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| For obvious reasons, the following diary contains no names. It also contains no specific dates or places. |
She knew of the Former Business Partners of Deceased, and that he was not on friendly terms with them because of a feeling by Deceased that he was being ripped off by them. She said Deceased had set up the new Security Company to distance himself from Former Business Partners and wanted to remain a silent partner in the business because many of the staff were from his Former Security Company (FSC) and the FSC still owed them some salary.
The witness described how Deceased was making an effort to get his life back on track after a messy break-up with his wife, leaving him with financial problems, and the break-up of his former business with Former Business Partners. He had given up smoking and drinking, and was making an effort to become more involved with Security Company so he could ensure he received his due share of profits. She described him as "100% punctual", never once being late to a meeting with her or not letting her know what he was doing.
Crown asked the witness what she knew of the relationship between Deceased and Accused A. She said that Deceased had been suspicious of Accused A, since he believed he should be seeing more profit from Security Company and that possibly Accused A was ripping him off. She also said that part of the business sharing arrangement was that Security Company would pay the repayments on Deceased's car. The month before he disappeared, however, he had received a repossession notice stating that he had missed payments. He had also asked Accused A for a key to Business Premises, which Accused A had delivered, but which turned out not to fit any of the locks at Business Premises. So Deceased was beginning to get very suspicious of Accused A's activities in running the Security Company. Deceased had enlisted the help of an accountant friend to look over the Security Company's books and determine if he was being ripped off. This had been done the week before he disappeared, and he was looking to arrange a meeting with Accused A to confront him with this accusation. Deceased was getting frustrated too, because Accused A had agreed to several meetings previously and not shown up to them.
Crown asked the witness about her relationship with her previous boyfriend, raising the fact that she had taken out an Apprehended Violence Order against him. Crown asked the witness if the previous boyfriend had ever threatened to shoot her, or any future boyrfriends she might go out with. The witness said that he had threatened to kill her and her family, but not to shoot anyone, and not to do anything to any future boyfriends.
The witness then described events on the day Deceased disappeared. He had dropped her at work that morning and then went to pick up his mother and take her to the airport. Then he was planning to visit a friend. He called the witness at 5pm to tell her he had arranged a meeting with Accused A to go over the books of Security Company. The witness had had a work function that evening, and she asked him to call her later to find out where it was being held, and pick her up at 9:30pm.
At 9:15pm as the function was winding up, she phoned Deceased's home to leave a message on his voicemail, which he could access from anywhere via a toll-free number. She explained that Deceased's mobile phone had been broken a few weeks earlier, but that he carried around his SIM card so he could use it in borrowed phones to access his address book and mobile service messages. When he hadn't shown up or returned her call by 9:30, she took a taxi to his flat. She normally carried a key, but had left it inside on this day, so could not get inside.
She phoned the home phone inside the flat to leave a message that she was locked out - in case Deceased accessed his messages using the toll-free number. She made another call to Security Company to see if Accused A was still there. A guard answered and offered to get the mobile number of Accused A, but it would take him some time since he was currently on patrol and had to return to the office to get it.
She accessed the back yard of Deceased's flat by pulling off a fence paling. Her German shepherd dog was still in the yard. She found the back door was unlocked - she said she thought this was unusual, but then reasoned that maybe Deceased had thought the door was safe with her dog in the yard. Once inside, she phoned the home phone number there again, this time to leave a message that she was inside. She called some friends and family, and then went to bed to try to sleep.
Around 1am the security guard called back with Accused A's mobile phone number. She figured it was too late to call him, but an hour later decided to do so. She left a message on his paging service for him to call her back. An hour later he called her and said to her that he had had dinner with Deceased and left him outside a restaurant. Accused A said he had known Deceased needed to meet her because he kept looking at his watch. At this point, the Crown stopped the witness and asked, "Did Deceased wear a watch?" She looked stunned for a second, then said, "No, he didn't."
Around this time, the witness broke down into tears and the judge called a recess. We discussed in the jury room the significance of this revelation. Deceased's body had been found with no personal effects (including watch) on it. If in fact Deceased didn't wear a watch, then Accused A's statement that he had seen him looking at it is immediately under question. We went through the various possibilities: that the witness recalled Accused A's statement incorrectly, that Accused A had actually said, "looking at the time," and so on. Or of course the possibility that Accused A was lying outright to cover himself. We had no reason to suspect the witness of fabrication - she came across as very genuine in her statements about Deceased, her affection for him, her then concern over his whereabouts, and her grief in the court. The mood in the jury room was very downbeat when we retired; it really hit us hard that this case had affected someone's personal life so terribly.
When we returned, the witness continued her story, describing more phone calls she made to friends during that night. At 6am she had called Accused A again, leaving another message on his paging service. He called back an hour later, with no further news. She said he had sounded concerned for Deceased, and asked her to call him if he contacted her. She asked for more details of where they had had dinner, and he named a street in a suburb - we noticed this was not the street on which Restaurant was located, but another street further south and joining end-to-end via a short cross-street.
Later that morning, the witness had travelled with her sister to the street Accused A mentioned, and canvassed several businesses on that street to see if anyone had seen a person matching the description of Deceased - a very tall man with short, spiky, dyed blond hair. She found one employee at a petrol station who was on duty the evening before and recalled seeing a tall man use the public phone there.
The witness then travelled to Business Premises to see Accused A. The receptionist there told her that they had been trying to contact Accused A all morning, but hadn't been successful. The witness then travelled to a nearby police station to report Deceased as missing. Police there informed her that a person needed to be missing for 24 hours before they could open a case. She went home. She left a note for Deceased on the fridge and left his flat.
Crown had taken a photo of the note left on the fridge and was about to show it to the witness when Defence objected and said that it wasn't necessary for her to see the photo, and that it would cause distress to her. The judge asked the Crown if it was necessary for his case, and he backed down.
Two days later she returned to another police station near the area and filed a missing person report. At that stage she told the police about her investigation and finding the man at the petrol station.
Then she contacted Accused A and met with him. He told her that the meeting he'd had with Deceased was amicable, and that they discussed two things: A subcontracting agreement with Another Security Company to supply guards for their use; and plans to move Deceased's internet job placement business into Security Company and merge the businesses. She recalled these two things specifically because they were both news to her and she thought it unusual that Deceased hadn't told her anything about either thing.
About two weeks later the witness was helping clear things out of Deceased's flat, since the rent hadn't been paid and the landlord wanted the place available for renting. Accused A offered to store Deceased's belongings at Business Premises, but the witness refused, thinking they would be safer in commercial storage. Accused A asked if he could take Deceased's computer at least, to start integrating the internet business into Security Company. The witness said she refused this too, but then thought about it for a while, then agreed to let Accused A take the computer, but only after she copied and removed certain personal files from it. It was not clear to the jury if this meant she removed the internet business databases from the computer or not. At any rate, she then let Accused A take the computer.
Around this time she made her first official statement to the police, outlining most of these events. She made another statement a few weeks later, after Deceased's body was found. She made a third statement some months later.
The Crown had a photo, which I could see from the jury box was a cheerful snapshot of the witness and Deceased, clearly happy together. Crown said, "Could you look at this photo please?" and handed it to a court officer to pass to the witness. Defence jumped to his feet and loudly objected, saying again that it was unnecessary and would cause distress to the witness. The judge said that this time he would allow it. The witness took one very brief glance at the photo and put it face down on the bench in front of her. The Crown asked if that was a photo of her and Deceased taken on New Year's Eve. She replied that it was. The Crown said, "Nothing further, your honour."
Cross-examination began with Defence confirming that the witness made her police statements by answering questions put to her by a police officer as he typed in her responses, and not that they were reports that she had written herself. The implication being made by Defence here was that police statements may contain information coaxed out of the witness by leading questions - information that may be convenient for the police case but may be embellished or less than factual.
Defence asked the witness if she had made mention in her first police statement of the investigations she had made and the petrol station employee. She said she hadn't, because she had told those things to the police officer when she filed the missing person report and assumed the police already had that information. She subsequently included those things on her second statement.
Witness 16. Manager of Another Security Company (ASC) that subcontracted work to Security Company. This witness described the terms of the contract between the companies, that he had negotiated with Accused A. The contract had included a bank bond payable by Security Company to ASC to cover losses suffered by ASC in the case of no-shows of contractors, equipment damage or loss, and the necessary hiring of staff to cover no-shows. This bond had been payable by a deadline, which elapsed without it being paid. The bond was renegotiated for payment later, on several occasions, and in fact was never paid.
The witness had partially pulled out of the contract due to the failure of Security Company to live up to its part of the contract, and eventually cancelled the contract entirely when Security Company failed to deliver anything like the requested number of subcontracted staff.
Cross-examination concentrated on the hourly rates payable to staff and the hourly rates paid to Security Company by ASC for the services of those staff, pointing out the difference was supposedly profit for Security Company. Defence had the witness read out a list of weekly invoices from Security Company for the services of the subcontracted staff. Defence made no point about these, but simply seemed to want the figures on the court record.
Witness 17. Deceased's accountant. The witness described how he was introduced to Deceased by his then wife when they were married, and how he had prepared his tax returns. He went on to describe how Deceased had approached him to ask if he could determine from the accounts of Security Company if he was being ripped off by Accused A.
Deceased had given the witness a monthly ledger file from a small business accounting software package, taken from the offices of Security Company. The witness said he couldn't tell from one month's figures and needed to see the files for a full year. Deceased had told him that he would get the files for him. That meeting had taken place a week before Deceased disappeared, and the witness had not seen Deceased again.
Cross-examination went over old ground, covering what the witness knew of Deceased's relationship with Former Business Partners again. This time, however, the witness stated that he believed the Former Business Partners were resentful and hostile to Deceased. The witness agreed with Defence's statements that Former Business Partner A believed that Deceased had informed against him to the Police Integrity Commission, and that this caused Former Business Partner A to have strongly hostile feelings towards Deceased.
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