pm Mr Meyer made another call to the ambulance which arrived shortly after.

Government medical officer, Dr Arthur Gillespie, told the court that he examined the body of Joyce Pohl at the murder scene at 12.45 pm and concluded that the victim had died of strangulation carried out by means of a ligature of wide material wrapped around the neck and tightened by a hand being placed between the neck and turned, thereby applying further pressure. Dr Gillespie said that he thought that death had occurred approximately three hours before the time he first saw the body, making the time of death at around 9.45 am, almost the exact time that Ziggy Pohl had said that he had returned to the flat. When asked by defence counsel what he meant by approximately Dr Gillespie replied that he would allow margins of tolerance of ‘I think an hour, about an hour, an hour more than that, maybe a little earlier, it is only an estimate.’ The doctor went on to say that he thought the most likely period of time was a minimum of three hours, possibly up to four from the time he saw the body.

Arguably the most damning piece of evidence against Ziggy Pohl was a letter dated 27 February, about ten days before the murder, written by Joyce Pohl but unposted. The letter read in part:

 

Siegfried is fine and has put on a lot of weight. Everyone says he is looking fine and fit. As for me – I am growing thinner by the day. Life here is very hard for me. Where you have to do everything for yourself. At the moment I have a headache – I don’t know what’s the cause for it – may be too much sun as we went bushwalking on Sunday.

I am not so happy here – and that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been writing to anyone. So don’t be surprised if you find me back home or left Australia for some other place.

I just don’t know what to do. I am all mixed up. I wish I had someone to talk to who could give me some advice. I don’t think marriage is good for me – oh mummy – wish you were here with me and could offer me some advice. Tell me what shall I do – come home or make a go of it. Mummy I am only thinking of you (not of myself) what will people say and what you will have to bear up if I did come home.

The main problem is Siegfried doesn’t want me to work – but he doesn’t understand – what I am going to do all day at home by myself – that’s beside the point – he can’t afford keeping me at home – everything here is so expensive.

Oh mummy – what shall I do. Stop working but I am scared. What happens if I fall short of money – I have nobody to turn to – Siegfried is a hopeless case sometimes he has no money on him. Sometimes I have to give him some. All I can’t understand is why he doesn’t want me to work. I don’t know how long I can continue like this – my health isn’t so good.

 

The Crown suggested to the jury that the letter provided sufficient motive for Ziggy Pohl to murder his wife rather than have her leave him. The court heard that the day after the murder Ziggy Pohl had spoken to a Mrs Curtis, the wife of a local real estate agent for whom he was doing some work, and told her he thought there was something strange when he came home because his wife was a particularly fussy and clean person and never left anything lying around. He told Mrs Curtis that the bed was the same as when he had left in the morning and suggested the damage to the front door may have been caused by it being pushed up against a chair.

As the case pressed on it was noticeable that the defence offered little or no contradiction to the evidence as it was presented by the Crown and that apart from the usual formalities, no evidence was called on in the defence of Ziggy Pohl. Pohl’s only real contribution to the trial was a brief unsworn statement which made no attempt to deal with the Crown case or explain his conduct on the day of the murder.

In its summing up to the jury, the Crown seemed to have a watertight case – albeit circumstantial. The Crown was quick to point out the following:

• The range of estimated times of death of three to four hours before 12.45 pm given by Dr Gillespie could be narrowed to 9.25 to 9.45 am.

• Ziggy Pohl, by his own admission, had returned to the flat at 9.30 am and remained there for about ten minutes.

• Pohl’s statements to the ambulance officer and to Mr Meyer suggested that his wife had just stopped breathing at about noon, could be considered by the jury to be lies or prevarication.

• He was observed by a neighbour, Mrs McGann, to be walking in an unhurried fashion outside the premises at about noon. His manner could well have been regarded as consistent with someone who knew there was no need for haste. It was also inconsistent with the evidence of his activities on finding the body. The Crown put forward the suggestion that only when Mr Pohl realised that he had been observed that he commenced procedures to have the ambulance called to attend the residence.

• The evidence of gas smelled by Pohl but not by any of the others.

• The letter to the relatives in Hong Kong which could tend to cast doubt on his assertion that the marriage was happy.

• Pohl’s statement that he was in the house fifteen or 20 minutes prior to discovering his wife’s body, given the miniscule size of the flat, could support the available inference from the evidence of Margaret Pohl that he had set up the house in order to establish that there had been an intruder.

• Pohl’s statement that he had pulled his wife’s skirt down to cover her exposed genitals could well have been construed as another attempt to suggest a sexual attack by an intruder.

• The suggestion by Pohl of items missing from the house could have been construed as a fabrication by himself to again suggest an intruder in the premises.

With these thoughts in mind the members of the jury retired to consider their verdict. It didn’t take them long. Johann Ernst Siegfried Pohl was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. When asked if he had anything to say before he was taken back to Long Bay Jail, the kindly German with the sad eyes who had come to Australia to start a new life told the court in broken English that he did not kill his wife and that he had foolishly believed all the while that if he told the truth then he would be set free. Now he had little faith in Australian justice. He appealed his conviction and it was dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 2 August 1974. He was advised not to seek special leave to appeal against his conviction to the High Court of Australia. Ziggy would serve his time.

During his imprisonment Ziggy Pohl undertook various courses in engineering by correspondence and worked in various prison joinery shops. His talents as a cabinet maker were quickly recognised and he was frequently deployed outside prison working on community projects. Other than his brother he had few visitors in jail. He was regarded by prison authorities as a model prisoner. At all times during his period of imprisonment he maintained his innocence.

Ziggy’s continuous protestations of innocence were regarded initially by probation and parole officers as a factor inhibiting his rehabilitation. He was described by a probation and parole officer in 1981 as having ‘little faith in the justice system. He does not seem actively bitter, but rather resigned to the fact that he was charged, as he says, falsely.’

Ziggy Pohl was released on license on 25 February 1983, almost ten years to the day after the murder of his wife. He strictly observed the conditions of his license. He maintained his innocence to anyone who would listen. No one did. No one cared.

•••

On 8 September 1990, a man walked up to the desk at the Quenbeyan Police Station and asked the officer behind the counter if he could have a word with the most senior policeman. The man appeared to be very nervous and was shaking noticeably.

‘Well, I’m Sergeant Pulsford,’ the officer replied, ‘and for the time being I’m the most senior officer present. Just come through that doorway and I’ll see you on the other side.’ The man was then taken into the sergeant’s office and given a seat. He gave his name as Roger Graham Bawden. When asked he said he was 40. The questioning continued.

Sergeant Pulsford: ‘What do you want to tell me?’

Bawden: ‘Sergeant, I killed a woman here in Queanbeyan sixteen or seventeen years ago. I’ve been living with it all this time and it’s been hell. I’ve been having nightmares every night and I’ve come up from Melbourne to confess to the murder.’

Sergeant Pulsford: ‘What was the name of the woman you say you murdered?’

Bawden: ‘Pohl. She was Asian.’

Sergeant Pulsford: ‘Did you know this woman?’

Bawden: ‘Never met her before that day.’

Sergeant Pulsford: ‘How did you know her surname?’

Bawden: ‘It was in the papers the next few days.’

Graham Bawden told Sergeant Pulsford that on the day of the murder he had left his home in the nearby suburb of Cook to go the Fairbairn RAAF base where he worked as a cook. He was married to his first wife at the time. He was anxious and depressed due to the fact that he had no money because he had lost everything he had gambling.

Bawden said that at some time in the morning he formed an intention to break into a house and commit a robbery. He went to Booth Street, Queanbeyan, not knowing why, and, whilst driving past, saw an Asian lady in the garden. He said that as best he could recall the time was around 9 to 10.30 am. He parked his car around the corner in Atkinson Street and walked around to Booth Street. Using the pretext that he was with the Labor Party and was making some inquiries in the area, he struck up a brief conversation with the lady.

Bawden said that he returned to his car, waited for a short period and then went back to the house, but the lady was nowhere in sight. He went to the front door of the flat and knocked and when she answered he forced his way in. At the same time he slammed the door shut, having noticed a dog barking and bounding across the road to the front door.

Bawden said that the struggles with the woman continued until he forced her to the floor of the loungeroom and, using a shirt, he strangled her by twisting it around her throat. He then dragged the dead woman along the hallway into the bathroom. From there, he dragged or carried her body into the bedroom where he dropped it on the bed. He then placed the dead woman’s body on the floor in the bedroom between the bedroom wall and the bed in an attempt to conceal it. He said that he tried to push the body half under the bed. He was feeling panicky and desperate and made a half-hearted attempt at robbery, taking a container of 50-cent coins from a cupboard and a woman’s watch from a shelf on a wall divider at the end of the hall. He said that he turned on the gas as he left the premises.

After Graham Bawden told them many things that only the killer would know, police had to admit that they had made a mistake and that an innocent man had spent ten years of his life in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Everything that Ziggy Pohl had told them was exactly the way that it was yet it had been misconstrued by scientists, relatives, police and circumstances into making him a murderer.

How the hole on the inside of the front door ever got there was never explained, though it can be assumed that it was incurred during the initial struggle between Bawden and Mrs Pohl and that the witness Margaret Pohl, who had no intention other than of telling the truth, simply failed to see it. Everything else is explained by Ziggy Pohl’s observations. In other words, it was exactly as Ziggy said it was.

Ziggy Pohl was eventually pardoned and compensated with an undisclosed sum, believed to be around a million dollars. But there is no amount of money in the world that could compensate him for what he lost. First the woman he loved and then ten years of his freedom, sitting in a cell year in and year out wondering who really killed his wife and why Australian justice had treated him so unfairly when all he was guilty of was telling the truth. In a cruel irony, Roger Graham Bawden pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to only eight years in prison, two years less than the innocent Ziggy Pohl had served. Roger Bawden is now a free man. Ziggy Pohl lives in Sydney’s southern suburbs. He has never remarried.