Can a burglar be a murderer?

Editorial: Jesse Wray-McCann

Photography: Jesse Wray-McCann, Bendigo Advertiser and supplied

Content warning: This article contains information about the death of an infant. Reader discretion is advised.

It’s about 7am on 15 June 2012 and three-year-old Xavier Veal-Whitting has awoken to find the front and back doors of his family’s Long Gully home in Bendigo are wide open.

Little Xavier goes into his mother Casey Veal’s bedroom where she is sleeping with her boyfriend of eight months Matthew Tisell.

“Doors open. Doors open,” Xavier says. Casey checks the house, including peeking into the bedroom of her 10-month-old son Zayden Veal-Whitting where he seems to still be sleeping in his cot.

She soon discovers her and Matthew’s wallets are missing and their cars parked outside have been rifled through, so she phones Triple 0.

At about 7.30am she goes into Zayden’s bedroom and notices the baby monitor has been disconnected and that Zayden’s blanket is unusually covering his face.

Casey pulls the blanket back and begins screaming uncontrollably.

There is blood all throughout the cot and tiny Zayden’s face is bruised, bloodied and swollen.

An ambulance rushes Zayden to hospital and despite desperate attempts to revive him, he is pronounced dead at 8.05am.

The Homicide Squad’s Detective Senior Constable Tony Harwood gets the case at 9am and immediately drives to Bendigo with colleague Det Sen Const Kyle Simpson.

Now a detective acting senior sergeant, Harwood recalls theorising about potential scenarios.

“In the majority of homicides, people are murdered by somebody known to them,” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

“Due to previous investigations and experience with so many domestic-related incidents, we were thinking, ‘Well, who else is it going to be? He’s only been on the scene for eight months, so it's going to be Matthew’.”

The two Homicide detectives went straight to the hospital, where they had to carefully approach the situation with a grieving Casey and Matthew.

“We had to separate them without them knowing that’s what we were doing, because we had to treat them as persons of interest and keep their evidence and information independent of each other,” he said.

“It was a fine line of how to treat them to get what we needed out of them but also be sympathetic.

“They were devastated and it was probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.”

Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood interviewed Matthew while Det Sen Const Simpson interviewed Casey.

“We’d compare notes and go, ‘Geez, these guys have really got their story straight’,” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

“So we were like, ‘We've just got to keep pushing and we’ll find some slip-up’.”

Matthew became almost inconsolable when talking about Zayden’s death, making the detectives think a confession might be coming.

“You're thinking to yourself, ‘At what point is he going to say, “You know what, I did it"?’” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

“But that never happened.”

Back at the house, Major Crime Scene Unit officers were combing the scene for evidence in what would become one of the unit’s longest ever examinations, a total of 34 hours.

Specialist police comb Zayden's Long Gully home for evidence.

Photo: Bendigo Advertiser

Aspects of the crime scene made investigators question whether items had been staged around the house, including Casey’s purse near the back door with her licence poking out, and items removed from one of the cars that had been left strangely on the ground close to the car.

“It just didn’t seem like a natural burglary scenario,” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

Small blood stains discovered on Matthew’s pillow, jeans and a t-shirt were sampled for testing.

The next day, a post-mortem revealed Zayden had died after being hit at least 25 times with a blunt object.

His injuries included distinct stipple markings on his face and body.

Investigators formed a list of possible offenders that included Matthew, Casey, Zayden’s biological father, two patients who had escaped a psychiatric facility overnight, and an unknown burglar.

Bendigo Crime Investigation Unit (CIU) detectives made their Homicide counterparts aware of reports of a further 12 burglaries in the streets around Zayden’s home on the night of his murder.

Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said that while they took the unknown burglar theory as seriously as possible, it seemed improbable.

“A burglar killing a baby is just not heard of, because they steal things to sell for drugs or whatever, but they're not murderers,” he said.

But to cover all bases, the Major Crime Scene Unit processed the other 12 crime scenes.

In investigating the burglaries, Bendigo CIU Detective Senior Constable Tom Harper leaned on his long-time local knowledge to identify a house of interest in the area where known petty criminals lived.

Early on 17 June, two days after Zayden’s murder, Det Sen Const Harper and his colleagues searched the house at 2A Green Street, Long Gully for property stolen during the burglaries.

At 9.40am, Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood got a call that would begin to change the path of the investigation.

“My sergeant said the search had turned up a set top box there that had been stolen from 15 Jackson Street, the house immediately behind Zayden’s,” he said.

“That showed a nexus between the offender and the burglaries that night, which was really important, but it didn’t necessarily show a nexus with the murder so we needed to keep looking into it.

“This was while we were still considering Matthew and checking carefully through his and Casey’s interviews to prove or disprove everything they told us.”

Those who lived at 2A Green Street all pointed out that one of their housemates, 19-year-old Harley Hicks, was high on methamphetamine when he went out in the early hours of 15 June to commit burglaries and then was last known to have travelled to Gisborne later that morning.

After a couple of days hiding from police, Hicks was caught by Det Sen Const Harper laying on the floor of the backseat of his father’s car on the way from Gisborne back to Bendigo on 19 June.

Det Sen Const Harper said this level of behaviour seemed out of step with what he was used to in his previous dealings with Hicks.

“I think at that stage he was wanted on a couple of warrants, but normally that would not spook him to that extent,” Det Sen Const Harper said.

“So I’m thinking, ‘Well, Harley, you’re up to your neck in something here’.”

He immediately told Det Sen Const Harper he was responsible for some of the break-ins but said he had been out stealing with another male and they split up after stealing items from 15 Jackson Street.

“He said this other male was acting strangely and was very aggressive,” Det Sen Const Harper said.

“Harley Hicks is very street cunning.

“He could be a very, very convincing liar and he could use others to his advantage.”

Homicide detectives soon found the other male had a rock-solid alibi that proved he was not out stealing that night.

On 20 June, Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood got a phone call from people Hicks had stayed with in Gisborne to say they had found cutup clothing belonging to Hicks and other items that may have been in his possession.

It was also discovered that, on the night he had stayed there, there had been internet searches on one of the computers in the house for any news coverage relating to terms such as “baby murder Bendigo” and the specific address of baby Zayden’s home.

Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood and his colleagues still had Matthew Tisell as their main person of interest but were struggling with a lack of evidence.

“It was frustrating because we just couldn’t catch a break,” he said.

“We needed a plausible break and not this fanciful one where a burglar had murdered a baby.”

But the items found in Gisborne strengthened Hicks as a person of interest and gave detectives the legal grounds to return to Hicks’s home for a more detailed search.

“I was driving back from Gisborne when they were doing the search and I got a call from one of the other detectives who said to me, ‘Harwood, are you sitting down? We just found Tisell’s wallet at Hicks’s house’,” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

“The hair was standing up on my arms.”

Major Crime Scene Unit officers were immediately called back to scour the house for further evidence.

Around this time, Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood heard back from Victoria Police’s Biological Sciences Group that Zayden’s DNA had been found on the set top box stolen from 15 Jackson Street, along with the DNA of one unknown person.

The blood stains found on Matthew Tisell’s pillow and clothing were also found to be his own.

Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood was reviewing photos of items seized during the second search of Hicks’s home when he spotted a long black baton within a bag of stolen property.

“The baton was a heavy bundle of copper wiring wrapped in black electrical tape,” he said.

“As soon as I saw the copper wire ends exposed at the end of the baton, I had a light bulb moment and I scrambled for the post-mortem photos of Zayden.

“There it was – the soft tissue stipple marks on Zayden’s face and body were almost identical to the pattern of the wires.”

The baton was rushed off for testing, which revealed the DNA of two people.

One was 1.1 trillion times more likely to be the DNA of baby Zayden than any other Caucasian male from the Australian population. The other was 1100 times more likely to be the DNA of Harley Hicks.

“With that, I could finally rule out Matthew Tisell and Casey Veal as persons of interest, which was a big relief,” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

But it was quickly revealed to Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood that Harley Hicks had an identical twin called Ashley.

Identical twins with identical DNA.

“Not only did they have the same DNA, but they had the same traits, same drug addictions and very similar criminal records,” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

Ashley Hicks told police he was at his father’s house asleep on the night of Zayden’s murder, a claim that would need to be tested in court.

Harley Hicks was charged with murder and the case went to trial in March 2014.

He fought the charge and his only defence was to try to pin the murder on his brother Ashley.

When a Victoria Police forensic officer conceded on the witness stand to the defence barrister that the DNA found on the baton was just as likely to be Ashley’s, Harley turned and winked at Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood from the dock.

It was the first sign of any emotion the remorseless Harley Hicks had shown through the trial.

‘I thought to myself, ‘Ok, game on’,” Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood said.

Among those Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood organised to put on the witness stand were Ashley himself and three others, who all gave evidence that Ashley was at his father’s house that night.

Casey Veal told the court that with Zayden’s horrific death, she lost everything.

“I lost all future plans I had dreamed for my boys. I lost his right to grow up, to celebrate even one birthday,” Casey said.

“All I have is memories and even most of them are tainted by this crime and the trauma that has come from this.

“This crime has destroyed my life; I will never be the same again.”

After five days of deliberation, the jury returned a guilty verdict.

Harley Hicks was convicted of Zayden's murder.

Photo: Bendigo Advertiser

Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood could not be in Bendigo for the verdict due to a family emergency in Melbourne.

Despite initially being a person of interest, Casey had nothing but praise for Det A/Sen Sgt Harwood and the relationship they had built.

Outside the court, she was asked her reaction to the guilty verdict.

“I only wish that Tony Harwood was here to see it,” she said.

In sentencing Harley Hicks, Justice Stephen Kaye described the murder as “appallingly violent” and “utterly evil”.

Hicks was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 32 years, a record sentence in Victoria at the time for such a young offender.