Ep.5 Cat Fight

Kathleen shared her fears of being stalked. A cat fight breaks out at Kathleen's house. The congregation of cat ladies outside Katheen's house, the day her body was found, tell police the murderer has just driven past. And that woman becomes the first person of interest in Operation Leaf. But DNA testing changes the course of the investigation. 

Transcript

MURDER AND THE HELLCATS

EPISODE FIVE

Previously on Murder and the Hellcats.

TED: Her interest, strong interest, when she was treasurer from 1991 right through to 1997, was to root out the corruption that she saw, which was related to bequests, which would be made to the Cat Protection Society, but wouldn't appear on the books.

RHODA: We decided not to answer the door. Because Kathleen and I did not want a confrontation. 

CATHERINE: I'm Catherine McHugh, and this is episode five of Murder and the Hellcats. 

Just a reminder before we get into this episode, the first person of interest in Operation Leaf was a woman. I have not named her for privacy reasons, but have given her the pseudonym Helen. When she is referred to by other people in the podcast. whether it is an interview, a recreation of the committal, or in a police statement, I have beeped her name. 

 Opinions about Helen's alleged involvement in the murder of Kathleen Marshall are not evidence and would never be admitted in a court. Rather, they are accurately set out from contemporaneous materials merely to allow a fuller understanding of the Cat Protection Society Background and reasoning for the police's initial investigation of Helen.

The opinions that you're going to hear in this episode are in no way endorsed by this podcast. Indeed, the podcast changed the name to Helen as a matter of fairness, since we approached Helen for comment on the murder and she declined. Therefore, I do not have the benefit of her commentary. I do have her contemporaneous denials of any involvement in the murder, and I do not suggest she had any such involvement.

ACT I

CATHERINE: In the last episode I mentioned the poison pen letter that Kathleen received. She suspected it was written by Helen or under Helen's influence by one of her supporters, since it contained details only Helen would've known. This letter is being read aloud, but it is not in the author's voice.

CLARE WAGNER: Someone you don't know about, witnessed your manoeuvres on Monday night, when you wimped out of the meeting on a phony pretext of illness. Your departure and return were observed. And also, Ed Hall's two attempts to enter your house during your absence. He talked at the top of his voice to his wife and let the whole street know that he has skeleton keys, which he didn't use for fear of you knowing. Now you do. Will you check with him?

He also used surprising language for a Christian fundamentalist. Of his efforts to get into the house he said: I've been stood up like a prick at a wedding and of __________, the bitch has gone, and on your return, you are safe now. He's wrong. You are not safe from exposure. Many people are now aware of your dishonesty, smear, campaigning, and downright lies with which you try to conceal your greed. 

Your reputation among professionals and administrators stinks already. If you want to save face, resign. The first page of your newsletter puts the cats last. Your recorded message recommends certain death in referring people to the RSPCA and certain neglect with a man convicted of cruelty. The newsletter gives no details of cat welfare work. If you were a genuine board, you would be recruiting new members and not encouraging resignations. The newsletter is nothing more than ac crude liable on __________. Along with a disgraceful attack on Corrine Welsh who has contributed her own money to the society and not taken from it. How does Kathleen Marshall pay her groceries? You are nothing but a bunch of crooks and more people are finding out.

CATHERINE: The anonymous letter sent to Kathleen was written by a Helen supporter called Claire Wagner. She had applied to join the Cat Society on Helen's encouragement but had not yet been granted membership. The letter was given to police and later Claire Wagner came forward and identified herself as the anonymous author. This is Rhoda's version of what happened when her husband Ed came to Kathleen's house as opposed to what is detailed in the letter. It is an excerpt from her police statement and not her voice.

RHODA: My husband Ed arrived to fetch me because he had the car. _______ and the other women interrogated Ed, trying to find out what was going on inside. Kathleen told Ed to go away through the door and he left. He returned a couple of hours later to Kathleen's house. Kathleen eventually rang a solicitor named Ian Galton, who advised her to ring the police if they refused to leave. Kathleen asked the three women to leave. And they refused. Ed came round an hour after the conversation, and we talked on the front steps. Kathleen had dead-locked us in the house and Ed was outside. We had a conversation and Ed told Kathleen that the bitch was gone.

CATHERINE: According to Rhoda Hall's police statement, the poison pen letter could only have been the result of Helen eavesdropping while on Kathleen's property. This is what Rhoda Hall said in her police statement about Helen, but it is not her voice.

RHODA: The letter outlines some conversations that is not exactly accurate and what is taken out of context. We were not talking loudly on the evening, and _______ would've had to have been in the yard to hear the conversation because of the amount of foliage in the yard, it is quite possible that _______ was under the stairs.

CATHERINE: When Ed said the bitch is gone, referring to Helen, we know she wasn't gone. She was likely hiding somewhere close enough to hear him say this, possibly on Kathleen's property, because this comment was repeated in the poison pen letter. Two months later in August 1997, which was six months before Kathleen was killed, a meeting was called to remove Helen as a director. It was carried 41 votes to one. 

Even when she was sacked as treasurer and a new treasurer installed, Helen wouldn't hand over access to the bank account. Donations were coming in and large sums were going out, without the knowledge or approval of the rest of the directors.

Kathleen had started calling Helen the bitch and didn't mind baiting her. She enjoyed goading Helen. But the relationship between the pair took a more serious turn in the month before she was killed. Kathleen called up a fellow Cat Society director and said: you wouldn't believe what the bitch has done. She was referring to an event that was described as a cat fight. This is amateur sleuth Ted Duhs describing the incident:

TED: Kathleen Marshall had made her home at Main Avenue the registered office of the Cat Protection Society. Previously, the registered office had been _______ home at Constitution Road, so _______ who is very familiar with procedure, knocked on Kathleen Marshall's door on the 23rd of January 1998, nine o'clock in the morning. Kathleen Marshall opened the door and _______ said, well, it's business hours, I want to see these documents relating to the Cat Protection Society. Kathleen Marshall said, you're not coming in. And there was some pushing and shoving at the door and some hair pulling. And finally, Kathleen Marshall, who was 14 stone and as heavy and bigger than _______ (who was quite a big woman) won the physical battle and  _______ couldn't come in.

CATHERINE: Having discovered from Kathleen's neighbour's daughter, Heather Logovik, that Kathleen wasn't a strong person, I wasn't so sure Ted was right on this. The police statement from a male Cat Society director seemed to confirm this. This is what he told police, but it is not his voice.

UNAMED CAT SOCIETY MALE DIRECTOR: Kath told us that she had to grab _______ by the hair and physically remove her from the house because of the trouble that she was causing and by refusing to leave her residence. Kath stated _______ is a very strong person physically, um, and is probably as strong as a man.

CATHERINE: Another cat Society director named Sandra Wilson confirmed this in her police statement. This is what she said Kathleen told her about the cat fight, but it's not her voice. 

SANDRA WILSON: She's as strong as a Mallee bull. She's as strong as any man. The only way I could get rid of the bitch was to pull her hair and push her away.

CATHERINE: The visit to Kathleen's house by Helen occurred with Corrine Welsh, who was a director at this stage, in tow. In an effort to stop Helen entering her house, Kathleen had pulled Helen's hair and in the scuffle, Kathleen was alleged to have hurt her fingers. This is Helen's version of events from her police statement, dated two days after Kathleen's body was found, but it is not her voice.

HELEN: She was closing the door on us, not saying anything. I put my foot in the door. I said, the registered office is open. Corrine is entitled to see the proxies. I pushed the door back and entered the hallway. Kath Marshall then started pushing me out of the house. I was just inside the door, and she was trying to push me out. There was a vertical beam just inside the door, so I hung onto it and told Corinne to go across the road and get Graham, Steven, and his friend Ron Welsh (Justin McKelvy). Kath Marshall said, no, don't, and ran after Corrine and tried to stop her at the footpath. Kath Marshall then came back to me and resumed pushing me, not with her hands, but her whole body. She then grabbed my hair. Corinne then came back and said, they're not home. Give it away, _______, give it up. So I gave up and we left. Whilst this was all happening, she reached into her bedroom and grabbed the phone and pretended to ring the police, saying she had a mad woman in her house.

CATHERINE: According to police, Kathleen did actually ring triple zero and asked police for help at the time, and yes, she told police something along the lines of, according to Detective Marsh at the committal, a mad woman is trying to break into my house. Kathleen took a photo of the injury which was given to police, and before her death she complained of still suffering pain in her finger that was jammed in the door during the fight.

Another thing Kathleen shared with other Cat Society members about Helen, is that she thought she was being stalked by her; that she was being watched, and her private conversations overheard. This is what Kathleen told Cat Society director Sandra Wilson. It's from Sandra's police statement, but it's not her voice. 

SANDRA WILSON: I'm being stalked. It's the bitch. I'm sure of it. She's out to get me.

CATHERINE: Sandra Wilson also recounted claims by Kathleen that she could smell cigarette smoke on her back veranda. This is what Sandra told police after the June 1997 incident, when Helen and two supporters refused to leave Kathleen's premises after being refused entry to what they suspected was a director's meeting. 

SANDRA WILSON: Kathleen told me of an incident where she went onto the back veranda of the house at 11 o'clock at night. Kathleen called me the next day. She said, I went onto the back veranda and smelt cigarette smoke. I was really scared. I said, well, there might be any explanation for that Kath. She said, no, it's the bitch. I said, Kath, _______ doesn't smoke. She said, yes, she does.

CATHERINE: Ed Hall, who was also a director of the Cat Society and husband of fellow director Rhoda Hall; he confirmed Kathleen's fears about being stalked in his police statement. This is what he told police, but it's not his voice.

ED HALL: Over a period of time Kathleen had told me that she, on occasions, could smell cigarettes, which had been smoked in her yard. So did her neighbour, Gertrude.

CATHERINE: At the time Helen was a smoker. And we know that it was possible to access the backyard of Kathleen's house from Eildon Hill Reserve and not be seen because of the coverage of overgrown vegetation.

The local pharmacist, David Kelly, saw Kathleen frequently in his shop and they were also friends. He recalled Kathleen entering his shop six to eight weeks before she her murder in order to hide from Helen. Cat's Society member Phyllis Jones told police that in early 1997 Helen had declared to her that Kathleen Marshall is an evil, dangerous woman who needs to be gotten rid of. Phyllis Jones went on to tell police that Helen, was in fact, the one who was dangerous and capable of physically harming someone. 

Helen had some other habits that other directors found unsettling. Rhoda Hall told police that letters written by Helen criticising the directors would arrive by taxi or they would find them on the front step when they woke in the morning. Helen was reported to have parked around the corner or up the street from some director's houses and hand delivered letters in the dead of night, sometimes lurking outside for long periods of time.

On February 16th, less than two weeks before her murder, Kathleen and another member of the Cat Society went to police and reported that Helen had Cat Society property that she refused to return. The property should have been given back in August 1997 when Helen was voted out of office. One of the policemen who spoke to Kathleen about that complaint was Detective Geoff Marsh, the same detective who would be in charge of the murder investigation.

After the conversation with the detective, Kathleen and the other directors decided to take civil action to retrieve the material. They told Detective Marsh they believed that if the police spoke to Helen about the Cat Society property, she might destroy it rather than return it.

On January 29th, a month before Kathleen was killed, the annual general meeting of the Cat Society was held at Wilston State School. Helen brought her father along and together they were reported to have interrupted the meeting and arguments flared on voting and accounting issues. Since Helen had refused to hand over documents and all the other belongings of the Cat Society, it had made it impossible for the annual accounts to be presented to members. 

In her police statement, Helen said this was the last time she saw Kathleen before she was murdered. But we do know that Helen drove regularly past Kathleen's house. She admitted this to police in her statement. This is what she said, but it's not her voice.

HELEN: I would randomly drive past Kathleen Marshall's house to monitor if meetings were on. This happened from the beginning of November 1997. I knew there would be no meetings on Friday nights or Saturday nights. Friday nights because Rhoda was a Seventh Day Adventist and Kath Marshall had her diners’ cub on Saturdays. I might have gone by on a Sunday to see if a meeting was on.

CATHERINE: The drive-by on Sunday does in fact seem consistent with the idea that Helen was keen to know if director's meetings were going on without her knowledge. Her main ally in the Cat Society, Corinne Welsh, was a director and should have had an invitation to these meetings, and by some accounts was excluded.

Usually after a meeting with Cat Society members, like the one held the day Kathleen's body was found, a director's meeting was conducted afterwards. That was in fact what was due to happen that Sunday when Helen did the drive past.

 Helen was also thought responsible for spreading rumours about directors. These usually involved accusations of theft or misuse of cat society funds. One piece of gossip Helen was said to be repeating was that Rhoda's husband Ed, who was also a director of the Cat Society, and Kathleen were having an affair and the pair were planning on stealing all the Cat Society money and running away to Indonesia together. Meanwhile, Rhoda and her husband were a churchgoing couple, caring for rescue cats, living modest lives in suburban Brisbane.

Earlier on the day Kathleen's body was discovered, the Cat Protection Society had held a meeting at the local primary school. Helen initially showed up at what was known as the Talk Fest with a man who was not known to other Cat Society members. The pair didn't stay long and left before the meeting started. What came to light after the murder was that the man Helen brought with her was a private investigator, and he had been hired by Helen to secretly set up a tape recorder in the room.

The 60 Minutes TV show featured a story about the Kathleen Marshall murder less than a month after the killing. Journalist Liz Hayes asked Helen if she had killed Kathleen Marshall. Helen told Liz Hayes that she absolutely did not kill her and that she was hoping to sue her for defamation and therefore wanted her alive. In fact, after discovering Kathleen was dead, she said in her police statement: (it is not her voice).

HELEN: I didn't sleep. I was very upset. Now that Kathleen Marshall had died, I would be unable to claim on the defamation suits. She was worth at least $80,000 to me. Now that she had died, I don’t know what I'll do. I'll have to discuss it with my solicitor.

CATHERINE: When asked by Liz Hayes why she bugged the meeting, Helen replied that it was a way of getting a record of the meeting without actually the unpleasantness of being at the meeting. Helen's plan, she told Liz Hayes, was to collect evidence for a defamation against Cat Society directors. It's not actually legal to secretly record private conversations. 

At the committal, the magistrate asked Detective Marsh if Helen or the PI she had hired had been charged. But Detective Marsh said no action had been taken. The PI hired by Helen declined to give a statement to police. But he said something telling about Helen to the 60 Minutes show, but we'll get to that later in the podcast.

Just to recap, there were two incidents where Helen and other Cat Society members in her faction went to Kathleen's house and refused to leave. The first was in June, 1997 where they lingered outside for hours, which was mentioned in the poison pen letter, and was followed by the accusation that Helen hid on Kathleen's property to eavesdrop, and the other was the hair pulling cat fight that resulted in Kathleen calling triple zero. That incident occurred in January 1998, the month before Kathleen was killed. It's clear in the weeks leading up to her murder, Kathleen told a number of people that she thought Helen wanted to physically harm her. This is what Cat Society director Sandra Wilson told police about Kathleen’s fears. It is not her voice.

SANDRA WILSON: Kathleen appeared to be very upset, very agitated, and very fearful. In my opinion, Kathleen honestly and truly believed _______ was out to hurt her. 

CATHERINE: Ominously, days before the murder, Kathleen announced to Sandra Wilson that Helen was quite capable of taking a knife to her. That comment was the last conversation this Cat Society director had with Kathleen before she was killed.  

Even if Cat Society members hadn't told police about the problems between Helen and Kathleen, the stalking, the cat fight at Kathleen's front door and Kathleen's request for police to help retrieve Cat Society property from Helen, it wouldn't have taken long for police to discover the enmity between them. Kathleen had reported these matters to police. They had them on file.

When Helen did the drive past of Kathleen's house on the Sunday afternoon after the body was found, one of the Cat Society members waiting outside said in the presence of police, the murderer has just driven past. No wonder Helen was the first person of interest in Operation Leaf.

ACT II

Helen lived on the other side of Eildon  Hill Reserve from Kathleen, the bushland I trekked through in the last episode. Her proximity to the deceased only added to the suspicion. Police door-knocked the street where Helen lived, asking neighbours about her.  Eccentric but wouldn't her to fly, was what one neighbour had said about Helen, which was recorded in the police logs. 

TED: A number of people in the Cat Protection Society believe that she killed Kathleen Marshall. 

CATHERINE: In the police statement of another longtime cat society member and director, a woman who I have not named, said at the previous director's meeting  that Kathleen had voiced her fears about Helen. This is what she said in her police statement, but it is not her voice.  

UNAMED CAT SOCIETY DIRECTOR: At the previous director's meeting on Sunday the 15th of February 1998, Kathleen Marshall voiced her concerns of how scared she was of ________ doing something. She said she knew that ________ had been snooping around her house. She was paranoid about being watched by ________ Kathleen was scared that ________ was going to do something and she said that she was in the firing line. I know ________ to lie openly about things. She has never threatened me physically. I have thought about this in depth since Sunday and cannot think of any person other than ________ who would harm Kathleen Marshall. Not unless she either hired someone or got her father to do it. 

CATHERINE: The Cat Society director you just heard from was the wife of the male cat Society director. You also heard from earlier in this episode, this is what he said in his police statement about Kathleen's murderer.

UNAMED MALE CAT SOCIETY DIRECTOR: I am of the opinion that ________ is responsible for the death of Kathleen Marshall. I make this statement because I feel that ________ is a very psychotic and vindictive person who is capable of committing such a terrible act.

TED: She knows she was the first suspect of the police because Ken Cox says that when the samples from the police first arrived on the 2nd of March 1998, he was instructed by the police to check that those samples either confirmed for ________ profile.

CATHEIRNE: DNA scientist, Ken Cox, found no match for Helen's blood at the crime scene. On March 9th, eight days after Kathleen's body was found, a number of items were taken from Helen's house to the John Tong Centre for testing. These included two pairs of shoes, underwear, items of clothing towels, a bath mat, and a shower curtain. Bloodstains were not found on either pair of shoes. One pair, the sandals, the DNA scientist attempted to test the DNA on the sole, but it did not yield typeable. A dress showed no visible bloodstains. The rest of the clothing, shower curtain and bathmat had no visible bloodstains, and most of those items had a freshly washed odour. A test on the blue towel showed a diffuse stain that tested presumptively negative for blood. A number of areas in Helen's house tested positive for blood. They showed positive results for both luminal and Sanger testing by the police scientific officer at the location. Swabs of nine locations were taken for testing. These included several areas on her rear stairs, a rear path, areas on the wheelie bin, inside the bathtub, and a pair of scissors found on the front passenger seat of Helen's car. In Ken Cox's statement, he said these samples were only tested using luminal testing and the result was negative. The samples from Helen's house were not tested further.

What is the difference between the detection method of the police scientific officer in the field and the scientist in the lab if they are both doing preliminary testing? How likely is it that all the initial tests gave false positives at Helen's house and then negative once back at the forensic lab? These are questions I hope to get answers for when I find a DNA scientist that will speak to me on the record, which is not as easy to find as I had hoped.

ACT III 

CATHERINE: Helen was questioned about her movements in the period police suspected Kathleen was killed. They started the investigation based on a time of death between 3PM Thursday to 3AM Friday. So police worked with a timeline starting Thursday, the 26th of February 1998, four days before her body was discovered on the Sunday. This was partly driven by the newspaper deliveries sitting outside Kathleen's house on Sunday, which indicated that the paper had not been collected by Kathleen for several days.

When questioned about her movements on Thursday, Helen said that she went to the spiritualist church at Thorn Street, Windsor. This was a place where she regularly visited Clairvoyant Patrick Hanrahan, a 40-year-old invalid pensioner. Patrick also practiced as a psychic at a tea house and shopping centre in the city.

According to Patrick, Helen came to the church at around 2PM.She wanted a psychic reading and showed him a letter that had been signed by Kathleen. Helen claimed the letter had defamed her and told Patrick that she had given the letter to her solicitor. At 4PM they left the church together and Helen drove Patrick to a doctor's appointment.

On the Friday before Kathleen's body was found, Helen showed up at the house of a neighbour of Kathleen, the man you heard from in the first episode by the name of Graham Steven. In his police statement, Graham said Helen arrived at his front door with a letter and a roll of approximately 30-millimetre-wide packing tape and a pair of nail scissors, telling Graham that she had to deliver a letter to Kathleen's house by 4PM. She wanted Graham to witness her delivering it. Together, Helen and Graham walked from Graham's house to Kathleen's house. Helen walked up Kathleen's front stairs while Graham waited on the footpath. Making no attempt to knock, Helen taped the letter to the front door. Graham estimated this occurred at 4:10PM. He observed that Kathleen's car was in the driveway and told the police that meant that Kathleen was likely home at the time since she didn't leave the house without her car, unless it was to take her dogs to the park on the corner. 

The pair then walked back towards Graham's house where Graham's cousin and her husband were waiting on the footpath. The four of them chatted for six minutes, according to Graham, or more like 15 to 20 minutes in Helen's version, before she left in her car.

Helen said she went to the local primary school at 6:15PM. At the Wilston State School she wanted to scope out the classroom to place the secret audio equipment before the Cat Society meeting to be held on Sunday. She found the classroom locked, but hearing noises from the pool, she went up and decided to hang around and watch a swimming carnival that was taking place that Friday night. A BBQ was held at the swimming carnival and after eating Helen said she left shortly before 8PM. This is what she told police she did next. It is not her voice.

HELEN: At about 8PM I drove past Kathleen's house to see if the letter had been removed from the door. The light that night was enough for me to pick up a white object if it was on the door. I was driving my car away from Kedron Brook Road, driving very slowly looking at the door, to see whether the envelope had been taken off. I could not see the envelope, and I presume that it had been collected by Kathleen.

CATHERINE:  Helen also outlined in her police statement who she thought killed Kathleen and how the murder might have gone down.

HELEN: I think that Ed Hall has a bad temper. I think that it was an impulsive thing against Kathleen Marshall. Ed Hall is incredibly intense and he can get stirred up. He is very serious and has no sense of humour. I think that is what has happened that both Rhoda and Ed Hall were around there at Kathleen's house and there has been some sort of dispute about money or possibly about sex, and Ed Hall is incredibly intense and he has just gone berserk. Rhoda has probably been there telling him to stop, but he's out of control.

CATHERINE: Helen also said this in her police statement:

HELEN: I had Ed Hall ring me up one night in July last year at about 10PM and he told me that he had been told that I have been spreading a rumour about him and Kath Marshall whilst Rhoda watches. He wouldn't tell me where he heard the rumour and I told him that it was absolutely ridiculous. This is the type of thing that Kath Marshall would concoct, but there may be something to it. 

CATHERINE:  So what Helen is saying in her police statement is that Cat Society director Ed Hall contacted her and accused her of spreading rumours that Ed and Kathleen were having sex while Ed's wife Rhoda watched. And on one hand she's saying that it's a rumour that Kathleen Marshall would invent, and at the same time she thought it might be true. To my mind, this confirmed that she was likely responsible for initiating, if not spreading the rumours.

ACT IV 

CATHERINE: On March 31st, a month after Kathleen's body was discovered, DNA testing at the John Tonge Centre revealed male blood present at the crime scene. Five samples of blood taken from different places in the surgery yielded male DNA or a mixture of male DNA with the victim's blood. A week after male blood was detected at the DNA lab, police were informed and the course of the investigation abruptly changed.

From then on, DNA testing was focused on all males, directly or indirectly related to Kathleen Marshall. The list of men tested included Cat Society directors, members, and cat carers. They also looked at beneficiaries of Kathleen's will, which is standard police procedure. Some of these beneficiaries were also directors or were hired by the Cat Society through their connection with Kathleen.

Society treasurer and accountant, Grant Hacker, friend and Cat Society lawyer, Greg Vickery, as well as Kathleen's cousin and lawyer, Ian Skinner, were tested and eliminated. In her will, Kathleen left these friends and their children various sums in the thousands of dollars and items of her jewellery.

A friend and sometime flatmate, solicitor Ian Galton, was also asked to supply a DNA sample. Ian and his children were beneficiaries of Kathleen's will. He had turned up along with a friend who was also a solicitor at Kathleen's house in the early hours of Monday, March 2nd, after Kathleen's body had been found, that afternoon. Both of them were drunk. This event was noted in the police logs, and it mentions that they both had histories of drink driving convictions. Ian's DNA was tested and eliminated, and he was not treated as a suspect.

Warren Smith, the man who'd had a running battle with Kathleen for decades and she suspected was a drug dealer, was tested. His DNA did not match the male DNA found at the crime scene. The neighbours across the road, Graham Steven and Justin McKelvey, who you've heard from previously in the podcast, were also tested and eliminated.

Kathleen's housesitter and dog walker, Ronald Gramm, who another neighbour Greg Rowe, thought he saw in Kathleen's car on Friday afternoon, was also tested and eliminated. Police records revealed they tested three other men in connection with Kathleen's murder, Christopher Petri, John Claude Gracia, and Darren Johnson. All were eliminated.

However, one of those men was also a person of interest in another two murders and had a prior interaction with Kathleen that was not in a friendly capacity. We'll be talking about him later in the podcast.

When I said all men directly or indirectly connected to Kathleen were tested, some significant males were not tested. None of Kathleen's immediate family or her ex-husband were tested. Given the acrimony in her family relationships and the manner of her marriage ending, I found that surprising. There is no suggestion that any member of her family or her ex-husband were involved in her murder.

All the known male associates of the person of interest Helen were tested, including the private investigator that Helen had hired to leave the listening device at the Cat Society talk Fest. Helen's father, a retired academic living in Armadale, was tested. Neither man's DNA profile matched the crime scene DNA.

Helen revealed to police that she'd had a past relationship with a Fijian National named Keveli Tavale. Police discovered he had prior convictions for violence. He had returned to Australia on February 15th 1998, a matter of two weeks before Kathleen was found murdered. At the time he was living in Fortitude Valley and was attempting to flee the state under an assumed name when police caught up with him.

When questioned, he would not supply a statement and denied any romantic involvement with or even any knowledge of Helen. Police took a sample for DNA testing after he spat on the ground. They also handed the John Tonge Centre a cigarette butt smoked by him, along with various other items of his. After visiting his home, presumably with a warrant, they collected four items that appeared to be bloodstained, along with his reference blood sample.

His former flatmate, Stuart Hawkins, was also tested by the police. Neither of these men tested by police matched the male DNA profiled at the crime scene.

I wondered if their belongings would've been tested for Kathleen's DNA, or was the DNA scientist only looking for a match at the scene? That's a question we'll save for our DNA experts later in the podcast.

 On May 27th, about two months after Kathleen's body was found, police contacted the Spiritualist Church at Thorne Street Windsor, looking for another male connected to Helen. Detective Geoff Marsh telephoned the church to speak to the clairvoyant Patrick Hanrahan, who held readings there  Helen regularly received psychic readings from Patrick on Matters concerning the Cat Society. 

When Detective Marsh called the church looking for Patrick, the phone was answered by Andrew Fitzherbert. Andrew told the police that Patrick wasn't at the church at that time. The police then went to the spiritualist church in person looking for Patrick when they ran into Andrew. At that stage, Andrew wasn't a person of interest, but he encountered the police on the steps of the church. That's when he was asked if he would provide a blood sample. He asked if it was compulsory, and when he was told it was voluntary, he refused.

When police did speak to Patrick the psychic, on May 28th, he volunteered his blood for a DNA sample. By all accounts, Patrick was not in good health and found the experience with the case distressing. Patrick's DNA didn't match.

Andrew's initial refusal to supply his DNA was a red flag to police detectives. It's safe to say he became a suspect initially because of this refusal. After police had contact with Andrew for the first time in late May, a newspaper article published on the 14th of June about the infighting in the Cat society featured Ruth Bennett as a supporter of Helen. Ruth Bennett, happened to be Andrew's de facto partner.

Helen had known Ruth since she ran Sandra's Tea Room in Stafford with Andrew. Ruth was in a relationship with Andrew while she remained married to Colin Bennett, who also practiced as a psychic. The three of them had worked at Sandra's Tea Room where Helen would come regularly for psychic readings. The tea room closed in 1997. Ruth's husband, Colin, didn't live with Andrew and Ruth, but spent quite a lot of time at their house where Ruth and Andrew also lived with Ruth's son, Timothy Bennett.

Andrew's refusal to supply his DNA sent police down a path to find evidence of his guilt.

Next time on Murder and the Hellcats.

TED: The theory is that Fitzherbert has brought Ruth's cat, pregnant Siamese cat, to Kathleen Marshall. One o'clock Thursday Marshall puts it in the house somewhere. Somehow or other the cat gets out of the cage disappears. Ruth, who's devastated by the loss of her favourite Zilla the cat somehow comes to Kathleen Marshall's place confronts Marshall. Violence erupts.

LAURA-LEIGH: The other comment is with the best rush job in the world, John Tonge Centre did not get results out in 24 hours. So that would be a question mark. Did they already have a sample and they were simply an unofficial sample and they were simply going through the process to get unofficial one so that they could match it, in which case they already had the results?

This episode was written and produced by Catherine McHugh. Theme music by Sasha Louis Leger.