WEBVTT - Three black widows and one a shade of grey 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:04.480 It didn't should the window, didn't should picture on the wall, 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:07.200 didn't shod the bed head. It didn't shoot him in 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:11.239 the knee or party's hair, or knock his right or 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:15.040 left arm. About what it did was shoot him extremely dead. 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:21.120 Lorraine was feeding him enough arsenic to kill Farlap. And 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.319 the reason for this is Lorraine I was conducting a 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:30.400 very torrid affair with one of Johnny Moss's workmates. I'm 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:33.919 Andrew Rule. This is Life and Crimes. Today we're going 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:37.040 to talk about a group of people some people call 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:39.239 black widows. Now, I don't know if they're call on. 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:42.279 Black widows because of the black widow spider. 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:46.760 That's the spider that's renowned because the female of the 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:51.600 species eats the male of the species after they reproduce. 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.880 It could be, but anyway, it's the name that everyone understands. 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.480 When we talk about black widows, we're generally talking about 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:04.320 women who may or may not have caused the death 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:10.520 of their husband or other intimate partner. And today we're 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:13.600 going to look at several cases. Three of them were 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:19.119 convicted of unlawful killings and one was not. And we 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:23.280 point that out. Now, the one that attracts our attention. 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:28.600 First up is the interesting case of Margaret Utley. Margaret 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.680 Erica Utley. Like a lot of people in the past, 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.240 she was married young. She married at twenty years old 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.920 to a twenty year old young farmer, a young guy 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:45.840 called Stephen Henry Utley. And Stephen Henry Utley farmed a 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:50.040 block i think growing vegetables, mostly down on the Werribee 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.520 River out on the other side of Weerriby at Tarneq 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.040 now Tarnique these days is one of the newer out 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:02.360 western suburbs, but back in the seventies, eighties nineties it 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:07.520 was very much still a farming district beyond Weeraby and 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:13.880 Stephen Utley was a farmer there and he and his wife, Margaret, they. 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:14.840 Had four kids. 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:19.360 She was known as a hard working, diligent, pretty respectable 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:24.200 sort of woman, and Stephen was known, I think over 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:28.760 time as a hard drinking, probably depressive sort of guy. 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:32.720 And after twenty five years of this it had reached 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:37.440 the stage where Stephen Utley would apparently drink heavily every 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:42.680 night and his only concern was to get his wife 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.200 Margaret to drive him around as if she was a 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.040 taxi driver into Werriby, to various pubs and home again, 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:54.799 and life had become fairly miserable for her and her 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:57.959 four children, who were at this stage quite mature. I 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:00.640 think the youngest one was a secondary school but the 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:05.200 others were young adults. And given they've been married twenty 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.440 five years in the year two thousand, therefore kids ranged 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:12.880 in age from about twenty four down to fifteen something 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:17.600 like that. The last time that Stephen Utley's friends saw 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:23.240 him was at a barbecue on a Sunday night around 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:27.160 whereby somewhere, I think it was Sunday, October the eighth, 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.360 in the year two thousand, so this is only one 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.640 week after the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. That 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:37.600 gives us the era usual thing, he'd been to a barbecue, 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:42.080 got a belly full of grog and went home. Now 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:44.720 no one now knows how he got home. Did he 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.560 take a taxi or did Margaret pick him up as usual, 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:49.400 or did he get a ride with one of his mates. 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:53.320 But the last time his mate's remember seeing him was 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:59.360 that night. Now he vanishes. Margaret tells her friends and 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:03.880 family that Stephen has bolted, that he's left her and 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.000 gone to the Northern Territory, that you know, finally the 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:09.800 straw breaks the camel's back. They've been arguing and fighting. 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:15.120 He's a drunken, a big problem, and he's said, bugger it. 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:17.120 I'm off to the Northern Territory to work on a 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:20.680 cattle station, and I'm going with you, Tom. 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:21.520 Dick or Harry whatever. 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.120 This is the story she tells everybody in the following 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.359 days and weeks that Stephen's left her and he's gone 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:34.680 up north. And it would appear that those closest to 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:40.120 Margaret Utley believe this, or believed it sufficiently not to 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:44.720 question it in any real way. It'd be interesting to 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:49.279 know what her adult children thought, but presumably they were 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:53.080 sort of more on mom's side than dad's side. Apparently, 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.840 Stephen's siblings he has at least two sisters, weren't all that. 0:04:57.880 --> 0:04:58.960 Happy about this. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.920 Stephen's their mother was dead at this stage, so there 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.880 were no sort of parents to look into Stephen's whereabouts, 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:10.919 and Stephen had been a sufficiently loose unit that it 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:14.040 made some sort of sense that he might disappear and 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.839 not be seen for a while. But as time wore on, 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:24.680 the nagging suspicions of relatives, friends, neighbors, drinking buddies started 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:28.800 to become stronger because no one heard a word from him. 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:34.440 No Christmas, no birthdays, no this, no that. And eventually 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:42.200 I think Stephen's sisters probably caused the police to look 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.720 into it. And when they did look into it, they 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:49.640 went and interviewed Margaret utterly, and she said, you know, 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:53.800 he left sometime that week, said he was going to 0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:57.240 the Northern Territory with with his mate, and I haven't 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.400 seen him since. And she stuck to that story, but 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:00.400 she didn't. 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:01.000 It very long. 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.360 The police are pretty good at interviewing. 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:06.160 People, and perhaps they saw that there was a. 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.440 Bit of a chink in her armor, that she wasn't 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.640 as resolute and as defiant as she might be, and 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:16.719 they kept at her and in the end she threw 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:19.440 her hands up and said, now I'll tell you what 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:23.880 really happened. And Margaret Utley's version of what really happened 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:29.080 goes something like this. She says that on two AM, 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:34.440 so this early morning, after midnight of the eleventh of October, 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.960 it's in a sense the Tuesday night, but it's after midnight, 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.080 so it's the next morning. She says that as usual 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:46.159 Stephen stayed up late drinking and was very drunk and 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.400 very aggressive and nasty, and that he came into their 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.880 bedroom or her bedroom, in the dark with a loaded shotgun. 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.120 Now I'm not sure how she knew in the dark 0:06:56.279 --> 0:06:58.560 what he was holding, and whether she knew it was 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:00.719 a loaded shotgun or an empty shop gun or what, 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:01.960 but this. 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:02.440 Is the story. 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:07.880 She says that she was able to grab the shotgun. 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.840 A man handled it away from her husband, who, to 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.520 be fair to her, was not a terribly big man, 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:19.000 and he was a drunk man, so you know, maybe 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.400 she couldn't. She says she wrestled the shotgun from her 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:26.280 husband and that she managed, obviously to reverse it. She 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:28.440 didn't just pull it towards us. She was able to 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:32.320 turn it around and lo and behold, amazingly, it went off, 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:36.040 as sometimes guns seemed to do in these circumstances, they 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.480 just go off by themselves. And it went off by itself, 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:43.360 and amazingly, of all the places that could have shot, 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:45.680 it didn't shot the window, didn't shot the picture on 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.520 the wall, didn't shit the bed head, It didn't shoot 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:52.040 him in the knee or party hair, or knock his 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:55.640 right or left arm about what it did was shoot 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.920 him extremely dead. So it hit him in a vital swat, 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:03.040 if not the head, then fair and square around his heart, 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:08.440 and that killed him. And interestingly, she would later assert 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:12.480 that her two younger children and by this woman, an adult, 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.080 a young adult old enough to drive a car, maybe nineteen, 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.920 and her youngest one who was at high school maybe 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:23.560 fifteen something, that they were asleep in the house at 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:27.400 the time. Now that is amazing, because this is a quiet, 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:33.160 smallish and very quiet farmhouse out on ninety hectares of farmland, 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:38.960 surrounded by other farmland. It's not a suburb. It's farmland 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.400 and pretty quiet and peaceful at night, particularly back in 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.160 that era. And a shotgun, a twelve grade shotgun in 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:53.360 a house is a massive, explosive and deafening raw. It's 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:59.440 a very loud noise, and I think unless the two 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.520 up children had really good earplugs in that night to 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.600 stop them hearing all the crickets that you might hear 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:10.160 on a silent night, it would wake them. But anyway, 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.600 her story is that they were asleep in the house 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:17.200 elsewhere in the house and didn't hear a thing but 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.600 their presence. She would later instruct a lawyer to tell 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.320 a court their presence means that she could not have 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:27.840 premeditated murder because of course her kids were there. So 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:30.840 who would premeditate a murder with a shotgun when your 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:34.240 kids are there? Because they'd hear it, wouldn't they. This 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.160 is very interesting to me. I find it fascinating that 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:41.640 this would happen in this way and at work the 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.880 judge copt it said yep, I'll believe that, and ultimately 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:50.720 a judge would believe her or her defense case, which 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.760 was I think slightly contrived in my view, but anyway, 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:56.120 she was very well advised. 0:09:56.480 --> 0:09:57.800 Her solicitor was. 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:02.480 One of the most shrewd crime lawyers, particularly on that 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:05.000 side of the West Cape Bridge. We won't name him here, 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:09.400 but trust me he's good, and her counsel, her barrister 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:14.200 was mister Phil Dunn, who we have mentioned him many 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:19.839 times in our podcast. He is criminal legal royalty, very 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:24.120 very good at it, and they were able to sell 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:28.320 or tell Margaret Utley's tale in court very well, and 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:33.440 it went so well that Margaret Utly pleaded guilty to manslaughter. 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:39.120 We should point out that previously the police did not 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:44.840 get to talk to Margaret Utly for some years, and 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:48.719 it really wasn't until two thousand and seven that the 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:52.480 going got tough for her, because it took that long, 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:54.960 and we're talking a time of six and a half 0:10:55.000 --> 0:11:00.320 odd years for the suspicions to grow into accusation, and 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.319 the accusations to prompt the police to go and talk 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:07.000 to her. And so for those years Margaret Utley had 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:11.320 basically lived the life of a grass widow. She was 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.840 home on the farm with whichever of her children were 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.600 still there with her, and life went on. And in 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:23.160 that time, you know, those people who knew her, perhaps 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:28.400 apart from Stephen Utley's immediate family, the Utley family, leave 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.760 them out for the minute, but those other people who 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:35.760 knew were neighbors, friends, community people regarded her as a 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:40.440 good citizen, a good woman, kind hearted, hard working, decent 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:44.600 in every way. She formed a relationship with a local 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:48.360 man who I think proposed to her later when she 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.560 was in jail. But she certainly formed a relationship with 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:57.319 this man who already had children from his previous marriage. 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:02.680 And one of the witnesses to Margaret at least good 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:08.880 character was her new partner's ex. Her new partner's X 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:13.040 said I've got no beef with Margaret. She's nice, she's good, 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.120 and when my children go to stay at her place 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.440 with my ex husband, I'm quite happy about it because 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.480 she's really good. And so when it came time for 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.560 the judge, Judge Osborne, to rule how much time she 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:34.120 should serve, he took all of those good references into 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.640 account and said she was a good character, and he 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:42.640 sentenced her to five years for pleading guilty to manslaughter 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:46.240 with a two year minimum, which meant that with the 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:50.320 time she'd already served on remand she actually was in 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.200 jail for less than two years. She went into jail 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.839 in the middle of two thousand and nine and walked 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.960 out of jail a Taran Gower Women's prison up him 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:04.679 Aden in late twenty ten. Not a bad trick if 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.600 you can do it. The interesting thing about Margaret Utley 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.400 is that after she got out of prison, her good 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:15.720 luck got even better. She served, you know, two years 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:21.080 for manslaughter rather than many years for murder. Good And 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:23.920 then it turns out that the property which had been 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:29.920 gifted to her late husband by her mother in law 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:33.720 who was dead, was now controlled effectively by her children 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:38.240 and effectively by herself. So she and her kids had 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.720 inherited ninety hectares at tarant which had just been rezoned 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:48.400 as a new suburb. And so the ninety hectares of 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:53.320 relatively ordinary farmland on which they struggled to make a 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:58.200 living suddenly was real estate that was sold by the foot. 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:02.079 And so that block of farmland was worth anywhere between, 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:05.199 you know, fifteen and twenty one million dollars. So that 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.600 was falling on your feet. And perhaps because of her 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:14.680 millionaire status, million hair status, she hadn't actually got the 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:19.000 millions in her pocket, but she could expect not to 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.440 be too poor in the future. She joined a syndicate 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.320 in racing a race horse. Now, any of you out 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:27.400 there that takes an interest in the gallops and in 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:32.720 punting will have heard of the horse in which Margaret. 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:36.440 Utley had a share. That horse was a very. 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.760 Good sprinter, not a champion of champions, but he was 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.800 one of the better and most durable sprinters in Victoria. 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.720 In fact, he won five races down the straight six 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:52.400 at Flemington. He won over several seasons, and he won 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:56.680 a total of close to nine hundred thousand in state money, 0:14:56.720 --> 0:15:00.560 which means if his owners had been backing him, especially 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:03.760 on those big days at Flemington. They probably grossed a 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:07.520 million dollars out of the horse, which makes that horse 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:12.080 a remarkable success compared with ninety nine and a half 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:15.680 percent of race horses. But it's the name of the 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.200 horse that is the most excellent part about it. Because 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:23.320 Margaret Utley, who was accused by some people of murdering 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:27.040 her husband, was convicted and pleaded guilty to manslaughter of 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:32.120 her husband after becoming a very serious suspect for his death, 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:37.840 that horse was called serious suspect. The spelling is s 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:42.920 I R I us and then suspect, but still when 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:47.640 you say it, it is serious suspect, and his breeding 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:53.600 a leads to that name. He is by the stallion wanted. Now, 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:58.080 Margaret Utley is just one of a handful of people 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:01.120 that we're going to look at black widows. Another one 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.200 that her name has come up over the journey, and 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.960 some listeners might recall it was Lorraine Moss. Now Lorrain 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:12.640 Moss was the Bendigo poisoner, or one of the Bendigo poisoners. 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:17.160 She's not the only Bendigo poisoner. And Lorrain Moss was married, 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:23.120 probably young like Margaret to a bloke called Leonard John Moss, 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:26.880 and he was known always as Johnny Johnny Moss, and 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:31.480 he was a meat worker at Bendigo and they lived 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.840 locally out on the outskirts of Bendigo and one of 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:36.440 the suburbs out there. 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.360 And he used to pack hiss. 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:40.960 Cut lunch in the mornings and go off to work 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:43.480 at the meat works or small goods factory whatever it 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.120 was like that, and they had a couple of kids, 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:48.040 and you know, life went on. They had a holden 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:52.600 and probably a dog all that, and lo and behold 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:59.080 in the early eighties, poor oh Johnny Moss starts to 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:03.240 get sick, and he gets very sick. He gets terrible 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.240 stomach pains, and he loses weight and he's in diabolical trouble. 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:11.119 And he gets taken to hospital and they look at 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:13.880 him and they examine him, and they feed him hospital 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.880 food and all the rest of it. And his ever 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.439 loving wife Lorraine comes in and gives him grapes and stuff. 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.879 And when he's in hospital, he improves, He gradually improves 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:26.879 and he gets a bit better and he goes home 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.639 and he's wanting to go back to work at the meatworks, 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:33.960 and sometimes she would pack his cut lunch to go 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:36.720 to work at the meatworks. One day he didn't feel 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.240 up to eating his ham sandwiches or whatever, and he 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:41.680 gave him to a couple of his mates, who are 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:45.440 always hungry and they like kids at school. The mate 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:48.560 said that the sandwiches and lo and behold the two 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:50.840 mates get crooked. One of them was off work for 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:55.200 months and it didn't kill him, but nearly did. And 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.440 this was an amazing business that these fellows would be sick, 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:03.119 and was very puzzled. And the really strange thing was 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:07.600 that when Johnny Moss came home from hospital to effectively 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:13.320 recuperate at home, suddenly his condition would get worse. He 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:18.280 would go downhill. And the problem was that Lorraine was 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:23.760 feeding him enough arsenic to kill farlap. And the reason 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:28.119 for this is the actual reason, was that Lorraine was 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:32.840 conducting a very torrid affair with one of Johnny Moss's workmates, 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:41.400 a blood called White. That's whyte and that was her motivation. 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:45.000 She wanted to get rid of Johnny Bath in their 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:49.080 thirties at this stage so she could take up with loverboy. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:51.880 And a bit of bad luck intervened here, a bit 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:56.200 of inefficiency in the system. The Austin Hospital did tests 0:18:56.320 --> 0:19:02.560 on Johnny Moss, and those tests, had they been not lost, 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.480 which they were for a year or something, those tests 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:11.080 showed that Johnny Moss had actually something like eighty times 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:15.359 the safe amount of arsenic in his system. Your system 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.760 can tolerate a tiny amount of arsenic, it cannot tolerate 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.760 eighty times that amount. And had that report from the 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.160 laboratory at the Austin Hospital been sent up the line 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:29.720 to Bendigo, to the local hospital and distributed to the 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.520 perhaps the local police or whatever, things might have ended differently. 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:36.159 But it was lost and that didn't happen, and the 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:40.280 result of that was that Lorraine Moss kept poisoning Johnny, 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:45.080 and Johnny died. Johnny died in about nineteen eighty two 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:50.600 after some sixteen months of being poisoned, and there was 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:55.600 a coroner's inquest into it, and some questions were raised. 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.640 I think there were suspicions, but the absence of that 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:04.240 rep meant that the coroner, who I'd have to say 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:10.080 was a very kindly and generous and gentle coroner, concluded 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.479 that although Johnny mossad died of sustained exposure to Arsenik, 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.320 that there was no proof that his wife, Lorraine was 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.320 the one giving it to him, And so she got 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:23.840 to do not go to jail card from the coroner's court, 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:27.520 and she went home to Bendigo, of course, and she 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:34.040 married the fellow white that was Loverboy, and she lived along. Meanwhile, 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:38.680 herd kids, they've grown up and become young adults, and 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:41.720 I think particularly one of them. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.199 Was always suspicious about the whole thing, as you might be. 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:51.840 And one day, and this is about eighteen years or so, 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:56.359 at least eighteen years or so after Johnny Moss's death, 0:20:57.720 --> 0:20:59.960 the daughter is talking to her mother, and her mother 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:03.960 blurts out something about, oh, well, I can't look into 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:06.640 it now because it's too long ago. And she had 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:12.040 assumed wrongly. I might say that once something was so 0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:16.399 long ago, eighteen years, twenty years, that you wouldn't be 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:21.520 able to be charged. She imagined in her befuddled mind, 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:25.240 And she was befuddled, otherwise she wouldn't have poisoned her husband. 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.480 It is a bit befuddled. She imagined that there was 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:31.439 a statute of limitations that would protect her, and she 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.320 said something like this to her daughter. She blurted out 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:39.480 something that was actually incriminating, and the daughter didn't miss it. 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.320 She thought, oh, this is it. Mum's actually admitting she 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:46.040 poisoned DA. And she went to the police and said, 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:50.840 mum's admitting she poisoned d and that makes a lot 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:53.960 of sense. We always thought there was something strange about it. 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:58.040 And the police said, oh, well, that's interesting, and they 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:00.600 wired her for sound. They got the daughter to wear 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.000 a mini tape recorder and a little microphone, and she 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.680 went and met mum at a picnic somewhere or whatever. 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:10.879 They met for lunch somewhere, and she gets mum to 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:13.800 tell her the whole sad story of how she poisoned 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.040 the girl's father and it's all on tape. And so 0:22:17.160 --> 0:22:20.240 the girl goes back to the homicide squad and they 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:24.359 were able to prosecute her. And the judge in that case, 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:28.480 the judge in the murder trial, that is Justice Bill Gillard, 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:31.960 who's a lean and hungry judge. He had defended a 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:33.679 lot of crooks and so he knew a fair bit 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:37.120 about it, and he didn't miss Lorraine Moss at all. 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:41.360 He said, you're a wicked woman whose wickedness knew no bounds. 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:44.399 You condemned your husband to a painful death, and you 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:47.000 kept at it for month after month after month. You 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:50.399 know there's no redeeming features. And he sentenced her to 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:54.400 twenty two years with a minimum of eighteen and that 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.440 was in I think two thousand and two, which means 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:02.400 that even if she served every day of that sentence. 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:10.120 Lorraine Moss, whose name was later Lorraine White, he's out 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:15.440 there amongst us, somewhere, probably wondering what happened to the 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:19.359 last twenty years. There's one more thing to add about 0:23:19.400 --> 0:23:21.440 Lorraine Moss, the Bendigo poisoner. 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:24.880 The police were suspicious of it for. 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:29.240 Some time, and one of them, a sergeant, a detective 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:33.480 sergeant Jack Jacob's, a very funny man, a very charming man. 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:36.359 Women liked him, and he would drop in and talk 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:39.480 to her, to interview her and see if he could 0:23:39.480 --> 0:23:42.320 get her to incriminate herself. This is before they had 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:45.879 the tape recorder, I think. And he said she was 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:49.640 really hospitable and friendly, and she would always offer him 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:54.919 a cup of tea, which he never ever touched, just 0:23:55.000 --> 0:23:59.560 in case. Another Bendigo's story, another black widow, probably seen 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:03.640 by many people as not such a black widow extenuating circumstances. 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:07.800 You're honor Heather Osland. Now, Heather Osland was a big deal. 0:24:07.960 --> 0:24:13.080 It was a celebrated case because Heather Oceland. It was 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:16.919 well held, and I think fair to say that she 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:21.320 was a battered wife. She'd married a man called Frank Osland, 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:24.439 and from all accounts he was a violent and nasty 0:24:24.480 --> 0:24:29.000 piece of work and gave her and perhaps her children 0:24:29.520 --> 0:24:33.119 a very hard time. And it got so that Heather 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:37.200 thought it would be better if either he'd kill her 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:42.080 or she'd kill him, and so she sedated her husband 0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:46.000 using some form of tablets said it. And when he 0:24:46.080 --> 0:24:51.919 was fairly well drugged unconscious, she got her son to 0:24:52.119 --> 0:24:54.359 help her hit him with a blunt object. I'm not 0:24:54.400 --> 0:24:56.040 sure if it was the back of an axe or 0:24:56.040 --> 0:24:57.680 what it was, but they hit him with a blunt 0:24:57.720 --> 0:25:01.320 object until he was dead. One was not terribly old, 0:25:01.359 --> 0:25:04.600 he might have been a teenager. And he beat the 0:25:04.800 --> 0:25:09.000 charge on self defense, which is interesting. I suppose it 0:25:09.080 --> 0:25:13.360 was one of those defense issues where you say, well, 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:15.280 I was scared of him and he used to flog me, 0:25:15.320 --> 0:25:18.200 and this was my way to fight back. So anyway, 0:25:18.480 --> 0:25:23.600 the judge and jury bought that story, and the boy walked, 0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:29.760 but his mother, Heather, did not walk because Heather had 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:34.639 premeditated the death, and she had obtained the sedative and 0:25:34.680 --> 0:25:37.640 she had administered it to her husband, and so that 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:42.560 element of premeditation counted against her, and so it was 0:25:42.920 --> 0:25:46.320 murder fair and square, and she was convicted of same. 0:25:46.640 --> 0:25:50.480 And because of the extenuating circumstances, I think she only 0:25:50.520 --> 0:25:54.600 served about nine and a half years in total. Unlike 0:25:54.640 --> 0:25:57.760 Lorrain Moss, she served about half the sentence that Lorrain 0:25:57.840 --> 0:26:01.160 Moss did. And when she got out of jail, Heather 0:26:01.200 --> 0:26:04.639 Oslin was welcomed by a group of supporters, mostly women, 0:26:04.920 --> 0:26:07.520 who clapped and cheered when she walked out of the 0:26:07.560 --> 0:26:11.639 gates of the women's prison at Tarangawer, the one near Malden. 0:26:12.560 --> 0:26:14.680 And finally, we're going to talk about not so much 0:26:14.680 --> 0:26:17.679 a black widow as a sort of a piebald widow 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:20.400