Pod Insights True Crime Conversations The Adelaide Schoolgirl Abducted From Her Bed Without A Trace About this episode On a summer evening in January 1983, 10-year-old Louise Bell went missing from her bedroom in Adelaide's Hackham West.
It was a case that horrified Australia, as every parent's worst nightmare became reality for the Bell family. How could a young girl tucked up in her bed in a safe, suburban neighbourhood just go missing in the middle of the night?
It would take 30 years, and advances in DNA technology, to find out who was responsible for the disappearance of Louise Bell.
Supporting audio supplied by ABC South Australia.
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Guest: Candice Prosser
Host: Gemma Bath
Executive Producer: Gia Moylan
Audio Producer: Scott Stronach
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Transcript 0:05 Speaker 00 It's January 4, 1983, in suburban Adelaide. And the Bell family is wrapping up another lazy summer day after the chaos of Christmas and the new year. Ten-year-old Louise is getting ready for bed and is excited to slip into the brand-new pyjama top she got for Christmas. Pale yellow scattered with darker yellow flowers. At 8:30 PM, Louise and her little sister Rachel say goodnight to their parents, Colin and Diane, and hop into their single beds, just a metre or so apart, in the home's front room overlooking the front yard. At 6 AM the next morning, Diane pops her head in.
0:47 Speaker 00 She notices Rachel's still fast asleep, but Louise's bed is empty.
0:53 Speaker 00 After checking the house for her, she frantically wakes up her husband. Colin inspects the girl's bedroom and makes a horrifying discovery. The window above their beds is open, and the fly screen has been cut from the corner of the window frame. It's flapping in the breeze. They check the house again. They run next door. They canvass the whole street. Nothing. Louise is nowhere to be found.
1:33 Speaker 00 I'm Gemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations, a Mamma Mia podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. The disappearance and subsequent murder of Louise Bell is a crime that shocked and niggled at Australians for 30 years as they waited for answers. How could a young girl tucked up in her bed in a safe suburban neighbourhood just go missing in the middle of the night? It was the kind of thing parents have nightmares about, and here it was happening in real life. A man was originally convicted for her abduction and murder, but several months later, his
2:15 Speaker 00 sentence was overturned, and once again, Adeladians were left to live with the uncomfortable reality that there was a killer still at large.
2:25 Speaker 00 In 1989, a 10-year-old boy called Michael Black was abducted and murdered about an hour away from Louise Bell's home. The man responsible for that, an Adelaide high school teacher, was sentenced to 38 years behind bars. It took 30 years and advances in DNA technology to prove that the same man was responsible for the murder of Louise. It was a highly anticipated trial that started in 2015 and ended in 2016, one that delivered more than a few surprises. Our guest today, Candice Prosser, followed closely for the ABC. She joins us now.
3:16 Speaker 00 Candice, who were the Bell family and what were they doing with their summer holidays in 1983? Can you talk us through it?
3:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, so the Bell family were a typical family, living in suburban area, in the outer southern suburbs of Adelaide. So it was summer school holidays at the end of 1983. And Louise Bell, who was then 10 years old, and her younger sister Rachel, were doing lots of things that kids did back then with their parents. They were just an ordinary family.
3:50 Speaker 00 How would you describe the area where they lived? It was a suburb called Hackham West.
3:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, so Hackham West is in the outer southern suburbs of Adelaide, very sort of family-friendly, outer suburbia. Back in the 80s, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as developed as it is now. And the Bells lived in, you know, a very typical little family house in that area. It was blonde brick and had like an open front lawn. The sisters shared a bedroom and their parents were just next door in the next room. So a very sort of suburban area with lots of families that was a bit further out of Adelaide.
4:29 Speaker 00 And the way the house was kind of orientated, the girls' bedroom was right at the front of the house. So was it shown from the road or how obvious was it?
4:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, so the bedroom that the two girls shared, the window to that room faced out onto the street where they lived, there was a garden area at the front which you could walk through to get to the window and it was quite visible from the street.
5:00 Speaker 00 Let's go to the evening of January 4. What were the Bell family's movements on that evening?
5:06 Speaker 01 So that evening was typical for the summer holidays. They had had a day where they had had trips to the shop, the bank, they'd watched television into that evening. And then Louise and her sister Rachel were in bed by nine o'clock that evening and they were listening to a tape on the cassette player that Louise had been given for her birthday. So it takes you back to the 80s when kids were doing that and they were listening to that in their room. And later that evening, their dad Colin checked on them. And at that time, the younger sister Rachel was asleep and Louise wasn't. Her dad said goodnight to her and that was the last time that he saw his daughter.
5:51 Speaker 00 So when did the family notice or when did the parents notice that she was actually missing?
5:57 Speaker 01 So it happened early the next morning. Louise's mother went in to check on them on her way back from collecting the milk from the front door, another throwback to the 1980s when people got milk delivered to their door. And she went to check on her girls and Louise wasn't there.
6:16 Speaker 00 So I'm assuming she at first might have thought, oh, she's gone to the TV or she's having breakfast. Or do we know what the movements of the morning were trying to find her?
6:26 Speaker 01 It was immediately obvious that something bad had happened.
6:29 Speaker 00 Right.
6:30 Speaker 01 And.
6:32 Speaker 01 Louise Bell's parents immediately started looking for her. Her dad ran the streets, he looked in nearby pools, he ran down to the school. They were frantically searching for their daughter. And the police were called and they arrived there early that morning too.
6:49 Speaker 00 Was there anything that sparked their worry? Was there anything suspicious in the room that the parents noticed?
6:56 Speaker 01 Yes, so first of all, it was very unusual. They knew something was wrong. Their daughter wouldn't just leave like that and go missing. That morning, they noticed that the window in the girl's room had been opened more than it had been the previous night. There had been some damage to the fly screen of that window prior to this crime. On the morning of her disappearance, the parents noticed that that fly screen damage was greater, that the hole had been widened and the window was also more open than it had been the night before. So this was clearly during summer in Adelaide. It would have been hot. The window was left open a crack during the night.
7:39 Speaker 01 And in the morning, it was clear that that window had been interfered with in some way.
7:45 Speaker 00 Had any of the family heard anything? Obviously, Rachel was sleeping right next to her and the parents were sleeping in the next room. So had anyone heard a rustle or her getting up in the middle of the night?
7:57 Speaker 01 This is one of the mysteries of this case that I don't think we will ever know the answer to. How this little girl was taken from her bedroom, sleeping right next to her sister, a thin wall dividing their room from their parents' room.
8:17 Speaker 01 We can't say how that happened. The prosecution said that it was likely that Louise was enticed out of her room, that any kind of forced abduction would have surely woken her family up.
8:30 Speaker 01 And we will never know, unfortunately, many answers to this very sad case, and that's one of them. In his judgment, the judge did say that there were so many tantalising gaps in the evidence that he couldn't answer, he couldn't make findings about that, and he couldn't make a finding about how Louise was abducted. But he did say that the prosecution scenario that she was lured out of her bedroom was probably the most likely scenario. It's really hard to wrap your head around how it could have happened when she was sleeping so close to her family members.
9:08 Speaker 00 You said that the police were called quite quickly after the family woke up, realised she wasn't there. How big of a search are we talking? How quickly did the authorities rally and what did that look like?
9:20 Speaker 01 So this was a huge investigation on an unprecedented scale. It was enormous and straight away there was a large scale search during the investigation. Police do not two and a half thousand homes in the area and they interviewed 8,000 people. So this was all over the news. Everyone knew about the Louise Bell disappearance. And yet, decades went by without any real answers.
9:50 Speaker 00 Can you describe Louise? How was she referred to in media reports at the time?
9:55 Speaker 01 I'm just having a look here at the photograph that was sent out at the time that we've used over and over again of this beautiful, happy, smiling little girl. Louise was a schoolgirl. She's got short brown hair with a little fringe. That's a photo that so many South Australians and Australians will be familiar with. And at the time of her abduction, she was wearing her little yellow pyjama top, which would prove to be crucial later on in the case.
10:29 Speaker 01 And everyone was searching for Louise. Police, the public, rewards were offered. Everyone knew about this case and everyone was trying to find this little girl. It was unthinkable that a little girl could be taken from her own bedroom.
10:45 Speaker 00 Did her parents, because it's quite common when someone goes missing, that the family members might get up and kind of do a bit of an appeal? Did that happen? Did the parents kind of feel comfortable doing that?
10:57 Speaker 01 I don't think they did. What I'll say is that clearly Louise Bell's parents have been deeply traumatised by what happened and they've been a very private family, understandably. They found the media focus and attention incredibly difficult while dealing with the unimaginable trauma of having your child abducted. Over the years, we've heard very little from the Bell family directly and they've kept very private and their grief is very private, which the media has respected because this has been
11:41 Speaker 01 an enduring nightmare for them for decades now.
11:46 Speaker 00 There were some rewards announced early on, so it was, you know, a $5,000 reward and then it actually got increased to 15,000 because some good Samaritans decided to help boost the figure. I guess that kind of shows how invested the community was in this little girl. Did it kind of really stop Adelaide and South Australia at the time?
12:09 Speaker 01 It did. This was something that you just didn't think could happen. You know, this little girl went to sleep next to her sister in their family home and the next morning she was gone. She'd somehow been taken from her own bed. It was just inconceivable that a child could go missing in this way and that there'd be no trace. It was just horrible and everyone was aware of the case. It was incredibly high profile for those reasons and I think everybody at the time wanted to do whatever they could to help and it was clear even in the judgment, nearly 40 years later, the judge remarked on the fact that it just created so much publicity and anxiety in the community.
12:53 Speaker 01 The South Australian community was just so shocked by what had happened. It was just so hard to fathom.
12:59 Speaker 00 Early on in the search for Louise, a milkman came forward with some information. Can you talk us through what he saw?
13:07 Speaker 01 So, at the time, there had been some tent wires that had been placed in front of the little girl's bedroom window. And the milkmen who delivered their milk in the morning would have to sort of step over them to put the milk down. And he noticed on that morning of the abduction, when he went to deliver the milk, that those tent slats had been moved out of the way so that there was literally a clear path to the little girl's window.
13:38 Speaker 00 Which is super eerie to hear about, isn't it? It kind of shows that there might have been someone, or there was someone in the area. But obviously, at this point, we had no idea who, or what, or when. One of the next things that happened a few weeks after Louise vanished was a call from an anonymous caller who claimed that he had Louise. And he pointed police towards some silver hoop earrings as evidence. Can you tell us about that call and more about what he claimed?
14:09 Speaker 01 That's one of the other really eerie aspects of this case, is that the killer clearly targeted this woman in her home and called her and gave her information about Louise Bell's disappearance, that he wanted her to pass on to police at the time. And he was taunting her a little bit. The evidence at trial was that although he started off sounding a bit nervous, that he then became more confident during the call and was mocking the way police had conducted their investigation and pointing to bits of evidence that he said that they had missed regarding the the window and the fly screen and how the little girl would have been taken out of her room.
14:51 Speaker 01 And he told the woman at the other end of the line where to find Louise's earrings. He claimed that he had Louise with him. And that if police went to look at this particular location on the corner of a road underneath a rock, that her silver earrings would be there. And when police went to search that area, that's exactly what they found.
15:11 Speaker 00 Just to confirm, this lady that received the call, she was just a member of the neighbourhood? She was not linked to the case?
15:18 Speaker 01 That's right, she was a member of the neighbourhood and it seems as though the killer picked her, for whatever reason, and there was a second incident that happened where he had targeted that same woman.
15:30 Speaker 00 So this was a few weeks later and this lady, this ordinary person from a nearby neighbourhood, found a pyjama top on her front yard?
15:42 Speaker 01 That's right, so that same woman had received the phone call some weeks prior that she'd reported to police, she was one morning just going about her day, dropping her kid off at school and she noticed that there was something in the letterbox that looked like an item of clothing, at that point she just, you know, noticed it but kept walking and she came back to the house, didn't really think anything of it, she saw that it was a piece of child's clothing and she just sort of put it aside, thinking that it would just be disposed of. And at some point during that day, she got the thought that Louise Bell was wearing pyjamas when she went missing and she went back and looked at this pyjama top and that would
16:21 Speaker 01 have been a very disturbing moment when this woman realised that this was probably linked to the case and so she called police, they came and seized that pyjama top and that pyjama top became crucial to the conviction that happened nearly 40 years later.
16:41 Speaker 00 What state was the pyjama top in? Was it wrecked in any way? Was it dirty?
16:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, so there's scientific evidence that the pyjama top had been submerged in the Onkaparinga River, the Onkaparinga was the river that ran through that area of Adelaide and there was evidence that was very specific to that particular river, that they could pinpoint that it had been there and there was also evidence that after it had been in the river, it had been rinsed and it also had some cuts down the sides of it.
17:15 Speaker 00 When did police turn their attention to a man called Raymond John Geising?
17:21 Speaker 01 So Raymond John Geising was a paedophile and police received some information from informants, prison informants, who claimed that this man, Geising, had confessed to them while in prison on unrelated matters to the murder, abduction and murder of Louise Bell. And that formed the basis of the case against that man when he was originally tried and convicted by a jury. But that all unraveled pretty quickly. Two years later, he had his conviction overturned on appeal when one of those witnesses changed their story and the Court of Criminal Appeal
18:04 Speaker 01 found that there wasn't enough evidence, it wasn't reliable enough evidence to convict this man of murder. So Geising was originally convicted of Louise Bell's murder and that was later overturned and he walked free.
18:19 Speaker 00 And so the reason Geising was able to get off was because his case was mainly based on that circumstantial evidence, those inmate testimonies, there wasn't any physical evidence?
18:30 Speaker 01 That's right. The prosecution case essentially relied on the testimony of four other inmates that was found just not to hold up to the standard of criminal proof beyond reasonable doubt.
18:42 Speaker 00 So Geising walks free and suddenly we still have this unsolved, I guess it's a cold case by now, in Adelaide. I can only imagine how that must have felt for the family and the community, knowing that there was potentially a killer still at large.
18:58 Speaker 01 This is one of those cases that's just remained on people's minds for years and decades. It was just one of those really tragic cases that we just never got any answers to. And it wouldn't be until years and years later that any other real progress was made in this case.
19:25 Speaker 00 You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Gemma Bath. I'm speaking with ABC journalist Candice Prosser about the disappearance and murder of Louise Bell.
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20:17 Speaker 00 In 1989, so this is quite a few years after Louise went missing, there was a new potential lead that emerged. A man named Dieter Fennig. Can you tell us about him and what he did that year that helped police understand who he was and how he could potentially be linked to Louise?
20:36 Speaker 01 So in that year, and that was obviously a few years after Louise Bell's disappearance, a little 10-year-old boy called Michael Black was murdered, and his body has also never been found. And it was also around that time that Fennig was on the radar for sexually assaulting another boy. So Fennig was now well and truly in the sights of police, and he was convicted of murdering Michael Black and sexually abusing the other boy. He was then sentenced to life in prison with a very long non-parole period.
21:17 Speaker 00 So Fennig is behind bars, accused of these other horrific crimes, and police are kind of trying to work out whether he might have been involved in Louise Bell's murder as well. Did they have any links to go off? Did he have anything to do with that family at all?
21:33 Speaker 01 He did, Dieter Fennig, who at the time that Louise disappeared, he was 34 years old. He was a teacher. He had two daughters, one of them was in the same year as Louise Bell and they were in the same school. He lived just a couple of streets away from the Bell family. And he was known in that community. He was someone who was seen as as highly intelligent. He was born in Germany and had a slight German accent, which was one of the other aspects that became part of the circumstantial case against him with some of the eyewitnesses that were called to give evidence many, many years later about what they saw and observed.
22:16 Speaker 01 But Fennig was a teacher. He was a dad. And he was known to that community. And he would have gained the trust of lots of families.
22:30 Speaker 00 Is it that there just wasn't enough evidence at the time in 1989 or in the years around then to charge him or bring him in or do anything? It was just these, I wouldn't call them rumours, but I guess allegations, but they couldn't really lead to a charge?
22:46 Speaker 01 It was really hard to pinpoint any direct evidence to the Louise Bell case until police reviewed the cold case and a detective took over that in 2009 and started a review of all the evidence which had been sort of stored in various exhibits in boxes that had been stored away since the early 80s. And the evidence that had been stored away included Louise's pyjama top. That was the pyjama top that had been left at the woman's address. And when police reopened the case and did their review, they sent some samples of that
23:28 Speaker 01 pyjama top off to the Forensic Science Centre in South Australia. And it came up with a probability match.
23:40 Speaker 01 That didn't exclude Dieter Fennig. So that was the first initial bit of DNA evidence that implicated Fennig. And then police sent that bit of sample off to a very advanced lab in the Netherlands, and they matched it to Fennig with a huge probability of one in a billion.
24:05 Speaker 00 Wow. So that's basically implicating him straight away. There's no getting around DNA. You can't fake DNA.
24:13 Speaker 01 That's right. So at nine thirty AM on Tuesday, the 19th of November in 2013, which is almost three decades after Louise's parents woke up to find her missing from her bed, Fennig was arrested and charged with the murder of Louise Bell, based on that DNA link.
24:35 Speaker 00 So did Fennig have an alibi for the night Louise disappeared?
24:39 Speaker 01 So at the time of the murder, just beforehand, Fennig and his family had been on a holiday, a canoeing marathon. And Fennig had actually returned home by himself before his wife and daughters, and was living back at a family home just a couple of streets away from Louise at the time of the abduction. But there was evidence that he had kept the curtains shut and didn't want anyone to know that he was home. And in fact, his next door neighbour, who'd been watering his lawn while he was away, continued to do so after we now know that he was at home. So when police did that initial huge door knocking effort, there was no record that there was an answer at the Fennig house and
25:22 Speaker 01 his next door neighbour, who'd been watering his lawn for him while he was away and continued to do so after the evidence now shows he was back home, told police that the Fennig family wasn't there. And we now, of course, know that he was there by himself. And there was evidence that later on, when his next door neighbour saw him, Fennig had said comments along the line of, well, there goes my alibi, which the neighbour at the time took as a joke.
25:48 Speaker 00 You were there, you sat in the courtroom as he went on trial. How did you find that experience? What was that trial like? It was actually quite a long trial, wasn't it?
25:57 Speaker 01 That trial was remarkable for so many reasons. I've spent quite a number of years covering court cases in South Australia, and this is one of those cases that stays with you. I've always remembered this case. I don't think I'll ever forget it. Certain aspects of it will stay with me forever. And I think this was a case that had been so highly anticipated. And you just got the feeling that it was so high stakes, that after so long without answers, this was finally the chance for the wheels of justice to start turning in this case. And there was at that point still some hope that the court case might result in some of the answers to those questions that never got resolved for this poor family.
26:42 Speaker 01 And it was huge. I remember they set it up in one of the larger courtrooms in the South Australian courthouse in the Supreme Court, the main building that houses the trials, and this is Samuel Way building. And there was so much interest. Lots of detectives who had worked on the cases over the years were there. There was a huge prosecution team and defence team, and it was a huge trial. Fenig elected to be tried by a judge alone without a jury, which sort of allowed the case to run on as long as it did.
27:17 Speaker 00 One of the reasons the trial went for so long was because there was a medical emergency? What was that?
27:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, so partway through the trial, the whole thing looked at one point as if it could completely derail because Fenig suffered a medical episode. He had an issue with his heart, and he was taken to hospital and was in an induced coma and had to have heart surgery. So the trial at that point was paused and... A few weeks later, once he'd recovered from that surgery, the trial resumed, which is one of the many unusual aspects of this case over this months-long ordeal of this trial. There was also quite remarkable aspects of the evidence. So Fenwick actually challenged the validity of the DNA evidence and that, that in itself is so rare to see.
28:05 Speaker 01 I mean, people just don't challenge DNA evidence. They might try and explain away some sort of more innocent explanation about how the DNA got there, but it's very rare to actually mount a challenge against the scientific process of getting the DNA evidence. And that's exactly what Fenwick's legal team did. And that resulted in some special late night sittings of the court to get video links to some of the best, most well-renowned scientists in their field worldwide to give evidence in this trial about the DNA process itself to satisfy the court that the, the analysis that they used to get this match with Fenwick could stand up.
28:48 Speaker 01 And of course, the judge later found that it, it did stand up.
28:51 Speaker 00 I guess to me, that kind of shows that the defence didn't have much else to go on. Like, why would you focus on that? I guess because there's, there's not much else to dispute.
29:02 Speaker 01 They did then later on provide what they claimed to be an alternative explanation as to how the DNA evidence got there. So after mounting this huge challenge that the DNA evidence wasn't even valid, they then went on to try to explain away how Fenwick's DNA could be found on Louise's pyjama top, saying that it was like this secondary transfer because Louise and his, Fenwick's daughter had played basketball together, but the judge dismissed that. There was evidence that Louise hadn't seen Fenwick's daughter for some time and that that pyjama top was a Christmas present and it couldn't possibly have happened the way that the defence claimed it could have.
29:45 Speaker 00 Let's talk a little bit more about the evidence that the prosecution went through. A few witnesses claimed that Fennig actually confessed to them, confessed to murder. Can you talk us through that?
29:56 Speaker 01 Yes, so there were a couple of witnesses that were called to the trial saying that Fennig had confessed to them. One was an inmate and one was a pastor who both claimed that Fennig had confessed to them. The prosecution clearly had to lead that evidence and the inmate who gave evidence was very closely scrutinised by the defence team. In fact, Fennig himself didn't give evidence in his defence in his trial, but the defence did actually call a psychiatrist, basically with the sole purpose of discrediting this prison informant who had given evidence in the trial. And that in itself was another bizarre aspect of the case where this witness, this inmate,
30:40 Speaker 01 was getting really riled up when he was under cross-examination from Grant Algy, a very high-profile, well-known barrister, and was insulting him and calling him all sorts of names and was clearly very rattled by the line of questioning. The judge later found that his evidence just could not be relied upon, but there were other aspects of the case that were strong enough to convict Fennig without that testimony. But interestingly, there was also plenty of other circumstantial evidence in the case, as well as the DNA evidence. There was also this whole other facet of evidence that the prosecutor, Sandy McDonald, said it was a trail of evidence that spanned decades. There was this picture that Fennig was obsessed with the disappearance of Louise Bell and
31:25 Speaker 01 that he would talk to people about it. He was a teacher at the time, there was evidence that he had raised it in class to the children in his class, that he had... Confessed and talked about it. He was a canoeist, which was his connection to the Onka Puringa River. And there was suggestion that he'd said that that's where Louise's body was. He'd talked about it on canoeing trips. He'd talked about it over the years. And there was also evidence that a man, sort of matching his description, a taxi driver gave evidence that he had taken a man through the suburbs in the weeks after her disappearance. He refused to say where he wanted to go, but would direct him and then stood outside Louise Bell's house, smoking a particular type of cigar
32:10 Speaker 01 that Fenig was known to have used at the time. And it was sort of this bizarre revisiting of the crime scene. Those sorts of bits of evidence, in the end, didn't quite meet the threshold that the court could find beyond reasonable doubt were proved. But there were plenty of other aspects of the case that were proved.
32:32 Speaker 00 You sat there in a room with Fenig. What was he like? Did he react to the evidence? Did he show any facial kind of emotion?
32:43 Speaker 01 He was unmoving the whole time. He, he didn't really give much away. I felt like there was a disconnect there. There wasn't much in the way of reaction to any of this. He was just very stone-faced the whole time.
33:16 Speaker 00 Was the prosecution able to paint a picture of what he did, of what happened, of how he did it and where he might have left Louise?
33:25 Speaker 01 Unfortunately, those are the things that the prosecution simply couldn't tell the court. And at the end of the day, the judge simply couldn't find. Other than the theory that Louise was somehow lured out of her bedroom by someone she knew, someone she trusted, a dad, a teacher. Fenig matched that description. There was no other explanation as to how Louise could have been abducted in those circumstances without anyone knowing. It was just... So difficult to answer some of the enduring questions that remain about this case. And at the end of the day, the prosecution couldn't do that, the court couldn't do that.
34:07 Speaker 01 So there are many aspects of the case that I don't think we'll ever know the answer to about what happened when Louise was taken, how she was murdered, when she was murdered.
34:21 Speaker 01 But at the end of the day, the judge found that he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was Fennig and he didn't need to answer those specific questions in order to make his finding.
34:34 Speaker 00 I just wanted to ask you quickly about that anonymous call that we spoke about earlier. Was the court able to ascertain that that was him that called and why he might have made a call like that?
34:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, the judge found that it was the killer who made that call. And as to why, that's one of the other questions that we'll never really know the answer to. What goes on in a killer's mind, a deranged person's mind, someone who would take a child and kill them? Other than perhaps there was some perverted attention that he was getting from speaking about the case and seeing police get led to evidence that he had left for them. He was taunting police, that's what he was trying to do through this third party. That's the only explanation you can think as to why he would do that.
35:33 Speaker 01 That over the years, this obsession with the Louise Bell case, he wanted to talk about it. He wanted to seek that perverse gratification from talking about the case. One can only assume that was part of the motivation for making the phone call.
35:49 Speaker 00 He was convicted of murder finally in July 2016. Were you in the courtroom for that? Were you sitting there when that happened?
35:56 Speaker 01 I was.
35:58 Speaker 00 How was it? What happened? Was he there? Did he react? I'm so curious as to what that moment was. It was so many years in the making.
36:06 Speaker 01 That was huge, that moment. There's always a sense of... Huge anticipation, almost like a sickening feeling when a verdict's about to be delivered. There's just so much riding on it and that atmosphere is palpable in the courtroom. Never more so that I've experienced than in this case. The, every available area of the public gallery was packed. We had retired detectives filling the courtroom, people who used to know Louise. Just so many people had come for this moment. It was a trial by judge alone. So the judge after the trial would go off and consider the verdict and would then publish his written reasons for a verdict rather than in a jury trial where you just sort
36:51 Speaker 01 of wait, you didn't know when they'd come back. We knew when this verdict was being delivered and there was such a sense of anticipation. And I think you could have heard a pin drop in that courtroom when we were waiting for Justice Michael David to deliver his verdict. And it was a hugely emotional moment for everyone in that courtroom. And what was the finding? Justice David found Fennig guilty of murdering Louise Bell. He reached the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt that it was Fennig and he found him guilty. Justice David said something at that moment that is incredibly rare for a judge to say and I'll, I'll never forget it. And Justice David was one of these fantastic rare types of judges who was just great at
37:34 Speaker 01 getting right to the heart of the matter and cutting through all the legalese and just asking really great pointed questions. And after he delivered his verdict, Justice David asked Fennig to reveal where the bodies of Louise Bell and Michael Black were. And he said that may or may not affect his sentence. So you've got the Supreme Court judge directly appealing to a killer to reveal where these children's bodies are. Which is unprecedented. That was a huge moment and extremely emotional. Did he reveal where the bodies were? Unfortunately not. There was some hope at that stage that now that there was this finding of guilt, that
38:18 Speaker 01 these poor families could finally lay their children to rest. But it wasn't to be. Fennig just continued to maintain his innocence. He showed no remorse. He lodged an appeal against his conviction, which was ultimately unsuccessful. And he's now serving the rest of his days in prison. And unfortunately.
38:40 Speaker 01 That's something that the family has had to deal with on top of this awful tragedy is never being able to lay their daughter to rest.
38:49 Speaker 00 Did we hear from the Bell family after the verdict?
38:52 Speaker 01 The parents were too distressed clearly to speak to the media. But after the verdict, there was a rare like statement from the family and Colin Bell stood next to the investigating officer while the investigating officer read his statement.
39:05 Speaker 03 Today's verdict leaves us feeling relieved. It has been a long time coming and while it's a significant outcome, it is not the end of this difficult journey. Our beloved 10 year old daughter was taken from her own bedroom, a place where she should be safe and has never come home. Words cannot describe the impact this has had on our lives. Today is the culmination of our struggles to find answers for Louise. That is what makes today's decision so important. It is a small victory for Louise. We still want to be able to lay Louise to rest.
39:42 Speaker 01 It was a really moving moment, but again, the family's very private. They understandably don't want to speak about their grief publicly. And in fact, they declined to give a victim impact statement as part of the sentencing process because the court couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't be published in the media. And in that statement, he thanked police and, and as he stood next to the detective who was reading that statement, it just, you just can't help but feel heartbroken for this man who's mourning the loss of his daughter after so many years. Sorry, I get a bit emotional, actually.
40:16 Speaker 00 No, you're all right. Being in those courtrooms, I've done that. I've been at a sentence and it's really hard, especially because you're often sitting beside or behind family.
40:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's one of those emotional things that I think at the time when I covered this case, I really remember it really got to me as it does with everyone. It's just, you just can't help but think about this little girl and her poor family and what they've been through. And since covering that case, I've become a mum myself. And yeah, it's really hard to think about what that family's gone through.
40:50 Speaker 01 I'll always remember Louise's dad, Colin Bell, just the trauma that he's been through. And he's clearly still extremely affected by it. And yeah, it's heartbreaking. You can really see it written all over his face. And I really feel for him and for all of Louise's family. And I think we all did, all the detectives, all the journalists, everyone who'd been involved in that case. Just so many heartbreaking aspects of it that you can just never give this family the answers that they deserve.
41:28 Speaker 00 Thanks to Candice for assisting us to tell this story. True Crime Conversations is a Mamma Mia podcast hosted and produced by me, Gemma Bath, with audio design by Scott Stronach. Our executive producer is Gia Moylan. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a rating or review in your podcast app. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
42:07 Speaker 01 True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on.
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