No body, no witnesses, no DNA, so how did Detective Dennis Bray solve the most notorious kidnapping in Australia's history?
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00:00Two of the
00:27Detective Shards found two important documents. One was a small writing pad and the other
00:33one was a large, full-scap pad. One for how he was going to execute his plan and the other
00:40one certainly was a format for how he was going to set out the ransom note.
00:47A major police investigation is underway tonight after the wife of a millionaire Sydney businessman
00:54was kidnapped.
00:55She was last seen walking toward Phillips Street where police believe she was abducted.
01:00There will be no second chances. Follow all instructions or your wife will die.
01:05Kerry, if you can hear what I'm saying, don't give up.
01:10Do you know who kidnapped your wife?
01:12I believe I do, yes.
01:15It doesn't look good with our data.
01:16Bruce Burrell became a prime candidate.
01:20Bruce Burrell had also been the one and only suspect for the disappearance of Dorothy Davis.
01:28Just an unfortunate circumstance that you were an acquaintance of two women who have
01:34disappeared and never been found again.
01:36Absolutely.
01:37I'm Brett Ryan and my sister was Kerry Ryan who became Kerry Whelan. I'm very biased
02:00but I think she was a great big sister. We had a lovely stable home life, the four of
02:06us, Mum, Dad, Kerry and I were all very close. Anything that mattered, I'd always check
02:12in with Kerry to get an opinion. Every boy needs a good older sister, I think. They were
02:26just such a good couple, basically because they were just best mates. Mum and Dad and
02:39I had to get our head around the concept that 23-year-old Kerry was suddenly going out with
02:45a 40-year-old grey-haired businessman. But as soon as we met Bernie, Mum and Dad loved
02:52him. They were very in love too, very, very in love.
02:59This is missing. We found her car, a car upon her husband in Parramatta.
03:22When I was contacted by my now wife to say that Kerry was missing, I was actually interstate.
03:29I was on the Gold Coast at an industry conference. It was very out of character for Kerry. There
03:38was nothing going on in her life that would suggest she would run away or had a mental
03:43breakdown or anything. It was very hard to work out what the hell was going on, like
03:49why wasn't Kerry there? Once I flew back to Sydney, my now wife picked me up and then
03:57we went to Kerry and Bernie's house. Bernie had made contact with the police by that stage
04:09and had got them to at least take the issue on. I think it would have been early afternoon.
04:16Someone had collected the mail from the letterbox and that's when we received the ransom note.
04:35There will be no second chances. Follow all instructions or your wife will die. By the
04:42time you receive this letter, she will be safely in our keeping. To ensure her safe
04:46return, you must at no time bring in the police, the press, any authorities or outside assistance.
04:53We will know if you do so. The consequences of breaching this rule will be dire for your
05:00wife. The ransom for her return is one million US dollars. You have seven days. When the
05:08money is ready, you are to put it in an advertisement in the public notice section of the Sydney
05:13Daily Telegraph newspaper. This is your only means of ever seeing her alive again.
05:27So at that point, yeah, it all erupted at home. That's really when the police investigation
05:34ramped up.
05:38Dennis Bray. I was a detective sergeant, acting team leader at the Homicide Squad at North
05:45West Region. We had no notion or idea of who may be involved or behind the author of this
05:52letter and who had taken Mrs Whelan. It was quite threatening, intimidating and designed
06:00to put fear in the reader and to get them to comply. What we had to do then is mount
06:11a major operation, a covert operation, because it was one of the conditions that had been
06:17laid out by the author of the ransom note that he wasn't to involve the police.
06:24The first thing to establish were Kerry Whelan's movements in the lead up to her abduction.
06:32Mr Whelan was a businessman. He was the senior vice president of Crown Equipment in Australia
06:39and South East Asia. They lived up in the Blue Mountains, Currajong area.
06:48On the morning of May 6th, Bernie and Kerry left their Currajong property in separate
06:53vehicles. They planned to meet up later in the day to travel to Adelaide on a work trip.
07:03Kerry drove to her nanny's property in nearby Glossodia and picked up a Land Rover Discovery.
07:12Mrs Whelan left the Glossodia address and travelled from there to Parramatta. And on
07:19the way she spoke to Mr Whelan by phone twice and she was quite excited and upbeat.
07:34The next sighting we have of Kerry is her arriving at the Park Royal at about 9.37am,
07:42where her car is protected, driving in the underground car park of the Park Royal. She
07:50parks her car. We obtained the footage of Mrs Whelan leaving the underground car park
07:57and walking up on the western side of the driveway of the underground car park.
08:05Mrs Whelan vanished almost as soon as she left the car park and she didn't enter the
08:14hotel. We believe that she got into a car, but our investigators saw no evidence of that
08:21when they checked the CCTV.
08:29The first person we had to eliminate from our investigation was her husband, Bernie.
08:37We quickly established that he was nowhere near the Park Royal at the time of Kerry's
08:41disappearance.
08:44We certainly did research on the family, on Mrs Whelan and also Bernie Whelan. There was
08:49a lot of information come in, but nothing that suggested they were in inappropriate
08:56relationships or Mr Whelan was doing anything untowards in the relationship. It was all
09:02a picture of a happy, loving family with beautiful children, the world at their feet, great future
09:12and it was all turned upside down on the 6th of May when Kerry was abducted. Their whole
09:16life had changed.
09:19The first lead came from the Whelan's nanny, Amanda Minton-Taylor.
09:25She said that a couple of weeks before Kerry's disappearance, she was introduced to a male
09:30who Kerry described as a friend of the family. He turned up at the house unannounced, driving
09:38a green Jag. She thought it was an odd meeting she was watching.
09:56And when the meeting concluded, Kerry appeared not to be happy. He went to give her a kiss
10:05on the cheek and she pulled away. She thought Kerry was uncomfortable with whatever the
10:12discussion was.
10:15The nanny recalled the exact words Kerry said to her when the man departed the property.
10:19Don't worry, I'm not having an affair. It's a surprise and I'll tell you about it in a
10:24couple of weeks.
10:28Then she overheard Kerry washing up at the sink. Heard her mumble, why is this bastard
10:34doing this to me? All we knew that it was a family friend by the name of Bruce.
10:46The next day investigators had the nanny review the Whelan family photo albums to see if she
10:52could find a match for the man that she had met at the house a few weeks earlier.
11:01She found a photo. It was a lunch held by Mr and Mrs Whelan at their property where
11:07they played tennis with executives from Crown. She picked a fellow by the name of Bruce Burrell
11:12from that photo.
11:16Burrell was hired as an advertising manager by Crown Equipment in the 1980s. His boss
11:23was Bernie Whelan and the two became friends.
11:29This is a photo of the Whelans at their property at one time with Bruce Burrell and his then
11:35wife. Mr and Mrs Whelan went to the wedding of Burrell and his wife many years before
11:43and they had cordial relationships but hadn't seen him since his retrenchment.
11:53Bruce Burrell was retrenched from Crown Equipment in 1990. So why did he turn up unannounced
12:01at the Whelan house just a couple of weeks before Kerry's kidnapping?
12:09We had to find out more about this Bruce and that's what we did. We embarked on that inquiry,
12:15researched him back to his childhood. He'd been in trouble with the police, with the
12:21law, as a young person working in a bank. He lied a lot. He wasn't that popular, as
12:29soon as lazy and argumentative. He could every now and then blow up when talking to people
12:36for no reason. Even when he was with his former wife, she was successful in the advertising
12:44industry but he wasn't working.
12:48Problems developed in Burrell's marriage. He split from his wife Dallas in December
12:521996 and he moved to a 500 acre property in Bungonia near Goulburn where he remained unemployed
13:00and lived alone.
13:03He had a mortgage on the property which he was having trouble meeting the costs. It was
13:14a picture that we might have had two Bruce's, if I can describe it that way. Bruce who spoke
13:19like he was well educated, a country gentleman, nice car, jag. And then the other side of
13:26Bruce was a Bruce that could be very controlling, manipulative and very convincing to have people
13:34do things that he wanted them to do.
13:39We wondered if Bruce Burrell had somehow persuaded Kerry Whelan to meet him in Parramatta on
13:43May 6th. Following his split from Dallas, he was a man without an income. That gave
13:50him motive.
13:53We didn't have anything at that stage to say that he had picked her up. But I felt that
13:58if Burrell was involved, Kerry was in great peril. It was unlikely that he could ever
14:04let her go because she'd be able to identify him.
14:13Once the investigation got going, Bruce Burrell became a prime candidate very early in the
14:20piece.
14:23Kerry Whelan was kidnapped outside the Park Royal Hotel on the 6th of May. The ransom
14:28notes sent to her husband Bernie instructed him to put an ad in the Daily Telegraph within
14:33seven days with a coded entry confirming he'd raised the ransom of one million US dollars.
14:41The ad was duly placed and we surveilled Burrell to monitor his reaction.
14:49And then on the third day, the 14th of May, Mr Burrell was followed into the Ampol garage
14:59at Maroolin, where he was seen to pick up a Daily Telegraph newspaper by the surveillance
15:06police. After there, he left and went back home.
15:13If Bruce Burrell was indeed the kidnapper, we wanted to give him a couple of days to
15:17make contact with the Whelans regarding ransom payment. But he never did. So we planned to
15:24covertly search his property whilst he was absent.
15:32On the 16th of May, we had arranged for a highway patrol to stop Burrell when he went
15:38into Goulbert in the Pajero.
15:40Because we believed the car Burrell was driving was stolen, and it was.
15:48He was processed at Goulburn and we did a covert warrant on the house to see if there
15:55was any indication of Mrs Whelan having been there.
16:03After not finding anything, they withdrew without him knowing and he got a taxi home.
16:19We were getting to the point where we'd have to go public. If Kerry was still alive, we
16:24had to find her and quickly. She wasn't being held in the house on Burrell's property, but
16:31maybe she was being held in the surrounding bushland.
16:37Dennis Bray rang me and asked me, are you available for a job? And about 30 of your
16:45people, hey, we need you and this is what we want done.
16:53They were pretty sure that Burrell was the man and they wanted the property raided and
17:02secured with the hope that we might find Mrs Whelan alive.
17:09There's certainly a sense of urgency. So we've got to get in there and go hard, really go
17:15hard and get at it.
17:22But we didn't do any good. And what we did find was a Jag, a Jaguar, motor car.
17:30And that vehicle turned out to be stolen as well in 1995 from a dealership at our apartment.
17:38But we didn't do any good. And what we did find was a Jag, a Jaguar, motor car.
17:51That vehicle turned out to be stolen as well in 1995 from a dealership at our apartment.
17:58Burrell offered implausible accounts of how the Jaguar and the Bajero came to be in his
18:03possession. We believed he had stolen both vehicles and was subsequently charged. And
18:10we continued looking for more evidence.
18:14There was a number of firearms. One of the firearms was a .22 rifle that Mr Whelan had
18:20lent to Burrell many years prior. And Burrell had reported to Mr Whelan that it had been
18:26stolen from his car. Turned out that it hadn't been stolen, it was in Bruce's possession.
18:32He loved taking things but wouldn't give them back.
18:38Another team of detectives forensically searched the interior of Burrell's house and they uncovered
18:44a few items of great interest.
18:46They found, importantly, a bottle of chloroform. The chloroform was empty. It was found in
18:56his main bedroom on a gun locker.
19:00The big question, of course, was, had Burrell used chloroform to subdue Kerry Whelan in
19:05the act of kidnapping her?
19:10We also found two important documents, handwritten by Burrell. One appeared to set out the steps
19:19for the kidnapping and the other, how to construct the ransom note.
19:23I'll go through the first one. There's an outline of how he was going to execute the
19:31plan. Collection. It talks about how he was going to collect Kerry. Advisement. How he
19:42was going to advise what was coming. Then he was prepared to wait. He's given us the
19:46time period of seven days and then the ad and, of course, he was waiting.
19:51Then we turned to the second page, a format, for how he was going to set out the ransom
19:59note. Has been Kay. She's been kidnapped. She's been taken. No P. There's a reference
20:08in the ransom note. No police. And then nothing until received. So he was going to do nothing
20:16until he received acknowledgement that it was right to go.
20:19And, of course, the last one, stress two. Well, two is the second point, which is no
20:27police. Do you feel at this stage that it's definitely
20:33Bruce? Well, we were close, but we still had a long
20:38way to go at that point. The 21st of May 1997 was a big day in the
20:46investigation. We began to formally search Burrell's Bungania property and we went public
20:58on the case. Good evening. A major police investigation
21:04is underway tonight after the wife of a millionaire Sydney businessman was kidnapped.
21:10Kerry Whelan was abducted from Parramatta on May the 6th and by the hour hope dwindles
21:16that the mother of three is still alive. We have great fears for the safety of Mrs
21:21Whelan given the nature of the demand. Kerry, if you can hear what I'm saying, I
21:29want you to know that we all love you. We will do anything to get you back, but most
21:37of all, don't give up. It was incredibly painful to watch. So it
21:44was a very tough day for the family, a very tough day.
21:49Do you know who kidnapped or who abducted your wife?
21:54I believe I do, yes. The owner of a property near Goulburn, which
22:00was searched by police for five days, today denied any knowledge of the abduction.
22:06I can say that absolutely categorically. The unfortunate portrayal of my role in the case
22:14has to date created for me an appearance of guilt and contamination by association.
22:21When I first spotted him talking to the general media, I knew that there was a chance to really
22:29nail this bloke. I was working for the Nine Network's 60 Minutes program as a producer.
22:40So we made the decision that the time's come that we need to go and talk to Bruce Bubble.
22:48I was able to get the phone number and I rang him on a Wednesday night during the State
22:54of Origin. And when I said, it's Steve Barrett here from 60 Minutes, I hope I'm not upsetting
23:07your State of Origin night. And he said, no, no, no. So that became a talking point. He
23:16liked the sound of 60 Minutes as a vehicle for him to protest his innocence and he agreed
23:24to that. We turned up at the property and Bruce was ready for us and he was able to,
23:39let me say, put on a show for us.
23:46Tell me what happened last Thursday night.
23:48The best one in my book was the great lengths that he went to alibi himself about the day
23:56of Kerry Whelan's disappearance from the car park at Parramatta.
24:08He says he was alone on his farm and suffering a bad back. And on that morning at a party
24:16about 8.30, he took a two-way radio call from a neighbour.
24:21The neighbour, Kevin Cooper, had made a diary entry for May 6th about a planned meeting
24:27with Burrell on a section of his property called Rabbit Ears.
24:32Just because your neighbour has your name written in his diary on the 6th of May, that
24:37doesn't mean you were here.
24:39No, it doesn't.
24:42When we formally interviewed the Coopers, they were unable to verify if they spoke to
24:47Burrell on the 6th of May. They said they may have spoken to him on a day or two either
24:52side of the 6th. In fact, they were not certain they spoke to him at all.
24:58Burrell was up to his old bullshit.
25:03This crime against us can only be described as mental terrorism.
25:09Mr Whelan, a senior executive with Crown Forklifts, received a ransom note soon after
25:14the abduction, but there's been no further contact.
25:18On behalf of my family, I beg them to contact me.
25:31We believe Bruce Burrell was contained at his property in Bungurnia because we had seized
25:36the two stolen cars he'd been driving. But on May 23rd, Burrell found a way to leave
25:43the property.
25:47Burrell rang around to obtain a vehicle from one of the neighbours in adjoining properties
25:51and it was successful. No one knew really where he went on that day.
25:59On May 23rd, a phone call that would become critical to the investigation was made from
26:08a public phone in Goulburn.
26:11The call was traced to the Empire Hotel, a telephone box out the front on the main street.
26:18That call emanated at 9.21am.
26:22The man who made the call was the kidnapper making contact.
26:28That call was made to Crown Equipment at Smithfield and it was received by a receptionist.
26:37The caller that made the call to the receptionist at Crown said,
26:42Mrs Whelan is OK. Mr Whelan must call off the police and the media today.
26:50The interesting thing with that was, where were the police and the media that day?
26:58They were at Bulgania doing a major search for Mrs Whelan.
27:05So who made the call from the public phone in Goulburn?
27:09In order to prove it was Burrell, we had to place him in Goulburn at the phone at 9.21am.
27:14Good evening. Developments tonight in the Kerry Whelan kidnapping case with police re-interviewing
27:22Bruce Burrell, the former employee of Mrs Whelan's husband.
27:27Police force detectives from Sydney arrived at Burrell's property in the early evening.
27:32The 44-year-old met the three officers at the front gate before they drove to his home.
27:37I had this feeling that this might be the last time we got to interview him.
27:42It was important to explore what his movements were on the 23rd of May.
27:49We'd found a receipt when we first went on the premises for a case of beer at Woolworths
27:54for the 23rd of May. We knew that he'd been in town at Goulburn, so we started to interview.
28:11He didn't want to be caught lying to us and he thought we'd had him under surveillance
28:15in town that day.
28:19I certainly wasn't going to let Burrell know that we were not surveilling him.
28:23We'd be letting him off the hook.
28:27So I just went along and just asked him his movements. And he said he went to the Woolworths.
28:36After that, he went to the other end of town and he hedged around where he went. But eventually
28:42he said he went to a phone box opposite the Mayfair Mall, which is the phone box outside
28:49the Empire Hotel. He put himself in that phone box at a critical time when the call was made
29:00to Crown Equipment.
29:03Of course, Burrell denied calling Crown Equipment, but it was about as close to a gotcha moment
29:10as we were going to get. Who else would have been making that call from that phone box
29:16at that precise moment?
29:20At the end of the interview, I felt that we'd had enough to think about doing a prosecution.
29:32Until the moment we went public on the abduction of Kerry Whelan, we thought we were only dealing
29:37with one kidnapping.
29:39I received a phone call from a senior detective from the City South region, which is based
29:46in the city, and he advised me that Bruce had been part of an investigation of the disappearance
29:53of an elderly woman in Lurline Bay back on the 30th of May, 1995.
30:00Dorothy Davis, Dottie to her friends, was a 74-year-old widow living in Lurline Bay
30:06in Sydney's eastern suburbs. In 1995, when Dottie went missing, Bruce Burrell was still
30:14married to Dallas, and they lived around the corner from Dottie.
30:20Dottie Davis was a very good friend of my wife's parents. My wife thought a great deal
30:28of Dottie, Dottie thought a great deal of my wife, and we basically got along very well.
30:36Mrs. Davis had left her property just around the corner from Burrell's property at about
30:471.30. We know that because there was a builder doing some work on the home. Mrs. Davis indicated
30:55that she was going, and she was going down the road. Well, down the road was where Burrell's
31:03wife and he lived. And after that, that was the last time Mrs. Davis had been seen.
31:12What struck me about these two cases was how unusual it is for women like that to disappear
31:22without trace. My name is Mark Tedeschi. I was a Crown Prosecutor for 35 years. I'm now
31:30a private barrister. Bruce Burrell had been the one and only suspect for the disappearance
31:39of Dorothy Davis. Dorothy Davis's daughter had told the police, her mother had told her
31:49that she had lent $100,000 to Bruce Burrell. He had convinced her not to tell anybody about
31:57it. She had asked for that money to be returned because it was a loan he had refused. He had
32:06become threatening of her, and Dorothy Davis had told him, if you don't pay that money
32:14back, which you said you would pay back, I'll hand this matter over to my solicitor, and
32:20I'll tell your wife, Dallas, who's a close friend of mine, about this money. Now, the
32:31police then went and investigated this information. They went and interviewed Bruce Burrell, and
32:36he said, I was at work that day that you mentioned that Dorothy Davis disappeared. I was at work
32:43that day. In fact, he said, I remember that we had a lunch that day for one of my colleagues.
32:51It was his birthday or something like that, and we had a lunch at a restaurant. Now, Dennis
32:58Bray caused further inquiries to be made. He got his team to get the credit card records
33:05for the lunch at the restaurant and found out it wasn't on that day, it was another
33:10day. He then got Bruce Burrell's mobile phone records and found out he was in his home suburb
33:22at the time that Dorothy Davis left her place at lunchtime on that day, and then he made
33:27a sudden dash an hour later down to Bongonia, where he had this remote rural property, and
33:35then drove back to Sydney. Not only was his alibi destroyed, but it was shown that he'd
33:43actually lied about where he was that day. So he immediately became prime suspect once
33:49again for the disappearance of Dorothy Davis.
33:54Just an unfortunate circumstance that you were an acquaintance of two women who have
34:00disappeared and never been found again.
34:03Pretty...
34:04I did watch the show. At the time, I just thought he was quite delusional. He appeared
34:16to think he could sort of control the commentary, and knowing what the police investigation
34:22was, I thought that was a very stupid move.
34:26Would you concede that it doesn't look good?
34:28Oh, I don't know if it looks... It doesn't look good, without doubt. But because I've
34:35known them, doesn't mean I've had an involvement.
34:39Now, I accept that wholeheartedly. It doesn't establish a thing, except it's unusual.
34:44True. I'd grant that.
34:48Unusual to the point of disbelief?
34:51No, not at all.
34:55I don't think it went well for him. Although, I must admit, I had someone that I know say
35:02to me, are you sure? The police have got the right guy, which it was very hard not to react
35:08to.
35:14One year after the kidnapping of Kerry Whelan, police remained confident of catching whoever
35:19was responsible. Mrs Whelan was last seen in the car park of a Parramatta hotel. Police
35:26say Mr Whelan's ex-employee, Bruce Burrell, remains a person of interest to the investigation.
35:34We had a lot of circumstantial evidence against Burrell, but we needed to identify whether
35:40Burrell had been in Parramatta that morning.
35:43No-one really knew where he was on the 6th of May. Whilst we couldn't prove that he was
35:48there, we couldn't prove that he wasn't there.
35:51One night I was at home reviewing all the evidence and I started thinking about the
35:56CCTV camera system at the Park Royal Hotel.
36:00I couldn't recall that investigators had actually checked all the other cameras, whereas there's
36:07about eight cameras at the Park Royal.
36:11So I went to work the next day and I got the videotape out that we had, and I had a video
36:18player where you could control the toggle frame by frame. I just was going through that.
36:24I looked at camera 7, and camera 7's mounted in the entry to the then nightclub at the
36:30Park Royal. So it's mounted in the ceiling and it's aimed down on a glass entry door
36:35of a nightclub.
36:41So I'm moving through it frame by frame and then I noticed that the glass door was picking
36:46up the reflection of what was happening out on Phillips Street.
36:52I move forward bit by bit.
36:57And at 9.38.46, we've got a Mitsubishi Pajero captured pulling away.
37:05That it's two-toned and it's a three-door Mitsubishi Pajero.
37:10So I was surprised. I nearly fell off the chair and then the car on the screen looked
37:15a lot like the stolen car we'd seized from Bruce Burrell on May 16th.
37:22Ten days after Kerry Whelan was kidnapped.
37:27I went back to the car park vision, looking for the exact time Kerry Whelan exited on
37:32foot.
37:39And that was 9.38.09, exactly 40 seconds before the Pajero pulled out of the kerb on Phillips
37:46Street.
37:51This opened up a whole new inquiry.
37:56I had to establish that the Pajero outside the Park Royal was Burrell's vehicle and couldn't
38:01have been driven by anyone else.
38:08Dennis Bray caused an investigation to be conducted, getting the police in New South
38:14Wales to try and locate every single owner of that model of two-toned Pajero in the whole
38:21of New South Wales.
38:24And the question was, on that particular day, where was your vehicle?
38:29Were you in Phillips Street, Parramatta, on that day?
38:35And they were able to locate, I think, all but six of the owners.
38:42So we weren't able to exclude all of the 5,000 or so vehicles.
38:48But the coincidence of it being somebody who was known to Kerry Whelan, who was the
38:57possessor of that vehicle, was very important also.
39:06We begin tonight with the major developments in the case of Sydney woman Kerry Whelan.
39:11Bruce Burrell, who was once employed by Mrs Whelan's husband, has been charged with her
39:16abduction and murder.
39:28When Bruce was finally arrested for Kerry's murder, there was a feeling of relief.
39:34In hindsight, that was the start of the cruel process of the delays.
39:43The matter was to start trial on the 31st of January 2001.
39:49What often happens with a complex trial like this is that the defence make an application
39:56for evidence to be excluded.
39:59And that's precisely what they did in this case.
40:02A court was told today that during one of the searches of Mr Burrell's property, police
40:07found an empty bottle of chloroform.
40:11The chloroform bottle was ruled inadmissible.
40:15The conversation of Kerry, why did this bastard do this to me, that little bit was ruled inadmissible.
40:26The DPP made a decision, which he announced publicly, that the trial of Bruce Burrell would not go ahead.
40:36The Director of Public Prosecution said there was no reasonable prospect of conviction on
40:41the evidence that is now available and admissible.
40:46So, um, I was a bit upset. We copped it a bit, but anyway.
40:51With their case in tatters, police left the Supreme Court with nothing to say.
40:55I've already told you we're not making any comment.
41:00Freed from jail on Tuesday, Burrell celebrated at his sister's Northern Beaches home.
41:05You can understand he didn't just come out of jail.
41:07I can imagine.
41:08So, he just needed some time by himself.
41:26I found the coroner's court quite positive.
41:28They get to cut to the chase pretty well because no one's being tried.
41:36We're strong and today's a big day for us.
41:38We've been waiting five years to see Mr Burrell finally in the witness box.
41:41He was entitled to refuse to answer questions if the answer to those questions might tend to incriminate him.
41:59And there were something like 84 questions that he was asked, like, are you a predator of women?
42:08Were you responsible for the disappearance of Kerry Whelan?
42:12That he refused to answer.
42:16Watching him in the coroner's court showed his psychopath mentality.
42:23Because we were all idiots and we didn't understand and we were wasting his time and clearly he was innocent.
42:33I noticed he would take notes.
42:37I actually asked the coroner after the proceedings had finished because I knew he sat above the witness box and he could look down and see that.
42:48And I said, I noticed a lot of note taking from Burrell, what was that?
42:53And he looked at me and smiled and said he wasn't writing anything.
42:58So it was just yet another case of a psychopath needing to look like he's in control of the situation.
43:16The coronial inquest sent the case back into the DPP with a rocket.
43:21The coronial inquest sent the case back into the DPP with a rocket.
43:25Because the finding was that Kerry was dead and there was a prima facie case of murder by a person known.
43:37And I'm sure that added to the pressure to take it to a criminal trial.
43:46The trial of Bruce Burrell took about three months.
43:49It was chock-a-block full of evidence.
43:52At the end of that three month trial, the jury were deliberating for well over a week.
44:01And they announced that they were unable to reach a decision and that there was no prospect of them coming to a decision.
44:12The DPP says it will now press ahead with a new trial, hopefully early next year.
44:28Good evening. Bruce Burrell, the man long suspected of kidnapping and murdering Sydney woman Kerry Whelan, has today been found guilty.
44:37It was his second trial after the first failed to reach a verdict.
44:43This time the jury deliberated for nine days.
44:49I actually found it a very unusual experience because I didn't get my sister back.
44:58So I felt an odd man out and wanted not to be there.
45:03Until it dawned on me that this was the ultimate vindication of the police.
45:10I thought this was their reward and I think I raced down to the small banister or fence at the bottom of the public gallery in the court and leaned over and hugged Dennis Bray.
45:24I was just happy that we were able to get some result for the family.
45:29They're the ones that suffered and they're the ones that, you know, we were getting paid to do a job and we did it.
45:35I rang Bernie to tell him about it and he was very emotional.
45:41Yes, there will be a few drinks and we'll try to say goodbye to Kerry.
45:51We haven't got her back so it's a relief, it's not a celebration.
45:59There was a second trial to happen and that went ahead in 2007.
46:06That was the Dorothy Davis matter.
46:10After eight days of deliberations and difficulty in reaching a unanimous verdict, finally a decision, guilty.
46:17To the members of the jury, we say thank you for their heartfelt dedication to the job that they had to do.
46:29Burrell never revealed to anyone where he hid the bodies of Dorothy Davis and Kerry Whelan.
46:34He was never told where he hid them.
46:37He was never told where he hid them.
46:40He was never told where he hid them.
46:42Burrell never revealed to anyone where he hid the bodies of Dorothy Davis and Kerry Whelan.
46:47I've always suspected it's somewhere in the Southern Highlands or near his property in Bungania.
46:53That's why we spent so much time searching there.
46:57The other mystery that still gnaws is how did he get Kerry to meet him in Parramatta?
47:09And I could never work out what that was.
47:13I asked Mark Tedeschi, off the record, much later, and I said, you've looked at it, what's your best theory?
47:25I think I know exactly how Bruce Burrell abducted Kerry Whelan.
47:34Weeks before he abducts Kerry, he goes to her home to meet up with her.
47:41No doubt to make an arrangement to convince her to come to Parramatta and get into his car.
47:50He'd spoken to her and afterwards she was uneasy, dismayed, unsettled.
48:00From a shooting weekend many years before, Burrell had one of Bernie's rifles.
48:07And it had stayed with him for a long time on his farm.
48:11Bernie was very angry about that.
48:14Mark said, possibly, Burrell wanted to return that gun to Bernie
48:20and had convinced Kerry to maybe help smooth that in by being there with him to do that
48:27rather than him having to face Bernie after all these years.
48:31The mother of three disappeared after parking her four-wheel drive at the Park Royal Hotel at Parramatta.
48:38She was last seen walking toward Phillips Street where police believe she was abducted.
48:43Clearly, Bruce Burrell had convinced Kerry Whelan to get into his car
48:50by saying they were going to go and speak to Bernie Whelan.
48:55Once she was in that car, he was inevitably going to murder her because she knew him.
49:07One of the things that was found in a vehicle that was parked at Bruce Burrell's property near Bungonia
49:16was a street directory.
49:18The street directory that was found at Bungonia had the location of the Park Royal Hotel highlighted in pink highlight.
49:27And the address of the hotel was written in highlighter in the margin.
49:34Then there was a route that was marked in highlighter going from the hotel towards Smithfield
49:46which is where Bernie Whelan, Kerry's husband, had his work premises and where he was at work that day.
49:56But it stopped at a location on a main road where at that time in 1997
50:07there were no houses, no shops, no factories in the vicinity
50:11and you could see in either direction on that street for about a kilometre.
50:16So it was an ideal location where if you were going to convert a voluntary lift into a forced abduction,
50:25it would be a great place to do it.
50:27Bruce Burrell, the man convicted of the killing and the death of another woman, has now died in jail.
50:34Simon Bote is with me in the studio and Simon Burrell had a dark history.
50:38He did Pete, there's no doubt about that.
50:40But Pete, I can tell you there are two families tonight who are in emotional turmoil yet again.
50:45But Pete, there is a footnote in this story.
50:47Bernie struggled through that period and his decline.
50:52No-one can weather that storm without taking hits.
50:55He was a man who was a man of the people.
51:00He was a man of the people.
51:02And he was a man of the people and he was a man of the people.
51:07And he was a man of the people.
51:10And he was a man of the people.
51:13And he was a man of the people.
51:18My mother had died just before Kerry.
51:20Kerry died and dad passed away from cancer three years later.
51:24So for me, I went from a close family to no family.
51:28no family.
51:42Dennis had this inquiry from the very start. And some seven or eight years later, he convicts
51:51Burrell of both murders. No body, no admissions, but 12 jurors said, oh yeah, you've done it
52:00buddy. And you can't do any better than that. It's the best bit of police work I've seen.
52:09I was invited to Dennis's retirement function. There was a lot of police there and Dennis's
52:14family were there. And I felt I wanted to speak. I wanted to know that our family thinks
52:21Dennis, in their family, is a hero. He worked so hard, he was so compassionate, he would
52:28never let it go. He's a true hero, not the heroes we always talk about. So I pushed in
52:37and made my very clumsy, probably, speech, but I would have gone to my grave regretting
52:43it if I hadn't.