Most people in Brisbane have at least some understanding of the Allison Baden-Clay murder case. The mother-of-three vanished from her home in April 2012, with her body discovered beside a creek a week or so later. Her husband was tried and convicted for her murder, with the conviction overturned on appeal, and that overturning itself overturned on appeal as well in 2016. For myself, I remember that the friend we were going to use as a wedding photographer was an SES volunteer and hard to pin down, since he was looking for her.
Written by one of the journalists who covered the Baden-Clay case from almost the beginning, The Murder of Allison Baden-Clay is essentially the full story of this murder. David Murray introduces us to both the victim and her killer, as well as their families and the suburb of Brookfield where all of this took place. We're then taken through the investigation step by step from the perspective of the detectives, and then through the trial and subsequent legal twists and turns.
Murray's book provides a couple of useful points for those who got lost somewhere along the line in the case. Importantly, he explains just how wrong the Court of Appeal verdict was which replaced the murder conviction with one of manslaughter. Indeed, he's scathing of the various "experts" who attempted to cast the protests at this verdict as people "misunderstanding" the legal system. While I'm sure there were people who protested it out of a lack of understanding, it's important to remember that the High Court basically held that the Court of Appeal had misunderstood the law. Even I, as very much a former and terrible law student, can understand that following Murray's explanation. It's not a case of "some people might disagree with the idea", so much as "if anyone thinks otherwise, they should probably not be a lawyer."
Murray also points to a couple of interesting loose ends. The identities of the drivers of two mysterious cars are never confirmed, and Murray indicates that on legal advice he can't explain who is generally assumed to have been involved here. The strong implication of who it could be is a remarkably distasteful one, I must say. Of perhaps more interest, though, Murray also points out that the "running clothes" Allison Baden-Clay was wearing when her body was found may in fact not have been precisely that, and also that there's no reason to assume she was killed after an argument, as I and others have often thought.
There are even some slightly amusing relevations, too. My favourite image is the picture Murray draws of the detectives trying different techniques to work out what could have happened, including driving a number of cars around at different times of the evening (with and without "bodies" in them). Eventually, the question is asked as to whether Allison's running shoes would have looked different if she'd tied them versus if someone else had, so the detectives spend some time tying each other's shoes, with no discernible discoveries. Well, none beyond the fact that one of their number apparently ties each shoe differently from each other shoe!
Good though those features are, Murray's book is a victim of a very common flaw in true-crime writing - namely, that he never met a fact he didn't like. In many ways, this reflects the fact that many such books are written by journalists themselves, and may start being written before the verdict is handed down, so it's hard to know what might be relevant.
As it stands, however, there are certain digressions in this book which simply don't need to be there. The blow-by-blow recounting of Gerard Baden-Clay's father's childhood in what was then Northern Rhodesia, for example, is probably irrelevant, as indeed is the earlier explanation of how Scouting (to which the Baden-Clay family have a strong connection) came about. Quite what benefit the reader obtains by learning that one of the detectives had achieved a particularly remarkable set of bowling figures in club cricket is beyond me, too, as is the extensive coverage of the 2011 Brisbane flood - although here I should note that financial losses caused by the flood are said to have put Baden-Clay under considerable pressure, so some mention makes sense. The frequent digressions into the earlier lives of tangential figures (including the Tzvetkoff family, who are minor witnesses, and Bruce Flegg who was a family neighbour) also aren't all that required, particularly when we realise that Eric Idle (yes, him) plays a role in the latter.
This padding ultimately points to a more serious problem with a book about this murder.
While the Baden-Clay case is justifiably famous, both in legal-historical terms and in Brisbane itself, it's actually a rather simple (and sordid) story. Woman marries narcissistic and abusive husband. Husband begins an affair. Finances get tight. Husband realises he's painted himself into a corner and murders wife. Husband gets what he deserves. Murray makes the point that most murders have motives of money or sex at their bases, and this is a case which had both. By itself, then, that perhaps doesn't merit a book - and certainly not one pushing 500 pages.
However, not to write a book would be seen as a poor result. A famous murder needs - these days, at least - to "mean" something. Including Allison Baden-Clay as one of a number of women killed by intimate partners (as I've seen books doing) seems to do her a disservice of sorts.
Perhaps an editor should have had a look at this and trimmed it mercilessly. Just because a fact can be written about doesn't mean it has to be.
Of interest, but with reservations. Two stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment