There were 121 cases of homicide in Victoria in 1985 and 1986. Only one of these cases supposedly involved a woman killing her husband’s lover. It happened on Phillip Island.
By Phyllis Papps
AT 9.20am on September 23, 1986, two respected Phillip Island residents, one of them shire councillor Don Cameron, went to the Cowes police station to report a “domestic argument” at a farmhouse in Rhyll, 13 kilometres away.
After listening to their rambling story, Sergeant Cliff Ashe and one of his juniors drove to the isolated house. In the doorway of a bedroom they found the body of 23-year-old Beth Barnard covered in a quilt. She had multiple stab wounds, her throat was severed and the letter ‘A’ was carved on her chest.
The same morning, Vivienne Cameron was reported missing and the family Land Cruiser was found near the San Remo bridge with her handbag and keys inside.
Most people concluded the two events were connected. Two teams of divers scoured the bottom of the bay for Vivienne Cameron’s body but found nothing. Over the next few weeks, police interviewed people and collected evidence, took photographs, made a video recording and drew up sketches and plans.
As the story unravelled, it transpired that Beth Barnard had been having an affair with Vivienne Cameron’s husband, Fergus Cameron, the brother of Don Cameron and one of Phillip Island’s most prominent citizens. The prevailing theory – which eventually became the official version – was that Vivienne had leapt from the San Remo bridge after killing her husband’s lover in a fit of jealous rage.
Only one thing contradicted it: one of Vivienne’s colleagues stated that Vivienne had telephoned her at 10am on the morning of her supposed disappearance. “During this call, the conversation was focussed solely on the Phillip Island Community House activities,” the friend said in her statement to the police.
Phillip Island’s small, close community reacted to the murder with shock and horror but over time they became divided. Today, many people still believe the police were not thorough enough in their investigations, that their interviewing was too narrow, both in the questions they asked and the people they talked to, and that key information was suppressed.
Retired journalist Myra Mobach, who covered the Bass area at the time of the murder, says many people refused to talk to the police. “It was like a protection society to stop people from inquiring. People didn’t like an unpleasantness like a murder to tarnish the family name.”
Richard Schmeiszl, a journalist at the South-Gippsland Sentinel Times who has followed the case for 26 years, says Melbourne’s homicide squad came to the area totally cold. “They didn’t know these people.” Coverage of the murder in the Sentinel Times was extremely limited. “Our then editor thought it was a little too close to home and there were two small children involved, so he didn’t feature it very prominently.”
Under a screaming headline “Island Murder Devastating”, the Phillip Island Sun reported the murder on the front page the first week. The next week there was one small paragraph, the following week another small paragraph – then nothing.
The Age didn’t even bother to send its own reporter to the island, instead asking Schmeiszl to file a story for them. The print media was then strangely silent, despite the newsworthiness of the story of a murder and supposed suicide.
True crime writer Vikki Petraitis, co-author of The Phillip Island Murder, has been investigating and writing about crimes for the past 20 years. “I think within the context of the time, domestic murder wasn’t covered at all,” she says. “And still isn’t. Victoria averages about 50 murders a year and we don’t hear about half of them because they’re domestic. Although this murder did have a twist to it.”
Petraitis got a mixed reaction when she asked to interview people for her book. “Some were hostile and didn’t want to talk about it. A lot of people didn’t want to meet on the island to be interviewed. Other people were more interested in the puzzle.”
She says a Melbourne solicitor representing the Camerons rang her to say they didn’t want the book written. “When I said I was going to write the book, I was warned to be careful because I could be sued. It was all bluff.”
A year after Beth Barnard’s death, at the Korumburra Court, the Coroner found that Vivienne Cameron had “contributed to the cause of death”. In July 1988, at an inquest into Vivienne Cameron’s presumed death, the Coroner stated: “Although her body has not been found, I am satisfied that she is dead and that she leapt from the bridge into the water”.
Petraitis is not convinced. “There literally was no evidence for such a specific finding, when he simply could have made an open finding.” She questions the haste for an inquest when the process of declaring a missing person dead normally takes seven years.
One reason may have been to sort out Vivienne Cameron’s will. She was a major shareholder in a company called Placetac Pty. Ltd, which in 1985 had bought the old Phillip Island racing circuit – by then farmland – with a view to restoring it and reintroducing racing. Her share in the company was transferred to her husband in 1988. The same year, Placetac leased the track to Bob Barnard’s company and in 1989 he staged the first Australian round of the World Motorcycle Championship, later the Motorcycle Grand Prix.
In 2004, with the Grand Prix and Superbikes firmly entrenched on Phillip Island, Placetac sold the race track and surrounds to Lindsay Fox for an undisclosed sum.
Fergus Cameron re-married in 1993. Later that year, after two years of extensive research and nearly 20 interviews, Vikki Petraitis and Paul Daley released their book The Phillip Island Murder. The print run of 3000 copies sold out within months. The book sold extremely well, everywhere except on Phillip Island.
Myra Mobach says the Cowes newsagency refused to stock it. “I felt it was a strange business decision … I bought my copy from the newsagency in San Remo, which was run by someone who hadn’t grown up in the area. I think there was the feeling that the Camerons were well respected people and there is something grubby about a murder connected to a family, which people wanted to defend the Cameron family from.”
Periodically since then there has been talk about new clues, new information and the possibility of another investigation into the Barnard/Cameron case. In 2001, with the breakthrough in DNA testing, police tested samples that had been taken from both farmhouses and surrounds in 1986. The results have not been publicly released.
In 2002, Chloe Hooper released her first novel, A Children’s Book of True Crime, which was based on the Phillip Island murder. This “book within a book” changed all names and other details, setting the events in Tasmania. It won several awards and discussions are under way to adapt it for the screen.
In 2004, Channel 10 screened a documentary series called Sensing Murder in which psychics were called in to investigate unsolved crimes. One episode, titled The Scarlet Letter, covered the Phillip Island murder. Many people were interviewed and Petraitis supplied all her research material to the TV producers. To coincide with the program, her book was reprinted, with some updated information. It has been reprinted since and is still selling in bookshops.
She has not given up hope that new DNA techniques will provide a breakthrough. She is still committed to unravelling the murder and maintains contact with the homicide squad and the forensic science unit. “Most murderers get away with murder because they’re lucky, not because they’re more intelligent.”
She says there is so much supposition that sorting through it all is difficult. “Certainly, the rumours did lead us to form certain conclusions. They couldn’t be put in the book, because they couldn’t be verified.”
Schmeiszl also says he can’t let go of the story, even after 26 years. He still believes there was a cover-up. “With a tragedy like this, surely it should be totally out in the open. Justice hasn’t been done. No one has been arrested.” Victoria Police scrapped its cold case unit in 2008 but reinstated it last year. A warrant is still out for Vivienne Cameron’s arrest. The Coroner can also re-open a case if someone makes a request to the Supreme Court.
Myra Mobach says the Phillip Island murder remains a subject of fascination because the investigation has never been resolved.
“There has been a lot of speculation about how it happened and who did it and a lot of criticism of the way it was investigated. The real interest will continue as long as there is no full stop at the end of the story.”
AT 9.20am on September 23, 1986, two respected Phillip Island residents, one of them shire councillor Don Cameron, went to the Cowes police station to report a “domestic argument” at a farmhouse in Rhyll, 13 kilometres away.
After listening to their rambling story, Sergeant Cliff Ashe and one of his juniors drove to the isolated house. In the doorway of a bedroom they found the body of 23-year-old Beth Barnard covered in a quilt. She had multiple stab wounds, her throat was severed and the letter ‘A’ was carved on her chest.
The same morning, Vivienne Cameron was reported missing and the family Land Cruiser was found near the San Remo bridge with her handbag and keys inside.
Most people concluded the two events were connected. Two teams of divers scoured the bottom of the bay for Vivienne Cameron’s body but found nothing. Over the next few weeks, police interviewed people and collected evidence, took photographs, made a video recording and drew up sketches and plans.
As the story unravelled, it transpired that Beth Barnard had been having an affair with Vivienne Cameron’s husband, Fergus Cameron, the brother of Don Cameron and one of Phillip Island’s most prominent citizens. The prevailing theory – which eventually became the official version – was that Vivienne had leapt from the San Remo bridge after killing her husband’s lover in a fit of jealous rage.
Only one thing contradicted it: one of Vivienne’s colleagues stated that Vivienne had telephoned her at 10am on the morning of her supposed disappearance. “During this call, the conversation was focussed solely on the Phillip Island Community House activities,” the friend said in her statement to the police.
Phillip Island’s small, close community reacted to the murder with shock and horror but over time they became divided. Today, many people still believe the police were not thorough enough in their investigations, that their interviewing was too narrow, both in the questions they asked and the people they talked to, and that key information was suppressed.
Retired journalist Myra Mobach, who covered the Bass area at the time of the murder, says many people refused to talk to the police. “It was like a protection society to stop people from inquiring. People didn’t like an unpleasantness like a murder to tarnish the family name.”
Richard Schmeiszl, a journalist at the South-Gippsland Sentinel Times who has followed the case for 26 years, says Melbourne’s homicide squad came to the area totally cold. “They didn’t know these people.” Coverage of the murder in the Sentinel Times was extremely limited. “Our then editor thought it was a little too close to home and there were two small children involved, so he didn’t feature it very prominently.”
Under a screaming headline “Island Murder Devastating”, the Phillip Island Sun reported the murder on the front page the first week. The next week there was one small paragraph, the following week another small paragraph – then nothing.
The Age didn’t even bother to send its own reporter to the island, instead asking Schmeiszl to file a story for them. The print media was then strangely silent, despite the newsworthiness of the story of a murder and supposed suicide.
True crime writer Vikki Petraitis, co-author of The Phillip Island Murder, has been investigating and writing about crimes for the past 20 years. “I think within the context of the time, domestic murder wasn’t covered at all,” she says. “And still isn’t. Victoria averages about 50 murders a year and we don’t hear about half of them because they’re domestic. Although this murder did have a twist to it.”
Petraitis got a mixed reaction when she asked to interview people for her book. “Some were hostile and didn’t want to talk about it. A lot of people didn’t want to meet on the island to be interviewed. Other people were more interested in the puzzle.”
She says a Melbourne solicitor representing the Camerons rang her to say they didn’t want the book written. “When I said I was going to write the book, I was warned to be careful because I could be sued. It was all bluff.”
A year after Beth Barnard’s death, at the Korumburra Court, the Coroner found that Vivienne Cameron had “contributed to the cause of death”. In July 1988, at an inquest into Vivienne Cameron’s presumed death, the Coroner stated: “Although her body has not been found, I am satisfied that she is dead and that she leapt from the bridge into the water”.
Petraitis is not convinced. “There literally was no evidence for such a specific finding, when he simply could have made an open finding.” She questions the haste for an inquest when the process of declaring a missing person dead normally takes seven years.
One reason may have been to sort out Vivienne Cameron’s will. She was a major shareholder in a company called Placetac Pty. Ltd, which in 1985 had bought the old Phillip Island racing circuit – by then farmland – with a view to restoring it and reintroducing racing. Her share in the company was transferred to her husband in 1988. The same year, Placetac leased the track to Bob Barnard’s company and in 1989 he staged the first Australian round of the World Motorcycle Championship, later the Motorcycle Grand Prix.
In 2004, with the Grand Prix and Superbikes firmly entrenched on Phillip Island, Placetac sold the race track and surrounds to Lindsay Fox for an undisclosed sum.
Fergus Cameron re-married in 1993. Later that year, after two years of extensive research and nearly 20 interviews, Vikki Petraitis and Paul Daley released their book The Phillip Island Murder. The print run of 3000 copies sold out within months. The book sold extremely well, everywhere except on Phillip Island.
Myra Mobach says the Cowes newsagency refused to stock it. “I felt it was a strange business decision … I bought my copy from the newsagency in San Remo, which was run by someone who hadn’t grown up in the area. I think there was the feeling that the Camerons were well respected people and there is something grubby about a murder connected to a family, which people wanted to defend the Cameron family from.”
Periodically since then there has been talk about new clues, new information and the possibility of another investigation into the Barnard/Cameron case. In 2001, with the breakthrough in DNA testing, police tested samples that had been taken from both farmhouses and surrounds in 1986. The results have not been publicly released.
In 2002, Chloe Hooper released her first novel, A Children’s Book of True Crime, which was based on the Phillip Island murder. This “book within a book” changed all names and other details, setting the events in Tasmania. It won several awards and discussions are under way to adapt it for the screen.
In 2004, Channel 10 screened a documentary series called Sensing Murder in which psychics were called in to investigate unsolved crimes. One episode, titled The Scarlet Letter, covered the Phillip Island murder. Many people were interviewed and Petraitis supplied all her research material to the TV producers. To coincide with the program, her book was reprinted, with some updated information. It has been reprinted since and is still selling in bookshops.
She has not given up hope that new DNA techniques will provide a breakthrough. She is still committed to unravelling the murder and maintains contact with the homicide squad and the forensic science unit. “Most murderers get away with murder because they’re lucky, not because they’re more intelligent.”
She says there is so much supposition that sorting through it all is difficult. “Certainly, the rumours did lead us to form certain conclusions. They couldn’t be put in the book, because they couldn’t be verified.”
Schmeiszl also says he can’t let go of the story, even after 26 years. He still believes there was a cover-up. “With a tragedy like this, surely it should be totally out in the open. Justice hasn’t been done. No one has been arrested.” Victoria Police scrapped its cold case unit in 2008 but reinstated it last year. A warrant is still out for Vivienne Cameron’s arrest. The Coroner can also re-open a case if someone makes a request to the Supreme Court.
Myra Mobach says the Phillip Island murder remains a subject of fascination because the investigation has never been resolved.
“There has been a lot of speculation about how it happened and who did it and a lot of criticism of the way it was investigated. The real interest will continue as long as there is no full stop at the end of the story.”