Networked Knowledge
The Frits Van Beelen Homepage [1972]

Author: Dr Robert N Moles
Go here for a pamphlet on this case
The Steven Truscott homepage - involved timing of death by stomach contents

List of media items on this case

Outline of legal proceedings

Notes on stomach contents issues

The Van Beelen case is significant because it was the first criminal case in South Australia to rely entirely on scientific circumstantial evidence and at the time it was the longest criminal trial in the state’s history. The time of death was pivotal, and the case is notable from the pathology point of view because the determination by Dr Manock of this time was, and still is, unscientific.

Deborah Leach murdered

On Thursday, 15 July 1971 at about 3.30pm, 15 year old Deborah Leach left Taperoo High School, in Adelaide, with a girlfriend. They walked home together as far as Deborah’s home which was about 300 metres from the school. Deborah went into her house, dropped off her school bag and a cake she had baked at school that day, and got changed into a pair of tartan slacks and a brown jumper. At about 4pm, a witness saw Deborah with her dog running across the paddock opposite her home and down towards the beach. At 4.40pm, Deborah’s mother came home from work and found her daughter’s cake on the kitchen table. She looked out through the front window and saw Deborah’s dog playing alone on the seagrass covering the beach. Deborah’s mother crossed the road and retrieved the dog. She called out Deborah’s name several times but got no reply. By 6pm she was beginning to worry and rang her husband, who was at work. He came home and together with a neighbour and Deborah’s dog, they went to the beach to look for Deborah. It was dark by this time and they had to use torches in their search. The seagrass was piled up all over the beach, in places up to a height of about two metres. During the search, they found tyre marks and boot prints (of the type Deborah had been wearing) but there was no sign of the teenager. They went home and called the police several times. By midnight the police had launched a full-scale search.

There was intermittent rain throughout the night. At 4am a police officer found some of Deborah’s belongings lying close together on the edge of a bank of seagrass. They were her right boot, her small transistor radio and a dog leash. At 4.20am, one of the senior detectives came across Deborah’s partially-clothed body buried in the seaweed about three metres from where her belongings were found.

Frits Van Beelen

Van Beelen was an unemployed carpenter, and often went to the beach for a walk, or to do some jogging. He had two previous convictions, one for indecent exposure and the other for attempted rape. He did not come forward in response to the police requests, but was traced through his car registration number which had been noticed by other visitors to the beach that day. Two weeks after the discovery of Deborah’s body, police interviewed Van Beelen. He said that on the day of Deborah’s disappearance, he had driven to the beach at about 4pm and gone for a walk along the beach for about half an hour. During this time he could not recall having seen anyone else on the beach. He said he left the beach and drove into the centre of Adelaide to pick his wife up from her work at 5pm. It was estimated that it would have taken him about 30 minutes to get into the centre of town from the beach. Almost three months after Deborah’s death Van Beelen was arrested for her murder, and subsequently brought to trial in July 1972.

The scientific evidence

Much of the evidence against him during the trial was scientific. The clothing Van Beelen was said to have been wearing on the day of Deborah’s death had been vacuumed for possible traces of evidence - microscopic fragments of paint, fibres, hairs, and so on. In all, 27 different areas of expert scientific evidence were presented by the prosecution. All areas were contested by the defence. At the end of a trial lasting three and a half months, the jury found Van Beelen guilty of murder. He was sentenced to death. His appeal against the conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal on several grounds, one of which was that the trial judge had misdirected the jury in the way they were to regard the scientific evidence. The headnote to this case reads as follows:

In a criminal trial, the judge is required to direct the jury that they cannot convict unless they are satisfied of the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt, and it is usual, in a case of circumstantial evidence, for the judge to tell the jury also that they cannot convict if there is any rational hypothesis or reasonable probability consistent with the innocence of the accused. [Emphasis added]

The appeal judges also said:

… if we had been members of the jury, … we think we might have been tempted to abandon in despair the task of trying to make sense of the scientific evidence and to concentrate on the other evidence ...
[The Queen v Van Beelen Supreme Court Appeal 4 SASR 353-411 (in Banco) Bray CJ, Mitchell and Zelling JJ at pp353-64] 

A new trial took place one year and nine months after Deborah’s death.

At the second trial the prosecution again relied largely on scientific evidence in which Dr Manock had a significant involvement. The original 27 categories were now reduced to four. The evidence of Dr Manock and a police expert witness concerning human and dog hairs was not presented at this trial. It had been the subject of much dispute in the first trial.

The defence had been able to show that both Dr Manock and the detective sergeant had mistaken artefacts caused in the mounting of the hairs on slides for microscopical examination for ‘pigment’ and ‘fluorescence’ and had mistakenly used this as a basis for comparison.

The jury themselves picked up that the experts gave the diameter of the hairs as ten times too big. It was further revealed in cross-examination that the police expert, who had been giving this sort of evidence for years, wrongly believed that hair grew from the tip end.

The prosecution, however, presented evidence of red and black fibres found on the upper part of Deborah’s singlet and which were said to have come from Van Beelen’s red and black jumper. The defence was again critical of the quality of the scientific work and its interpretation. Indeed, a professor of chemistry was moved to remark during his evidence that he saw: no reason why, if the legal process were going to use science, it should not use proper science.

The fibre evidence was to the effect that the red and black fibres found on Deborah’s singlet were the same as those from Van Beelen’s red and black jumper taken by the police from his home. Initially Van Beelen was unsure whether he had been wearing his red and black jumper or his blue one. He then remembered that he had been thinking of going for job interviews that day and so he wore his best jumper - his blue one.

The defence argued that the fibres were not uncommon and had not been tested adequately and could even have come from Deborah’s tartan slacks which she had been wearing that day. The most that can be said about fibres of this sort is that they are similar to other fibres. The evidentiary value of fibres is based on an estimation of the frequency of their occurrence in the community.

Pathology evidence

No body temperature

Pathology evidence was introduced by the prosecution. Dr Manock arrived at the scene soon after Deborah’s body was found. He examined the body but did not take the body temperature. Dr Pocock, a pathologist called by the defence said of this:

The body temperature and air and water temperature should always be taken when arriving at the scene and Dr Manock did not do that. The only exception is when the body is decomposed. A thermometer is quite cheap to buy. Transcript at p2532.

Dr Manock conducted the autopsy and concluded that Deborah had died by drowning in seawater. Dr Manock’s work in relation to diatom testing in this case (and others) also requires re-examination. Dr Pocock said:

With regard to the diatoms, Dr Manock should have checked for their presence in the liver, kidney and bone marrow, not just in the lungs, as they can get there without drowning. Transcript at p2529.

If it is suspected that someone has drowned one can test tissues to see if the diatoms in them are similar to those in the water in which the person was found. In a number of cases where drowning has been involved, Dr Manock says that he tested only the lung tissue for the presence of diatoms. Testing lung tissue is inadequate to confirm drowning.

Although there were no signs of bruising, Dr Manock concluded that she had been murdered. Dr Manock also determined that someone had committed an act of intercourse on Deborah’s body after her death (rather than before her death) as there was a small triangular tear in her vagina but no bleeding or bruising associated with it.

Dr Manock also found that rigor mortis was present, as was lividity. He said that the skin would not blanch under pressure, which meant that the lividity had become fixed. This meant that she had probably been dead for at least six hours. The prosecution, on advice from Dr Manock, claimed that this evidence was consistent with death occurring between 3.30pm and 4.30pm the previous day. However, Dr Pocock explained that the evidence about rigor was also consistent with death having occurred up until around 11pm that night.

Whilst Dr Manock said that rigor mortis was consistent with death having occurred between 3.30pm and 4.30pm, he should also have explained that it was also consistent with death occurring between 11am and 11pm. Second Trial Transcript  at p2541

Time of death

Throughout the trial, the timing of the death was a crucial factor. Deborah had last been seen alive by a witness at 4pm and Van Beelen had an alibi from just after 4.30pm. If he was to be found guilty of murder, then it would be essential to the prosecution’s case to establish that Deborah was dead by 4.30pm. An accepted way for a pathologist to calculate a time of death is by taking body temperatures. Dr Manock did not take the body temperature when he arrived at the scene. He later said at the trial that in view of the seaweed and cold wind, this was not a reliable indicator in this case. He has also stated that because it was possibly a case of sexual assault, he did not want to take a temperature from the rectum. Expert advisors state that this is unacceptable, as it would mean that an important diagnostic facture in determining cause of death (temperature) would be unavailable in all cases where sexual assault would be a possibility. Other pathologists say that this explanation does not excuse or properly explain his failure to record the temperatures.

The most contentious of the evidence was the way Dr Manock fixed the time of Deborah’s death. He said he was able to fix the time of death as having occurred between 3.30pm and 4.30pm. He did this by relying on an analysis of Deborah’s stomach contents. Dr Manock gave evidence to say that it was ‘virtually certain’ that Deborah was dead by 4.30pm, and most probably around 4.15pm. His calculation was based on the rate at which a stomach is emptied of its contents. Some of Deborah’s school friends spoke of the time at which Deborah had eaten her lunch, and of what it consisted. Deborah had apparently eaten a pie or pasty, some chips and a carton of milk around midday. Dr Manock then ‘calculated’ the amount of time that would be necessary for the stomach to process the food, and to pass it through the system. He asserted that by examining the contents of the girl’s stomach, he could be certain that her death had occurred by 4.30pm, and no later.

In a scientific article subsequently published by Dr Derrick Pounder, now Professor of Forensic Pathology at Dundee University, the method used by Dr Manock in the Van Beelen case was reviewed and evaluated. Professor Pounder concluded that the most that could be said about this approach to the timing of death was that it could narrow the possibilities down to ‘a range of some hours’. He stated that any suggestion that this method could be exact to ‘… within a half an hour as given in … the Van Beelen case in Australia would seem to be scientifically unsound’.
[Horowitz M; Pounder DJ. Gastric emptying – forensic implications of current concepts. Medicine, Science and the Law 25 (1985) 201-214]  

Dr Manock has never explained how he was able to calculate the time of death in this way based on the observations which he said he made. In 1984, under cross-examination in another case, Dr Manock was questioned on Professor Pounder’s statement about the Van Beelen case. ‘I did see that comment, yes’ he replied, and went on;

Counsel: And would you agree that estimates of time of death on the basis of stomach contents are very unreliable.
Dr Manock: I do agree with that. [Emphasis added]
[Cross-examination at the trial concerning the death of Mrs Cooke (arising from an autopsy conducted on 14 April 1984), transcript p829]

See also Jessica Snyder Sachs, The Time of Death, Arrow Books, 2003, where it was said in relation to experts called for the prosecution and defence in relation to the time of death of Nicole Brown Simpson (The OJ Simpson case) that:

… both experts had to admit that the quantity and quality of stomach contents had long ago been dismissed as the most unreliable of all post-mortem time scales. Such grasping at straws would continue to be part of medical expert testimony when all else failed. At p45

Dr Bernard Knight is quoted by Sachs as stating:

Unfortunately, it is often the least experienced medical witness who tends to offer the most accurate estimates, not having seen enough cases to appreciate the many pitfalls and fallacies in the process.
[Sachs at p. 27 from Claus Henssge, Bernard Knight, Thomas Krompecher, Burkhard Madea and Leonard Nokes, The Estimation of the Time Since Death in the Early Postmortem Period, Edward Arnold, 1995]

Unfortunately, the concession by Dr Manock was of no assistance to Van Beelen.

There are many factors that are important in making an estimate of time of death from gastric contents. Dr Manock had no way of knowing Deborah’s standard rate of digesting food. He had no test results to see how her rate of digestion of different types of food progressed. He had no test results to compare how her rate of digestion varied between differing physical and psychological states. He had no knowledge of the periods of time she was in each of those states.

Even if we were willing to accept Dr Manock’s assertions about Deborah being killed about four hours or so after her last meal, we cannot be sure that the meal she had at midday was in fact her last meal. There was no proof that the food in Deborah’s stomach had actually come from the school tuck shop. If she had another pie or pasty and a carton of milk at 4pm that day, and was then killed around 8 or 9pm that night, the condition of Deborah’s body would have been just as Dr Manock found it.

No bleeding

Dr Manock gave evidence that the injury to the tissues of Deborah’s vagina was a post mortem injury. In his evidence-in-chief, he was asked:

Q. You told the jury that in relation to the laceration that there was, I think I quote you, “No evidence of bruising”.
A. That is correct.
Q. Was there any evidence of bleeding externally or internally near the site of the laceration.
A. No, there was not.
Q. Is there any significance in the absence of bruising and the absence of bleeding, both externally and internally.
A. The significance is that had the injury been caused during life then bleeding would have been apparent. I therefore come to the conclusion that this was a post-mortem injury.
[First trial; transcript, p476. It was also said by the judge in his summing up at the second trial, that the only injury was the tear to the vagina caused after her death; transcript, p2816]

Dr Manock’s evidence that the lack of bleeding in the tear in Deborah’s vagina meant that the injury occurred after death was one factor used to rule out another person (Sandercock) who had actually confessed to the murder. The same evidence should also have ruled out Van Beelen.

On the facts, Deborah went to the beach around 4pm, and Van Beelen left the beach around 4.30pm at the latest. Therefore, if he had been the perpetrator, and if he had killed Deborah and then had sexual intercourse with her body, there could only have been an interval of a few minutes between her death and the intercourse, at the very most. This would be insufficient time to prevent bleeding in the manner Dr Manock described. Whilst Dr Manock has stated that bleeding does not occur after death, this is clearly imprecise. Bleeding occurs as a matter of course at autopsies where they are conducted expeditiously after death has occurred. Bleeding will occur whilst the fluid blood remains in the part of the body tissues which are torn, cut or damaged.

The only way bleeding will not occur in such a circumstance is when the interval between death and damage to the tissues is sufficiently extended that there is no longer fluid blood in the vessels. This can be for one of two reasons. Either it has drained from those vessels, as it may do with the process of lividity, or it has become fixed and is no longer fluid. This process will take at least an hour or two, depending upon the temperature, and the position of the body. It clearly will not occur either instantaneously, or within a few minutes. As a result, Dr Manock’s observations about the damage to the tissues and the lack of bleeding should have been sufficient to clear Van Beelen of suspicion.

Dr Pocock also made the following comments upon Dr Manock’s evidence:

Dr Manock was incorrect when he said that salt water makes the lungs contract. There is no evidence for this in the textbooks. Transcript at p2530.

The protein fluid in the lungs could have been caused by heart failure; therefore Dr Manock should have tested for drugs as a cause of death, which he did not do. If sea water had been there, the protein would not have been. Transcript at p2530.

The stomach contents had been frozen before detailed examination by Dr Manock, and this would have affected their composition. Transcript at p2540.

Dr Manock said that hypostasis showed that the body had not been moved, but it could have been moved before the hypostasis became established, which can take up to one to two hours after death, not 30 minutes as Dr Manock said. Transcript at p2542.

Dr Manock said he had examined the internal organs microscopically, and had excluded other causes of death, but I don’t see how he could exclude epilepsy, for example. Transcript at p2554.

The radio mystery

One of the most intriguing elements of the whole case, and one which was never explained, was the fact that when Deborah was found her radio was nearby. It appeared to have been left switched ‘on’ to full volume, and that the batteries had run down. The outside of the radio was damp but the inside was dry, and when the batteries were replaced the radio immediately worked. This was curious because Deborah’s body and the radio were found below the high water mark. In fact, shortly after her body was found the tide was coming in, and the body had to be moved to prevent it from being covered with water. The previous tide had come in at about 8pm the night before. This would have meant that if her body had been there at the time, it, and one assumes the radio, shoe and dog leash, would have been under water during the course of the night. If that was not the case, then Deborah’s body (and / or radio) had been placed on the beach after that last high tide – long after Van Beelen had been near the beach that day.

The interesting point about this is that if there is one piece of objective or scientific evidence that is not consistent with a guilty verdict, then the accused must be acquitted. In many cases it is difficult to determine if any piece of objective evidence is actually inconsistent with a guilty verdict. In this case the inconsistencies should have been clear. Because the radio was dry inside, it must have been placed at that location on the beach after the last high tide. If so, it couldn’t have been Van Beelen who put it there. Therefore, by implication, it is unlikely that he committed the murder and assault. However, the judges in the appeal said that the evidence about the tides was before the jury, and it was there for them to accept or reject as they thought fit. This seems to suggest that the jury could ignore the irrefutable evidence about the high tide. It seems a little strange to suggest that the jury could arrive at a result that is inconsistent with the known laws of physics.

We take the view that the case, because of its inherent defects, should not have been put to the jury at all. The evidence about the tides, properly explained, or the evidence given by Dr Manock about the absence of bleeding, properly explained, should have established reasonable doubt that the damage to the tissue which Dr Manock reported was caused by Van Beelen.

Convictions upheld

Although there were two trials and numerous appeals, including an appeal to the Privy Council in London , Van Beelen’s conviction for the murder was upheld. He had been sentenced to death, but it was the practice at that time to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment.

However, the case refused to go away. In 1974, the Adelaide Advertiser reported that a juror at the second trial claimed that the stress of circumstances and pressure in the jury room influenced the juror’s vote. ‘It was a moment of weakness which I have lived to regret,’ the juror said. After much thought and receiving counselling, the juror felt compelled to ‘speak out about it’.
[Juror Claims ‘Pressure’, The Advertiser, 18 February 1974]

 The same issue of the paper carried the first of two substantial articles discussing the case. The paper said that they were written ‘in the public interest’. The articles elicited a response in the form of a Letter to the Editor from Sir Roderic Chamberlain, a former crown prosecutor and supreme court judge. Sir Roderic wrote that ‘the unanimous findings of two separate juries, confirmed by the State Full Court’ made it ‘difficult to see how the public interest is served by publication of material that can only throw doubt on the justice of the conviction’. He went on to say that the public interest might have been better served by a tribute to the skill of the police homicide and scientific bureau officers and their expert advisers.
[A former judge and the Van Beelen case (Letter), Chamberlain RRStC, The Advertiser, 21 February 1974]

A number of university scientists who had been involved with the defence, responded with a Letter to the Editor pointing out that the bulk of the prosecution’s scientific evidence was either withdrawn or rejected, and it was this which should be ‘a matter of public concern’. They said that the length and cost of the case was largely caused by the necessity to expose and correct the many ‘scientific mistakes and misconceptions’ which were made and held.
[Scientific evidence at Van Beelen trial (Letter), Bevan DJM, Dyer PY, Harding HWJ, Rogers GE & Taylor WB, The Advertiser, 26 February 1974]

Other suspects

There were two other curious facts about this case. At the time of the murder police, through the media, had appealed for anyone who had been on the beach that day to come forward. They were particularly interested in talking to a man with a limp that had been seen in the area at the time. He did come forward and he confessed to Deborah’s murder. He then retracted that confession. However, the police dismissed his confession because, among other factors, he had at one time been institutionalised for mental problems, and because he said that he had raped Deborah before he killed her. Dr Manock had said that Deborah had been raped after she had been killed. The defence lawyers were not told of this man’s claims. If they had known about this in good time, they could have conducted their own investigations of the matter, and perhaps they would have formed a different conclusion. What was unusual were the remarkably accurate details that this man gave about Deborah’s dog, her clothes and the drowning in his statement to the police, which was only three days after her death. These matters had not been covered in such detail in the newspaper reports. He later said that he only knew the details because he had heard some police officers talking about them in the pub. Those officers were never identified, nor was their presence in any pub ever confirmed.

The other interesting matter surfaced in 1988, when a woman who had been living near to the beach at the time of Deborah’s death told the authorities that she suspected that her former husband might have killed Deborah.
[As related in the Opinion by EP Mullighan QC, 25 July 1988]

He had apparently been sexually interested in young children for some time, and was known to frequent the toilets in the area of the beach. The wife thought that it seemed possible that he had the opportunity to commit the crime, and to return to the scene later to move Deborah’s body, and she thought that this should be investigated.

It was, however, many years after Van Beelen had been convicted that the woman had come forward and by that time she had been divorced from her husband for some years. The police were no longer sure of his whereabouts, it being thought that he had moved interstate.

The Legal Services Commission sought the advice of Mr Mullighan QC (now a Supreme Court judge). He concluded that, on the basis of the information available to him at the time, there was insufficient evidence to pursue the overturning of the conviction of Van Beelen. It was considered that while the wife may have thought that her husband’s behaviour at the time looked suspicious, there may well have been perfectly innocent explanations for it. It also had to be considered that the wife had delayed for so long before bringing the matter to the attention of the authorities.

Mr Mullighan concluded by saying: ‘…the new evidence is not capable of establishing the innocence of Mr Van Beelen or of removing the certainty of his guilt (as determined by the jury) ...’

But people are never required to prove their innocence. The most that they should be required to do is to establish reasonable doubt as to their guilt.

It becomes clear in the course of the report by Mr Mullighan QC, that the evidence of Dr Manock was at that time still regarded as an important part of the prosecution case. Yet as  has been shown, Dr Manock failed to take temperatures of Deborah’s body when he first arrived at the scene, and his timing of Deborah’s death has been described as ‘scientifically unsound’.

Conclusion

Throughout the years since his arrest, Van Beelen has continually asserted his innocence. Because he would not show contrition for the offence for which he was convicted, the Parole Board would not release him on parole until he had served over seventeen years. It was at that time quite common for those sentenced to life imprisonment to be released after eight or nine years. Van Beelen was a model prisoner. He continued to be a keen jogger and was from time to time allowed day-release from prison to compete in races. He frequently competed alongside judges and senior lawyers. He now lives in Adelaide and has been gainfully employed since his release from prison. He still says that he didn’t do it.

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