Pat Ritter. Books

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A Detective Sergeant in the country, particularly far out in the country, the country folk practically worshipped and treated him like royalty. I received country hospitality.
Gary, a disc jockey from the local radio station welcomed me to the town and made a special segment at six o’clock each morning to report in detail what cases I investigated. Terry from the Toyota Dealership treated me as if we’d known one another forever and welcomed me to their town. Doug, who I relieved in the position of Detective Sergeant, remained in the town for his holidays, by the end of a day’s work we all met at the local watering hole named The Cattle Camp to skit about what we’d done. I drank Claytons Tonic it is a non-alcoholic drink mixed with tonic water.
I’d only been at this new office a couple of weeks when a man was found dead in the car park behind a hotel of the town. He suffered a fatal bullet wound to his forehead. A twenty-two-calibre rifle lay beside the body. After preliminary checks at the local hospital I discovered the dead man was discharged earlier. He’d suffered depression. Nothing appeared unusual about the suicide. There were no suspicious circumstances.
We met for a drink after work. It was the same day the male person committed suicide at the rear car park of the hotel. Sometime during the night one of us, I think it was Doug won two chooks in a raffle. Doug suggested he’d take the chooks home and cook a roast dinner for the following night and invited us. After winning the chooks Doug didn’t go home and left the chooks in his car for a couple of hours. In the country, particularly out west, the temperature is as hot at night as it is in the middle of the day.
At Doug’s dinner party conversation got around to the poor fellow who died behind the hotel. Doug reminded his guests the place where the dead man was found was the exact spot, he parked his car at the hotel car park where we drank. We all enjoyed Doug’s roast dinner...

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The next morning as usual I switched on the radio to listen for Gary play music and comment about my work. Instead I heard Slim Dusty songs, over and over for about an hour non-stop. As usual at lunchtime we met at The Cattle Camp and I wanted to know from Gary why he played the same record over and over. ‘I had to put on enough records for an hour because I was on the toilet, thanks to Doug and his dinner party.’ When Doug left the chooks in his car between when he won them and the time, he cooked them they had gone ‘off’. None of the others at the party got food poisoning only a slight pain in the stomach.
Life of a detective never dictates when anyone is about to commit a crime. It was about four o’clock one morning when the local sergeant awakened me. There’d been a stabbing. Earlier in the night a man and woman returned home after drinking at a hotel. Both were drunk.
Whilst at the hotel the man accused his de-facto wife of flirting with other men. The argument continued long after they arrived home. He was a slaughterman and his knives were razor sharp and, in their holder, hung on the wall. During their argument, the woman grabbed one of the knives and took it from its pouch in her right hand and swung it toward her de-facto husband. He was wearing denim jeans.
When he saw her swing the knife toward him, he tried to step away but she drove the knife across his right kneecap; severed his trousers and forced the knife through the skin and lacerated his leg below his kneecap. Blood spurted from the wound. ‘Look what you’ve done, you silly bitch.’ He grabbed hold of his leg to stop the bleeding. She reached for a tea towel and wrapped it around the wound and said how sorry she was. Blood gushed from the wound and the tea towel soon soaked with blood.
I met them at the local hospital and interviewed the woman and asked her to return to their home to show me what she had done...

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When I walked into her home she pointed where she had taken the knife and stabbed her de-facto husband. There was blood over the bed sheets, bed spread and floor. ‘What happened after you stabbed him?’ I asked her.
‘I wanted to make it up to him so we went to bed and we had sex.’ Her reply shocked me.
‘That’s one way of making up.’ I commented.
A couple of days later Graham arrived at the scene to examine blood samples taken from the husband to compare the type of blood with what remained on the knife. He at trying to visualise the man and woman having sex on their bed with most of the man’s knee almost severed to the bone. ‘If that’s love I don’t want it.’ He said.
It wasn’t long afterwards I returned to Dalby.

Chapter Four

Chief received a promotion. He richly deserved the accolades praised upon him. Trainee detective Peter obtained his detective designation and transferred. Darryl and I felt dubious about anyone who replaced them because over the time we’d worked together we’d crossed many a dry gully together and built a deep trust between one another.
Work needed to go on as usual. As soon as our new ‘Boss’ was announced, we tapped into the police grapevine to find out ‘all we could’ about him. Where had he worked; could he work; what type of person was he? It was only natural to go to these extreme lengths to find out much before he arrived to take over, at least we’d done our homework to find out all about him.
It was no surprise to our new ‘Boss’ when he arrived to ‘take over’ he’d been checked out beforehand. He had big shoes to fill after Chief left. With another trainee detective Greg to complete the team of investigators we were again four.
An elderly woman was found dead in her bedroom at her home under suspicious circumstances. Darryl, Greg, and I travelled to the dead woman’s home, at Chinchilla to investigate the death. The dead woman’s daughter discovered the body of her mother and telephoned the police. Her mother lived alone and she visited her mother at least three times a week. She told us when she visited her mother in the morning to make her a cup of tea; she called out to her, and didn’t hear a reply and walked into her mother’s bedroom and found her mother on the floor in between her bed and the wall dead.
There was something strange about this investigation. A leading Forensic Pathologist was on his way from the city to perform the post-mortem examination on the dead woman. It was most unusual for a man of his status to leave the city to perform this role in the country. His presents had to have an impact on the investigation...

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‘Why is this doctor coming all of the way out here to do this. It’s not suspicious, is it?’ I asked Darryl.
‘The Superintendent from Toowoomba telephoned me before we left to say he’d contacted him because he thought the death was suspicious. That’s all I know. You and Greg go and have a talk with the neighbours. See if they heard any noises or seen anyone near here this morning. I’ll stay here until the doctor arrives.’
We visited each of the neighbours near the dead woman’s home. No one heard or seen anything unusual.
The doctor arrived and examined the dead woman. ‘I can’t see anything out of place. Can you arrange for her to be taken to the mortuary for a post-mortem examination?’ We made the arrangements to move the body to the morgue.
He performed a post-mortem examination. On any other occasion the local doctor performed the post-mortem but this time the leader in his field was doing it. He was professional and explained each step as he carried out the examination and recorded his examination onto a tape-recorder. He looked over the naked body and spoke into the tape recorder and explained his thoughts.
His concern was a laceration to the left eye. He rolled the body over onto its side to look along the back of the body and recorded a bruise around the lower back and buttocks. He cut open her chest and checked her heart, lungs, and stomach.
Three ribs on the left side of the rib cage were fractured. He examined the lungs and found the left lung punctured by a fractured rib and broken away from the cage.
‘From what I can see it appears she fell somehow on top of her bed and broke her ribs which in turn punctured her lungs. She bled to death. No suspicious circumstances.’ We knew it was not murder...

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Always after each post-mortem examination, for days afterwards I smelt death. It was a special smell, which comes from a dead body. It slithers into the nostrils and sticks to the inside hairs of your nose. Eventually the smell goes but the sensation of death remains.
The doctor returned with us to the dead woman’s bedroom to re-construct her death. The bed was built of steel, those ancient ones with the angle iron frame to hold the mattress in position. Near the bed, clothing, slippers, and other items lay recklessly near where she was discovered by her daughter.
He concluded when she was about to retire to bed, she must have either tripped on a lose garment on the floor near her bed causing her to slip onto the side of the angle iron bed and strike her head. The fall onto the angle iron edge caused the injury to her rib cage. This fall was sufficient to cause her injury and death. We were satisfied there was no suspicious circumstances involved with the death of the elderly lady. A report was prepared for the Coroner. After the doctor’s report there would be no doubt the findings would be accidental death.
Chinchilla was my town for investigations. I probably carried out more investigations in this small town then did any other detective. There wasn’t a week go by without I was required to investigate a crime or a death. On one occasion I was called to investigate the death of a male person, twenty-six years of age who’d shot himself with a shotgun.
Suicide is a difficult investigation for any detective especially when the victim didn’t leave a suicide note to explain ‘why’ he wanted to do it.
All these deaths were treated seriously. On this occasion the victim drove his Holden utility out of town far away from homes. His body was found leaning against the passenger side door in an upright position with the shotgun across his lap...
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Gunshot wounds were to his stomach; legs; chest and head. When I arrived at the scene the body was stiff and rigor mortis set in.
The only way I could tell the number of shots fired from the shotgun was because of the spent cartridges on the ground. There were three empty cartridges with an empty one still in the gun. Obviously, the victim was determined to ‘end his life’ by extreme measures he took to use a four-ten single barrel shotgun which was commonly known as a ‘snake gun’. Normally it was used to kill snakes not human beings.
I looked at the dead body to re-construct the scene of the crime and figure why this young fellow wanted to die. The first shot was to his legs. Why would he want to shoot himself in the legs? I concluded the next shot must have been to his stomach because where the shot entered the man’s stomach was almost central. The next shot was in the heart region, only the shot didn’t enter the rib cage of his body.
The final shot was to his head where he placed the gun to his temple and discharged the shot. The poor fellow wanted to die. Photographs of the dead man were taken and the shotgun taken for ballistics examination. He was transported to the town mortuary for a post-mortem examination. It was a strange way to end a person’s life especially at such a young age.
Often when I worked in Chinchilla uniform police officers asked if I was detained and not able to attend an investigation on time, they wanted to know what they should do until I arrived. I always insisted the body not be moved until photographs were taken and a proper sketch made and details accurately recorded. Witnesses interviewed in the appropriate manner by way of typed written statements with dates, places and times accurately recorded in their Official Police Notebook.
I was called to another suicide to investigate in Chinchilla and this time it was a thirty-six old married woman...

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She’d suffered from depression for many years and decided to end her life. Again, the victim left no suicide note so it was treated as suspicious. She had tried to end her life on three previous occasions. I was late to the investigation and had a trainee detective with me. When we arrived at the house the victim had been removed and the crime scene cleaned.
The trainee detective was astonished to see the body removed prior to our arrival. We went to the police station and spoke to the police officers who attended the scene. He was further astonished to learn the police officer who investigated the suicide followed the guidelines taught to them by me to the letter of my instructions. He was hugely impressed.
Photographs were shown to us of the suicide victim on her bed. Her throat cut from one side of her neck to the other. In her right hand was an electric carving knife. She wanted to end her life. There was no evidence of fowl play. The trainee detective was so impressed by the procedure carried out by the police officer who investigated the suicide he commented he couldn’t have done better himself.
The electric carving knife was fitted with serrated edged blades. The cut to her neck gave an impression of the serrated blade of the knife tearing to the juggler severing it completely through to the bone. I could only imagine how desperate she must have wanted to die. From then onwards each time I used an electric carving knife, my mind instantly returned to those photographs and revisited the lady who cut her own throat.
When she had found her right hand still held the handle of the knife. I have never been able get the vision from my mind. The question ‘why’ do they do it has lived in my memory since.
My new partner for the next couple of years was Greg the latest recruit to the team. We investigated crimes and mysteries either together or with other detectives. One night we were notified of a fatal road accident at Miles, a couple of hours drive west from Dalby. It was late at night. A motorcycle had struck a large tree. The driver died instantly. The pillion passenger lost his right leg. It was torn from its socket at the hip and left him with most of his stomach exposed. He was lucky he wore a tight-fitting pair of jeans because where his leg parted from his body at the hip his jeans worked as a tourniquet to stop him from bleeding to death. He was rushed to hospital for medical emergency and survived...

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