BLURB

      Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend time with a convicted serial killer? Or how you would feel when they told you what it was like to take a life?

      Don't Ever Call Me Helpless is a powerful, chilling true crime story that offers a rare glimpse into the mind of convicted murderer Catherine Birnie.

      In the late 1980s, Catherine and her defacto partner David Birnie went on a killing spree that shocked and numbed the Western Australian community. In just six weeks they abducted, tortured, raped and murdered four Perth women, and were only caught when a fifth victim escaped and led police to the killers.

      During the 1990s Ruth Wykes was a frequent visitor to Perth's Bandyup Women's Prison. She spent many hours with Catherine Birnie, and her account of the woman, mother, and remorseless killer is a must-read for anyone who is interested in true crime.

      DON'T EVER CALL ME HELPLESS

       It's the stillness in her, the calm, when she watches me that frightens me more than anything. I know enough to be aware that her conscience is bankrupt; she is bemused by ordinary human emotions and reactions.

       I am her reluctant teacher. I know she mimics my interactions with people to help her pass as ordinary and insignificant. I have become her mask. Yet barely beneath the surface, in those times she is tested, her true character is revealed. When she is real she is cruel, deeply arrogant, manipulative and difficult.

       She won't change because she can't. She won't find redemption, and in any case she doesn't want to.

      Catherine Margaret Birnie resides in Perth's Bandyup Women's Prison. It has been her home for 22 years, and if public sentiment is any measure of her future, she will remain there for the rest of her life. In 1987 she was imprisoned for abducting, kidnapping, torturing and murdering four Perth women and attempting to murder a fifth. She and her partner David Birnie were kidnappers. They were torturers. They were sexual sadists. They are serial killers.

      The first thing you notice about Catherine Birnie is that you don't notice her at all. She blends in, taking up very little space. It isn't until she becomes aware that you haven't recognised her that she makes herself known to you.

      She doesn't look scary; neither does she carry an aura of danger. In her everyday life Cathy Birnie is a diminutive woman, only around 160 centimetres tall with tiny features. Her hands are small and well defined, and when she walks it is with the air of someone who doesn't have a care in the world.

      Even her face is still and unremarkable when she is relaxed. Her eyes, which have been variously described as cruel, evil and dark, are rarely that; they are part of the mask she wears so successfully. She passes as 'nobody'.

      One woman, a social worker who was conducting a workshop at Bandyup, spent some time chatting with Catherine in the library one day. As she was leaving the prison she was talking to a colleague about the 'lovely woman in the library'. She went on to speculate that this nice woman must be one of those people you read about who is in prison for social security fraud. When she learned who she had been talking to she refused to believe it: 'No way! She's like any normal person you'd meet in the street. She couldn't have done that!'

      But Catherine isn't like any normal person. She has a native intelligence that enables her to read a person's character very quickly. She also has an intuitive sense of someone's vulnerabilities, and an absolute willingness to play with that. For someone with Catherine's propensity for games, an institution with 180 other women to choose from is a smorgasbord.

      Life in prison is relatively comfortable for her. She has gained the right to live in one of the self-care units, which are separate from the main cell blocks and have their own small gardens. She gets access to the daily newspapers and to a computer. All meals are provided; it's still jail, but a self-care unit is as comfortable a place as anyone can find within the prison.

      By her own admission she is now a Christian. And while she is quite happy to state that she has found God, her reluctance to expand on this life-changing experience leaves many people cynical. It is far from uncommon for prisoners, especially those serving lengthy jail terms, to convert to Christianity. It is also not uncommon for that to be nothing more than a convenient 'character reference' for their next parole hearings.

      Now 58 years old, Catherine is a fading version of the hateful, belligerent woman who stares defiantly out of photos taken after her arrest in 1986. Her face has softened and her hair has turned grey.

      The hateful facial expressions, captured by the news media and police photographers, represent a moment, frozen in time, when she had just been convicted of murder. They are inarguably the reference point by which everybody forms their judgement of Catherine Birnie. After all, the closest most people will ever get to her is by looking at those frozen images. In real life she is softer, less intimidating. But is she any less lethal?

      The year 1986 was one in which Australian politics was dominated by the Labor Party. Bob Hawke, the charismatic bloke you'd want to have a beer with, was Prime Minister of Australia. Brian Burke, a man who himself would become intimately familiar with the inside of a prison cell, was Premier of Western Australia. In New South Wales Neville Wran resigned after a decade of leading the state.

      Culturally, the Australian Ballet was bravely performing Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew to surprisingly excellent reviews, but the arts event most Australians remember more was the debut of the movie Crocodile Dundee. Starring Paul Hogan, it became a worldwide smash. On the small screen an ambitious local soap opera made its debut. Producers and TV executives wondered how it would be received, but Neighbours is still entertaining us more than two decades later.

      In the sporting arenas around the nation, the Parramatta Eels beat Canterbury Bankstown to become premiers of the New South Wales Rugby League, and in the VFL's 90th year Hawthorn defeated Carlton.

      But 1986 was a horrific year for crime. In February a young nurse, Anita Cobby, went missing. When her body was found in a paddock, every ordinary person in New South Wales was stunned, then outraged. Rage was palpable when five men were arrested and details emerged of what they had done to Anita.

      In March a car bomb exploded outside Police Headquarters in Russell Street, Melbourne. The bomb killed a policewoman and injured 22 other people. Four men were arrested and sent to prison for the bombings, although one of them was later acquitted on appeal. The apparent motive for the bombings was revenge against the police. The bombers had previously been arrested by the Victoria Police for other crimes.

      In July Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were hanged in Malaysia. Barlow and Chambers had been caught trafficking 141.9 grams of heroin and, in what Prime Minister Bob Hawke described as a 'barbaric' act, became the first westerners executed under the tough new Malaysian anti-drug laws. They were hanged on 7 July in Pudu Prison.

      In August, a beautiful nine-year-old girl, Samantha Knight, went missing in Bondi, Sydney. Despite a huge police investigation and intense media campaign nothing came to light and Samantha wasn't found. Ten years would go by before a real clue led police to start looking at a convicted paedophile, and it would be 17 years after her death that this man would be found guilty of killing her. Samantha's body was never found.

      In October 1986 a working-class couple in the Perth suburb of Willagee grew tired of talking about their fantasies and decided it was time to do something about it. In the intimate language of couples they developed a shorthand - a code - for their perverted intentions: 'I've got the munchies'. David and Catherine Birnie started hunting.

      It was all well planned beforehand, and it happened so quickly that most of the damage had been done before Perth's police or general