R v Bowie [2022] NSWSC 1505 | Case summary

Supreme Court of NSW|2022-10-24|Before: Yehia J

Judgment

By Indictment dated 26 September 2022, John Bowie ("the accused") was charged that he, on or about 5 June 1982, at Walgett or elsewhere in the State of New South Wales, did murder Roxlyn Margaret Bowie ("Roxlyn"), contrary to s 18(1)(a) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). The accused pleaded not guilty to the offence.
The trial commenced on Monday 26 September 2022 by way of pre-trial argument, and a jury was empanelled on Tuesday 27 September 2022. The Crown case concluded on Friday 21 October 2022. The accused did not give evidence or call evidence.
On the morning of 21 October 2022, Mr Terracini SC, on behalf of the accused, filed written submissions in support of an application that I direct the jury that the fact that the "Dear John" and "Dear Mum and Dad" letters were each written by Roxlyn under duress at the direction of the accused is an indispensable intermediate fact requiring a direction in accordance with Shepherd v The Queen (1990) 170 CLR 573; [1990] HCA 56 ("a Shepherd direction").
The Crown resisted the giving of such a direction. Although the Crown acknowledged that if the jury is not satisfied that the accused forced Roxlyn to write the letters, the Crown case on murder would be substantially weakened, it is not conceded that this is an indispensable intermediate fact.
It was necessary that I decide whether to give such a direction in advance of the commencement of closing addresses. The Crown was afforded time to consider its position and to file submissions in reply. The matter was fully ventilated before me on Monday 24 October 2022, prior to the commencement of the Crown's closing address. In light of the importance of the issue, and the need for certainty before the parties embarked upon their closing addresses, I gave my ruling on the same day. These are the reasons for that ruling.

The Crown Case

Roxlyn disappeared on 5 June 1982. She has not been seen since. Her body has not been found. The Crown alleges that the accused committed a deliberate act or acts causing Roxlyn's death, and at the time that he committed the act or acts, he did so with an intention to kill her. The issues in the trial include a question of whether she is dead at all; a denial that the accused caused her death by a deliberate act or acts; and a denial that he did so with an intention to kill.
At the end of the Crown case, Mr Terracini SC requested that I leave manslaughter to the jury as an alternative count. The Crown case is a wholly circumstantial one. If the jury finds that the Crown has failed to establish the requisite state of mind, it remains open, on the Crown's circumstantial evidence, to find that the accused caused Roxlyn's death by way of an unlawful and dangerous act. Put another way, I am satisfied that it is open on the evidence for the jury to consider an alternative count of manslaughter. The Crown did not wish to be heard against such a course.
As of June 1982, Roxlyn resided at 93 Euroka Street, Walgett with the accused and their two young children, a daughter who was 6 years old and a son who was nearly 2 years old. The accused was employed as an ambulance officer at Walgett. There is no real dispute that the accused was a "womaniser" who had multiple casual affairs with various women in Walgett. Roxlyn was aware of at least one of those liaisons.
At the time of Roxlyn's disappearance, the accused was in a sexual relationship with Gail Clarke, who, then, resided in Sydney. Gail Clarke is now deceased. Leave was granted pursuant to s 65 of the Evidence Act to have her evidence read onto the record as follows: "On 24 April 1988, interviewed Gail Maree Clarke, born 23 April 1954, at her home at 7 Kew Way, Airds, phone 046267348, re her relationship with the missing person's husband, John Douglas Bowie Mrs Clarke, who is divorced, stated that about six months prior to June 1982 she had separated from her husband and, during the two weeks of the May school holidays 1982, she had holidayed in a caravan with friends on the banks of the Barwon River, Walgett. It was during this time she met John Bowie in his capacity as an ambulance officer and formed a brief relationship with him. She went out with Bowie on a number of occasions in his van and on one occasion accompanied him to the Walgett RSL Club She had previously been informed by Bowie that he and Roxlyn lead different lives and that she had a boyfriend. On the occasion they attended the RSL, Bowie pointed out a woman and a man to her in the club and told her that the woman was Roxlyn with her male friend. Mrs Clarke is now unable to describe that woman or man. She stated she continued seeing Bowie for the duration of the holidays and then returned to her home at 17 Tempe Street, Chullora. Some weeks later, Bowie phoned her and told her he was coming to Sydney. Towards the end of June 1982, Bowie arrived at her home and told her that his wife had left him and suggested that he move in with her. She refused this request and, although she went out with him on a number of occasions, she terminated the relationship after two to three weeks and has not seen him since. She said at that time Bowie was living in a flat at Lakemba. She stated that she had accompanied him to his in‑law's home at Killara during that time and she had also met his children on a number of occasions. Both children appeared to be well cared for, although she was surprised that the older child, Brenda, made no mention at all of her mother. She also stated that Bowie did not discuss his wife or her disappearance, other than to say she had left him. During the time Mrs Clarke knew him, Bowie was not a heavy drinker. She stated that when Bowie arrived in Sydney he was extremely keen to form a serious relationship with her, but she never entertained the idea and terminated the relationship."
The accused worked a shift at the Walgett ambulance station on Saturday 5 June 1982. His shift ended at 5:00pm, and he was at home with Roxlyn and the children at about 7:00pm when the children were put to bed. At some stage, he left the house and went to the Imperial Hotel where he stayed for a period of time. At some point later in the evening, he was seen at the RSL Club.
There is a dispute in the trial as to whether he returned home in the period between 7:00pm and about 11:00pm. The defence case is that he left the house at about 7:00pm. He went to the Imperial Hotel where he stayed for some hours before attending the RSL Club. He returned home at about 11:00pm to find Roxlyn missing.
The Crown case is that this account is a fabrication. The Crown contends that the accused returned home sometime after 7:00pm and before 11:00pm, and in that window killed Roxlyn ("the window of opportunity").
Evidence adduced from Ruth Ovens and Eddie Ovens suggests that the accused had returned home at about 11:00pm. Ruth and Eddie lived in one of two caravans in the backyard of 93 Euroka Street. The accused knocked on their caravan door looking for Roxlyn. The Crown case is that the attempt made by the accused to raise the alert and search for Roxlyn was a ruse, a performance intended to deflect attention from himself.
The last time Roxlyn was seen by anyone was on 5 June 1982. Her body has never been found.
The Crown relies upon a number of facts which include, but are not limited to, the following:

Roxlyn was a loving and devoted mother, and a devoted daughter who had a good relationship with her parents. She was unlikely to leave her children never to communicate with them or her parents again;
There is no evidence of normal life activities. There is no evidence that Roxlyn has used her bank account or Medicare health card, renewed her driver's licence, or been sighted or heard from by anyone since 5 June 1982;
Walgett, the town in which she lived with the accused and their two young children, was a particularly isolated town in 1982. There was no public transport leaving town on the weekend. Of particular relevance to this case is that there was no public transport leaving town on Saturday nights;
The accused had a motive to kill his wife because he wanted to have a serious relationship with Gail Clarke;
The accused had a tendency to inflict intentional violence on his domestic partners;
The accused pawned jewellery that is alleged to have belonged to his wife after she disappeared;
Police located a dress ring buried at 123 Euroka Street, which has been identified by one witness as belonging to Roxlyn. Also located at that site was a metal fragment with a scalpel wrapper, and two facemasks (items the accused would have had access to as an ambulance officer in 1982);
An alleged admission made by the accused regarding having "killed before", and a number of representations made by him from which the Crown invites the jury to infer that he disposed of Roxlyn's body by feeding her to pigs; and
The accused told a number of lies that are said to constitute consciousness of guilt.

The Crown case has been conducted on the basis that the accused caused the death of his wife Roxlyn by a deliberate act or acts, done with an intention to kill. The Crown opened, and conducted the trial, on this sole basis.
The circumstances referred to above, taken as a whole, are capable of establishing that Roxlyn is dead, and that the accused caused her death by a deliberate act or acts. The question that arose on this application was as to the facts relied upon to establish the requisite state of mind, namely, an intention to kill.
An important fact in the Crown case that goes to establishing beyond reasonable doubt the requisite intention, relates to two letters said to have been written by Roxlyn before she disappeared. These letters have been referred to during the trial as the "Dear John" and "Dear Mum and Dad" letters. In each letter, Roxlyn announces that she is leaving her husband and children "for good".
The "Dear John" letter was located by Ruth Ovens on the night of 5 June 1982, and at a time after the accused knocked on the door of a caravan to inform his neighbours that his wife was missing. As they searched the accused's house for Roxlyn, Ruth Ovens found the letter under a sugar bowl on the dining table. The Crown case is that this was staged, the accused having left the note on the table for his neighbour to find.
The "Dear Mum and Dad" letter was posted at the Coonamble Post Office in the period between the night of 5 June 1982 and 3:15pm on Monday, 7 June 1982. It is the Crown case that the accused drove to Coonamble and posted the letter himself.
Significant reliance is placed upon the inference that the accused forced Roxlyn to write the letters. During the course of the Crown's opening address, he said: "You will hear evidence in this trial from a number of experts in relation to the letters. Some of those experts are anticipated to tell you that the handwriting is likely to be Roxlyn's handwriting. One handwriting expert will tell you that the two letters appear to have been more slowly and deliberately written when compared to the reference writing of Roxlyn, which the expert, I anticipate, will tell you appeared more fluid and written with more speed. By that I mean you will hear evidence at the handwriting expert had access to other letters and writings of Roxlyn and that it is anticipated she will give evidence she compared the two letters that are part of your jury folder. Another expert will tell you that the two letters appear to have been written on the same notepad, one after another. In the opinion of that expert with the first letter being written, being the letter described as the "dear John" letter and the second letter being the letter written to Roxlyn's parents. The Crown case is that the reason the two letters were not written in the opinion of that expert is fluidly as compared to her other compared writing is because she was forced to write those letters by Mr Bowie. The Crown case is or the Crown says when it says "forced to write" either by being dictated to her to write or to copy something that he had pre-written other the likely mechanisms. The Crown says Mr Bowie forced her to write the two letters."

Submissions made on behalf of the accused

In support of the contention that it is necessary to give a Shepherd direction to the jury, the accused made the following submissions:
Firstly, in a circumstantial case such as the present, the jury may only return a verdict of guilty if it excludes all other reasonable conclusions inconsistent with the guilt of the accused. The truth of the contents of the two letters is a conclusion that is inconsistent with the accused's innocence. That possibility must be excluded by the Crown. The Crown seeks to do so by tendering evidence to prove the fact that the letters were written under coercion and at the direction of the accused, either by way of dictation, or copying the letters from another document.
It was submitted that it is necessary that the jury accept the contention that the contents of the letters were not a genuine reflection of Mrs Bowie's state of mind and a record of what she actually did, before they can convict the accused of murder.
Put another way, it was said that the letters are, on their face, an exculpated reversion of events that must be excluded before a jury can return a verdict of guilty.
The accused submitted that if the Crown cannot establish the fact that the letters were written under coercion, there would, in effect, be no case to go to the jury, as the Crown would have failed to exclude the possibility that the notes were simply the truth, and, therefore, the possibility that the accused had nothing to do with Roxlyn's disappearance and she had in fact left him and the family "for good".
Secondly, the Crown case is that the accused killed Roxlyn with an intention to kill. This intention to kill can only be inferred if the jury accepts the Crown's contention as to the provenance of the letters and, inferentially, the premeditation involved in forcing her to write the letters.
It was contended that there is no other evidence which could rationally support an inference that the accused had that intention, but for the contention that he forced Mrs Bowie to write the letters. The accused pointed out that the Crown case has been based upon murder by way of an intention to kill. The Crown did not proceed on the basis that the accused had any other state of mind.
It is submitted that the Crown not only seeks to disprove the truth of the contents of the letters, but also positively relies upon the circumstances that it contends surround the writing of the letters, in order to prove an essential element of the charge of murder; namely, the requisite intention. Accordingly, that circumstance is an indispensable intermediate fact.

Submissions made on behalf of the Crown

The Crown submitted there are a number of facts relied upon to establish, circumstantially, that the accused had the requisite state of mind; namely, an intention to kill. The contention that he forced Roxlyn to write the two letters is only one of a number of facts.
The Crown submitted the following facts are also relied upon to establish an intention to kill: 1. An admission the accused made to Annette Adams: "I've killed before - it was not a nice feeling". This representation is said to be telling of having killed with the requisite intention, particularly when considered in the context of the conversation in which Ms Adams was telling the accused about her abusive husband and said she wished that somebody would kill him; and 2. The fact that the accused had a motive to kill his wife; he was having an affair with Gail Clarke and wanted to pursue a serious relationship with her.
During the course of oral argument, Mr Terracini SC expanded his application requesting a Shepherd direction in relation to motive as well as the inference contended for by the Crown, that the letters were written under duress.

Legal principles

The starting point for the discussion of these issues is the judgment of the High Court in Shepherd v The Queen. I extract a well-known passage from the judgment of Dawson J which appears at 579, where his Honour said: "It may sometimes be necessary or desirable to identify those intermediate facts which constitute indispensable links in a chain of reasoning towards an inference of guilt. Not every possible intermediate conclusion of fact will be of that character. If it is appropriate to identify and intermediate fact is indispensable, it may well be appropriate to tell the jury that that fact must be found beyond reasonable doubt before the ultimate inference can be drawn. But where - to use the metaphor referred to by Wigmore On Evidence, Vol 9 (Chadbourn Rev. 1981) par 2497 pp 412-414- the evidence consists of strands in the cable rather than links in a chain, it will not be appropriate to give such a warning. It should not be given in any event where it would be unnecessary or confusing to do so. It will generally be sufficient to tell the jury that the guilt of the accused must be established beyond reasonable doubt and, where it is helpful to do so, to tell them that they must entertain such a doubt where any other inference consistent with innocence is reasonably open on the evidence."
It is well established that a circumstantial case cannot be considered in a piecemeal fashion. In a "strands in a cable" circumstantial case, none of the facts or circumstances from which the jury is invited to draw inferences need to be established beyond reasonable doubt. This is because none of those facts are indispensable links in a chain of reasoning towards an inference of guilt. As was observed by N Adams J in D'Agostino v Regina [2019] NSWCCA 259 at [62]: "as the metaphor suggests, if a cable is made of many strands and one or more strands break, the cable may be weakened but it is not broken."
On the other hand, in a "links in a chain case" if one link breaks, then the chain is broken. There is no settled test for determining what constitutes an indispensable intermediate fact. In some cases, it is not easy to pin down whether a particular fact is to be categorised as a link in the chain as distinct from a strand in a cable. This conundrum was referred to by Sully J (as his Honour then was) in Minniti v The Queen (2006) 196 FLR 431 at 445; [2006] NSWCCA 30 at [38]-[39]: "What continues is a difficult concept, and a concept unexplored in any decision to which this Court was referred in the present case, is the concept, or principle, by which a trial judge can determine with a proper professional confidence whether he [or she] has on his hands a case calling for "links in a chain" directions; or, rather, a case calling for "strands in a cable" directions."
That this conundrum is a real one and is illustrated by the reasoning in R v Merritt [1999] NSWCCA 29 where it is said (at [69]): "It is important not to be carried away by the power of metaphors but, in the context of this case, we think that whilst it is possible to consider this concatenation of facts strands in the cable, it was also possible, quite reasonably, to consider one or more of them as links in a chain, that is to say indispensable to a conclusion of guilt."
There is some guidance provided in Davidson v R [2009] NSWCCA 150, where Spigelman CJ (as his Honour then was), referred to the case of Merritt in illustrating that where there is a paucity of evidence (as there was in that case) only to intermediate facts, it may be neither "unnecessary" nor "confusing" to give a Shepherd direction. The prospect of confusion is a relevant consideration for the purpose of determining whether such a direction should be given to a jury, particularly where in the given case there are numerous separate facts of varying degrees of probative force relied upon.
A further relevant consideration is whether giving a Shepherd direction is redundant in light of the fact the jury will be directed that it cannot return a guilty verdict unless the Crown has excluded all reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence.
The most useful guidance that I have been able to find is that provided by Simpson J (as her Honour then was) in R v Davidson (2009) 75 NSWLR 150 at [74]: "Whether a fact on which the Crown relies as part of a circumstantial case is or is not "indispensable" may be tested by asking whether, in the absence of evidence of that fact, there would none the less be a case to go to the jury. If the answer is in the affirmative, even if the Crown case is weakened, even considerably, the fact is not "indispensable". Where the answer is in the negative, the fact is "indispensable" and the jury should be directed accordingly".

Should a Shepherd direction be given?

With these principles in mind, I turn to consider the application for a Shepherd direction. Many of the facts relied upon by the Crown, taken together, are capable of establishing that Roxlyn is dead, and that her death was caused by a deliberate act or acts of the accused.
I am not persuaded that the admission to Annette Adams is probative of the accused having caused Roxlyn's death with an intention to kill her, as opposed to the accused having caused Roxlyn's death by way of an unlawful and dangerous act. If the jury accepts that the representation was made and was truthful, it is no more than admission by him that he has killed someone. There is nothing about his representations, or the context in which they were made, which demonstrates that the act causing death involved an intention to kill.
Although the motive relied upon is arguably unconvincing, taken at its highest it is capable of establishing the requisite state of mind. In support of the motive the Crown relies upon, there are a number of circumstances. Those circumstances include, but are not limited to, the following:

That the accused (admittedly) had an affair with Gail Clark;
The rapid speed with which the accused transferred to Bankstown;
That the accused transferred to Bankstown and not closer to where his circle of support was located around Hornsby;
That the accused told his daughter she would have a new step mother and step siblings some 15 days after Roxlyn was last seen;
The accused having travelled some 1600 km round-trip to spend time with Gail Clark on Roxlyn's 31st birthday on 25 May 1982; and
Gail Clark's evidence of the accused arriving in Sydney towards the end of June and being "extremely keen to form a serious relationship".

What weight is afforded the motive is a matter entirely for the jury. I accept that, absent the Crown proving the fact that the accused coerced Roxlyn to write the two letters, motive is another aspect of the evidence available to the Crown to establish the case for murder, albeit leaving a considerably weakened Crown case for murder.
Ultimately, I am not persuaded that a Shepherd direction should be given to the jury in relation to motive and/or the circumstance that each letter was written under duress or at the direction of the accused. It seems to me that giving such a direction is redundant in circumstances where I will clearly identify the circumstances relied upon by the Crown to establish the requisite state of mind, together with a clear direction that the Crown must prove the element of intention to kill beyond reasonable doubt.
Accordingly, I refuse the application to give the jury a Shepherd direction. DISCLAIMER - Every effort has been made to comply with suppression orders or statutory provisions prohibiting publication that may apply to this judgment or decision. The onus remains on any person using material in the judgment or decision to ensure that the intended use of that material does not breach any such order or provision. Further enquiries may be directed to the Registry of the Court or Tribunal in which it was generated. Decision last updated: 04 November 2022

Crimes Act 1900(NSW)s 18(1)(a)

R v Bowie

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