Perfect Victim

Front Page News

Day 9: Wednesday, 10 March

Nine days after Rachel had waved happily from the door her disappearance made front-page news.

As day breaks I walk across to the petrol station to buy the papers. I am numb. The newspaper and media attention emphasises our loss. Will I ever see her again? You read the headlines 'Family Fear on Missing Teen', you read the story and make your judgment. Bad feeling about that girl. She's dead. And you realise that the thing that always happens to someone else is happening to Rachel, to Mike and Elizabeth, to Ashleigh-Rose and Heather. Not strangers. Me. Us. Our family. The paper tells your own story. The paper makes it final . . . and life goes on.

More phone calls. More sorrys. More help offered. More food left. Radio calling. Television calling. Attention plus.

Drew drives to Healesville to pick up more recent photographs and a Christmas video.

Victoria Police Media Liaison arranges for all the television stations and press to visit our house together so that we need only tell our story once. 'Australia's Most Wanted' will be coming after the news media. All the other inquires can be directed to Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Waddell at the Missing Persons Unit. There is a sense of protection. I vaguely remember the presence of a kindly policewoman.

Furniture is rearranged. Lights are glaring. Television cameras. Fluffy microphones. Sound technicians. Reporters. Our living room is transformed. It is a long morning. A blur. There is a video fiasco. Competition between channels or programs from the same channel, with Drew caught up in the middle. Apologies given. Apologies accepted. I remember thinking, why is this happening to our family? Will they help us find our beautiful daughter?

'All Things Come To Pass'

Detective Sergeant Thatcher had the giant rubbish bins at the front of the flat searched, as well as the laundries on each floor. But there was no indication anywhere that Rachel had ever been at Trinian Street. Steve Waddell decided to arrange for an unmarked police car to monitor the region, just in case she was near by. He wondered if she might even be in the vicinity now, perhaps watching activities and waiting for a safe moment to return.

After finding the handwritten document referring to a Sydney trip, Steve Waddell instructed someone to direct police in the Victorian country town of Benalla to halt the Sydney-bound train later that evening before it crossed the border into New South Wales. Just after 8 p.m. local police officers stopped the train. No sign of Rachel.

The flat was secured and remained under police surveillance throughout the coming weekend. Thatcher and Rae remained behind until back-up could be sent from Prahan police station.

The remaining detectives from the Missing Persons Unit returned to the office, taking some of the material they'd found – a couple of notebooks, a diary, and some scribblings on loose sheets of paper. They hoped that these might lead them to Rachel. But all along, dePyle could not help feeling that there was something more to this case than he'd originally envisaged.

The detectives examined the notes more carefully. Among the documents were some partly legible notes refering to Rachel, but they could not properly be deciphered. One appearing to be a carefully charted character profile of the missing teenager, containing personal information such as her date of birth and the name of the hospital where she had been born.

Then there were other notes about Rachel's family. They struck a particularly uneasy chord among the police. Listed neatly down the page, in impeccable handwriting, someone had noted the full names and birthdays of Rachel Barber's younger sister and personal background information on her parents, Michael and Elizabeth. The author of the notes appeared to know this family very well indeed. The notes revealed that Rachel's mother Elizabeth was the daughter of prominent Australian children's writer Ivan Southall. She was described in the profile as a religions woman and a 'disciplinarian'.

If it was Caroline Robertson who had written this information, it was clear to everyone she'd been doing her homework. She made mention of Michael Barber's birthplace in England, and noted he was a toy maker and knew something of his work history. The detail suggested an unusual method of monitoring. It charted Rachel's progress through her childhood in the country, describing her romantically as a 'free spirit' who'd run barefoot. It followed her progress closely from her youthful dating habits and dancing to her subsequent decision to leave school in year 9 to pursue a professional dancing career. It was up-to-date on Rachel's more recent activities too: Rachel's modelling, her love of classical ballet, and her boyfriend.

Robertson wrote in almost glowing terms about her young subject, describing her as a 'strikingly attractive' teenager with a dancer's body, clear pale skin and 'hypnotic' green eyes. Rachel had experimented only recently with hair colouring. The author of the document had noted that too.

There was also the Barber's home address and telephone number on the bottom. And in the top right-hand corner was another notation: 'Corner Church. Dance Factory Richmond.' Overleaf, there was another even more peculiar list itemising personality characteristics. The police assumed they were those of the missing girl. There was a growing sense that the subject of this romanticised prose held some weird fascination for the writer: she seemed to be almost in awe of her. Rachel Barber, according to the notes, was a 'wild free spirit' who lived life on the edge; a simple yet complicated girl of enormous talent and contradictions. She was a fiercely independent girl who was 'passionate, determined, cheeky, loyal and honest,' with a moody and mysterious personality. She was described as argumentative and difficult, 'eclectic and kooky, crazy, funky and cool.' this was a teenager who didn't suffer fools gladly but had, claimed the writer, a wonderful charisma. It was a list that brimmed with admiration.

But it was then that the police noticed something else. More ominously, in what appeared to be Caroline's handwriting, they saw the words down the bottom of the page, 'All things come to pass.'

'It was fifty-fifty,' recalls David dePyle.' At that stage we thought Rachel still might turn up at the flat after being out shopping or somewhere else, and maybe this older girl had just developed some unbelievable fascination with Rachel Barber. But then again' . . . . Nothing felt right about this case. The officers studied the notes again. But there were pages missing, and the indentations left behind were too faint to be legible.

Other scribblings listed dates of the month and figures. Scanty handwritten notes, a sheaf of documents. The Police began to have a creeping idea that something untoward might have happened to Rachel.