Free Call Me Cruel by Michael Duffy

One is the notion of Kylie as a sexual predator, another that she was violent and a thief, and yet another that she possessed secret information about the truth of TJ Hickey’s death. Then there is Wilkinson’s apparent concern for his family’s safety, his professed love for his son and the fear that his wife might leave him if Kylie told her she and Paul were having an affair—even when they weren’t. And finally there was the peculiar comment about his own capacity for violence (‘My wife hasn’t seen an angry man . . .’), which had nothing to do with anything else in the conversation.
    The interview was continued two days later when he came back; this time it was filmed and recorded. This procedure, known as an ERISP (Electronically Recorded Interview with a Suspected Person), is, as the name implies, most commonly used for suspects, but it can also be used by police to create a record of important witness interviews. After explaining to Wilkinson that he was not under arrest and was free to go at any stage, the detectives returned to the threats against his life. Another example of these was a letter he’d received at home with his car’s registration number on it along with the word ‘tick’ repeated a dozen times.
    â€˜It got to the point that before even getting in the car I’d look under the car,’ he said, ‘with the tick, tick, tick, tick about twelve times . . . I could only assume that it was a bomb.’ He said the letter was handwritten, the same as another letter he’d received. That one had been put on his vehicle when he was visiting the Aboriginal Medical Service. This mentioned a police officer’s name in relation to the death of TJ Hickey, and Wilkinson gave it to the Aboriginal Legal Service. Another letter received at home referred to his wife’s colourful pyjamas, which Wilkinson sometimes wore when he went outside in the morning to adjust their faulty water main. ‘One of the letters,’ he said, ‘it was along the lines of “Nice pyjamas”, or something to that effect. That had me like a bit windy, that’s why I told Julie she’s got to take the little boy over to her mother’s and stay there for a while, ’cause the only time they would have seen me in the pyjamas was when I’d gone out the front, and that was an indication to me that, you know, it’s possible that people are around watching.’
    The letters, he said, were not sent through the post: someone had hand-delivered them to the mailbox out front of their house. Asked if he had any idea who had sent them, Wilkinson said, ‘At the time I was 100 per cent certain that it was the blackfellas, the local blacks down there at the Block [in Redfern], after what had happened to TJ . . . the day in which I went to the Aboriginal Medical Service . . . in the foyer there was not less than seven local Koori ladies, um, sheilas, and they gave me a hard time over what happened with TJ, and in the end when I was finished with the doctor I had to go out the back door because there was more of them down there, and that’s when I’ve gone back to my car to go home and on the windscreen there was a letter.’
    The officer named in this letter was Mick Hollingsworth. The detectives, recalling what Wilkinson had said earlier about his conversation with Kylie at Sutherland Hospital, asked how she had come to know of Hollingsworth’s alleged responsibility for Hickey’s death. ‘They were knocking each other off [ie. having an affair],’ Wilkinson said, ‘Kylie informed me that . . . he told her [that he’d killed TJ Hickey], like, to her face . . . I put an entry in a notebook, um, and after that things just got nasty, where I was threatened, like, not to say anything . . . By Kylie, I was told not to say anything, otherwise