This story is one of murder and miscarried justice.
It’s kinda long, but have a personal connection with it.
Stay with me, if you will…
It’s a worthwhile read.
CAST OF CHARACTERS:
(Or people connected to me in this case. All of this is on public record, apart from my personal recollections)
MICHELLE ENGELHARDT - UNWITTING WITNESS
My best friend for many years. She still is in many ways. We still have a very close connection, although we don’t speak as often as we ought to. Michelle was with me through some of the craziest times of my early adulthood. I looked after her, she looked after me. She’s an incredible woman. A woman of the world, yet not of this world. She attracts more freaks than I do… and that’s saying something. She’s a fairy in an unconvincing disguise and has come through a lot to become a true woman of strength. Although I’ve probably spent more time looking after her than vice versa…
ANDREW MALLARD - CONVICTED MURDERER
Andrew is the central character in this story. He was living with Michelle as her flatmate when all this shit went down. He was taken by her, as so many men are. It would prove to lead to his downfall. Not by any fault of his own, or hers. You will find that story here.
JOHN QUIGLEY - LAWYER EXTAORDINAIRE
I had the privelege of being the Foreperson on a jury where John Quigley was the defence lawyer. I don’t trust lawyers. I gave him the hairy eyeball for the entire trial and focussed solely on the evidence, as I should have. That said, he was truly impressive as a defence counsel. At the time I wasn’t aware of his humanitarian convictions… I just thought he was your usual spin doctor.
ROB DEVENISH - PRISON CHAPLAIN
The Devenish family lived across the road from my grandparents for many years. My entire childhood. I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s house and Rob’s daughter Belinda, would stay with me and I with her. I remember Rob as a very kind, if somewhat distracted man. The Devenish’s were a great family. The kind of family I wished I could grow up in, despite Belinda being the only girl amongst four boys.
COLLEEN EGAN - THE BEST KIND OF JOURNALIST
An investigative journalist who was convinced that things were not as they seemed, in this case. I mention her here, because my husband is acquainted with her, on a professional level. She’s the real heroine of this story.
The year was 1994.
My friend Michelle was living in a 2 bedroom flat in Mosman Park, Perth.
The rent had been a little steep at her last house, so she accepted the offer of an acquaintance to move in and share expenses. A man named Andrew Mallard.
I wasn’t living far from Michelle, at the time. I spent quite a few days and nights at her flat, with her and Andrew, watching telly, then going out to wherever took our fancy in the evening.
Andrew was usually there when I was. He was an odd character. Truth be told, he wasn’t all that pleasant to be around. He talked too much about things that didn’t make sense and was often quite loudly obnoxious about it. Usually we couldn’t wait to get out of there… at least I couldn’t. I didn’t feel like I was in danger, he was just annoying. He had a slightly manic way about him and had a lot of ridiculous conspiracy theories. He was also infatuated with Michelle.
Infatuated with Michelle to the point where, when it was revealed that things had gone bad at the last house she lived in and she couldn’t get her belongings back from that house, Andrew thought it would be a good idea to go around to the house and pose as a police officer to retrieve her stuff.
He didn’t do a very good job of it. He posed as in ‘Interpol Officer’. Nice one. The ex-housemates were onto him pretty much straight away. They called the police and he was arrested for impersonating a police officer and charged with theft. It was sweet of him to try, as misguided as his attempt was… He really wanted to impress Michelle.
One day soon after, I received a frantic call from Michelle.
It went something like this:
“Vanessa! I’ve got to tell you something!!”
“Why? What’s happened??”
“Andrew’s been arrested for that murder on Glyde Street! He’s been taken in for questioning and I don’t know what to do!! I’m freaking out, man!!!”
“Hang on… What???? Tell me what’s going on..!?”
“They think he killed that woman.. you know… Pamela Lawrence…to death!! He killed her!!! FUCK MAN!!! HE MURDERED SOMEONE!!!”
“Are you SERIOUS??!!”
“YES!!!”
“Holy fuck.. Wait.. wait… I just need to get my head around this…”
“I’m going to be taken in for questioning”
“That woman who was bludgeoned to death in her shop??”
“YESS!!!!!!”
I don’t remember much of what happened after that…
All I do remember is that things went horribly wrong for Michelle from there. She was taken in for questioning. She gave a statement. The police tore apart her flat. Andrew had been gone for a couple of days at this point. It turned out that he’d been picked up by the police, whilst he was sitting at Gino’s having a coffee. Gino’s is a very well known and perpetually busy cafe on the Fremantle strip. Fremantle is about a 15 minute drive south from Mosman Park. The police had been keeping an eye on him after the ‘Interpol’ incident. An undercover cop had been selling him pot, just the night before he was picked up.
Andrew was taken into police headquaters and interrogated for 11 hours, with no lawyer present. This was after being beaten up at a nightclub the night before (he was 6′5″, gangly, and had obnoxious tendencies… he stood out), after scoring dope from the undercover cop and also after having no sleep.
Eleven hours. Only the last 20 minutes of that eleven hour interview was recorded.
When the case eventually came up in court, amongst rabid media attention, nobody was aware of this. The cops said that he confessed. Police aren’t psychologists. They were looking for a shortcut conviction. That’s what they do.
In that last 20 minutes of the interview that was actually recorded, they asked him how Pamela Lawrence was killed. Andrew replied that she must have been bludgeoned with a wrench, this way.. and that way. He demonstrated how this had happened. He also drew a picture of the murder weapon, upon request. It was a wrench.
All of this was reported with glee on the TV news. Everyone agreed that he must be guilty. He was the talk of the town. There was even an eyewitness; a young, teenage girl who was a passenger in a car pulling up to the lights near the shop. Her mother worked in Pamela’s shop. She noticed that the lights were on and that Pamela was nowhere in sight, but she did see a man. She drew a description of the man she saw.
The Prosecution opened with the drawing Andrew had drawn of the supposed murder weapon. The wrench. All forensic evidence showed that it wasn’t a wrench that killed Pamela Lawrence. That evidence was never shown to the jury.
Andrew was found guilty by jury and sentenced to 30 years in a maximum security prison. Casuarina Prison. Casuarina ain’t pretty, despite it’s name.
It was the last 20 minute video of his interrogation, with no other evidence that saw him convicted. They made a big deal of his prior record. The ‘Interpol Officer’.
The first year he was in remand and prison, Andrew refused help from everyone, including his family. He was taken, after some time, to Graylands Hospital, which is the major psychiatric hospital here in Perth for the seriously mentally ill. It was established that he was suffering ‘Hypermania’, which is basically an early onset ‘manic’ state of people with Bipolar Disorder, or as it was once known, Manic Depression. I saw his mania for myself. I could have told them that, for crying out loud.
I’m quite familiar with Bipolar Disorder. I have observed it time and time again. If he was in a manic state when he was being questioned by police, he would have thought he was helping them, by providing them with scenarios under which this kind of killing could have occurred. Hypothesising, if you will. He would also have felt bulletproof and fully believed in his high intellect. He does have a high intellect, but he also would have had poor judgement, due to his condition. Bipolar people are generally not violent.
None of this was brought out in court, of course. But, that’s just one of many things.
His mother wrote a letter to an investigative journalist named Colleen Egan. Colleen almost dismissed the letter. After all, don’t most mother’s believe their children are innocent? But, Colleen also received a letter and report from the man who had performed a polygraph test on Andrew (not admissable in court), telling her “Follow your heart. You’ve got an innocent man, there.”
On the basis of that letter alone, she knew she had to delve further.
Colleen knew of John Quigley by reputation. He had been a high profile, very successful defence lawyer in Perth. He’d recently moved from law, into politics and was languishing on the backbench in Parliament. He would be the perfect guy to get involved in this case. He also had the ear of the Attorney General (State Minister for Law).
Quigley, despite his apparently bored appearance in Parliament, was still quite a busy man, but he spent 14 weekends reading the transcripts of the initial court case. He was hooked. He saw enough to see he felt he had a duty. A duty to see justice done.
Nobody could see, on the lack of evidence provided, why Andrew Mallard was in gaol (yes we spell it ‘gaol’ in Australia, hah!). There was no weapon. No DNA (although initially it was too early for the technology), no blood on his clothes, no fingerprints were found at the scene, he didn’t have a lawyer present at his interview and alleged “confession”. Also, the sketch by the teenage girl didn’t match. The man in the drawing had a beard and no moustache. Andrew had a moustache and no beard. That’s quite a difference. The sketches were never given to the Defence, let alone the Jury. The police didn’t hand them over.
Meanwhile, the Chaplain at Casuarina Prison, Rob Devenish, had taken special notice of Andrew’s case. He saw things weren’t right. He’d spent some time with Andrew, one on one and realised his plight. He felt driven to step up an appeal.
A high profile law firm also got involved in his appeal. Clayton Utz (my mother used to work for them). The group call from the partners in the firm was “On the simple facts, he couldn’t have done it”.
They soon discovered evidence from a taxi driver who testified that he had dropped Andrew at the ‘Bel Air’ flats not long before the time of the murder. 20 minutes before the murder. The taxi driver had waited outside the flats for that long and had assumed that Andrew had done a runner, but Andrew had returned. So, according to the prosecution, in that 20 minute period, Andrew had walked 4 blocks, murdered Pamela Lawrence, then sneaked back to the flats to pay the taxi driver. There was also a witness who saw him in the lift in the flats during this time.
Collectively they delved further.
Michelle’s second testimony was also revealed. According to the teenage ‘eye witness’, the man in the shop was wearing a cap. Andrew had said to the police that he did own a cap, but he wasn’t wearing it on the day. Unbeknownst to Andrew, Michelle testified that Andrew did own a cap, but at the time, she was at home and it had been hanging on the back of the front door, where it usually was.
It was initially suggested to the Jury by the Prosecutor, that Andrew must have gone and washed the clothes he was wearing, after the murder, under the Fremantle bridge. This was a quite a distance away, he didn’t have a car… and it was also kept from the Jury that there was no trace of blood OR salt water found on his clothes.
It’s just piling up, no?
Andrew was asked to take another Polygraph Test. Again, there was no doubt he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t murder Pamela Lawrence.
All this evidence in his defence was gathered for his appeal.
It took three Judges, ten days (that’s fast work), to find the new evidence in the Andrew Mallard case unconvincing on appeal.
He was apparently, fucked.
Andrew is a lucky man. He has a family who loves him and believes in him. Not long before he was found guilty intially, his father died. His father didn’t believe he was guilty. His poor mother. She had to deal with the death of her husband and her son being put away for life at the same time. She blames her husband’s death on Andrew’s arrest…
His sister stepped up to the plate. Between them both, with the generous help of the top legal brains in the state, they managed to get his case to the High Court in Canberra (Australia’s Capital).
They still needed new evidence to get it that far. Only 5 percent of cases that apply actually make it to the High Court.
They found it.
They found it in the form of a letter written by the police Superintendent in charge of the case, to the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions). The Super stated quite clearly that he thought Andrew Mallard was innocent and stated reasons why. The police are the one’s who withheld all the crucial evidence initially…
It may seem like a small thing, but it made all the difference.
The case was accepted in the High Court. They agreed to look properly at the evidence, or lack thereof.
Last year, after 12 years in gaol, Andrew’s conviction was quashed, and he was set free.
Twelve years in prison.
FREE.
A free man.
I shed tears the day he was freed.
I know I didn’t like him much, but I didn’t hate him. Not at all. He just irritated me a bit. I’d never wish what he went through on anyone.
I feel bad that I believed he was guilty, without proof.
I think back, and I can’t see that he could have ever done it. He may have been a bit annoying, but he never showed any signs of violence. I think you can pick that in people. He was a fundamentally decent man, if a bit misguided.
If you read this, Andrew, I’m sorry. So very sorry.
Initially, I believed the hype.
Andrew leaving Casuarina Prison with his sister, Jacqui:
If you’re looking for a postscript, here it is…
It’s 2006.
Andrew is free, but the police are still insisting, or implying he’s guilty.
There is some not-so-new technology called DNA.
Late last year, a handprint found at the scene of the crime, matches that of a man who, just a week before the horrible death of Pamela Lawrence, bludgeoned his own girlfriend to death.
That man is already in prison.
Here’s where the media comes in again….
A young, inexperienced radio newsreader at the ABC puts to air, without knowing she shouldn’t, the name of the man who matched the DNA.
The next morning the man in question is found dead by hanging in his cell in Albany Prison, south of Perth.
Andrew found out there was a new suspect by reading the newspaper over someone’s shoulder on the bus.
The police didn’t tell him.
The man who hanged himself was, by fairly concrete evidence, the man who murdered Pamela Lawrence.
In April 2007, it is announced there will be a Corruption Inquiry into the wrongful imprisonment of Andrew Mallard.
He has been awarded a $200,000 ex-gratia compensation payment, with more to come once the inquiry has settled its findings.
Fucking incompetent, egotistical, corrupt police.
That is the end of the story.
Except, I thank John Quigley, although I didn’t really define his role in this story…
I’ll just say this…
Quigley for Prime Minister. I’m glad your cancer is in remission.
And Rob Devenish, not only for making my childhood a more pleasant place, but for the moral support you showed Andrew in his darkest 12 years.
Andrew, I hope you can find yourself in the time you lost. And I thought I had it hard….
For what it’s worth, although I went along with it, it never made sense to me.
No help, I know.
If Andrew had been convicted in any number of states in the U.S. with the death penalty, he would probably not be alive now.
Here is the latest story about the case.
Hallelujah.
The End.
P.S. To the Lawrence family: I’m so sorry for your years of hell. I understand in ways I haven’t expressed. I so sincerely hope you can find some closure soon… as much as there can be.
Song Of The Day - TV On The Radio - Wolf Like Me
