Barrenjoey Road 07 | Christmas Tree Hill

This is an ABC podcast.

Have you been having some weird dreams lately, Pete?

Had a bit of a spread of standby the other night.

About girls, eh?

Dancing around girls?

Yeah, all these girls dancing around me, Trudy and a few of her friends and stuff.

I'm at a director's house watching the opening scenes of a 70s surf movie he made.

It's everything you'd expect.

Long, loose shots of boys on boards, the girls sunbaking on the beach.

Get a bit of sunbaking done from

the beach all day.

But there's one scene in particular that I'm waiting for.

The whole reason I've come to watch this film is because one of the girls in it is Trudy Adams.

As far as I know, this long lost film is the only recording of Trudy.

She's on Avalon Beach with a couple of friends.

In one sequence, Trudy's wearing a daisy chain.

They're all smiling and giggling and making jokes about the boys.

How are the boys?

All they think about is so yeah.

Trudy, is that Peter out there?

Yeah.

And then you can hear Trudy talk.

Went out to dinner last night at Colin Candle Crease.

It's so good.

We had such a good time.

That's a bit of a jost to hear one of her friends call out Trudy.

Like, I just, that gave me a bit of a like, whoa, this is actually one of Trudy's friends saying, hey, Trudy, you know, and they're down at the beach hanging out, like they actually probably did.

The film was made in such a 70s way.

The filmmaker, Steve Otten, just rounded up a bunch of his mates at Avalon Beach and told them they could ad-lib the script.

They're all using their real names.

Steve Otten was in his 20s at the time with dreams of making a great Aussie surf film.

He called it Highway One.

It's kind of a surfing film with a with, what do we call it?

Australia's first acting surfing feature created by the young for the young.

The plot, there really wasn't a plot, it was sort of like one end of the highway to the other end of the highway and what happened in between.

This is the first time Steve's watched Highway One in decades.

In fact, no one's really seen it since the 70s.

It was made one year before Trudy went missing when she was 17, and she plays the girlfriend of the main character.

She looks so happy.

Oh, she always is, yeah.

She's always just such a happy person.

She was like a sparkler.

She's always just sparkling, you know, like

always bright and going off, you know.

Yeah, you got your license, didn't you, sir?

Good, you can drive us out there, all right?

Oh, it's just...

Well, we've spent so much time trying to get to know her and find out about her and to actually see her and like hear her talking to her friends.

Yeah, it's a real spin-out.

And it's really sad.

It's actually really, really sad because when you're watching it and they're so happy and they're having this beautiful time together, and

I mean, we know what happened next, and that's just

really actually awful watching it in some ways.

Such a nice car, where'd you get it?

Oh, my dad bought it for real.

Really?

He said, I mean, no further home.

This is the final episode of Unravel Season 2: Baron Joey Road.

I'm Ruby Jones.

For the past year, I've been investigating the disappearance of Trudy Adams with the help of investigative crime reporter Neil Mercer.

Trudy was 18 when she went missing from Baron Joey Road in June 1978.

I have no doubt that she was killed, probably on that night.

Her body has never been found.

But now, we've received a tip-off and we think it's a new lead that police have never considered before.

Testing, testing, testing.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

So a couple of weeks ago, Neil, you got a phone call.

No, you called one of your sources, didn't you?

A law enforcement source.

A former law enforcement source, yes.

And so we met up with this source.

Should we give him a name?

Todd.

Todd.

So my recollection of that first meeting was you brought the conversation around to Trudy Adams and you said, I can't remember exactly what you said, but it was something like, you know, we're looking into the Trudy Adams case.

And the first thing he did...

was tell us where the body was.

I had no idea that he was going to say that.

Did you know that he was going to say that?

No, I did not.

I didn't know.

I just thought he might know something about it because he was certainly around in those times.

He's a good source.

And you and I just sort of looked at each other, I think.

And neither of us really knew what to make of what he'd just said.

This tip-off could be a really big lead, but there's been a lot of rumours in this case, so we need to be careful.

and check what this source, who we're calling Todd, is telling us.

Todd used to work in law enforcement.

By the time he got this tip-off, he'd left the force.

Neil tells me he's a credible source, and he's provided reliable information in the past.

What Todd has told us all centres around a criminal called Guido.

He says Guido was also known as Chicken Wire Man.

I have to warn you, the reason for that nickname is disturbing, and the description you're about to hear is pretty graphic.

He's called that because apparently he specialised in disposing of bodies wrapped in chicken wire.

What I'm told is by a couple of sources is that

if you throw a body into the water it doesn't sink, it eventually comes to the surface and what you have to do is lay it down

and you did certain things to the body so that it wouldn't come to the surface but you'd wrap it in chicken wire and

that was his nickname or how he was known.

Todd told us that back in the 80s, one night he was sitting in a pub in Brookvale on the northern beaches and he's talking to a few people, including this guy called Guido, also known as Chicken Wire Man.

Okay, so Todd is sitting at a pub with Chicken Wire Man and another Krim.

The three of them are sitting around at a pub and Trudy Adams comes up.

Trudy Adams comes up.

And then Guido, this so-called body disposal expert, says something very interesting.

Chicken Wire Man says words to the effect

they should be looking around Christmas Tree Hill.

You know, he didn't say specifically, I did it or I disposed of the body there, but he specifically raised the location of Christmas Tree Hill and intimated to our source, Todd, the former law enforcement officer, that that's where her body had been disposed of.

So our source doesn't think that Chicken Wire Man had anything to do with Trudy's death, and we don't know if Guido was telling our source the truth that day in Brookvale, but it sounds like Guido may have been involved in moving her body.

For a long time, police had this theory that Trudy might have been killed by accident, that the men who picked up the 14 other women and sexually assaulted them also picked up Trudy.

But maybe it didn't go to plan, and the gun that we know those men had with them during those other assaults went off by mistake.

If this is what happened, and if, as police suspect, Neville Tween was one of those men, it would mean that Tween had a body that he didn't know what to do with, and maybe he enlisted the help of this criminal called Guido or Chickenwire Man, at a place called Christmas Tree Hill.

Christmas Tree Hill is apparently some sort of ridge, and there are creeks on either side of it.

It's off a road called Cottage Point Road.

And I remember when he said that to us, when he said the location, I think I got my phone up and I, you know, I pulled up Cottage Point on Google Maps and I showed him, you know, the road that goes up to the top of

Cottage Point and he pointed out two possible spots.

He said, because the road had two, I guess, ridges.

And he said, it's either that ridge or that ridge.

So it's, I gather it's a fairly rugged location.

And one thing that he did say that our source Todd said was that there's a

there's a quite a deep part of the creek perhaps where the two of them meet which I think from memory he said was about he thought was about 10 meters deep and that's where he thought the the body might be so just say that this is all true and this is what happened to Trudy

What are the chances that any of her remains are still there in this ravine after 40 years?

That I just don't know.

Christmas Tree Hill is in Karingai Chase National Park, which is where all the other attacks happened back in the 70s.

But it's on the other side of the national park and it wasn't ever searched, as far as we know.

Neil and I want to go and see the area ourselves, but before we do, we want to try and find Guido.

Neil and I have been asking around and we've got some more information about Guido.

We think that he might have worked at a smash repair shop in Brookvale, so we're heading there now.

What the source also said, and it was very specific, he said that Guido

Chicken Wireman,

also worked at a smash repair shop shop or he owned it or he either owned it or worked at it in West Street, Brookvale, which is on the northern beaches.

Yeah, and that's so interesting because we know that Gary Batt also used to hang around at and then occasionally work at a smash repair shop in Brookvale.

So that's back in, you know, the late 70s and 80s.

Gary Batt was another criminal.

And back then, he hung out with Neville Tween.

He was one of Tween's accomplices.

Gary Batt actually took part in that horrible assault on a young man that we heard about in episode three.

So we've got these two people with links to smash repair shops in Brookvale and we've been given some very specific information that this guy Guido, who may have disposed of her body, worked in a smash repair shop in West Street.

Okay, so Neville Tween knows Gary Bat

and Gary Batt might have known Guido from the smash repair scene.

But Neville Tween's dead.

Gary Batt is also dead and we've been told that Guido is dead now too.

But we head up to Brookvale anyway because we want to know if anyone remembers them.

We talk to one person.

He wants to remain anonymous, but something kind of wild happens when we ask him about about Guido.

When we get back into the car, we turn our mics on to chat about it.

He had quite a bit to say, and he, as soon as we said the name Guido and Guido's associate, he knew both of the names, he recognised them.

He did,

which was really interesting in itself.

And he said, what's this in relation to?

Is it a drug-related matter?

And then he said, is it related to Treaty Adams?

Yeah, I couldn't believe he said that.

Completely unprompted.

But what we've just confirmed is that, you know, well, what we sort of knew, I guess, but that Guido and his mate

did work around this area.

So eventually we were able to identify the specific repair shop where Guido probably worked, but it's shut down.

That's as far as we've got for now.

But we're going to keep looking into Guido and seeing if anyone else remembers anything about him.

In the meantime, we need to go to Christmas Tree Hill.

So that's Cole and Candle Creek on that side.

Yep, on the right hand side and on the left hand side is Smith's Creek.

We're pretty high up.

And we're heading to a place called Christmas Tree Hill.

Although it's not an official location, when you Google, when you look on Google Maps, it's not there.

I think it's only known to locals and maybe the rangers.

It's It's a pretty remote area.

There aren't many other cars on the road and there's no houses out here.

Alrighty.

Neil and I start walking out through the scrub.

We're on this dirt track.

It's only big enough for one person at a time and either side of us are these thick, scraggy trees and shrubs.

The bush out here is pretty wild and it's totally untouched.

Even if police did search out here back in the 70s, it would have been really hard to find anything.

I reckon the track's this way.

Just watch a step.

Well, there's that one to the left, and then there's this one here, so there's two possibilities, but I think that one...

Well, they've put stones in there to stop cars going in, so I think this is the one here.

So let's take a look.

Eventually, Neil and I reach a clearing and a lookout.

There's this big rocky outcrop, and we realize

this is the spot.

This is Christmas Tree Hill.

This is where Trudy's body could be if this tip-off is right.

Either on the land just around us or in the patch of water that's down below.

It's a lot higher up here than I thought it would be.

It's a much steeper drop down to the water.

In my head I thought it would be more like because they're creeks, that's what they're called.

I thought that they would be much smaller and slower running but it's actually quite big bodies of water.

They're very broad, flat bodies of water.

It's just far more isolated than the section that was searched for Trudy.

Isolated and a lot more rugged and that's saying something because the bush they did search, a lot of that was pretty rugged, but this is really very steep,

very, very difficult terrain.

Yeah, coming out here has really made me realise how difficult it would be to search this area.

It would be incredibly difficult which is why I think appealing for anybody who might have been in this area years and years ago.

So you mean like someone who knew an associate

or saw something

coming through the bush here that they thought was suspicious.

You never know what people might have seen in the bush and decided to keep to themselves.

So

hopefully,

if this

is relevant to Trudy's disappearance, there might be somebody out there who's listening, who knows something, might have heard something,

and who might feel it's now the time to come forward.

There's plenty of spots out here that you could put a body.

Do you feel like it's too late?

I sort of feel like it's too late.

To find the body?

Yeah.

I don't think it's ever too late.

There's always hope that,

you know, it might just be a complete accident that somebody stumbles on something.

A bushfire might go through, might uncover something.

Something might be unearthed.

You just never know.

Such a long time, 40 years.

It is kind of comforting how peaceful it is out here though.

And how beautiful it is.

If Trudy's body is out there at Christmas Tree Hill, our source Todd seems to think that it's more likely to be in the water.

We need to know if it's possible to locate remains in the water 40 years later.

So we get in touch with an expert in Canada who's spent a lot of time studying this exact thing.

Yeah, so 40 years, I mean, it sounds a long time, but water,

sea water particularly, the chances of survival are very high.

Professor Lynn Bell is a forensic anthropologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

The sea is a great preserver.

It has a reputation for being a destroyer, but in fact it's the complete opposite.

When you say the chance of survival is high, what is it that you think we would potentially be able to find?

Well, it would be skeletal material.

The soft tissues, they can be gone within a week.

I mean, sometimes it can be super fast.

So not soft tissue, but skeletal material, including the teeth, there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't recover them.

So that's good news.

And also, if this chicken wire man used the method that he was known for, that might make remains easier to find.

You know, that's a good thing.

If he wrapped the body in chicken wire, it could have kept the body together.

But then comes the bad news.

And then, of course, the question is,

has the body been completely covered over with silt

and so it might be there

but would you find it

yeah how do you look for a body in silt or sand there's no real way for something the size of a body to be detected

it's not like looking for a ship which is a much bigger structure

so The only thing you're left with is divers

or an ROV

just

inspecting the bottom and looking for something that

might look indicative of a body.

And that could be the biggest problem.

If the body is buried in sand or silt, there might not be anything visible above the sand.

But then again, there's a chance there is.

The right thing to do now is to pass on everything that we know to the police and leave it in their hands.

And that's what we've done.

We haven't heard anything back from them yet.

Obviously, we don't even know for sure that Trudy's remains are in this area, but it's possible.

As we were putting together this episode, I kept going back to the movie that Trudy was in, Highway One.

I kept watching it over and over.

And one day, as I watched it, something hit me.

In one scene, Trudy's telling her friends about a dinner date that she had.

When Trudy says this, the film cuts to a scene of her and the boyfriend character at a restaurant.

It's a beautiful spot.

There's some lilies and a candle on the table.

Trudy's in a blue silk top with her hair pinned back and bangles on her wrists.

Behind her, there are big bay windows looking out over the water.

Colin Candle Creek.

And that's when a horrible coincidence dawns on me.

Because that calm silver water behind Trudy, that's where this Guido guy said her body might be.

The intersection of Smith's Creek and Colin Candle Creek.

Went out to dinner last night at Colin Candle Creek.

It was so good.

We had such a good time.

Yeah, really

Oh, he's so nice.

I really like it.

Oh, you're kidding.

No.

Mark, Chuckwood, you're kidding.

Now you've got your microphone.

We've dug up a lot of information over the course of this investigation and I want to stop here for a second and talk about everything that we've found out and what we think should happen next.

We've made it pretty clear in this podcast that the number one suspect in Trudy's murder is Neville Tween.

There are a lot of things that make me think that he might have been involved, too many things to ignore.

like the assaults on the other women, which match up with the times that Neville Tween was in and out of jail.

And the fact that some of these women ID'd Neville Tween as one of their attackers.

And we know that Neville Tween lived in the area and he owned a panel van.

But it took decades for police to interview him, and their case against him never quite got there.

I'm not the only one who thinks that more could have been done.

Nick Cowdry is the former Director of Public Prosecutions in New South Wales.

For 17 years, he decided what cases made it to court in this state.

We wanted to know how strong he thought the case against Tween was, whether Tween should have been prosecuted for Trudy's death or for those 14 sexual assaults on the northern beaches.

Nick says that it would have been tough to pin Tween for Trudy's murder without a body.

But it's a different story with the sexual assaults that led up to Trudy's disappearance.

I think the investigation into that series of offences was somewhat lacking.

What was it lacking?

Well, there seemed to be some

clues that were given that were not followed up.

For example, there was an identification of Tween.

Further work could have been done to connect Tween,

I think, with that series of sexual assaults.

And those offences might well have been prosecuted quite separately from any disappearance of Treaty Adams.

As well as the attacks on the young women, there was also the attack on the 19-year-old man.

Neville Tween was convicted for that attack.

And Nick thinks that that's really significant.

It's my view that having obtained the conviction in the case involving the young man, and therefore having identified Tween,

that provided a body of evidence of events which were strikingly similar to the events that occurred in relation to the other series of sexual assaults.

And those striking similarities could have been used to pin Tween

to those other offences and get convictions against him.

Did you get a sense that perhaps if police had taken a different direction back in, as far back as 1971, then a lot of this wouldn't have happened?

I think you have to say that, that if there had been a more proactive response by police police to the first complaints, that might well have resulted in other offences not being committed.

I know policing was different back in the 70s.

I know attitudes towards women were different back in the 70s, but that doesn't make the crimes committed against any of these women any less awful.

And no less than the former director of public prosecutions says that Tween should have been prosecuted for those rapes.

And that's not all.

Trudy might have been let down too,

because there are all these question marks about Neville Tween

and why he wasn't properly investigated.

We know that he had a relationship with corrupt cop Mark Standon.

And that relationship goes back to at least the early 90s.

Mark Standon says his work wasn't compromised by his relationship to Neville Tween,

but we've spoken to a former detective who suspects that Tween may have used his relationship with Standon to avoid being investigated in relation to multiple missing persons cases.

Mark Standon denies this, but Standon helped other informants.

Did he help Neville Tween?

Neither of Standon's former employers, the Crime Commission or the former National Crime Authority, will talk about whether Tween was a paid informant.

They say that policy and law prevents them from confirming or denying anything about confidential sources.

But surely that can't be the end of this.

I'm not the only one who believes that more needs to be done to investigate this relationship.

Former cop and policing academic Mick Kennedy is calling for a full public inquiry.

He doesn't think that those in charge have done enough to get to the bottom of this.

It seems more about covering up their inadequacies than it has been about just getting to the bottom of it.

They're worried what he might say about a whole range of other things.

You don't get involved in that sort of stuff in an isolated incident.

And Twin would have compromised him over and over and over and over again in order to get what he wanted out of him.

And

from what I've been told, Standham would have been foolish enough to go along with it.

He was very vulnerable.

So the only way we'll know about that is if there was a public inquiry into it.

New South Wales Police have declined all of our requests to talk about this case, so I don't know the status of it.

or if police are planning on doing anything with the information that I've given them, like the tip-off about Christmas Tree Hill.

In the meantime, the main thing I'm hoping for is that someone comes forward with more information.

That's what Trudy's ex-boyfriend Steve Norris is hoping for too.

I

hopeful that there'll be some resolution.

Yeah, well for sure.

Again, because Neville Tween's died, maybe somebody who was in fear now can come forward and get off their chest.

So maybe there might be something somewhere there with a bit of luck.

But yeah, you know, it's been a long time.

But it wouldn't be nice if something dig a bit of closure for everybody.

Yeah.

Even if it's a swim chance.

Exactly.

Better than none at all.

Yeah, definitely.

Yep.

Trudy's high school friends, Leanne and Anita, also haven't given up.

They think there's a chance they might be able to get some closure.

What would you like to see happen?

I'd like to see someone come forward and

somebody held accountable for what happened to her because she certainly certainly didn't do it to herself.

I wish we could say goodbye.

Yeah, I wish that.

I wish that too.

Yeah.

How does it make you feel knowing that no one has ever been held accountable for her disappearance?

Quite angry, really.

It is angry.

I think that's an emotion I would use.

It makes me feel angry.

After Trudy disappeared, Anita started having this recurring dream.

It played out like a scene from a movie over and over again, and she couldn't shake it.

She says this went on for years.

I'd just dream that she'd be somewhere and she'd be there and I'd go, Trudy, and I'd hug her and I'd say,

where have you been?

We've been looking for you and she'd say, I'm fine, I'm fine, everything's fine.

But that's psyche, I don't know how you'd justify dreams like that.

You just miss somebody, I guess.

Hi Chris, how are you going?

So this is Christine.

Christine met so.

Yes, she was getting to the early unit.

Was she?

No.

She couldn't come up, so

get it.

This is the final episode of season two of Unravel for now, but there are still a lot of leads that we want to chase down.

So many of you have been getting in touch with useful leads and tip-offs.

We're going to keep going through the tips we're being sent and we're going to keep looking for information about Guido or anyone else else who lived in Brookvale in the 70s and 80s who might know something.

And we're going to keep looking for Trudy.

If you know anything, get in touch.

You can come forward anonymously by emailing unraveltruecrime at abc.net.au.

And if there's any big news, don't worry.

We'll make another episode to update you.

This season of Unravel was hosted by me, Ruby Jones, reporting by me and Neil Mercer.

Our TV production partner is Wild Bear Entertainment, with big thanks to Mark Rodomsky and Alan Erson.

Unravel's supervising producer is Tim Roxburgh, producers Ellen Lee Beder and Shane Anderson.

Sound design and composition by Martin Crowder with Tim Jenkins.

The sound recorders for Richard Vauxhall, Glenn Fitzpatrick and Dave Sims.

Gina McEwen and Angela McCormack are our digital team and Unravel's executive producer is Ian Walker.