04 Sharon’s Disappearance | No body, no parole

Thirty-six years after he killed his wife, Robert Fulton changed his name to Raymond Reddington, the lead character in US crime show, The Blacklist. We discovered another connection to this program not mentioned in the trial. Stocky, David Weber and Clare Rawlinson discuss the sentence, the name change and why Raymond Reddington didn't receive a non-parole period. 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.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Forty years after Sharon Fulton disappeared, her husband was found guilty of her murder. He was Robert Fulton, he is now Raymond Reddington. And in this episode, the surprising link between the name change and the woman that he killed. I'm Stephen Stockwell. This is the case of Sharon's disappearance.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Special Crime Squad detectives extradited Reddington back to Perth.

• 1:09Speaker 04

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

• 1:15Speaker 03

  I am instructed to assert that he protests his innocence.

• 1:18Speaker 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.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Sharon Fulton's body has never been found. There's no direct evidence a crime was even committed. But that didn't stop a jury finding her husband, Raymond Reddington, guilty of her murder. His constantly changing stories and benefit from her disappearance would have been weighing in their mind as they made that decision. And there throughout the trial, David Weber, the ABC's court reporter in Perth. Welcome, David.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Also joining us for this episode is the K-Sobs executive producer, Claire Rollinson.

• 1:59Speaker 06

  Hi, Stocky.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Something you've heard us wrestle with throughout this series has been the identity of the murderer, or rather, the name. Robert Fulton, when he killed his wife Sharon Fulton, Raymond Reddington throughout his murder trial. It's a name change that seems to be inspired by the lead character in the TV show The Blacklist. It all seemed so random until I discovered while preparing for this series that The Blacklist also has a character called Sharon Fulton, the same name as the woman who disappeared in 1986. In The Blacklist, she is a disillusioned FBI psychologist who gets similarly disillusioned FBI agents to kill serial killers who, in inverted commas, got away with it. The season she's in was released around 2017. And David, is that period of time about the same time

• 2:46Speaker 02

  that Raymond Reddington is being investigated by the police for the murder of Sharon Fulton, his wife, who went missing?

• 2:55Speaker 04

  It's when he must have become aware that police were interested in him because there was an interview carried out in 2017. He gave the impression that he couldn't remember anything from that time. He was asked, you know, did you sign this? Did you say that? And he said, well, maybe I did, kind of thing. He was really giving the impression that he had no memory of that period in 1986 when his wife disappeared.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Claire, what do you make of it?

• 3:21Speaker 06

  The name change is a really odd one. But I think, you know, the most neutral reading of it would be this is someone who wants to disassociate from, or disconnect from, his former life. There's really negative memories with his wife's disappearance. But I think it's when it's confined with the fact that there is this character Sharon Fulton. And if he's been watching the TV show and has changed his name to Raymond Reddington, the protagonist of the show, who is, you know, in the trailers, he's America's favourite criminal, played by James Spade, or this incredibly smug anti-hero that is always outsmarting authorities. And for him to choose that name and for him to choose it after the episodes-

• 4:05Speaker 06

  Where there's a character introduced called Sharon Fulton, it does just feel like it's more purposeful than purely trying to just remove or distance yourself from your former life or your former name. To me, it just raises questions about why he chose to adopt this particular character's name.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  I mean, it would be speculation on my part, but maybe there's a part of him that's saying, this is how confident I am with what I've done, that I'll do something that might even be a tip of the hat. If you are going to investigate this and you are going to investigate me, this is me getting away with it. I mean, the defence, and this is not an argument that's put forward, somebody in his defence might say, well, he was so distraught about the loss of his wife this period of time later, and then he happened to like this TV series and found this coincidence and decided to tap into it. We simply don't know.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. We just don't know. But it is so strange. I haven't really been able to make heads or tails of it throughout this series. And I mean, as far as the timeline of all of this goes, you know, there was the investigation in 2017, as you mentioned, David. There's also a coronial inquest in 2022, and that's the year that Robert Fulton changed his name to Raymond Reddington. Again, all a bit strange. The other thing I've been thinking about a lot is the letter that was sent to the coronial inquest. Now, this is the letter we spoke about in our last episode, that pointed investigators to a carport slab somewhere where Sharon Fulton's body, they had heard, had been buried after Michael Harrison had apparently got her pregnant and killed her. And, you know, that letter

• 5:41Speaker 02

  was anonymous to the coronial inquest, but it was found to have Raymond Reddington's DNA on it, and the conclusion being that he had sent that letter. Claire, I mean, this is something you immediately liken to the Bob Durst case in America. This is featured in a true crime series called The Jinx. Now, I haven't seen this series, and please don't tell Rachel Brown that, because I had promised her in Moorewall, where we lived last year, that I would watch it. So, without knowing what's happened here, Claire, can you explain the similarities between, you know, the letter that Robert Reddington sends and Bob Durst?

• 6:14Speaker 06

  Well, I'm going to spoil it for you, unfortunately. You really should have watched it. But I did, I immediately saw sort of shades of the Bob Durst case in Raymond Reddington, Robert Fulton's case. So just a bit of background, Bob Durst, he was suspected of three murders. The first was his wife, who, like Sharon, her body has never been found. The second was his neighbour, and the third was his best friend. Her name was Susan Berman. So Susan Berman was found dead in her Beverly Hills home. She was shot in the back of the head. Police found her because they received a handwritten tip-off saying that there was a body, or actually a cadaver, at her address. And it was never cleared throughout their entire investigation who had sent this note.

• 6:59Speaker 06

  Now, in that documentary, the filmmakers, they are able to find another handwritten letter that Bob Durst has written to his friend Susan Berman. They present him with this letter that they found of his and compare it to the letter that police received with the tip-off. The handwriting is a perfect match. They capture this moment on camera. It's absolutely riveting. And he is clearly rattled. And eventually, it is this letter, this tip-off that he wrote, that's what leads to him being arrested and then convicted of Susan Berman's murder. But what I think is so similar about both of these cases is there's just sort of this

• 7:42Speaker 06

  smoking gun, and it's through a means that actually both perpetrators thought would absolve them, or thought would enable them to control what investigators were doing. I think the other thing that I see as such a parallel in these cases is both Bob Durst and Raymond Reddington, Robert Fulton, there's like an element of enjoyment in these moves, like changing your name to a fictitious kind of anti-hero character. And a sort of participation in popular culture, like Bob Durst couldn't resist the temptation to be a part of this HBO documentary.

• 8:23Speaker 06

  And Robert Fulton apparently couldn't resist changing his name to this famous character who outsmarts investigators. But both of those temptations is potentially what has led to their downfall. I mean, I don't know if a jury would have... Felt that there was enough evidence without that note to the inquest with Robert Fulton's DNA on it. But, I mean, we'll never know, but it does feel like such a critical kind of final move of his.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Because there was a long investigation into Sharon Fulton's disappearance. We'll talk more about that as we get through this episode. So, police had been looking at it, but it wasn't until the inquest, it wasn't until this letter had been sent to the inquest and Rayan Redding's DNA had been found on it, that, you know, we got to this murder trial.

• 9:16Speaker 06

  Exactly. If it's not what prompted the jury's decision, it may have been what prompted the murder charge after the inquest.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yep. You know, we had a jury make up their mind in four hours. You know, David, as you mentioned in our last episode, it's one hour of every decade that this had been, you know, unsolved, had been hanging over Perth. But it can't have been much doubt in the jury's mind if they've come back that quickly.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  In the period of a trial and putting all these facts together and talking about it within a short timeframe, it's often easy to forget that the 40-year time gap is really considerable. He had, to all intents and purposes, got away with murder because nobody had really been hauling him over the coals, he hadn't been the focus of public attention as a possible murderer in 1986, went on with his life, looking after his four kids, went to the other side of the country, and then with the letter. I think police would have been working towards trying to bring him to trial with or without the letter, but it would have been harder for the jury to find him guilty without that letter and the evidence associated with it.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Claire, what are your reflections on the speed the jury made their decision?

• 10:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I think that despite like the huge challenge of not having direct evidence, there were just so many links in that chain that there was a really clear story to explain how it was no one other than Robert Fulton who was responsible for Sharon's disappearance. And we see in a lot of the cases that we cover on the case of, the defence needs to work really hard to present a plausible alternative. And I think in this case... There just wasn't a plausible enough alternative to create reasonable doubt. You know, he, he had a motive that was really clearly articulated. He stood to lose so much with her planning to divorce him. He also had taken out the life insurance.

• 11:06Speaker 06

  Uh, she had said she was frightened of him, uh, and he didn't have an alibi.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 11:11Speaker 06

  So the serial killers was the strongest attempt that defence made to present a plausible alternative for her disappearance, but it just wasn't plausible enough because as David explained, the Bernies killings happened later in nineteen eighty six. They also confessed to what they'd done and they never mentioned Sharon Fulton. So we can only assume the jury just didn't buy that. And the fact that his kids have suspected and have said that, you know, they felt that there wasn't something right, they felt the control as well. Um, and that they ultimately do believe that their father is the one that's responsible. Yeah, it, I think it just shows that they, they didn't have a plausible alternative their whole lives to believe in either.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  With the minds of children at the time, uh, they're relying on their father as the provider. They don't know what's happened to mum, but, uh, there would have been a certain amount of conditioning, which wasn't, uh, their fault because kids only want what's best. They want, uh, a, a future that's safe. And, uh, they, I would suspect at the very young ages be thinking, gee, maybe dad murdered her. That terrible, I guess, perspective or outcome would not have been strong in their minds until maybe they got older.

• 12:21Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 12:21Speaker 04

  Uh, I know that, uh, you know, Heath had talked about how he carried guilt. He was only three years old at the time, uh, but he does have strong memories of what happened and, and the loss and the, the fact that mum was missing. But, but kids do tend to think about the positive and they're, and they're trying to get through things day by day. Yeah, I mean, they would have been keenly feeling the loss as the days and weeks and months went past, but if dad didn't want to talk about it, there was no sort of evidence that there was a sort of sit down and talk about this kind of thing. In fact, it seemed that dad was trying to move on and that does create the impression in the minds of the kids that mum did leave them. That's why he doesn't want to talk about it because he can't deal with the, the reality that mum didn't want to be with us. We didn't hear in the trial. That level of detail about what the kids were going through, so this is speculation,

• 13:06Speaker 04

  but we do know that they keenly felt the loss.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, and I think David is spot on there with just how the children would have been thinking about this, you know, they just want to continue living their lives, they want to be somewhere safe, they want to be cared for and, you know, if Robert Fulton, Raymond Reddington is providing that for them and, you know, is kind of steering them away from this conversation, you can see how they would end up in this position. David, what sentence was handed down to him?

• 13:27Speaker 04

  So it was a life term with a minimum of 20 years. The sentencing comments were interesting, they focused on domestic violence, this was an extreme act of domestic violence. I mean, the sentencing was brought on relatively quickly because as the prosecutor said when Raymond Reddington was found guilty, he said it would be a perversion of justice if he can avoid sentence by dying. Justice McGraw did point out, the state was unable to say how he killed Sharon Fulton or whether any weapon was involved, but the state case, as he said, was that you killed the deceased and then concealed her body, having done that on the 18th of March 1986, and then covered up criminality by telling lies over a period of time.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  And going back to the timeline of the 18th of March 1986, Justice McGraw pointed out, she had a full schedule, this is Sharon Fulton had a full schedule of activities, getting the kids to school, taking Heath to the Sound Coordination Centre, which started at 9.30 a.m. on the Tuesday, scheduled to last one hour with a fixed time of 10.30. So that's the opportunity that Raymond Reddington had to either incapacitate or murder Sharon Fulton, because the routine or the plan was to pick up Heath at 10.30. There had been a phone call to the bowling partner who had the print party in Bayswater at about 10 a.m. So if Heath's being picked up at 10.30 and the phone call is at 10 o'clock, then it

• 14:53Speaker 04

  follows that it must have happened within that half hour time period. The judge said, "You probably had undertaken some efforts at concealing the deceased body, at least in a preliminary way. How you spent the day is not known." It's open to make the finding, as he does, this is Justice McGraw. You spent a great deal of the day endeavouring to conceal the body of the deceased. It's not known where you went to dispose of the deceased's body. But it may be you made a temporary concealment with a view to taking further action and went to police three days later. One interesting thing is that while the state submitted that the killing was planned and premeditated, Justice McGraw said he couldn't be satisfied to the requisite standard that was premeditated to that point.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  He said there was animosity in the marriage and you were concerned about the deceased claiming to divorce you, which would affect your access to children. And also the fact that the plan was for this to happen on a day when Sharon Fulton had so many plans herself. He did also reflect on what we refer to as mitigating circumstances. So we did hear in court on the day of the verdict, Jonathan Davies said, my client only has months to live, he's in the last months of his life. What Justice McGraw had to say about that was that while he was being treated for cancer, it seems to have stabilised. But there were some key factors that he said were important to take into consideration as aggravating factors.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  It was circumstances of domestic violence and there needed to be general deterrence, he said. Of course, we know that domestic violence occurs today and significant acts of domestic violence that end in murder. So that deterrent factor is still important. Even this many years later, you will still be punished for what is an extreme act of domestic violence. You did not render assistance to her, you did not contact emergency services and you engaged in the concealment. She was a young woman, relatively young woman, with a life ahead. You have deprived your own children of their own mother and only you know where the resting place is.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Some very strong words there from Justice McGraw. And speaking and thinking of the children, I mean, they have been deprived of mother for most of their lives and they now have some closure of what happened. But outside court, Sharon's oldest son, Derek, pointed out that it's not over just yet.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  So that way we can bring her home and give her the respectful burial she deserves. I plead to my father, our father, to finally let us know where she is. So we can, her children, finally also find comfort in the rest of our lives.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  That's Derek Fulton, Sharon Fulton's eldest son. Now Raymond Reddington has been sentenced to life with a minimum of 20 years. He is appealing that verdict, but David, putting the appeal to one side, what does the fact that Sharon Fulton's body has never been recovered mean for his parole opportunities after that initial 20 years passes?

• 17:52Speaker 04

  There are no body, no parole laws. Justice McGraw will say that it'll be a matter for other authorities as to whether you get parole. But we are talking a couple of decades into the future and what the parole board decides. Whether the law changes again remains to be seen. But certainly the kids are in a situation where we're calling on him to reveal where the remains are. In the media we talk about, do you have closure? There's no sense of closure really, because people talk about, you know, the lost remains. But a step towards assisting with what we refer to in the media as closure is to find the remains and give them some sort of sense of respect to the deceased person that they have not been able to give.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  It's certainly part of the grieving process that's unfulfilled when there's no body.

• 18:40Speaker 06

  I think it would also no doubt go such a long way to the children and their sense of, you know, Heath speaking about feeling guilt. And just to be able to, like he says, give his mother the send off she deserved. You would hope that then that would alleviate some of that guilt at least, which is obviously so misplaced and is just another way that the kids have been victimised through Robert Fulton's actions. But it's obviously not going to happen at the moment that he would reveal the body's location because he's appealing this conviction altogether. But if that weren't the case, I know in other cases there have been deals done to eliminate a sentence in exchange for the body's location.

• 19:22Speaker 06

  But you would hope that he would eventually give his own children that dignity. Because otherwise, it just shows the thing that seems to be evident in a lot of domestic violence cases, that the hate and control towards the partner is stronger than the love and care towards the children. And they've suffered their whole lives, they've been victims, because not only did they lose their mother, but they feel the guilt and the loss of not being able to send her off either.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  He is appealing, so he is still saying that he's not guilty of the crime. There have obviously been some cases globally and in Australia where there's been some leniency shown to somebody accused of a crime, whether it's a reduction in charges or a disappearance of charge, or even perhaps leniency when it comes to sentence, when somebody says, well, I will tell you what happened and where the body is. That comes down to a deal making that's often behind closed doors. And it might be hard for members of the public to understand when they see these deals occur. It should be pointed out that when Justice McGraw was talking about the possible, or

• 20:36Speaker 04

  the likely hardship that Raymond Reddington was going to face in prison compared to the general population, a man being in his late 70s, who's going to be spending a couple of decades in prison. But he says, one of the reasons you are now being sentenced as a person of advanced age is because you didn't take responsibility at the time you killed the deceased.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  David, one of the reasons we were so interested in this trial, in this case, was because of the amount of time that had passed from the crime to the trial, to this accountability. Forty years between Sharon Fulton being murdered and Raymond Reddington being held to account for her murder. You know, with that though, this is a circumstantial case, there was no direct evidence of a murder, let alone a crime at all. You know, who do you think deserves the credit for kind of getting this done forty years after the fact? Is it the media? Is it the public for keeping this around? Is it the police?

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Well, when going into this, there was one obvious comparison, and that's the case of Chris Dawson in New South Wales, and that was driven by the media. Headley Thomas did a brilliant job through the Australian newspaper, and that led to a conviction, this was not similar to that case in that sense, because this was driven by police, very careful, considered work over a period of years. The media didn't forget about this case. There were some stories from time to time, so it wasn't completely forgotten about. But it wasn't a case that was driven by the media to a point of a man being charged and convicted of murder. It

• 22:06Speaker 04

  was a victory for law enforcement and prosecutors, dealing with a case where there was such an absence of evidence, and being able to take it to a jury and get a conviction. So it's really a tribute to police and prosecutors.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Claire, what are your thoughts on it? Who do you think deserves the credit, but also, you know, probably shouldn't escape criticism?

• 22:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. It's, of course, the current day investigators deserve credit for the success with this, but also I think there's a huge failure that needs talking about, and that is the lack of investigation in those initial critical days, like the absence of any gathering forensic evidence at the house, or properly interviewing and investigating Robert Fulton at the time of Sharon's disappearance, when there was just, you know, you look back at the evidence now and it just feels very obvious for, at the very least, for him to be considered a suspect and investigated thoroughly. But I think it shows, you know, with these cold cases, like with the two intruders, and also with

• 23:13Speaker 06

  the jinx, the Bob Durst one, you do see, people may escape accountability for decades, but the crimes eventually catch up to you. And it does seem for the large part that police don't just forget, they do keep investigating. And when, especially when you continue to leave crumbs for investigators, it does catch up.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  What I would say about the police investigation at the time, often What said his old police investigative techniques back then are not what they are now. And I'm sure that police who were involved at the time, those that are still with us, would look back and think, well, why didn't we do this? Why didn't we do that? In this case, I would think in the broad sense, they believed him. And whether that was because his stature as working for the RAF for a long period of time as well. I mean, he'd been stationed in Malaysia and come here from the eastern states. That may have played a role. It was a busy time for police in 1986 with women whose bodies were found. And he was, there's evidence that he was distraught. There was the independent evidence from the fellow from the uniting church who spent time with him

• 24:18Speaker 04

  that said that he seemed genuinely distraught. But on reflection, yes, I think he would have been charged a lot earlier today, or even 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. It's an open question, but if police had done different things back then, then her body would have been found, I would suggest. If they could have got to a point where they interrogated him as a murder suspect and went down the path that they eventually went down, that got us to where we are today.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely. We're now at a point where Raymond Reddington, Robert Fulton, has been found guilty of the murder of Sharon Fulton in 1986. Such a bizarre case with so many strange twists, the suggested involvement of serial killers, the backfiring tip off and something that has had such an incredible impact on the Fulton children, as we've been talking about through this episode. I'm really pleased we could help tell the story of Sharon Fulton all of these years later. And David, thank you for taking us through it and helping us understand what's happened.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  No worries at all.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  And Claire, thank you so much for joining us for this episode as well.

• 25:24Speaker 06

  Glad to be here.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  We'll be back in your feed on Tuesday next week. James Otten is returning to the podcast to explain the charges laid against the so-called ISIS brides. This was a massive story when these women returned to Australia in May and several of them have been before the courts now. So we'll be unpacking all of that. Also, if you've enjoyed this series, please share it with your friends so more people can hear the story of Sharon's disappearance and we can make sure that she's not forgotten.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  The Case of Sharon's Disappearance is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by David Weber with help from our executive producer, Claire Rollinson, presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and thank you to senior lawyer Jasmine Sins 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 Wurundjeri people.