The Mayor, The Killer, His Father, The Court
The Age
Saturday July 29, 2000
AT the time of his death in 1998, David O'Hearn was what his neighbors called a ``confirmed bachelor". He was 59 years old, lived alone, had never married. Asked in court to define his sexuality, his sister, Patricia, said, well, David was ``gay, but not practising".
O'Hearn owned a small store in Dapto, outside Wollongong. He liked to open before 7am. One morning, he didn't show up, so the young man who worked for him telephoned his sister to find out what was wrong.
Patricia didn't know, so she went to her brother's house. Nobody answered when she knocked at the door, so she opened it, and was confronted by a death scene that even the killer's lawyer has since described as ``god-awful".
O'Hearn's body was lying on the lounge-room floor. He had been decapitated and disembowelled. His head was found in a sink half-filled with water. His intestines were coiled on a silver tray. The killer had cut off O'Hearn's hand and used it to write Satanic messages on the wall.
Two weeks later, there was another bloody, violent death in Wollongong, and again the victim was an elderly bachelor, Frank Arkell, who used to call himself ``Mr Wollongong" because he had been mayor for 17 years, and a state MP as well.
In recent years, Arkell had been accused of molesting children and, a few months before his death, he had been charged with several sex offences, but he denied being a paedophile, and intended to defend his reputation in court.
Instead, a 72-year-old widow, who lived in the granny flat behind Arkell's house, went to give him the newspapers one morning, and found him bashed to death, bludgeoned with an ashtray and a lamp, and strangled with an electrical cord.
The two deaths, two weeks apart, stumped local police. Were they dealing with a serial killer, one with a particular hatred of homosexuals? If so, would he kill again, and how soon? They were not left wondering for long. According to testimony given at trial last week, Mark Valera walked into Wollongong police station in September 1998 and told the constable on duty that he was the man they were looking for.
``I killed David O'Hearn," Valera said. ``And I also killed Frank Arkell."
Valera, who was 19 at the time of the killings, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but not guilty to murder. His defence to murder is provocation and diminished responsibility. Valera told the court that he killed O'Hearn and Arkell because they asked him for sex. The request had caused him to completely lose control, because he had been abused by his father since the age of five. Forensic psychiatrist and defence witness Dr Hugh Jolly told the court that Valera's abusive relationship with his father made him crave warm, loving relationships with older men.
Valera's trial is proceeding in the New South Wales Supreme Court and, because he has confessed to the killings, the result has been testimony that juries rarely hear: a first- person account from an alleged killer attempting to explain how and why he killed, and how he felt afterwards.
His father, Jack Van Krevel, was called into court on the sixth and seventh day of the hearing. Each time he appeared in the witness box, his son slumped to his knees in the dock, and crouched out of sight on the floor, while his father gave evidence.
Van Krevel told the court that he had physically abused his son, who could be heard weeping as his father recalled putting a gun to the child's head when Valera was about seven or eight. Asked if the gun was loaded, Van Krevel said no, ``but that didn't matter because Mark didn't know it wasn't loaded". He couldn't remember what the boy had done, ``but obviously it wasn't serious enough for that".
He told the court that, after his wife left him, he had tried to raise Valera (who changed his name by deed poll) and his younger sister alone, but had failed as a parent. He said he had punched and kicked his son, often without a reason, and the child had never fought back. He said he knew his son was scared of him and now hated him.
But he vehemently denied sexually abusing his son, saying that he would admit to ``everything else, but not that. It didn't happen".
Valera contends that it did, telling the court that when he killed O'Hearn and Arkell, he actually believed he was killing his father, a man of whom he was so terrified that even the sound of his footsteps outside the door made him wet himself.
In refusing to accept Valera's plea of guilty to manslaughter, the prosecution is relying on videotapes made by Valera when he first confessed to the killings, in which he does not speak of sexual abuse, or of being propositioned for sex by the men he killed.
In the tapes, which were shown to the jury during the first week of the trial, a handcuffed Valera is shown walking from room to room in O'Hearn's house, describing what he had done.
``I sat down on this sofa," Valera says, indicating a velvet lounge in the corner of O'Hearn's house. ``David went to get me an orange juice. Then, when he had his back to me, I picked up a... what do you call it? A wine decanter, from this table and bashed him in the back of his head."
But on the stand Valera said that O'Hearn had asked him for sex, and that this had provoked him to kill.
In the tapes, Valera shows police how he had gone into the kitchen, taken a hacksaw and hammer off the top of the fridge, and some knives and a corkscrew from the kitchen drawers. He then went back to the lounge room, where O'Hearn was lying on the floor.
``I rolled him over and slit his neck from ear to ear," he says. ``I took the hacksaw, grabbed his wrist and tried to saw through it. When his hand came off, I put in the table. Then I took his head off and held it for about five minutes, just looking at it. Then I took it into the kitchen and washed it in the sink for a while. Then I thought, stuff this, and left it there, in the sink, half-filled with water."
Valera then tried to saw O'Hearn's body in half, around the waist, but couldn't, so he gave up, and went home. He has since told the court that, when he caught sight of himself in one of O'Hearn's mirrors, he scared himself. His pupils were dilated, and his eyes were ``lit up, like a Christmas tree". After the killing, he closed the door to O'Hearn's house and walked home.
At this point, the police officer conducting the interview looked up from the paper on which he was making notes, looked into Valera's face and said: ``What's your reason for all this? Why?"
On the tape Valera looks puzzled: ``Why I killed David O'Hearn? I don't really have one. No particular reason, really." The tape ended there.
But in court Valera said that O'Hearn had asked him for sex and ``that's when I grabbed the wine decanter and whacked him on the head".
When asked why he didn't just say no, he replied: ``I felt like I was put right on the spot and I was there and there was no way out of it." Asked why did did not explain this to police at the time of his confession, Valera said he was ashamed of the truth.
According to his testimony, after Valera killed O'Hearn, he went home to bed. The following day, he had some breakfast, watched TV, ``just hung about the house really". And then, about 1pm, he noticed some police cars in the street, so he went outside.
``There were people standing around, so I asked the lady next door what happened. And she said, somebody's been murdered, and I said, `Oh, really?"'
What did he feel? ``I didn't feel much," Valera says. ``I just sort of stood there, looking at the police cars."
On Tuesday last week, Valera again gave evidence that directly contradicted the statements he made on the police tapes, saying that he had, at the time of his confession, been ashamed of the true nature of his relationship with his victim.
On the tapes, Valera says that he didn't know Arkell, except by reputation. He says he telephoned the former mayor from the Wollongong railway station and said: ``Hello, my name's John. I'm gay. Can I come over?" Arkell said yes, so Valera walked around to his house, ``and as soon as he turned his back to me, I grabbed him and rammed him into the wall".
``It gave him a fright," Valera told police. ``He buckled. He didn't expect it. He tried to get back up, but I just continued to smash him in the head with an ashtray that had, like, sharp edges on it. He fell on to his hands and knees. He was trying to cover up, to crawl away, so I booted him in the ribs. He was winded, he fell against the wall and that's when I grabbed the lamp and bashed him with that. Then I took the cord and wrapped it around my hands, and tried to strangle him with that. I kicked his face with my hard boots. I kicked his head in."
But on Tuesday last week he told the jury that he had a sexual relationship with Arkell for more than a year before he killed him.
Between long, silent pauses, Valera said that Arkell had, after their first sexual encounter, urged him not to be embarrassed, saying ``I've had another young man come here before".
He said he had sexual experiences (but not sex) with Arkell about eight times. He kept going back because he had few friends, and nobody to talk to, except Arkell, who told him: ``I'll be your friend."
He said he finally killed Arkell when the former mayor asked him to be the ``active partner" in sex. He had killed O'Hearn for the same reason.
Three months after the killings Valera confessed to his tae kwon do teacher, and then to police. In the police tapes, he explains that he was unable to stop thinking about what he had done. Ultimately, he went to his tae kwon do teacher and said: ``I've got a problem. I've got a guilty conscience." The teacher took him into his office, sat him down and said: ``What have you done? Have you robbed a bank?" and Valera said: ``No, it's worse than that. I killed somebody."
The teacher immediately organised for another instructor to take his class. He drove Valera into town, urged him to go the police to confess. Valera did so.
The trial is continuing.
© 2000 The Age