A Shrink in the Clink Read online

  No, my silent wrath was directed towards Duggan. No wonder he was so evasive. He had clearly retained a relative novice because no one else would have touched the brief.

  ‘Thanks for the heads-up, mate, where can I find this gifted ornithologist?’

  My feeble attempt at humour was met with a po-faced grunt. ‘I’ll bring him up, son . . . Please wait in the interview room.’

  Heaven on a stick. Ambushed and conned. And a highly controversial case. After a detailed interview and assessment, I would need to dictate his report hurriedly over the lunch break ahead of giving evidence in the afternoon. I could hardly wait. It was clear from the discussions with the cop that I had my work cut out for me. The desk sergeant’s comments had alerted me to the exotic interview that awaited me. Extraordinary.

  My thoughts were dislocated by the jangling of police cell keys and a dysfunctional symphony of squawks, cow moos and barking dogs emanating from the cells as my hapless punter was escorted to the room. The boys are on fire, I silently chuckled. Better than a day at the Land Titles Office. And besides, there was always the fee to consider. My mood lifted.

  And there he stood, all five feet of him, as scrawny as a deflowered chook himself with a screeching banzai voice to match.

  ‘Well, Mr Smith, I hear you’ve been very busy. I’m Tim Watson-Munro. I’m a forensic psychologist and I’m here to help.’

  Lame as it sounded and despite my sense of being suckered by the lawyer, I had made a split-second decision to use the sugar rather than the shit approach to my questioning. I had learned from my jailhouse days that gaining swift rapport when it came to such awkward charges was essential.

  ‘Yep mate, very busy. Did ya know the fuck’n bastard shot me?’

  Without drawing breath, he continued, ‘Yeah . . . shot me in the arse, the gutless cunt.’

  I was taken aback by his focus. No tears for the defiled dead chooks he had screwed to death. Not on one occasion either, but several. No, not for Chooka – his only concern seemed to be for his tender, yet-to-be-fully-healed arse, humiliatingly peppered by the enraged farmer with his double-barrel shotty when their paths finally collided with brutal, withering force. For a bird-brained chook-fucker his attention to detail was staggering. So was his salivating enthusiasm to share his lascivious tale with me.

  ‘How’d he catch you?’ I figured if his focus was self-interest, this was as good as any point to commence our discussion.

  ‘Well, I was in the chook house and he snuck in with his gun . . .’

  ‘What were you doing?’ I knew the answer but wanted to test his willingness to recount his actions honestly. Most crooks obfuscate when it comes to describing any behaviour that casts them in a bad light.

  ‘I was rooting a chicken, mate.’

  Showing no embarrassment reflected in some way his sick, perverse pride. I had noticed in the brief that the farmer had indeed busted him in full flight. Tweeds around his ankles with a chook impaled on his member, it must have been an overwhelming encounter for all parties.

  I also understood the fury of the shooter. Unbeknown to Chooka, the man pulling the trigger was a renowned, highly respected alleged godfather within the local Calabrian community . . . Beyond the loss of his beloved livestock, it was now a matter of honour. A devout churchgoer, he had made the journey to town every Sunday and for a number of Sundays before the fateful encounter with Chooka, he would return home to find a number of dead chickens in the coop. Evidently convinced that, despite the chickens only dying on Sundays, a fox was the culprit, he set a trap.

  On the day of the intervention, as was his usual practice, the ‘farmer’ was driven in his immaculately polished motor down the long, sweeping driveway of his estate. Past the undulating fields of vines, past the olive groves and past the chook pen. Chooka was vivid in his unashamed and graphic recollections. As he observed the dissipating swirls of dust tossed into the blue morning sky, his anticipation, passion and excitement was rising. He had by now established the routine.

  ‘Simple, mate, I’d hide in the bushes, wait for the car to go and off you go.’

  Upon returning from Mass, no doubt reinvigorated from the week’s sins and with a restored soul, the farmer was confronted by the discovery of several dead chickens on the property. By the time of his arrival, rigor mortis had generally set in.

  Frightened to death? He was bewildered. And angry.

  Unbeknown to Chooka, on the day of his detection, the farmer had asked his driver to drop him at the end of the driveway with his double-gauge shotty neatly and secretly disguised under his overcoat.

  Believing the coast was clear, with foxy cunning Chooka entered the yard to be greeted by a cacophony of squawking hens. By now, they too knew the routine. The terrified squawking emanating from the yard was the farmer’s cue.

  With his feathers clearly ruffled, he burst in. You can imagine his horror and disgust when instead of a fox he stumbled across Chooka, strides around his ankles and a prized fowl on his member.

  ‘Mate, he was fuck’n angry, alright,’ Chooka reflected, now in full flight as he narrated his tale. ‘The next thing I remember is trying to run away down the paddock . . . I couldn’t go fast cause the fuck’n chook was stuck on me cock and I couldn’t get me pants up properly.’

  ‘And then what happened, mate?’ I felt I had some rapport with him and was keen to extract as much information as possible, which would assist me in formulating an opinion as to why he had offended and his prospects for rehabilitation. Despite being a novice, I knew these would be the key issues discussed in my evidence during his sentence hearing.

  ‘The next thing I heard was a fuck’n bang and I realised I’d been shot in the arse, mate. I shat meself, I fair dinkum thought I was gonna die . . . I knew it was all over.’ On that point he was correct – an arrest, medical attention and incarceration awaiting sentence on abominable crimes.

  Having established the chronology of events, my next task was to explore the subtle dynamics of his psyche. This involved in the first instance a fairly benign, non-intrusive exploitation of his developmental history. As I had learned during my ‘apprenticeship’ at Parramatta Gaol, obtaining a detailed history provides the royal road to the deeper aspects of an offender’s mind.

  His willingness to share his tale without embarrassment or shame suggested that he either trusted me or didn’t give a fuck. Regardless, I felt he would open up on the darker aspects of his sexuality with some gentle persuasion.

  ‘Ever done this before, mate?’ I enquired.

  ‘Nah . . . but I’d thought about it a lot.’

  ‘Ya mean when you were having a tug, mate?’

  I was on a roll. His admission about masturbatory fantasies – as I came to learn over the ensuing years – was typical of this kind of offence. The pleasure derived from orgasm, however, is progressively diminished with each episode, inevitably leading to an escalation in the behaviour where at some point the offender starts acting out.

  A man with a restricted vocabulary, Chooka continued, ‘Yep, I was always disappointed in meself after and I thought I’d never think about that again, but the thoughts would come back . . .’

  ‘Have you ever enjoyed different types of strange sex?’ I doubted he’d answer truthfully even if he had, but it was important to find out if possible. Generally, people who indulge in one form of sexual perversion tend to indulge in several.

  ‘Nah mate . . . just chooks.’

  Perhaps it was my unseasoned youth yet to be fully blooded by future experience, but I believed him. I then wondered about his intellectual capacity. He described a limited education and menial rural employment since leaving school. His intelligence was clearly on the lower side, but IQ testing revealed he was not intellectually disabled.

  He was, however, experiencing high levels of anxiety relating to being shot. ‘Do ya know who the shooter is, mate?’ he enquired before continuing. ‘I’m fuck’n lucky he didn’t kill me, or worse.’ I sensed he was al
luding to his genitals, which miraculously had escaped injury. ‘Excessive force and wrongful imprisonment,’ he declared. I was staggered by the irony and his lack of insight.

  The rest of the session proceeded smoothly and, by the time it finished, there was little time to collate my notes and test material ahead of preparing my court report. Paul appeared and I was conveyed the short distance to his office to complete the task. I held off giving him a spray. There was no point. And besides, despite the awful nature of the offence, it had been an extraordinary first case to be involved in.

  ‘Not your usual break-and-enter, eh, Tim,’ Paul grinned. His comment broke the tension as we burst into gales of laughter.

  My arrival at the courthouse was far more sombre – it was my first experience of giving expert evidence. Despite my outward bravado and three years of working in arguably the country’s toughest prison, which I reasoned was worth a decade in a more benign setting, the reality was I had just turned 28 and I was in a completely foreign world. I realised, however, that medico-legal work is not for the faint-hearted and that, if I was going to make a fist of my new career move, I would need to paper over any sign of nerves.

  I was fortunate to have a wise, experienced and seemingly kind judge in Bruce McNab. He immediately put me at ease. ‘Mr Watson-Munro, the court is grateful to you for coming all the way from Melbourne for this case . . . now please go on.’ My hubris was restored.

  I was then asked a series of questions by the defence barrister before being cross-examined by the Crown’s lawyer. He too, sensing my youth, was gentle in his approach.

  Various topics were traversed during a half-hour period of preliminaries. My qualifications, experience and the amount of time I had spent with Chooka were the first order of the day. Then came questions regarding his mental state.

  ‘Is Mr Smith intellectually disabled? Is he insane? What are his prospects for rehabilitation?’ These were issues I had anticipated. Although most people would assume this behaviour stemmed from some kind of insanity, he in fact was not legally insane, as he knew what he was doing and was aware of the consequences.

  While the judge seemed nonplussed by my descriptions of the mental trauma arising from his punctured buttock, he was more sympathetic when it came to the reality of his plight. Inevitably he was going to jail and inevitably he would require protection.

  Despite their at-times-wanton disregard for the rights of others, crooks take a dim view of paedophiles and cruelty to animals, particularly of a sexual nature. It was also highly unlikely he would receive treatment in jail and, in the absence of this, the likelihood of him reoffending was high.

  After being excused from the court, I proceeded directly to the magnificent Grand Hotel on the banks of the Murray. It was just after 3 p.m. and I had a couple of hours to spare before boarding my return flight.

  A cold beer had never tasted so good.

  ‘Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings –

  always darker, emptier and simpler.’

  – Friedrich Nietzsche

  In my 40 years as a forensic psychologist, I have assessed some of the world’s most intelligent people, who also happen to be criminals, psychopaths and killers. Talk about one extreme to the other.

  Genius is often reflected in its simplicity and Brisbane’s Boggo Road maximum security breakout in March 1989 was a stellar example. Few prison escapes have been so daring, nor so successfully executed. The mastermind was Leslie Connolly, an old client from my Parramatta Gaol days, a gifted man who could have been a leader in any field he chose. However, fate had dealt him a particular hand. With his band of mates, Les executed a near-perfect departure from one of the toughest jails in the land.

  It was mid-afternoon on a sultry Saturday when the jailhouse laundry van headed through the heavily secured, double-gated exit, Les and his buddies were congregating on the prison oval. As long-term recidivist crims, they knew the system like clockwork: at this time of day the shift changed. Complex, integrated problem-solving has always been a struggle for most of the screws I have assessed and recruited in the past, and on this occasion their collective focus was further diminished by the absence of the post guard. He had escorted another crook to hospital and was tasked with selling raffle tickets to support another officer, who had been charged with bashing a crim. This forerunner to crowdfunding was popular among crims and screws alike when it came to acquiring money to cover exorbitant legal fees when one of their brethren had been wrongfully accused.

  Consequently there was no one in charge when Les and his crew bolted through the main gate before ‘pole-vaulting’ a six-metre fence and, confronting the bewildered and no doubt terrified guards, further demonstrated their sincerity and bona fides with short arms that had been cunningly smuggled into the jail in the lead-up to the day.

  It was a no-brainer. One of the crooks fired a shot and a threat of hostage-taking sealed the deal. In a jiffy, they were free.

  These were no ordinary men. They were widely acknowledged, singularly and collectively, as extremely dangerous. One of the gang, Francis Carter, was renowned at the time for being the nation’s most dangerous convict. In a moment of rage and lethal misinterpretation he murdered a bloke for talking to his gal. Crims frequently view their women as chattels and a slight like that could not be left unanswered. It was always a matter of honour and for the hapless soon-to-be-deceased, this was no exception. Fortunately for all, Frank was caught at the gate.

  Another, Ivan Kiripatea, effected his escape in a passing taxi. His freedom was short-lived and after being apprehended by the Queensland police he was returned to his cell within the hour. He had previously escaped on three occasions. An unlucky chap, he’d also previously been hospitalised with a ruptured cock.

  My former client, Les Connolly, was more fortunate. Described as a highly dangerous crim with a willingness to use a gun, he had form for numerous armed robberies – heroin had been his poison since his youth. He was eventually detected some months later in Tasmania and, knowing the ruse was up, he surrendered without a fuss.

  I had first met Les eleven years beforehand. It was during my first weeks at Parramatta Gaol. I was 25 and he was two years my junior. In a different time and context, we could have been mates at our local school. Despite his history, I liked him. He was clearly gifted – articulate, analytic to a micron and very funny.

  He’d recently been convicted of a gruesome drug-related murder. ‘It’s all bullshit, mate,’ was one of his first utterances when we met. ‘I was set up by crooked cops, they all fuck’n hate me.’ That was certainly true. From an early age, Les had come to their attention. He was a teenage pioneer when it came to experimenting with and becoming addicted to heroin. A life of crime inevitably followed, ultimately leading to the murder charge and a conviction in the New South Wales Supreme Court. A life sentence was his punishment.

  Perhaps it was my youth and associated naivety, but I came to believe him. His story was compelling. In this respect I was not alone – he was also believed by Virginia Bell, now a Justice of the High Court of Australia, who at that stage with others had established the Redfern Legal Centre, a legal practice whose charter was to assist the poor and to right legal wrongs. She was ably assisted in Les’s defence by Kathy Pearce, another dedicated practitioner, as well as a flotilla of others who were all convinced of his innocence. Against the odds and after much legal analysis, sufficient errors of law were detected in the transcript to enable, on appeal, a retrial.

  ‘I’m in with a chance, mate!’ he gleefully exclaimed when the news came through. By this stage Les had become a highly accomplished jailhouse lawyer – in fact, probably the best in the land and in the eyes of many more skilled than some registered Sydney attorneys.

  By his account, the trial was uneventful. Indeed, on the odd occasions that I saw him on non-sitting days – when he remained within the confines of the jail – Les seemed quietly confident. So too were his legal team. His optimism rapidly vaporised on the day
of the verdict.

  ‘Guilty’ was the stone-cold pronouncement of the jury’s foreman. Despite all the hard work, the preparation and the immutable belief of those who lived and breathed his case that Les was innocent, he was convicted for the second time.

  Perseverance is also a trait of the truly brilliant. Les was not prepared to throw in the towel. Neither were his lawyers.

  No doubt, besides her legal genius, Justice Bell was appointed to the highest court in the land because of her tireless work ethic. The second trial was dissected then vivisected with no stone, no nuance, overlooked. Each day, she and the others would make the thankless journey to the prison in an effort to secure yet another trial. Judicial error, points of law, matters of evidence being suppressed, can all contribute to a successful appeal. However, in this case, the goose had been thoroughly cooked, if not scorched, on two occasions. In the harsh light of day, Les’s prospects of a third trial seemed to be zero. And still, he maintained his innocence.

  Against all the odds, Les was granted a third trial. His knowledge of criminal law, courtroom procedures and the wily tactics of the Crown were now highly polished, so much so that as the trial proceeded he could see errors similar to the earlier trials being repeated. He was beyond despair. He knew that, against all odds, he had secured a berth on the last train to Munich. If he went down this time, there would be no fourth trial. So, with reckless abandon, he sacked his legal team and advised the court with mind-boggling hubris that he would be conducting his defence from that point onwards.

  The adage ‘A person who represents himself has a fool for a client’ is well known and from years of observation, generally correct. Les, however, had nothing to lose. He believed his legal skills were on a par with qualified lawyers and in all likelihood, he reasoned, his courtroom jousting was superior. No one knew the case better than him. According to those who had faithfully attended his trial each day, his decision caught the prosecution off-balance. Afforded the privilege of wearing civilian clothes, he scrubbed up well, and his quiet charisma along with his capacity to charm all worked to his advantage in the court, where reality is suspended and theatre at the hands of a skilled orator comes to the fore. With polished shoes, he was dressed to the nines in the colourful, flamboyant attire of the ’70s with an armful of legal texts complementing the trial transcripts spread across the bar table, and this clearly established the tone for the remainder of the trial. He was also brutal in his cross-examination of key witnesses, including the cop he claimed had verballed him from the outset. Les was playing for keeps. To lose again would condemn him to decades of incarceration.