Remember me
It's been 40 years since the infamous Phillip Island murder, but true crime writer Vikki Petraitis says certain secrets are still buried in the coastal enclave - secrets that could upend the official version of what occurred that night.
Now, as she releases The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron - her second book on the case, which contains explosive new witness statements that rewrite the narrative - unidentified human remains have been discovered.
'I wanted to lay out an alternative explanation for how things could have unfolded,' says Petraitis of the book, though she admits that in the 40 years that have passed, tensions surrounding the case on the island run just as high.
'I've been attacked online by locals telling me to let it go. It's something a lot of people would prefer was never spoken about.'
The murderWhen Beth Barnard was found brutally murdered in her Phillip Island farmhouse in the early hours of September 23, 1986, it sent shockwaves through the close-knit community that reverberate to this day.
Not only was the crime singularly gory - Beth's throat had been cut, she'd been stabbed several times and a large 'A' had been carved into her chest before being covered with a blanket - but it quickly became evident that a second woman was missing, with police immediately deciding she was the prime suspect in Beth's murder.
In 1986, Beth Barnard (pictured) was found murdered in her Phillip Island home with the letter 'A' carved into her chest
Vivienne Cameron, a 35-year-old local mother of two, was reported missing by family shortly after the discovery of Beth's body. Beth had worked for Vivienne and her husband, Fergus, on their farm. She and Fergus had also been having an affair, which Fergus says led to a violent altercation with Vivienne on the night of September 22, leaving him requiring stitches.
Several members of the Cameron family - significant landholders on Phillip Island, whose assets included the Grand Prix track, sold in 2004 for an estimated $20million - corroborated Fergus' version of events.
Vivienne's handbag, as well as the couple's LandCruiser, were found on September 23 a few hundred metres from a bridge. A 1988 coronial inquest found that Vivienne killed Beth, then jumped from the bridge, ending her life.
Her body has never been recovered, and because she was never charged, the outcome of the inquest remains a coronial determination, not a conviction.
Doubts, conflicts and one woman's refusal to let the story die'Right from the start, police had zeroed in on Vivienne as the killer,' says Vikki Petraitis, whose 1993 book on the case The Phillip Island Murder was banned from being sold on Phillip Island due to local outrage.
'In fact, I spoke to a friend of Beth Barnard's who visited her family just hours after her body was discovered. She said they told her that police had told them she was murdered by Vivienne because she was having an affair with Fergus - all this while her body was still lying on the floor of her house. They hadn't even collected evidence at this point.'
Beth Barnard was known to be having an affair with Fergus Cameron (pictured), with whom she worked. Fergus was married with two young children
Vivienne Cameron (pictured) was married to Fergus and knew about his affair. She was reported missing shortly after Beth Barnard's body was found - but true crime author Vikki Petraitis isn't convinced she was Beth's killer
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Petraitis has always believed there is more to the case than has been revealed, pointing to questions about the timeline of events, testimony from a witness who says she spoke to Vivienne after she was believed to have died, and a lack of blood in Vivienne's LandCruiser - something that investigators should have found significant amounts of, given the nature of Beth's injuries.
One thing that has always troubled Petraitis was the fact that Beth's body had been covered with a blanket after her murder. She believes that if Vivienne had truly carved the 'A' into Beth's chest - widely believed to be a reference to the 'A' for 'adulterer' in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter - she would not have then covered the body.
'If this was Vivienne, and she's killed her husband's girlfriend, sending a message with the big "A" on her chest, surely her intent was for everyone to see it? It doesn't seem like she would then decide to get a doona and cover her up. It doesn't make sense,' Petraitis told the Daily Mail.
'So many people have come forward over the years, with new information for the police,' says the author, 'but the police are so disinterested. In their mind, the case is inactive, so they don't want to hear any new information.'
Two vital new pieces of information - one that includes the possible location of a grave and one that comes from an ex-police officer - are revealed in detail in Petraitis' new book, out now, which she calls a 'scream into the void' begging for authorities to take a second look.
The home where Beth Barnard was brutally murdered is pictured
The Cameron's LandCruiser has always been central to the case
Human remains discoveredHuman remains - including a skull and other bones - were discovered just weeks ago, on January 15, at a holiday home in the Phillip Island suburb of Silverleaves, prompting widespread speculation that they may belong to Vivienne Cameron.
'As soon as the remains were discovered, my phone started blowing up and I had a lot of locals sending me information,' Petraitis said.
Petraitis says images of the skull circulating online - which some sleuths have compared to photographs of Vivienne to note dental similarities - look 'compelling'.
However, last week Victoria Police said there was no indication the bones, which were uncovered by a plumber, were linked to any active missing persons cases.
Still, Petraitis believes that if the remains are somehow eventually connected to Vivienne - and it may take months to definitely rule out any link - it will represent a significant deviation from the version of events the Coroner accepted.
'If this skull does belong to Vivienne, she has pushed her way up through the sands of time,' she told me.
'I thought it was ironic that no police would go anywhere near this case, and yet watching the news about the discovery of the remains, there's a whole yard full of police. If it does turn out to be Vivienne, I had the thought that she might be somewhere thinking, "Huh, you thought that you could ignore me? And now I am forcing you to come down to Phillip Island in droves, to not let me be forgotten."'
Eyewitness testimoniesWhen Petraitis released a podcast about the murder in collaboration with Casefile, she did so in a bid for more people to come forward with information.
'There are people who know what really happened that night, and the hope was always that more people would bring that information to light,' she said.
'I have been the conduit for information on this case for over three decades, but I believe the new eyewitness evidence I've received - including from a person who claims to have been with Vivienne on the night she supposedly committed the murder - present a compelling alternative. That's what this book does, it presents an alternative case for what happened that night.'
Petraitis says that, in the book, she 'puts quite bluntly' her theory about what actually happened - in part because efforts for over two years to convince police to reopen the case have been in vain.
'I spent two years trying to get the cops to take [the new eyewitness] statements, and the police would not,' she says.
'And then we applied to the coroner to get the files, and to ask for the coroner to look into it. All we got was, "You don't get any information and we're not interested." And so this book is a cry of desperation. We tried to do this the right way, and we hit a brick wall every single time, so instead, you get this book. This book is a real scream into the wind, it's a cry for justice for Vivienne and also for Beth.
Petraitis says she has always felt a pull to keep talking about the case.
True crime author Vikki Petraitis (pictured) has been driven to tell the story of Beth Barnard and Vivienne Cameron for 35 years
'I'm not a person of faith necessarily, but I feel like they haven't been vindicated, and I feel like both Vivienne and Beth quite possibly are floating around in the ether going, "Solve this, clear our names." Because what's happened is, Beth has died "the mistress", as though that was all she was. In fact, she was a park ranger, farmhand, she had a bachelor of agriculture, friends, family.
'Vivienne was a devoted wife and mother, she was a community house coordinator, she was a friend and she was a sister, and these women just get relegated to the jealous, murderous wife and mistress.
'If it wasn't for my book, this case would never have been spoken about because it would have just been relegated to history, and when that skull was discovered earlier this month, nobody would have thought it could be Vivienne.'
'I have been driven for 35 years to tell the story of these two women, and I feel a responsibility to many people involved to keep pushing for justice.'
The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron is available now