September 8, 2019 • 30 mins
Margaret's case is re-opened as a murder, 30 years after a suicide finding. We take a road trip to Sarina, visiting the home where she died and the places she knew and visited. Why it's never too late to identify a killer.
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, Alex Wright Media, Mackay City Council Library.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Forty years ago, a young mum dies violently in a
small Queensland town. Suicide or murder? What happened to Margaret Kirstenfeld?
Someone knows? This is Pendulum Episode eight.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I'm Paula Donovan. On a Sunday afternoon in two thousand
and five, Buntie Willard was enjoying a catch up phone
call with her daughter deb when there was a knock
at the front door of her gen Dowie home. The
visitor introduced herself as Detective Rose Walker from the Queensland
Homicide Squad. She wanted to speak to Buntie about the
(01:14):
death of her daughter, Margaret, and she told her that
evidence had come to light, prompting police to re examine
the case. Although her death had been deemed a suicide,
Margaret's case had been added to the list of cold
cases to investigate at the behest of Queensland's most senior
detective at the time, Peter Swindell's from murder to suicide
(01:42):
and now the pendulum was swinging again. Detective Swindell's had
been working as a detective in Rockhampton in nineteen seventy
eight when Margaret died three hundred kilometers away in Serena.
He never accepted did the suicide finding. For almost thirty years,
(02:07):
the case played on his mind. In two thousand and two,
he took the helm of Queensland State Crime Operations Command
and later instructed the Homicide Squad's Cold Case unit to
reopen the Curson Felt file.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The Sunday Mail July fifteenth, two thousand and seven new
clue in nineteen seventy eight death. New forensic analysis has
confirmed the suspicions of Assistant Commission of Peter Swindell's that
Margaret Kirstenfeldt was murdered in her Serena home in central
Queensland twenty nine years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Peter Swandell's is now retired. Despite repeated attempts, he declined
to do an interview for this podcast. However, he was
happy for us to use the comments he gave during
an interview I did with him in two thousand and seven.
Back then, I worked for the newspaper The Sunday Mail
and wrote articles about the reopened murder investigation. I discovered
(03:07):
this case while researching a book I was writing on
Queensland's first convicted serial killer. But more about that later.
In two thousand and seven. When Swendell's was the Assistant
Commissioner of State Crime Operations Command, he said.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I didn't accept Margaret's death was suicide. There were too
many inconsistencies. A few other detectives also believed at the
same time it wasn't suicide. The horrific injury she suffered
they could not have been self inflicted, and she could
not have walked outside the house. But I was in
a different town and I was not involved in the investigation.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Former Assistant Commissioners Wendell's asked one of his senior detectives,
Graham Renders, to refer Margaret's case to the Forensic Reference Group,
a group set up by Victorian police and coordinated by
the state's Behavioral Analysis Unit. It was comprised of scientists
and other ex experts who could help detectives progress their investigations.
(04:04):
Through the fraternity, they could track down the best qualified
specialist and offer inside industry knowledge. Margaret's case was examined
by this Forensic Reference Group. The panel of experts found
medical evidence that was inconsistent with the original finding of suicide.
They came to the conclusion that Margaret could not have
(04:27):
cut her own throat so the Queensland Police Coal Case
Unit reopened the case on the belief that Margaret had
been murdered the pendulum had swung back to where it
had started murder. In two thousand and seven, I also
(04:51):
interviewed Detective Mike Condon, the then head of the homicide squad.
He was reluctant to comment on the original investigation and
suicide finding, saying at.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
The end of the day the pathologists formed a certain
view at the time based on the information before him
and his medical examination at the post mortem.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
He also said it was possible that Margaret may have
known her killer, but the motive remained unclear. Peter Swndell's
suspicions were fueled by a man person X, living in Serena,
very near to Margaret in nineteen seventy eight. He was
interviewed by police at the time of her death. Swindells
(05:31):
knew this man from his time stationed in Rockhampton. We'll
explain why next episode. Interestingly, the reopening of Margaret's case
as a murder did not come as a surprise to
Milton Hassenham when I spoke with him about it in
two thousand and seven. He was the detective who wrote
(05:51):
the report for the coroner and ultimately supported doctor Wilkie's
finding of suicide. He said he always continued to have
an open mind. The turn of events gave Margaret's family
new hope for justice, but it also inflamed old wounds
and raised even more questions. Here's her sister, deb.
Speaker 6 (06:14):
Was it somebody she knew or whatever?
Speaker 7 (06:17):
I made all of these scenarios of thousands.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
But I guess couldn't have maagine why she give far
some of these questions We've never got to know the
answers to.
Speaker 9 (06:24):
You're going to find that where they lived with that?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And you had fleas Dade all.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
Those some answers.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
There was one person who was never told Margaret's death
was no longer being treated as a suicide but as
a murder. To my surprise, her husband, Malcolm, only found
out when I spoke to him for this podcast. Keep
in mind he and Margaret's family are rarely in contact.
It's your curiosity ever gotten the better of you in
(06:53):
relation to Margaret's death, Malcolm, to try and go and
find out what happened.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
Margret's family and well, what's left in my family now?
Because my birth my mum and dad are both said now.
But you know, if they were alive, they at all
want some sort of closure. But I can't see that
being pending myself. You know, don't get me wrong. I
think just now is just opening wounds up that we're
just about already healed. I think, you know, not that
we'll ever forget. You know, I'm the daughter, and the
(07:19):
son probably never ever forget losing their mother. But you know,
it's just I can't feel now that anything was ever
going to come.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
At So you never really got to hear the news
about when the case was reopened and that the findings
had changed.
Speaker 9 (07:36):
No, nobody had been in touch with me after that.
Lady came out to where I was working. Yeah, I
had never heard. I never heard anything. But I think
I got a phone call or something that say that
I was still trying to get the case reopened or something,
or I were having trouble getting it opened or something.
(07:56):
That was the last I heard.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So you didn't actually observe this show of that change.
Speaker 9 (08:01):
I've really never heard anything about the case being opened
or the last they were trying to get aburben.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It sounds like the police went out to Malcolm's workplace
to speak with him about the case, but he wasn't
able to step away from his job at the time.
He never chased it up with police. Right now, Queensland's
Homicide Squad is actively pursuing the case. This is Detective
(08:30):
Senior Sergeant Tara Kentwell, who is the head of the
cold case investigation team.
Speaker 7 (08:36):
It's over the years a number of views have been
conducted by other police with conflicting thoughts on whether Margaret
was murdered or whether she did commit suicide. Margaret was
well known in the Serena community and we believe that
there are still people out there who have information that
can help us progress the investigation. We would also like
to provide Margaret's family some closure. I would ask that
(08:59):
if anyone has any information, no matter how small or irrelevant,
that they think it may be, to contact crime Stoppers
on one eight, one hundred trip or three Triple O
or crime Stoppers online. It's never too late to come forward.
Relationships and loyalties change. People who were once scared may
no longer be and I'd encourage those people to come forward. Yeah,
there's no time limit on cold cases.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
We just continue on Detective kent Well on her team
recently charged to Queensland and grandfather with a murder allegedly
committed fifty five years ago. It is believed to be
the oldest case in Australia where an arrest has been made.
The charge follows arrests in fourteen other cold cases by
the investigation team in the past two years. Here is
(09:42):
Detective kent Well again.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Our review is just going back through all the old
document conducting forensic examinations. I'm just having a look at
an old investigation through fresh eyes. This investigation is currently
being reviewed by the Homicide Cold Case Investigation Team.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I've also spent several months trying to track down people
from Margaret's past who may remember something significant with my
friend and Nette. In a seven day road trip, I
drove to Serena and other towns associated with this case.
The trip to Serena is around nine hundred and fifteen
kilometers from where we're based in Brisbane.
Speaker 10 (10:24):
From the road trains.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
My first stop the scene of the crime Margaret's old
home on Serena Beach Road, where she lived and perished.
Another young family is living here again. They'd only recently
moved in and had just found out about the property's
disturbing history.
Speaker 9 (10:46):
There's been a couple of times when I've had a
few little goose by somewhere.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Surprisingly, when compared with photos we've seen from the nineteen seventies,
very little about the house has changed.
Speaker 9 (10:57):
It looks as a.
Speaker 10 (10:58):
Dead forty years ago we did.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Here's the kitchen, dwawm dry. After a short walk through
the rooms of the person who lives here now, I
recorded some notes. The house is small inside. Its saving
grace is its high ceilings, helping deal with the hot,
humid Queensland tropical summers. When Margaret's husband Malcolm, the young
(11:21):
son Colin, and baby daughter Leslie moved here, it was
a forty five dollars a week rental in a row
of houses that accommodated mostly railway workers. At one point
I stood in Margaret's bedroom, remembering one of the crime
(11:44):
scene photos I had seen, which showed her blood soak
bed and pillows. It was in her bedroom where police
believed she suffered most of her injuries. I thought about Margaret,
with her wound ten centimeters wide and three centimeters deep,
(12:05):
a deep slashed to her throat which severed her left
jugular vein, and tried to picture her alone, bleeding, stetting
herself as she moved towards the front door and passed
her sleeping baby daughter. Could she have staggered so far
(12:26):
with such an injury or did someone carry her?
Speaker 11 (12:32):
But I must admit that I found it hard to
comprehend from what I had seen in the bloodline and
of the wounding, that a person could walk some three
meters from the scene and be found on the grass
outside the place. But there was no real evidence that
a body had been dragged out of the house either.
(12:54):
There's no spirit alone along.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
The wallway I think about the first treated as a
rape and murder, then suicide, and back to murder. There
were no signs of struggle in the home, a key
factor brought up by those who subscribed to the theory
Margaret took her own life. Then I wonder was there
(13:21):
an assailant who threatened to kill or harm her baby
if she screamed or resisted, or had she known her
assailant welcomed them in, only for things to quickly escalate
in the bedroom we walked outside. The property is on
(13:42):
the main road linking the town of Serena to the beach.
There's still not much street lighting. Some of the locals
told me the road is as dark at night now
as it was in nineteen seventy eight. As part of
(14:04):
research for this podcast, some colleagues of mine, Georgia and Leticia,
also visited Serena, although several months earlier they met up
with a man who could remember Margaret's death and the
shockwaves it sent through the community.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Do you mind just saying your first and same for us?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh, you don't let you want to remain anonymous?
Speaker 6 (14:24):
Yeah, so can.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
You just tell us a bit about what you remember
from this murder nearly forty years ago?
Speaker 12 (14:29):
Well, I think it was a Friday night. It happened
Friday or Saturday night, and it was talk of the
town for weeks after everybody's surmise and who might have
done it? But that's the last day. I don't think
they've ever charged anybody for it.
Speaker 13 (14:42):
Was it a big shock though?
Speaker 12 (14:43):
That was a shocked everybody for looking out of town
this size for something like that to happen.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
And yeah, what was kind of Serena like that around
that kind of time?
Speaker 12 (14:52):
Not quite and what it is now in population probably
about a quarter or what it is now.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
Was Margaret well known in the town? Did many people
know her?
Speaker 12 (15:01):
I don't think she had been he all that long.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
I mean, I guess the kind of murder of a
twenty one year old girl that didn't kind of send shivers.
Speaker 12 (15:11):
Down and everyone's spine.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Did everyone know that she had a little baby inside
at the time.
Speaker 12 (15:17):
Yeah, I know there were young kids in the.
Speaker 13 (15:19):
House with them.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
I mean, we've been going around asking people whether they
know about it. Almost everyone You're the first plason we've
come across it remembers it. I think it's a bit
interesting that it's such a huge part of Serena's history
and it's just basically forgotten about.
Speaker 12 (15:33):
Probably a lot of the older people have moved on
or passed on by this time.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Do you think he'll ever be sold?
Speaker 6 (15:40):
Well?
Speaker 12 (15:40):
Did think they would have found them by now if
they were going to?
Speaker 5 (15:43):
And I'm sure obviously there would have been a lot
of rumors kind of flying around.
Speaker 12 (15:47):
Yeah, there was rumors that it was a neighbor and
it's somebody that died, either that or somebody that knew her.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I try to track down some of the friends Margaret
made in a short time she was living here. There
are still a few around. I wrote the following commentary.
During my stay, I show a woman a picture of
a person of interests in Margaret's case, but she doesn't
recognize him or remember the name. I tell her. The
town's population is around six thousand. While it's known for
(16:15):
sugar cane farming, it has benefited from a mining boom.
About fifteen kilometers to the north is hay Point, the
second largest export coal terminal in Australia and one of
the biggest in the world. A large cane toad statue
called Buffy is situated in the town center in honor
of Serena's cane farming history. At the time of our trip,
(16:36):
Buffy was decorated with flowers and tribute for a local
resident who'd recently died. It was a reminder of Serena's
close knit community. Several locals we chatted to lament their
once sleepy seaside hamlet now has high unemployment and is
in the grip of a crime epidemic fueled by the
drug Ice. As outsiders, we're welcomed with a healthy dose
(16:59):
of suspicion. Maybe that's because the reason for our trip
has disturbed old dormant feelings of fear, trauma, and grief.
Some of the key figures who knew Margaret still live
in this town. However, they did not want to speak
to us. She is the ghost of their past that
continues to haunt them. I wonder if they open up
(17:19):
whether there'll be a huge shift in the status quo
of the lives they have built in the forty years
since the murder. Others spoke to us on the condition
of anonymity. One woman tells me she never believed Margaret
took her own life. Others say, how could anyone kill
themselves by cutting their own throat with a serrated knife
(17:40):
and then make jagged hand motions to show me what
they are talking about. Another resident confides that Margaret was
a devoted mother, but had a reputation as a woman
who'd give men what they wanted. She believes a local
man who relentlessly pursued Margaret for sex, only for her
to reject his advances, is the killer. I recorded one
(18:04):
of the interviews with a local resident who didn't know
Margaret personally, but shared mutual friends and acquaintances. However, she
would only speak in the proviso her identity was not revealed.
Her voice has also been altered.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
She could pretty much fee her place from where we lived,
which could look outs onto Beach Road and down Beach
Road sort of thing. Yeah, so that's the part I
think that sort of sunk in with our skills. They
were living there at that time, because I mean, it
was pretty close to where we.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Were, and she remembers talk of a prowler in the
area at the time.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
There was a prowler going around at that stage. He
was down around for a few years. There was one
that used to run around a red underpink so silly.
Nobody knew then. Whether the police know or not, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
So police also didn't talk much about Margaret's death.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
I did know a couple of the police and quite well,
but that's not something they talked about after work. Us
younger girls, we didn't discuss it as much because it
did freaks out because there was a couple of us
that did work at the pub and we used to
have to walk home. But we were lucky back then
because we had really good taxi drivers that when we
(19:23):
finished work, they drivers homeful free your girls, walk it years,
car will.
Speaker 13 (19:28):
Drop you home.
Speaker 6 (19:29):
So we had a couple of really good taxi drivers
back then that sort of looked after us girls if
we had to walk home or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
But there was a common belief because.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
None of us believed it was suicide. So yeah, it
was big news there for a little while. And I
think when they come out and said it was supposed
to be suicide, I think a lot of people just
just took it at that, you know, they didn't want
to think of the obvious.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That it was a murder.
Speaker 14 (19:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
Yeah, to this day, nobody really knows what actually happened,
only the person that would now with the person that've
done it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Another woman speaks to us but refuses to be recorded.
She says we can quote her, but we have to
use a pseudonym, so we'll call her Sally. This obviously
isn't her voice.
Speaker 8 (20:23):
Her reputation when she lived for those kids, she was
a top mother.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Sally said Dale Payne and were hauled over the colls
after Margaret's death. She also mentions another man whom Margaret
is rumored to have rejected.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
They reckon. She used to come across to all the
guys and give them what they wanted, and there was
this one guy tried to latch onto her. He wanders
the street now, I reckon it may have been him.
He must have told the boys because they knew that
she rejected him, and he was asking her for a while,
and she told him where to go. I think he's
a bit loopy up top.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
We also visited the Pie Car or the Diner, the
old cafe where Margaret at one time managed and worked shifts.
It is an institution of Serena that now sits on
Queensland Railway Land, minus the wheels it used to have
when the business started in nineteen twenty seven. It's still
(21:37):
operating and hasn't changed at all. There's nothing fancy about
this place. The Pie Card is no longer open at night,
but it does open for breakfast and lunch every day,
a simple meal for around nine dollars for what seems
to be a regular band of customers. The day we
were there it was corned beef and veggies. Not long
(22:00):
before her death, Margaret and her family consider taking over
the business. It is also where Margaret first met taxi
driver Alan Servis Hello. Allen is now eighty six years old.
Speaker 10 (22:15):
I bought the three in a taxi in nineteen seventy
four and I got out of it in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
So while you were running taxis, did you get the
opportunity to meet Margaret Kirstenfeld? Can you tell me how
you met her?
Speaker 10 (22:29):
Well, I didn't get to meet her actually at the
whole diner we got here, old pie card. It's like
it's got stools beside it and a roof over it,
and it's been there since I was a boy at fifteen.
I used to come down and have a cup of
tea and a sandwich of an afternoon on shipwork and
all that sort of thing. It's been there all those
(22:51):
years and are still there now to this day. And
apparently this girl we're talking about, Margaret, used to do
a bit of night work when I was in the taxis.
I don't know when she started or when she knocked off,
but what she used to do is if it was quiet,
she'd wander down to the rink where the taxis were.
(23:13):
We were working pretty hard ourselves with the taxis. There's
only two of us, and we're doing a lot of
railway work, running guards and firemen up to different mines
in different places where they had to learn the road
and we'd be away for a couple of hours, but
in the meantime, if she saw us down there, she'd
wander down. It's only about one hundred and fifty meters
down the road to where we were sitting. The mey
(23:35):
and the other mates passed on. Now the other taxi
driver and Margaret had come down, and that was about
the first time we ever met her. She said, I'm Margaret.
I'm up here in the pike card doing a bit
of work. I said all. And then all of a
sudden she'd say, oh, look, I've got to go, because
she'd see somebody walk in there. And sometimes she wouldn't
be there any more than five minutes, you know, talking
(23:57):
to us, and she'd have to run up the road
and go and fix this, follow him. And half the
time by the time she'd done that, we'd be gone
away on jobs, you know. But I'd say, I see
her about five or six times. I've seen her down
there talking to us under the tree, no more than that.
And then all of a sudden she just went out
(24:18):
of our minds. And I don't know whatever happened to her.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Please tell the taxi drivers what had happened to Margaret?
Speaker 10 (24:25):
My first impression of her, she was a decent young lady,
and as far as I'm concerned, that's the way she
stayed a decent young lady.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
In the moments that you did speak with her under
the fig trees. What did you talk about?
Speaker 10 (24:39):
Well, that's another thing. I just don't know off hand
what we talked about, but it wasn't anything like sexual
or bloody anything like that. The only thing she said
to me one night, and I didn't know this fella,
she said, I've got myself a boyfriend, Allen. I said,
oh yes, she said yeah. I said, oh, well, that's good.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
You like him?
Speaker 10 (25:00):
She said, yes, I do. I said what's his name?
She said, Joe MacLeod. Do you know him? I said no,
I don't, And she said he's been taking me swimming.
I said, all right, over the range somewhere she said.
I said, oh, you want to be careful. I said,
how long have you known him? She said two days.
I said, you'd be careful going away like that, young lady.
(25:21):
I said, you don't know what can happen, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Alan doesn't remember whether Margaret's death calls much of Asta
and Serena in the late nineteen seventies, but he does
recall police detectives arriving on his doorstep in two thousand
and seven after the case had been reopened.
Speaker 10 (25:37):
Oh, they just come into the lounge and they were
talking to me. Do I know Margaret cursed the found
I said yeah, and asked me what I knew about them.
I just told him what I told you, And they
asked me what sort of a girl she was? I said,
as far as I'm concerned, she was a decent, young
little lady. I told the detective. At seven o'clock that
(26:00):
particular night, or might have been between seven and eight,
I was taken affair out past the house that Margaret
was hurt or whatever happened to her, and this fellow
was running from that direction up the road, and I
had about one hundred meters to go to drop this
(26:21):
passenger off. I dropped him off. He paid me a
couple of bucks, whatever it was, and I turned to
come back to go to the stand, and he'd run
about two or three hundred meters run across the road
in front of me, past the police station. On the
way back to my rank. I told them all about that,
but they never seemed to follow it up. Because at
(26:43):
the time I didn't even know when Margaret was hurt.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Alan continues talking about Joe McLeod, what little he knew
of him. I hadn't heard of anyone connected to this
case with that name. Police and others who I have
interviewed also had no recollection. There was no statement from
a Joe, no mention from Margaret's neighbor Heather, and no
(27:14):
sign of a Joe in Milton Hassenkham's police report. And
then I found a reference to a Joe, but no surname.
Marsha Breed was an acquaintance of Margaret and Malcolm from Mackay.
They stayed with her just before the young family moved
to Serena. Marsha says she and her fiance Frank and
(27:39):
daughter Glenda visited Margaret at her Serena home two weeks
prior to her death.
Speaker 13 (27:45):
And that she was pregnant to this guy called and
that she'd been playing up with a few blokes. She
mentioned Arnie, the bloke from next door, a guy called Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
So who is this Joe? If you know, please get
in touch. So from murder to suicide and back again.
Who killed twenty one year old Margaret Kurston felt at
her Serena home in February nineteen seventy eight. There are
(28:17):
plenty of people who may have had the opportunity, but
what was the motive? Someone knows? Next time the persons
of interest far Well I asked me.
Speaker 9 (28:36):
That I come down to the police station and answer
some questions.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Also the notorious Marlborough Stretch, known for unexplained murders in
the nineteen seventies, and just who is this mysterious person X.
Speaker 14 (28:51):
I certainly would not have trusted him or turned my
back on him.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
If you have information about the Margaret Kirstenfeld case, please
let us know. Email us at Pendulum podcast at gmail
dot com or go to seven US dot com dot
AU Forward Slash Pendulum presenter and executive producer Paula Donovan,
(29:45):
writer and producer Sally Eels, sound design Mark Wright, Graphics,
Jason Blandford, producer Annette Caltabiano. Transcripts Susan and Bush. Our
theme music is the Clock is Ticking by Dark. All
music See our show notes for full music credits. With
(30:13):
thanks to seven Years Brisbane
Forty years ago, a young mum dies violently in a
small Queensland town. Suicide or murder? What happened to Margaret Kirstenfeld?
Someone knows? This is Pendulum Episode eight.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I'm Paula Donovan. On a Sunday afternoon in two thousand
and five, Buntie Willard was enjoying a catch up phone
call with her daughter deb when there was a knock
at the front door of her gen Dowie home. The
visitor introduced herself as Detective Rose Walker from the Queensland
Homicide Squad. She wanted to speak to Buntie about the
(01:14):
death of her daughter, Margaret, and she told her that
evidence had come to light, prompting police to re examine
the case. Although her death had been deemed a suicide,
Margaret's case had been added to the list of cold
cases to investigate at the behest of Queensland's most senior
detective at the time, Peter Swindell's from murder to suicide
(01:42):
and now the pendulum was swinging again. Detective Swindell's had
been working as a detective in Rockhampton in nineteen seventy
eight when Margaret died three hundred kilometers away in Serena.
He never accepted did the suicide finding. For almost thirty years,
(02:07):
the case played on his mind. In two thousand and two,
he took the helm of Queensland State Crime Operations Command
and later instructed the Homicide Squad's Cold Case unit to
reopen the Curson Felt file.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The Sunday Mail July fifteenth, two thousand and seven new
clue in nineteen seventy eight death. New forensic analysis has
confirmed the suspicions of Assistant Commission of Peter Swindell's that
Margaret Kirstenfeldt was murdered in her Serena home in central
Queensland twenty nine years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Peter Swandell's is now retired. Despite repeated attempts, he declined
to do an interview for this podcast. However, he was
happy for us to use the comments he gave during
an interview I did with him in two thousand and seven.
Back then, I worked for the newspaper The Sunday Mail
and wrote articles about the reopened murder investigation. I discovered
(03:07):
this case while researching a book I was writing on
Queensland's first convicted serial killer. But more about that later.
In two thousand and seven. When Swendell's was the Assistant
Commissioner of State Crime Operations Command, he said.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I didn't accept Margaret's death was suicide. There were too
many inconsistencies. A few other detectives also believed at the
same time it wasn't suicide. The horrific injury she suffered
they could not have been self inflicted, and she could
not have walked outside the house. But I was in
a different town and I was not involved in the investigation.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Former Assistant Commissioners Wendell's asked one of his senior detectives,
Graham Renders, to refer Margaret's case to the Forensic Reference Group,
a group set up by Victorian police and coordinated by
the state's Behavioral Analysis Unit. It was comprised of scientists
and other ex experts who could help detectives progress their investigations.
(04:04):
Through the fraternity, they could track down the best qualified
specialist and offer inside industry knowledge. Margaret's case was examined
by this Forensic Reference Group. The panel of experts found
medical evidence that was inconsistent with the original finding of suicide.
They came to the conclusion that Margaret could not have
(04:27):
cut her own throat so the Queensland Police Coal Case
Unit reopened the case on the belief that Margaret had
been murdered the pendulum had swung back to where it
had started murder. In two thousand and seven, I also
(04:51):
interviewed Detective Mike Condon, the then head of the homicide squad.
He was reluctant to comment on the original investigation and
suicide finding, saying at.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
The end of the day the pathologists formed a certain
view at the time based on the information before him
and his medical examination at the post mortem.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
He also said it was possible that Margaret may have
known her killer, but the motive remained unclear. Peter Swndell's
suspicions were fueled by a man person X, living in Serena,
very near to Margaret in nineteen seventy eight. He was
interviewed by police at the time of her death. Swindells
(05:31):
knew this man from his time stationed in Rockhampton. We'll
explain why next episode. Interestingly, the reopening of Margaret's case
as a murder did not come as a surprise to
Milton Hassenham when I spoke with him about it in
two thousand and seven. He was the detective who wrote
(05:51):
the report for the coroner and ultimately supported doctor Wilkie's
finding of suicide. He said he always continued to have
an open mind. The turn of events gave Margaret's family
new hope for justice, but it also inflamed old wounds
and raised even more questions. Here's her sister, deb.
Speaker 6 (06:14):
Was it somebody she knew or whatever?
Speaker 7 (06:17):
I made all of these scenarios of thousands.
Speaker 8 (06:19):
But I guess couldn't have maagine why she give far
some of these questions We've never got to know the
answers to.
Speaker 9 (06:24):
You're going to find that where they lived with that?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And you had fleas Dade all.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
Those some answers.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
There was one person who was never told Margaret's death
was no longer being treated as a suicide but as
a murder. To my surprise, her husband, Malcolm, only found
out when I spoke to him for this podcast. Keep
in mind he and Margaret's family are rarely in contact.
It's your curiosity ever gotten the better of you in
(06:53):
relation to Margaret's death, Malcolm, to try and go and
find out what happened.
Speaker 9 (06:58):
Margret's family and well, what's left in my family now?
Because my birth my mum and dad are both said now.
But you know, if they were alive, they at all
want some sort of closure. But I can't see that
being pending myself. You know, don't get me wrong. I
think just now is just opening wounds up that we're
just about already healed. I think, you know, not that
we'll ever forget. You know, I'm the daughter, and the
(07:19):
son probably never ever forget losing their mother. But you know,
it's just I can't feel now that anything was ever
going to come.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
At So you never really got to hear the news
about when the case was reopened and that the findings
had changed.
Speaker 9 (07:36):
No, nobody had been in touch with me after that.
Lady came out to where I was working. Yeah, I
had never heard. I never heard anything. But I think
I got a phone call or something that say that
I was still trying to get the case reopened or something,
or I were having trouble getting it opened or something.
(07:56):
That was the last I heard.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So you didn't actually observe this show of that change.
Speaker 9 (08:01):
I've really never heard anything about the case being opened
or the last they were trying to get aburben.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It sounds like the police went out to Malcolm's workplace
to speak with him about the case, but he wasn't
able to step away from his job at the time.
He never chased it up with police. Right now, Queensland's
Homicide Squad is actively pursuing the case. This is Detective
(08:30):
Senior Sergeant Tara Kentwell, who is the head of the
cold case investigation team.
Speaker 7 (08:36):
It's over the years a number of views have been
conducted by other police with conflicting thoughts on whether Margaret
was murdered or whether she did commit suicide. Margaret was
well known in the Serena community and we believe that
there are still people out there who have information that
can help us progress the investigation. We would also like
to provide Margaret's family some closure. I would ask that
(08:59):
if anyone has any information, no matter how small or irrelevant,
that they think it may be, to contact crime Stoppers
on one eight, one hundred trip or three Triple O
or crime Stoppers online. It's never too late to come forward.
Relationships and loyalties change. People who were once scared may
no longer be and I'd encourage those people to come forward. Yeah,
there's no time limit on cold cases.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
We just continue on Detective kent Well on her team
recently charged to Queensland and grandfather with a murder allegedly
committed fifty five years ago. It is believed to be
the oldest case in Australia where an arrest has been made.
The charge follows arrests in fourteen other cold cases by
the investigation team in the past two years. Here is
(09:42):
Detective kent Well again.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Our review is just going back through all the old
document conducting forensic examinations. I'm just having a look at
an old investigation through fresh eyes. This investigation is currently
being reviewed by the Homicide Cold Case Investigation Team.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I've also spent several months trying to track down people
from Margaret's past who may remember something significant with my
friend and Nette. In a seven day road trip, I
drove to Serena and other towns associated with this case.
The trip to Serena is around nine hundred and fifteen
kilometers from where we're based in Brisbane.
Speaker 10 (10:24):
From the road trains.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
My first stop the scene of the crime Margaret's old
home on Serena Beach Road, where she lived and perished.
Another young family is living here again. They'd only recently
moved in and had just found out about the property's
disturbing history.
Speaker 9 (10:46):
There's been a couple of times when I've had a
few little goose by somewhere.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Surprisingly, when compared with photos we've seen from the nineteen seventies,
very little about the house has changed.
Speaker 9 (10:57):
It looks as a.
Speaker 10 (10:58):
Dead forty years ago we did.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Here's the kitchen, dwawm dry. After a short walk through
the rooms of the person who lives here now, I
recorded some notes. The house is small inside. Its saving
grace is its high ceilings, helping deal with the hot,
humid Queensland tropical summers. When Margaret's husband Malcolm, the young
(11:21):
son Colin, and baby daughter Leslie moved here, it was
a forty five dollars a week rental in a row
of houses that accommodated mostly railway workers. At one point
I stood in Margaret's bedroom, remembering one of the crime
(11:44):
scene photos I had seen, which showed her blood soak
bed and pillows. It was in her bedroom where police
believed she suffered most of her injuries. I thought about Margaret,
with her wound ten centimeters wide and three centimeters deep,
(12:05):
a deep slashed to her throat which severed her left
jugular vein, and tried to picture her alone, bleeding, stetting
herself as she moved towards the front door and passed
her sleeping baby daughter. Could she have staggered so far
(12:26):
with such an injury or did someone carry her?
Speaker 11 (12:32):
But I must admit that I found it hard to
comprehend from what I had seen in the bloodline and
of the wounding, that a person could walk some three
meters from the scene and be found on the grass
outside the place. But there was no real evidence that
a body had been dragged out of the house either.
(12:54):
There's no spirit alone along.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
The wallway I think about the first treated as a
rape and murder, then suicide, and back to murder. There
were no signs of struggle in the home, a key
factor brought up by those who subscribed to the theory
Margaret took her own life. Then I wonder was there
(13:21):
an assailant who threatened to kill or harm her baby
if she screamed or resisted, or had she known her
assailant welcomed them in, only for things to quickly escalate
in the bedroom we walked outside. The property is on
(13:42):
the main road linking the town of Serena to the beach.
There's still not much street lighting. Some of the locals
told me the road is as dark at night now
as it was in nineteen seventy eight. As part of
(14:04):
research for this podcast, some colleagues of mine, Georgia and Leticia,
also visited Serena, although several months earlier they met up
with a man who could remember Margaret's death and the
shockwaves it sent through the community.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Do you mind just saying your first and same for us?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh, you don't let you want to remain anonymous?
Speaker 6 (14:24):
Yeah, so can.
Speaker 5 (14:25):
You just tell us a bit about what you remember
from this murder nearly forty years ago?
Speaker 12 (14:29):
Well, I think it was a Friday night. It happened
Friday or Saturday night, and it was talk of the
town for weeks after everybody's surmise and who might have
done it? But that's the last day. I don't think
they've ever charged anybody for it.
Speaker 13 (14:42):
Was it a big shock though?
Speaker 12 (14:43):
That was a shocked everybody for looking out of town
this size for something like that to happen.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
And yeah, what was kind of Serena like that around
that kind of time?
Speaker 12 (14:52):
Not quite and what it is now in population probably
about a quarter or what it is now.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
Was Margaret well known in the town? Did many people
know her?
Speaker 12 (15:01):
I don't think she had been he all that long.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
I mean, I guess the kind of murder of a
twenty one year old girl that didn't kind of send shivers.
Speaker 12 (15:11):
Down and everyone's spine.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Did everyone know that she had a little baby inside
at the time.
Speaker 12 (15:17):
Yeah, I know there were young kids in the.
Speaker 13 (15:19):
House with them.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
I mean, we've been going around asking people whether they
know about it. Almost everyone You're the first plason we've
come across it remembers it. I think it's a bit
interesting that it's such a huge part of Serena's history
and it's just basically forgotten about.
Speaker 12 (15:33):
Probably a lot of the older people have moved on
or passed on by this time.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Do you think he'll ever be sold?
Speaker 6 (15:40):
Well?
Speaker 12 (15:40):
Did think they would have found them by now if
they were going to?
Speaker 5 (15:43):
And I'm sure obviously there would have been a lot
of rumors kind of flying around.
Speaker 12 (15:47):
Yeah, there was rumors that it was a neighbor and
it's somebody that died, either that or somebody that knew her.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I try to track down some of the friends Margaret
made in a short time she was living here. There
are still a few around. I wrote the following commentary.
During my stay, I show a woman a picture of
a person of interests in Margaret's case, but she doesn't
recognize him or remember the name. I tell her. The
town's population is around six thousand. While it's known for
(16:15):
sugar cane farming, it has benefited from a mining boom.
About fifteen kilometers to the north is hay Point, the
second largest export coal terminal in Australia and one of
the biggest in the world. A large cane toad statue
called Buffy is situated in the town center in honor
of Serena's cane farming history. At the time of our trip,
(16:36):
Buffy was decorated with flowers and tribute for a local
resident who'd recently died. It was a reminder of Serena's
close knit community. Several locals we chatted to lament their
once sleepy seaside hamlet now has high unemployment and is
in the grip of a crime epidemic fueled by the
drug Ice. As outsiders, we're welcomed with a healthy dose
(16:59):
of suspicion. Maybe that's because the reason for our trip
has disturbed old dormant feelings of fear, trauma, and grief.
Some of the key figures who knew Margaret still live
in this town. However, they did not want to speak
to us. She is the ghost of their past that
continues to haunt them. I wonder if they open up
(17:19):
whether there'll be a huge shift in the status quo
of the lives they have built in the forty years
since the murder. Others spoke to us on the condition
of anonymity. One woman tells me she never believed Margaret
took her own life. Others say, how could anyone kill
themselves by cutting their own throat with a serrated knife
(17:40):
and then make jagged hand motions to show me what
they are talking about. Another resident confides that Margaret was
a devoted mother, but had a reputation as a woman
who'd give men what they wanted. She believes a local
man who relentlessly pursued Margaret for sex, only for her
to reject his advances, is the killer. I recorded one
(18:04):
of the interviews with a local resident who didn't know
Margaret personally, but shared mutual friends and acquaintances. However, she
would only speak in the proviso her identity was not revealed.
Her voice has also been altered.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
She could pretty much fee her place from where we lived,
which could look outs onto Beach Road and down Beach
Road sort of thing. Yeah, so that's the part I
think that sort of sunk in with our skills. They
were living there at that time, because I mean, it
was pretty close to where we.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Were, and she remembers talk of a prowler in the
area at the time.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
There was a prowler going around at that stage. He
was down around for a few years. There was one
that used to run around a red underpink so silly.
Nobody knew then. Whether the police know or not, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
So police also didn't talk much about Margaret's death.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
I did know a couple of the police and quite well,
but that's not something they talked about after work. Us
younger girls, we didn't discuss it as much because it
did freaks out because there was a couple of us
that did work at the pub and we used to
have to walk home. But we were lucky back then
because we had really good taxi drivers that when we
(19:23):
finished work, they drivers homeful free your girls, walk it years,
car will.
Speaker 13 (19:28):
Drop you home.
Speaker 6 (19:29):
So we had a couple of really good taxi drivers
back then that sort of looked after us girls if
we had to walk home or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
But there was a common belief because.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
None of us believed it was suicide. So yeah, it
was big news there for a little while. And I
think when they come out and said it was supposed
to be suicide, I think a lot of people just
just took it at that, you know, they didn't want
to think of the obvious.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That it was a murder.
Speaker 14 (19:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
Yeah, to this day, nobody really knows what actually happened,
only the person that would now with the person that've
done it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Another woman speaks to us but refuses to be recorded.
She says we can quote her, but we have to
use a pseudonym, so we'll call her Sally. This obviously
isn't her voice.
Speaker 8 (20:23):
Her reputation when she lived for those kids, she was
a top mother.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Sally said Dale Payne and were hauled over the colls
after Margaret's death. She also mentions another man whom Margaret
is rumored to have rejected.
Speaker 8 (20:44):
They reckon. She used to come across to all the
guys and give them what they wanted, and there was
this one guy tried to latch onto her. He wanders
the street now, I reckon it may have been him.
He must have told the boys because they knew that
she rejected him, and he was asking her for a while,
and she told him where to go. I think he's
a bit loopy up top.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
We also visited the Pie Car or the Diner, the
old cafe where Margaret at one time managed and worked shifts.
It is an institution of Serena that now sits on
Queensland Railway Land, minus the wheels it used to have
when the business started in nineteen twenty seven. It's still
(21:37):
operating and hasn't changed at all. There's nothing fancy about
this place. The Pie Card is no longer open at night,
but it does open for breakfast and lunch every day,
a simple meal for around nine dollars for what seems
to be a regular band of customers. The day we
were there it was corned beef and veggies. Not long
(22:00):
before her death, Margaret and her family consider taking over
the business. It is also where Margaret first met taxi
driver Alan Servis Hello. Allen is now eighty six years old.
Speaker 10 (22:15):
I bought the three in a taxi in nineteen seventy
four and I got out of it in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
So while you were running taxis, did you get the
opportunity to meet Margaret Kirstenfeld? Can you tell me how
you met her?
Speaker 10 (22:29):
Well, I didn't get to meet her actually at the
whole diner we got here, old pie card. It's like
it's got stools beside it and a roof over it,
and it's been there since I was a boy at fifteen.
I used to come down and have a cup of
tea and a sandwich of an afternoon on shipwork and
all that sort of thing. It's been there all those
(22:51):
years and are still there now to this day. And
apparently this girl we're talking about, Margaret, used to do
a bit of night work when I was in the taxis.
I don't know when she started or when she knocked off,
but what she used to do is if it was quiet,
she'd wander down to the rink where the taxis were.
(23:13):
We were working pretty hard ourselves with the taxis. There's
only two of us, and we're doing a lot of
railway work, running guards and firemen up to different mines
in different places where they had to learn the road
and we'd be away for a couple of hours, but
in the meantime, if she saw us down there, she'd
wander down. It's only about one hundred and fifty meters
down the road to where we were sitting. The mey
(23:35):
and the other mates passed on. Now the other taxi
driver and Margaret had come down, and that was about
the first time we ever met her. She said, I'm Margaret.
I'm up here in the pike card doing a bit
of work. I said all. And then all of a
sudden she'd say, oh, look, I've got to go, because
she'd see somebody walk in there. And sometimes she wouldn't
be there any more than five minutes, you know, talking
(23:57):
to us, and she'd have to run up the road
and go and fix this, follow him. And half the
time by the time she'd done that, we'd be gone
away on jobs, you know. But I'd say, I see
her about five or six times. I've seen her down
there talking to us under the tree, no more than that.
And then all of a sudden she just went out
(24:18):
of our minds. And I don't know whatever happened to her.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Please tell the taxi drivers what had happened to Margaret?
Speaker 10 (24:25):
My first impression of her, she was a decent young lady,
and as far as I'm concerned, that's the way she
stayed a decent young lady.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
In the moments that you did speak with her under
the fig trees. What did you talk about?
Speaker 10 (24:39):
Well, that's another thing. I just don't know off hand
what we talked about, but it wasn't anything like sexual
or bloody anything like that. The only thing she said
to me one night, and I didn't know this fella,
she said, I've got myself a boyfriend, Allen. I said,
oh yes, she said yeah. I said, oh, well, that's good.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
You like him?
Speaker 10 (25:00):
She said, yes, I do. I said what's his name?
She said, Joe MacLeod. Do you know him? I said no,
I don't, And she said he's been taking me swimming.
I said, all right, over the range somewhere she said.
I said, oh, you want to be careful. I said,
how long have you known him? She said two days.
I said, you'd be careful going away like that, young lady.
(25:21):
I said, you don't know what can happen, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Alan doesn't remember whether Margaret's death calls much of Asta
and Serena in the late nineteen seventies, but he does
recall police detectives arriving on his doorstep in two thousand
and seven after the case had been reopened.
Speaker 10 (25:37):
Oh, they just come into the lounge and they were
talking to me. Do I know Margaret cursed the found
I said yeah, and asked me what I knew about them.
I just told him what I told you, And they
asked me what sort of a girl she was? I said,
as far as I'm concerned, she was a decent, young
little lady. I told the detective. At seven o'clock that
(26:00):
particular night, or might have been between seven and eight,
I was taken affair out past the house that Margaret
was hurt or whatever happened to her, and this fellow
was running from that direction up the road, and I
had about one hundred meters to go to drop this
(26:21):
passenger off. I dropped him off. He paid me a
couple of bucks, whatever it was, and I turned to
come back to go to the stand, and he'd run
about two or three hundred meters run across the road
in front of me, past the police station. On the
way back to my rank. I told them all about that,
but they never seemed to follow it up. Because at
(26:43):
the time I didn't even know when Margaret was hurt.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Alan continues talking about Joe McLeod, what little he knew
of him. I hadn't heard of anyone connected to this
case with that name. Police and others who I have
interviewed also had no recollection. There was no statement from
a Joe, no mention from Margaret's neighbor Heather, and no
(27:14):
sign of a Joe in Milton Hassenkham's police report. And
then I found a reference to a Joe, but no surname.
Marsha Breed was an acquaintance of Margaret and Malcolm from Mackay.
They stayed with her just before the young family moved
to Serena. Marsha says she and her fiance Frank and
(27:39):
daughter Glenda visited Margaret at her Serena home two weeks
prior to her death.
Speaker 13 (27:45):
And that she was pregnant to this guy called and
that she'd been playing up with a few blokes. She
mentioned Arnie, the bloke from next door, a guy called Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
So who is this Joe? If you know, please get
in touch. So from murder to suicide and back again.
Who killed twenty one year old Margaret Kurston felt at
her Serena home in February nineteen seventy eight. There are
(28:17):
plenty of people who may have had the opportunity, but
what was the motive? Someone knows? Next time the persons
of interest far Well I asked me.
Speaker 9 (28:36):
That I come down to the police station and answer
some questions.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Also the notorious Marlborough Stretch, known for unexplained murders in
the nineteen seventies, and just who is this mysterious person X.
Speaker 14 (28:51):
I certainly would not have trusted him or turned my
back on him.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
If you have information about the Margaret Kirstenfeld case, please
let us know. Email us at Pendulum podcast at gmail
dot com or go to seven US dot com dot
AU Forward Slash Pendulum presenter and executive producer Paula Donovan,
(29:45):
writer and producer Sally Eels, sound design Mark Wright, Graphics,
Jason Blandford, producer Annette Caltabiano. Transcripts Susan and Bush. Our
theme music is the Clock is Ticking by Dark. All
music See our show notes for full music credits. With
(30:13):
thanks to seven Years Brisbane
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