Pod Insights The Case Of 02 Sharon’s Disappearance | What Robert Fulton stood to lose About this episode Sharon Fulton was looking into divorcing her husband months before her disappearance. He stood to lose everything. Was this a motive for murder?
In this episode, Perth reporter David Weber describes what Sharon wanted out of a divorce. David also explains the defence argument she may have been a victim of Perth serial killers 'The Birnies', and her son's attempt to find the truth.
If you have any questions you'd like David and Stocky to answer in future episodes, please email [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Tammy Shipley believed someone was out to hurt her.
0:03 Speaker 01 I thought someone was after me and I wanted to just be safe.
0:05 Speaker 00 She's put under 24-hour surveillance.
0:07 Speaker 02 I tried to get in contact multiple times.
0:10 Speaker 01 I think I made a phone call, nobody knows who I am.
0:13 Speaker 00 And then something strange happens.
0:15 Speaker 03 She just drank and drank and had something like 20 litres of pure water.
0:19 Speaker 04 Ambulance emergency. I've got a woman unconscious.
0:22 Speaker 00 Tammy's story. Search background briefing on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:30 Speaker 00 ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:45 Speaker 05 The day before Sharon Fulton went missing, she fought with her husband. She then caught up with a friend who offered her a place to stay, but Sharon never made it there. I'm Stephen Stockwell, this is episode two of The Case of Sharon's Disappearance.
1:00 Speaker 03 Special crime squad detectives extradited Reddington back to Perth. They were experiencing marriage difficulties and Reddington thought he would suffer financially if she left him. I am instructed to assert that he protests his innocence. Today is about my mother, Sharon, a dedicated, loving mother. Mum, you are not forgotten, you are not erased, you are not just a case file.
1:30 Speaker 05 The marriage of Sharon and Robert Fulton was on the rocks when she disappeared in 1986. Things weren't good at home, Sharon had been looking into a separation and said that her husband had been unfaithful. After she disappeared, her husband told all sorts of stories about what might have happened to her, that she had run off with another lover, that maybe she'd been the victim of the Bernies, serial killers who targeted women in Perth in the 80s. These stories didn't stop her husband being charged with her murder though. A trial that was followed by the ABC's David Weber, our court reporter in Perth. Welcome, David.
2:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, g'day.
2:06 Speaker 05 On the 18th of March in 1986, Sharon Fulton goes missing. The last people to see her are her children and her husband, the man who's on trial for her murder. But the day before she catches up with this friend, who was it?
2:20 Speaker 02 So, Norell Harrison was a...
2:22 Speaker 04 A fairly close friend of Sharon Fulton's, she was an important witness because she had said that the day before Sharon Fulton went missing, she had seen her and Sharon was, as she described, scared and frightened, very frightened were the words that she used. And Norrell Harrison had said, you can stay at our place with the children, but the following day she disappeared.
2:45 Speaker 05 When Sharon was speaking to Norrell, you know, Norrell offers her a place to stay, did Sharon say she would go? Did the court hear anything about that?
2:52 Speaker 04 It would seem that she didn't, it would seem that there was no intention to stay at Norrell Harrison's home. The impression that was left from this and other evidence was that she needed to be there to contribute to getting the kids to school.
3:04 Speaker 05 I see. So she stays at her home, the next day she goes missing. Was there any accounting for Robert Fulton's movements on that day, the day that Sharon Fulton disappeared?
3:14 Speaker 04 There was evidence that there was going to be a face-to-face meeting between the two on the day that she disappeared, Robert Fulton and Sharon Fulton. He worked out at the RAF base and we heard from an officer who said that Robert Fulton had called him, said he needed to leave and he said, quote, "probably said something about a domestic issue. I need to go home", he said. And then later said something about police had located his wife in New South Wales.
3:40 Speaker 05 Right. I mean, we do know the police never found Sharon in New South Wales. Did we hear much from other friends about where she may have gone?
3:48 Speaker 04 So we heard from Pat La Friends, who was a friend of hers. They knew each other from postings in Malaysia, RAF wives, husbands being posted there for the RAF, and also knew each other through ten-pin bowling at Mirabokka in a group that they called the Shady Ladies. We did hear that Sharon Fulton really liked ten-pin bowling, she was good at it, and she told the court that she hadn't turned up to bowling as expected. Sharon was meant to drive that day and this is after she disappeared, so she'd learned that she had disappeared. Pat La Friends said that she had not been contacted by Robert Fulton. And then Pat La Friends was asked, "Did you see Robert Fulton after the disappearance?" She said, "At a RAF event and he was there with another woman and he had..."
4:32 Speaker 04 Said to her, Sharon's in Queensland.
4:35 Speaker 05 Okay, the changing stories is something we spoke a bit about in our last episode. One of the reasons the prosecution says that Raymond Reddington should be found guilty of killing his wife are the different versions of his disappearance that he told to police. There was also a confrontation with police at the time, you know, Raymond Reddington going to talk to them and there being some kind of blow up, I guess. Who did we hear that from?
4:57 Speaker 04 That came from a man named Wesley Hamilton Hartley. So he's a reverend with the United Church and Robert Fulton had come to see him after his wife had disappeared and quote, concerned that his wife had gone missing. He told the court that he went with Robert Fulton to Warwick Police Station because Robert told the reverend that police had said, oh, we think we found someone. Can you come, come by? And they both went to the police station. And what was related to the court by Wesley Hamilton Hartley was that there was a heated conversation between Robert Fulton and, and an officer. It seems like he wasn't inside whatever room that heated conversation happened, but he did say that Robert Fulton relayed to him, she appears to have gone away. I don't know where
5:40 Speaker 04 she is. I'm really worried. And he talked about where he searched for her and Wesley Hamilton Hartley told the court, he was wondering to himself, is there more I don't know about? But the defence lawyer, Jonathan Davies, asked, what was it? Was it about accusations being made to Robert Fulton and the court heard that maybe it involved indignant denials? But there wasn't much more specific about that, except that there was a heated confrontation at this police station some days after she'd gone missing. But certainly the, the version of events that Wesley Hamilton Hartley had been given by Robert Fulton was that she had gone missing. He didn't know where she was and that he was distraught.
6:19 Speaker 05 Hmm. I mean, we do know that the relationship wasn't going that well. Sharon Fulton had looked into a separation and met with a lawyer, Thomas Kestrel. It sounds like through that process, they actually got through a lot of the key details to kind of get that underway.
6:34 Speaker 04 Yes, and had detailed what she was hoping to get from the separation because she didn't have an income earning capacity at that time, she would have presumably had to look after all the kids. She wanted quite a bit of money, she wanted the house. The whole thing was that, and this is the prosecution saying this, that because of the plans that she had, that he had stood to lose everything, is the way that the prosecutor described it. Some of the documentation went to say that she wanted the kids, the home, as sole occupancy, this is the home in Dun Craig. She wanted the husband to pay maintenance, mortgage payments, power costs, rates and taxes, excess water accounts, household and contents insurance, third party insurance and fifty dollars a week.
7:18 Speaker 04 And then for maintenance, a hundred dollars a week for the husband to pay out goings, transfer of title. She referred to herself as having no income and no employment. And so that's why that's important in terms of what she wanted as the home maker, the person that was looking after the kids. And she said, I consider the marriage has irretrievably broken down, a deterioration over a period. She said that her husband had an affair with a mutual friend of ours. It's quote, unquote, impossible to live in the same household. I have no relatives in WA, in Western Australia, or the resources to find accommodation for myself and the kids. The atmosphere in the home is tense and cold, there is a lot of bickering between myself and the husband, I tend to take out anxiety on the children.
8:02 Speaker 05 Yeah, it paints a, I guess a kind of grim picture about the Fulton household around that time, in the mid eighties, I suppose, David.
8:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, so she didn't have any means of employment, or it would suggest that she was going to be a full-time mother to the kids, for kids, and needing to take care of all of those responsibilities. Where it would have landed, who knows, it's only speculation because it would have been some kind of a deal. But it really fed into the prosecution case that Raymond Reddington stood to lose everything. When you hear that, you can see why the prosecution put forward a possible motive for murder, was that if she was going to leave him, then he was really going to have almost nothing.
8:41 Speaker 05 Hmm, yeah, I mean, I can see why something like that, that possible motive is information the prosecution is keen to get in front of the jury. David, the thing I can't stop thinking about with this, though, is the investigation into Sharon's disappearance by police. Did you hear very much about how deeply the police looked into this?
9:00 Speaker 04 So, yes, with the police investigation, we did hear the police had gone to the house and found no evidence of a crime, although a police officer who was serving at the time had told the court that there were ways to commit an assault on somebody or murder somebody without leaving a trace, suggested strangulation, for instance, might have been one possibility. But there were other missing women around that time. There were greater suspicions that they had been murdered. I guess what happened with police is that they must have believed Robert Fulton, by accounts, did seem distraught, had possible explanations for what had happened, even though he changed the version of events he gave to police within days. Yes, that would ring alarm bells.
9:40 Speaker 05 David, Raymond Reddington and the family, outside of Sharon, obviously, make the move to Queensland following all of this. What did Raymond Reddington tell the courts about Sharon's disappearance when he was making claims over there?
9:54 Speaker 04 Well, he had to go to court to have her officially declared deceased, and the court was presented or was shown documents that were referred to as to what he did in Queensland. And this is in 1993. This is a statement. "I say on the 8th of March 1986, my wife of 19 years, Sharon Elizabeth Fulton, went missing, and I've not seen her since that day. At the relevant time, I was a shift worker. I returned home, as I did not commence work until 4.30. It was her intention to return home no later than 3.30, so she could pick up the youngest children. I spent a couple of days ringing around friends. My efforts brought me no joy whatsoever. I wondered whether she might have needed some time on her own."
10:35 Speaker 04 And then we heard that in 1993, an update from detectives in Perth, "There has been no new information in relation to the case. The missing persons file for Mrs Fulton remains open." And we also heard that Raymond Reddington was saying at the time, or Robert Fulton. Fulton, I telephoned every hospital, every mental institution in every state. That's a lot of mental institutions, I'd suggest. There was no evidence, of course, as I'd mentioned before, of phone records being presented from that period of time. And in 1990, Sharon Fulton's disappearance formed part of an episode of Australia's Most Wanted, a TV show at the time, and there was no response whatsoever.
11:15 Speaker 05 David, the thing that sticks out with me about that version of events is the other phone calls that Raymond Reddington then Robert Fulton made to Sharon's friends. Because is that what we heard from them?
11:29 Speaker 04 The friends that gave evidence said that they did not hear from him. There was no reaching out to them as such, including Norel Harrison, who was considered herself to be her best friend. There was some slightly conflicting evidence that the fellow from the Uniting Church said that she had arrived at the house at some stage, but it would seem there was very limited contact, which is passing strange if you are looking for your wife, especially someone who was closely connected to people she was bowling with. There didn't seem to be much contact with them at all from him. So ringing around friends is contrary to what they said in court.
12:03 Speaker 05 Right, so again, the kind of changing stories of Raymond Reddington that the prosecution really kind of focused on in their case against him. The defence had another line that they ran, though, that while Sharon Fulton may have been killed, it wasn't by her husband. In fact, she could have been the victim of serial killers who were active in Perth in the late 80s, a couple called the Bernies. Who were they?
12:25 Speaker 04 So David and Catherine Burney, they abducted five women and girls aged from mid-teens to 31. The first victim was detained and murdered. She had actually gone to the home. She was after some tyres and he said, oh, I've got some at my house. She went there and she was murdered. And then others were abducted and murdered. And one 17-year-old girl, she managed to escape. So there were five victims. And after the 17-year-old escaped, her name was Kate Moyer, police arrested David Burney and he was confronted during questioning with some of the evidence that they had. Against him and he basically told them everything and then Catherine Burney ultimately made some admissions, I think she started making admissions out at one of the grave sites.
13:10 Speaker 04 The women were left out in bush graves and quite horrible circumstances for all of those victims, they were tortured before they were murdered. And the impression that the community was left with was that Catherine Burney was doing this at the behest or to please or to keep David Burney happy, but it was David Burney that gave up the accounts of what had actually happened to all of these women. So this is in, later in 1986.
13:38 Speaker 05 Yeah, so was there any link ever established between Sharon Fulton's disappearance and the Burneys?
13:44 Speaker 04 No, it was pushed by the defence, Detective Sergeant from Cold Case Review Team who talked about the extensive measures that they'd taken to investigate Sharon Fulton's disappearance as a murder. He had said 1986 was a very busy year for, for missing ladies. There were a lot of investigations into the Burneys, not just in 1986. David Burney was interviewed afterwards for, for periods of time. It's also understood that he was even consulted by investigators when it came to the disappearances of three and the murders of two, or at least two of the girls or women that went missing from Claremont. So there was a kind of understanding between investigators and David Burney, probably because
14:28 Speaker 04 he had been so forthcoming in talking about the victims of himself and Catherine Burney. And then it follows, well, if he was so forthcoming about them, why not talk about Sharon Fulton if he had done that? Why hide that one or, or any others for that matter? So the Detective Sergeant told the court, there was no evidence to suggest or to support that the Burneys were involved in any others that they knew about. And the defence lawyer actually put it to him, is it possible you were too narrow in your focus? And, and he said, no. It's something that the defence put up and the Bernys were notorious. The crimes that they committed were so hideous and awful. Yeah, it put that case into the minds of the jury.
15:11 Speaker 04 Something that they probably didn't expect when they turned up for jury duty, they'd have this almost history lesson of these serial killers, because that's what David and Catherine Burney were.
15:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, and I mean, probably not something the jury saw coming either, that history lesson, but, I mean, talking about the Bernys and this version from Raymond Reddington's defence team, if this lands, what does that mean for the jury?
15:32 Speaker 04 Well, the jury would have had to find that Raymond Reddington could not have been found guilty of murder beyond reasonable doubt, because by creating reasonable doubt, which is, you know, David and Catherine Burney might have done it. Now, David and Catherine Burney being active in the later part of 1986, even though it was months after Sharon Fulton had gone missing, but police would have looked at other possibilities, other possible victims, even though David Burney was quite forthcoming about the four murders, and of course he couldn't deny what had happened with the 17-year-old that escaped the clutches. So while he was forthcoming about what happened to Susannah Candy, Nolene Patterson, Denise Brown and Mary Nielsen, he didn't mention Sharon Fulton, so why not?
16:17 Speaker 04 I mean, if you're going to talk about everything that you'd done with Catherine Burney, Catherine Burney was apparently not as forthcoming initially, but ultimately the evidence was mounting, so why didn't Catherine Burney talk about Sharon Fulton?
16:29 Speaker 05 Hmm.
16:30 Speaker 04 To the extent that she may have been part of the investigation into the Bernys, it didn't lead anywhere.
16:34 Speaker 05 Yeah, and is this a, I mean, in your reading of it as a court reporter, was that a serious line, or was it something that the defence has probably looked at and gone, oh, hang on, we can exploit this, there's an avenue here to put a bit of doubt in the jury's mind?
16:47 Speaker 04 We heard that Raymond Reddington had said to his subsequent partner, she asked him, you know, what happened, because we'd heard evidence from the kids that, you know, it wasn't something that was talked about, but certainly a subsequent partner wanted to know and asked him, and he said, oh, the Bernys, the Bernys killed her.
17:01 Speaker 05 Yeah, right.
17:02 Speaker 04 So, so this is late 80s, early 90s, around the turn of 1990 when he'd said that. And so I suspect that's the kernel of the defence case. It's not something that I would suggest it's not something that the defence lawyer came up with.
17:17 Speaker 05 Hmm.
17:17 Speaker 04 Uh, there's something, there's a starting point there.
17:20 Speaker 05 I mean, we talked a lot about the investigation at the time that Sharon Fulton disappeared, or lack thereof in, in some senses. Um, but there were a couple of others in the intervening years, I suppose. Uh, there was one in two thousand and seven, there was another one in, in twenty seventeen. And in twenty seventeen, one of Raymond Reddington's sons, one of Sharon Fulton's sons, was involved as well. How did, how was he involved in this investigation?
17:44 Speaker 04 So there was a secret recording that was made. Heath Fulton had told the court that he had wanted answers about what had happened. He was three years old at the time, and he has some memories of that day. So in the recording, we heard Raymond Reddington say that he dropped his mum off at the station, drove home, had to pick her up four forty or, or five, and we waited until about six or seven, and uh, you were starting to get hungry. So there we have a, again, a version of events where he had consciously dropped her off and expecting her to come back.
18:15 Speaker 05 Hmm.
18:16 Speaker 04 And he said, you could hear, Heath is sort of wanting to know what happened to mum and said to him, um, why did you say in thirty years I'll tell you what happened? So Raymond Reddington had said this to, with court heard, uh, Raymond Reddington had said this to Heath ten years previously, you only spoke to the police once, quizzing her, uh, why would she leave her four kids? We didn't hear any admissions in those recordings as such, but um, we did hear Raymond Reddington saying, uh, the thing that upset me the other night when you were here, uh, didn't like being called a liar, and he'd been trying to remember to the best of his memory or ability. And he said to Heath, I want to help you in your endeavours, try to get to the bottom of this whole thing.
18:55 Speaker 05 Hmm.
18:55 Speaker 04 And the other interesting thing around this is that he was interviewed by police, and we were shown footage of that police interview. Uh, this is in the eastern states.
19:05 Speaker 05 Hmm.
19:05 Speaker 04 And uh, he sat there and seemed to have no memory of what had occurred back then. But around the same time, he's speaking with some level of recall about.
19:18 Speaker 04 What happened to his own son, like this, you know, we went down wanting to pick her up. She didn't turn up, you were hungry, so we left. I mean, that's a pretty specific memory.
19:26 Speaker 05 Yeah.
19:26 Speaker 04 But then he's sitting there being asked these things by police, he's just shrugging his shoulders. No, sorry, no.
19:31 Speaker 05 Okay, so he can remember some things with his son, but not when he's with police. How did the prosecution use that?
19:39 Speaker 04 We had heard that there was a partner around that time that he had coached her in how to fake an Alzheimer's condition. What the prosecution was suggesting was that here he is faking it when he's talking to police.
19:52 Speaker 05 Right, I mean, talking about his children, Heath, three years old when this happened, involved in another police investigation thirty years after the fact, and then, you know, forty years after the fact, he's in court having these conversations again. How was Heath during the trial? Was he in the courtroom? Were other children in the courtroom as well?
20:11 Speaker 04 Yes, so Heath and Derek, so Derek was the oldest child at the time, and he had more clear memories. I mean, Heath had said that Derek had taken more of an objective view over the years and referred to some turmoil in the family. I mean, there was, of course, there was a separation, they didn't know what had happened to mum. He was quite lucid and forthright in court because he had done the recording and he'd been asking questions for some years. He was there to seek answers. So Derek and Heath were prominent afterwards, sort of being in court, listening to things, as were some of the other people who gave evidence, who were friends of Sharon. Uh, and clearly it's not just Heath and Derek who are looking for answers, it's also people
20:54 Speaker 04 who remember Sharon and remember the day that she disappeared and the outcome of something that they've been trying to find answers to for decades.
21:03 Speaker 05 Yeah, um, what was it like being in the courtroom? You know, as these boys are giving evidence against their father who's on trial for killing their mother?
21:12 Speaker 04 Well, it's, it's, as a reporter, you just approach it as objectively as you can. You listen to what they say and report what they say. There's a lot of material that's presented in court. You've got to distill it, as you do with anybody else. I mean, people are going to court because they have to. They're there because they're, it's, it's the ultimate way of getting answers to, to what happened to somebody. And this is no different to anybody that has to suffer through a murder trial where a loved one has been taken away from them. But the difference in this case is that time period, a 40-year time period.
21:48 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's so much that we'll dive into in our next episode. David, we'll look at the anonymous tip that proved to be a huge part of the case against Raymond Reddington, but probably not for the reasons that you're thinking. And also the, the verdict, how the jury decided in this murder trial. Was Raymond Reddington guilty of murdering his wife, Sharon Fulton, in 1986? Thank you so much for joining us for this episode, David.
22:11 Speaker 04 No worries at all.
22:12 Speaker 05 We're back in your feed on Tuesday next week. Make sure you grab ABC Listen, it's the best place to enjoy The Case Of and lots of other wonderful ABC content.
22:28 Speaker 05 The Case Of is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by David Weber and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rollinson. Thank you to senior lawyer Jasmine Sims, our legal queen, for her legal advice, to the Perth newsroom and to Audio Studios manager, Eric George. This episode was produced on the land of the Wajak Nunga and more untreat people.
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