– not if she was talking to you on the phone about... what was it?’
‘Patchwork patterns,’ said Glenda, lost in thought.
‘Let’s face it,’ said Pam, ‘nobody’s going to discuss patchwork if they’ve just killed somebody. Are they?’
‘Oh my God, Pam! I can’t believe this.’
Once off the phone to Pam, Glenda called the police immediately. She gave a statement to Jack McFayden, and then later to the Homicide detectives who arrived to double-check her story. Glenda assured the police officers that it was Vivienne on the phone, but she felt their doubt. They tried to suggest that it might have been Monday when she called, not Tuesday. But Glenda was certain. And Pam was a witness. Pam wasn’t even there on the Monday morning.
Glenda’s information was explosive. Was Vivienne alive at 10am? Was she still alive now? And, more importantly, if there were voices in the background, who else knew where she was? While Glenda assumed it was Vivienne’s children in the background, it couldn’t have been her older child as he had been taken to school. The younger one was picked up by Don Cameron on Tuesday morning.
Detective O’Connor had spoken briefly to Fergus Cameron before giving time to regain his composure. It was also his decision that Jack McFayden should conduct the formal interview on Thursday – two days after Beth’s murder and Vivienne’s disappearance.
When Jack McFayden visited him to take his statement, he found Fergus propped up in bed in his pyjamas, saying that he was feeling the after-effects of his injuries. He had been staying with his sister, Marnie, and her husband, Ian, since Monday night.
Despite losing both his wife and his girlfriend, Fergus was calm and able to give his account of what happened.
He and Vivienne had been married 10 years, he explained, and had two children. They had been having marital difficulties, compounded by Fergus’ affair with Beth Barnard. He had met Beth when they both worked at the Penguin Parade and he had then employed her as a farmhand. It wasn’t long before the two began having an affair that had lasted until her death.
Fergus described his strained relationship with his wife. He said Vivienne had noticed he gave Beth favoured treatment. He told the detective that several times in their relationship, he and Beth had decided to stop seeing each other, but their resolutions had never lasted.
In December of 1985, Vivienne had caught Fergus in the shearing shed with his arm around Beth. That, according to Fergus, was the first time his wife had accused him of having an affair. He told her that he and Beth were just good mates. Nonetheless, Beth had been shaken by the confrontation, and quit working at the Cameron farm.
A short while after that, Fergus explained that he’d come home in the early hours of the morning from a Christmas party at Beth’s. He said that Vivienne had attacked him, punching him in the face and back.
Despite Beth’s resolve to leave the Penguin Parade job and the job at the Cameron farm, Fergus said that the pull of their relationship was stronger and she was soon back working at both jobs. He said that Vivienne had questioned the wisdom of having Beth working on the farm.
The tension between Vivienne and Fergus culminated in a fight around shearing time.
‘We had all been drinking, including myself, and when we’d gone up to the house, Vivienne became violent with me over Beth. She said that Beth was a scheming little bitch and in general criticising her to the point of hatred. She was very disparaging as to my admiration for Beth, but did not to my knowledge accuse me of having an affair with her but I think she assumed I was.
‘During this argument, she punched me half a dozen to a dozen times around the face, arms and chest and at that time I was sitting on a stool in the back porch. I feel that she had every right to do what she was doing, not because of my association with Beth but because she deserved some answers and I wasn’t giving her any.
Although Vivienne was drinking on this occasion, she wasn’t drunk but probably had enough to drink to say what she had wanted to say for a long while.’
McFayden reflected that this was the second time in several hours that Fergus had spoken about his wife’s allegedly violent nature. He wondered too, how Fergus could have sat on that stool without falling off or protecting himself, while his wife beat him about the head.
From about May 1986, Fergus told McFayden he had become less concerned about protecting his family. Vivienne and Fergus had discussed their marriage and its problems and Vivienne had asked him to see a marriage counsellor. Fergus had told her that he didn’t see what good it would do.
Around this time, Fergus explained, Vivienne had received a $5000 inheritance and asked Fergus to quit his job at the Penguin Parade and spend more time with her and the children. Fergus said that he was ‘totally opposed’ to quitting his part-time job, knowing it would mean that he’d see less of Beth.
At this point Fergus interrupted himself and said, ‘I forgot to include earlier, I first told her [Beth] I loved her in December 1985 and she was immediately reciprocal.’ McFayden duly recorded this fact.
According to Fergus, Beth was willing to wait until the end of the year to see what happened with his marriage. However, Fergus was anticipating that he would be leaving Vivienne and the children to live on another part of the Island. He wouldn’t contemplate living with Beth because, he said, it would not be fair on her family.
‘It had got to the point that if I had any sexual relations with Vivienne it would have been an enormous feeling of guilt towards Beth. Although Vivienne didn’t say anything, I could tell that she felt rejected and I tried to compensate by doing all the things a loving husband should do, such as making her comfortable and making her wanted and needed in other ways and I used to confer with her in everything but our own personal relationship.’
About seven weeks before Beth’s murder, on a Monday morning, Fergus recalled, he was late picking up his younger son to take him to kindergarten. Fergus said Vivienne was furious and had abused him for spending his time with Beth. ‘She said she had had enough.’
He recalled that Vivienne had, once again, asked him to get help to save the marriage, to which he had replied: ‘Don’t be stupid’. Driving her own car, Vivienne had then followed Fergus to the Phillip Island Race Track where they had another heated discussion.
Asked by McFayden what it was about, Fergus said, ‘I have no idea’.
McFayden thought it odd that, while Fergus could remember the time and date of the argument, he couldn’t remember what was said.
Now that he had the background, McFayden needed Fergus’ account of the night Beth died. Fergus said Beth had been sick with the flu and feeling down, but on Monday night, she seemed more cheerful. She had met him at the back door after he’d finished his shift at 8pm at the Penguin Parade. Fergus commented on the fact that the security door wasn’t locked when he got there. ‘I told her to be more security conscious and keep the door locked.’
Fergus said that he and Beth had discussed their relationship optimistically. He said that he left around 9.05pm and said that while they had ‘kissed and cuddled’ each other, they hadn’t made love. He admitted having sex with her on the Sunday night, but not the Monday night.
Fergus left
