Altona’s Meshel Laurie has gone behind the harrowing scenes to speak with those directly touched by some of Melbourne’s and the world’s worst crimes.
Her new book, CSI told you lies, tells the stories of victims’ families, forensic pathologists who conduct autopsies, homicide detectives and defence barristers.
High-profile cases in the book include David Hookes who died from one punch, serial killer Peter Dupas, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 shot down over Ukraine, and Eurydice Dixon and Aya Marsaawe who were raped and murdered.
Laurie said in the Hookes’ case, the investigator in charge, Charlie Bezzina, had wanted to bring a charge of manslaughter.
Hookes had vehemently wanted to be an organ donor.
“So, Charlie had to negotiate between David Hookes’ widow and the hospital and the Coroner’s Court,“ Laurie said.
“It was this extraordinary situation where the forensic pathologist came to the hospital and basically conducted a lot of the autopsy at the same time as they removed the organs for the donation.“
Laurie’s unexpected connection to Dupas, convicted of murdering Nicole Patterson, Margaret Maher and Mersina Halvagis, is revealed in the book.
“I was working in brothels in the late ’90s as a receptionist,“ Laurie said.
“I had a beautiful boss called Miss Vick who put on staff meetings for us.
“She used to invite guest speakers; she might invite a bank manager to talk about getting a loan and buying a house and then the next month she might invite a legal representative to talk about custody issues and family court issues and things like that that she thought would be helpful for the girls.
“One month she invited this young woman who was a psychotherapist to come along and talk about self esteem issues and getting counselling if ever things got on top of you.
“This lady’s name was Nicky and Nicky gave us all cards at the end but she was scratching out the phone number on the card and saying, ’I’ll give you another phone number because I don’t work there anymore, I’m setting up my own practice at home’.
“Within about a week and a half, one of the girls said, oh, I’ve been trying to call Nicky and she’s not answering, she’s not ringing me back.
“It turned out that Nicky had been murdered by Peter Dupas and in fact he was the first client to make an appointment to come and see her at home, at the new practice.“
Laurie spoke with Nicole Patterson’s sister, Kylie Nicholas, for that chapter of the book.
Another chapter was written with Anthony Maslin (Maz) and wife Marite Norris (Rin), who lost three children in MH17.
“They had so much to say about not just surviving after something like that but actually living after it, and about making the decision to have another child because as they said, ’we were still parents but we had no children’.“
