‘Joel, you’re aware that we’ve searched all properties associated with the Shillingworth Trust and also the McLeods’ residences at Palm Beach and Cottage Point. We’ve located numbers of items belonging to the victims and also photographs and videos of you and Sara that were taken at the time of the murders.’ The police interviewer’s voice was calm. ‘The photographs place you both as present and active in all these murders. There’s also sufficient evidence to identify you and Sara McLeod as the murderers of Jirawan Sanders.’
‘My client still denies all knowledge.’
‘Does Joel want to speak for himself?’
Griffin shook his head. The profiler spoke next.
‘Joel, let’s talk about your grandmother, Dr Amelie Santos. When did you first find out about her?’
Griffin looked at her and spoke for the first time. ‘Amelie Santos was a woman who owed me money.’
‘Why did she owe you money?’
‘The point is, if you owe someone money, you should pay them. If you don’t, then you’re at fault.’
‘She was at fault,’ the profiler repeated. ‘Did you tell her that? Did you go and see her at her house in Blackheath?’
‘She knew she owed me money,’ Griffin said.
‘How did she know she owed you money?’
Griffin looked at his lawyer.
‘I’m doing this under instruction from my client,’ the lawyer said and took an envelope out of his briefcase. It was old and yellowing. From it the lawyer took and placed on the table a copy of the letter from the Salvation Army identifying Frank Martin Wells as the son of Amelie and Rafael Santos.
‘She already had that,’ Griffin said. ‘She’d had it for years. I had to pay for it.’
‘Presumably Amelie Santos had to pay for it as well,’ the police interviewer said. ‘This is the information you bought from Jennifer Shillingworth. Am I correct?’
‘If you check the envelope, you’ll see the stamps are from the late 1960s, early ’70s,’ Griffin’s lawyer said. ‘Dr Santos must have obtained that information illegally and then declined to act on it.’
Watching, Harrigan thought that of all the people involved in this, the one with the most clear-sighted understanding of Dr Amelie Santos had been her son, Frank. She didn’t want me. She didn’t even give me a name. Just this once, all those years ago, she seemed to have made a tentative step towards finding him, but had then, for whatever reason, drawn back.
‘Joel, are you saying that your grandmother knew all along who her son was?’ the profiler asked.
‘She had that letter. She must have done.’
‘But how could she know who you were? You were Joel Griffin by then, not Craig Wells.’
‘She knew she owed me money as soon as she opened the door.’
‘You went and saw her in the house at Blackheath. She recognised you. Did she let you in?’
‘She came outside. She said, I don’t want to see you. She wouldn’t even talk to me.’
‘Did you ever go into the house?’
‘When they took her away.’
‘She later gave it to you,’ the profiler said.
‘She knew she owed it to me.’
This seemed to be as close as Griffin could get to admitting he was her grandson. The depth of resentment in his voice reminded Harrigan of Frank Wells. The bitch! She left me nothing! Resentment decades old. The one point on which father and son were in agreement.
‘Joel,’ the police interviewer said, ‘you started burying people at Dr Santos’s surgery in Turramurra years before you first visited her. That was before she told you she didn’t want to know you. You were using her surgery while she was still alive, still its owner. Why?’
Silence. Griffin looked down at the table. He was almost smiling.
‘There’s no point in that question,’ his lawyer said. ‘Joel has no admissions to make.’
‘As soon as you got back to this country, Joel, your grandmother was already in your mind,’ the profiler said. ‘You started to do things that were associated with her in a very negative way.’
‘As I’ve said, there’s no point in those questions. Joel has nothing to say.’
‘Why did you wait four years before you went and saw her? Why not see her as soon as you came back to Australia? That’s when you found out who she was.’
‘I wanted to see her before she died. She was getting old.’
‘You wanted to make sure she put you in her will before she died. Were you watching her?’ the profiler asked.
‘No. I do things in my own time,’ he replied.
‘After your mother, Janice Wells, Jennifer Shillingworth was your second victim. Whose decision was it to kill her? Yours or Sara’s?’
‘There’s no proof that Joel killed his mother,’ the lawyer said.
‘Jennifer Shillingworth was your first victim when you came back. Why did you kill her?’
‘When I do business with someone,’ Griffin said after a few moments, ‘I always stick to the deal I’ve made. Once I’ve settled on a price, I never ask for more money.’
‘Jennifer Shillingworth wanted more money. Is that what you’re saying?’
Silence.
‘Why did you use her name for the property trust you set up? Because she led you to your grandmother? Or because she tried to get money out of you? Was this your way of putting her in her place?’
Silence.
‘Your next victim after you came back to Australia was Stan Wells. He was your father’s brother. Why did you kill him?’
Silence.
‘The first thing you do when you come back to Australia after years away is find out who your grandmother is, and then carry out a killing that will cause your real father genuine grief,’ the profiler said. ‘Those are things Craig Wells would do, aren’t they? Not Joel Griffin.’
‘I’m not Craig Wells.’
‘For all your killings you used an axe you stole from your father. Everything you do seems to lead back to your real family. Have you ever really left home, Joel? You’ve travelled the world, but aren’t you still back in that little house on Bay Street?’
‘You don’t know the places I’ve been,’ he replied.
‘You never killed your father.’
Griffin looked down at the table and this time he did smile. ‘Isn’t he already dead?’
‘You made your grandmother the centre of this,’ the profiler said. ‘You buried your victims in her surgery. The young women who worked for you at Life’s Pleasures said they were there to work for Amelie. You used her home as a base for your murders. You called your property trust after the woman who found her for you and whom you then killed. Why?’
Silence.
‘You and Sara met at Camp Sunshine,’ the profiler said. ‘You were both fifteen.’
‘Joel has already agreed with that statement,’ the lawyer said.
‘You planned the real Joel Griffin’s death from that time, didn’t you? Sara started seeing him. She paid for him to get his teeth fixed but he didn’t know it was under your name.’
‘That allegation is pure speculation,’ the lawyer said.
‘No, there’s sufficient evidence to support it,’ the police interviewer replied. ‘We also have Joel’s own dental records. They date back to when he was fifteen. Given that DNA testing has established his identity as Craig Wells, we can state that he was using Joel Griffin’s identity while the real Joel was still alive.’
‘Sara knew from the start what you were planning,’ the profiler said. ‘You planned it together.’
‘She liked being with me. She said it was exciting. She said there was only us in the world.’
‘She was in love with you.’
‘I guess so.’
‘You’re fascinated by identity, aren’t you?’ the profiler said. ‘You used the medical records you found in Amelie Santos’s garage to sell new identities to other people. You used them for yourselves. You even used them when you were extorting Amelie Santos’s Blackheath house from her. It was like having a second self you could draw on whenever you needed to do something. Like being invisible. And you sold several of those IDs to women who then worked gratis at Life’s Pleasures in payment. You even murdered one of them who refused to keep her side of the bargain. You used the names of your victims. It seemed to be almost a way of keeping them alive. You even brought Craig back to life. Or is that your way of keeping your victims prisoner? A way of going back to what you did to them? You bring them back to life. You murder them again.’