The cruellest of crimes

February 28, 2009 - SMH

Twelve years after Kerry Whelan's kidnapping, details of the case are finally revealed, write Ellen Connolly and Candace Sutton.

Bernie Whelan had never handled so much cash - huge wads of $100 notes tied with rubber bands and packed into calico bank bags. It was the million-dollar ransom for the life of his beloved wife, Kerry, kidnapped from Parramatta's Parkroyal Hotel four days earlier.

"Follow all instructions or your wife will die," read the typed letter, which turned up in the mailbox at Bernie's Kurrajong home in Sydney's north-west on May 7, 1997, just 24 hours after Kerry went missing. Bernie followed the orders in the ransom note - all except the demand he not contact the police.

The money was placed in a green garbage bag and secured in Bernie's bedroom safe, under 24-hour protection.

The whole thing felt surreal to Bernie, as though he was an unwilling character in a movie, not unlike Ransom, which the Whelans had watched together only weeks earlier.

After 17 years of marriage, he could not fathom that Kerry was gone and he was stuck in this awful reality.

Bernie Whelan, who was head of the Australian arm of the multinational company Crown Equipment, and his three children - Sarah, 15, Matthew, 13, and James, 11 - were now on an active file of the FBI in Washington.

Confused and fretting for their mother, the children were taken under police escort to a safe house while Australia's biggest kidnap and ransom operation was played out.

Unbeknown to the public - police kept their manoeuvres secret from the media - the Whelans' once tranquil rural neighbourhood was now crawling with heavily armed members of the State Protection Group, an elite corps of officers trained to deal with hostage negotiations.

Lying in Bernie's horse paddocks in Kevlar helmets and bullet-resistant vests, each carried two firearms: a Heckler and Koch MP5, the 700-millimetre German submachine-gun that was standard issue for counter-terrorist forces, and a Glock 22 .40-calibre pistol. The camouflaged officers had stun grenades and canisters of tear gas and capsicum spray. Their body armour added about 30 kilograms to each officer's weight.

Inside the house, Bernie Whelan was also wearing a bulletproof vest.

The atmosphere was electric as Bernie sat in the family lounge room with six hostage negotiators, his eyes focused on the telephone, praying for it to ring, waiting for the kidnappers to call and tell him Kerry was still alive.

Civilians are usually excluded from major covert police operations, but Bernie was needed. He had to talk to the kidnappers and personally deliver the million-dollar ransom. "Most importantly you've got to ask for proof of life," the negotiator instructed Bernie. "You want to speak to your wife and you must insist on hearing Kerry's voice."

Bernie's Mercedes-Benz was wired up with tracking devices and radio equipment in preparation for the ransom delivery. A helicopter was on standby and the snipers were ready to shoot.

Day after day, and desperately tired and running on adrenalin, Bernie sat waiting with detectives for the call. It never came, and police decided Bernie should make a public appeal to the kidnappers.

"Kerry, if you can hear what I'm saying, I want you to know that we all love you and we will do anything to get you back, but most of all, don't give up." Bernie stared into the camera, his lip quivering.

At a media conference in Sydney, he told reporters: "I will do whatever they ask and will go anywhere to ensure the safety of my wife. The crime against us can only be described as mental terrorism. The children and I have only kept our sanity due to the love we have for each other and the love from close friends who have been minding us. They [the Whelan children] are very vulnerable at this time and barely coping with this tragedy."

For weeks, the media camped outside the Whelan home as the story of the kidnap of a multimillionaire's wife captured front-page headlines across Australia.

But the media had found another focus - the prime suspect, Bruce Burrell, who lived on a farm near the tiny town of Bungonia, south-west of Goulburn. Burrell, who worked for Crown Equipment before Bernie retrenched him in 1990, had made an unexpected visit to Kerry in mid-April 1997, three weeks before she vanished.

Burrell intended to abduct the mother of three that day, but abandoned his plan after discovering her youngest child, James, was at home from school.

When Burrell departed, Mrs Whelan asked "a favour" of the children's nanny and horse trainer, Amanda Minton-Taylor: "You never saw him here. Don't tell anybody. Give me a couple of weeks and I'll tell you why. Don't worry, I am not having an affair."

On the morning of May 6, Kerry Whelan drove to the Parkroyal Hotel in Parramatta, telling her husband she had a 9am beautician's appointment. Closed circuit television cameras captured her walking up the ramp of the underground car park and disappearing from view.

In the ensuing weeks, police raided Burrell's house and found a cache of weapons, a chloroform bottle and two obscure - but revealing - notes which suggested a kidnap and ransom plan.

They searched the Bungonia state recreation area, which backed onto Burrell's property, scouring vast tracts of bush, abseiling down deep ravines, and diving in chilly dams. After several exhausting months, the police packed up and left.

Media attention waned, and the investigating team was drastically reduced. Nevertheless the taskforce commander, Dennis Bray, would not give up, persevering over the next decade to nail Burrell for Kerry Whelan's murder.

Bray was driven for another reason: he was convinced Burrell had killed the elderly widow Dorothy Davis after she demanded repayment of a $100,000 loan.

It was too much of a coincidence that Burrell would know two rich women, both of whom vanished without trace.

Dorothy, 74, vanished on May 29, 1995, after going to visit a sick friend in Sydney's eastern suburbs, believed to be Burrell's then wife, Dallas.

The case eventually made it to the NSW Supreme Court, thanks to the efforts of Bray and the Senior Crown Prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi, QC, who was convinced he could get a conviction despite the jury not hearing much of the incriminating evidence which had been ruled "prejudicial" to Burrell getting a fair trial.

The suppression order was finally lifted last November, allowing our book Ladykiller to publish details denied to the jurors in the trials involving the disappearances.

No juries were told of the damaging discovery by police of the near-empty bottle of chloroform in Burrell's house. Nor did they hear that Burrell had boasted to friends he could hide a body in bushland where "no one would ever find it".

Similarly, jurors did not hear of a UBD street directory found in Burrell's car. He had used a highlighter pen to mark the route from the Parkroyal Hotel in Parramatta, where Kerry Whelan was last seen, to her husband's factory in Smithfield.

Also excluded from the trial was Burrell's phone call to the help desk at Canon about his typewriter, which police believe was used to construct the detailed ransom letter.

James Whelan's evidence about Burrell's secret visit to his mother was struck out, as was some of Amanda Minton-Taylor's account of the day. Burrell's defence team had objected to the inclusion of Kerry's comment: "That bastard, why did he do this to me?"

The judge ruled the words inadmissible at trial because they were obscure and their target unclear.

Police deduced that Burrell arranged that day to meet Kerry at Parramatta, although the reason for the meeting remains an enduring mystery. With no obvious answer, rumours swirled that Kerry was having an affair with Burrell; there was never any evidence.

Instead, police believe Burrell was either blackmailing Kerry Whelan or, being the generous woman she was, Kerry had offered to lend the cash-starved Burrell some money.

Evidence of Burrell's arsenal of weapons was not allowed, nor did the jury hear the videotaped interview with Jennette Harvey, a wealthy widow who police believe Burrell was also targeting.

In a dying deposition made in September 1997, Mrs Harvey revealed how Burrell was pressuring her into investing in a phony diamond scheme. She told Bray that she too would mysteriously have disappeared had she entered the Burrell scheme.

After a hung jury and two trials, Burrell was convicted of the Whelan and Davis murders, and is now serving a life sentence.

The events took a heavy mental and physical toll on Bernie Whelan. He looks every bit his 70 years; the pain and enduring sorrow haunts his face and 12 years of hard labour fighting for Kerry have left him frail and emotionally unstable. "No one can understand what we've been through. Kidnapping is the cruellest of crimes," Whelan said.

"Bruce Burrell was once my friend. He was welcomed into my home. He cuddled my children, then he betrayed me in the worst way imaginable. He's not an insane person - he's just a cold-blooded killer who would do anything for money."

Bernie Whelan hopes Burrell will one day tell police where the bodies are buried. A choice between Burrell's conviction or the return of Kerry's remains for proper burial is no contest, he says.

"The children and I would without doubt choose to bring Mum home."

Candace Sutton's and Ellen Connolly's Ladykiller will be released by Allen and Unwin on Monday.

The cruellest of crimes

Convicted killer Bruce Burrell's gun kept by his sister