who is a close family friend. She was concerned because she hadn’t heard from Fergus and Viv, and she couldn’t get them on the phone. She said she had the children with her. As she had to go to work, she said she’d put the school-aged child on the bus with her two boys, and I told her not to worry, I would come to pick up the other child.’
He collected the younger boy, Hugh, then drove past Fergus’ house and noticed Vivienne’s Holden sedan was still in the driveway. ‘I got home and my wife Pam rang my sister Marnie, and Fergus answered the phone. He seemed really distressed and didn’t want to talk to us, so he handed the phone to Marnie’s husband, Ian. Ian diplomatically told Pam that something had happened and he would talk to us later. Pam insisted that we know what had happened because we had their child with us.
‘Fergus then got back on the phone and told Pam that there had been a row the night before and he had been injured and had to be treated at the hospital. We gathered that the row had been of a domestic nature and it had involved Beth Barnard. But other than that, Fergus was pretty uncommunicative.’
Don explained that Ian had telephoned a short time later and told him that Fergus’ Land Cruiser was missing. Fergus had asked Ian and Don to drive to Beth’s house to tell her what had happened. Don said that he had driven to Ian’s house to pick up his brother-in-law. The two had then driven to Fergus’ house, walked around it and called out to Vivienne but she was nowhere to be found.
Then they drove to Beth’s house.
Don described what happened next. ‘We drove up the driveway and saw Beth’s farm ute and her own car parked in their usual spots. I walked to the back door and knocked but there was no answer. The porch light was on and I saw that the door was open about six inches. I called out but there was no answer.
‘I took a step inside and saw the door to my left. Just beyond the door, I saw Beth lying there on the floor covered with a quilt. Her face was almost covered but I recognised her and she appeared to be dead.
‘I yelled out to Ian: “Come here quick, the worst has happened.” We immediately left to report what we’d found at the Cowes police station. That’s really all I can tell you.’
Don Cameron signed his statement at 12.50pm.
Like Senior Constable Peter McHenry earlier, Jack McFayden was struck by Don Cameron’s demeanour. He would later say, ‘I’ve never seen a bunch of people so cool, calm and collected. You’d think these blokes discovered bodies every day of their lives.’
Jack McFayden wanted to speak to the woman who had collected the Cameron children in the middle of the night. Was she the last person to speak to Vivienne Cameron? Was there a link between Vivienne organising for the children to be picked up at 3am, and the neighbours hearing a car driving in Beth’s street at 3.30am? Hoping she could shed some light on matters, the detective tracked Robyn Dixon down at work.
According to Robyn, it was her husband, John, who had answered the phone in the middle of the night. Vivienne said she was calling from the hospital, and asked John to go and get her children and take them home for the night. Robyn explained that she and her husband had driven to the Cameron’s house where they woke the children and took them home.
Robyn noticed that Vivienne’s Holden sedan was in the garage, and wondered if perhaps Fergus and Viv had gone to the hospital in an ambulance. Inside the house, the Dixons saw Vivienne’s handbag and thought she must have left in a hurry.
That morning, when Robyn had to go to work, she had tried to call Viv and got no answer. When she tried to ring Don Cameron, it took her 15 minutes to get through because their line was engaged. When she finally did, Don said he knew nothing about what had gone on the night before. He agreed to collect Hugh so that Robyn could go to work. The older child was sent to school.
McFayden wondered who Donald Cameron or his wife, Pam, had been speaking to for the 15 minutes that morning when Robyn Dixon was trying to call them.
For most of Tuesday 23 September, both Vivienne Cameron and the family’s Land Cruiser were missing. In the afternoon, Don Cameron’s wife, Pam, discovered the Land Cruiser on her way home from work.
She had heard that Beth had been murdered and that Viv and the Land Cruiser was missing, and when she drove home across the Phillip Island bridge, she saw the vehicle parked on a wide nature strip adjoining a playground on the Phillip Island end of the bridge.
Detectives, McFayden, O’Connor and Hunter headed to Forrest Avenue, Newhaven, to find the vehicle parked and locked. Later Pam would tell them that she had found it unlocked and she had taken the keys out of the ignition and gathered Vivienne’s purse from the seat, then locked it.
If the car had been parked there all day, that meant that despite knowing it was missing, all of the detectives, local and city, had driven past it on their way to the Island.
There was one piece of evidence that McFayden noted. Robyn Dixon said she saw Vivienne’s handbag at the house when she picked up the children, meaning that Viv didn’t take it with her when she left the house in the middle of the night. If it was found in the Land Cruiser, did that mean that Vivienne drove to kill Beth, then returned home for her handbag only to dump the car with her handbag in it?
While the detectives checked the Land Cruiser, they wondered about the fate of Vivienne Cameron. The car was parked several hundred metres from the start of the bridge.
McFayden immediately searched the bridge for any signs that Vivienne could have jumped off it. He walked slowly along both sides looking for any break in the salty film on the guard rail. He found nothing to suggest that Viv might have jumped the 10 metres into the icy water below.
And, while the car was parked within a short walk to the bridge, it was also only metres from a bus stop. Had Vivienne caught a bus off the Island?
Later, a local baker would give a statement that he had seen a vehicle parked on the nature strip at 5am. Even though the baker wrote in his statement: I cannot say what type of car it was or colour, all I can say is that there was a car parked there.
This vague declaration would form the basis of a very specific Coronial finding. But that would come later.
The detectives spoke to a friend of Beth’s, called Maree, who had spent several hours with Beth on the day she died. They had met at Maree’s house and Beth was still feeling the effects of the flu and had antibiotics in her handbag. Part of their conversation that afternoon was about Beth’s relationship with Fergus. He was coming over that evening and Beth said she planned to give Fergus an ultimatum; she was tired of having a relationship with a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife. Beth had been deeply in love with Fergus and had always believed the Cameron marriage was over in all but name before her affair with Fergus had begun.
According to Maree, Beth had every intention of telling Fergus that he would have to resolve his marital difficulties – one way or another. Beth saw no future in their relationship continuing with the way things were.
Maree knew how hard the situation had been for Beth.
