Crime Junkie - CONSPIRACY: Phillip Island Part 1

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

When 23-year-old Beth Barnard is found murdered in her home, investigators immediately suspect a woman named Vivienne Cameron, whose husband had been having an affair with Beth. But the more investigators – and the wider public – dig into the mystery, the less the puzzle pieces seem to fit together.  Visit the Crime Junkie Fan Club App to listen to Part 2 now, as well as hundreds of never before released bonus episode.If you would like to purchase Vikki Petraitis’ and Paul Daley’s book, “The Phillip Island Murder,” please visit this link!If you or someone you know if experiencing thoughts of suicide, support can be reached by calling or texting the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/conspiracy-phillip-island-part-1Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllcCrime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat. Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at [phone] to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, random photos of Chuck, and more! 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and the story I have for you today. It is one where none of the pieces fit perfectly together, no matter which way you look at it. I mean, this has had our entire team pulling out their hair for months, because just when you think you figured it out, I promise you, you haven't. So buckle up crime junkies. This is the story of Beth Barnard and Vivian Cameron, part one. After taking a bit of time off work, September 23, 1986, is Sergeant Cliff Ash's first day back at work. And as you can imagine, that means catching up on everything he's missed. I'm sure he's assuming it'll be an easy day considering the small community of Philip

Island, Australia, is typically pretty crime-free. So he should be able to catch up on a bunch of paperwork that's piled up. But about 905 in the morning, when two men walk into the station, his easy first day back is shattered. Sergeant Ash actually knows these guys. They're Donald Cameron and Ian Cans, who are part of the prominent Cameron family. The family owns a bunch of land, they have deep political ties there on the island, so in the community where everyone knows everyone, everyone really knows

the Cameron's. Anyway, Sergeant Ash asked what he can do for them, and Donald muttered something about their having been some kind of domestic disturbance, and then he started to rambling about something having to do with family fights, and this affair that his brother Fergus was having with this young woman named Beth Barnard, and it doesn't make a ton of sense, but eventually, like 10 minutes into this rambling, Sergeant Ash interrupts Donald, and is like, what are you getting at? And Donald says, quote, it's Beth, I think she's not well. So it's after he says this that he finally gets to what I think is crucial information They may have wanted to start with and he says that he had just been over at Beth's farmhouse where they found her lying on the floor with blood everywhere Start with that that seems like way more than just not well. Right. Did you think even check if she's still alive? Well, Sergeant Ash has the same questions. I mean, he's obviously taken aback by this information, but like, especially taken aback, because now that he knows what he's dealing

with, he doesn't understand why neither of these guys seem even overly concerned. But this guy's a seasoned officer, so he immediately jumps into action and calls for backup from a police station on the mainland. And he does this because, I mean, the population of Philip Island is super small, so they have to call for backup whenever they need even just a few more officers for anything. And should this turn out to be the worst case scenario, they don't even have a homicide unit there,

so they need help from outside. Now, Phillip Island is connected to the mainland by a bridge, so it's easy to get a few more officers over on short notice. But after this initial call for backup, Sergeant Ash knows that he's going to need some immediate help between now and when they arrive. So he calls another local officer back to the station, who was out on another job or something. But once he's back, all four of them head to Beth's farmhouse. So that's these two officers, Ian and Donald, and Ian and Donald are leading the way in their car. Two officers following behind in theirs. After about 10 minutes, they pull up to Beth's place and initially everything looks pretty normal, at least from the outside. So Sergeant Ash makes the decision to go in. Shouldn't he wait for the backup?

I mean, they don't even have a homicide unit on this. Like, what about preserving the crime scene? Well, that's the thing that he doesn't know if there is a crime scene to like preserve or anything, because Donald and Ian were so vague. Honestly, he's thinking that Beth could very well still be in their needing help. So he's not just gonna stand outside waiting for backup when he doesn't know minutes could be of the essence here.

So he walks up the path to the back door and he notices that the door and the screen door are both unlocked and cracked open a little bit. According to an episode of the podcast, the vanishing of Vivian Cameron by Casefile presents, he opens each door enough to let himself in, where he proceeds slowly and cautiously down this long hallway. It only takes him a few steps before he comes across a bedroom. And even though he's expecting blood, what he sees isn't what he was imagining.

Because there he sees who he assumes to be Beth lying on her back on the floor with his white floral quilt pulled up to her nose. The top of her head is facing the door and her eyes are half way open. But even though her eyes are open, Sargent Ash knows there's nothing behind them. Her cold stare and the huge pool of blood congealed around her make it clear that she's deceased and there is nothing he can do to help her. So is this the same thing that Donald and Ian saw? Because I mean, this guy knows she's immediately gone and they were like, oh, she's not

well, I don't know. Right. It doesn't get any less weird from here. But yeah, this is the same thing that they saw. So Ash walks over, carefully takes the corner of the blanket in between his fingers and pulls it back just a tiny bit which reveals a few of Beth's injuries. And these are brutal.

Her throat has been cut literally down to the bone and her upper lip has this large gash likely from a knife. And actually, that slice was so vicious that it knocked out one of her front teeth which is lying near her body along along with a wooden-handled knife. So after seeing just how violent this attack was, Sargent Ash is now more concerned than ever with preserving the scene. So he carefully places the quilt backward, and he just heads straight back outside to where the other men are still waiting for some kind of update.

According to a book titled The Philip Island Murder by Vicki Petrata's and Paul Daley, which by the way, Vicki Petrata's has become like the foremost expert. I think at least that I've been able to find on this case. And it's really because of her work that we were able to put a lot of this episode together. And the podcast even that we reference is based on this book.

So high five to Vicki. But based on her book, it doesn't take long before homicide detectives arrive from the mainland, and they're the ones who begin processing the scene, starting with the room that Beth was found in. Now to give you a sense of the layout, there are two beds that are pushed to either corner of the room, one that Beth sleeps in and then an extra bed, and there is a dresser that sits in between them with like like a lamp, a few knick knacks on it, and several items are kind of just scattered around the room. And not like in a disturbance way,

but just in like a people live here kind of way. Like there's a hat hanging off the post on the spare bed, stuff like that. Now what's clear to them is that the attack started in Beth's bed. There is blood on the sheets, there's blood smeared on the wall next to it, and some that's even spattered on the dresser that are in between the two beds. But what's interesting

is like I said, the whole room isn't destroyed. I mean, even the lamp that was on the dresser is still upright. The hat that I said is still hanging there. So had there been a big scuffle in this room, you would think some of that would have gotten knocked over. Yeah, the way you're describing it, it makes me think that maybe she could have been sleeping when she was attacked? Yeah, and that's exactly what they end up thinking, because as they look around the rest of the house, there is any evidence of a struggle in any of the other rooms, either. I mean, there's actually not much of anything in the rest of the house, just some blood on

a tap that was on the bathroom sink and then a maroon towel, like someone tried to wash up. Yeah, maybe. And it was weird too, is like there isn't even any indication that her house was broken into. If she was attacked in her bed, like there was just that cracked open door

that they walked through. So it's almost like she let her killer in. Maybe, right? So she let them in or on an island this small, like it actually isn't super unusual to leave your door unlocked. And again, if she's in bed, left the back door unlocked.

So even as security conscious as she was, someone could have entered her house without even her knowing. So was it unlocked when Donald and Ian had gotten there earlier? I assume so. Like, I've never seen that said explicitly. They say that the door was cracked open.

So yeah, and then when police got there, it's not like there's any instance of forced entry, right? Like, even they had to get in. So I'm pretty sure it was unlocked. And again, maybe even cracked when they got there. And so police are pretty confident that the killer entered and exited through that back door.

And once their crime scene examiners scope out even further, they spot one more little piece of evidence right outside on the path leading from the door. It's just two small droplets of blood. So, before they can touch or move anything, they have to get it all photographed. Then, once that's done, they bring in experts to dust the place for prints. After that, only then do investigators remove the quilt from Beth's body to get the full extent of her injuries. And when they do, immediately, they know they aren't dealing with your run of the mill homicide. Because her top has been pulled up, revealing that the letter A was carved into her torso.

The A is large, taking up most of her torso with the tip pointed up towards her head, like the tip of the A. And this cutbread is deep. So deep that according to the Philip Island murder book, investigators noted the slashes had cut through Beth's chest and stomach muscles, I mean, down to her ribs. Oh my god. And they can tell that it wasn't made with just three long cuts to form the a. Someone with the knife went in multiple times on both sides of the a like slashing it over and over again. Vicki also says in her podcast that Beth also has multiple stab wounds to her neck and chest and defensive wounds on both of her hands. Now as they continue to pull back the quilt even further, it reveals that her arms and legs have been smeared with blood, almost like whoever killed her rubbed their hands

like all along her extremities. And whoever did this, they took their time. Like nothing about this scene feels random to police. This attack was personal. One committed by someone who felt a lot of rage toward her. I mean we're on an island that this can't be that long. It's not. And really the who of it all might come back to the way that Donald and Ian rolled into the police station. I mean I think what they were trying to do and all their rambling was give context for what they found which to do and all their rambling was give context

for what they found, which wasn't helpful when initially we just needed to get to Beth, like Beth's in trouble. Right, they started with, she's not well. Yeah, it was massive trouble. But now that context is very important. So here's what Sergeant Ash knows at this point. Beth has been having an affair for a little over a year with a man named Fergus Cameron.

Now Fergus remember is Donald's brother, he's one of the men who came into the police station, and Ian, the other guy who came into the police station, is married to Fergus's sister Marney. So he's his brother-in-law. Now Beth was not married, but Fyrgis is. He has a wife and two kids at home, and you can imagine that his wife Vivian, who everyone calls Viv, wasn't thrilled when she recently confirmed suspicion she was having about him having an affair.

In fact, Donald and Ian say that things had come to a head between the couple just the night before when they had this massive argument about the affair that escalated to the point where they've broke a wine glass and stabbed Fergus in the back with a piece of it or like broke it over his ear and then a piece like got him in the back. A fair or no, I do not love this dynamic in the slightest. No, I mean, this happened. It is toxic and straight up abuse. There are questions about how this happened.

Trust me, we'll get there. Now, I guess the cut was so bad that Vivian ended up taking Fergus to the hospital to get stitches. After he's discharged, they decided that they just needed some space. So Viv took Fergus to Marnean Ian's house, so his sister and his brother-in-law. He stays the night there and Viv went back home to be with their boys, or at least that's where

they assume she went. And the boys didn't go to the hospital too. No, so according to an article published in the age, they're only about like eight and five and the fight between Fergus and Viv happened late at night when they were sleeping, sometime between nine and ten. So they had called Marney over to just sit at the house with the boys until they got back. But like I said, they decide to spend the night away from one another. Viv drops Fergus off, she goes home, none of them hear anything from Viv for the rest of the night. And I mean, not that they even expected to. But then in the morning, they do hear from someone. It's just not Viv. So Fergis' brother, Donald, he and his wife Pam got a phone call from a friend who told them that she had Fergis and Viv's kids. But she needed someone to come take them because Viv still

wasn't back and she had to get to work. We, I'm confused. We all are. So if Gets Home from the hospital, sends Marney home, takes Fergus to Marney's and then leaves again? Yeah, she apparently called this woman at like three in the morning and said that she needed her to take the boys because she was at the hospital with Fergus.

Does that mean they go back to the hospital? No. By 3am, Fergus was at Marnie and Ian and Viv is supposed to be at home. Her and Fergus have already gone to the hospital, they're back. So no one was going to the hospital or at the hospital or anything related to the hospital at 3am. So why was Viv having this lady come get the boys? That was the big question for the whole family. Because Donald and Pam get this call, and they weren't involved with any of the stuff the night before. So this is like the first time they even think something's weird.

So when they get this call, they may contact with Ian and Marney, and kind of exchange notes, Ian and Marney fill Donald and Pam in on what happened the night before. This call that they got that started out weird is weirder now that they know everything because now everyone's like, okay, Vivian essentially lied, right? No one went to the hospital. Why did she have this woman come get her kids? No one knows what's going on.

And yeah, no one knows where Vivian is now. So basically what ends up happening is this friend who was watching the kid, she gets the older kid on the bus with her son to go to school, Donald swings by to pick up the younger kid, and then they start looking for Vith. But she, along with one of their vehicles,

this land cruiser, which has a flat bed truck for Hollings, the kind of thing like a pickup truck. Both her and the pickup truck are like MIA. So that's all like the backstory. Again, I know I give you a little bit more, but this is all the backstory that Ash had when he went there. So he already knows like when they go looking for who could have done this to Beth

that she is tied up in this love triangle type thing with you know, Fergus and Vivian. And they know that Fergus, he says he's with his family all night and they know now that Vivian is missing. Okay. So I feel like you skipped a huge chunk. How did Ian and Donald make their way

to best stop warning? I'm actually not sure if they explain all that, right? At this very moment. I mean, obviously there are a lot of gaps to fill in and you know people investigators need to talk to but at least for the moment investigators they just know four things and they're trying to move quickly. They know Fergis and Viv had a huge fight about the affair. Viv called another woman to watch her kids in the middle of the night.

Beth is down dead and now Viv is missing. So Viv is suspect number one. She is. And according to Vicki Impal's book, until they get more information, Fergus is on that list too. Like just because his brother-in-law and his sister say that he's at their house doesn't have them totally writing this guy off just like minutes into their investigation, at least not yet.

So where exactly is Fergus at this point? So he is still at Marnie and Ian's. And this is kind of where a bunch of things start happening all at once, but I'm going to walk through everything like one at a time, so bear with me. One of the first things they do is send one of the officers there at the scene to go get a doctor from the local hospital to go check on Fergus and break the news to him that Beth is dead. So, Donald and Ian haven't told him? No, they say they went straight to police after they found Beth.

And why are they sending a doctor to Fergus instead of an investigator or an officer? I thought it was weird too, but I couldn't find a solid explanation other than sending the doctor to check him out, make sure he's okay. But to me that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because it couldn't be from the injuries the night before, at least in my mind, like there'll be pictures of those on our website of what that looks like and if they were not life threatening by any means, I don't know. But this officer, he and actually goes with this officer to get the doctor and then go get Fergus.

Now, the same time that that's happening, investigators also begin the collection process of everything from the house to send off for testing. Including the blood in Beth's room, those two drops of blood outside of the house, the smears of blood on the bathroom taps, and that towel in her bathroom. And they're also collecting things that maybe didn't jump out at first, the way, you know, blood would, but things that they're hoping might give them evidence as to who was in her home last. Like, there are some cigarettes that they find.

There's one cigarette in the bathroom and then a few in the kitchen. Now, it's worth noting the cigarette in the bathroom is a different brand than the others. And they're standing out to police as possible evidence because as they've been talking to people, they find out that Beth wasn't a smoker. What about Vivian? Well Vivian was known to be a smoker, and actually the cigarettes found in the kitchen are the same brand that she smokes. Was Ferg is a smoker, too?

Not that I'm aware of, but it is worth noting that apparently Beth's parents may have also smoked, although I can't 100% confirm that. And according to Monique Horse reporting for the herald son, they actually own the house that she lives in, as well as the surrounding property. And they don't live there on the island or in the house all the time. So it doesn't seem like the cigarettes would have been there, but it's not like you can tell how long cigarettes have been anywhere, so right. They have no idea who these belong to.

All they can do is package it up, hope the lab can find something on them to test and connect to a specific person. Now, in this evidence collection process, they're also paying specific attention to Beth's driveway, where there are a number of tire impressions. Some of them are obviously from Ian and Donald's car, and the several police cars that have accumulated on the scene. But there are some others that don't match any of the vehicles present. So they take plaster casts of the impression that they can't match to any of the vehicles on site at the moment, hoping to match them one day to a suspects car, possibly even the land cruiser if they can ever find it.

Meanwhile, other officers are dispatched to basically go stake out the homes of Vivian's two siblings who live in Melbourne, which is across the bridge. It actually turns out that she was supposed to be visiting her brother in just a few days, so hypothetically, if she had something to do with this, if she had killed Beth and was looking for a place to lay low, they're thinking that, okay, maybe she would go to her family on the mainland. Which by the way, they're sending people to stake the house out, but no one has bothered to call them and tell them that their sister is missing. What? Yeah, I don't know if they do this because they don't want to give them a heads of bright, call them and tell them that their sister is missing. What? Yeah, I don't know if they do this because they don't want

to give them a heads of bright. I don't know if they're still suspecting that she might be going there, or if this is something that just didn't happen because of crossed wires or lack of manpower. But Viv's sister later says that they only learned about it because there was a report that came over the radio about everything. And when they finally got in touch with Ian,

it was weird he wouldn't tell them really what was going on, which again, kind of makes me think was everyone in cahoots to kind of keep them out of the loop. Right. But they're not having that, so they just drive to the island and check everything out for themselves. And all that to say Viv didn't show up at their houses.

No, she didn't. But I think it's good that they forced themselves in front of investigators because they're able to tell them about something that at the time didn't seem like anything, but now that they know Viv is missing, it might be really meaningful. Apparently a few days ago, Viv had called her brother and asked if she could come visit him early. Like she had plans to come in a couple days ago, Viv had called her brother and asked if she could come visit him early.

Like she had plans to come in a couple of days but was like, hey can we come now basically. And he told her, no, just come when you're scheduled to come. When I'm sure that what ifs are just eating him alive right now, I'm sure. And to them, I mean to think that their sister was capable of murdering someone and then fleeing. I mean to think that their sister was capable of murdering someone and then fleeing. I mean, it sounds impossible, but her brother, I mean, honestly, all he's wishing for at this point is for her to show up at their house, just so they can know she's okay, deal with whatever is next, but she doesn't. You're right, she never shows.

Whether Vivian is responsible for what happened to Beth or not, they believe finding her is the key to answering a lot of their questions. So investigators aren't taking people down to the station for more formal, documented interviews, starting with Donald. Now I know we have some of the basics of what happened over the last 24 hours, but for this case, the devil is in the details, so we're going to have to go into the details. According to the Philip Island murder book, Donald starts out by explaining that at about 7.45 in the morning, he got a call from a family friend who had the two boys. We know that.

He agrees to pick up the younger boy from their house while the older one goes to school. And he says once he does on the way home, he's swung by Fergus and Vibshouse. Now the two of them live on a farm that is run by several members of the family and their house sits back from the road up this like long driveway. And Donald says that he didn't pull into the property, he just slowed down as he passed, but he could see that the sedan that Viv normally drove was parked in its usual parking spot. But he didn't go to check if the land cruiser was still there because it was normally parked in a shed, which it

doesn't sound like he'd be able to see from the road. And like she didn't normally drive that one anyways, it was usually Fergus who drove it. So I think the whole point of the drive-by is just to look for her, he sees the car, but he doesn't go in, whatever, for whatever reason. But why not? Wouldn't he have assumed that she was home

if her car was sitting there? I agree, I think it's weird because the whole question everyone has right now is like, where is it? And why wouldn't she get her kids? Like nothing makes sense. And think it's weird because the whole question everyone has right now is like, where is Vin? Why wouldn't she get her kids? Like, nothing makes sense. And if you're going to take the time to drive by, the one thing I'll say is I did hear that this family farm, it was more like a compound where they all lived really close to one another, but I don't have any kind

of like map or exact proximity. So I don't know if the-by was more like an on his way and he spotted it Rather than like going out of his way just like an intentional thing, right? Right But again devils in the details. So, but I'm gonna have you read an exact quote from this next section of his statement sure Quote I got home and my wife Pam rang my sister Marney and Fergus answered the phone He seemed really distressed and didn't want to talk to us, so he handed the phone to Marney's husband, Ian. Ian diplomatically told Pam that something had happened, and he would talk to us later. Pam insisted that we know what had happened because we had their child with us.

Fergus then got back on the phone and told Pam that there had been a row the night before, and he had been injured and had to be treated at the hospital. We gathered that the row had been of a domestic nature and it had involved Beth Barnard, but other than that, Fergus was pretty uncommunicative." Does he mean that the fight involved Beth physically or more that the fight was about Beth? Cannon for having the direct quote. I don't know. I think he means it's about the affair.

And just for clarity, this quote, I think he's talking about the time right when they are trying to figure out what's going on and they're like conferring with one another, but it's before he picked up his nephew. OK, so if he mentions Beth and the affair, then they all knew about it then? Yeah, it sounds like the details of the affair weren't like fully family knowledge until now. But I do know that at least according to the podcast, I mean, they were all really familiar

with Beth before this. I mean, it's a small community. They worked together. She worked on the Fergus Family farm, which, again, more family members worked at. She was actually kind of close with all of them. In addition to the fact that her and Fergus both also worked at this thing called the Penguin Parade together, I'm sorry, the what? Yeah, you know, there's a first for everything. I hadn't heard of it. Need to see it now.

Apparently, Philip Island has the largest colony of little penguins in the world. And the penguin parade is what they call the penguins, waddling from the sea to their burrows every night. That is a adorable background to the squirzy case. I'm actually going to send you a picture, which I will show to everyone. It's a little pick me up because we got a lot of darkness ahead. Oh, isn't that the sweetest? God, I love that there's a little underdeck too, so you can be like face to face with the penguins.

Yeah, people come out and watch them a lot of joy. I love this. Okay, okay, you got your joy back to the ceiling. Okay, so the next part I think is important, because it picks up at 905 when he says that Ian called him back and said that the land cruiser was missing. Which, I know this was like two ad breaks ago

and a whole penguin parade, so you might not recall, but 905 is the time that Donald and Ian are at the police station reporting Beth being not well. Oh. At least according to police. So we know at least the timing of what he says happen next is off. Now I've seen some people really spiral on this,

especially when you compare Donald's timeline of events with the timeline presented by other family members in their statements, but as we'll come to see, a lot happened that morning, and there is a world where you can chalk all of it, some of it up to just not looking at the clock every five minutes. You know what I mean? Okay, but all of this is happening just a couple of hours ago. It's not like we're trying to ask teenagers to recall, you know, what they were doing in a tiny window of time after school six weeks ago. That is a deep cut serial reference and I love you for that. Oh, I mean you would. But okay, weird timeline aside, how did Ian find out that the land cruiser was missing?

Well that I don't know. I don't think Donald asked Ian. I don't know if police asked Donald during his statement. But during this call, like while they're on the phone, Ian says to Donald, like, hey, Fergus wants us to go tell Beth about the fight that he, meaning Fergis, he and Viv had the night before. Like physically go see her, not just give her a call. Right. Why? I don't know.

Maybe because she was the reason for the fight. Then why wouldn't Fergis just go himself or call her himself? I don't know. Does it have anything to do with how he was injured or? No, I mean, like, like I said, he got some stitches. Maybe he's not supposed to move around a lot, but again, you can see the photos of the cuts he had. And in my mind, that still doesn't mean anything,

because you also could just give her a call and give her a head to it. Why are you sending your brother and your brother in law to tell her about the fight your wife and you had last night? I mean, maybe he was going to end things and just didn't want to see her. Like maybe the fight with Viv got to him. Then to me, call or have them call. If the problem is like, oh, I just don't even want to be caught talking to her again.

Like, I don't understand why they have to go there. The whole trip out there. It just doesn't make sense to me. But it must have made sense to Donald, because he says that he drove over to Ian Marnie's house, picks up Ian. And while he was there, he saw Fergus there at the back door. And he says that Fergus looked just super distressed, almost like crying. And this is before anyone even sees Beth that morning.

Yeah, no one has any idea that Beth is harmed. So again, maybe Fergis is fighting about his marriage. I don't know, he's very upset. He's asking them to go check on his paramour. He also asked Arnold if they would stop by his and Biv's house on their way over to Beth's just to see if she's there. And that's exactly what they do. The even go inside this time, look around, but they don't see Vib.

So then they drive to Beth's, they see her car and her family's work truck that they kept on the property. And Ian stayed behind while Donald walked up to the back door. And this is where he does. He finds it a little bit open, cracked about six to eight inches. He says he calls out for Beth, doesn't get an answer. And then when he stepped inside, just like when Ash went inside, it doesn't take him long to find Beth's body, laying on the bedroom floor covered with that quilt. And he says after that, they went right to the police station. To tell the police that she wasn't well.

Not well. Right. So, what does Ian have to say about all this? Or better yet, does Fergus say anything about what happened that night? So that's the thing. Despite sending a doctor to go check on him and make sure he's okay, no one actually takes a statement from Fergus that day. Which again, maybe Senator Investigator not a doctor, but whatever.

Yeah, and you know who else they don't take a statement from that day? Ian. Or any other of the family members in the Cameron family. What? Do they ever take their statements? They do, and we're not, you know, not months or anything. They take them two days later, but okay, but why? I have no clue. It is something that is stuck with me as I've been researching this case. And look, maybe it means nothing, or maybe it's the first sign of things going sideways. But even though they don't talk to Fergus or the other camera until the 25th, there are others they do talk to, and they're able to put together a tentative timeline of events

for that night. From speaking to staff at the hospital, they learn that Fergus and Viv arrived at the hospital at about 10-15 pm the night before. But their visit was weird from the start. According to the podcast, the nurse who took care of them says, at first, she just noticed a cut on Fergus's ear and thought that that was the extent of his injuries, but then eventually she noticed

his back was bleeding too. But to me, the weird part is, neither of them would say what happened. They would just give each other these like long, meaningful looks. And eventually, they said he'd fallen through a glass window or a door or something, but even though it was like definitely weird,

even to the nurse, he didn't think that their behavior was suspicious. Strange yes, suspicious, no. She just assumed that maybe he'd gotten into a fight with his brother since, again, they're all like this well-known family. Maybe he didn't wanna make a big thing of it. Okay, but is that something that happened regularly?

Not that I can tell. But this nurse says that Viv in particular looked really concerned for him. So again, she's coming up with like, you know, what could have happened in her mind? But because of the way Viv was acting toward him, none of the things she came up with in her mind ever involved like something happening between Viv and Fergus themselves, because it seemed like she was like caring for him. Now, he gets stitched up, they eventually leave the hospital, and like we already know, Fergus went to stay at Ian and Marney's house while Viv was gonna go stay back at their

house. We've got nothing really happening, everything seems quiet until 3am, and that's when this family friend, who we learn is named Robin, gets a call from Viv. Now according to Robin, Viv said that she was calling from the hospital, and she needed Robin and her husband to go get her boys, so they wouldn't be at her house alone. Now remember, we know this isn't true. Fergus and Viv had already been to the hospital, neither of them returned to the hospital at any point that night,

so we have no idea why she is saying this. So obviously she's not back at the hospital, but do we know where she's making this call from? No, and this is one of the most frustrating pieces of this case because there are so many answers I think we could get if we had phone records, but apparently at the time, phone companies there on the island didn't keep logs of local calls.

So Rob and her husband go to the Cameron farm to pick up the boys. Now she says when they got there, they noticed that the sedan was still there, but the land cruiser was nowhere to be seen, which to them didn't exactly stick out as a red flag because they're not really like looking for the land cruiser, you know? And you also said that the land cruiser was usually parked in a shed, right?

Right. Well, at least that's what I've seen. But I think it is a little weird that the sedan is still there, because, I mean, if they'd driven to the hospital like this story, even though we know the story isn't true, that probably would have been the vehicle that they'd take. But Robyn just kind of writes it off, thinking maybe they could have gone in ambulance or someone else picked them up, like no biggie, whatever. Now, she also notices that Viv's black handbag

is still in the house, too. Now, she might need this, it's a little concerning, but not alarming because, again, you rush out of the house, like, especially if you don't take your own car, like, you're just getting out of the house. She has no idea what this medical emergency was that took into the hospital. Right. She left her purse behind whatever.

Now, after Robin and her husband take the boys back to their house, the next piece of the timeline investigators put together comes from one of Beth Barnard's neighbors. This neighbor says that she was woken up at around 3.30 in the morning by someone driving down their street. Which might not seem like a big deal, but the street that Beth lived on only has maybe seven houses on it, so the neighbors are all pretty aware of each other's comings and goings. And this vehicle stood out to this neighbor in particular because she says it sounds just like her son's truck.

And is that what the Land Cruiser would have sounded like? That's kind of the insinuation, but nothing that I've seen, like says that explicitly. Okay. And everything that I've seen only says that this neighbor heard the truck, not saw it. So she can't even say what make or model or whatever. Okay, so just to recap, I know it's a lot.

Fergus and Viv hadn't argument about Beth that boiled over into a physical altercation. They go to the hospital around 10-15. Yes, they go home. And afterward, Fergus goes to Ian and Marnie's. Yes. What time did he get there again? Oh, so I don't think I've said that. So he got to Ian and Marnie's sometime

between one and two in the morning. And there's a discrepancy there, we'll get there, but sometime around one or two. Okay, okay. So Viv drops him off at one or two leaves. She says she's going home, but we don't actually know where she goes. We have no account of her in this time.

Then Robin gets this call to get the boys at three and around three 30, one of best neighbors. Here's a car coming on the road that sounds like her son's truck. You got it. Okay. That's all of the happenings like that night into the early morning hours.

Now, the next thing we have is at 7.45 in the morning. That is when Robin called Donald saying she can't get a hold of it, she needs someone to come get the kids, whatever. Okay, and that's when the ball starts rolling. Gotcha. Right. So, even though investigators are filling in more pieces for parts of the night and in the early morning hours, there is this missing chunk that honestly almost gets more confusing the

more information they get. And they think the only person who can make sense of this is Vivian. And at around 4pm that same day, investigators hopes Ghost Sky High that they're going to be able to talk to her because they get word that the land cruiser has been found. It's found parked close to a bus stop by the bridge that connects Philip Island to the mainland. And you're never gonna believe who found it. The vehicle was spotted by Pam Cameron, Donald's wife. What?

And she saw it as she was driving home from where she worked on the mainland. I mean, what are the odds? Yeah, it's kind of astounding me because it's not like it's hidden. Yeah, I know you said staff was limited. I guess I kind of pictured that the island was still like crawling with cops looking for Viv and this land cruiser, so for it not to be found until four, it makes me think that it just got parked there. Well, and you think about it too, they called four back up from the mainland, which they would have taken the same bridge that Pam did.

Right, they would have passed them. Maybe they didn't have the description, maybe they would just get your butts over here. But things get so wonky around this whole thing because it is so strange that it wasn't found earlier because Pam even says that she came back over to the island on her lunch break. So hours before 4 o'clock, she comes over and in her statement she makes note of seeing a cop car in the same place that the land cruiser is later parked. And she does not say explicitly that the land cruiser is there as well. She just says that she assumes that police have found Viv, but doesn't say that the land, and it makes me go bananas because if the land cruiser wasn't there, then what's the cop car doing there?

Yeah. And that means it was parked later, or if it was there, the cops should have found it. She shouldn't be the one reporting it. I have to be missing something or something hasn't been reported, because something about Pam's lunchtime siding just confuses things for me, but that is like the theme of this case. All things can't be true.

Yeah, and something is missing. Well, especially because when you learn that police's theory, they have this other witness comes for this local baker who tells them that he was making his morning deliveries. And he says he passed this same bus stop at like 5 a.m. and he noticed a vehicle parked in the same spot that the land cruiser was later found in. But it wasn't the land cruiser. Well, we don't know. He just says a vehicle. Like that's all I've ever seen reported. And so what they end up assuming is that they've leaves the land cruiser there sometime before five and that it's like sitting there all the way. But then we see a cop car there.

Yeah, whether the land cruiser is there at night noon, like either cop car is there and no one reported it or it wasn't there and the story doesn't make sense. And again, it doesn't even make sense to me. So even if you can rationalize all of that, it's also to me weird that it's a family member that clocks it and no one else when the whole day is devoted to finding Viv.

I mean, yes, but also a family member is probably gonna be on the lookout, recognize it easier than just a rando, you know? I mean, that's true. It is their work vehicle on their family farm. Either way, I mean, again, I could just sit here and talk about that one piece for hours alone, but here's what happened.

So Pam says she spots the car this time at four. It's sitting there. She's like, oh my gosh, I know what this is. She pulls over. She walks up and she notices that the driver's side window is rolled down about two inches. And when she tried to open the door, she found up and she notices that the driver's side window is rolled down about two inches. And when she tried to open the door, she found that it's unlocked and the keys are still in the ignition. And she quickly takes stock of what is in the vehicle. And she sees a gold purse,

a black handbag, and what she calls a brown face washer on the passenger seat, which is a term I wasn't familiar with before researching this case, but from what I can tell it's basically like a washcloth or like some kind of hand towel. And then I was truly in name, got it. Yeah, must be. But it doesn't even matter. So on the dashboard, she saw two packs of cigarettes that were the same brand that Viv smoked. One of them is full, one of them had been opened. And she also saw a lighter, and the key is to the Philip Island circuit, which is this racetrack that Fergus and Viv invested in, the Philip Island circuit, which is this race track that Fergus and Viv invested in and were shareholders in along with all of their siblings. So Pam says that what she does is she takes the keys out of the ignition, she grabs the

gold purse, and then she drives back to work to call Donald and tell him what she found. Oh, why did she drive back to work and not just go home or even like someplace closer with the phone? I don't know. I don't know if work was the closest place with a phone. All I know is when she got there, she calls Donald. He told her to call the police and report that she had found the land cruiser. So she did, but then no one picks up the phone because it turns out every single officer

on Philip Island is working this homicide slash disappearance, so no one's even at the police station to like take a call. So the place is crawling with cops, just none of the station because God forbid anyone else have an emergency. Yeah, I mean, they're lucky nothing else happened that day or like that we know of at least. Yeah, seriously. So after the police don't pick up, Pam said she drove back to the land cruiser. Took the racetrack keys, rolled up all the windows, locked the door on the driver's side,

and then she walked over to the passenger side and saw a carving knife sitting on top of some pants. Did the knife have any blood on it? No, apparently it was clean, so were the pants. But she said she did recognize it as being the same type of knife that Fergus and Viv had in their kitchen, maybe like the same like set or something. Now finally she said she opened the glove box to see if there was anything in there but there wasn't, so she finally locks the passenger side door too. But she still doesn't go straight home, instead she went over to Ian's place and filled

him in on what she saw. He calls the police and it seems like he's actually able to get through to someone. Okay, so the gold purse and the black handbag are they both vives? I know the handbag is, the black handbag. I'm assuming the gold purse is, too, since she said she finds vives license in it. But I don't know, people don't really talk about the gold purse a ton, but we'll talk more about the black handbag in a little bit. Now, when police arrive and examine the land cruiser, they find everything pretty much as Pam described. But there's something else about the vehicle that stands out.

There are a few hay bales, just like stacked on the back. One of them is even kind of like hanging off because even though I described it like a truck, it's a flatbed. There are no sides to the back of the truck. And what's so strange about this is that none of the investigators at the scene over at Beth's house saw any hay in her driveway, which seems unlikely if the current working theory is that Viv drove the Land Cruiser to Beth's to kill her. I mean, maybe it would have been possible to drive all over without a single piece of hay falling off. I say no.

Haybales are compact, but not that compact. I mean, like, sneezing by what? And you're covered in hay. And I know that from being at your house. I mean, you guys dealt with haybills all the time. Yeah, my daughter goes to my parents house and we'll walk in the barn and come out just like, covered.

So if you're moving a vehicle, even at like 15 miles an hour, don't you think a little piece of wind would catch one? I feel like the slightest jostling on the bed of the truck. I know. Some loose strands would fall out, but there's none over at best.

And I don't know what to make of that. Like, does it mean that somehow, hey, just didn't leave the haybills? Again, look at the picture that we're gonna put online, or if you're in the app, you can see it right now. I don't see how it's possible. They're literally like hanging off. It seems so unlikely. Is it possible that the hay wasn't on there, but like, so then she, what again, working theory she goes and kills Beth and then loads some hay to then go dump the truck, like that makes no sense to me?

Yeah. You could say maybe she didn't drive the car that far, but that still doesn't make sense. Like, maybe she checked out their car, I guess? Well, maybe, but like, we know that the sedan didn't really go anywhere. We're not robbing clocks, the sedan. Right. Don on the E and clock, the sedan. So that doesn't add up to me either.

At least with the timeline we have. There's a chance that she put the hand after, but that also doesn't make sense. Right, that's what I'm saying. Like, this is one of the pieces that you can't fit anywhere. Okay, I'm grasping at straws here. Pun intended, Ashley. But you said they did those plaster

impressions of the tire marks. Just test them and see, right? Like, if it's not the cruiser, then there's a bigger mystery. No, and they're going to. Like, the land cruiser itself is taken away to be processed, but it's not going to be done till the next day. But really, I think in that moment, if everyone was being honest with themselves, they think they know what the result are going to be, because before they even moment, if everyone was being honest with themselves, they think they know what the results are going to be. Because before they even get them, before they even speak with the rest of the Cameron family, they have this theory that has started to form an investigator's mind, a theory that viv in her rage over learning of Ferguson's affair killed Beth before driving to the bridge

to die by suicide. Where did that come from? Because her car was parked to the bridge to die by suicide. Where did that come from? Because her car was parked by the bridge. They think that she must have jumped. You said the link, who's always found near a bus stop though, right? Yeah, like a few meters away. So she also could have gotten on a bus and left the island. Yes, I know that they put out a call to anyone

who might have given her a ride or drivers who operate the buses, taxis, stuff like that. None of them remember seeing her, which is why I think they latch onto this idea that she must have tried to die by suicide. OK, I'm not doubting any bus driver or taxi memories, but I mean, how many people do they see every single day?

There's no way that they're committing everyone's faces to memories. How could they remember? This isn't Ireland though, when you think about it, and it's not like they're asking them weeks later. It was in a short window, so... Sure, someone could have forgotten, someone wasn't paying attention maybe. But for whatever reason, they're putting a lot of validity in the fact that they don't think she was on a bus on a taxi Whatever they know that maybe we don't know or maybe they don't know anything else They're saying she parked there to go then jump off the bridge. I feel like I'm just like missing a

Dot to connect here. They're like how do you get from parked at a bus stop by the bridge to Jumped off the bridge to die by suicide and so so quickly, yeah, this story turned on a dime. That's what I think is so odd about this theory is how quickly it formed with, to your point, there's missing pieces. I can't get from A to C without a B, where's the B? Yeah, and everyone's operating on a million what-ifs. In actuality, we don't know anything yet.

I mean, we don't even know if she's the one who actually killed Beth, which is kind of the linchpin for any of this to make any sense. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, it's a theory at this point, but in the first day Vivian is the only one that they can see who has means motive and opportunity. And they really lean in hard on motive for this to have been her. Not just the fact that she found out about the affair and the fact that she attacked Fergus, they think that there was something at the crime scene that alluded to the affair too.

Specifically, that big letter A that had been carved into Beth's chest. They believe that Vivian might as well have signed her name on Beth because that A to them could only mean one thing. You've read the scarlet letter, right? Yeah, of course. Can you give us like the 30-second plot refresher for those who haven't been in English 101 for a while? Sure, so it's by Nathaniel Hawthorne and it's about this woman in the 1600s who gets pregnant from an affair and has to wear this big red letter A on her clothing so that everyone knows that she's an adulterer.

Doesn't man have to wear the letter two? Of course not, because it takes place on a Puritan settlement, Massachusetts, and you know, finding a man who slept with a married woman isn't nearly as important as shaving the woman who he actually slept with. Yes. That's a tangent, sorry. Yeah, the letter A, letter A. That's the big deal. That's the, yeah, so it's all about this, like, a fair and her being branded for the affair. And it turns out it's not just required reading here in the US. It's a pretty well-known book

or premise in Australia, too. And minus the pregnancy aspect, because spoiler alert, the autopsy confirms Beth was not pregnant, the rest sounds kind of similar to this story. Or, is it a fair, right? At its heart. So they think that A could stand for adulterer? That's the theory, which, and this is a technicality, but like adulterer doesn't really apply to Beth in the affair, because she wasn't married,

Fergus is the one in this triangle who fits the definition of an adulterer. Okay, but during a murderous rage, no one's checking a dictionary. Right. Point taken. It's obviously more about the symbolism. If that is what it means, because again, theory.

We are a whole one day into the investigation and working on almost no facts yet. But I'm sure they're hoping that Beth's autopsy is gonna provide some. It's conducted the next day on the 24th, and the coroner finds that despite her death being frenzied and violent, it was quick. The cut to her throat severed her carotid artery, and one of the stab wounds to her chest cut, her paracardium, and venocava, meaning that she would have only lived for maybe a few minutes before succumbing to her injuries.

He's also pretty sure she was not alive when that A was carved into her torso. The forensic pathologist takes samples to send to the lab as well, with the rest of everything, so we've got a pile of potential evidence slowly but surely building up and being processed. But the day that the autopsy is done is also the day that the land cruiser is processed. And it turns out the plaster cast taken from outside Beth's house do match the type of tires from the land cruisers. The only thing I never see reported is if there were any other ones or unidentified ones, but we know we can place the land cruiser there. And then they collect the rest of the stuff inside for testing, and then they

send the whole thing, the whole land cruiser off to be photographed and dusted for prints. Now I know already that's a lot, but there is one more thing they do on the 24th, and that is search, Fergus and Viv's house. Because even though they are confident Viv isn't there, maybe there is a clue to where she went. And inside they find signs of a physical altercation. There is blood in the hallway, blood in a spare bedroom, some in the bathroom. They also find a bloody tissue,

even some clothing with blood stains in the laundry. And there are some papers scattered around the spare room, also with bloodstains in the laundry, and there are some papers scattered around the spare room, also with bloodstains on them. But we know there was an altercation, so this is kind of to be expected, right? Right. And also to be expected, they do find blood on the passenger seat of the sedan, which is the vehicle that Ferguson lived drove to the hospital. She drove him, so right now pretty much all matching up with what we know so far.

And there's a bunch of samples and items that are collected from their house that are also sent off to the lab for testing. Had Robin or her husband noticed any of the blood when they went to pick up the boys that morning? They didn't, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. They didn't have any reason to go into like the spare room, it also could have been kind of dark. You did say there was blood in the hall too though. Yeah, but I don't know exactly how much or where in the hallway it was.

Like again, when I'm listing off all these places, I remember the first time I heard this, I'm like, oh my God, there's blood everywhere. But I didn't have seen a few crime scene pictures that Vicki had posted on the blogs for their podcast, and it's a lot less than what I was expecting. So we're gonna link out to those. You need to go check them out.

And really, even if they had seen some blood or all of the blood, I mean, they're there because they're told they rushed off to the hospital. So that would probably track. They're still could be blood. And it's in the middle of the night. They're like at these people's house just picking up the kids.

They wanna go home and get back to sleep, get the kids settled. Yeah, so even though not everything is buttoned up perfectly yet, investigators are fairly confident that they know what happened. Viv's snap, she couldn't take the loveless marriage anymore. It was eating her alive and starting to spill over into other parts of her life.

This is actually backed up by some friends that they talked to who said that her marriage wasn't a happy one. I mean, one friend even reports that Viv had been going to marriage counseling by herself because Fergus just didn't want to go with her. And she'd even been like doing things like losing weight or dying her hair or things that her friends thought that she was doing to try and make herself more physically attractive to Fergus. But this had been going on for a little bit. Even after she tries all of this, the police are like, okay, he still chose someone else.

Like they had this crescendo of all this coming together. So according to the article from The Herald Sun, police think that she took part of her anger out on Fergus, but after dropping him off at his sister, she decided that the only way to end the affair, truly once and for all, was to end Beth's life. So in their theory, she left the house, drove to Beth's farmhouse, got there around 330, that's the car that the neighbor heard. They think she killed her, they think she carves this letter A into her chest, then tried to clean up

in the bathroom, leaving her cigarettes behind as she does so. And then they're saying like, once the reality of what she had done set in, that's when she drove to the bus station, parked her car, walked to the bridge, jumped sometime before 5 a.m. when that baker drove by and saw her truck. To them, again, missing a couple of pieces,

but pretty neat and tidy. It would only be a matter of time before her body surfaced, and once some of the evidence was processed, it would put Vivian at the scene of the crime, and they could close this horrific chapter of their island's history. But the problem with this case is that never happened because they never found what they were looking for.

Not Vivian's body, not the evidence they expected, and as quickly as they developed their theory, quickly as they developed their theory, that theory would blow up in their face. And all of that is next week on part 2. Or you can listen right now in the Crime Junkie app. You can download it in the Apple App Store, Google Play. And in addition to part 2, there is also a ton, like literally hundreds of never before released bonus episodes. Just visit crimejunkieapp.com for more details. And if you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, support can be reached

by calling or texting the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We will be back next week with part two of Beth and Viv's story. Don't forget, you can listen to it right now if you're a fan club member. The Crime Junkie is an audio check production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?