CONSPIRACY: Phillip Island Part 2

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Speaker 1 Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

Speaker 2 And I'm Britt.

Speaker 1 The murder of Beth Barnard was almost an open and shut case. Beth was sleeping with a married man named Fergus Cameron.
His wife Vivian found out and went into a rage.

Speaker 1 She attacked her husband, even had to take him to the hospital for stitches before dropping him off at his sister's so they could both have some space.

Speaker 1 Then she went to Beth's home, killed her husband's mistress, and drove to the island's bridge to jump and take her own life.

Speaker 1 Stories like this of love and jealousy and betrayal are as old as time, but there are very few that get discussed and picked apart nearly 40 years later, the way that this one has.

Speaker 1 And that's because unlike other cases where the more information you get, the more a case makes sense.

Speaker 1 In this one, the more information we get, the more the leading theory, the one that I just laid out, unravels. If you're jumping in, you have to go listen to part one.

Speaker 1 Gotta have that under your belt before diving into this part two. But for those of you who are ready, let's go.
This is the story of Beth Barnard and Vivian Cameron, part two.

Speaker 1 All police really need to close this case is to locate Vivian's body in the water. The physical evidence will probably follow, but finding her is their top priority.

Speaker 1 So the vast majority of investigators' resources are going towards boats, divers, helicopters, basically the works in an attempt to find any sign that backs up their theory that Viv died at that bridge.

Speaker 1 But this thread that they're pulling at starts to unravel the whole thing because there is no sign of Viv. And I'm not just talking about her body.

Speaker 1 Along with the water search, they're combing nearby mud flats, the bridge itself, but they can't find any evidence of her even being there.

Speaker 1 And even if they can't find her body for some weird reason, there should be at least some kind of sign that she jumped.

Speaker 1 Because there's this salty film that covers the guardrails on both sides of the bridge, which she would have to like climb over.

Speaker 1 And so you would see some kind of disturbance there, but even that film is undisturbed.

Speaker 2 So are they expecting to recover her body? Is it just like a wait and see kind of things? Are the waters treacherous or what they like?

Speaker 1 Girl, this is where it gets strange. These waters aren't treacherous, like you said, or vast or whatever.

Speaker 1 In fact, one of the things that I picked up from the Vanishing of Vivian Cameron podcast, in that podcast, they say that teenagers would jump off this bridge for fun over the summer.

Speaker 1 And they're totally fine.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if they're necessarily expecting to find her body or whatever, but I don't even understand how she would actually die by suicide on a place that people go swimming.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right, but it's the only place they can think to look.

Speaker 2 Maybe they're half right. Maybe they're right and she did kill Beth, but they're wrong about her jumping.
Maybe she took off instead.

Speaker 2 I mean, that has always made more sense to me because her car is right there at the bus stop.

Speaker 1 At the station. Listen, I agree, but again, they checked with the bus drivers.
They're saying she didn't go that way. You know, she would have had to walk over the bridge to get off the island.

Speaker 1 And that's the wild part too, right? We're talking about an island, which is surrounded by water.

Speaker 2 What about a boat?

Speaker 1 Whose, though? Because no one's come forward saying they helped her. And at no point do we learn that she has a boat or has an accomplice.

Speaker 2 But where is she then?

Speaker 1 I don't know. And that's the point.

Speaker 1 To those who know her best, All this back and forth about how she left is to them a moot point because they say that she never would have left to begin with because she wouldn't leave her boys behind no matter what.

Speaker 2 But they also probably don't think she's capable of murder. I mean, this is crime junkie life rule number one.
You never really know anyone ever, especially if they are in a moment of desperation.

Speaker 1 I agree wholeheartedly. But let me give you another thread to pull at because it's not another one? It's not just the lack of evidence that she jumped.

Speaker 1 There might be a lack of evidence she was even gone that morning. Huh?

Speaker 1 So one of Viv's friends, this woman named Glenda, says that she talked to Viv in the morning, that morning that she's missing, the morning that Beth is found.

Speaker 1 She says she talks to Viv on the phone at 10 a.m.

Speaker 1 And this is hours after she...

Speaker 1 allegedly killed Beth and then allegedly jumped off the bridge and died herself.

Speaker 2 This is even an hour or so after this whole thing got rolling with the guys at the police station, right?

Speaker 1 Looking for her, yeah.

Speaker 1 According to an article by Paul Daly for the Bulletin, Glenda says that around 10 that morning, her phone rang. And when she picked it up, she hears Viv's voice on the other end.

Speaker 2 Did Glenda know about Beth yet?

Speaker 1 No. So even though things are rolling with the family, like showing up at the police station and stuff, this is before news had spread across the island.

Speaker 1 So she didn't have any reason to be suspicious or think this call was unusual. This was a super normal call from a friend.
Viv sounded fine.

Speaker 1 And she says they have this brief, perfectly normal conversation. The only thing that she thinks is noteworthy in retrospect is that she remembers hearing a few other voices in the background.

Speaker 1 Now, she couldn't tell who they were or what they were saying. And it was just like normal background noise when she thought she was having a normal call.

Speaker 1 But now she's, you know, now that she knows she's missing. Okay,

Speaker 2 my head is upside down right now.

Speaker 2 If Glenda's story is true, that means Viv was making calls like nothing happened seven hours after she allegedly left her house and she's alive, like, what, five hours after police believe she died by suicide?

Speaker 2 And if she's alive and making totally normal phone calls at 10 a.m., where is she now?

Speaker 1 Well, and who's she with? Yeah. Right.
Like, who are these voices? And these are the right questions, but frustratingly, investigators don't put much stock in Glenda's story.

Speaker 1 So I don't think they put a ton of effort into answering them.

Speaker 2 Wait, they think she's lying?

Speaker 1 They don't think she's lying. They think that she's mistaken and that the call had to have happened on another day.

Speaker 2 I feel like they're kind of picking and choosing which accounts are credible, depending on what's fitting their theory.

Speaker 2 Because Didn't they trust that Baker guy from the last episode who said he saw like the Land Cruiser at five o'clock in the morning? What if he's mistaken and Glenda's right?

Speaker 2 I mean, they can also also both be right. I don't know why they're writing off Glenda.

Speaker 1 I know, and I think it's worth noting that that baker, like I said last time, all I've ever seen documented is that he saw a car, not even the land cruiser, just a car.

Speaker 2 But it could have been.

Speaker 1 It could have been.

Speaker 1 Right. But to your point of like, oh, we're going to put like our whole story is like this guy, you know, it works.
So we're going to keep his story for our theory.

Speaker 1 He didn't even like give you a ton of details. And then for them to like discount Glenda's,

Speaker 1 I don't know, because here's the thing: there are two separate things that actually back up Glenda's story.

Speaker 1 First, there's another woman who comes forward and says that she was with Glenda when she got that 10 a.m. phone call.

Speaker 1 And according to the podcast, she is sure that it had to have happened on the 23rd because she had been visiting from out of town and was leaving to go home that day.

Speaker 1 So she's like, for me to be there, it couldn't have been.

Speaker 2 It couldn't have happened any other day. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the other thing is that there's this handwritten note at a local community center in town.

Speaker 1 It's an organization that is dedicated to supporting gender equity, offers things like classes, other support networks.

Speaker 1 Some sources even say that Viv was a founding member of this place, and she continued to work there. We know that for sure.

Speaker 1 Well, apparently one of Viv's coworkers there tells police that she went in for work soon after the murder and looked at what she refers to as a work diary.

Speaker 1 And from what I can tell, it's almost like a sign-in book with notes and reminders for people who work there.

Speaker 2 So kind of like a planner?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what I'm guessing. But she tells investigators that a recent entry in the diary was from Viv.

Speaker 1 It seems that the entry was undated, but it included a note with the name of a woman who could help get a gift for their mutual friend, blah, blah, blah, blah, as well as a reminder to call Glenda.

Speaker 1 Which, by the way, this like gift for a friend, whatever, whatever, is exactly what Glenda said they talked about.

Speaker 2 And Glenda, like, reported all this without ever seeing this note, I assume.

Speaker 1 Correct. And Glenda didn't work there either.
And the notes found after Glenda called police.

Speaker 2 But there's no way to know when that entry was made.

Speaker 1 No, I do know that Viv worked on the 22nd, the day before, because there's two people that confirmed that they saw her there. So it's possible that it was then.

Speaker 1 I don't know if the when really actually matters, like when she wrote it, but it's more that this could potentially validate the claims that Glenda is making.

Speaker 2 So do you think she would have made that call from this community house?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I've thought about that before, but we're never going to really know. Like I said, the local calls on the island are not kept or tracked or whatever.
My guess is she made it from there.

Speaker 1 I feel like if she was at home, someone would have seen her. They're like, we got people going past her house nonstop.

Speaker 1 There could be some potential third location that we don't know about. I feel like if she was at home, someone would have seen her.

Speaker 1 And even more than that, so one of the things that Glenda mentions is, again, she's hearing these voices in the background.

Speaker 1 And I think she says she specifically hears men, which definitely isn't her home.

Speaker 2 Would there have been men at this community house?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's possible, but like, either way, again, I don't even know that the men's voices matter all that much. My whole thing is like, someone had to have been there when she's making this call.

Speaker 1 Why haven't they ever come forward if that's the case?

Speaker 2 Okay, well, what about this? Maybe when she called and asked Robin to pick up her kids the night before, she wasn't going over to Beth's to kill her.

Speaker 2 Maybe she was going over to the community house just to get out of her space for a little bit. And maybe she was tucked away in like a staff area.

Speaker 2 So even if people did come and go, like as the day was starting to get going, like they didn't see her to be able to report that she was there.

Speaker 1 Maybe. I don't know the layout of the community center.
I don't know how things function. No one ever reported seeing her there.

Speaker 1 And as far as I know, I know they search the place, but they don't find any evidence that she was recently there.

Speaker 2 I mean, she was there recently. She worked the day before.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 So. But how do you prove that she wasn't there?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Speaker 2 Unless the place is just like covered in cameras. You're looking for proof of nothing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but so here's the problem I have with that. In your theory or in what you propose, she doesn't kill Beth.
She's just like cooling off after a fight with her husband.

Speaker 1 So why didn't she go pick up her kids? Like she's completely MIA on them in the morning. Why not show back up?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I mean, maybe she did kill Beth and we have the second part wrong.

Speaker 1 Well, I think, I think we keep getting everything wrong because we aren't working with the full truth to begin with.

Speaker 1 And that becomes evident once investigators finally interview the rest of the Cameron family to nail down what happened in the hours and days leading up to Beth's murder and Vivian's disappearance.

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Speaker 1 So investigators collect statements from Fergus and the Cameron family. And I'm going to start with Fergus's version of events because his is the longest.

Speaker 1 And before I get into the details of the timeline of the crime, I want to also share what he told investigators about his relationship with Viv, with Beth, because obviously that is super relevant to what is happening here.

Speaker 1 So according to his statement, which is detailed in the Phillip Island murder book, he says that his and Viv's relationship wasn't always smooth sailing.

Speaker 1 It was really only at its best when their two kids were first born, but it had kind of been deteriorating ever since.

Speaker 1 His relationship with Beth, on the other hand, was a little bit more of a whirlwind. Fergus says that he met her in 1984 when she was interviewing to work at the Penguin parade.

Speaker 1 And then by April of 1985, he had offered her a part-time job on his farm and she accepted. But it wasn't until a month later when their relationship went from friendly to sexual.

Speaker 1 He explains that staff at the Penguin Parade had a party and afterwards, Beth invited, you know, him, few coworkers over to her place for a drink, but Fergus was the only one who showed up and one thing led to another, he says, and they end up hooking up.

Speaker 1 But despite both apparently agreeing that it was a bad idea, they did keep seeing each other.

Speaker 2 Was Viv suspicious about the relationship at all?

Speaker 1 I don't know like the exact details of when she suspected things when she found out.

Speaker 1 I do know that she was definitely suspicious by December because that's when she caught the two of them in the barn on their property with Fergus's arm around Beth.

Speaker 1 And she apparently asked him if he was having an affair with her, to which he responded like, oh, no, no, no, we're just good friends. I don't know what Viv's response was to that.

Speaker 1 I don't know if she fully believed him, but Beth was spooked enough by getting caught that she quit her job at the Cameron farm and even turned in her notice at the Penguin Parade.

Speaker 1 Apparently, she wanted to move off the island altogether to get away from the drama, but Fergus convinced her to stay, so she did.

Speaker 1 And eventually, not only was she back to work at the Penguin Parade, but she started working on the Cameron family farm again.

Speaker 1 So Fergus says that the night before Beth's murder wasn't the only time Viv had lashed out at him physically.

Speaker 1 For instance, he says that a few days before Christmas, Beth threw a party and he was there pretty late, late enough that he thought Viv would be asleep by the time he got home. She wasn't.

Speaker 1 And when he got home, she was losing it, he says. And he says she punched him in the face, again on his back, all while asking where he'd been.
And all he said was that it was a really good party.

Speaker 2 Did she know it was Beth's party?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I assume she suspected whether it was her party or not.
I think she suspected he'd been with her. And that's the point.

Speaker 1 Now, when it comes to what happened the night before the murder, Fergus says that around 8 p.m. after he got out of work at the penguin parade, he went over to Beth's.
They hung out for about an hour.

Speaker 1 And even though he said they had sex the night before, he is adamant that they had not had sex in that night leading up to her murder.

Speaker 1 Remember, the Vivian did it theory means Beth died in the early morning hours of September 23rd. Anyway, Fergus claims that they talked about this love triangle.

Speaker 1 And in so many words, he told her that his marriage with Viv was basically over and he just wanted to be with her, with Beth.

Speaker 2 And what car was he in when he makes this visit?

Speaker 1 He says that he's actually in the sedan when he makes this visit. So I don't know if they found the sedan tire marks there or not, or if it matters or whatever.

Speaker 1 But going back to the hay and stuff, we're not getting hay potentially from this visit anyways. Got it.
So he says he gets home from Beth's at about 9.05 p.m.

Speaker 1 to find both Vivian, his wife, and his sister, Marnie, waiting for him. Marnie looked upset.
Viv looked very upset. And I think at this point he knew he'd been caught.

Speaker 1 But before he could say or do anything, apparently the phone rings and Homeboy answers it.

Speaker 2 He's like, oh, this is an out.

Speaker 1 It must have been. I don't know what the call was about, but somehow he didn't finish up for 40 minutes.

Speaker 1 He doesn't come back to Viv and Marnie until like 9:45 after he had been talking to whoever this was. And that's something that I've never seen reported.

Speaker 1 And that I am constantly like, who was on the other hand? Talk to this man for 40 minutes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so he comes back.

Speaker 1 He chats with Marnie for a few few minutes about something not sure what and then marnie leaves to go home and why was marnie there to begin with i'll get to that when i get to marnie's statement so according to vicky and paul's book after that viv asks where he's been he admitted he'd been talking to beth and he says that sent viv into a fit of rage He says that she grabbed the wine glass she'd been drinking out of and smashed it against the side of his head, which sliced his ear.

Speaker 1 And she's doing this while screaming, quote, I knew you were with that little bitch.

Speaker 1 Fergus then turned away from her, but Viv proceeded to stab him a few times in the back with now broken pieces of wine glass. He says he didn't lash out at her, though.

Speaker 1 Rather, he says he walked away and went to the spare bedroom, which tracks with the evidence that police found. There was, remember, some blood found up in that spare room.

Speaker 1 But after her initial rage subsided, she became really concerned for him and the damage that she'd done. So they agreed to go to the hospital together.

Speaker 1 So around 10.15, they call Marnie to come over and look after the kids while they go to the hospital, which they go to in a sedan.

Speaker 1 And really quick, if you listen to part one, you might be remembering that Vivian and Fergus were said to have arrived at the hospital at around 10.15. Yeah.
But that was the nurse's story.

Speaker 1 This is Fergus's. Also, this is a tiny island.
So is that a big discrepancy? I don't really think it's that big.

Speaker 2 Right. 1015 could have been 1017.
Could have been 1013.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Who knows? Could have been 1020.
Like, you know, yeah. So anyways, Viv is the one who drives.
Fergus is in the passenger seat. Again, checks out.
We know the blood is on the passenger seat.

Speaker 1 And he says that on this drive, Viv admitted to knowing he was having an affair.

Speaker 1 And even though they had like had this brawl, He says this here in the car was a relatively calm conversation, all things considered, until they parked.

Speaker 1 And he says that's when she turned to him and said, quote, I'm just going to get the little bit.

Speaker 2 Did he take that threat seriously?

Speaker 1 No, he says he just thought she was venting. In fact, he even says she takes back the statement later, said she didn't really mean it.
Now, according to him, they're at the hospital for a little bit.

Speaker 1 When they get back, Marnie's still there. She's staying with the kids.
And her husband had come, Ian, he's actually there too.

Speaker 1 But Ian didn't stay too long because when Marnie eventually left and went back home, she told Ian how they'd collectively agreed that it would be best for Fergus to stay the night at their place for a few days, just to get some space, which sounds like these people need to be separated for sure for a little bit.

Speaker 1 So Marnie and Ian leave and Fergus says that for the next hour and a half or so before he decides to go, he and Viv

Speaker 1 have this talk about their marriage. And according to him, Viv makes a ton of suggestions about what they should do going forward.

Speaker 1 Allegedly, she wanted to separate immediately, quit her job at the community house, move over across the bridge to Melbourne, but she says the boys wouldn't go with her.

Speaker 1 They're going to stay on the island with Fergus. And he says she even says something to the effect of like, oh, she's not a very good mother, but he's a great father.

Speaker 1 And that Beth would be a good mom to them.

Speaker 2 I'm sorry, five seconds ago, she was so mad at Beth that she's making threats. And now she's ready to give up custody of her kids to Beth.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is where I, I was fine with everything. And then I'm like, eyebrow.

Speaker 2 And again, her friends are like, these kids were Viv's entire life.

Speaker 1 It's out of left field, to say the least. But according to Fergus, this is what she said.

Speaker 2 Okay, but we don't know how she said it, like her tone.

Speaker 1 My husband tells me tone is everything.

Speaker 1 True, true.

Speaker 2 Giving Fergus the benefit of the doubt, I mean, this could have been her like trying to kind of verbally process her feelings.

Speaker 1 So, I mean she just said it in the heat of the moment maybe she was even like fishing for his reaction to all this to these suggestions yeah like wanting him to be like no no no you're a good mom you're yeah i'm not gonna marry beth it's just a flick it's true maybe that maybe that is it to not have been there there are a thousand ways that i think this could have gone especially when you're dealing with such a complicated situation and emotions were so high.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I don't want to lose sight of some option out there where maybe she didn't say this at all, or at least not in the way that Fergus is describing.

Speaker 1 You know, like there's a lot of bad stuff that has just happened that he is at the center of. Again, there's a sliding scale for this too.

Speaker 1 Like there's a world where all of this is just a straight up lie, or there's a world where he's just trying to sugarcoat the conversation to make himself look better or feel better.

Speaker 1 I don't know what it could be, but again, I could spiral forever. After that conversation, he says Viv drives him to Marnie and Ian's in the sedan.

Speaker 2 And the kids are just home alone at this point.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but like I said, as far as I can tell, this is like some big compound. So this is a quick drive.

Speaker 2 Home alone is like down the driveway a little bit.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So he gets dropped off sometime between 1 and 2 a.m. He says they kissed goodbye.
Question mark. Okay.

Speaker 1 And the last time Fergus says he saw his wife, according to this statement to police, was when she she drove away. He says he has no idea what happened to her after that.

Speaker 1 He assumes she went home, but he doesn't even know now if that's true, now that he's learned about her calling Robin and now that he's learned about Beth's murder.

Speaker 1 Now, his story, after he gets dropped off, he's like, I'm just there. His story next picks up at 8.30 in the morning.

Speaker 1 That's when he says he answers the phone at his sister's house and it's Pam on the other end. Remember, Pam is his sister-in-law.
It's his brother Donald's wife.

Speaker 1 And Pam is the one who had gotten the call from Robin, who's like, hey, Viv had me watch the kids. She's not back.
I got to get to work.

Speaker 1 So Pam is calling Ian and Marnie's house to just figure out like, what the heck is going on? Fergus picks up the phone.

Speaker 1 And this is the moment that he says he starts to get really worried because when he hears that Viv is MIA,

Speaker 1 that's when he remembers the threat that she made toward Beth the night before, even though she had taken it back. And he says that he couldn't help but wonder if she had followed through on it.

Speaker 1 And he said that fear got even worse when he learned that the land cruiser was missing because he starts thinking, like, well, you know, that's the car that I normally drive. So maybe,

Speaker 1 maybe Viv took it. So that way when she pulled up late at night to Beth's, Beth would think that it was me and she wouldn't be afraid.

Speaker 2 Okay, I guess I

Speaker 2 so I know he lays out that Vivian has this established pattern of violence with him, but to me, it seems like a pretty wild jump to make in like the first 30 seconds that you're learning your wife is missing.

Speaker 2 To go from like, oh, she must have like changed her mind and gone and killed my mistress all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 It's strange to me too. Again, I don't have the context of their entire marriage.
The way that he does.

Speaker 1 I wasn't there that night to know how scary or violent, but like to kiss goodbye, everything's fine.

Speaker 2 And then you just need to cool off and then she turns on a dime and goes and kills Beth.

Speaker 1 Right, especially because you like he has no idea that Beth is unwell at this point, right?

Speaker 2 Right, because this is early guys.

Speaker 1 It's just like, hey, we can't find your wife. So weird.
So I don't know if the investigators like dig into this or not. We just have like his straight up statement.

Speaker 1 Now, the rest of his story matches what police already know. He basically gave Pam the high-level overview of his fight with Viv the night before.
Then Donald and Ian left to go check on Beth.

Speaker 1 And from there, he learned about Beth's death when the doctor showed up at Marnie and Ian's house. So that's Fergus' statement.
On to the next, which is Marnie's.

Speaker 1 Now, she states that the night before the murder, at around 8 o'clock-ish,

Speaker 1 she wanted to talk to her brother Fergus, so she calls his house, expecting him to pick up the phone. Instead, Vivian answers the phone and says, oh no, so sorry he can't get to the phone right now.

Speaker 1 He is still at work. So she calls the Penguin Parade, but the folks over there say, no, no, no, he is already off work.

Speaker 2 Stories aren't lining up. Got it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, and she's not even like suspicious, maybe. Right now, she's like, you know what? I'll just, I'll wait a little bit.
I'll drive over to their house in like 10 minutes or so.

Speaker 1 I'll talk to him in person. But she gets there at 8:30 and Fergus still isn't.
home.

Speaker 2 And this is again, tiny island. He's driving home from work.

Speaker 1 So I assume she has to tell Viv, right? Like, oh, I wanted to talk to him. Oh, he's at work.
Oh, I already called work a half hour ago and he was gone.

Speaker 2 Now I'm waiting for him here because in theory, he should be here already.

Speaker 1 It explains why Fergus walked into a tense household. Yeah.
So Fergus gets home to Viv and Marnie a little after nine. And Marnie says she waits while he's on the phone with whoever that is.

Speaker 1 And then she talked to him afterwards and leaves around 9.45.

Speaker 1 Again, doesn't say what they talked about, but she just talks in for a minute, leaves.

Speaker 1 Now, Marnie says when she gets back to her house, not long after, she gets that call from Viv asking her to come back over and watch the boys because Fergus needed to go to the hospital and get some stitches.

Speaker 1 Now, she could tell there had been a fight, but she didn't like ask for any details. She just agreed to help out.
And when she got back to their house, she says she checked on the two boys.

Speaker 1 They're still sound asleep. Her husband Ian arrives, and that's when they noticed some shards of glass.

Speaker 1 There was also a heater that was tipped over, even bloody clothing, like the shirt that he'd been wearing when he got home in the laundry basket.

Speaker 1 She noticed a face washer, which if you remember from part one is like a washcloth for our American friends. And then she noticed, so it's that face washer and this towel that had blood on them.

Speaker 1 Now eventually, Ian leaves. She waits there until Viv and Fergus gets back to their house.

Speaker 1 And once they're back, they all agree Fergus is going to stay with Marnie and Ian for a few days, get some space, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 She leaves and goes home and like waits up for her brother to get there. Marnie says they get there at about two.

Speaker 1 And this is one of our like first big discrepancies between Marnie and Fergus because Fergus says they're getting to Marnie's house at one. So we've got an hour.
Okay.

Speaker 1 She says when they get there, she gives Viv an envelope with some pills in it to help her sleep.

Speaker 1 She also says that both Fergus and Viv told Marnie that Viv was going going to go to Melbourne the next day and that the boys were going to stay on the island with Fergus.

Speaker 1 So again, she doesn't get the whole like, oh, forever and ever, but it's like backing up Fergus's story. And Marnie says that after Viv left, she and Fergus stayed up and talked.

Speaker 1 And apparently Fergus was really torn up about the whole thing, as you should be. But he says, like, listen, there's no going back.
Viv made up her mind. There's nothing he can do about it.

Speaker 1 And by 3 a.m., Marnie says that they're going to bed.

Speaker 2 3 a.m. Like that, I feel like we keep coming back to that time.
It's like the magic time in this story.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's like, again, none of the times line up, but like this 3 a.m. keeps like keeps popping up in everyone's story.
And I don't know if it means anything. It's just weird.

Speaker 1 Anyway, the next morning, Marnie checked on Fergus before she left for her 8 a.m. shift at the hospital.
Now, she's a nurse at the same hospital that Viv and Fergus had gone to the night before.

Speaker 2 And is this hospital on the island or on the mainland?

Speaker 1 This is on the island. Okay.
According to her statement, she got to to work on time. Everything's normal until she got a call at work from Fergus at around 9.30.

Speaker 1 He tells her about the call from Pam and Donald saying, Robin called us. We got to pick up the boys.
Fergus is telling Marnie that he's concerned about Beth.

Speaker 1 And he's like, hey, will you call Beth and make sure she's okay?

Speaker 2 Is this before he asked Donald and Ian to just go over there? Is that why he didn't ask them to call?

Speaker 1 I don't know why he didn't just have them call, especially if he's asking Marnie to call now.

Speaker 1 But if the timing is correct, yes, this would have been after Donald and Ian found that Beth was murdered, but it's before anyone else knew.

Speaker 1 Remember, he doesn't know until they've already gone to police. Police have sent the doctor.

Speaker 2 Right. And

Speaker 2 remind me again when they were at the police station, like nine?

Speaker 1 Well, according to Donald's statement, who knows? According to police, they're at the station at 9.05. Okay.
So she says she gets off the phone with Fergus.

Speaker 1 Marnie calls Beth to check in like he asked her to. She doesn't get an answer.
So she calls Fergus back and told him, listen, no one picked up. Now he's like super worried.

Speaker 1 He asked her to come home from work, which she did. And when she arrived, Fergus told her that he just knew something bad had happened.

Speaker 1 And while Donald and Ian had gone to check on her, Marnie says that she kept trying to call Beth like over and over again, but no one was picking up.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 so just to line this up, Fergus and Marnie's statements make sense together.

Speaker 1 Pretty much.

Speaker 2 They're essentially the same. Yeah.
but they don't really fit in with the larger, grander, more complete timeline.

Speaker 1 There are things that aren't making sense.

Speaker 1 And when investigators compare their story, and particularly Marnie's, to other staff members at the hospital, there are even more things that just don't add up.

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Speaker 1 It turns out that the nurse who took care of Viv and Fergus the night before when Fergus came in to get his stitches, this woman was also working in the morning too when Marnie had to work.

Speaker 1 And she remembers Marnie being there. She even remembers Marnie getting that call from Fergus.
Well, maybe.

Speaker 1 The thing is, she says that she's the one who initially answered it, but she says it wasn't Fergus on the other end. When she picked up the phone, it was Donald.
And she says that call wasn't at 9:30.

Speaker 1 It was more like 8.30 or 9.

Speaker 1 And it's not just this one nurse. There are other staff members at the hospital who remember the call being closer to 8.30 as well.

Speaker 1 And she says she doesn't remember Marnie making any outgoing calls, like the ones Marnie said she made supposedly to check on Beth.

Speaker 1 She says after she gets this one call at 8.30, she just immediately leaves.

Speaker 2 This is such a mess of a morning.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 So much is going on. Is there any chance Marnie could have just gotten her time confused?

Speaker 2 Because honestly, the call being at 8.30 works better with what we know about when Donald and Ian were at the police station, right?

Speaker 1 Right. And to me, that's the only thing that does work that someone called at 8.30.
Because we know we've got Donald and Ian walking into the station at 9.05.

Speaker 1 So if this call did happen at 8.30 instead of Marnie's claim of 9.30. And then the nurse is right that it wasn't Fergus, it was Donald, that could work, right? Like it could be Donald calling at 8.30.

Speaker 2 Right, but he couldn't have called at 9.30 because he was with police by then heading over to Beth's.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 Then it had to be for, oh my God. And just remind me, what time does Robin say she called Pam and Donald?

Speaker 1 She says she called them at like 7.45.

Speaker 2 And did Donald or Ian mention calling Marnie at work in either of their statements?

Speaker 1 So that's the thing is I don't see that in either of their statements. Though it is worth noting, I couldn't find their full statements in any of the source material.

Speaker 1 Like I just see it reprinted in the book or spoken on the podcast or somewhere online. So it's possible that that's something that's been left out of the reporting here.

Speaker 1 We don't have the actual case file, but they also might have not said it or left it out on accident. I mean, like you said, this is a whirlwind of a morning.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of phone calls like flying around.

Speaker 1 And Eventually, that nurse who says that it was Donald clarifies that she doesn't really even remember if the caller identified himself. She just thought it was Donald.

Speaker 1 Because again, Small Island, she knew Donald, thought she recognized his voice.

Speaker 2 But Small Island, she treated Fergus that night. I know, man.
She also could have recognized the voice.

Speaker 1 So maybe it's something, maybe it's not. Maybe it's Donald, maybe it's Fergus.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 Honestly, what I'm most hung up on is why Marnie like rushed home from work so quickly. Cause from what we know at this point, she didn't know that anything bad had actually happened.

Speaker 1 She didn't know that Beth had been murdered, but she was deep in it with Viv and Fergus the night before. So maybe that gave her more cause for concern than like any other day or any other person.

Speaker 2 Okay, are there any discrepancies in Ian or Pam's statements?

Speaker 1 So Ian's mostly matches up with Marnie's, his wife's.

Speaker 1 The only thing that stands out to me is that he says Donald was the one who told him that the land cruiser was missing, whereas in Donald's statement, He says the reverse, that he learned the land cruiser was missing from Ian.

Speaker 1 I don't know. There's so much to get stuck on here.
This isn't one of the places I get really caught up. I think there's probably a reasonable explanation for that discrepancy.
As for Pam,

Speaker 1 she says that she was around for most of the early morning phone calls, but that she had to then leave for work after Donald got back to their house with Fergus and Viv's youngest son.

Speaker 1 And then she says that it was around lunchtime. that a coworker mentioned that there had been a murder on Beth Street.
And of course, Pam says she's immediately worried.

Speaker 1 So that's when she called Donald. He's the one to confirm, yeah, there was a murder.
Yeah, the victim was Beth.

Speaker 1 But according to an article published in The Age, what's interesting is that Pam doesn't rush home the way that Marnie did.

Speaker 1 Like she stays at work and then she goes out during her lunch break to buy someone a gift. And remember, this is like something I got caught up in again.

Speaker 1 That's when she supposedly saw that cop car where the land cruiser was later parked, but like it's unclear if the land cruiser was there at the time the cop car was. Right.

Speaker 1 And then we're back at that whole thing. Listen, this is all

Speaker 2 weird, but there's no smoking gun. And with Vivian still missing, she's the key to this thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I agree. I think that there's just two viewpoints as to what the key to this thing means.
Like you and I think there's more to this. We need her accounted for to understand it all.

Speaker 1 And so to me, that's what like her being the key means. Like, I don't even know how to make sense of this until I know what happened to her.

Speaker 2 She's just a missing piece in this timeline. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But to investigators and maybe even like some members of her family, they think that she's the key because she did it.

Speaker 2 So her family is agreeing with the investigators?

Speaker 1 Well, not like openly coming out and saying that they think she killed Beth.

Speaker 1 But on either October 17th or the 22nd, depending on which source you read, there is a memorial service held on the Cameron family farm for Viv, and it's like invitation only.

Speaker 1 So not everyone on the island is invited, but Viv's sister is there. Her kids are there.
The rest of her like extended Cameron family is there.

Speaker 2 But they don't have any evidence she's even dead.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 Like they've never like, they didn't say that back then, but It seems like at that time they were leaning into police's theory of suicide for them to be holding this vigil, which in turn, to me, kind of implies that you're leaning into a theory that she killed Beth.

Speaker 1 And it's actually a lot of Viv's friends that are taken aback by the memorial service in general. Okay.

Speaker 2 Ashley, right now, all we have are messy, messy stories and opinions. What about any of the evidence? Has testing come back yet? Like, what are the facts that we're actually working with here?

Speaker 1 So when they're doing this memorial service, no, we don't have evidence back. That takes a few more months.
That all comes in sometime in February of 1987.

Speaker 1 And friendly reminder, I know you guys know, but this is happening in the 80s. So we're not talking full DNA profiles when we're doing testing.

Speaker 1 We're going to be working with blood types, blood groups.

Speaker 2 So really rudimentary.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, what we know is that Viv had type A blood. And Fergus and Beth actually both had type O, but there's something called a PGM subgroup.

Speaker 1 PGM stands for phosphoglucomutase, which is this enzyme marker. So Fergus is O, but he has a PGM subgroup of 2-1,

Speaker 1 and Beth has a PGM subgroup of 1. So theoretically, we should be able to tell all three people apart.

Speaker 2 Theoretically. Theoretically.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about the results from Beth's house, because I think those are the most straightforward.

Speaker 1 There were a lot of samples collected from her room, as well as those two drops of blood on the path outside by the back door.

Speaker 1 We had a maroon towel in her bathroom, the top that she was wearing, the two different brands of cigarettes found in her house, and that knife found next to her body.

Speaker 1 Now, they are able to confirm that, as you would expect, pretty much all of the blood spatter around her room and on her body belonged to her, belonged to Beth.

Speaker 1 Interestingly, the blood on the top that she was wearing was found to be type O, but it could not be subtyped. Neither could the knife found next to her.

Speaker 2 I mean, that stuff I'm expecting to be hers, though.

Speaker 1 Same. And honestly, just about every other blood sample taken was hers as well, but not all the samples.
Those two drops of blood that were on the path outside, those are Vivian's blood type.

Speaker 1 And the maroon towel taken from her bathroom, that has Viv's blood type on it too.

Speaker 2 What about the cigarettes?

Speaker 1 There aren't any blood on those. So in the 80s, there's nothing they can pull from them.

Speaker 1 All we know is that the ones in the kitchen were her brand, which means really nothing, and that the other ones aren't. I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 Okay, cigarettes aside, they can place Viv at the scene of the crime now because they have her blood type there.

Speaker 1 Maybe. Let me keep going.
We're going to circle back. So let's move to the report about Beth's body.

Speaker 1 From what I can tell, all of the blood found on Beth's arms and legs, remember it had looked like it had been like smeared around? Yeah.

Speaker 1 All of that blood seems to be her own or has been mixed to the point where they can't single out a different contributor.

Speaker 1 They also tested the scrapings from under her fingernails, but they couldn't get any definitive results from them.

Speaker 1 So if Beth had scratched her killer, testing can't determine who that was she scratched.

Speaker 1 And finally, during her autopsy, the forensic pathologist took both internal and external vaginal swabs, and both came back being positive for sperm.

Speaker 2 Can they do any type of basic typing with sperm back then, like secretor, non-secretor stuff?

Speaker 1 I don't think that they were able to do anything other than just know it was there and they have like some kind of suspicion that sexual activity happened shortly before her death.

Speaker 1 And this is the key though, because of the external sperm that was present, they're thinking it likely happened very soon before, like at least that same evening or something.

Speaker 1 Now, if you remember, Fergus said they had sex the day before,

Speaker 1 like the full night before, not just like the night before her murder, one night before that. And what experts say is that most external sperm gets washed off in the shower.

Speaker 2 So okay, but all he did was he said they didn't have sex when he went to go see her before she was murdered. I mean, he could have been flying to avoid explaining it or something.

Speaker 1 But when you think that at some point he would have admitted to it, I mean, it's not like he's saying he didn't see her that day. Like he's admitting to being in her house right before he goes home.

Speaker 1 He admits to having sex with her the day before. I feel like the only reason to lie about it is if you're lying about other stuff that night.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 she could have been with someone else the night she was killed.

Speaker 1 Which is true. I mean, and it's worth noting, as far as I can tell, there aren't any signs of sexual assault that were found during her autopsy.
No, like, ripping or bruising.

Speaker 1 So investigators don't think that sexual assault was the motive. The whole sperm thing is just something surprising that, again, they don't really know where this piece fits.

Speaker 1 So now for the infamous Land Cruiser and all the stuff inside of it.

Speaker 1 Basically, all we learn about that comes from the Case File Presents podcast where it said that the cigarettes test positive for traces of Vivian's blood type, which makes me think that it had to have had blood on them, right?

Speaker 1 Or like maybe the packaging or something.

Speaker 1 And there's also Vivian's blood on the face towel. Okay.
That's all from the car, like testing-wise.

Speaker 2 That's completely unhelpful.

Speaker 1 Results from the sedan are equally unhelpful because blood on the passenger seat, I think I already said this, it's Fergus's type and subtype, which we expected. No new info there.
Cool.

Speaker 1 And we know fingerprints were a big thing back then. So they obviously looked for those in key places.
None were found in the land cruiser, which I learned something new.

Speaker 1 Even six years in, every day is a learning moment. I originally heard no prints and I'm like, it's wiped down.
Like the air is cleaned up. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but apparently fingerprints don't really last when they're exposed to really hot temperatures.

Speaker 1 And so the heat would have rendered any fingerprints that did exist inside the land cruiser as unidentifiable. So they just like evaporate? Okay.
Who knew? But it was just the cruiser.

Speaker 1 Like there was nothing from the crime scene or even the Cameron house fingerprints wise that was super meaningful.

Speaker 1 No usable prints came back on anything like the knife that was found next to Beth's body. And it sounds like they didn't get anything from those taps, even in Beth's bathroom where they found blood.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 2 I don't want to say you misled me, but this is feeling pretty straightforward, Ashley. I mean, there are a couple things that are weird, but I feel like everything's sort of lining up.

Speaker 2 And we just have some questions around, you know, where Viv is and where she was when Beth was killed.

Speaker 1 Brett, I

Speaker 1 would never mislead you or the crime chunkies. How dare you?

Speaker 1 I I am just about to get to the nitty-gritty, the good stuff, because it's the forensic results from the Cameron's home, actually,

Speaker 1 that make everything a lot more confusing.

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Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 are you ready? Do I have to respond? Yeah,

Speaker 1 ideally.

Speaker 1 Are you not ready? Do you not want to do this? Britt, I need you in it with me.

Speaker 1 Trick question. I know this is a long one.
I know this is complicated, but it's going to take two crime junkies and then about 10 million others out there to help me figure this out.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to ask again, are you ready?

Speaker 2 Let's do this.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 for Fergus and Viv's house. Fergus' blood type shows up in a few places around the house.

Speaker 1 on the pink tissue in the bathroom and on the shirt that he was wearing when he got home from work, the one that was in the laundry basket.

Speaker 1 And that shirt actually has some puncture holes in the back, too, which backs up his story about Viv stabbing him in the back. Right.

Speaker 1 There's also his blood on a pullover labeled Cherry Lane, which I don't know if he was wearing that at some point during the night.

Speaker 1 I don't know if the blood just got transferred there from his shirt or something. But his blood type isn't the only one that's on it.
Viv's blood type shows up on that pullover, too.

Speaker 1 Hold up.

Speaker 2 No one in any version of any statement mentioned Viv getting injured there at the house.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 In fact, quite the opposite. In Fergus's statement, he's adamant that he never struck her and she was never injured at all.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he pointed that out.

Speaker 1 Fergus aside, even the hospital staff backs that up. They say they didn't see any injuries on her when she brings Fergus in for stitches.
Now, her blood type is also on a sponge in their kitchen.

Speaker 1 It's also on their bathroom floor. It's on numerous pieces of clothing found in their laundry or scattered around their house.

Speaker 1 And most shockingly, that blood in the spare room, the bedroom that Fergus said that he went after Viv stabbed him,

Speaker 1 that blood isn't type O. It's type A.
That's Viv's blood type.

Speaker 2 Uh, plot twist, him going into that bedroom after he was injured was the explanation for the blood.

Speaker 1 Blood to begin with.

Speaker 2 If it's not his, does this get investigators to start looking at Fergus a little bit more skeptically with a little bit of a side eye now?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. But when they go back and speak with him, he just doubles down.
He insists Viv wasn't hurt when they were together. Again, they have hospital staff backing this up.

Speaker 1 A little more plot twisty is that Beth's blood also shows up at the Cameron house. It's on some of those papers that Marnie and Ian saw scattered around the spare bedroom.

Speaker 1 But the thing I'll say before you lose your minds over that, A, this is the only

Speaker 1 place her blood was found, nowhere else in the house. This paper that the blood is smeared on is on this informational sheet on herbicides.
And we know Beth worked on the farm regularly.

Speaker 1 Is it possible it's from a different time she cut herself? Is it possible the sheets were at her house? And then I don't, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Okay, but but actually, if her blood is there from her getting murdered that night this might actually make more sense and make somehow everything else make sense viv went and killed beth viv gets injured in the attack that's why she leaves blood in beth's bathroom those two droplets as she's exiting and then she's home and bleeding and some of beth's blood from the attack gets on stuff there boom You think I've been on this earth living and breathing true crime for nearly 34 years and I didn't think of that?

Speaker 2 Listen, I was excited, okay?

Speaker 1 Remember, Viv's blood wasn't found in the sedan, only Fergus's. The whole theory is based on Viv driving the land cruiser, right?

Speaker 1 There was zero blood in the seats of the land cruiser, like not a drop. So problem I have with that theory.
How is Viv

Speaker 1 so bloody? that she gets her blood all over her house in the spare room, in the kitchen, like on the sponge, even transfers Beth's blood onto papers.

Speaker 1 But there isn't any blood on the seats of any vehicle they owned that she would have had to use to get from A to B.

Speaker 2 Okay, so she had to have gotten hurt at the house.

Speaker 1 But she was fine at the hospital.

Speaker 2 At the hospital earlier in the evening,

Speaker 2 it had to have happened after the hospital when her and Fergus came back to the house before he went to Marnie and Ian's, after Marnie left.

Speaker 1 Do you want me to throw another wrench in all of this?

Speaker 2 Uh, not really, but you're going to.

Speaker 1 Yeah. This whole story starts with Viv breaking the wine glass and stabbing Fergus, right? That's why they go to the hospital to begin with.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Britt, there is no wine glass. What?

Speaker 1 The crime scene examiner insists. that they don't find any broken glass from the glass Viv supposedly used to attack Fergus.

Speaker 2 Not even in the trash? Didn't Marnie and Ian see it?

Speaker 1 They did. And Marnie even says she cleaned it up.

Speaker 1 This is another one where we've got some conflicting stuff.

Speaker 1 And let me just tell you. Okay, so according to this crime scene examiner, it is not in the house.
It is not in the trash. He is the one who was there that day.

Speaker 1 Now, in a 60 Minutes Australia episode on this case from 2021, one of the investigators says, Yeah, we definitely did find glass and the glass had blood on it. Totally collected by forensics.
Cool.

Speaker 1 But forensics has no record of it. The crime scene examiner who examined the scene saying that's not true wasn't there.

Speaker 2 So how do they explain this maybe wine glass?

Speaker 1 I don't know. They don't.
They're just like, nope, promise you it was there. Don't know where it would be now.
Of course we would have collected it, but we don't have it.

Speaker 1 And I mean, like, okay, so say there was a glass that got lost or someone took it away. Either way, I don't know why you would either way, but that means someone was in that house after 3 a.m.

Speaker 1 Because here's another fun fact. Remember, maybe if you do, there's been a thousand facts.

Speaker 1 There was a gold purse and a black handbag when Pam found the land cruiser, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because she like takes the gold one. The purse, maybe? Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, the black handbag.

Speaker 1 That is the handbag that Robin says she saw at the Cameron house when she picked up the boys after that 3 a.m. call.

Speaker 2 Oh, and she's like, oh, I bet she would have needed this, but I'm sure they were in a rush getting to the hospital.

Speaker 1 Right. She made note of it because she's like, oh my gosh, she forgot her purse.
She gets that call at 3 a.m. She goes to pick up the boys.
Handbag is there. And then handbag is in the land cruiser.

Speaker 1 That's found.

Speaker 2 I have a lot of questions. Why would you take the handbag with you when you drive to the bridge if you didn't take it to go kill Beth?

Speaker 2 Why take it to the bridge at all if you're just going to leave it in the land cruiser? I mean, that's the one that her ID.

Speaker 1 Her ID was in the gold one. So there were two.
But yeah, why?

Speaker 2 Why did she need the black one then for anything? Right.

Speaker 1 So again, the theory all along, around 3.30, she's supposedly pulling up to kill Beth. She would have killed Beth, come back to the house, which, okay, maybe that's how some blood gets there.

Speaker 1 We still can't explain.

Speaker 2 Grabs this bag that doesn't have her ID in it, has TBD in it,

Speaker 2 takes it with her to leave the car and leaves all the bags.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 And make it make sense.

Speaker 1 Make it make sense. That's what we should title this episode.
Make it make sense. Now, there's one more weird thing.
Of course there is. And I wouldn't even call it a wrench.
I know.

Speaker 1 It's just like a hmm. So the face towel from the Land Cruiser and the towel found in Beth's bathroom, they are both the same brand that the Camerons have in their home.

Speaker 2 That they are also missing from their home?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know if they would know.
I mean, Viv and Fergus might know. Viv's not here.
Fergus, I don't know if I believe everything Fergus says.

Speaker 1 I don't even know if like he would know or if he was asked. I can't find anything specifically on that.
But

Speaker 1 now you see it, right? Like this is what investigators are working with. A messy, confusing set of circumstances that no matter which way you maneuver them, don't line up.

Speaker 1 And when things are this messy, they tend to stay messy. If you fast forward to later that same year in August of 1987, an inquiry is held into Beth's death.

Speaker 1 And after hearing all of the evidence, the coroner agrees with the prevailing theory that Viv was the one who killed her.

Speaker 2 So do they consider the case into Beth's murder just solved and closed?

Speaker 1 Pretty much. I mean, unless Viv shows back up or someone comes forward with definitive evidence that Viv wasn't the killer, case closed.

Speaker 1 Now, a month later in September, on the one-year anniversary of Beth's murder and Viv's disappearance, Berges and the rest of the Cameron family all sign sign affidavits to declare Viv legally deceased.

Speaker 1 According to the case file presents podcast, they all say that she died by suicide. So after the last one is filed, a judge declares her legally dead.

Speaker 2 This seems kind of quick for that sort of declaration. Is there a reason they needed to do this other than just to have that sense of closure?

Speaker 1 Well, I think it depends on your theory, right? So yes, maybe closure, or maybe because of what happens two months later in November.

Speaker 1 That is when the Cameron family sells 10 acres of their farmland to another company. And they're only able to sell it now if Viv is declared dead since she had a sixth of the share of the land.

Speaker 2 So this sounds like more of a business decision, less of a motive.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But is Viv's family okay with declaring her dead?

Speaker 1 And no. They're not even convinced she is dead, much less that she died by suicide or that she had anything to do with Beth's murder.

Speaker 1 So by now they're like, again, I don't know what was going on at the vigil vigil before. By now they're speaking out.

Speaker 1 And because they're speaking out, there is an inquest into Viv's death in July of 1988. Her family is hoping that at that one, they can stand up, advocate for her by making sure they give her a voice.

Speaker 1 And they want to make sure that the evidence against her is really sound. But their hopes are dashed when they show up at 10 a.m., which is the time everything for them is supposed to start.

Speaker 1 And they're told, like, oh, no, no, no, sorry. The inquest is already over.
You totally missed it. Coroner officially ruled her manner of death as suicide.
Sorry. What?

Speaker 1 They're like, what the?

Speaker 1 How could the coroner have possibly heard all the evidence and made the decision before 10? And why didn't we know about it?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So they end up filing a formal complaint, basically saying that they had a right to be there and that the way that it all played out violated that right. Yeah.
The coroner's like, yeah, you know what?

Speaker 1 Like, you're right. If you want, we're going to do another inquest.
But I think they're just like fried at that point. Like, they're, what's the point? It's kind of how they're viewing this.

Speaker 1 Like the coroner obviously thinks Viv died by suicide. He believes the Cameron family's statements.

Speaker 1 So it feels like they wouldn't even really be hurt because the Cameron influence in this area is so strong is their opinion. And that continues to prove true even years later.

Speaker 1 Because it was in the early 90s when Vicki Petraitis and Paul Daly, who again, their reporting has been the backbone of these two episodes. That is when Vicki starts investigating Beth and Viv's case.

Speaker 1 And it's so wild because she walks into the newspaper office there on Phillip Island looking for articles on the case. Basically, she wants, you know, anything they can give her.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And in the podcast, she describes how this woman she's talking to is like, okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 She like steps away, presumably to get the articles, but then she comes back a few minutes later with nothing.

Speaker 1 And Vicki's like, okay, like, what's going on? And the woman says, I've just run the family and they don't want you to write a book.

Speaker 2 Whose family?

Speaker 1 The Cameron family.

Speaker 1 So she won't hand over any of the articles, not because she can't, but.

Speaker 2 These are like public newspaper articles.

Speaker 1 But the Camerons said no. And if there was ever a moment where the sway that the Cameron family truly had over the people and the island itself was on full display, to Vicki, this was it.

Speaker 1 And it didn't leave her with a good feeling. She still went on to write the book.
She interviewed a ton of Vip's friends who were all happy to participate.

Speaker 1 And when the book comes out, I mean, it's a hit in Australia, but they won't sell it on Phillip Island. Of course not.

Speaker 1 Like even if the newspaper prints an article about the book, the newspaper isn't sold on the island.

Speaker 2 And all of this is possible because the Camerons simply didn't want the book to be written.

Speaker 1 That's what it seems like.

Speaker 1 And look, it's not like sometimes you'll hear the word banned. The book wasn't actually banned.
They banned it together and said, we don't want that here.

Speaker 1 So there could be an innocent reason for the island, for the family to be against the book. You got to think, I don't want them to get lost in this.

Speaker 1 Fergus and Viv still had two sons who had obviously been extremely impacted by this whole thing. But to have gone so many years, Vivian's family, her friends, it just feels strange.

Speaker 1 Like they still have such a craving for answers. And I think a lot of people don't understand why that isn't coming from the Camerons as well.
Now, the last thing I want to touch on happens in 1993.

Speaker 1 By now, DNA testing is in its infancy in Australia, and several pieces of evidence are tested again or looked at in hopes that maybe

Speaker 1 all these missing pieces or confusing pieces will fall into place. But it doesn't, of course.

Speaker 1 The only three things I think are important to mention are that the knife found by Beth's body, the cigarette butts, and the sperm samples.

Speaker 1 So results from the sperm samples exclude 99.98% of the population, but they cannot exclude, you guessed it,

Speaker 1 Fergus. Yeah, not all that surprising.
Now, the blood on the knife is Beth's mixed with another person's, and at the time, they can't say with total certainty that the other person's blood is Viv's.

Speaker 1 But they say that it was more than likely hers. Take that for what you will.
As for the cigarette butts, Vicki reports that, quote, testing revealed no blood group substances on the cigarettes.

Speaker 1 But according to that 60 Minutes Australia episode, the cigarette butts are confirmed to have Vivian's DNA on them. Now, remember, there were multiple there.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure which ones her DNA are found on, which ones they aren't. My best guess is that they're found on the ones that are the brand she smoked.
But again, that's really.

Speaker 2 That's even more confusing if it was the brand she did smoking.

Speaker 1 If this one was not, I know. So that's that.
There was even more testing done in 2001, but the results of that testing have never been released.

Speaker 1 And the case is basically considered closed by the authorities on the island.

Speaker 1 Fergus has gone on to remarry, and as far as I can tell, still lives on the island to this day, where the case isn't talked about.

Speaker 1 But for Viv's loved ones, her friends and her family, they can't consider this closed.

Speaker 1 And there are just too many many things that don't add up that leave them feeling like justice wasn't really served.

Speaker 1 Because each scenario they can think of doesn't explain the evidence that we have or the evidence we lack.

Speaker 1 I know I, for one, have spent countless hours trying to come up with a single scenario that accounts for all of the evidence we have, and I can't do it.

Speaker 1 But before we end this episode, I do just want to take one more look at all of the puzzle pieces. I can show you how we can get close, but not quite there.
I want to analyze them together.

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Speaker 1 All right, Brett, I feel like the easiest thing to do is to kind of break it down into four different sections and to first go over just a couple of bullet points of like the stuff that points to Viv being the one that killed Beth.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 She has the motive. Right.
The affair. Beth was having an affair with her husband, right? She has the opportunity, assuming that the murder happened around 3:30.

Speaker 1 We don't have anyone who.

Speaker 2 There's like unaccounted for time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we know that Robin had to come pick up the kids. She could have been at Beth's.
Again, it's not placing her there, but it's possible.

Speaker 2 Just unaccounted for where she is at that point.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 And we have some physical evidence. We have two drops of her blood outside of Beth's house.
We have blood on a towel, most likely her blood on the knife, TBD, maybe.

Speaker 1 and 60 minutes says we've got dna on the cigarettes at beth's house evidence viv didn't kill beth there's a lack of blood on the seats in the land cruiser you'd think that something would have been transferred again to believe that her blood is in her home and beth's blood is on these papers if it transferred to the home it had to have been moved there via a vehicle and it's not in the land cruiser it's not in the sedan if she's bleeding because she killed Beth and got hurt.

Speaker 1 Right. Doesn't make sense.
There's a lack of fingerprints. There was no hay in Beth's driveway.
So explain to me which car she used.

Speaker 1 Some of the biggest issues that you'll see brought up in this case revolve around even the stuff that does have Viv's DNA at Beth's house or in the car or whatever.

Speaker 1 One thing that you'll see over and over again is everyone keeps referring to them as transportable evidence. So we don't have a big smearing of Viv's blood on Beth's body in Beth's room.

Speaker 1 We have it on these pieces of evidence, a towel, a cigarette that could come from somewhere else and be placed there. Okay.
There's no evidence that they were, but.

Speaker 2 There's no evidence that there weren't either.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, because it's strange when like, okay, you're dealing with a crime that happened in the 80s. I mean, people didn't know DNA the way crime junkies now know about DNA.

Speaker 1 For

Speaker 1 I just think about for this woman in a rage to go kill her husband's mistress, I mean, to the point where she's carving something in her chest, to not leave a single smidge of DNA anywhere but on these couple of pieces of things that could technically be brought and left there.

Speaker 1 Is she a criminal mastermind? Right, right.

Speaker 2 Well, and there's the drops of blood. Like that's not necessarily transferable.
Like that's drops of blood on a thing in stasis.

Speaker 1 To me, like, the drops of blood is what I will put back in the Viv could have done it. Like, how those two droplets of her type A blood, well, and again, not say hers, just the type.
Right.

Speaker 1 Type A blood gets outside the house, looks suspicious, but then you're bleeding. Why aren't you bleeding in a vehicle? In the car.
Right. In the car.

Speaker 1 And you're bleeding so much that your blood's at your house. So it's not like it just dropped two droplets and stopped.

Speaker 2 Why did she have a knife in the land cruiser if a knife was found next to beth's body can i give you like a farm girl answer to this i'll take it there's hay on the back of the land cruiser you have to like cut open hay bales

Speaker 1 sure

Speaker 1 but then it doesn't explain everything it explains one tiny piece of evidence maybe i agree i love the perspective because it's stuff i wouldn't have thought of but We know those are sitting on top of a pair of pants, pants coming there for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 That assumes that, again, she's not moving things in and out of the land cruiser. She's just going with what's in there.
Wouldn't that mean that the hay was already there?

Speaker 1 Like she's not loading on hay just to go dump the car.

Speaker 2 No, it does, but then that doesn't explain why there isn't any hay anywhere the land cruiser was supposedly if she had done this.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Section three.

Speaker 1 Evidence Viv wasn't killed. Like maybe she left on her own.
Maybe she died by suicide. Okay.
Land cruiser is next to a bus stop. So she could have left left on a bus.

Speaker 1 Witnesses might just not remember. Maybe she had a disguise.
There is all this,

Speaker 1 not all this, there's some stuff online that says that maybe someone saw someone on a motorbike coming across or over the bridge like in the early, early morning hours, kind of when that baker saw supposedly a car, which people are assuming is the land cruiser.

Speaker 1 It's been said that the Cameron family had a motorcycle, like, and I say motorcycle, it seems more like a work utility vehicle, but like on two wheels, that kind of thing you would have on a farm.

Speaker 1 So, did someone take her away? Okay, well, that person's never come forward. That like doesn't totally add up.
The big elephant in the room is this call to Glenda at 10 a.m.

Speaker 1 I've spent a lot of time spiraling about that call because for the longest time, when I first got into this case, that call was the thing I couldn't let go of.

Speaker 1 And I think it's something that everyone focuses on.

Speaker 1 This is one where i think i end up where police are that it had to have been a different day someone was mistaken yeah someone has to be because i can't justify that call in any scenario where she killed beth where she didn't kill beth where she left where she was murdered like nothing about that call makes sense of her just like acting like everything's fine of her being around people as she's making this at a time when people were starting to find out what had happened on the island right because even if this call,

Speaker 2 if this call actually happened, there are so many other things in motion by 10 a.m.

Speaker 2 There'd be no way her life wasn't even a little bit disrupted by that. I mean, she has a friend calling other family members because they don't know where she is to take care of her kids.

Speaker 1 And maybe there's a world, like, okay, so say I'm trying to make it fit. Say there's a world where she has snapped.

Speaker 1 Like she's not functioning like she normally would she goes to the community center and makes this call well then the land cruiser can't be where we think it is by 5 a.m staying there right she had to have like left with no one seeing her which is not impossible it just doesn't it doesn't add up like that someone again she to be making a call about getting a friend a gift or something You have to be like disassociating from reality of what just happened.

Speaker 2 And again, like at this time, her friend's already calling around seeing who other than Viv can pick up the kids.

Speaker 1 Oh, and the final thing is that there was no disturbance on the railing of the bridge to suggest that she went into the water. And honestly, so many people are like, oh, I wish I could see a picture.

Speaker 1 I don't know what that means. I don't even get that caught up in it.
Again, I've seen pictures of this bridge. No one's ever died by suicide off this bridge.

Speaker 1 I don't know why we're still talking about that. Like, is someone not telling me something?

Speaker 2 Based on like what you've described as the setting, like you said, like this is not a bridge you jump off of and the waters whisk you away or anything.

Speaker 2 If she could die by suicide by jumping off the bridge in this like swimming hole, essentially, of an area of water, she could have just as easily died by suicide by walking into the water.

Speaker 2 So why does the bridge matter? Why does the film matter? Why did we rush to suicide? First question.

Speaker 1 Well, what's so weird too is like, I guess there were cliffs by the Cameron family farm that

Speaker 1 would have made it easy to die by suicide. It seems like those weren't searched or ever considered.
And I don't know if it's because of where the land cruiser ends up being found that like...

Speaker 2 They triangulated the bridge to be a more likely area?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I think a lot more makes sense. But then what you have, if that's true, is like, then someone put the land cruiser there.

Speaker 1 And then it means someone else is involved in this, which brings you to this other theory that you'll hear hear from people or question.

Speaker 1 Did someone murder Viv too?

Speaker 1 Like, we have all this blood of hers in the Cameron home.

Speaker 1 How did it get there?

Speaker 2 Like, but how much is all this blood?

Speaker 1 I'll show you. There's, like I said, there is some pictures that Vicki Petratis had gotten a hold of and posted that we'll link out to.

Speaker 1 You're not talking a bloody crime scene where someone has lost so much blood, that's their cause of death. I mean,

Speaker 1 there's splatters of blood. And again, it's on a sponge where someone's trying to clean stuff up.
It's in the bathroom. It's in the bedroom.
So it's not just a couple of drops.

Speaker 1 It's enough that there is a open wound. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And we know she doesn't get that between the fight she has with Fergus, at least before they go to the hospital.

Speaker 2 At least before they go to the hospital, but they're home for an hour question mark before he leaves and goes to Marnie's.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And this is where like, I always come back to like, what do we know that's not statements from the family? Yeah.
And it's actually not a lot. We have Vivian at the hospital at 1015.
She is fine.

Speaker 1 Fergus is cut up. They're acting weird, but maybe together, but like they won't say really what happened.
They're being cagey about it. Then I want to say you have Robin.

Speaker 1 So what I'll say is what we know for sure is we have Robin coming to the house at around three and no one is there, but Viv's purse is there.

Speaker 2 The kids are there because that's who she's there to pick up.

Speaker 1 Right. That's all.

Speaker 1 Because even the call to Robin, I got really hung up on that too. Cause I like every scenario I would place together.
I'm like, okay, but Viv has to be alive at three to call Robin.

Speaker 1 I've seen some places where it says that it actually wasn't Robin who picked up the phone. It was her husband who like relayed the message because they were both in bed.

Speaker 1 And if you think that they're like, they're in bed, they're groggy, it's him. He's like, oh, she said it was Robin.
Does he know her voice from someone else's? Is Viv alive at 3 a.m.?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Because in a scenario where she is murdered and not just on the run or has died by suicide, that could have happened anytime after she left the hospital.

Speaker 2 Right. Because the only accounts after that of anyone having any contact or seeing her that are fairly confirmed are family members.

Speaker 2 Being at the house, having a conversation with Fergus, then Fergus leaves, and that's the last person we know who saw her, right?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I don't know what to do with this one. I can't get over the fact that if she died by suicide, her body would have been found.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And if she's not found because she went somewhere else, why haven't the police changed their theory? Nothing has changed at all.

Speaker 1 So my problem problem is I just can't make it fit with the story that investigators are sticking to.

Speaker 1 Now, there are other pieces that like, I don't know what category to put them in, but they just are a.

Speaker 1 I could literally spend the next six years just talking about this case, friendly. Like we spent the first six years talking about different cases.

Speaker 1 How would we spend the next six years just diving into this?

Speaker 2 I mean, if there was ever a case to do that on, this is the one.

Speaker 1 This is the one.

Speaker 1 I understand how Vicky Petritas got like lost in this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So going back to like the talking about how a lot of the stuff with Viv's blood on it was transferable evidence, one of the things like from Marnie's statement is that she saw a bloody towel and a face washer in the Cameron house.

Speaker 1 The problem is none were actually taken as evidence from the Cameron house.

Speaker 1 The only thing that we have that match up with that is there's a towel taken from Beth's bathroom and a face washer that's taken from the land cruiser. So this again kind of backs up.

Speaker 1 And remember, they're the same brand as the one that the Camerons had. They are there when, you know, Marnie mentions them in her statement.

Speaker 2 And keep in mind the fact that like everything that is evidence is weirdly transferable, transportable, movable, not stuck in one location.

Speaker 2 It's just question marks.

Speaker 1 How did no one see the land cruiser all day till 4 p.m.? What is the deal with Pam saying like, oh, there's a police officer there at 4.

Speaker 1 Again, they should have found it or it wasn't there. Either one doesn't fit.
What's with the way Donald and Ian even reported this to begin with? 10 minutes to get to she's not well?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's not like how you go into a police station, ask for help.

Speaker 2 And even if the lead is she's not well, when like

Speaker 2 clearly it's more than she's not well, why start with that whole backstory?

Speaker 1 And here's the other thing that I get really frustrated by. We don't actually have a a time of death for Beth.
Everyone keeps like spiraling around this 3.30 because this neighbor hurt a truck.

Speaker 1 We don't know. You know what I mean? Like something?

Speaker 1 That doesn't mean that she died then. What if she died way earlier?

Speaker 2 Like before Fergus ever came home to upset Marnie. I'm an angry div.
Oh my God.

Speaker 1 But trust me, there's problems. I have been down every single road, but we don't know.
We don't know when she died. Again, did Fergus really not be intimate with her that night? Why lie about it?

Speaker 1 Why was then sperm found on the exterior of her vagina? I don't know.

Speaker 1 And why was Fergus's like first instinct when he knew his wife was missing to have someone like, oh my God, you have to go check on Beth. You have to go check on Beth.

Speaker 2 Well, and for the whole family to be like, yes, Beth is the priority here.

Speaker 1 Like, what?

Speaker 2 It doesn't make any sense for them to not be like, and also, where's Viv? We need to make sure she's okay. Figure out what she's been doing, figure out that she's safe.

Speaker 1 The phone calls don't add up, the timeline doesn't add up.

Speaker 1 We're missing something, everyone's missing something.

Speaker 1 It might be in front of their faces, it might be lost to time now that it's been so long.

Speaker 1 I think the truth of understanding what happened that night, truly what happened to Beth, is tied up in where Viv is.

Speaker 1 So, I hope hope that there is still a concerted effort to find her, whether she is deceased and we're looking for her body, or whether she is still out there somewhere. So you guys, I wasn't kidding.

Speaker 1 Like I, I need all of you on this one. I want to do something a little bit new.
If you're on Instagram, I want you to post your theory. Give me the theory that explains everything.

Speaker 1 I haven't been able to come up with it, but it's been a while. You guys are probably better crime junkies than me by now.
Make sure you tag us at Crime Junkie Podcast. I want to share your responses.

Speaker 1 I want to bring our community together to discuss this one. Because maybe if we all put our heads together, we can come up with something plausible.

Speaker 2 Anyways, we highly recommend getting your hands on Vicki Petretus and Paul Daly's book, The Phillip Island Murder.

Speaker 2 I know I'm grabbing a copy for myself along with highlighters and post-it notes because believe me, I think we're going to need it if we're going to figure this one out.

Speaker 2 As you can tell, Vicki and Paul have done incredible recording and this episode wouldn't have been possible without it. We'll have links in our show notes to where you can buy it yourself.

Speaker 1 You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

Speaker 2 And be sure to follow us on Instagram and post your theory, tag us in it. We want to hear it.
At Crime Junkie Podcast.

Speaker 1 And we will be back next week with a brand new episode.

Speaker 1 Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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