Accidental Death?: when things may not be as they seem

ACCIDENTAL DEATH

Robin Bowles is the author of twelve best-selling true crime books, including the definitive books on the Jaidyn Leskie murder, Justice Denied, and the disappearance and alleged murder of British tourist Peter Falconio, Dead Centre. She lives and writes in Melbourne.

Scribe Publications

18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

Published by Scribe 2016

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Copyright © Copyright FUNKY P/L 2018

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

Thanks to the Supreme Court of Victoria, the Magistrate’s Court of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Coroner’s Court, and the NSW Coroner’s Court for supplying transcripts and findings. Some transcripts have been edited for brevity and fluency, but the results remain true to the words spoken.

Image for the chapter ‘KILLER COP’ by GlebSStock/Shutterstock.com; all other images supplied.

9781925322521 (paperback edition)

9781925548853 (e-book)

A CiP entry for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.

scribepublications.com.au

scribepublications.co.uk

Dedicated to the brave and caring members

of the State Emergency Services, who are volunteers;

and other first attenders — police and ambulance officers

— who often go home with tears in their eyes.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. MURKY WATERS

2. ‘KILLER COP’

3. DUE PROCESS

4. TWENTY-SIX SECONDS

5. 63 NOT OUT

6. ‘THERE IS A KID UNDER THE WATER!’

INTRODUCTION

Dear readers,

This new book contains a collection of stories about sudden events that have changed the course of people’s lives. One day, everything is on track and life is great; then the police knock at the door; a person loses his temper; loved ones are suddenly no more — their beds undisturbed, their voices no longer heard, their smiles just a memory, their places at table empty.

Why have I chosen to write these stories when I am best known for writing about murder and other heinous crimes? Many people over the last 20 years have asked me to tell their stories, but it’s not always possible. I don’t have enough time in my year; sometimes the story isn’t detailed enough for a book, which needs lots of layers; at other times, what happened is too awful, or the reasons too simple to justify a full-scale investigation. I do collect these stories, though, research them, write them down, and keep them in a drawer, until I think there might actually be a book in them after all.

A compendium of stories like this is more demanding to write than a single case, because each story has to be researched in detail — there are survivors, investigators, witnesses, families, police, and legal people in practically every case. But hey, I love meeting people, and I’m honoured that they trust me with their thoughts and feelings. Besides, Miss Deva, my doggie sleuthing companion, needs to get out from her bed beside my desk every now and then and do some exploring.

In this collection of stories, police investigations still happen, as the police are a suspicious bunch and not all that open-minded about ‘accidents’. Several of the accidents, on investigation, turned out not to be accidents at all. Some of them were crimes. Some of the ‘accidents’ remain unexplained, unsatisfactorily resolved in the eyes of the victims left behind. Others have been shown, after detailed investigation, to be just what they appeared to be.

In some cases, the relatives of a person killed cannot accept an outcome even after a thorough investigation. They don’t think it’s just or fair. They want someone punished for taking away the person they loved, even if it happened by accident. Almost every day, I encounter survivors who just can’t accept the courts’ decisions and admit that the person who has caused them so much grief is also a victim of the accident. ‘Sorry’ just doesn’t cut it, somehow.

The first story in Accidental Death? is called ‘Murky Waters’. When you read it, you’ll understand the title. The intriguing thing to me was that on the face of it, this death seemed open-and-shut. A 61-year-old woman swimming in flat water at a safe beach had got into difficulties just out of her depth. She was rescued by another beachgoer and her son-in-law, both of who were at least 50 metres away on the shore, but they couldn’t revive her and she died. A lay-down-misère for accidental death — or was it?

After the drowning, suspicion and innuendo flowed around the son-in-law, who stood to profit financially from the victim’s death. Rumours also flew about his alleged poor treatment of her before she died. Could he have somehow contributed to her drowning? I had trouble understanding how someone could contribute to a drowning when he hadn’t got his feet wet until he saw that help was needed and had then rendered assistance. The Coroner had trouble with it as well and took nearly four years to deliver his finding, which still left questions unanswered.

The title ‘Killer Cop’ might conjure an image of a rampaging badass cop from some awful action movie, weighed down with assault gear and brandishing a semi-automatic weapon. Think again. This story is about a freak accident of the kind that never enters your mind as you leave home in the morning but will put you in the lock-up by the end of the day. The events described here occurred before ‘one-punch’ legislation was enacted in every Australian state except Tasmania. The man at the centre of the story has just served his 15-year sentence, completing parole in March 2017. His story is about how a law-abiding upright member of the community changed the course of his own and many others’ lives in a split second after a freak accident. In this story, names have been changed to afford privacy to the man and his family in the new lives they have made, but the facts remain.

‘Due Process’ is a story that has followed me for a number of years. It’s about a well-connected and talented doctor in Melbourne who accidentally lost two wives in the space of ten years, and then married again. No blame has ever been attached to his actions in this regard, but as Lady Bracknell says in The Importance of Being Earnest, ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’

The doctor, an immunologist, lost his first wife, who was pregnant, when she allegedly choked on her vomit as a result of extreme morning sickness. Just ten years later, his second partner died from a sudden onset of life-threatening gastroenteritis. The father of the second partner was unwavering in trying to discover his daughter’s cause of death over several years. There was a police investigation, an inquest, Ombudsman’s representations, government intervention, an ex gratia payment from the Victorian government to make him go away, but nothing deterred this father until death overtook him as well, his quest to find the cause of his daughter’s accidental death unresolved. It is still not satisfactorily explained.

The next story is about the loss of a child. Every day, we read in the papers stories about ‘accidents’ on the roads: people slamming into trees, getting clobbered on pedestrian crossings, or being hit by a drunk or careless driver. The stories don’t mean much. Each death is another statistic: one more person killed on the road, one more statistic for the annual road toll. The victims leave home in their cars and they never come back. Sometimes, the people who caused those accidents are investigated by police and charged; sometimes, they are investigated and not charged. Behind every statistic, though, is a crushing emotional, psychological, and personal impact on family and friends.

The Tasmanian police don’t recognise ‘accidents’ in their state. They are called crashes or collisions — there’s no such thing in their lexicon as an ‘accidental’ road death. ‘Twenty-six Seconds’ tells the story of a beautiful young girl who was driving home on a sunny Sunday afternoon when her life was obliterated by a driver travelling at speed on the wrong side of the highway. The driver of that vehicle was injured but not killed. He was the Director of Public Prosecutions in Tasmania. For the next two years, the family’s anguish at their daughter’s loss was intensified by the DPP’s efforts to avoid legal responsibility for the collision, which occurred because he was driving for some distance on the wrong side of the highway.

Cricket fans won’t need an introduction to ‘63 Not Out’, which was the famous score of one of Australia’s best-loved cricketers, Phillip Hughes. Phillip was playing at the Sydney Cricket Ground in a Sheffield Shield game, and his high score as opening batsman in the first session of play didn’t bode well for the other side. Strategies were formulated during the lunch break, to get him out by making him swing at bouncers in his usual cocky way and whack the ball to the boundary with his famous cut shot. Put him off balance, keep changing the fielders around to spook him, send the maximum number of bouncers allowed per over in the hope that he’d misjudge a swing.

Suddenly, after yet another bouncer, with his mother and sister watching from the members’ stand, he fell to his knees, then hit the dirt, full-length and face down. He remained motionless. What could have happened? Was this a terrible accident or the result of a sustained assault on a player renowned for his larrikin approach to bouncers?

Out on the field, medics desperately tried to sustain his life until help arrived. He was rushed to hospital for treatment, but to no avail. His life-support equipment was turned off two days after the accident.

But the aftermath of the accident is the real story. Phillip’s family believed his death wasn’t a proper accident, even though it had been caused by a freakish combination of circumstances. An inquest was held in an atmosphere of growing bitterness between Cricket Australia and the Hughes family, with accusations of lies and cover-ups. On the fourth day of the inquest, Phillip’s family walked out en masse when the counsel assisting advised the Coroner that his findings shouldn’t apportion any significance to the opposition’s sledging or their alleged use of bowling techniques to put Phillip off his game.

There is still great sadness around Australia for the loss of such a talented young sportsman, and it seems Phillip’s family are convinced that his death wasn’t a straightforward accident. It was also a terrible day for Sean Abbott, who bowled the fatal ball. It was an accident on his part, but how would you feel?

This collection ends with the heartbreaking account of the death of three children of a Melbourne-based South Sudanese woman, Akon Guode. In 2015, for some inexplicable reason, Akon drove herself and four of her toddler children into a lake. The three youngest children drowned. The fourth survived but remains severely traumatised. Akon also survived to face her Dinka community, the father of the dead children, and the Australian legal system.

The story is included in this collection because at first it was thought to be an accident. Akon told everybody she had become dizzy and lost control of the car. Sympathy flowed towards her immediately. Akon was supported unquestioningly by the children’s father; at the triple funeral, she sobbed over the tiny white caskets, which had been paid for by money raised by the community. Dozens of community members attended a memorial candlelight gathering by the lake to mark the Dinka’s traditional forty days of grieving. Even the ‘hardened media’ believed her at first. No one could comprehend that a mother would act like this deliberately. She said she’d been placed under a witchcraft spell. She was dizzy. She couldn’t remember. Was she lying?

We’ll never know what her real motivation was, but the police were suspicious, and their suspicions proved to be correct. To understand Akon’s situation on that day, as she teetered on the edge of an emotional precipice, you have to know what went before. Her story and her ultimate fate have affected me greatly. ‘There’s a Kid Under the Water’ is one of the saddest stories I’ve written.

This book has been a bit of a marathon, with all the families involved, the delving, reading, travelling, court attendances, and listening I’ve had to do. As Miss Deva snores contentedly at my feet, I’m happy to turn it over to you, my readers, for your verdict and perverse enjoyment in that true-crime aficionado way! All the stories are true. As you read, be thankful that fate hasn’t singled you out for a similar accidental death, which can have a greater impact than premeditated murder, because it can happen to anyone.

Some names have been changed to protect personal or professional privacy. The first time they appear they are followed by an asterisk.

Let me know what you think.

Robin Bowles

Melbourne

[email protected]

www.robinbowles.com.au

Adrian Lacroix working on his legal cases.

MURKY WATERS

When there are no answers, questions are a waste of time.

Little Howrah Beach is considered one of the safest swimming beaches in southern Tasmania. Even with tidal variations, it’s shallow for about fifty metres out from shore. But on the evening of 14 March 2011, it was the scene of a drowning. The ripples from that drowning have engulfed dozens of people.

Summer in Tasmania usually comes into its own after Christmas, with February being the hottest month and March still very warm. Daylight saving and Hobart’s 40-degree latitude make for long, balmy evenings right through to the end of March.

In 2011, Monday 14 March was a public holiday to mark Tasmania’s Labour Day, and the weather was stinking hot. Police Sergeant Mike Callinan had somewhat reluctantly buttoned up his uniform and picked up his patrol car for his 3 p.m. shift. About four hours later, he was cruising along Howrah Road above the beach, idly debating whether to stop at the next set of shops for a cold drink, when a woman leapt in front of his car, gesticulating and shouting.

‘A boy has drowned down there,’ she panted. ‘They’ve just pulled him out.’

The policeman pulled over and parked, then ran across the grassy bank beside the road and down the shallow dunes. He saw a little group of people huddled around an inert body, which was lying on the sand near the water’s edge. The centre of attention wasn’t a boy, but a small, middle-aged woman in a black-and-white bathing suit. A man in a wetsuit was standing at her feet and another man, who was wearing wet boxer shorts, was performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, assisted by a woman, who was co-ordinating chest compressions.

Sergeant Callinan checked that an ambulance had already been called, then went up to wait for the paramedics. The people delivering CPR seemed to have the situation under control, but the woman wasn’t responding. A couple of minutes later, the paramedics arrived and took over. The ambulance log said they arrived eight minutes after receiving the call.

The man in the boxers was very distressed. ‘She’s my mother-in-law,’ he told the paramedics. ‘I want you to keep trying. I’m going with you to make sure you don’t stop trying.’

The paramedics and Sergeant Callinan both tried to dissuade him, but the man grabbed his clothes and keys from a towel on the sand and pushed his way into the front seat of the ambulance carrying the inert woman.

Although there was no let-up in resuscitation, there was nothing the medical teams in the ambulance or at the hospital could do to bring her back. Adrian Lacroix had just lost his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Ann Higgins. It was the beginning of a six-year journey.

This is Ann Higgins’s story.

Elizabeth Ann Higgins, always called Ann, was born in South Australia on 2 August 1949. She grew up in a close-knit, happy family with one brother, Michael, whom she loved. The siblings had a special relationship and remained close until she died. In 1968, Ann’s close friends Phil and Barbara Tavender introduced her to Harold (Harry) Higgins. Phil and Harry had been friends since high school, and so had Ann and Barbara. In 1972, Ann and Harry married, with Phil as best man and Barbara as matron of honour.

Not long afterwards, Ann and Harry moved to Sydney, where Ann did office work and Harry took a position at the CSIRO. They had a daughter, Chantelle, in 1981. Chantelle’s sister, Rebecca, followed in 1987. Then Harry took a transfer to Tasmania with the CSIRO. They arrived in Hobart in 1984 and set up house at Roches Beach early the following year. Phil and Barbara remained close to the family. They’d speak by phone once a month, with the calls usually lasting about two hours, and the Tavenders stayed at the house in Roches Beach in 1986.

It was known that Ann had mental health issues. Phil Tavender described her as being ‘easily influenced, especially by Chantelle in the earlier years and perhaps by Bec in the later years. Ann seemed to be someone who wanted to please everybody and not cause waves.’

When the couple moved to Tasmania, various doctors diagnosed her as being bipolar and schizophrenic, and she was prescribed medication for those conditions. That sort of medication is renowned for producing weight gain and stuporous lethargy, and Ann soon began to put on a lot of weight. Phil told me that he and his wife were aware of Ann’s ‘previous mental health issues’, which she freely discussed.

In a later statement to police, Harry said that his marriage to Ann was ‘healthy’ until 1995, when Ann was hospitalised for 12 months. The handwritten pages of his statement read like a script for Days of Our Lives or The Bold and the Beautiful (except not so beautiful!) as they described how the family unravelled.

In the same year that Ann was hospitalised, their elder daughter Chantelle developed anorexia. She had several spells in hospital over the following five years. Chantelle said later, in a videoed interview, that she kept going back to hospital so she could escape the tensions at home.

Harry said that as a result of Chantelle’s illness, responsibility for caring for Ann on her discharge from hospital fell to him and Rebecca. Over the next seven years, Ann too was in and out of hospital.

Sometime around 2000, Chantelle met a young man named Adrian Lacroix. The two of them moved to Western Australia, where they secretly married.

The young couple returned to Tasmania soon afterwards, but in 2002 they had a major falling out with Harry. They applied for an intervention order against him, but the application failed, at which point they left for Western Australia again. It wasn’t until 2007 that they returned, now with two children.

By the time they came back, Harry had retired from his job at the CSIRO, and his retirement seems to have sharpened the tensions in the household at Roches Beach. Ann’s marriage to Harry was failing, and in 2010 it terminally collapsed.

Friends and neighbours had the impression that things had been going downhill in the relationship for some time, but when the Taverners visited in 1986, Phil observed that the house was in good order, and he saw ‘no signs of neglect or untoward activity’.

Ann and Harry’s more recent neighbours at Roches Beach, however, have different memories. One of them told me, ‘You’ll never understand why Ann died if you don’t understand her mental state at the time.’ With that in mind, I began contacting other people who knew her.

Tony Hickey, who lived next to Harry and Ann for twelve years, said he’d had suspicions that things weren’t good for some time. He told me he’d never been invited inside the house, but from outside he could see that it was falling into disrepair.

When Tony and his wife first moved in, the block surrounding the Higgins house was well maintained. ‘Harry was outside mowing and clearing every weekend that he was home,’ Tony told me. Harry impressed him as a really bright guy who was doing serious research and going off to Paris quite often.

Tony said that problems with the house seemed to surface after Harry retired in about 2005. ‘The block got overgrown, the bins never went out, they were surrounded with rotting rubbish, and from time to time, trees fell down, blocking the access to the property. To deal with the mess next door, we put up a high fence so we couldn’t see it. And as for the trees, I’d go over with my chainsaw and offer to cut them up. It helped them, and I kept the firewood.’

One cold day, a particularly severe storm brought a big tree down and blocked the driveway at the Higgins’s house, so Tony went over and offered to remove it. Ann answered the door, and behind her he saw Harry, crawling around on the floor, which was covered with newspapers. Harry didn’t acknowledge Tony’s presence.

Looking over Ann’s shoulder, Tony could see teenage Rebecca sitting at the dining table, dressed only in her underwear. ‘I was a bit shocked as it was such a cold day,’ Tony said, ‘but I just offered to cut up the tree and Ann agreed and shut the door.’ He later described this incident in his evidence to the inquest.

Some of this strange behaviour was explained in a statutory declaration Ann made to police in July 2010, after the couple had separated. She claimed that a couple of years after they were married, Harry had developed a phobia about the house being infected by radioactivity from the CSIRO. He would shower twice and wash his clothes after he came back from work, then rinse out the washing machine to make sure it wasn’t contaminated, she said.

Ann said that the obsession got worse after Harry retired, except that now he blamed her for being the source of the contamination because she’d touched a letter that came from the CSIRO. He decided that the family dog was also contaminated and needed constant washing because it had touched some rubbish she had handled. Ann claimed he once made her spend nine hours in the car outside while he decontaminated the house. She didn’t drive off because she was worried about her daughter Rebecca, who was inside. ‘I wanted to get back to her as quick as I could.’

Ann said in her statement to police, ‘In the morning, Harry would not let me and Rebecca get out of bed until he had finished his morning [washing] routine, and this could take hours, as if he thought he hadn’t done it properly … he’d start again.’ She was sometimes confined to her bedroom for the whole day.

She said he wouldn’t let Ann or Rebecca use the bathroom, and they had to walk on plastic bags to use the toilet, but they weren’t allowed to touch anything, including the toilet flush. Ann wasn’t allowed to use the toilet unless Harry was watching her, and he’d recently made Ann and Rebecca spend a whole day in the car because Rebecca had gastro and might contaminate the bathroom.

Even though Ann was a diabetic and needed to keep her fluid intake up, she barely drank anything when she was restricted to the bedroom so that she wouldn’t need to use the toilet. She told police that Harry had started making her wear nappies. ‘He made me tell the doctor I was incontinent so I could get incontinence nappies. I was too embarrassed to take them to the tip, so I kept them in garbage bags in my room.’ She said that once Harry had decided that the laundry was contaminated, they didn’t do any washing for a year. Sometimes they’d buy new underclothes or linen because he wouldn’t permit them to wash the old ones, she claimed.

Ann’s four-page statutory declaration detailed what she swore were the conditions at home. She said that Harry occasionally struck her and had often abused her verbally in front of the children. She told the police, ‘I was always afraid. It was my main fear that he would not let me and Rebecca out of the house. Although I was not physically restrained, I was always scared to leave because of his threats. I just wanted to throw myself under a bus. For all our life he made me think I was useless. I had money he gave me for shopping but didn’t know how to use it to leave.’

Rebecca’s presence added to the complications. Rebecca was worried about her father, but she loved him and didn’t want to hurt him by leaving. On the other hand, Ann didn’t want to leave without her.

Ann said her phone use was restricted, and Harry didn’t allow visitors (even Chantelle). He hid if people came to the door. Things just got ‘worse and worse’. Sometimes she went out to buy food with money Harry gave her, but she was stressed and always took Rebecca along to help her make basic decisions about what to buy. In a later statement, Rebecca confirmed that her mother had difficulty shopping. Ann wrote to one of her doctors, explaining that she was paralysed by fear of the consequences of making the wrong decision, which would lead to physical and mental abuse.

Harry’s view of the relationship was completely different. In an affidavit sworn after Ann’s death, he blamed Ann’s mental illness for the problems in the marriage. One source of stress, he said, was that Ann’s spending habits were erratic. In May 2010, for example, she ran up a credit-card bill of $13,570, then became frustrated when Harry tried to reduce her expenditure to a ‘reasonable level’. Other months, she was so afraid to spend money that her church friends would buy her underwear.

Chantelle’s relationship with Adrian exacerbated the conflict with Harry, who believed that the couple had married secretly so that he’d continue to support Chantelle’s studies. Harry said he was paying Chantelle $500 a week in living expenses, plus buying her nursing uniforms, covering her medical expenses, and paying her HECS fees. He said in his sworn statement, ‘We were eventually alerted by our private heath fund that Chantelle and Adrian were married.’

Money was clearly a big issue for Harry, and he was convinced that Chantelle and Adrian were trying to manipulate Ann. He said in his statement, ‘There were several instances where both Adrian and Chantelle tried to get Ann to sign money over to them … mainly related to managed funds and investments.’ Ann never signed, but Harry believed ‘they targeted her because she was vulnerable’.

Harry’s version of events was contradicted by various affidavits sworn by Ann, Chantelle, some of Ann’s neighbours at Roches Beach, and members of her church group, all of whom gave horrifying details of the abuse and neglect she alleged had been inflicted on her. The affidavits claimed she was a virtual prisoner in her home, subjected to humiliation and emotional and physical abuse. When some of the church members helped to clean out the house after she and Harry had left, they were ‘shocked at the atrocious conditions she’d been forced to live in’.

Mark Stephan, the service-station operator at Lauderdale, near Roches Beach, told me that he thought Ann might have been ‘living in the car’ shortly before the breakup, as one day she’d driven in and asked him to replace the car’s overhead light bulb. ‘I saw a lot of clothes and food wrappers and stuff on the back seat,’ he told me. He said the junk was almost up to the windowsills.

He’d also been to the Higgins house on several occasions, he said. ‘I knew the house really well, as I grew up in the house next door and went over there a lot as a young person. I went inside a couple of times when the Higginses were there, and the squalor was unbelievable, like one of the worst hoarder’s houses you’ve ever seen on TV.’

According to Adrian, Ann eventually told her GP about Harry’s behaviour, and the GP called the health authorities. Ann also confided in her brother Michael Jones, who was shocked to learn that her relationship with Harry had broken down. On 8 July 2010, a mental health team, accompanied by police, escorted Harry to a secure hospital for treatment.

Later that day, Phil Tavender took a call from Michael, who also lived in South Australia, who gave him the startling news that Harry and Ann had separated, and that Harry was in hospital, having been taken there by the police. He said Ann and Rebecca were temporarily staying with a friend from the church group.

The next day, Barbara phoned Ann, who told her that Harry had punched her in the face. She said they had separated due to the deplorable state of the house. Apparently, he’d been trying to clear a blocked toilet when he collapsed.

As I waded through all the statements and statutory declarations and spoke to people on the phone, I began to think I was on the fringes of a bad TV show, not researching the drowning of a nice, ordinary, middle-aged woman. Well, perhaps not so ordinary!

Soon after the breakup, Chantelle invited Ann to come and live with her and Adrian. Ann accepted the invitation with alacrity, as it not only presented an opportunity to escape Harry but also meant she could be with her beloved grandchildren, though Rebecca, who was now 22, didn’t go with her. Ann never returned to live in the Roches Beach house. A friend of Harry’s told me that Ann’s departure had left both Harry and Rebecca homeless, and they both lived in a car for a while until they found another place to live.

Relations between Rebecca and Chantelle soured very quickly after Ann moved to the Lacroix house. Rebecca and Chantelle had an argument; Rebecca said she was trying to talk to Ann privately, but Chantelle wouldn’t let her. Chantelle claimed Rebecca hit her, and after that she obtained a restraining order to stop Rebecca coming near her, Adrian, or the children. Then Ann took out a separate order preventing Rebecca from contacting her. Rebecca says these actions caused her ‘a lot of heartache’. She became so stressed that she attempted suicide. Her father supported her through this difficult time.

Some legal issues also arose during the weeks after July 2010. Ann appointed Chantelle and Adrian to hold an enduring power of attorney for her, which would give them absolute control over her assets and affairs if it were exercised. She also changed her will, cutting out Harry and Rebecca and leaving all her assets to Chantelle, save a small bequest to each of the two grandchildren. This would have been a difficult will to execute, as under the Tasmanian Testator’s and Family Maintenance Act 1912 (s3A), a spouse or child can contest a deceased person’s will if no provision has been made for them. Rebecca could certainly have challenged the will with a good prospect of success, and Harry may also have had grounds, depending on his marital status with Ann at the time. Adrian and Chantelle were named as executors of the new will.

Ann’s life changed dramatically after she moved in with Chantelle. Adrian took a year off his work as a consultant in forensic document examination to look after her. He applied for a carer’s pension, while Chantelle continued to work as a nurse at St Helens District Hospital in Hobart. Ann was seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist. At first, she was always accompanied by Adrian or Chantelle, though the professionals didn’t see this as