03 Sharon’s Disappearance | A tip off with a twist

An anonymous letter was sent to Sharon Fulton's coronial inquest, claiming to know who killed her and where her body was. But who wrote this letter, and can it be believed? Court reporter David Weber reveals who the author was and what the jury decided at the end of the trial in this 40-year-old cold case. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, Grace Tame here. You might know me as the 2021 Australian of the year, or quote-unquote, "difficult woman", but did you know I'm also autistic? It took me a long time to get diagnosed, and sadly, that's true for a lot of women. I want to know why that's the case. That's why I'm taking over Ladies We Need to Talk for a series called Autistic AF. Find it by searching Ladies We Need to Talk on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  For decades, the whereabouts of Sharon Fulton were unknown, until an anonymous tip pointed to where she may be, a tip that would have dramatic consequences in the trial of Raymond Reddington. I'm Stephen Stockwell. This is the case of Sharon's disappearance.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Special Crime Squad detectives extradited Reddington back to Perth.

• 1:04Speaker 04

  They were experiencing marriage difficulties, and Reddington thought he would suffer financially if she left him.

• 1:10Speaker 03

  I am instructed to assert that he protests his innocence.

• 1:13Speaker 05

  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.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Over the 40 years since Sharon Fulton disappeared, there were a number of stories about what had happened. She ran away, she was killed by serial killers. But one story became the focus of the trial with its surprising link back to Raymond Reddington. We'll also find out if the jury bought any of these stories in this episode. I was surprised how long it took them to reach a verdict. And there throughout all of this was the ABC's court reporter in Perth, David Weber. Welcome, David.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, g'day.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  The trial of Raymond Reddington ran for weeks. The court heard from his children, the friends of his wife, police who investigated at the time. And then there was a letter sent to an inquest that claimed to know where Sharon was. What was this letter?

• 2:07Speaker 04

  So it was kind of the most recent evidence that was presented against Raymond Reddington. It was prefaced by prosecutor Ben Stanwicks at the start of the trial. So the coroner's court, which was looking into the disappearance of Sharon Fulton, was considering an inquest. And a letter was received by the coroner's court in 2021. And the letter said, I worked with this bloke, Michael Harrison. He had a business on the side. He would order more concrete. He's a bit of a ladies' man. I saw her with him in Dun Craig. He got her in the family way. So he's basically, in this letter, the person who's written the letter is suggesting that Michael Harrison had had an affair with Sharon Fulton.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Right. And in the family way, is that a way of saying that Michael Harrison got Sharon Fulton pregnant?

• 3:00Speaker 04

  Yes. So the the letter went on to say, he got rid of that problem and suggesting that she was under a carport slab. I'm sure it's the missing woman, is what this letter said. This letter was received by the coroner's court suggesting that Sharon Fulton was murdered by Michael Harrison, who by that time had passed away.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Okay. And I mean, if the name Harrison is sounding familiar, that's because Michael Harrison is the husband of Norel Harrison, who we talked about in our last episode, you know, the best friend of Sharon Fulton, who saw her the day before she disappeared, who said she was frightened or seemed frightened in the home. I mean, David, was there any evidence that there was a relationship between Sharon Fulton and Michael Harrison outside of this letter?

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Not not effectively. I mean, all we heard was that Michael Harrison was deceased by the time of the trial. He was looked at by police, the possibility that he might have been involved, but the court had heard he had an alibi, or there was an alibi to to suggest that he wasn't involved.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Did anyone go around and look under some carport slabs or concrete slabs or anything like that to to chase this up?

• 4:09Speaker 04

  There are a lot of carport slabs in Perth and it would seem that it wasn't exactly specified where in the letter, you know, it was this address somewhere. So there's a vagueness with the letter, but the reason this this letter was really important to the prosecution was that when testing was done on the envelope, a DNA sample was found inside the envelope that matched Raymond Reddington's.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  And so this letter was sent by Raymond Reddington, the man who's on trial for the murder of Sharon Fulton.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  Well, the prosecution case was that Raymond Reddington had sent it. There were reference samples tested against the DNA as well, Derek Fulton, the oldest son, and others to exclude them. Of course, DNA was on the envelope from people that had handled it, people that might have been associated with the coroner's court. But the DNA that was crucial to the prosecution case was that that was inside the envelope, and that was matched to Raymond Reddington. And as Ben Stanwicks told the jury, he referred to it as an astonishing piece of dishonesty, accused Raymond Reddington of having taken on a made-up persona to send police on a wild goose chase when the coronial court was getting ready to conduct an inquest.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  It suggests that some of the other stories about Raymond Reddington had put forward, this is just another piece of the puzzle, from the prosecution's perspective, of Raymond Reddington trying to make it look like somebody else had done it.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  David, this is right towards the end of the trial. I mean, you know, you've had weeks of evidence at this point. How big a moment is a piece of evidence like this that links Raymond Reddington to something that's trying to point investigators in the other direction?

• 5:47Speaker 04

  The jury knew it was coming, and those of us in the courtroom knew it was coming because it was talked about in the opening. So it was always important, but the jury and the people in the court know that it's coming. And so when it came and they actually presented the letter in court, showed it in typed-out form, and explained its importance. So this happening quite close to the modern day, it was only a few years ago, it was important in that sense, and also in the context of the Cole case detective sergeant who gave evidence about the work that they had done up to that point. So I think in terms of the jury in particular, it helps them because things moved chronologically. There were gaps of years where not much happened at all, and then in 2021 you had this event,

• 6:32Speaker 04

  which resulted in a scientific study and the result that they got. With all the murder trials that I've covered, you can't get away from DNA, DNA doesn't lie.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  A close, I mean, one of the last people that you can hear from is often the the person who's defending the charges that they're they're facing in court. I mean, we heard from Raymond Reddington in the the secret recordings that were done by his son in the the late teens, twenty seventeen, around that time. Did he end up getting into the witness box and giving evidence himself, talking to the jury and trying to explain any of these these things?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  So Raymond Reddington did not give evidence. It's always open to the defence to put the accused person on the stand. The the defence tends not to reveal their hand until that day. The the judge will ask, does your client like to give evidence? And in this case, Jonathan Davies said that he wouldn't. And that's not really out of the ordinary. In fact, in murder trials and other trials, you often see that the accused person does not give evidence because they are open to cross examination. And and at the end of the day, the system that we have is that the case has to be proven against the person who's accused. And by not putting them on the stand, you're suggesting, well, the prosecution hasn't proven the case.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I mean, how did the prosecution wrap up their case against Raymond Reddington? I mean, there's there's no body in this situation. It's a circumstantial case. Were they just kind of rehashing those things we were talking about in our first episode of the the constantly changing stories of Raymond Reddington?

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Yes. So you you kind of, with most trials, you end up where you started, and it's a wrap up. And they reflect on the evidence. They name the people who gave evidence because they'll say, you will remember that this person said this or that this person said that. It's like a refresher. At the end of a trial, which has gone for weeks, the prosecutor, Ben Stanwicks, went right back to the beginning, the missing persons report, the the different versions of events that Raymond Reddington gave. But by going through all of these versions, most people would remember, I would suggest, pretty clearly, especially for an adult.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  What was really one of the most important days of his life. But why he gave these different versions of events, including to police, that would suggest that he was not being open and honest. Through all of the statements, 1989 statement that she went to Mount Lawley Station, which is a different train station to East Perth. A signed statement saying it was Perth Train Station and she was going shopping to meet a friend and she was supposed to come back. So depending on who he was presenting the story to, these things changed. He also referred to the timelines of the day. There's a period of hours there where it's not really explained as to what he did. And as Ben Stanwick said, he was busy killing his wife and figuring out what to do with the body. Hmm.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  All we know is that he went and picked up Heath at around 11.30 and then he saw the kids later on that afternoon. He had ample opportunity to kill Sharon Fulton at the house and take at least preliminary steps to remove her body. He said it was basically 48 minutes to hide her body, at least temporarily, and referred to perhaps the boot of the sedan where she could have been before disposing of the body more thoroughly. He had like a three day head start because he didn't tell police for three days. So a bit of speculation there by the prosecution, which the prosecutor can present during closing because if you put the pieces of the evidence together, it allows him to put forward that opportunity.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  So the timeline of the day being really important, the life insurance, which was presented as a motive, which was taken out not that long before she disappeared. And then he talked about how he told a subsequent partner how to fool a doctor into getting an Alzheimer's diagnosis. And then he's with police where he, during an interview in the eastern states, he's saying, suggesting that he didn't remember what was going on. Police saying that he struggled with his own name. Of course, he changed his name by then from Maxwell Robert Fulton to Roman Reddington. He didn't have that lack of recall when he was talking to Heath around that time. Yep. And then Ben Stanwick's moved on to the letter to the coroner's court, which referred to as an astonishing piece of dishonesty. It's

• 10:44Speaker 04

  Really wrapping up the evidence as you would expect, but more specific because the jury's sitting there having heard from all of these witnesses.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  And David, we spoke in our first episode, the defence's line basically being that, you know, there was no body, as you mentioned, there was no evidence that a crime had been committed, this, this was a circumstantial case that was being put towards the jury in this instance. When the closing finishes, the judge gives his directions to the jury and the jury takes their time to consider their verdict. I mean, when the jury retired, how long were they gone for? How long did it take?

• 11:18Speaker 04

  It was only about four hours or so, because I counted in a kind of ironic kind of way that it was an hour for each 10 years. Relatively quick for a jury in a murder trial.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, four hours does seem very quick, David. What was it like in the room as the jury came back in to deliver their verdict? Who was there?

• 11:40Speaker 04

  So the jury came in and the foreperson was asked what the verdict was of the jury, and the foreperson said guilty. And there was no reaction from Raymond Reddington, who was sitting in the dock. He was, he was as impassive as he was for much of the trial. In the public gallery, so behind where the media sits, I could hear sort of an intake of breath from somebody, like a, like that when the verdict was provided. There were people in the gallery who, some of whom had given evidence, there were other people associated with the trial, not as many as had been watching the trial, because waiting for a jury verdict can take some time, not everybody can be there.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  But there was also some applause, I write that it was muted applause, it's just like that. And then after the jury was let go, the defence lawyer Jonathan Davies said that his client, Raymond Reddington, was in the last months of his life, he was receiving chemotherapy. Not a lot more was said about that in court, except that there was an acceptance that there needed to be sentencing dates set relatively quickly.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we'll talk more about the sentencing in our next episode, David, and explore kind of what submissions were made prior to that and, and what was said about Raymond Reddington going into that process. We'll also dive into some analysis of this trial as well. But before we get to that, I mean, what do you think the moment in this trial was that, that maybe tipped the jury over?

• 13:08Speaker 04

  It's hard, without being able to interview jurors, which we can't, it's hard to say. I think. His DNA being on the envelope with a letter that was trying to send police or investigators in a completely different direction, what was described as a wild goose chase, that was really important. But the changing stories about the disappearance of the mother of your four children, it's hard to fathom how somebody would have different versions of events about something like that. The absence of evidence was obvious, but Raymond Reddington's versions of events that

• 13:49Speaker 04

  changed over time depending on who was speaking to and the insurance policy that he tried to claim on in the 1990s, which was referred to by the prosecutor as a life-changing amount of it. It was a circumstantial case, but there were lots of pieces in the case that came together. With juries, you get the idea that some jurors make up their mind on day one, but others are not convinced and have to be brought along. And certainly by the end, yeah, it was the verdict of them all.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Yep. There's lots to talk about with the letter in our next episode. It's got shades of the jinx about it, a series that a few people listening to the case of may be familiar with, and we'll dive into that on Thursday. David, with this verdict, we've spoken about Raymond Reddington and Sharon Fulton's children being in the court for parts of this. How did they take the verdict? Were they surprised?

• 14:43Speaker 04

  I wouldn't say they were surprised. Early in the trial, when Heath gave evidence, he said that there'd been differences of opinion between the siblings over time, without going to a huge amount of detail, but he said that Derek was a little bit more objective, I think. They thanked the police, they thanked everybody who had worked to get to that point of that verdict. But I wouldn't say surprised, no.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's obviously something that they have been waiting a very long time for. And Heath, Sharon's son, who was just three years old when his mother was murdered, made a really powerful statement outside court.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  Today is not just about a verdict, it's about my mother, Sharon, a dedicated, loving mother who lost her family on the 18th of March, 1986. For 40 years, silence worked in his favour. Silence protected him, silence isolated us, silence erased her.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  We were taught not to ask questions, not to speak her name, not to challenge the story we were given. As children, we internalised that silence. I internalised guilt. I believed for years that somehow it was my fault. That silence was not accidental, it was maintained. Family members were separated, relationships were controlled, speaking about our mother was discouraged. While we grew up in confusion and grief, he lived a full life. He travelled, he prospered, he rebuilt, he changed his name. He had the privilege of time. My mother did not.

• 16:25Speaker 05

  She did not get to see her children grow up, she did not get to watch milestones, she did not get decades. I have lived with him, I have experienced the control, the deflection, the blame. Silence gave him space. Today, that silence ends. Mum, you are not forgotten, you are not erased, you are not just a case file, you are our mother. And I promise you and my siblings that I will not stop searching for you and for the full truth of what happened to you for the rest of my life.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  That's Heath Fulton, speaking outside of court following the guilty verdict of their father for murdering their mother in 1986. In our next episode, we're going to find out what sentence he received, we'll look at some of the things the jury didn't hear and I'm going to reveal some sleuthing that could explain the reason behind Robert Fulton changing his name to Raymond Reddington. David, thank you so much for joining us through this episode and taking us through the kind of the last stages of the trial and the verdict.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  No worries.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  If you'd like to listen to more of the case of or hear other great ABC products without any ads, you can check them out on ABC Listen. We're back in your feed on Thursday.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  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 Rawlinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Wajaknua and Wurundjeri people.