The murder of Rachel Barber.

Rachel Barber

Rachel Barber was a beautiful 15 year old girl.  A talented dancer, she had the whole world in front of her.  Unfortunately for Rachel this made her the target of a deranged woman who wanted to take all that away from her.

Caroline Reed Robertson was only 19 herself.  Their families were friends; Caroline had babysat Rachel and her younger sisters.  Caroline was chubby, and suffered from teenage acne, which led to a very negative self-image. As a teenager Caroline was a prolific writer, documenting her inner torment.

In Rachel, Caroline saw everything she was not, and an obsession began.  In Caroline’s twisted thoughts, the fact that Rachel was beautiful automatically meant that she would be happy, something she desired so badly for herself.  The obsession with Rachel festered and grew for several years.  As early as 1997, two years before the murder, Caroline would take photos of Rachel, supposedly for school projects.  It seems that for Caroline, coveting what Rachel had was not enough.  She had to take it from her, and somehow transfer it to herself.

In the months leading up to the murder, Caroline decided that she needed a new identity. She spoke to Rachel’s younger sister and asked her for Rachel’s date of birth.  The police believe she used this to get a copy of Rachel’s birth certificate.  Still a prolific writer, hand written notes later found at Caroline’s flat showed that Caroline planned to kill and disfigure Rachel, and then create a new identity for herself as “Jem Southall” a wild 16 year old, a “total revhead”.   She wrote detailed plans of how she was going to kill Rachel, and create a new life for herself as “Jem”.

Eventually Caroline’s plans were put into action.  She lured Rachel to her flat in the trendy Melbourne suburb of Prahran under the guise of getting her assistance in a psychology assignment.  It was a secret study, so Rachel had to not tell anyone what she was doing.  Rachel was last seen on the afternoon of February 28^th 1999 on a tram with a woman resembling Caroline. 

Sometime that night Caroline strangled Rachel with a telephone cord and, according to her later statement, she kept her body in her flat for a couple of days before taking it in a taxi to be disposed of.  She buried her body on a property at Kilmore, just outside Melbourne, which was owned by her father. 

Caroline’s attendance at work over the next two weeks was sporadic.  On one of her sick days she applied for a car loan.  She didn’t drive, so it is suspected she wanted the money to fund her new life.  The loan was declined.  She pressured a colleague to return a small amount of money that she had lent her.  For all of her careful planning for the murder itself, she left a lot of the details of the next stage of her plan to chance.  The police now wanted to talk to her.  The net was closing in. 

After several unsuccessful attempts on March 12^th to talk to Caroline, police gained entry to her flat and found her apparently unconscious, next to an empty bottle of Tegretol (which she took for her epilepsy). Upon searching her flat, police found clothes that would not have fit Caroline, but would have fit Rachel.  After being treated at hospital, Caroline was questioned by the police.  She confessed everything.  The police retrieved Rachel’s body from her shallow grave the next day.

The questions which occur to me are: why not just create a new persona?  Why did a beautiful girl have to die for this to happen?  I’m sure Rachel’s friends and family have asked those questions repeatedly for the past 16 years.  She specifically mentioned wanting to disfigure Rachel after she killed her.  To hate someone so much, for a physical attribute that they have no control over, blows my mind just a little. 

This week Caroline Reed Robertson was released from prison, much to the horror and anxiety of the Barber family as well as Rachel’s boyfriend Manni Carella.  While the Barber family don’t want Caroline to contact them, they don’t wish her harm.  However, they are very concerned that Caroline will reoffend, and put another family through the same torture that they have had to endure over the past sixteen years.  Time will tell if their fears are justified.

I don't like Mondays - Brenda Spencer, the first school shooter.

The silicon chip inside her head,
Gets switched to overload.

Brenda Spencer lived with her father after her parents divorced.  It would be a massive understatement to say it was not a normal relationship.  Not many 16 year old girls sleep in the same bed as their father.

She had been depressed for quite some time, but her father refused the doctor’s advice to admit her to a psychiatric facility.  She asked for a new radio for Christmas, instead he gave her a gun.

Brenda had already been in trouble for shooting her BB gun out of her front window at the school across the road, shooting out the windows.  Now she had a real gun.

And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.

Unfortunately for many students, they were already at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, lining up outside, waiting for Principal Burton Wragg to unlock the gates and let them in.  It was January 29^th 1979 and Brenda Spencer was about to become the first school shooter.

She used her Christmas present, a Ruger 10/22 Semi-Automatic .22 calibre rifle with telescopic sight, to shoot at the children lining up across the road.  Principal Wragg tried to protect his charges, and was fatally wounded in the process.  The school janitor, Mike Suchar, came to assist his boss protect the children, and paid for his heroism with his life.  One of the first responding officers, Officer Robert Robb, was wounded in the neck.  The shooting was only stopped because another brave police officer drove a garbage truck between Brenda’s house and the school, blocking her view of the children.  After 30 rounds of ammunition, 2 men lay dead, and a police officer and 8 children were wounded. 

Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.

Brenda then barricaded herself in her house for nearly seven hours.  She told police negotiators that she was going to “come out shooting”.  A journalist began ringing all the local phone numbers, to ask residents of the area if they had witnessed the events, trying to get a scoop.  He unintentionally managed to call Brenda, and so he asked her “Tell me why?”  Her response, according to that journalist, was the now iconic “I don’t like Mondays”.  She ended the conversation by saying “I have to go now.  I shot a pig, and I want to shoot some more”.  The journalist had his scoop.

Brenda claims to not remember this exchange, but it would be safe to say that on that day she was not strongly connected to reality. 

Eventually, she surrendered, and walked outside, dropping her rifle on the front lawn.  The person terrorising an elementary school and a whole neighbourhood was a 5’2”, very thin girl, with long red hair.  Police searched the run-down house, finding evidence of beer and whiskey, although Brenda tested negative for any substances in her system.

Brenda was tried as an adult.  She pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life.

Brenda clearly had a mental illness at the time of the crime, which doesn’t seem to have ever been effectively treated.  At her first parole hearing she told the parole board that she was hoping that the police would kill her.  She claims to have attempted suicide the previous year, and she felt that her father wanted her to kill herself, which is why he gave her a gun.  She also claimed to the parole board that she was under the influence of drugs, but the police conspired to falsify the drug test results.  She has self-harmed several times in prison, once using a heated paper clip to burn the words “courage” and “pride” into her chest after a relationship break up.    Brenda has been treated for epilepsy and depression while in prison, but still seems to be significantly disconnected from reality.

At her parole hearing in 2001 Brenda claimed her father had sexually abused her.  This was the first time she had mentioned it to authorities, so they did not believe her.  After Brenda’s arrest, her father went on to have a relationship with Brenda’s 17 year old roommate from juvenile detention, later marrying her.  Brenda’s roommate looked just like her.  In a cruel twist of fate for one of the children shot by Brenda, a child of Brenda’s father and Brenda’s roommate – Brenda’s half-sibling – attended the child care centre where the now adult victim worked.

Brenda has expressed concern that she is responsible for the school shootings which have occurred since. 

“With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially responsible,” she told the parole board back in 2001. “What if they got the idea from what I did?”

Sadly, I suspect that even though Brenda was the first, she did not create nearly four decades of copy cats.

Long before my interest in crime, I loved the song “I don’t like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats.  The first two songs I asked for on vinyl, aged 5, were ”I don’t like Mondays” and “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.  I clearly had excellent taste.  It was more than 30 years later before I discovered the story behind the music, after watching the documentary about Brenda titled “I don’t like Mondays”.  If you get the chance, I recommend watching it.  It gives a fascinating insight into Brenda, both at the time of the crime, and throughout the years in prison.  It really is a story of a mentally ill person who needed help, but didn’t know how to get it.  As a result two heroic men died, 9 more people were injured, and psychological scars were inflicted on scores of innocent people, many of them children.  She is still in prison, and I doubt she will ever be released.  At her last parole hearing in 2009 the parole board decided that she would not be eligible again until 2019. 

Teen Angst: Pauline and Juliet

Teen angst is not a new issue - ask Romeo and Juliet. I have been fascinated with teen killers since I saw the film Heavenly Creatures. Here is the tale of this classic teen homicide with a twist:

Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme

Regardless of movies about shiny rings and big boats, I personally believe that Heavenly Creatures is both Peter Jackson's best work as a director, and Kate Winslet's first shining moment as an actress. It tells the true story of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme.



Pauline and Juliet were teens in 1950's New Zealand. They developed a very enmeshed, intense friendship where they would write stories together and live in a fantasy world that they created. There are some hints that the friendship had developed into a romantic relationship, but this is mere speculation. An example of Pauline's poetry:

"There are living amongst two dutiful daughters

Of a man possesses two beautiful daughters.

The most glorious beings in creation...

And above us these goddesses reign on high.

"I worship the power of these lovely two

With that adoring love known to so few.

'Tis indeed a miracle, one must feel

That two such heavenly creatures are real....

And these two wonderful people are you and I."

Pauline's parents, especially her mother, became very concerned about the closeness of the friendship and tried to separate the girls. Fatal mistake.

Juliet was due to be moving to South Africa with her parents, and Pauline wanted to go with her, but her mother had explicitly forbidden it, so the girls came up with a plan. They would take Mrs Parker to a local National Park, hit her on the head with a brick, and it would look just like she had a bad fall. Pauline's father would be so upset, he would allow Pauline to travel with Juliet.

Like a lot of these plans, it did not go how they imagined.

They went with Mrs Parker to the park - Juliet had fetched half a brick from a pile and had put it inside a stocking and given it to Pauline- so far, so good. The plan was that Juliet would walk ahead, dropping a pretty pink stone on the path. When Honora Parker bent over to pick up the stone, the brick in her daughter's hand would end her life.

But Pauline's initial blows were tentative - enough to injure her mother, but not kill her. Juliet had to assist Pauline, and it became a horrible, bloody, messy death.

Above: The girls go to court (Juliet on the left).

The girls were charged the next day and both were eventually found guilty. One of the conditions of their sentences was that they were never allowed to contact each other again. That provision has always struck me as highlightling the futility of their act. These girls were in love with each other, whether it was romantic love or not. Yet their "black and white" way of looking at the world cost one woman her life and deprived the girls of what they wanted most in the world - each other.

Above: Pauline in the 1990's

As a Post Script, Pauline went on to live a very non-descript life in New Zealand. Apart from the fact that she is a devout Catholic, little else is known.

Above: Anne Perry in the 1990's

Juliet on the other hand changed her name to Anne Perry and is a very popular British crime author!!! She writes books set in Victorian England - personally I would prefer if she wrote more contemporary stories - like a story set in New Zealand in the 1950's.... Like Pauline she also turned to religion - in Juliet's case it was Mormonism. She has given one interview about the case, when Heavenly Creatures was first released. She stated that it was her loyalty to Pauline which motivated her in the attack, rather than any malice. Check out her website here.

I would recommend watching Heavenly Creatures.  While this story just happens to be my personal favourite example of teen angst, there is a new example of this type of crime all the time. Teens who want to be together, who see parents as an obstacle, so they remove them - literally.

In reality if they had enough patience to wait for a few years, they could be together. But teens don't think like that - and the black and white thinking results in dire consequences for everyone involved.

Links

Crime Library

Wikipedia