As Seen on Women in Crime Ink

       He forced her to call her parents to say she was running away. They weren’t to worry about her. She was fine, she just wanted to hit the roads and find herself.  With the knife against her throat as she made the call she put in a performance that she hoped would save her life.

The teenager was tied to the bed again to await the next round of torture and sex. She had been abducted a few days earlier by a couple and driven back to an unsuspecting house in the middle of suburbia where the real horror story began for her.  The year was 1986.

Flash forward to 2005, and I found myself wondering if I was responsible for the death of one of the country’s most brutal serial killers and trying to understand my own feelings.

I had released a book on serial killers, River of Blood and was writing another one on Australian crime. I have been researching serial crime for so long, that I can’t actually remember how it all began. There was no moment that made me realise that this was the field I wanted to work in.  Nonetheless, I find myself as a female true crime author, a title that is a great ice breaker at parties, it has brought the media knocking on my door and has also made people revile in horror.

As I had done with River of Blood, I went to the source for many of the stories in my next book. I wrote to killers, families and law enforcement personnel to get my case studies correct.  This was how I ‘met’ David Birnie [1].  Birnie, along with his defacto wife, was the murderer of at least four women. Each woman had been repeatedly raped and sodomised before being brutally murdered and dumped in a remote forest. His final victim luckily escaped his murderous insatiable lust.

Birnie was not exactly someone that you’d choose as a friend. He was a brutal rapist and killer. I had always been careful to keep a distance from my research subjects. I never ever shared personal details about myself.  I always made it clear that my life was and is off-limits.

 People, outside criminological circles always believe that killers are obvious, that they would be easily pointed out in a crowd. But, if that were the case, how many potential victims would get into a car with some kind of drooling madman? Not many.  Killers are often suave, enticing, charming and engaging.  Killers, like Birnie Birnie.

I began corresponding with Birnie several years earlier. I had sent a stock letter to hundreds of killers around the world, asking some very leading questions. The letter received dozens of responses, some were offensive and therefore ignored, others welcomed the chance to chat with someone new. I steered clear of the usual suspects, Charles Manson, Richard Ramirez etc.  I had corresponded with Dahmer and Gacy earlier, but that also provided pretty mundane responses.

Birnie Birnie was one of the killers that was keen to spark up a conversation. He rarely had ‘penpals’. He saw it as exploitative and preferred to keep everything private. Yet, he saw in me something different.  From the very beginning, I made it clear that I was interested in the case. I was not a groupie, I was not interested in sending lingerie photos, pornographic material or anything of that ilk. Ground rules were set, I did not like profanity, nor any gratuitous pictures nor jokes. Birnie agreed, he liked that I meant business.

From that point on, we both wrote weekly, with questions and answers going back and forth. I would ask the questions and he would send a neatly typed letter back.  We discussed the case in detail as well as hundreds of other topics. The man was extremely interested in politics, religion and ancient civilisations. I would often draw out of him his opinion on current cases and was interested in his disgust of other criminals, particularly paedophiles.

After three years of written correspondence, we began to conduct telephone conversations. Talking with the killer was very different than the written conversations we had had.  We were able to talk with emotion.  We spent alot of time talking about his younger years and where he went wrong. We talked about the crimes and the other suspected victims that popped up in the news every so often.

When I had asked him about being in jail with a sentence of ‘never to be released’ he had explained that it was now easier.  “The first seven years are the hardest. After that, each day is no different.” He seemed resigned to the fact he was never getting out, though he was eligible to apply for parole as a mere formality.

Yet in 2005, things began to change, and my role changed from investigative writer to counsellor. An investigation was underway regarding the rape of a fellow inmate. According to the media he was the prime suspect, Birnie confided in me regarding the case and I saw a downward spiral in his demeanour. Previously he had been engaging in conversation and always open with me regarding his crimes and his time in jail, but now he was morose and talking about ‘the end.’

There the moral dilemma began. Does one convince a serial killer to die, or to live?  I had spent several years getting to know this killer as a person and now he relied on me to get him through each week.

On the day of his suicide he rang me. The phone call was unusual, and I did not realise until later that it was a goodbye call. He thanked me for being there as a friend over the years. He told me I was the only one who understood him and knew what had happened to him. He also explained that the prison was cutting off our contact.  His last words to me were “they say things can’t get any worse, then they do.”  This was a quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was Birnie’s way of saying it was over.

The following day, I was emailed a story about his suicide by a friend.  I didn’t know how to feel. Other killers had died that I had interviewed and I didn’t care. One less killer with the possibility of being released, was my usual response. But now I questioned my own emotions.  Should I feel sad that Birnie had died? Could I have stopped him killing himself? Would I?

I realised then that it didn’t matter. He was a brutal killer who paid little time for his victim’s deaths. He didn’t grieve for their deaths, so why should I grieve for his? He was buried in a paupers grave inside the prison soon after his death. I guess his sentence of ‘never to be released’ really meant forever.

A month later, I received a letter from one of the other inmates. It was a thank you, on behalf of Birnie.  He had told this other inmate about me and how I had ‘changed’ his life. I guess he had changed mine too, it made me see the human side of a killer’s psyche and how easy it is to be a victim. Perhaps in some strange way I am also one of his victims?