September 29, 2019 • 25 mins
A concerning association: the other reason why person X raises a red flag. Paula's previous meeting with the man in question, and her mission to find him again.
Credits:
Presenter / Investigative Crime Journalist - Paula Doneman
Producer / Writer - Sally Eeles
Sound Design - Marc Wright
TV reporter - Mackenzie Ravn
Graphics - Jason Blandford
With thanks to:
The team at 7 News Brisbane, Annette Caltabiano, Georgia Done, Letitia Wallace, Susan Bush, Charlie Dally-Watkins, Alex Wright Media, Mackay City Council Library.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
In nineteen seventy eight, a young mum dies violently in
a small Queensland town. Suicide or murder. What happened to
Margaret Kirstenfeld? Someone knows? This is Pendulum episode eleven. Pendulum
(00:44):
wishes to advise that some listeners may find parts of
the following podcast episode Confronting It contains details of sexual
violence and trauma Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Listeners are
also advised that reference is made to deceased Indigenous people. However,
name have been withheld or disguised.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I'm Paula Donoman. It intrigues me that three years before
Margaret Kursenfelt's death, Person X was arrested and charged with
the murder of a young woman whose bound and abused
body was found in the Fitzroy River. A woman was
referred to as Rosie. Her arms were trussed behind her back,
(01:29):
with her slip which had been knotted twice behind her shoulders.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
They believed she had been thrown into the river like
this and left to drought.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
He was discharged at trial and walked free.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
That been sored, the duty would necessarily send the accused
not guilty both of murder and manslaughter.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Could it be merely coincidence that he ended up living
just a few doors down from Margaret and happened to
be in her yard the night before her death, wearing
a gum bit health and joining others in a hunt
for a prowler. We've been finding inconsistencies too, such as
(02:09):
this retired Rockhampton detective Clary Williams remembers Person X had
an alibi something to do with the railway on the
night Margaret died. But if you go back to the
official police report of Detective Milton Hassenkam on page seven,
it says.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Although Barkie and were both inside and outside their residence,
and other persons were in close proximity, nothing of an
unusual nature was detected, and no screams or other activity
were heard from the deceased's home.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I have known of Person X for over seventeen years.
I interviewed him in two thousand and three. He was
in his fifties then and had a menacing presence. He
liked to be in control and not give too much away.
All he would reveal about himself was that he lived
(03:08):
on the central Queensland coast for sixteen years, hated Rockhampton
and was quite conservative. He was living near the beach
north of Rockhampton. He also told me he was born
in Toowoomba and when he was young, his mother told
him to go west, so he did. While he was
(03:28):
reluctant to talk about his past, he let me photograph
him in two thousand and three. He went by a
different name from the one that he used in Serena
and Rockhampton in the nineteen seventies. On at least two occasions,
he was convicted and jowled under his new identity. It
(03:51):
wasn't something that he changed officially by deepole. My research
could not find any information about when or how he
changed his name. I also searched electoral roles back to
the early nineteen seventies for the addresses of voters, and
his birth name was not listed anywhere, but I know
(04:12):
the two names definitely belonged to the same man. For
my book on Queensland's first convicted serial killer, Leonard John Fraser,
I obtained several records and documents, including the running sheets
of the different police investigations into his crimes. Two detectives
from the Task Force interviewed Person X in two thousand
(04:35):
and one. Three years later, cold case detectives investigating Margaret's
death also interviewed him. Both of his identities are tagged
in the police running sheets. I knew of his prior
identity and history when I spoke with him, but I
don't think he knew that. I've been looking for again
(05:01):
over the past year. From what I can gather, he's
still alive and would now be almost seventy. He's had
no recent court appearances under either of the names I
have for him. I've also checked current court and state archives.
I tried to see the currenter inquest into Rosy's death,
(05:22):
but have been told it can't be accessed for sixty years.
I've made phone calls and left messages. I even tracked
down one of his landlords, but she could not help.
Some of his associates have either died, could not be located,
or could not be reached for comment. I ended up
(05:43):
traveling to Rockhampton and the central Queensland coast to visit
his old haunts to see if I could find him.
These are some of the notes I made while.
Speaker 6 (05:53):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
We spend a day in Yupoon visiting his old addresses,
including the one where I interviewed him. I felt a
little ridiculous strolling the streets checking the hands and mature
males for crew tattoos. When we visited one of his
old haunts, the Strand Hotel, I came across Tom Jones,
a man who used to work with him. Tell me,
(06:20):
how did you meet in the Fineapples?
Speaker 6 (06:25):
First impressions very rough? Did you know much about him?
Have you become friends?
Speaker 7 (06:32):
Well, you work with a bloke and you you get
the impression.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
You know, how long did you work with him for?
Speaker 7 (06:43):
I would have worked within him about three four years?
Speaker 6 (06:46):
And what did you learn? Like? What did you come
to learn about him?
Speaker 7 (06:50):
He liked drinking and he was drop wouldn't bite anyone.
He just looked he guess looked like one of those people.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Was this someone who you wouldn't want to mess with?
Speaker 7 (07:01):
Oh you didn't bury, you can mess with him? Because
he knew he couldn't handle himself. He looked right, but
he couldn't. He couldn't fight because he he was ugless.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He mentioned me before at the bar that there was
an incident where you yourself had a fight.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 7 (07:18):
That's in the final he just wouldn't do what I
wanted him to do.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
So were you his supervisor?
Speaker 7 (07:23):
Yeah? I was in charge?
Speaker 6 (07:25):
Yeah, okay, And what did you ask him to do?
Speaker 7 (07:28):
I seem to keep up. He was too slow doing
eyes on one side and he's on they're picking up
I think tops or something, and he lagged behind all
the time. And he got that way that we had
Nyman say he went to hit me, and I just
sit in planning. He got in the car and trouble
(07:52):
and went up to the ball okay, and he was
just sold to get back to work. Go back. He's
in joyed you do with.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Your old Did he ever talk about his past, where
he was from, he had ever been married, anything like that.
No glimpses into who he was outside of the plane
of the plantation.
Speaker 6 (08:11):
Do you know anyone he was close to?
Speaker 7 (08:13):
Here? Sure? About five year ago, met to a.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
Funeral and what happened at the funerals?
Speaker 7 (08:21):
He got an argument with a family I used to
live with.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
What happened.
Speaker 7 (08:25):
He's just a person when he's strungle a a.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
He did no one like you, so they'd asker to leave. No.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
I just walked up and told him to get it.
While you came. He wasn't like here, and he had
this shelder and moved a robey, yes away talk. He
never socialized with us, and seeing him mix up with people,
just didn't like. He was bad all the time. He's
(08:54):
a good work. I walked shake that he's a bloody
good work. We all go to work drunk and still
Buddy's work. Not like they do these day. They drink.
I don't know they drink beer. He drank wine, drank
plump drink what they call plump day. He left because
I think he had a lot of money. I think
(09:15):
he had money to people and didn't pay. I shove
my life that he came to guneral. See we worked
for the p and the younger brother of pill and
he went to the funeral. The priest turned around and said,
if anybody's got something they'd like to put on the coffin,
(09:36):
come forward. And he came up, and everyone worked said, oh,
of course, what this whatever? And he was drunk. He
drunk when he went. He was drunk when he was
at the general and he got out and he went
out and he put his hat there and he walked away,
and the sun Bloat turned around and told him he said,
tell him I piss or get out of here. He
(09:57):
went and sat down with his woman or whoever he
was with when we came out the church and we're
all taught now. We walked past one of the brookes.
He says, sank one of the.
Speaker 6 (10:08):
Bloke what derogatory or upsetting one?
Speaker 7 (10:11):
Yeah. Oh, I just walked up and it's just just
said it and said it. Boy, you go that way,
you're getting your carwever you got here, get out of here.
Don't come to the bloody quit You're not welcome to
the way. And you go the way you're going to
get up. I said, you're drunk. He's with somebody. I said,
just shake him away. Just get in the car and
(10:34):
go go back the Robbie, don't come back. I know
we can get that back.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I show him the photo I have a Person X,
the one I took back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 7 (10:44):
He hasn't actually changed much on that photo.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
I'd say that.
Speaker 7 (10:48):
More gray airs man highlight in my first But when
I had that, when you had that, thought, that was it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Tom obviously wasn't a fan of Person X and didn't
know where he ended up. I did follow up on
some of Tom's information and a funeral was held under
the name he mentioned, but it was back in twenty thirteen.
I'm not sure if Tom got his times and events confused.
(11:14):
We left the town with little information to go on,
returning to rock Hampton, where a colleague thought he located
him at an odd shop that it wasn't him. Another
local business owner recognized the name, thought the photo looked familiar,
and gave me directions to where he might be. I
walked up a lane to the place I was told
(11:35):
he sleeps. My head spinning that I may again get
to cross swords with this man, a person who made
the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
That's a pretty unique situation for me as a crime
reporter who's mixed with some sinister types over the past
twenty seven years. I knocked, but no one was home.
(11:57):
While waiting, I continued with my online set and quickly
realized the man everyone thought I was looking for was
not Person X. Once again, he eluded me. There's another
(12:18):
big reason why my radar is triggered in regards to
Person X. You see, he was also a known associate
of Queensland's first convicted serial killer, Leonard John Fraser. This
is how I got to know about him, how I
got to know about Margaret and Rosie. Back in two
(12:43):
thousand and three, I was researching Fraser when I found
out about Person X. He and Fraser were about the
same age and shared similar features, the same strong athletic build,
and a similar menacing persona. They apparently met in jail
(13:04):
in the mid nineteen nineties, although some detectives suspect it
was earlier. One of the reasons Person X was interviewed
by Task Force Alex was because Fraser spoke about him
in conversations secretly recorded by prisoner turned police informant Alan Quinn.
(13:25):
The task force was set up in November two thousand
as a result of Quinn's initial information about a woman
Fraser had murdered, information that had not been made public
and that only the killer would know. Person x's name
came up when Fraser was plotting to blame the murders
(13:46):
he committed on his alter ego Squeaky. Fraser was concerned
police would track down Person X, who Fraser claimed knew
the real identity of Squeaky. In confessions, Fraser described Person
X as an alcoholic who was a bum a krim
(14:07):
trying to go straight, who would do anything for anybody.
Fraser spoke of how he busted Person x's jaw, how
he and Person X looked similar. Fraser also joked at
one point that Person X might be mistaken for Squeaky.
(14:30):
At the time of Rosy and Margaret Kirstenfeldt's deaths, Fraser
was in jail in New South Wales, Deemed an untreatable psychopath.
He was sentenced to twenty one years behind bars in
nineteen seventy four for rapes and sex attacks on women,
but Fraser would walk free on parole just seven years later.
(14:55):
In nineteen eighty one, he moved between Bowen and Mackay.
That's a stretch of about two hundred kilometers in North Queensland,
with Mackay just half an hour's drive from Serena. After
a two month jail stint for assaulting a woman in
September nineteen eighty two, Fraser moved with his parents to
(15:17):
a caravan at Hayes Point, about twenty two kilometers north
of Serena. It was here that he met a woman
and they had a daughter. Fraser got a full time
job as a ganger with Queensland rail It was possibly
the most stable time of his life, but by nineteen
(15:37):
eighty five he was jailed again for rape and released
twelve years later. In nineteen ninety seven. Psychiatrists feared he
would kill They were right. In September two thousand, Fraser
(16:00):
was jailed for life for the vicious nineteen ninety nine
murder and rape of nine year old Kira Steinhardt as
she walked home from school in Rockhampton.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
From the Staba, finger was pointed at forty nine year
old Fraser, known in the community as Lenny the Loon, two.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Weeks later, then three years later, in two thousand and three.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
After a six week trial, the Supreme Court jury sealed
the fate of Leonard Fraser. Regarded as an untreatable sexual
predator of the worst kind.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Fraser received three indefinite jail terms for.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
The murders of nineteen year old Sylvia Benedetti and thirty
six year old Beverly Lego, and the manslaughter of thirty
nine year old Julie Turner. All three vanished from Rockhampton
between December nineteen ninety eight and April nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Fraser also admitted murdering fourteen year old Natasha Ryan. In
nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Police had alleged Natasha was murdered by lee At Fraser,
the killer of Kirosteinehart. This afternoon, Fraser sat emotionless in
the dog as the Crown Prosecutor told a packed court,
Natasha Ryan is alive.
Speaker 8 (17:10):
The police received information yesterday. They immediately got onto it
and searched a house in Rockhampton during the course of
this morning and found Natasha in the house.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
That house belonged to Natasha's boyfriend, Scott Black.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Intriguingly, Natasha looks like another Rockhampton woman who went missing
years earlier, twenty one year old Michelle Lewis. The following
is from an article I wrote for The Courier Mail
the day after Fraser died from a heart attack on
January the first two thousand and seven secrets taken to grave,
(17:53):
some detectives remained convinced that Fraser had a hand in
the murder of Rockhampton woman Michelle carl Lewis X, who
disappeared on the night of January fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
after leaving a friend's home in North Rockhampton. Fraser, who
was in secure custody at a Rockampton jowl at the time,
was known to frequent the area and had buried his
(18:15):
pet dog, which he killed after having sex with it
on the road where she vanished. Taskforce Alex investigated the
claims but could not find enough evidence. There are names
of other women connected with Fraser two. This is from
the same article. Fraser claimed he murdered a hitchhiker by
(18:38):
the name of Sandy Lawrence in an abandoned crocodile zoo
in North Queensland in nineteen eighty two. Fraser also spoke
of the murder of his seventeen year old Aboriginal girlfriend,
claiming he had her throat cut in the back streets
of King's Cross in the early nineteen seventies. The taskwors
recorded Fraser on a listening device saying he'd murdered two
(18:59):
females hitchhikers in separate incidents in the Port Macquarie area
in New South Wales in the nineteen seventies. He said
he had returned to the area to find their gliddle
remains still intact. So that's Leonard Fraser. Now back to
(19:19):
Person X. If he did meet Fraser in jail in
the nineteen nineties. As he says, then, Fraser was not
yet known as a serial killer. However, he was still
a brutal and sadistic rapist who spent much of his
adult life in jail. I questioned Person X about this
(19:40):
when I interviewed him in August two thousand and three.
I have a partial tape recording, but I do have
the full transcript. The following is a reenactment. Did he
tell you what he was in for?
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Nuh?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Did he shy away from it?
Speaker 9 (19:55):
Everyone don't talk like that here. You know you're hear
it on the grapevine sooner or later?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
How did he inter with the other prisoners?
Speaker 9 (20:01):
He'd been in here for bloody longer than I had
hadn't he? So he just knew them. I think he
kept out of a few of their aids, you know,
a few of the heavies.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I had the feeling as in some police Person X
knew more about Fraser than he wanted to let on.
Speaker 9 (20:16):
When detectives come up from Brisbane, they sounded like they
were trying to implicate me with him.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They were trying to implicate you with Lenny, and.
Speaker 9 (20:24):
Sounded like it, Why was that what you were saying,
before you know what he did this time of night,
that time of night. Rah rah, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Do you think the cops were trying to put you
in the same well.
Speaker 9 (20:36):
They wanted to check me bloody work times and all that.
Can we go out and check your book work out
there when you were at work and when you're not,
you know, go for it. Don't worry me. I know
what I was doing, so they did. That's why I'm
sitting here and he's down there.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Then Person X goes on to talk about Squeaky, this
so called alter ego of Lenny Fraser.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
Like the detective said to me, do you know a
fellow called Squeaky around here? Some fella nicknamed Squeaky and
he reckoned it might be Fraser's alter ego.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
You know, have you ever spent any time, by any chance,
in New South Wales? Did you at all in the
Gosford Boy's home?
Speaker 9 (21:15):
That's me, yes, No, why was that?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I tell him I am trying to find anyone who
had spent time with Fraser in the Gosford Boy's Home.
But I also wanted to know was Fraser's concopted squeaky
alter ego? Someone he was incarcerated with in Gosford. I
was intrigued as to where the Person X had in
any way been used by Fraser in his creation of Squeaky.
(21:42):
Fraser had also used another criminal associate, again with similar
physical features, and build to him to create Squeaky's character.
Person X had hinted to police that he and Fraser
were associated in the nineteen seventies, which prompted detectives who
also return to Person X and speak to him about
(22:03):
his knowledge of the unsolved murder of another Queensland woman.
At one point, Person X was a person of interest
in this woman's murder, but now another man is a suspect.
Person x's connection with Fraser only heightens the suspicions of
then Assistant Commissioner Peters. Wendell's the detective who initiated the
(22:26):
re examination of Margaret Kirstenfeldt's death, so it was no
surprise Cold Case detectives investigating her death interviewed Person X
in two thousand and four. As we said in episode nine,
he denied any involvement in Margaret's death, but he remembered
she lived alone.
Speaker 9 (22:45):
Means nothing to me, although I have an idea she
lived on the other side of the Joneses.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Had small children and had been troubled by a prowler.
Speaker 9 (22:53):
I think I met her because a prowler was in
the area or is knocking on her door.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Next time on Pendulum, what it was like to live
in the same house as person xs up and knocks
me to the ground and starts booting me in the guts.
Speaker 9 (23:11):
He used to do things he shouldn't touch us where
he shouldn't touch us.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
We track down the children of his former de facto
wife and uncover horrific memories of abuse. Plus, we're back
in Serena and more people from the past are speaking out.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
She said, I'm going to have a slipping tablet a
glass of wine and hit the.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Hay and Margaret's Little Black Book? Did it exist? And
if so, what did it contain? If you have information
(24:12):
about the Margaret Kirstenfeld case, please let us know. Email
us at Pendulum podcast at gmail dot com or go
to seven News dot com dot AU. Forward Slash Pendulum
(24:34):
presenter and executive producer Paula Donovan, writer and producer Sally Eels,
sound design Mark Wright Graphics, Jason Blandford, producer Annette caltabiano.
Transcripts Charlie Dally Watkins. Our theme music is the Clock
(24:56):
Is Ticking by Dark Org Music. See our show notes
for full music credits. With thanks to seven Years Brisbane
In nineteen seventy eight, a young mum dies violently in
a small Queensland town. Suicide or murder. What happened to
Margaret Kirstenfeld? Someone knows? This is Pendulum episode eleven. Pendulum
(00:44):
wishes to advise that some listeners may find parts of
the following podcast episode Confronting It contains details of sexual
violence and trauma Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. Listeners are
also advised that reference is made to deceased Indigenous people. However,
name have been withheld or disguised.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I'm Paula Donoman. It intrigues me that three years before
Margaret Kursenfelt's death, Person X was arrested and charged with
the murder of a young woman whose bound and abused
body was found in the Fitzroy River. A woman was
referred to as Rosie. Her arms were trussed behind her back,
(01:29):
with her slip which had been knotted twice behind her shoulders.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
They believed she had been thrown into the river like
this and left to drought.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
He was discharged at trial and walked free.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
That been sored, the duty would necessarily send the accused
not guilty both of murder and manslaughter.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Could it be merely coincidence that he ended up living
just a few doors down from Margaret and happened to
be in her yard the night before her death, wearing
a gum bit health and joining others in a hunt
for a prowler. We've been finding inconsistencies too, such as
(02:09):
this retired Rockhampton detective Clary Williams remembers Person X had
an alibi something to do with the railway on the
night Margaret died. But if you go back to the
official police report of Detective Milton Hassenkam on page seven,
it says.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Although Barkie and were both inside and outside their residence,
and other persons were in close proximity, nothing of an
unusual nature was detected, and no screams or other activity
were heard from the deceased's home.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I have known of Person X for over seventeen years.
I interviewed him in two thousand and three. He was
in his fifties then and had a menacing presence. He
liked to be in control and not give too much away.
All he would reveal about himself was that he lived
(03:08):
on the central Queensland coast for sixteen years, hated Rockhampton
and was quite conservative. He was living near the beach
north of Rockhampton. He also told me he was born
in Toowoomba and when he was young, his mother told
him to go west, so he did. While he was
(03:28):
reluctant to talk about his past, he let me photograph
him in two thousand and three. He went by a
different name from the one that he used in Serena
and Rockhampton in the nineteen seventies. On at least two occasions,
he was convicted and jowled under his new identity. It
(03:51):
wasn't something that he changed officially by deepole. My research
could not find any information about when or how he
changed his name. I also searched electoral roles back to
the early nineteen seventies for the addresses of voters, and
his birth name was not listed anywhere, but I know
(04:12):
the two names definitely belonged to the same man. For
my book on Queensland's first convicted serial killer, Leonard John Fraser,
I obtained several records and documents, including the running sheets
of the different police investigations into his crimes. Two detectives
from the Task Force interviewed Person X in two thousand
(04:35):
and one. Three years later, cold case detectives investigating Margaret's
death also interviewed him. Both of his identities are tagged
in the police running sheets. I knew of his prior
identity and history when I spoke with him, but I
don't think he knew that. I've been looking for again
(05:01):
over the past year. From what I can gather, he's
still alive and would now be almost seventy. He's had
no recent court appearances under either of the names I
have for him. I've also checked current court and state archives.
I tried to see the currenter inquest into Rosy's death,
(05:22):
but have been told it can't be accessed for sixty years.
I've made phone calls and left messages. I even tracked
down one of his landlords, but she could not help.
Some of his associates have either died, could not be located,
or could not be reached for comment. I ended up
(05:43):
traveling to Rockhampton and the central Queensland coast to visit
his old haunts to see if I could find him.
These are some of the notes I made while.
Speaker 6 (05:53):
I was there.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
We spend a day in Yupoon visiting his old addresses,
including the one where I interviewed him. I felt a
little ridiculous strolling the streets checking the hands and mature
males for crew tattoos. When we visited one of his
old haunts, the Strand Hotel, I came across Tom Jones,
a man who used to work with him. Tell me,
(06:20):
how did you meet in the Fineapples?
Speaker 6 (06:25):
First impressions very rough? Did you know much about him?
Have you become friends?
Speaker 7 (06:32):
Well, you work with a bloke and you you get
the impression.
Speaker 6 (06:38):
You know, how long did you work with him for?
Speaker 7 (06:43):
I would have worked within him about three four years?
Speaker 6 (06:46):
And what did you learn? Like? What did you come
to learn about him?
Speaker 7 (06:50):
He liked drinking and he was drop wouldn't bite anyone.
He just looked he guess looked like one of those people.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Was this someone who you wouldn't want to mess with?
Speaker 7 (07:01):
Oh you didn't bury, you can mess with him? Because
he knew he couldn't handle himself. He looked right, but
he couldn't. He couldn't fight because he he was ugless.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
He mentioned me before at the bar that there was
an incident where you yourself had a fight.
Speaker 6 (07:17):
Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 7 (07:18):
That's in the final he just wouldn't do what I
wanted him to do.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
So were you his supervisor?
Speaker 7 (07:23):
Yeah? I was in charge?
Speaker 6 (07:25):
Yeah, okay, And what did you ask him to do?
Speaker 7 (07:28):
I seem to keep up. He was too slow doing
eyes on one side and he's on they're picking up
I think tops or something, and he lagged behind all
the time. And he got that way that we had
Nyman say he went to hit me, and I just
sit in planning. He got in the car and trouble
(07:52):
and went up to the ball okay, and he was
just sold to get back to work. Go back. He's
in joyed you do with.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Your old Did he ever talk about his past, where
he was from, he had ever been married, anything like that.
No glimpses into who he was outside of the plane
of the plantation.
Speaker 6 (08:11):
Do you know anyone he was close to?
Speaker 7 (08:13):
Here? Sure? About five year ago, met to a.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
Funeral and what happened at the funerals?
Speaker 7 (08:21):
He got an argument with a family I used to
live with.
Speaker 6 (08:25):
What happened.
Speaker 7 (08:25):
He's just a person when he's strungle a a.
Speaker 6 (08:29):
He did no one like you, so they'd asker to leave. No.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
I just walked up and told him to get it.
While you came. He wasn't like here, and he had
this shelder and moved a robey, yes away talk. He
never socialized with us, and seeing him mix up with people,
just didn't like. He was bad all the time. He's
(08:54):
a good work. I walked shake that he's a bloody
good work. We all go to work drunk and still
Buddy's work. Not like they do these day. They drink.
I don't know they drink beer. He drank wine, drank
plump drink what they call plump day. He left because
I think he had a lot of money. I think
(09:15):
he had money to people and didn't pay. I shove
my life that he came to guneral. See we worked
for the p and the younger brother of pill and
he went to the funeral. The priest turned around and said,
if anybody's got something they'd like to put on the coffin,
(09:36):
come forward. And he came up, and everyone worked said, oh,
of course, what this whatever? And he was drunk. He
drunk when he went. He was drunk when he was
at the general and he got out and he went
out and he put his hat there and he walked away,
and the sun Bloat turned around and told him he said,
tell him I piss or get out of here. He
(09:57):
went and sat down with his woman or whoever he
was with when we came out the church and we're
all taught now. We walked past one of the brookes.
He says, sank one of the.
Speaker 6 (10:08):
Bloke what derogatory or upsetting one?
Speaker 7 (10:11):
Yeah. Oh, I just walked up and it's just just
said it and said it. Boy, you go that way,
you're getting your carwever you got here, get out of here.
Don't come to the bloody quit You're not welcome to
the way. And you go the way you're going to
get up. I said, you're drunk. He's with somebody. I said,
just shake him away. Just get in the car and
(10:34):
go go back the Robbie, don't come back. I know
we can get that back.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
I show him the photo I have a Person X,
the one I took back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 7 (10:44):
He hasn't actually changed much on that photo.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
I'd say that.
Speaker 7 (10:48):
More gray airs man highlight in my first But when
I had that, when you had that, thought, that was it.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Tom obviously wasn't a fan of Person X and didn't
know where he ended up. I did follow up on
some of Tom's information and a funeral was held under
the name he mentioned, but it was back in twenty thirteen.
I'm not sure if Tom got his times and events confused.
(11:14):
We left the town with little information to go on,
returning to rock Hampton, where a colleague thought he located
him at an odd shop that it wasn't him. Another
local business owner recognized the name, thought the photo looked familiar,
and gave me directions to where he might be. I
walked up a lane to the place I was told
(11:35):
he sleeps. My head spinning that I may again get
to cross swords with this man, a person who made
the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
That's a pretty unique situation for me as a crime
reporter who's mixed with some sinister types over the past
twenty seven years. I knocked, but no one was home.
(11:57):
While waiting, I continued with my online set and quickly
realized the man everyone thought I was looking for was
not Person X. Once again, he eluded me. There's another
(12:18):
big reason why my radar is triggered in regards to
Person X. You see, he was also a known associate
of Queensland's first convicted serial killer, Leonard John Fraser. This
is how I got to know about him, how I
got to know about Margaret and Rosie. Back in two
(12:43):
thousand and three, I was researching Fraser when I found
out about Person X. He and Fraser were about the
same age and shared similar features, the same strong athletic build,
and a similar menacing persona. They apparently met in jail
(13:04):
in the mid nineteen nineties, although some detectives suspect it
was earlier. One of the reasons Person X was interviewed
by Task Force Alex was because Fraser spoke about him
in conversations secretly recorded by prisoner turned police informant Alan Quinn.
(13:25):
The task force was set up in November two thousand
as a result of Quinn's initial information about a woman
Fraser had murdered, information that had not been made public
and that only the killer would know. Person x's name
came up when Fraser was plotting to blame the murders
(13:46):
he committed on his alter ego Squeaky. Fraser was concerned
police would track down Person X, who Fraser claimed knew
the real identity of Squeaky. In confessions, Fraser described Person
X as an alcoholic who was a bum a krim
(14:07):
trying to go straight, who would do anything for anybody.
Fraser spoke of how he busted Person x's jaw, how
he and Person X looked similar. Fraser also joked at
one point that Person X might be mistaken for Squeaky.
(14:30):
At the time of Rosy and Margaret Kirstenfeldt's deaths, Fraser
was in jail in New South Wales, Deemed an untreatable psychopath.
He was sentenced to twenty one years behind bars in
nineteen seventy four for rapes and sex attacks on women,
but Fraser would walk free on parole just seven years later.
(14:55):
In nineteen eighty one, he moved between Bowen and Mackay.
That's a stretch of about two hundred kilometers in North Queensland,
with Mackay just half an hour's drive from Serena. After
a two month jail stint for assaulting a woman in
September nineteen eighty two, Fraser moved with his parents to
(15:17):
a caravan at Hayes Point, about twenty two kilometers north
of Serena. It was here that he met a woman
and they had a daughter. Fraser got a full time
job as a ganger with Queensland rail It was possibly
the most stable time of his life, but by nineteen
(15:37):
eighty five he was jailed again for rape and released
twelve years later. In nineteen ninety seven. Psychiatrists feared he
would kill They were right. In September two thousand, Fraser
(16:00):
was jailed for life for the vicious nineteen ninety nine
murder and rape of nine year old Kira Steinhardt as
she walked home from school in Rockhampton.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
From the Staba, finger was pointed at forty nine year
old Fraser, known in the community as Lenny the Loon, two.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Weeks later, then three years later, in two thousand and three.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
After a six week trial, the Supreme Court jury sealed
the fate of Leonard Fraser. Regarded as an untreatable sexual
predator of the worst kind.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Fraser received three indefinite jail terms for.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
The murders of nineteen year old Sylvia Benedetti and thirty
six year old Beverly Lego, and the manslaughter of thirty
nine year old Julie Turner. All three vanished from Rockhampton
between December nineteen ninety eight and April nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Fraser also admitted murdering fourteen year old Natasha Ryan. In
nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Police had alleged Natasha was murdered by lee At Fraser,
the killer of Kirosteinehart. This afternoon, Fraser sat emotionless in
the dog as the Crown Prosecutor told a packed court,
Natasha Ryan is alive.
Speaker 8 (17:10):
The police received information yesterday. They immediately got onto it
and searched a house in Rockhampton during the course of
this morning and found Natasha in the house.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
That house belonged to Natasha's boyfriend, Scott Black.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Intriguingly, Natasha looks like another Rockhampton woman who went missing
years earlier, twenty one year old Michelle Lewis. The following
is from an article I wrote for The Courier Mail
the day after Fraser died from a heart attack on
January the first two thousand and seven secrets taken to grave,
(17:53):
some detectives remained convinced that Fraser had a hand in
the murder of Rockhampton woman Michelle carl Lewis X, who
disappeared on the night of January fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
after leaving a friend's home in North Rockhampton. Fraser, who
was in secure custody at a Rockampton jowl at the time,
was known to frequent the area and had buried his
(18:15):
pet dog, which he killed after having sex with it
on the road where she vanished. Taskforce Alex investigated the
claims but could not find enough evidence. There are names
of other women connected with Fraser two. This is from
the same article. Fraser claimed he murdered a hitchhiker by
(18:38):
the name of Sandy Lawrence in an abandoned crocodile zoo
in North Queensland in nineteen eighty two. Fraser also spoke
of the murder of his seventeen year old Aboriginal girlfriend,
claiming he had her throat cut in the back streets
of King's Cross in the early nineteen seventies. The taskwors
recorded Fraser on a listening device saying he'd murdered two
(18:59):
females hitchhikers in separate incidents in the Port Macquarie area
in New South Wales in the nineteen seventies. He said
he had returned to the area to find their gliddle
remains still intact. So that's Leonard Fraser. Now back to
(19:19):
Person X. If he did meet Fraser in jail in
the nineteen nineties. As he says, then, Fraser was not
yet known as a serial killer. However, he was still
a brutal and sadistic rapist who spent much of his
adult life in jail. I questioned Person X about this
(19:40):
when I interviewed him in August two thousand and three.
I have a partial tape recording, but I do have
the full transcript. The following is a reenactment. Did he
tell you what he was in for?
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Nuh?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Did he shy away from it?
Speaker 9 (19:55):
Everyone don't talk like that here. You know you're hear
it on the grapevine sooner or later?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
How did he inter with the other prisoners?
Speaker 9 (20:01):
He'd been in here for bloody longer than I had
hadn't he? So he just knew them. I think he
kept out of a few of their aids, you know,
a few of the heavies.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I had the feeling as in some police Person X
knew more about Fraser than he wanted to let on.
Speaker 9 (20:16):
When detectives come up from Brisbane, they sounded like they
were trying to implicate me with him.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
They were trying to implicate you with Lenny, and.
Speaker 9 (20:24):
Sounded like it, Why was that what you were saying,
before you know what he did this time of night,
that time of night. Rah rah, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Do you think the cops were trying to put you
in the same well.
Speaker 9 (20:36):
They wanted to check me bloody work times and all that.
Can we go out and check your book work out
there when you were at work and when you're not,
you know, go for it. Don't worry me. I know
what I was doing, so they did. That's why I'm
sitting here and he's down there.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Then Person X goes on to talk about Squeaky, this
so called alter ego of Lenny Fraser.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
Like the detective said to me, do you know a
fellow called Squeaky around here? Some fella nicknamed Squeaky and
he reckoned it might be Fraser's alter ego.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
You know, have you ever spent any time, by any chance,
in New South Wales? Did you at all in the
Gosford Boy's home?
Speaker 9 (21:15):
That's me, yes, No, why was that?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
I tell him I am trying to find anyone who
had spent time with Fraser in the Gosford Boy's Home.
But I also wanted to know was Fraser's concopted squeaky
alter ego? Someone he was incarcerated with in Gosford. I
was intrigued as to where the Person X had in
any way been used by Fraser in his creation of Squeaky.
(21:42):
Fraser had also used another criminal associate, again with similar
physical features, and build to him to create Squeaky's character.
Person X had hinted to police that he and Fraser
were associated in the nineteen seventies, which prompted detectives who
also return to Person X and speak to him about
(22:03):
his knowledge of the unsolved murder of another Queensland woman.
At one point, Person X was a person of interest
in this woman's murder, but now another man is a suspect.
Person x's connection with Fraser only heightens the suspicions of
then Assistant Commissioner Peters. Wendell's the detective who initiated the
(22:26):
re examination of Margaret Kirstenfeldt's death, so it was no
surprise Cold Case detectives investigating her death interviewed Person X
in two thousand and four. As we said in episode nine,
he denied any involvement in Margaret's death, but he remembered
she lived alone.
Speaker 9 (22:45):
Means nothing to me, although I have an idea she
lived on the other side of the Joneses.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Had small children and had been troubled by a prowler.
Speaker 9 (22:53):
I think I met her because a prowler was in
the area or is knocking on her door.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Next time on Pendulum, what it was like to live
in the same house as person xs up and knocks
me to the ground and starts booting me in the guts.
Speaker 9 (23:11):
He used to do things he shouldn't touch us where
he shouldn't touch us.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
We track down the children of his former de facto
wife and uncover horrific memories of abuse. Plus, we're back
in Serena and more people from the past are speaking out.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
She said, I'm going to have a slipping tablet a
glass of wine and hit the.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Hay and Margaret's Little Black Book? Did it exist? And
if so, what did it contain? If you have information
(24:12):
about the Margaret Kirstenfeld case, please let us know. Email
us at Pendulum podcast at gmail dot com or go
to seven News dot com dot AU. Forward Slash Pendulum
(24:34):
presenter and executive producer Paula Donovan, writer and producer Sally Eels,
sound design Mark Wright Graphics, Jason Blandford, producer Annette caltabiano.
Transcripts Charlie Dally Watkins. Our theme music is the Clock
(24:56):
Is Ticking by Dark Org Music. See our show notes
for full music credits. With thanks to seven Years Brisbane
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