Speaker 1: Listeners should be warned that this episode of Life and
Speaker 1: Crimes contains graphic imagery and language. You will hear some beeps,
Speaker 1: and there is no doubt that the story we tell
Speaker 1: today is extremely disturbing, which it has to be. Donna
Speaker 1: looked in the rear vision mirror and caught the eye
Speaker 1: of one of the men in the back seat. She
Speaker 1: didn't like the look he was sizing her up. Years later,
Speaker 1: when Donna saw Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, it reminded
Speaker 1: her of the way her friend Angela looked at that moment.
Speaker 1: Then she saw the glint of the knife in his hand,
Speaker 1: held low between the bucket seats. That's when she knew
Speaker 1: there was no way out. I'm Andrew ruled this as
Speaker 1: Life and Crimes. Today we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: ones that got away. I'm going to do this because
Speaker 1: recently I've put together a book, which, funnily enough, is
Speaker 1: called Life and Crimes, and it features twenty two of
Speaker 1: the stories that I've written over the years, twenty two
Speaker 1: out of hundreds, really, and I chose them as some
Speaker 1: are old, some are new, some are borrowed, and some
Speaker 1: are blue. There's all sorts of stories there, But the
Speaker 1: ones that stand out for me over forty odd years
Speaker 1: of writing stories are the stories that are about people
Speaker 1: who got away with it. Stories where I tell the
Speaker 1: victim side of the story but we don't know who'd
Speaker 1: done it, who did it, and who done it is
Speaker 1: a common enough feature of crime stories, but in the
Speaker 1: real world there's nothing amusing about it. It is often
Speaker 1: a terrible thing because in many cases, someone has got
Speaker 1: away with a very serious crime and has never been
Speaker 1: hauled to account, and they're victims are haunted by that
Speaker 1: fact and it never leaves them. They are damaged. And
Speaker 1: not long before we came into the studio to do this,
Speaker 1: I had a long conversation with a woman who's now
Speaker 1: middle aged. We will call her Donna. It's not her
Speaker 1: real name. Her real name does start with d that's
Speaker 1: not Donna, But I've always called her Donna in any
Speaker 1: reference to her, in print or anywhere else. And Donna
Speaker 1: is someone I've spoken to and I've met, but I've
Speaker 1: spoken to her regularly for more than twenty years. She
Speaker 1: was the victim of a pack rape when she was
Speaker 1: fourteen years old, along with a school friend of hers,
Speaker 1: a girl from her own class out in a high
Speaker 1: school in the eastern suburbs, and that crime was horrendous
Speaker 1: in all ways and in many ways, and all the
Speaker 1: more so because of the effect it had on those girls.
Speaker 1: I don't really know. I can't talk for the other one.
Speaker 1: Because she didn't want to have anything to do with
Speaker 1: stories or anything else. She decided to lock that experience
Speaker 1: away in a box and get on with her life,
Speaker 1: which is one way to cope with such a terrible incident.
Speaker 1: But Donna is a different sort of person. She's I
Speaker 1: have to say, highly intelligent, highly articulate, I would suggest, creative,
Speaker 1: I'd suggest sensitive, and by her own admission, very damaged
Speaker 1: by what happened to her all those years ago. Now
Speaker 1: we're talking about Melbourne Cup Day nineteen seventy six, when
Speaker 1: this happened. That is a long time ago. It's coming
Speaker 1: up forty years in two more years, and I recall
Speaker 1: it well. It was a dark, wet day. It was
Speaker 1: the wettest Melbourne Cup on record. I think I think
Speaker 1: many inches of rain fell in the afternoon of the Cup.
Speaker 1: It almost drowned out the running of the Cup. It
Speaker 1: was run and won in about the slowest time of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, because the horses were running basically through
Speaker 1: three inches of water as they galloped. It was so
Speaker 1: dark and so wet and so much rain that the
Speaker 1: caller couldn't see the field. There was so much mud
Speaker 1: spattered over the field that the caller couldn't tell which
Speaker 1: one was what until they got halfway up the straight.
Speaker 1: It was a remarkable day with this feeling of doom
Speaker 1: and thunderstorms and rain. It was biblical. It was sort
Speaker 1: of like the end of the world. And on that
Speaker 1: day there was what they called Cup Day Rock. They
Speaker 1: used to hold this concert at Festival Hall, the old
Speaker 1: boxing venue in West Melbourne. Now Festival Hall was a
Speaker 1: very big venue. It had started life as a boxing
Speaker 1: and wrestling stadium run by Stadiums Limited, which was a
Speaker 1: front for the notorious John Wren, the man who virtually
Speaker 1: ran Melbourne in the old, bad old days. And as
Speaker 1: time were on and boxing became less popular, Festival Hall
Speaker 1: was a very big rock and roll venue back in
Speaker 1: that era in the year seventies and Cup Day Rock
Speaker 1: was a big thing they did every year. And that afternoon,
Speaker 1: while seventy eight thousand people were at the races getting wet,
Speaker 1: watching a Kiwi Mudla called vanderhum Win the Melbourne Cup.
Speaker 1: There was a big crowd at the Cup day rock concert,
Speaker 1: mostly teenagers or young you know, people that were not
Speaker 1: far out of their teens. And among them were these
Speaker 1: two fourteen year old girls who'd come in on the
Speaker 1: train from i'l say, Ringwood out that area. They went
Speaker 1: to school high school out there. There was a little
Speaker 1: bit of background to it, at least one of the girls, Donna,
Speaker 1: had been into the Rock Toober concert a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks earlier, and there she had met a young guy
Speaker 1: who could have been an apprentice builder or something like that.
Speaker 1: His name, she thinks was Wayne Thompson. That's the name
Speaker 1: she's got, and that's the name that has been published
Speaker 1: before in connection with this story, so I believe it's
Speaker 1: okay to use that name. And Wayne Thompson or the
Speaker 1: guy that called himself Wayne Thompson, may not be his
Speaker 1: real name. He drove a tan colored or fawn colored
Speaker 1: station wagon, probably a Holden or a Falcon. He had
Speaker 1: tools in the rear of the station wagon, as if
Speaker 1: he worked on building sites that sort of stuff. He
Speaker 1: might have been an apprentice build, a carpenter, whatever, or
Speaker 1: maybe a laborer. Back in those days, a lot of
Speaker 1: people left school fairly young and went to work and
Speaker 1: the minute they turned eighteen, they had a car. And
Speaker 1: they were young blucks with adult tastes. So I have
Speaker 1: to say they drank and they smoked, and he chased
Speaker 1: around after girls, and some of them, the bad ones,
Speaker 1: did a lot more than chase after girls. They were
Speaker 1: bad dudes who set out to trap young girls, sometimes
Speaker 1: against their will, and they did some very bad things.
Speaker 1: And that is what happened on this occasion. Wayne Thompson
Speaker 1: was quite a pleasant looking bloke and had a good
Speaker 1: line of talk, and he'd actually driven out to the
Speaker 1: eastern suburbs from his home suburb, which I think was footscrap,
Speaker 1: and that had impressed our girl Donner that he'd driven
Speaker 1: out during the week before the Cup day to see her,
Speaker 1: and she thought, you know, he was a bit of
Speaker 1: good stuff because he had a car, he was eight
Speaker 1: in et cetera, et cetera. He had the blonde haircut,
Speaker 1: the sharpie haircut, which was then very fashionable among some
Speaker 1: young people. And he also had a few bad habits
Speaker 1: which she didn't know about. And on this day, after
Speaker 1: meeting up again, with him at cup Day Rock. She
Speaker 1: went outside and there he was with his station wagon,
Speaker 1: and he had in the car a couple of other
Speaker 1: young guys who both of them call themselves John, which
Speaker 1: probably may not have been their real name. Wayne persuaded
Speaker 1: Donna that they'd go to a party, and at first
Speaker 1: she played it cool and said, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. But she realized later, too late,
Speaker 1: much later, that Wayne, being persuasive and plausible and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of a blonde pretty boy, that it was his
Speaker 1: job in this group of young men to chat up
Speaker 1: vulnerable girls picked out of the crowd at concerts. This
Speaker 1: was the modus operandi of a gang, a gang of
Speaker 1: gang rapists. Terrible thing. Donna took the bait. She and
Speaker 1: her friend Angela we will call her, agreed to go,
Speaker 1: and as soon as he closed the deal, Wayne switched things.
Speaker 1: He said his car was already full, but the girls
Speaker 1: could get a lift with his friends, and he assured
Speaker 1: them that he's in the other car were trustworthy. Now,
Speaker 1: as he says this, right on que a gleaming red
Speaker 1: Tarana pulled up next to them. Now, back in that era,
Speaker 1: at nine to seventy six, Tarana xw ones were big deal.
Speaker 1: They were racing them at Bathist. They were hot. A
Speaker 1: V eight model I think was one of them, and
Speaker 1: they were very fast production cars, and every young buck
Speaker 1: in the Burbs I thought they were wonderful and wanted one,
Speaker 1: and in this case, one of these guys had one.
Speaker 1: This would suggest, of course, that whoever was driving it
Speaker 1: wasn't actually eighteen. It was probably twenty twenty one. It
Speaker 1: was a two door manual. It had black bucket seats
Speaker 1: that had a bittered ball on the gearstick, which was
Speaker 1: what they used to do then, and it had a
Speaker 1: huge transfer on the top of the windscreen the front
Speaker 1: wind screen with the word Tarana, funnily enough, and so
Speaker 1: that made it quite a distinctive vehicle. There were four
Speaker 1: young men in the car. The driver wore a hat.
Speaker 1: A big man leaned forward in the passenger seat and
Speaker 1: unlatched it so that Angela could climb in between the
Speaker 1: pair of young guys in the back seat. Donna realized
Speaker 1: that she was expected to sit on the big man's
Speaker 1: knee in the front. She wasn't that delighted by this,
Speaker 1: but she thought, well, it won't take long to get
Speaker 1: to the party. It gave her the impression, being squeezed
Speaker 1: in like this, that the party could not be far
Speaker 1: away and maybe there in three minutes. Well, she was wrong.
Speaker 1: Wayne had assured her that he would drive ahead and
Speaker 1: lead the way, and she believed him, and Angela trusted
Speaker 1: her because Donna was sort of the sparky, outgoing, verbal one,
Speaker 1: the one that could talk fast and all the rest
Speaker 1: of it. And so in a sense, she was the
Speaker 1: one that led Angela, the quieter girl along, which I
Speaker 1: think is another thing that has haunted her, that she
Speaker 1: felt responsible for her friend or for her classmate. It
Speaker 1: was all organized in seconds. The situation had changed from
Speaker 1: the girls going with three people that Donna had already
Speaker 1: met before to being in a car full of strangers. Bang.
Speaker 1: That's how fast these guys had switched. They'd done the
Speaker 1: Thinberland Patrick switch and bait, as they say. The first
Speaker 1: thing she realized was that the four men belonged to
Speaker 1: one ethnic group. They were dark haired and spoke with
Speaker 1: the same accent. She thought they were Greek or perhaps
Speaker 1: Italian in itself. That didn't matter to her. Donna and
Speaker 1: some of her five siblings were born overseas to a
Speaker 1: Canadian father, and a Northern Irish mother and her family
Speaker 1: had been all over the world before immigrating only a
Speaker 1: few years before, so she knew what it was like
Speaker 1: to be an outsider. She had a bit of an accent.
Speaker 1: She still does have a trace of her an accent
Speaker 1: that's a touch of Irish and a touch of Canadian.
Speaker 1: So when she was fourteen living at home with her parents,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that accent was quite pronounced. What made
Speaker 1: her uneasy was that these strangers knew things about her.
Speaker 1: They knew which concerts she'd been to. They knew she
Speaker 1: liked dancing. She used to do ballroom dancing lessons. They
Speaker 1: knew where she came from, and they knew which school
Speaker 1: she went to. Now that was, looking back on it,
Speaker 1: a bit spooky because they knew all about her and
Speaker 1: she knew nothing about them. They'd done their homework. This
Speaker 1: when you look back on it, when you know what
Speaker 1: happened later, he's quite sinister. She said. They were kind
Speaker 1: of laughing, but in a sly way, and that's how
Speaker 1: she told me about it. Later, she says, we were
Speaker 1: being interviewed, but I didn't realize they were looking for
Speaker 1: someone who fitted their someone who came from a different
Speaker 1: area and had no idea who they were with or
Speaker 1: where they were taking us. The men avoided using each
Speaker 1: other's names. This is how cold blooded they were. They
Speaker 1: called each other mate, although she heard the name Joe
Speaker 1: and one of them mentioned working in a garage. What
Speaker 1: the men knew about her was harmless enough in itself,
Speaker 1: but they fact they knew it did unsettler and settled
Speaker 1: her greatly. Later on, Donna looked in the revision mirror
Speaker 1: and caught the eye of one of the men in
Speaker 1: the back seat. She didn't like the look he was
Speaker 1: sizing her up. The longer they drove, the stranger the
Speaker 1: situation seemed. For the second time in three days. She
Speaker 1: was driven into the Western suburbs. She'd been out there
Speaker 1: a few days earlier with Wayne on a bit of
Speaker 1: a reconnoiter, a trip that in itself hadn't been altogether satisfactory,
Speaker 1: but which hadn't scared. I'd point that out. Both cars
Speaker 1: pulled up at a service station. She was uneasy. The
Speaker 1: one that she calls the big Guy got out and
Speaker 1: spoke to Wayne secretively. It was as if they were
Speaker 1: discussing a drug deal. It wasn't a drug deal, but
Speaker 1: it was a deal. The big guy was the boss.
Speaker 1: He was broad shouldered, thick set, strong accent. Donna noticed
Speaker 1: a distinctive crease across the bridge of his nose. By
Speaker 1: the time they left the service station, Donna was spooked,
Speaker 1: but she didn't know what to do. Even if she
Speaker 1: got away from the front seat, Angela was trapped in
Speaker 1: the back of a two door car. She'd never get out.
Speaker 1: Soon the cars leave the houses of the Williamstown area.
Speaker 1: Back in those days, Williamstown and Altona were sort of
Speaker 1: the outer edge of the western suburbs, very different from now,
Speaker 1: and they passed open country. It was, in fact, the
Speaker 1: rifle range at Williamstown. They then turned off onto a
Speaker 1: rough dirt track that led into wasteland between the Altona
Speaker 1: beachfront and a row of huge fuel or chemical storage tanks,
Speaker 1: which used to be a bit of a landmark. Out
Speaker 1: there in the distance, she could see the tiled roofs
Speaker 1: of a new housing development, but the wasteland was deserted.
Speaker 1: She could hear thunder as the cars stopped near a
Speaker 1: patch of stunted scrub. Everything seemed wrong. Donna jumped out
Speaker 1: of the tarana and ran to the other car to
Speaker 1: Wayne's car, checking over a shoulder that Angela was behind her.
Speaker 1: What's going on? She yelled to Wayne, what's the problem?
Speaker 1: He said, and one of the two people with Wayne
Speaker 1: said something strange. He said, we're doing a deal. It
Speaker 1: was an emission. She heard a thud. She heard a
Speaker 1: sudden exhalation of air and a scream. She jerked around
Speaker 1: the sea that the big guy had knocked Angela to
Speaker 1: the ground and was dragging her, much like a hunter
Speaker 1: dragging an animal that they'd shot. Angela was clearly terrified.
Speaker 1: Years later, when Donna saw Edvard Munch's painting the scream,
Speaker 1: it reminded her of the way her friend Angela looked
Speaker 1: at that moment. Donna turned back to Wayne and the
Speaker 1: two Johns, the alleged Johns, and begged them to do something,
Speaker 1: but they mumbled something about going for help. They got
Speaker 1: in their car and drove away. She never saw them again.
Speaker 1: It was clearly a setup. The big man threw Angela
Speaker 1: into the Tarana. Donna ran at him and jumped on
Speaker 1: his back. She clawed at his neck. He grabbed her
Speaker 1: and tossed her into the back seat with Angela, who
Speaker 1: was sobbing. She's crying. The other two men were still outside,
Speaker 1: leaving the driver and the leader in front. The other
Speaker 1: two walked off as if they had reversed their movements.
Speaker 1: The driver sped off, bouncing over the rough ground, then
Speaker 1: stopped the car. Donna was terrified, but she was still
Speaker 1: thinking clearly. She said, you don't want to do this,
Speaker 1: you don't want to do this. But the big guy interrupted.
Speaker 1: He said, why don't you just fucking shut up? And
Speaker 1: he said it, staring at her in a very threatening way.
Speaker 1: Then she saw the glint of the knife in his hand,
Speaker 1: held low between the bucket seats. That's when she knew
Speaker 1: there was no way out. But she couldn't imagine what
Speaker 1: was going to happen. How could she. She just turned fifteen,
Speaker 1: She just had her birthday. She'd been fourteen a few
Speaker 1: days earlier, and now she was fifteen. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: Donna was twice that age, an apparently successful and sophisticated
Speaker 1: woman living a long way from Melbourne, that she found
Speaker 1: the words to finally tell what happened that day. By then,
Speaker 1: another fifteen years later, she had worked hard and lived fast,
Speaker 1: a party girl, running on adrenaline and deadlines, pushing herself
Speaker 1: to exhaustion so that she could sleep it off and
Speaker 1: do it all again night after night. She left school
Speaker 1: in Melbourne soon after the rapes, after the rape of
Speaker 1: herself and her friend Angela, and a waste land out
Speaker 1: near Altona Beach, she started as a window dresser. She
Speaker 1: moved to working in nightclubs and then theater steadily, more
Speaker 1: frenetic jobs that kept her body and her mind busy.
Speaker 1: It was the mask she turned to the world away
Speaker 1: to keep her nightmares at bay. It didn't always work. Once,
Speaker 1: when she was drunk in a club at five a m.
Speaker 1: She told a friend she'd been raped, and then she
Speaker 1: went silent. The friend did not hear the full story
Speaker 1: until years later. After one failed relationship and a few
Speaker 1: false starts, Donna stayed single for years. Her family knew
Speaker 1: what had happened in Melbourne, but it was to boo.
Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to.
Speaker 2: Talk about it.
Speaker 1: Her parents had opposed her going to the police back
Speaker 1: when she was fifteen. They'd moved into state soon after
Speaker 1: and tried to quote leave it behind. Donna was implicitly
Speaker 1: encouraged to go along with this sort of family silence.
Speaker 1: This silent conspiracy to keep it buried for the same
Speaker 1: reasons that so many rape victims keep the crimes secret
Speaker 1: and still do. They fear the shame, the blame, and
Speaker 1: they fear fear itself, fear of reprisals as well, fear
Speaker 1: of being cross examined in court and judged outside court.
Speaker 1: In any case, this fifteen year old girl who became
Speaker 1: that thirty year old woman who is now in her
Speaker 1: early sixties. For years, she couldn't force herself to talk
Speaker 1: about it until one day in early nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: when the past finally caught up and her mask cracked.
Speaker 1: It happened with a chance sighting at a place where
Speaker 1: she was working. A supervisor asked where she went to school,
Speaker 1: explaining that one of the men working there thought he
Speaker 1: remembered her face from a high school in Melbourne. It
Speaker 1: was a harmless enough query, but Donna was rattled by it.
Speaker 1: Being recognized triggered a rush of submerged memories and fear.
Speaker 1: From that day, friends noticed that her behavior changed. Now,
Speaker 1: this is classic PTA. It's pushed down, it's pushed down,
Speaker 1: it's pushed down, and eventually it gets the top and
Speaker 1: spills over. This is what happens to so many police soldiers,
Speaker 1: you know, victims of violence, victims of rape. One of
Speaker 1: those friends was a guy called Tom McDonald. He was
Speaker 1: a business lawyer who then practiced mostly in the United States,
Speaker 1: but he often visited the city where Donna lived. The
Speaker 1: Australian city with Donna lived. He first met her in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one at a club that she managed. They
Speaker 1: became friends, and then he helped her with a legal
Speaker 1: problem and they became good mates. He told me that
Speaker 1: the Donna he met when she was okay. She was
Speaker 1: sparkling company on a great cook, but their friendship was platonic,
Speaker 1: fair enough. After one meal together in early ninety two,
Speaker 1: they were listening to music and having a drink when
Speaker 1: Donna's charm offensive fell apart. She said she trusted him
Speaker 1: because he had never made a pass at her. Then
Speaker 1: she said she'd been having strange feelings, and then she
Speaker 1: broke down completely. The savvy club manager that she was
Speaker 1: in working hours turned back into that terrified, frightened schoolgirl. Crying.
Speaker 1: She poured out a stream of raw recollection. It was
Speaker 1: so traumatic it made her physically ill. Tom MacDonald told
Speaker 1: me a long time later afterwards, he said, he felt
Speaker 1: ashamed to be a man. Then he decided to help her.
Speaker 1: He suggested psychological treatment and legal remedies and crimes compensation,
Speaker 1: all these things that she could do to try and
Speaker 1: regain some control over what had happened to her. Really,
Speaker 1: not so much you needed the crimes for the money,
Speaker 1: but to feel that you'd taken back some control. The
Speaker 1: other was justice. Of course, she wanted to search for
Speaker 1: the attackers and see them punished. So McDonald helped Donna
Speaker 1: to launch a crime's case that she eventually won. But
Speaker 1: mere compensation about six months wages for a dozen rapes
Speaker 1: and a ruined life was never going to be enough
Speaker 1: to put her back together again. Meanwhile, Donna's friends saw
Speaker 1: what they call that sparky, mischievous, bossy girl unravel completely.
Speaker 1: The workaholic could no longer work. Her inner suburban house
Speaker 1: was a mess. She stayed indoors for days, curled in
Speaker 1: a ball crying. On a first visit to a psychologist,
Speaker 1: she handed over a tape recording of an interview she'd
Speaker 1: had with a sexual assault counselor. It was, the psychologist
Speaker 1: said later, a harrowing account of a harrowing crime. We
Speaker 1: haven't yet shared the full extent of this with our
Speaker 1: listeners here. Another friend heard the story firsthand with detail,
Speaker 1: shook him all the terrible, filthy parts that she needed
Speaker 1: to have said, he says. Johnna finally went to the
Speaker 1: police in March nineteen ninety two, while in Melbourne for
Speaker 1: a conference. She went to nine to one in community
Speaker 1: policing squad and started talking. It took ten hours to
Speaker 1: finish the statement. A policewoman took it all down and
Speaker 1: shared a piece of boiled fruitcake with her, the only
Speaker 1: thing either of them ate from midday until ten o'clock
Speaker 1: at night. She recalled every detail as if it were
Speaker 1: frozen in time. I had these snapshots in my brain,
Speaker 1: she told me later. It unfolds like a film, looks
Speaker 1: like a Noah film. And I have to say, for
Speaker 1: those listeners who have seen Dead Man Walking, which I
Speaker 1: personally find one of the most haunting films I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: the scenes in that film that are shot in black
Speaker 1: and white, that are reconstructing the crime that was committed.
Speaker 1: I think that the sense you get when you watch
Speaker 1: that film is the sense that Donna gets every time
Speaker 1: she thinks about what happened to her that total sense
Speaker 1: of nightmarish, sinister horror that you cannot escape. She says,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the knife that the man held, the
Speaker 1: main leader of the pack rape, but the look in
Speaker 1: the eyes. He dragged her out of the car, and
Speaker 1: then he got in the back seat and he proceeded
Speaker 1: to assault Angela. Donna was in shock. Back then the
Speaker 1: driver stayed in the car watching the other two men
Speaker 1: walked up. These are the two men who had walked away.
Speaker 1: They returned. They pushed and abused her, working themselves up.
Speaker 1: They called her a looking slut, stupid bitch, and other
Speaker 1: worse words. They grabbed it a breasts. They called her
Speaker 1: bhutana or putana Greek and Italian variations of war. She
Speaker 1: refused to undress. One of them called her a smart bitch,
Speaker 1: and they shoved her face down on the bonnet of
Speaker 1: the car and pulled her clothes down, one holding her
Speaker 1: by the hair. What followed was obscene, violent, and degrading.
Speaker 1: She was numb with pain, fear, and concern for Angela,
Speaker 1: who she knew was a virgin, and who Donna thought
Speaker 1: guiltily wouldn't be there except for her. Donna felt guilty
Speaker 1: that she'd brought Angela with her. She could hear her
Speaker 1: friend whimpering in the car. It rained again. This is
Speaker 1: the wettest day for years, the wettest Melbourne Cup day ever.
Speaker 1: She tried to block out what was happening by concentrating
Speaker 1: on the sky and on the rain drops on the windscreen.
Speaker 1: She'd see them running down. She never forgot that forever.
Speaker 1: After a wet windscreen jolted her into remembering those unspeakable acts.
Speaker 1: The rapists laughed and taunted Donna as they zipped up
Speaker 1: their jeanes. She dressed herself and got in the car
Speaker 1: with Angela, thinking it was over. But it wasn't. The
Speaker 1: Tarana when a few hundred meters and stopped waiting was
Speaker 1: another station wagon, a metallic mock, a brown Ford with
Speaker 1: curtains in the back. There were two men in it,
Speaker 1: a tag team. The big guy dragged Angela out and
Speaker 1: ordered both girls into the ford. He got in too,
Speaker 1: as if he owned them. They drove off. Donna didn't
Speaker 1: see the Toronto again except in bad dreams. She had
Speaker 1: no idea where they were until she saw a footscray
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology sign as the car turned down a
Speaker 1: sloping entrance. To park land beside the river. That's the
Speaker 1: Marrabanong River, opposite Flemington Racecourse, which she noticed was still
Speaker 1: crowded after the races. It was quiet over on the
Speaker 1: Footscray Bank, but a family was nearby trying to have
Speaker 1: a picnic despite the weather. The girls were raped again.
Speaker 1: Donna could see the picnickers through the fogged up windows.
Speaker 1: She willed them to realize what was happening and to
Speaker 1: rescue them, but of course that didn't happen. They drove
Speaker 1: off again. This is the third lot of driving in
Speaker 1: this sequence of this nightmare series of horrors. The gang
Speaker 1: leader put his arm around Angela in a grotesque parody
Speaker 1: of affection. When the cars stopped the traffic lights, he
Speaker 1: whispered in Donna's ear, I know you'd like to run.
Speaker 1: They drove under a bluestone bridge where water was lying
Speaker 1: across the road, almost knee deep. They turned into cobbled
Speaker 1: lanes among warehouses and factories, somewhere in North Melbourne or Kensington.
Speaker 1: Now this is an area I know reasonably well because
Speaker 1: I once lived over there. I'd suggest that it's on
Speaker 1: the city side of the main Bold Meadows railway line
Speaker 1: at Kensington down the hill between the railway line and
Speaker 1: the old Arden Street football ground. I reckon it's in there,
Speaker 1: because there was a heap of lane ways and factories
Speaker 1: and empty places and all the rest of it. Particularly
Speaker 1: on weekends, there was nothing much happening there. The car
Speaker 1: went up a steep lane and stopped in a car
Speaker 1: park underneath the building. It was dark and deserted. That's
Speaker 1: cup day, see it's public holiday. But suddenly the space
Speaker 1: was filled with the rumble of a V eight engine
Speaker 1: and male voices. More men. Donna whispered to Angela to
Speaker 1: cling to the pack leader. She said, just stay with him.
Speaker 1: He won't let anyone else touch you. She was not
Speaker 1: sure this was true, or even if they would both survive.
Speaker 1: She feared their ordeal was heading for some more sinister climax.
Speaker 1: I was frightened. We were going to be annihilated. Are
Speaker 1: the words, she told me. Years later, one by one
Speaker 1: the newcomers raped on her, except the last one, the
Speaker 1: twelfth man to grab her that day. She saw his face.
Speaker 1: She thought one of the others called him Steve. He
Speaker 1: was smaller and fairer than the rest. Unless sure of himself,
Speaker 1: she whispered to him, help get me out of here.
Speaker 1: He quietly helped her to get dressed, and then he
Speaker 1: called to the leader. They made us getting late. Why
Speaker 1: don't we get rid of them? They drove it was
Speaker 1: getting dark. Minutes later, the car pulled into a lane
Speaker 1: beside the North Melbourne Railway station and the two girls
Speaker 1: were shoved out like pieces of rubby. They'd avoided death,
Speaker 1: but their life sentences were just beginning. And that is
Speaker 1: the major part of a story that I wrote a
Speaker 1: long time ago, and that I've rewritten with some changes
Speaker 1: in recent times. It is one of the stories, one
Speaker 1: of the twenty two stories in my new book Life
Speaker 1: and Crimes. It's one of the stories there that stand
Speaker 1: out for me because it is one of those where
Speaker 1: the bad guys got away, the ones that got away.
Speaker 1: In the forty plus years since those rapes, those two
Speaker 1: girls have grown into women who have been haunted by
Speaker 1: what happened to them. I doubt this is a day
Speaker 1: in their lives that they don't think about it, that
Speaker 1: it doesn't affect them in some way. Nothing can change that.
Speaker 1: But one of the bad things is that the people
Speaker 1: that did it were never ever caught. At the time
Speaker 1: their parents persuaded them not to go to anybody. And
Speaker 1: it was only in the nineties, some sixteen odd years
Speaker 1: later that as we discussed that, Donna went to the
Speaker 1: police and made a ten hour statement and set certain
Speaker 1: things in train. Now in the end that did not
Speaker 1: lead to anybody being arrested or convicted either. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: some time after that, she came to me and poured
Speaker 1: her heart out. Somehow we found each other and she
Speaker 1: told me her story, trusted me with it, and I
Speaker 1: wrote that story, and I stay in touch with Donna.
Speaker 1: As I said before, she's intelligent, she's articulate, She's a
Speaker 1: very clever woman. And I think that probably makes it
Speaker 1: even harder for her. Really, the humiliation is probably even
Speaker 1: sharper for her. She can talk about it, and she
Speaker 1: talks about it with passion and with anger and with
Speaker 1: great verve. But every time she talks to me about it,
Speaker 1: even you know, if it's on the phone or in person,
Speaker 1: she'll break down. At some point it overwhelms her. The
Speaker 1: emotion overwhelms her like a wave, and it hits her
Speaker 1: and her voice breaks and she starts to sob, and
Speaker 1: then she forces it back inside her and keeps talking.
Speaker 1: Because even now, at the age of sixty three or thereabouts.
Speaker 1: She is determined if she can to a do something,
Speaker 1: to find the people that did it and make them
Speaker 1: pay and be She wants to see the system altered
Speaker 1: so that victims of sexual assault and these sort of
Speaker 1: violent assaults are handled better by the system. I think
Speaker 1: by and large that has happened. Things have changed a
Speaker 1: lot since the seventies, and a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that she knew were missing back in the day are
Speaker 1: now present, and there are now specialist sexual assault units, etc.
Speaker 1: Donna's problem is that when she goes to see police
Speaker 1: about it anytime in the last thirty years, inevitably she's
Speaker 1: frustrated because the original file from the nineteen nineties has
Speaker 1: been lost I think twice, not only physically lost, but
Speaker 1: the police that handled it and have dealt with it,
Speaker 1: they've moved on, they've retired, they've been transferred, so there's
Speaker 1: never been any continuity. She doesn't feel that this crime is.
Speaker 2: Very serious, very serious pack rape, a pack rape that
Speaker 2: would have got the offenders hanged back in the time
Speaker 2: of let's say, around World War One.
Speaker 1: I think men were hanged for pack rapes in that era.
Speaker 1: I remember my grandparents talking about it that it was
Speaker 1: a thing. It was a very serious capital offense, and
Speaker 1: men were hanged for it, just as they were hanged
Speaker 1: for murder in those days. So this was once a
Speaker 1: capital offense. These men got away with it. It's an
Speaker 1: offense that, even under our current laws, could result in
Speaker 1: very long sentences. And I'm suggesting here looking at some
Speaker 1: other crimes I know of, such as the Askavail rapist
Speaker 1: in the nineties. He originally got more than thirty years,
Speaker 1: which was later pulled back to twenty seven or twenty
Speaker 1: eight years on appeal. But you can see that if
Speaker 1: these men had been caught, they probably would have got
Speaker 1: more than twenty years jail and thoroughly deserved it. Now,
Speaker 1: we can't spend all day going through this, but I've
Speaker 1: done some research on it in the past, and I
Speaker 1: was able to track down a phone number and an
Speaker 1: address for the then boy, the nineteen seventy six boy
Speaker 1: called Wayne Thompson, and to track down people that knew
Speaker 1: people and so on. Police were able to identify certain individuals,
Speaker 1: but the problem was that in the absence of any
Speaker 1: other evidence, they were not in a position to lay charges.
Speaker 1: All these people would have to do is to deny
Speaker 1: everything and to say it didn't happen. But against that,
Speaker 1: let's put a few things out there. This car in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, November nineteen seventy six, a young man
Speaker 1: from it'll be from the western suburbs, so it'll be
Speaker 1: Foot's Gray or el Tarner or Spotswood or out that way, Williamstown.
Speaker 1: Young guy, probably Greek, maybe not maybe Italian, but the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: He had a red tarana, the hot tarana, with the
Speaker 1: big tarana writing across the windscreen in capital letters. Someone
Speaker 1: somewhere is going to have a polaroid snapshot or one
Speaker 1: of those old snapshots that people used to take of
Speaker 1: each other on weekends or whatever. It's stuck in an
Speaker 1: album somewhere of that car with its driver. Someone somewhere
Speaker 1: will remember this. Someone somewhere will be the young guy
Speaker 1: who didn't rape the girl, who said let's get out
Speaker 1: of here, let them go. That young guy took pity
Speaker 1: on them, he didn't commit rape. That guy is out
Speaker 1: there somewhere he might recall who was who and the zoo.
Speaker 1: They're all old now. I believe some of them will
Speaker 1: be dead. Others will be getting on. They were older
Speaker 1: than they're victims.
Speaker 2: By a few years.
Speaker 1: So these guys are now approaching their seventies and they
Speaker 1: will have led hard lives probably, And it would be
Speaker 1: a wonderful thing if among our listeners there were people
Speaker 1: who remember anything that might help the police solve this case.
Speaker 1: And there is no other way of solving it except this,
Speaker 1: that someone can recall that car, or a group of
Speaker 1: guys who fit this profile that era. Someone who remembers
Speaker 1: Wayne Thompson or a guy called Wayne who in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six was a young apprentice, or a builder builder's
Speaker 1: laborer who had a tan colored station wagon undoubtedly Holden
Speaker 1: nor Falcon, that sort of stuff. Someone somewhere must recall
Speaker 1: that Melbourne in nineteen seventy six was a much smaller place.
Speaker 1: The western suburb in those days ran from the Maravanong
Speaker 1: out to the Williamstown Rifle Range. They were much smaller suburbs.
Speaker 1: There were far fewer people around, and out there somewhere
Speaker 1: there are people listening to this who will know someone
Speaker 1: who knows someone who can help. I'm asking you in
Speaker 1: listener land to get in touch to help us solve
Speaker 1: the one that got away. There are other stories in
Speaker 1: this collection Life and Crimes that also need to be solved,
Speaker 1: but I would like to see none of them solved
Speaker 1: more than this one. This really means a lot. Anyone
Speaker 1: who wants to get in touch with us, please email
Speaker 1: us on Life and Crimes at news dot com dot
Speaker 1: Au or email me direct Andrew dot Rule at news
Speaker 1: dot com. All our emails are at news dot com
Speaker 1: dot Au, so they're easy. Please do that. I'd love
Speaker 1: to talk to anyone who can throw any light on
Speaker 1: any of this. It doesn't matter if it's just a
Speaker 1: little thing. Someone lived in the same street, someone used
Speaker 1: to work on a building site nearby that had a
Speaker 1: car like that used to whistle at girls as they
Speaker 1: walk past. Whatever it might be, you might know something
Speaker 1: that we can use to backtrack to solve this case.
Speaker 1: I have to say that I've done today's podcast without
Speaker 1: talking with Donna. On the podcast, Donna is currently in
Speaker 1: a distant part of a distant state, and one day,
Speaker 1: if we get anywhere, I would like to talk to her,
Speaker 1: and I think she would like to talk to us.
Speaker 1: But I have to say it is a grueling process
Speaker 1: and it's not easy. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes
Speaker 1: is a Sunday Herald Sun Production for True Crime Australia.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew
Speaker 1: Rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts
Speaker 1: sold at news dot com dot au. That is all
Speaker 1: one word news podcasts sold And if you want further
Speaker 1: information about this episode, links are in the description.