Inside the Law. Vikki Petraitis
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a bunch of people so cool, calm and collected. You’d think these blokes discovered bodies every day of their lives.’
Jack McFayden wanted to speak to the woman who had collected the Cameron children in the middle of the night. Was she the last person to speak to Vivienne Cameron? Was there a link between Vivienne organising for the children to be picked up at 3am, and the neighbours hearing a car driving in Beth’s street at 3.30am? Hoping she could shed some light on matters, the detective tracked Robyn Dixon down at work.
According to Robyn, it was her husband, John, who had answered the phone in the middle of the night. Vivienne said she was calling from the hospital, and asked John to go and get her children and take them home for the night. Robyn explained that she and her husband had driven to the Cameron’s house where they woke the children and took them home.
Robyn noticed that Vivienne’s Holden sedan was in the garage, and wondered if perhaps Fergus and Viv had gone to the hospital in an ambulance. Inside the house, the Dixons saw Vivienne’s handbag and thought she must have left in a hurry.
That morning, when Robyn had to go to work, she had tried to call Viv and got no answer. When she tried to ring Don Cameron, it took her 15 minutes to get through because their line was engaged. When she finally did, Don said he knew nothing about what had gone on the night before. He agreed to collect Hugh so that Robyn could go to work. The older child was sent to school.
McFayden wondered who Donald Cameron or his wife, Pam, had been speaking to for the 15 minutes that morning when Robyn Dixon was trying to call them.
For most of Tuesday 23 September, both Vivienne Cameron and the family’s Land Cruiser were missing. In the afternoon, Don Cameron’s wife, Pam, discovered the Land Cruiser on her way home from work.
She had heard that Beth had been murdered and that Viv and the Land Cruiser was missing, and when she drove home across the Phillip Island bridge, she saw the vehicle parked on a wide nature strip adjoining a playground on the Phillip Island end of the bridge.
Detectives, McFayden, O’Connor and Hunter headed to Forrest Avenue, Newhaven, to find the vehicle parked and locked. Later Pam would tell them that she had found it unlocked and she had taken the keys out of the ignition and gathered Vivienne’s purse from the seat, then locked it.
If the car had been parked there all day, that meant that despite knowing it was missing, all of the detectives, local and city, had driven past it on their way to the Island.
There was one piece of evidence that McFayden noted. Robyn Dixon said she saw Vivienne’s handbag at the house when she picked up the children, meaning that Viv didn’t take it with her when she left the house in the middle of the night. If it was found in the Land Cruiser, did that mean that Vivienne drove to kill Beth, then returned home for her handbag only to dump the car with her handbag in it?
While the detectives checked the Land Cruiser, they wondered about the fate of Vivienne Cameron. The car was parked several hundred metres from the start of the bridge.
McFayden immediately searched the bridge for any signs that Vivienne could have jumped off it. He walked slowly along both sides looking for any break in the salty film on the guard rail. He found nothing to suggest that Viv might have jumped the 10 metres into the icy water below.
And, while the car was parked within a short walk to the bridge, it was also only metres from a bus stop. Had Vivienne caught a bus off the Island?
Later, a local baker would give a statement that he had seen a vehicle parked on the nature strip at 5am. Even though the baker wrote in his statement: I cannot say what type of car it was or colour, all I can say is that there was a car parked there.
This vague declaration would form the basis of a very specific Coronial finding. But that would come later.
The detectives spoke to a friend of Beth’s, called Maree, who had spent several hours with Beth on the day she died. They had met at Maree’s house and Beth was still feeling the effects of the flu and had antibiotics in her handbag. Part of their conversation that afternoon was about Beth’s relationship with Fergus. He was coming over that evening and Beth said she planned to give Fergus an ultimatum; she was tired of having a relationship with a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife. Beth had been deeply in love with Fergus and had always believed the Cameron marriage was over in all but name before her affair with Fergus had begun.
According to Maree, Beth had every intention of telling Fergus that he would have to resolve his marital difficulties – one way or another. Beth saw no future in their relationship continuing with the way things were.
Maree knew how hard the situation had been for Beth. She could remember how upset her friend had been after Vivienne had caught Fergus hugging her in the shearing shed. Maree also knew that Beth would never intentionally break-up a marriage.
Beth told Maree that her brother had intended to make the drive from Melbourne to Phillip Island where he would spend the night with her at the house in McFees Road. However, Beth’s brother had broken his arm in an accident and had cancelled the trip. Maree said that Beth had assured her mother by phone that because her brother was not coming, she would bring the dogs inside as usual for extra protection.
Maree stated that Beth left her house early in the afternoon to return to McFees Road, so that she could prepare dinner for Fergus.
It was the last time Maree would see her best friend.
The job of performing the post-mortem examination of Elizabeth Katherine Barnard was given to Dr G R Anderson, a medical practitioner from Warragul, by order of the Coroner. The post-mortem examination was carried out in the mortuary of the Korumburra District Hospital, in the early afternoon of Wednesday 24 September 1986.
Beth’s body had been brought to the mortuary cool-room after it had been photographed, videoed and examined.
At 3pm, detectives Rory O’Connor, Alan McFayden, Brian Gamble, and photographer Peter Gates attended the post-mortem to view Dr Andersen’s examination. Throughout the examination, Gates took nine graphic photographs.
The doctor placed a measuring tape gently around the woman’s neck.
‘The throat wound is 11cm wide and 6.5cm deep in the fold between the chin and the upper part of the neck.’ The doctor walked over to the bench near the sink and took a notebook and a pen from his pocket and rested it there. He wrote down the measurements with his hand clad in its surgical glove. Traces of blood were left on the page. He walked back to the body and probed within the folds of the jagged neck wound.
‘The pharynx has been completely severed just above the larynx, as has the right carotid artery, but not the left. Mmm, that’s interesting,’ the doctor murmured.
‘Why?’ asked O’Connor bending closer to take a look.
‘Well,’ replied Dr Anderson, ‘one carotid artery is situated on each side of the neck.’ He indicated to the detectives their approximate location. ‘And when one is severed and the other one isn’t, that suggests that her head has been turned or held to the side when her throat was cut.’
‘Would the killer need much strength to do that?’
‘Depends if the woman was struggling or not I suppose.’
The doctor continued probing while the detectives took notes. ‘See this line along the lower border of the neck wound?’ The detectives again leaned forward for a closer look. ‘It’s intermittently jagged. That suggests multiple cuts rather than a single slash. Cutting a throat isn’t as easy as you might imagine.’
McFayden shuddered inwardly.
The doctor turned his attention to the wounds on the dead woman’s face, as his gloved hands manipulated the