'The Murder of Jessica Lang' relates how the family of Jessica Lang saw
justice in Western Australia. Their daughter had been murdered in a stabbing
frenzy by 18 year old Kelly Fuller, jealous that Jessica was now seeing her
former boyfriend. Fuller was sentenced to life with a minimum of 11 years
imprisonment and the sentence and the mechanisms of the judicial system shattered
the family and friends of Jessica Lang.
Extract:
'Fuller was taken back to Fremantle police station where she was
interviewed in the presence of her mother (something they did not have
to do, as by law she was an adult) on video tape. She was matter-of-fact,
calm and collected, even suspending questioning so she could comfort
her distraught mother who broke down during the more gruesome aspects
of the interview. When her mother regained her composure, Fuller resumed
exactly where she had left off, and as if nothing had happened."
I was surprised at her lack of emotion. There was no show of remorse
and she seemed really cold; an attitude that continued right through
to the trial. There was absolutely no show of emotion," said Detective
Sergeant Carter, a man of 21 years' experience investigating major crime,
including homicides.
The picture became clear that Fuller and Jessica could not have
been more different from each other. While Jessica had a model's figure
and was tall, sporting, popular and outgoing, Fuller was virtually the
opposite. She was known as being "a bit loopy" and "weird";
a softball coach thought she was "strange".
They had one thing in common though, and that was Michael Bloom.
Myk - as he was known - was a part-time disc jockey the girls knew
from the Rolloways roller-skating rink in O'Connor. It was a non-alcoholic
venue where the youth of Fremantle could meet, skate, dance and form
friendships. It was also where Jessica worked two or three afternoons
a week behind the snackbar and skate-hire.
When Bloom could no longer put up with Fuller's obsessive and jealous
ways he broke off their nine month on-again, off-again relationship.
He had been her first lover and her emotional turmoil was heightened
upon learning that within a month of their breakup Bloom was seeing
the younger and more attractive Jessica. In court Bloom admitted giving
Jessica love bites on the neck…'
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This anthology of true crime is edited by the author Kerry Greenwood.
There are sixteen writers and eighteen stories.
Snowtown. Belanglo. Port Arthur. Frances Knorr. Jessica Lang. Daniel Valerio.
Peter Aston. Jennifer Tanner. Peter Rowland...
Australia is not short on stories
of murder and mysterious deaths - all of them chilling, many of them unresolved,
and most still screaming with unanswered questions.
What impels a man to open fire
on a café full of tourists? How could a young girl stab her school
friend 47 times in the neck, spraying the ceiling and walls with blood? How
can it be that Peter Aston's sadistic killer is a free woman? Who is responsible
for the Snowtown murders?
In On Murder, crime writer and
legal aid solicitor Kerry Greenwood presents an outstanding collection of
Australia's finest crime writing. Trenchant and hard-hitting, yet defined
by a keen intelligence and sensitivity, the stories in this anthology will
shock, outrage - and compel.
Reviews:
In Short Debra Adelaide - Sydney Morning Hearld - (25 Nov 2000)
On murder: True
crime writing in Australia
Edited by Kerry Greenwood
From The Law Society Journal
Reviewed by Irene Nemes
University of New South Wales
THIS COLLECTION
OF 18 TRUE crime stories sometimes conjures
up images so horrific one forgets the stories are not fiction. Yet the
contributors do not intend to titillate or sensationalise. They genuinely
attempt to make some sense of why the events occurred.
Editor Kerry Greenwood, a crime writer and solicitor, has selected some
of Australia’s most infamous cases such as the Backpacker murders,
the Port Arthur massacre, the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance and the
Snowtown murders.
Her contributors
pose many unanswered questions. Did Ivan Milat have an accomplice; what
was the reason for Martin Bryant’s indiscriminate shooting spree
at Port Arthur; why has no-one been charged with the homicide of Jennifer
Tanner despite a coroner’s ruling in 1998 that "Sergeant Dennis
Tanner killed his sister-in-law, shooting her at least three times ...?"
Helen Garner
asks why not one of the 21 health professionals who saw little Daniel
Valerio in the months before his death intervened to save him.
Lindy Cameron,
in a searing account of the shooting of Dr Andrew Taylor in 1997, points
the finger at the criminal justice system as a whole.
In Peter Haddow’s
piece on the brutal stabbing murder of 15-year-old Jessica Lang, the
author identifies strongly with Jessica’s grieving parents as they
sit in Court and listen to the "half truths and outright lies being
told about [their] daughter".
This book is
not for the faint hearted, yet it does give an insight into the dark
recesses of human behaviour. One particularly distressing story concerns
the two schoolboy truants horribly tortured by two men with whom they
hitched a lift, one boy, to survive, being forced to bury his friend
alive. Perpetrator, Peter Luckman, a 17-year-old army recruit at the
time, underwent hormone therapy in prison and was released in 1999 as
Nicole Louise Pearce.
You will feel
no sense of satisfaction from reading this book, nor will it provide
any easy answers. But it makes compelling and intelligent reading for
anyone interested in crime.
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