3
Strategic Management
of Large Policing Operations:
The ‘Backpacker’ Murder Investigation
Clive Small
November 2011
Presentation to Year 12 Legal Studies Class
Ryde Secondary College
1 Introduction
The 'Backpacker Murder Investigation' involved seven murders and one attempted murder over two and a half years.
Broadly, the inquiry comprised four phases:
· the search (Belanglo and Galston Gorge) - about 500 police plus support units such as State Emergency Services and Bush Fire Brigade,
· the investigation - 40 task force personnel plus physical evidence and intelligence support staff,
· the search of 11 target properties and the arrest of Ivan Robert Milat - 280 police, and
· brief preparation - about 40 police directly involved.
On 27 July 1996 Ivan Milat was convicted of seven counts of murder and one count of detention for advantage. He was sentence to penal servitude for his natural life and six years respectively.
Milat’s commital commenced at the Campbelltown Local Court on 24 October 1994. During those hearings
· 172 witnesses were called to give evidence
· 201 witness statements were produced
· About 30 of the witnesses were from overseas.
· 225 items of property were produced
· 875 photographs were produced
· 150 documents, videos, charts, etc, were produced
As a result of disclosures during the commital a further 67 witnesses were interviewed and included in the prosecution case for trail.
As a result of admissions by the defence the number of trial witnesses was culled to 150 with the statements and depositions from the committal proceedings of a further 25 witnesses being tendered. Three hundred and twenty five primary exhibits were tendered. Many included numerous items. For example, one document comprised of 180 pages and photographs. Numerous schedules were tendered by agreement, principally to assist the parties to follow the case.
Due to the complexity of the case, at both commital and trial the following arrangements were put in place:
· At least one officer was in court at all times supplying information as to detail and providing exhibit management for the prosecutor.
· At least two officers assisting with exhibit management prior to and at the completion of each hearing day.
· A fully staffed police office at each venue.
· A response team available to conduct immediate follow-up investigations arising from the evidence given on any one day.
The complexity of the 'Backpacker Murder Investigation' means the following review is necessarily a broad overview with the selection of a few illustrations to emphasise strategic choices and critical issues.
2 Background
2.1 Seven backpackers disappear
James Gibson and Deborah Everist, two Victorians visiting Sydney, were last seen alive on 30 December 1989 when they left Surry Hills to hitch-hike to Albury. Their disappearance was reported to the Victoria Police.
On 20 January 1991 Simone Schmidl, a German backpacker left Guildford in Sydney to hitch-hike to Melbourne to meet her mother. When Simone failed to appear her mother reported her missing to the Victoria Police, and several reported sightings of the missing person in that State were investigated.
About 11 months later on 20 December 1991 Gabor Neugebauer and Anja Habschied, two German backpackers left Kings Cross to hitch-hike to Darwin. They were reported missing to the Australian Federal Police through the German Embassy by their parents.
On 18 April 1992 Joanne Walters and Caroline Clarke, two British backpackers left Sydney to travel to Darwin via Victoria and South Australia, intending to take the inland road from Adelaide to Darwin. They were reported missing to the New South Wales Police via Interpol.
So at this point at least four separate inquiries were being conducted into the disappearances, each using its own records maintenance and retrieval systems.
3 A murder investigation begins: Clarke and Walters
On 19 September 1992, five months after their disappearance, the body of Walters was discovered by chance, by a group on orienteering exercises in the Belanglo State Forest, about 140 kilometres south of Sydney, near the town of Mittagong and about 12 kilometres west of the Hume Highway. The following day, the body of Clarke was found in the same area by police.
A murder investigation was commenced and over five days about 40 police searched a 150 metre wide corridor of bush tracks about three kilometres in length. Nothing further was found.
4 The 'Backpacker Murder Investigation' begins
4.1 Two more bodies are found: Gibson and Everist
About 13 months later, on 5 October 1993 the skeletal remains of Deborah Everist were found by chance, by a person fossicking in the Forest. The remains of James Gibson were found a short time later by police. The remains of Gibson and Everist were about 600 metres in a direct line from where the bodies of the British backpackers had been found.
These discoveries resulted in the creation of a formal State-wide murder task force - Operation Air.
4.2 The search of Belanglo Forest begins: three more bodies are found: Schmidl, Neugebauer and Habschied
The apparent connection between the two lots of murders - Clarke and Walters and Gibson and Everist - raised a range of issues including:
· Were there others? If so how many?
· How big a search? - 18 months earlier the search had missed the Gibson and Everist bodies by a couple of hundred metres
· How do we handle the media?
· How do we manage the investigation itself?
5 The search: Belanglo State Forest and Galston Gorge
The search of Belanglo State Forest commenced on 6 October 1993 with forty police searchers and over a few weeks was increased to a search team of three hundred police plus support units until its completion on 17 November, some five weeks later.
The search was conducted in a series of phases. One, a shoulder-to-shoulder search by police, often on their knees. Two, a search by two cadaver dogs. Three, a spot-check search using metal detectors. Four, selected locations were searched by Crime Scene specialists, who sieved the dirt and ground cover of relatively large areas. And as a final check, suspect areas were again searched in shoulder-to-shoulder fashion by police. Some identified crime scenes were searched in this way three or four times.
The search area is densely covered with trees and bushes, thick ground vegetation and forest debris. The ground is undulating with rocky outcrops and large gorges. At one location for example, police were sent abseiling over 50 metre cliffs to search otherwise inaccessible gorge floors.
The final search area covered a corridor of around 73 kilometres of fire and other trails, by 400 metres wide.
During seven days in the latter part of November around 100 police also searched the Galston Gorge area north of Sydney. This search included divers and covered about five kilometres of creek and creek banks and a further two kilometres along roadways leading to and from the area. This search was undertaken because a few months after Gibson and Everist were last seen alive, Gibson's backpack was found in this area and, as a result, a smaller search had been conducted.
6 The media
From the outset media attention was both intense and international because of the nationalities of some of the deceased. British and German media were flown in, as was John Raydler of the US CNN network - a first for US coverage of Australian news events. Local 'experts' started appearing on the media, some giving advice about the way to investigate, others profiling the offender/s, and yet others demanding to know why they hadn't been seconded to the inquiry because of their special skills and knowledge.
So the media not only focused on the murders themselves and the capabilities of the Police Service, but also about the impact these murders might have on our tourist industry. In short, there was every chance media reporting could get out of hand and the damage caused to both the investigation and the police image irreversible.
Furthermore, in the early days of the inquiry it is fair to say that on the minds of every police officer involved was the real chance that these murders might never be solved. The reasons for this were several. In each case the victim was a backpacker, which meant information about travel movements and associations was limited and difficult to gather. The length of time between the murders and the discovery of the bodies increased the difficulty of the investigation - evidence may be lost, both in the sense of individual memory of incidents and deterioration of crime scenes. The remoteness of the crime scenes was clearly intended to provide a degree of safety and depersonalisation for the offender/s.
The time delay also meant not only physical and spatial safety, but together these added the perception of 'the perfect crime': 'How can they connect me now?'
In this environment several strategic decisions were taken with respect to the media. First, we would co-operate to the extent practicable even though this meant spending considerable time catering to the different needs of the various media and the various groups within the different media.
Second, the information given would be strictly controlled with primary media interviews each morning and evening.
Third, the information itself was deliberately structured - it had to be enough to give a morning and afternoon story, ie, satisfy their needs.
Fourth, where practicable all media interviews would be preceded with a written media release on the area to be covered - the ground rules for each interview were, therefore, clearly established.
Fifth, with few exceptions, the Task Force Commander would undertake all interviews. This was considered important for several reasons, not the least of which were to ensure no contradictory or unwanted information was released and to enable the investigators to get on with the job of investigating. This approach also allowed the communication of common themes in a consistent and reassuring way. Paraphrased a primary theme was, 'We're giving this our best shot, but it's going to be a long hard haul'. The idea was to gain confidence and support, but not to raise expectations too high - the groundwork was being set for a 'no result' investigation.
Another issue that had to be overcome, because it did take up a large part of the media reporting in the early days, was that the search some 12 months earlier had not found the other remains. How could we be confident this search would not leave us in the same position? The method of the search and the use of cadaver dogs has been already described. But the final search area had to provide the media and community with additional confidence.
In part for this reason, the size of the final search area was determined by natural boundaries, substantial creeks and rivers and the main road into the area. All this was explained to the media, both at formal interviews and in informal discussions.
The offender/s also figured prominently in our approach to the media. An important aspect of our media strategy was to put pressure on the offender/s: 'This is a crack team investigating these murders. They really do know what they are doing. Have I made a mistake?' In short, could panic lead to a mistake?
And last, and perhaps our most obvious strategy was to jog the memory of people who might have relevant information and to get them to come forward.
7 The investigative phase
7.1 The investigative information base
In addition to the four separate inquiries commenced following the report of the victims' disappearances, Kings Cross Patrol had commenced a more general inquiry into persons missing from that area and the Major Crime Squad South-West had commenced a murder investigation following the discovery of the bodies of Clarke and Walters.
In short, the discovery of the Gibson and Everist remains meant the pulling together of information gathered over six different investigations. This information had been treated differently in each case, some was manually recorded, other information had been recorded on different data bases and even where the same software packages had been used (the NSW Task Force Information Management Systems - TIMS) classification of the information varied. Added to this was the literal explosion in the information base.
7.2 An explosion in the information base
From discovery of the first body in October 1993 - the third body overall - information came in at a rapidly accelerating rate, and reached avalanche proportions by December. It is estimated that the holdings went from around seven to ten thousand pieces of information to around 1.5 million towards the end of January 1994 - about 12 weeks later.
7.3 Management of the information
Information management was a major challenge. The difficulties of trying to draw together a variety of data bases and a rapidly expanding volume of data, and at the same time keep up with what was going on meant that by December we were in difficulty. It was clear that our existing system could neither handle the amount of information involved nor was it sufficiently flexible to allow for adjustments in and the realignment of information groupings as circumstances changed, nor the retrieval of information in desired forms. Quality control mechanisms were also inadequate.