Name: Hallie Gabrielle KNIGHT
STATES:
My full name is Hallie Gabrielle KNIGHT. I am 15 years old and was born on 30th November. I am making this, my third statement, with my mother present and her name is Sylvia Jean KNIGHT. I now have more details I want to add.
On the second day he came in with another cup of milk. I still hadn’t drunk the first cup and it had grown a skin over the top. He made me start on the weaving he had begun the day before. I did as I was told but I didn’t think about what I was making. I had to keep strong. I imagined myself as an old lady, a mother with my own family, an Olympic rower, a famous documentary film-maker, getting awards, getting married, having Christmas. Christmases. Lots of them. He sat on a chair near the fireplace and watched me take some scraps of fabric out of the basket. I didn’t want to touch the hair. Dead girls’ hair. I asked how he got my photograph. He told me he’d seen me at rowing training early one morning, loading the boats back into the Barrington sheds and then he’d seen our team at the Head of the River. That’s when he got my photo and I guess how he knew about all the other girls in the team, so he could trick me into his car. He even knew I had a sister. I was so scared I’d never see my family again, or school or anything and all I could hear was my breath as I reached into the basket. I started to feel faint and asked if I could lie down but he said we didn’t have that sort of time. He said some other things too, it was all white noise and I didn’t want to look at his flat creepy mask. My stomach was growling. The weaving was about a metre long after a couple of hours and he said I could lie down. I was only allowed to leave the room twice a day to go to the toilet, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The rest of the time I just had to hold on. When I wasn’t weaving I lay on the mattress – shivering and waiting. I knew that when the loom was full, he would kill me. Sometimes I heard voices from another room, but it also could have been a TV. There was definitely music. I was getting weaker.
The days and nights blurred into each other. One morning, after five or six days, he came in and looked at the weaving I’d done so far. I had completely filled the loom and used up all the materials even the gross bits. I had hardly slept. I was finished but I did not care. I was just so weak and cold. My hands had shrunk and were blue with cold. I thought about Mum and Dad, and how they’d have to identify my body. They had probably given up. So had I.
That morning he seemed more agitated. He said he’d seen my family on the TV, asking the public for information. The bastard was so happy with himself, boasting about how little the police knew – how much he’d got away with. It made me sick. He said some guy was making a plea to the public on behalf of my family and he asked who it was. He kept going over to the window and tugging at the blind. I couldn’t work out who would be speaking on behalf of my family. Maybe my cousin, Damian, who Mum and Dad always call, ‘the son we never had’, as a kind of joke. I got a flash of Damian’s face and it made sense that Mum and Dad would have asked him ’cause he works for Channel 9. He got all angry and came up really close and, in this evil voice, asked whether Damian was my boyfriend.
That was when something unlocked in me. I saw Damian’s face again and he was nodding, like, ‘Say yes – say I’m your boyfriend, Hallie. Say it!’ It was like the words that came out of my mouth weren’t mine and didn’t come from me. He kept asking who the young man on the TV was, demanding that I explain. He was red with fury. He pushed his face right up close to mine. His breath smelt like salami. I told him Damian was my boyfriend and, as I said it, I could see Damian’s face smiling at me, saying, ‘Go, Hallie!’ The next thing I knew he was pulling my photo off the wall, grinding it into the floor, screaming, ‘You’re a Bad Apple after all, Hallie. You are a plain-as-day Bad Apple.’ I think he might have even been crying. I mustered all the energy I could and for the first time since I’d been with him, I wasn’t afraid. I stood on the bed and roared from a place so deep that it didn’t feel like me at all. ‘Yes, I’m a Bad Apple. Yes. Yes. Yes. Damian turned me bad and I enjoyed every bit of it. Every last bit, do you hear me, you sick creep.’ He left the room and locked it. I kept on screaming, ‘MOTHER FUCKER!’ I couldn’t stop. Then he burst back in and came at me. He had a syringe in his hand. He plunged it into my thigh and everything went black.
I hereby acknowledge that this statement is true and correct and I make it in the belief that a person making a false statement in the circumstances is liable to the penalties of perjury.
Sylvia Jean KNIGHT as guardian for Hallie Gabrielle KNIGHT
Acknowledgement made and signature witnessed by me at 12.20pm on 9th June at St Kilda Road Police Station, Melbourne.
M BELL
Detective Senior Constable 29861