Ep.7 Nondescript in Every Way

What were Andrew's whereabouts on Thursday, the day police thought Kathleen was killed and Friday, the day she was more likely killed? Photoboards are not regarded as reliable identification in a murder case and Andrew's smiling face likely stood out. Police recorded detailed statements about the man Pauline and Victor saw after Andrew was identified by Pauline. And why was Andrew calling Kathleen's house before the murder?

Transcript

MURDER AND THE HELLCATS

EPISODE 7

Previously on Murder and the Hellcats.

JEFF HUNTER KC: Have you made any efforts to find anyone by the name of John Wilson? I accept that there will be a number of them, but have you done that?

PAULINE LICCIARDI: I chose one number and I said, that is the man most like the man. I saw the difference being that this is a smiling photograph, and when I saw the man, he was not smiling. 

CATHERINE: I'm Catherine McHugh, and this is episode seven of Murder and the Hellcats. 

ACT 1 

We know that when Andrew was arrested, he had been identified by Pauline Licciardi on a photoboard based on a sighting of a man at 1:00 PM Thursday before Kathleen was found dead on the Sunday. This worked with the time of death window given to detectives of 3PM Thursday to 3AM Friday. We know the entomologist later changed this time. But when Andrew was arrested, they were only working off this initial time of death calculation.

 Therefore, in this episode, I firstly want to talk about Andrew's movements on that Thursday, even though we now know it is very unlikely Kathleen was killed on Thursday and more likely she was killed late afternoon/early evening Friday. I wanted to see if Andrew had an alibi on Thursday and answer the question of how likely was Andrew, the man that Pauline identified?

Patrick the psychic only worked at the Spiritualist Church on Thursdays. The routine was: he would be picked up from his home in Albion and taken to the church by either Andrew or Andrew's de facto, Ruth Bennett. On this Thursday, the 26th of February 1998, Andrew arrived at the church in Thorn Street Windsor with Ruth between 9:30AM and 10AM. Ruth was dropped off and Andrew then went to collect Patrick from Albion.

 Andrew then left the church sometime between noon and 12:15PM and drove to his office on Roma Street in the city where he had two palm reading appointments back-to-back starting at 1PM. The booking for both readings was in the name of woman called Rose. Ruth, who took the booking, testified at trial that Rose had a foreign sounding accent. Rose never came forward to corroborate those palm readings with Andrew, and we found no evidence that any public appeal was made to find Rose and her friend.

Andrew said he finished the two readings a little before 3PM Thursday. He then went downstairs to talk to his friend Edward Tovell, who owned a bookshop in the same building as Andrew's office. At that time, Edward returned a book he had borrowed from Andrew. The bookshop owner confirmed at trial that he had seen Andrew in his bookshop at approximately 2:50PM and they had chatted for 10 or 12 minutes.

Andrew said he left the bookshop between 3:10 and 3:20PM and returned to the Spiritualist Church to take Patrick the psychic home. But once back at the church, Helen was there and offered instead to give Patrick a lift. In her statement, Helen corroborated Andrew's presence at the church. Although she told police that Andrew had been at the Spiritualist Church from 2:00PM which was the time she said she arrived to get one of her regular readings from Patrick. Whereas Patrick had told police that Virginia had been at the church in the morning on that day. Given their recollections of that day were made in July, about a day five months earlier, differences in individual's memories were understandable.

 According to Andrew, just after 4PM on that Thursday, Andrew and Ruth arrived at the Suncorp Bank in Stafford City, which was about a 15-minute drive from the church, but they found it had closed at 4PM. They then went to the Teacher's Credit Union and Andrew waited while Ruth did her banking. This was confirmed with a withdrawal slip from the bank, timestamped at 4:34PM.

 It was about a 20-minute drive to where they lived in Zillmere from the credit union, and they arrived back at their home by 5PM They discovered on their return that Ruth's heavily pregnant Siamese cat Zilla was missing.

 Ruth's son Timothy told the trial that his mother and Andrew arrived home on Thursday just after 5PM. At the time he was working on his car in the driveway of the home, which he continued to do until 5:45PM.

 At trial, the internet company PowerUp testified that Andrew had logged into his email account at 5:31PM that day and spent half an hour signed in. Each PowerUp client had a unique logon ID for email and password, so it was possible to trace his activity.

At trial, the prosecution's barrister, Paul Rutledge. After questioning, Ruth and Andrew highlighted a discrepancy between Ruth's account of their movements and Andrews for that Thursday afternoon. Ruth testified at trial that they arrived at the bank at 4:30PM, compared to Andrew's testimony that they arrived at 4:02PM, highlighting a missing half hour between 4:02 and 4:30PM. The implication was that Andrew was hiding something, possibly the opportunity to kill Kathleen. But as I just pointed out, the police statements for the Thursday timeline given by Patrick the psychic and Helen were also different, and the discrepancies were a lot more than half an hour.

Something else worth noting here is that police did speak to Andrew's neighbours about a missing cat. Two people corroborated the missing cat event. A woman called Betty Morrow from the RSPCA verified that the cat belonging to Ruth Bennett was missing and that it was a pregnant Seal Point Siamese and a neighbour, Rose Potter, who also said she was made aware when it went missing.

 I do wonder why the accounts of Ruth and Andrew for Thursday afternoon didn't line up given they had the withdrawal documents from the credit union and were both aware of the specific time it occurred. Why didn't Andrew check these facts before he testified/ To answer that question we can't talk to Andrew, but in a later episode, I'll do my best to explain his character. I think it will give some important insight into why he would not feel the need to align his story.

ACT II

 Could the man carrying a Siamese cat seen waiting outside Kathleen's house at 1PM have been Andrew Fitzherbert?  The police case against Andrew certainly developed based on the identification of Andrew by Pauline. Police worked on the theory that this John Wilson person, which was Kathleen's appointment in her diary for 1PM wasn't found because he didn't exist, and it was in fact, Andrew Fitzherbert. Let's say it was Andrew and he carried a cat in his arms to Kathleen's house.

 We know that Andrew had been at the Spiritualist Church and left between noon and 12:15PM. Now, to get to Wilston, he would need to get home first and collect the cat. He lived in Lovegrove Street, Zillmere, which was about a 19-minute drive. He collects the cat, say a five-minute exercise, then drives from Zillmere to Kathleen's house, which according to Google Maps takes 21 minutes.

I can't be sure how long that drive would've taken back in 1998 before Brisbane underwent some major road upgrades. While the population of Brisbane in 1998 was 1.5million, and today it's 2.5 million, but let's assume it was about the same time to get from Andrews to Kathleen's house. That would make it 45 to 50 minutes in total to get from the Spiritualist Church back home to Zillmere, then to Kathleen's house by 1PM, the time scheduled for the John Wilson appointment.

According to the Licciardis, Kathleen's one o'clock appointment didn't arrive with a cat carrier but approached Kathleen's surgery on foot carrying the cat, while walking down the hill. Now let's say he was carrying Zilla the pregnant cat, belonging to Ruth. If it was Zilla that works with the cat going missing during the appointment with Kathleen and the lost cat sign in the newsagency seen by the old school friend of Kathleen the next day.

 I'd imagine pregnant cats are probably less amenable than cats that aren't pregnant when it comes to car rides and being carried around in strange neighbourhoods. Cats are skittish by nature when out of their comfort zone. I can't imagine wrangling a pregnant cat in my arms, and Ruth was breeding the cat to sell its kittens, so it was valuable.

This is what our retired detective inspector Rod Daymond thought about this evidence.

ROD DAYMENT: Why would he take his cat to someone they've been fighting with, you know, they don't like, her, you know, and here he is desperately booking his cat in to go to this vet. He doesn't like, yeah, I can't believe he went there. Yeah, so that’s why I discredit the identification. 

CATHERINE: It's also worth noting that in one of Helen's police statements, taken after Andrew was arrested, she said that Ruth's cats were never taken to Kathleen for vet care and named another vet they regularly used. The other problem I have with this evidence used to pursue Andrew is the Licciardi’s description of the cat. Neither of them mentioned the cat was pregnant. And when Pauline was asked at the Committal how the cat was positioned in the man's arms, she said and I quote, ‘the cat was sort of sitting up in his arms. Then she was asked what part of the cat she could see, and she said the head, probably some of the back, maybe some of the legs, but not the tail, not the full length of the leg or tail.

 When you are a cat carer and you have cared for hundreds of cats and had been doing it for decades, including pregnant cats, helping to deliver and raise kittens, I imagine you would quickly recognise a heavily pregnant cat being carried in someone's arms, especially given they were able to distinguish between the particular breed of Siamese cat, which was described as either Lilac Point or Seal Point, which seems like a more minor detail than noticing a cat's distended belly of imminently arriving kittens.

What about their description of the man who was carrying the cat. When they first spoke to police a week after the murder, the description was limited to: it wasn't someone they knew and he was aged in his fifties. Nothing about his attire, height, colour of his eyes or hair was mentioned. However in their police statement, after seeing the photo board, they then managed to come up with a lot more detail. They both described the cat holding man in his 40s, 5ft 6 to 5ft 8 tall, a slight build, clean shaven with short light-coloured hair, and a thin face according to Victor, or brown to grey hair, according to Pauline.

There's another aspect of this sighting that makes it unlikely to be Andrew:-  Andrew always without fail, wore a suit and tie to see palmistry clients. Anyone who remembers Andrew at the Riverside Markets in Brisbane reading palms in the 1990s will remember he wore a suit and tie even though it was the weekend. This was confirmed by Colin Bennett at trial.

 This is what Victor said about the man carrying the cat at the Committal, it is not his voice.

VICTOR LICCIARD: All I can say, he was very noticeable by the fact that he wasn't noticeable. He was very nondescript in every way. He was just normal, casually dressed. I didn't notice anything that stuck in my mind that way.

CATHERINE: Not once in any other descriptions of the cat-carrying man did the couple mention the distinguishing feature of Andrew wearing a suit. And I think that a man carrying a cat in his arms while dressed in a suit and tie in the suburbs of Brisbane during the middle of the day in the hottest month of the year would be memorable.

 What if Andrew changed out of his suit when he went home to collect the cat, and then after being at Kathleen's surgery, went back home to Zillmere and changed back into his suit before going to his office, seeing Edward Tovell, the bookshop owner, then returning to the Spiritualist church.  I don't think he had enough time to do that and get to Kathleen's by 1PM.

If he left the church between 12 to 12:15PM the time it would take to travel 19 minutes home, then add 15 minutes to collect the cat and change from his suit. Then add another 21 minutes to get to Kathleen's and park the car far enough away from her home to walk the cat in his arms down the hill. That puts him at Kathleen's after 1PM and Pauline and Victor specifically said they were leaving just before 1PM when they saw the man holding the cat.

In another scenario, which I think the police suspected by looking at Helen's statement, what if Andrew and Ruth took the cat with them to the spiritualist church that day? It's hard to imagine putting a pregnant cat in a car parked outside the church in the heat of a Brisbane summer and expect it to survive.

Patrick the psychic did not report seeing a cat in Andrew's car when he was collected that morning, and Helen also said specifically in her police statement that Andrew and Ruth did not have a cat with them on that day. 

Let's talk about photoboards generally in the identification of suspects in crime. TV crime shows regularly have either a lineup or a photoboard as a means of suspect identification. I asked the retired detective Inspector Rod Dayment about this part of the case. You'll recall that Andrew's passport photo where he was smiling was placed on a photo board and taken to the Coorparoo RSL. Pauline identified Andrew as the man most like the man she saw outside Kathleen’s house. But her husband, Victor, couldn't identify anyone on the board

ROD DAYMENT: Yeah, very dubious that identification. The only smiling face on the board. You know, uh, So why would you say that? Well, you know, you look at photos and you immediately go to, oh, the smiling face. The one that's different? Yeah, the one that's different. You know, and they're notoriously, notoriously bad identification photoboards and photo identification. Not reliable at all. You know, it may give you a, a line of inquiry, but as evidence in a murder trial, unreliable, terribly unreliable.

CATHERINE: And just in case you were not aware, you were able to smile in Australian passport photos in 1998. It wasn't until 2005 that mouth closed/not smiling was made the rule to enable the introduction of biometric technology at passport control.

I also found it strange that the statements were taken by police from the couple after they identified Andrew on the photoboard. They were shown the photoboard while they were at the Coorparoo RSL on June 23rd. Police visited Andrew's house on June 22nd and 23rd requesting a voluntary DNA sample. The couple made full police statements with descriptions of Andrew two days later, on June 25th.

It seems to me it should have been done the other way around in order to get a description of the man they thought they saw carrying the cat that wasn't tainted by what they saw on the photoboard or any discussion by the couple about the person after the photoboard identification.

This evidence from Pauline and Victor was never presented at trial. The jury never heard about the man carrying the cat even though it was key evidence in the pursuit of Andrew and likely the basis of the application for the search warrant where Andrew's personal items were seized for DNA testing.

In the episode of Forensic Investigators on Kathleen's Murder, the detectives discussed this evidence and the show aired interviews with both Pauline and Victor about the man carrying the cat, implying its importance to this case, along with including that creepy and inaccurate piece of music that was also wrongly described by police, we can blame it on dramatic license taken by the show's creators. But I think it's irresponsible to present this evidence that Andrew was at Kathleen's house as fact in this TV show. It was never tested in court and is likely something that could easily be disproved under cross-examination.

I felt it was important to go over this evidence because when you read the police logs, read Detective Marsh's statement for the trial and how they obtained Andrew's DNA, Victor and especially Pauline played a very important role in Andrew being pursued and ultimately charged. I wonder if the application for the search warrant of Andrew's house would've been granted if Pauline's photoboard identification was not able to be used.    

ACT III 

As a matter of routine, police obtained the logs of calls going in and out of Kathleen's residence. The last outgoing call from her home was made on the Wednesday evening before her body was found on Sunday. Inbound calls were obtained from the Tuesday of that week, which was February 24th.

Every inbound call after Thursday February 26th at 1:39PM was not answered by Kathleen. This may have initially supported the entomologist time of death starting at Thursday afternoon, although it was discovered that Kathleen routinely didn't pick up her phone when someone called letting it go to her answering machine. At some point, the answer machine tape must have been full and stopped collecting messages. From then on incoming calls simply rang out.

At 1:54 PM on Tuesday February 24th before Kathleen's body was found on the Sunday, a call was found on the call logs from Andrew's home to Kathleen's house. It lasted 65 seconds. There was no way of distinguishing if it was taken by Kathleen herself or the answer machine.

At trial, Andrew testified that he had called Kathleen on that Tuesday before she died from his home in Zillmere. Why?

We know Andrew's partner, Ruth, was an associate of Helen. She had been recruited into Helen's Cat Society faction. Helen was perpetually trying to build a faction in the Cat Society, and you didn't need much of a connection to Helen to be tapped by her, to help her stack the numbers. Helen's relationship to Ruth, Andrew, Patrick, the psychic, and Ruth's husband, Colin, dated back to the times when Andrew and Ruth ran a coffee shop in Stafford called Sandra's Tea Room, which hosted psychic readings. They had all come to know Helen and her problems with the Cat Society because she spoke about it regularly and visited the tea room since 1990 until it closed in 1997. Then she became a regular at the Spiritualist Church where she continued to air her problems and receive psychic readings.

Helen had pressured Andrew to join the Cat Society and had reminded him several times to inquire about the status of his application. This was corroborated by Helen in the new police statement she made after Andrew was charged, one of several she made in the course of the investigation. This is what she said in her police statement. It's not her voice.

HELEN: I approached Ruth and Andrew because I knew that they had an interest in cats about becoming members in the society and coming onto the board. The reason I invited Ruth was because she had been a school teacher and was a businesswoman with much committee experience. Andrew was a writer and was university educated with committee experience, and I thought they would be good people for the board. Membership applications have a six-month waiting time before the applicant is considered by the board of membership. Ruth's membership application form was dealt with and approved at a director's meeting on the 14th of May 1997. Andrew's application form was one of seven application forms in my possession, which were delivered to the society's then registered office at Main Avenue Wilton. I asked Andrew a couple of times had he heard anything about his application and he said no. I suggested Andrew after asking him a couple of times, had he heard anything about his application and being told no, that he contact Sandra Wilson or Kath Marshall to find out what was happening because Andrew's six months were well and truly up and his membership application should have been dealt with, and the results notified to him.

CATHERINE: Andrew testified at his trial that he was really only interested in joining the Cat Society because he liked to write and thought he might be able to help with the Society newsletter. He wasn't a man interested in the Cat Society fights, and like Colin Ruth's husband said at trial, the topic was such an obsession with Helen that they were sick of hearing about it.

In that police statement of Helen's, made after Andrew's arrest, she substantiates his motive for joining the Cat Society, which was to help with the newsletter because he enjoyed writing. Kathleen's home phone number was on the Cat Society flyer and other material as being the official phone number for the society. But it did not reveal that the official Cat Society phone number was also Kathleen's personal home number and her veterinary practice number.

So when Andrew testified at trial that he had called Cat Society number on that Tuesday before she was killed, it was to inquire about his Cat Society membership application, not realising he was calling Kathleen personally.

On Wednesday, February 25th, a day after the call from Andrew and Ruth's home, four calls were made from the Spiritualist Church to Kathleen's residence. They started at 9:48AM the first lasting nine seconds, followed by a 149 second call made at 9:54AM. Then at 11:38AM a call from the Spiritualist Church resulted in no connection made and then at 11:41 a call lasting 87 seconds occurred. Andrew testified that he was unable to remember if that week he had volunteered at the church on that Wednesday, the day the calls were made, or the next day.

This is what Andrew said when he was asked by the prosecutor, Mr. Rutledge about these calls at his trial. It is not their voices.

PAUL RUTLEDGE: How many times do you say you rang Kath Marshall's home?

ANDREW: Once.

 PAUL RUTLEDGE: Just once?

ANDREW: Yes. At least that is my memory. This is the point that I have a slight uncertainty in my mind. I know that I phoned to inquire, but I also have in my memory of something, of getting an answering machine. And I don't like answering machines. I thought before I had checked the telephone records that it was Kath Marshall, that what had happened was that I had attempted to get her and that the thing there had been an answering machine on and I tried later. 

 PAUL RUTLEDGE: If we can take it step by step. The telephone records reveal the phone calls were made from the church…

ANDREW: I don't know about those, I suspect 

RUTLEDGE: Please, we will really go a lot faster if I ask the questions and you try to answer them. When you say Wednesday the 25th of February, I will summarise the calls and I will ask the question.

CATHERINE: Prosecutor Rutledge then summarised the calls that they found on Kathleen's phone log that I have already outlined. To which Andrew replied.

ANDREW: It’s not me.

PAUL RUTELDGE: And do you know who made those telephone calls?

ANDREW: I don't know.

PAUL RUTLEDGE: You reject.

ANDREW: I would suspect it was Ruth Bennett as a member, an acting member of the society, failing that if   __________  was in there, which she may have been. I don’t know. You could ask her. She might have done so, I don’t know. What I do know is that that is not me. I did not make those calls.

CATHERINE: At the committal hearing, Detective Marsh said he didn't know where the phone was located in the church. He didn't know whether the phone was in a public area accessible to anyone in the church or passes by, or if it was in a private room. This seems like an important question to ask when, aside from the DNA evidence, you only have phone calls linking a suspect to a crime. Wouldn't you make inquiries about the location and access to a phone if you're going to use it as evidence in a murder trial? 

In reality, the church phone had an honesty system with a box for coin donations and a very long lead That meant it could travel a significant distance. The phone could be used by anyone entering the church. Its extension cord was so long that it could literally be used in different rooms of the church.

They would later find Kathleen Marshall's phone number written in Andrew's appointment diary. Her number was listed on a page with another seven or eight other phone numbers and various other notes.

The prosecution showed that phone calls between Andrew's house and the Spiritualist Church to Kathleen's House demonstrated Andrew did have an association with the victim. 

When Detective Marsh and Senior Constable Trennery went to Andrew's house for the first time to get a DNA swab on the 22nd of June 1998, the police did not make an audio recording of the meeting, but in his statement Marsh said that he had informed Andrew it was a legitimate reason to test his DNA because he had applied and been rejected for membership of the Cat Society and that there was a record of phone calls between the Spiritualist church and Kathleen's House. According to Detective Marsh, and remember there was no recording of this, Andrew told him that was a lie.

So it doesn't seem irregular that Andrew would be calling Kathleen's house at Helen's behest to find out about his application, unaware it was her actual home phone he was ringing. We also know the home phone at Zillmere was used by Ruth and she was a member of the Cat Society and could have been the one to call Kathleen's that day. And it can't be assumed that Andrew made the calls from the Spiritualist church on Wednesday because the phone had a long lead and an honesty box for a coin donation to use the phone. Psychic readers, other volunteers at the spiritual church and church clients all had access to the phone, which could be carried into other rooms of the church to make private calls.

 Andrew's diary, which was essentially just a notebook, was where he wrote down client appointments and other notes. It was kept next to his home phone and when he manned the phones at the Spiritualist church. Ruth also had access to Andrew's diary and wrote appointments in it for him. Ruth, who had more involvement with Helen and certainly more interaction with the Cat society, could have made those calls.

Just to recap on these calls, there was a single call from Andrew's house to Kathleen's house on the 24th of February. That was the Tuesday before she was found dead on the Sunday. It lasted 64 seconds. A further four calls were made a day later on the Wednesday the 25th from the Spiritualist Church to Kathleen's house lasting between nine seconds and 149 seconds

The Telstra officer testified at trial that he was not able to determine if these calls had connected with Kathleen directly or gone through to her message bank, but we do know there were no messages on her message bank from Andrew.

When police looked at Kathleen's phone records, did they check every call to see if John Wilson, Kathleen's one o'clock appointment, was one of the incoming calls? We know Kathleen didn't have many clients, so we can assume that the appointment for a vet visit could have been made at short notice possibly that morning or the day before.

She wasn't so busy that a client had to wait very long to see her. And when you book in a pet for a vet visit, you don't usually make it very far ahead. An ailing pet is usually something we want seen to as soon as possible.

The appointment for Jazz the dog was made by their owner at 9:12AM on the 26th of February, the same day of the appointment, which was for 12 noon. That phone call to make the appointment took 410 seconds.

I checked for any phone calls on Kathleen's call logs from the 24th to the morning of the 26th the day of John Wilson's appointment. I ruled out all the numbers I recognised as names from the Cat Society, phone numbers of businesses, and friends. I then narrowed the list of possible vet appointment phone calls to private numbers that had a duration of more than 30 seconds. I figured it would take that long, at least, to make a veterinary appointment.

And I eliminated any calls from a radius beyond five kilometres to Kathleen's home on the assumption that people are not likely to use a vet that is further than that distance. There was a call from Gordon Park, which is about three kilometres away. That was in the name of Lanigan and made at lunchtime on the Wednesday. The only other number from the area was from last name Lisette in Windsor, which called for 431 seconds at 8:39 in the morning on the Wednesday. There are two silent numbers on the list. They have phone numbers next to them, but no names. One I could trace to an address in Redcliffe, which is 34 kilometres away, which rules it out as a vet appointment. The other I could not trace. It was made at 10:04AM about three quarters of an hour after the Jazz the dog appointment. It lasted 178 seconds. Did police check all these numbers? I am not sure they did.

This report was generated on the 4th of March 1998. That was the Wednesday after Kathleen's body was found on the Sunday. They didn't question Andrew because his name or the Spiritualist Church came up on these phone logs. The investigation into Andrew was prompted by his refusal at the church in late May to give his DNA.

It wasn't till after that time that police went back to the phone logs and cross-referenced his name. 

ACT IV 

Let's get to Friday, the day Kathleen was most likely killed. What were Andrew's movements that day?

Andrew was at home in Zillmere in the morning on Friday February 27th 1998, with his de facto Ruth Bennett, waiting for a visit from Centrelink. The woman from Social Security ended up cancelling the home visit because the rollerdoor to her garage wouldn't open and she couldn't remove her car to travel to Andrew and Ruth's home.

After waiting all morning, the couple left home at 1PM and went to Suncorp Chermside to do their banking. Afterwards, they went charity shopping, first at a shop on Carrie Street Zillmere, and another at Pineapple Street. The shopping trip ended when the Vinnies on Pineapple Street closed. When the couple returned home shortly after four, Ruth's son, Timothy, was already home. He testified at trial that he was with them while he arranged his night out.

Andrew's presence at home at this time was verified with the tech company PowerUp, which showed Andrew had logged into his email account on the Friday at 5:15PM. That followed two other times that day he had logged in. First at 7:55AM and then at 8:53AM. Although logging into his email account doesn't prove that Andrew was actually home. Another occupant of the home could have logged onto his account.

Andrew and Ruth then travelled to the home of a woman called Pat Francey for a meditation group they regularly attended. Her house was at Wakerley and a 40-50 minute drive. Pat Francey testified at trial that the pair had attended the meditation group along with three other members of the group on that Friday night. She distinctly remembered it because the missing cat Zilla was mentioned.

Remembering that window of time for Andrew to commit the murder was on that Friday after 5:00PM and before 6:30PM. Any later than six 30, and Kathleen should almost certainly have been upstairs getting ready to leave her home to go to the leper dinner she had organised.

 Andrew testified they left Zillmere to go to Pat Francey’s at 6:15PM while Ruth thought it was more likely 6:30 to 6:45PM and Ruth's son Timothy said they left at 6:45 when he was on the phone. Amateur sleuth Ted dues explains.

TED: So Rutledge said to Tim Bennett when he was on the stand, how do you know that it was 6:45 when your mother and Andrew left the Zillmere House? And Tim said, well, there were three phone calls. And he said, I've got the times here, uh, from Telstra. And they were at roughly 6:46, 6:42, and maybe 6:39, something like that. And they were three phone calls that Tim made. One was to his girlfriend, one was to a friend, and one was to his boss asking whether he was needed to work the following day. So Tim said to Rutledge, I'm sure of the time, because my mother and Andrew left after the third phone call, which was either 6:45 or 6:46.

CATHERINE:  After the meditation group finished the pair travelled to Ruth's daughter's home in Tingalpa, arriving at about 9:45PM until they left at 12:30AM to return home to Zillmere.

 I'm not sure what to think of this alibi. For it to be dismissed by the jury, Timothy and Ruth Bennett would have to be lying, and one of them would've had to log into Andrew's PowerUp account to make it look like he was home. 

Police charged Andrew on the assumption that the murder occurred Thursday afternoon or evening, not Friday afternoon. So preparing a defence case based on an alibi for Thursday and then having to change that to Friday close to the actual trial doesn't seem fair. We don't know at what time Andrew's defence counsel were informed that police had changed their time of death calculation, but at the new maximum time of death of 3PM Friday, Andrew was going through the charity shops in Zillmere. Although no witnesses at trial, apart from de facto Ruth Bennett, were brought to court to corroborate that.

Academic Laura-Leigh Cameron-Dow explains why this was the case.

LAURA-LEIGH: Part of the problem is that they didn't really get the time of death sorted out either. That was a huge issue. So initially for the trial preparation, Andrew's team were all working on a time of death and then it was very close to the trial when the prosecution changed it and everybody was in a mad scramble trying to figure it out. And Andrew had alibis for the night that they were trying to get him, so they moved it. But I had discussions with Ruth, with Ruth where she was saying that it was really difficult because they'd spent, and it took almost a year to go to trial, they'd spent months and months and months working out everybody's movements and everybody's alibis and then really close to the trial date suddenly got a different date that they all had to try and work out and nobody focused on that date, so they'd struggled to get their movements and things together.

Next time on Murder and the Hellcats.

BENTLEY ATCHISON: Mr Cox has chosen a method of reporting population frequency statistics, which are not supported by the majority of scientists in the world. 

MICHAEL STRUTT: Most lawyers are very reluctant to give serious cross examination about DNA evidence because they know that the expert witness can basically completely bamboozle them and make them look like idiots. 

 This episode was written and produced by Catherine McHugh. Theme music by Sasha Louis Leger, and additional music by Lunar Years.

If you have any information about the murder of Kathleen Marshall please contact me at:

somethingtheysaid@gmail.com