Interview with Sean Fewster
September 14th 2010 04:48
:
Adelaide - 'City of Evil'
Link: www.hachette.com.au/
David Jobling talks with writer and journalist Sean Fewster
It did not take very long to warm towards writer and journalist Sean Fewster. Not having met him before I was struck with two things, he is a very tall chap - impressive some may say, and he is also a very genuine guy; there's clarity in the way he communicates that strikes me as somewhat of a novelty for such a massive fellow. Brawn and brainy! The only other journalist I recall who could match Sean in size is the Nine Network's Peter Fitzsimons.
Peter once sat in the unimaginably confined dressing-room of The Stables Theatre in Kings Cross to interview me about a play I had written. I was completely intimidated by Fitzsimons' sheer size and felt he was a danger to me for most of the interview. Talk about imposing! Yet Fitzsimons turned out to be a very nice man. My inherent fear of big tall men will eventually be explained, but not right now.
In the case of Sean Fewster, it took about two minutes to realise he was a really personable fellow, no mucking about, no bullshit, clarity, sincerity and excellent communication skills.
I met with Sean to discuss his book City of Evil a new true crimes book published by Hachette.
It's a book pitched at true crime readers who want to get under the facade of Adelaide's 'City of Churches' front, and explore the seamier side of this isolated town on the long wide Adelaide plane.
Although Adelaide has a relatively progressive history, it is not a progressive place to live. Best example is the debate that has been raging for some decades about what to do with Victoria Square, a park in the centre of the city. I tend to see Adelaide as the shade-less city. They don't seem to like trees here; seldom replacing any once they've been ripped out of the ground. The place is often called a big country town much to the dismissive bemoaning of locals who feel having an international arts festival once in a while makes them far more sophisticated than anyone can tell at a glance.
It only takes a walk down the filthy cruddy nightclub precinct of Hindley Street where boys and girls don't come out to play so much as have a piss-up and throw their fists around, to discover the true Adelaide.
It's a dark and isolated place with unexpected twists and turns everywhere you look. In my childhood here the daughter of one of my Priamary School teachers was abducted, never to be seen again. A foster sister of mine, along with the daughter of a friend of mine, both met with grizzly ends at the hand of (at least one) convicted murderer.
A local lad at school was found to have committed suicide in his car, on a lonely stretch of road using a rifle. He was found in the front seat of his car, the rifle was found under the back seat - obviously he placed it there as the bullet was blowing his brains out.
Adelaide, city of evil? I have no problem with that at all.
Quite a few others seem to be upset about the title of the book City of Evil: The truth about Adelaide's strange and violent underbelly.
Sean Fewster would know this better than most, because he's been a court reporter in Adelaide for over a decade.
To start a little way back, and find some context in his story we talk about the motivation that led him to this point. Writer and Journalist Sean Fewster's father did thirty eight years working for SA Police. An old code type of officer, his dad did not discuss details of his work at home with the family.
Of course this fascinated his son Sean who was interested to know what sort of things were going on. The young Fewster totally respected his father's decision not to talk about work at home but nonetheless Sean became intrigued by crime and matters of that nature. With no interest in going into law enforcement like his dad (or becoming a bad guy), he did love writing, and so from a very early age he decided his goal was journalism. Sean wanted to be the court reporter for The Advertiser, his local newspaper, back in the days before it was taken over by News Limited.
After finishing High School Sean did the three year Bachelor of Arts course (majoring in Journalism) at the University of South Australia's Magill campus. At the end of his course Sean finally applied for a cadetship at The Advertiser along with many other people and he was fortunate enough to be one of the seven selected at that time.
A couple of years were then spent doing general dog's-body duties at The Advertiser before an opportunity to do some Court Reporting came up, which he seized with both hands. Fewster has been doing it ever since.
After ten years at News limited Sean thinks that court reporting is the best job a journalist can have, "One of the most important jobs that can be done in the field of journalism; you have a responsibility to report both sides of the story as do all journalists but you also have a legal requirement to report with accuracy and balance, and where other aspects of the profession can be unfairly labelled with terms biased or media interest, in court reporting you are forced to stay within the realms of what the prosecution says and what the defence says, giving equal time to the victims and the accused."
Now with a his own young family, Fewster spends some holidays away from Australia in the home country of his partner, and admits to being drawn in to observe the courts there out of sheer fascination. Although he has been offered jobs by foreign newspapers several times, Sean has declined these offers in order to remain in Adelaide working on the Advertiser.
This is where I cut in with a question:
David Jobling: Is this because Adelaide has proven to be such a rich city of evil?
Sean Fewster: It's definitely a rich vein of bizarre crime and my interests in it are twofold. My first interest in it is giving voice to victims; I feel that the justice system doesn't give victims enough in terms of time to describe what has happened to them - doesn't give them enough of a say. I feel that the responsibility of the journalist is to continue doing that - to tell their stories, to give them room in the newspaper where it can be writ large and people can understand what they've gone through how they've struggled how they miss the people that have died or how they themselves have overcome the odds that have been pushed against them because of not only the crime but because of the inadequacies and slowness of the South Australian justice system. It's vital that justice doesn't have an expiry date, or a use by date - there is no statute of limitations on murder and most people would think that murder was the most evil crime that a person would commit but I dispute that - I say that rape, paedophilia, child sex abuse anything to do with violation of a person sexually is more heinous than murder because a murder victim, as horrible and as tragic as it is - they die - their pain is over - their families continue to suffer for the rest of their lives - in the case of a sex abuse victim be it male female, young old, child adult, they continue to suffer for their entire life as do their families. There's greater suffering caused by child sex abuse, by rape, by any form of sexual assault and I feel there shouldn't be a statuate of limitation on that either - for all of the problems that I do have with the State Government at times I certainly don't have any problems with them repealing the statute of limitations and allowing these particular retrospective cases to go ahead.
David Jobling: Do you choose you own cases to follow?
Sean Fewster: To an extent we go through the cause list every day selecting cases that we think are interesting, in others we know the names that we are looking for and in some cases it's when there is an overnight arrest; someone makes their first appearance in court. The policy we have is as much as is humanly practical the reporter follows the same case through from beginning to end to ensure continuity to ensure balance and to ensure fairness.
David Jobling: How do you deal with a slow news day?
Sean Fewster: We don't, we simply keep walking into court rooms and listening; one of the bizarre things about Adelaide is as I said in the book, no matter how small the case there can be some bizarre twist to it; a young reporter that I was training out of desperation at one point went to a man who was accused of bringing fruit across the border; out of sheer desperation. Turned out he had a boot full of illicit fruit that he'd been pressured into bringing back into South Australia by his elderly ethnic relatives, and when he'd gotten back without the fruit at the border station he'd been badgered and told off for being arrested and that turned into a great story because it was just a case of sitting in court and having a listen.
David Jobling: And that's a criminal charge? Bringing fruit across the border?
Sean Fewster: It is indeed.
David Jobling: Because of Fruit Fly?
Sean Fewster: Because of fruit fly.
David Jobling: There's no room for artistic licence in your work then is there?
Sean Fewster: No there isn't. You can be creative with your turns of phrase at times but that's as far as it goes. You are required legally to stick to the script as it were.
David Jobling: Do you ever get yourself close to the edge in terms of really wanting to say something that you can't?
Sean Fewster: No. There is always the temptation but there's always the respect for the law at the same time and you realise that you simply can't because at the end of the day you're an observer. As a journalist, you're there to communicate what happens in court to the rest of the public; but there's a victim to think about who may or may not deserve justice depending on whether or not the charges have been proven, there's an alleged offender who deserves fairness of procedure, there's a jury that deserves to hear the evidence without the bias that could be attributed from community opinion from reading a newspaper article, there's a judge who's being paid to do a job, prosecutor, lawyers, police officers, you don't have the right to put your foot in the middle of that or in that process because so many lives will be affected by it. If the journalist does comment it's at the end. It's once it's all done and dusted. That's the time to say here's what else I know; here's what I haven't told you over the past six months.
After one case had finished the Advertiser published a five page spread on the history of the offender. It was information I'd had in my possession soon after the first charge, and so I held onto that information for three years before it could be disclosed.
David Jobling: So you would find yourself in the position of actually walking around knowing much more than any person in the street. That must create quite a lot of pressure on you.
Sean Fewster: Not so much - you do know more than the average person on the street, you know less than the police officers and the lawyers who are doing their jobs to actually handle the case. The best way I find dealing with it is to remember that it's a job at the end of the day, and to put it away when you finish.
David Jobling: Must be a special sort of person that can do that.
Sean Fewster: Special in the helmet wearing sense perhaps.
David Jobling: Protective. And, fair enough. I suppose since you had an interest in court reporting from such a young age I guess you've steeled your nerves in the process haven't you?
Sean Fewster: I guess so. I'm not prone to introspection like that but it's certainly a viable theory. The other thing that helps is remembering that at the end of the day, you're not the person that this happened to and there's (again) an accused that has fair process rights, a victim that deserves justice, if the allegations are proven - that sort of thing - you're not them, and so you always need take that step back and realise that you may be upset at what you just herd in court but it happened to somebody else. They're going to be far more upset about it than you are. The Brooks case in the book where a masked man raped four women. They had no idea of who he really was. For eight years they were going through life wondering 'is it that guy over there?', 'Is it that man who is looking at me strangely?'. It's horribly distressing to sit in court and listen to that as a reporter but it's nothing compared to what these women went through for eight years. And so the onus is on the reporter to remember that. And say it's not about me it's about them (and I haven't done it anywhere near as hard as they have)
David Jobling: Is the book written and put together in one draft or do you work over a long period of time redrafting, proofing, coming back to the original notes - that sort of thing?
Sean Fewster: I wrote it in nine months. It went through one revision and then was printed.
David Jobling: And you've contributed to two other books before? Or just the one?
Sean Fewster: Just the one (Cold Blooded Murder) that was a chapter on John Eric Gassy who murdered Margaret Tobin, the mental health director. The chapter in the new book is an expansion of that original chapter with the information that followed the publication of that book - his second trial - his High Court Appeal.
David Jobling: Good reason for people to go out and look at both books in order to get a clearer picture of what happened there. Very interesting case that one.
Sean Fewster: Very interesting case, I quite often say to people that if ever there was a case that resembled a comic book case or a murder mystery it's the Gassy one. To use a comic-book term, if ever there was a person who trained himself like Batman to achieve an end that was motivated with goals similar to the Joker.
David Jobling: And made such stupid mistakes as you point out. Hiring a car using a false name, but using his own identification to put a deposit down or something, it's really silly.
Sean Fewster: Yeah he was a very intelligent man who was undone by his delusional state it's the sort of case where one may think that if Doctor Gassy had gone for a mental health defence the case may have gone very very differently but he was not prepared to accede to that.
David Jobling: You get that look into the eye of the black hole in that regard seeing people standing there in the dock, denying denying until they end up being found guilty. You must observe some very interesting human behaviour on that level.
Sean Fewster: One of the interesting ones that didn't make it into the book was an armed robber who had robbed a series of banks and fired some shots at police officers - this is several years back now - and he was on the stand and he was defending his shooting accuracy - saying that it couldn't possibly have been him shooting at these police officers because he was a trained pistol and rifle shooter who always hit his targets much closer - and that sort of thing.
The prosecutor got up and said, "So you must be lying then; you must be an absolutely terrible shot, because you clearly did this, so you must have been an absolutely woeful shot."
"No no no. I'm a wonderful shooter."
"Then you've got no grace under pressure; nerves of water. You're no good at what you do?"
"No no I am," he kept going and going, and then finally the accused barks out, "Listen if I'd wanted to shoot those cops they would've been dead; I could've killed 'em three times from where I was."
The prosecutor just sat back down the defense lawyer put his face in his hands and shook his head and the Judge said "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury I direct you to find a verdict of guilty."
The accused sat in the dock going, "What?"
That's the sort of bizarre thing that can happen in Adelaide.
David Jobling: A bit of a "D'oh!" moment?
Sean Fewster: Absolutely.
David Jobling: You've reminded me of the chapter about the fellow who became a bit of a local legend, photographed in a hotel room on the bed with his spoils..
Sean Fewster: His ill gotten gains.
David Jobling: There's a real character. Do you think in twenty or thirty years you may start off anew as a fiction writer? Could that happen?
Sean Fewster: It is something that a lot of people have suggested to me since they herd I was writing the book. I could certainly see myself doing it someday.
David Jobling: A cowl wouldn't cost much and you're easily big enough to be Batman what about that sort of direction?
Sean Fewster: No interest. I was raised with too much respect for the law to go vigilante. Besides I don't have Bruce Wayne's money.
David Jobling: Is there another book in the offing?
Sean Fewster: Possibly. Sales dictate everything. If there was another book I've spoken to some of my friend reporters and they all have interesting stories of their own to tell so if there is a second it may be a bit more of a group effort. An anthology similar to what Cold Blooded Murder was with a group of different reporters telling their own stories from South Australia.
David Jobling: Is it par for the course that if you are a court reporter a publisher will come along and tap you on the shoulder at some point and offer you a deal?
Sean Fewster: Apparently not judging how shocked everybody was when they found out I had a book deal. I was contacted by Hachette maybe three and a half years ago and asked to write a book and I said "No." I didn't have the time. They contacted me every six to eight months after that repeating the offer and I think they must have thought I was playing hard to get because when I finally said "Yes." the deal that was made was substantial and very very good for a young writer especially a basically unknown writer and they've been fantastic to work with.
David Jobling: Have they explained why they did that, pursued you that way?
Sean Fewster: They believed there was a gap in the true crime market that noone's ever told these stories of Adelaide before. To use Underbelly as an example the first Underbelly series was Melbourne, the second was Kings Cross, the tele-movies have been different places. Apparently the Underbelly producers are looking at a Queensland version but nobody's ever sat down and looked at South Australia as a crime thing. They've looked at "the family" with the Young Blood book they've looked at Gassy with the chapter I wriote in Cold Blooded Murder, they've looked at the Snowtown bodies in the barrels case as well but nobody's sat down and looked at Adelaide as a whole. Recently there was that visiting American crime writer who said "You could never set a book here in Adelaide it would just be too boring," and I was in the midst of writing this at the time and I thought "well, yeah, I'll send you a copy when I'm done."
David Jobling: Are the film rights being negotiated as we speak?
Sean Fewster: I'd have no idea. If we're lucky.
David Jobling: Would you make a cameo appearance?
Sean Fewster: Absolutely not. It's bad enough that my picture is in the newspaper and in the book.
David Jobling: Ah but you look so different - in fact no one would know you are a negro from that photo.
Sean Fewster: (laughs)
David Jobling: Thanks for talking with me - and all the very best in the future.
Sean Fewster Stay safe.
You can be creative with your turns of phrase at times but that's as far as it goes. You are required legally to stick to the script as it were.
- Sean Fewster
- Sean Fewster
It did not take very long to warm towards writer and journalist Sean Fewster. Not having met him before I was struck with two things, he is a very tall chap - impressive some may say, and he is also a very genuine guy; there's clarity in the way he communicates that strikes me as somewhat of a novelty for such a massive fellow. Brawn and brainy! The only other journalist I recall who could match Sean in size is the Nine Network's Peter Fitzsimons.
Peter once sat in the unimaginably confined dressing-room of The Stables Theatre in Kings Cross to interview me about a play I had written. I was completely intimidated by Fitzsimons' sheer size and felt he was a danger to me for most of the interview. Talk about imposing! Yet Fitzsimons turned out to be a very nice man. My inherent fear of big tall men will eventually be explained, but not right now.
In the case of Sean Fewster, it took about two minutes to realise he was a really personable fellow, no mucking about, no bullshit, clarity, sincerity and excellent communication skills.
It's a book pitched at true crime readers who want to get under the facade of Adelaide's 'City of Churches' front, and explore the seamier side of this isolated town on the long wide Adelaide plane.
Although Adelaide has a relatively progressive history, it is not a progressive place to live. Best example is the debate that has been raging for some decades about what to do with Victoria Square, a park in the centre of the city. I tend to see Adelaide as the shade-less city. They don't seem to like trees here; seldom replacing any once they've been ripped out of the ground. The place is often called a big country town much to the dismissive bemoaning of locals who feel having an international arts festival once in a while makes them far more sophisticated than anyone can tell at a glance.
It only takes a walk down the filthy cruddy nightclub precinct of Hindley Street where boys and girls don't come out to play so much as have a piss-up and throw their fists around, to discover the true Adelaide.
It's a dark and isolated place with unexpected twists and turns everywhere you look. In my childhood here the daughter of one of my Priamary School teachers was abducted, never to be seen again. A foster sister of mine, along with the daughter of a friend of mine, both met with grizzly ends at the hand of (at least one) convicted murderer.
A local lad at school was found to have committed suicide in his car, on a lonely stretch of road using a rifle. He was found in the front seat of his car, the rifle was found under the back seat - obviously he placed it there as the bullet was blowing his brains out.
Adelaide, city of evil? I have no problem with that at all.
Quite a few others seem to be upset about the title of the book City of Evil: The truth about Adelaide's strange and violent underbelly.
Sean Fewster would know this better than most, because he's been a court reporter in Adelaide for over a decade.
To start a little way back, and find some context in his story we talk about the motivation that led him to this point. Writer and Journalist Sean Fewster's father did thirty eight years working for SA Police. An old code type of officer, his dad did not discuss details of his work at home with the family.
Of course this fascinated his son Sean who was interested to know what sort of things were going on. The young Fewster totally respected his father's decision not to talk about work at home but nonetheless Sean became intrigued by crime and matters of that nature. With no interest in going into law enforcement like his dad (or becoming a bad guy), he did love writing, and so from a very early age he decided his goal was journalism. Sean wanted to be the court reporter for The Advertiser, his local newspaper, back in the days before it was taken over by News Limited.
After finishing High School Sean did the three year Bachelor of Arts course (majoring in Journalism) at the University of South Australia's Magill campus. At the end of his course Sean finally applied for a cadetship at The Advertiser along with many other people and he was fortunate enough to be one of the seven selected at that time.
A couple of years were then spent doing general dog's-body duties at The Advertiser before an opportunity to do some Court Reporting came up, which he seized with both hands. Fewster has been doing it ever since.
After ten years at News limited Sean thinks that court reporting is the best job a journalist can have, "One of the most important jobs that can be done in the field of journalism; you have a responsibility to report both sides of the story as do all journalists but you also have a legal requirement to report with accuracy and balance, and where other aspects of the profession can be unfairly labelled with terms biased or media interest, in court reporting you are forced to stay within the realms of what the prosecution says and what the defence says, giving equal time to the victims and the accused."
Now with a his own young family, Fewster spends some holidays away from Australia in the home country of his partner, and admits to being drawn in to observe the courts there out of sheer fascination. Although he has been offered jobs by foreign newspapers several times, Sean has declined these offers in order to remain in Adelaide working on the Advertiser.
This is where I cut in with a question:
David Jobling: Is this because Adelaide has proven to be such a rich city of evil?
Sean Fewster: It's definitely a rich vein of bizarre crime and my interests in it are twofold. My first interest in it is giving voice to victims; I feel that the justice system doesn't give victims enough in terms of time to describe what has happened to them - doesn't give them enough of a say. I feel that the responsibility of the journalist is to continue doing that - to tell their stories, to give them room in the newspaper where it can be writ large and people can understand what they've gone through how they've struggled how they miss the people that have died or how they themselves have overcome the odds that have been pushed against them because of not only the crime but because of the inadequacies and slowness of the South Australian justice system. It's vital that justice doesn't have an expiry date, or a use by date - there is no statute of limitations on murder and most people would think that murder was the most evil crime that a person would commit but I dispute that - I say that rape, paedophilia, child sex abuse anything to do with violation of a person sexually is more heinous than murder because a murder victim, as horrible and as tragic as it is - they die - their pain is over - their families continue to suffer for the rest of their lives - in the case of a sex abuse victim be it male female, young old, child adult, they continue to suffer for their entire life as do their families. There's greater suffering caused by child sex abuse, by rape, by any form of sexual assault and I feel there shouldn't be a statuate of limitation on that either - for all of the problems that I do have with the State Government at times I certainly don't have any problems with them repealing the statute of limitations and allowing these particular retrospective cases to go ahead.
David Jobling: Do you choose you own cases to follow?
Sean Fewster: To an extent we go through the cause list every day selecting cases that we think are interesting, in others we know the names that we are looking for and in some cases it's when there is an overnight arrest; someone makes their first appearance in court. The policy we have is as much as is humanly practical the reporter follows the same case through from beginning to end to ensure continuity to ensure balance and to ensure fairness.
David Jobling: How do you deal with a slow news day?
Sean Fewster: We don't, we simply keep walking into court rooms and listening; one of the bizarre things about Adelaide is as I said in the book, no matter how small the case there can be some bizarre twist to it; a young reporter that I was training out of desperation at one point went to a man who was accused of bringing fruit across the border; out of sheer desperation. Turned out he had a boot full of illicit fruit that he'd been pressured into bringing back into South Australia by his elderly ethnic relatives, and when he'd gotten back without the fruit at the border station he'd been badgered and told off for being arrested and that turned into a great story because it was just a case of sitting in court and having a listen.
David Jobling: And that's a criminal charge? Bringing fruit across the border?
Sean Fewster: It is indeed.
David Jobling: Because of Fruit Fly?
Sean Fewster: Because of fruit fly.
David Jobling: There's no room for artistic licence in your work then is there?
Sean Fewster: No there isn't. You can be creative with your turns of phrase at times but that's as far as it goes. You are required legally to stick to the script as it were.
David Jobling: Do you ever get yourself close to the edge in terms of really wanting to say something that you can't?
Sean Fewster: No. There is always the temptation but there's always the respect for the law at the same time and you realise that you simply can't because at the end of the day you're an observer. As a journalist, you're there to communicate what happens in court to the rest of the public; but there's a victim to think about who may or may not deserve justice depending on whether or not the charges have been proven, there's an alleged offender who deserves fairness of procedure, there's a jury that deserves to hear the evidence without the bias that could be attributed from community opinion from reading a newspaper article, there's a judge who's being paid to do a job, prosecutor, lawyers, police officers, you don't have the right to put your foot in the middle of that or in that process because so many lives will be affected by it. If the journalist does comment it's at the end. It's once it's all done and dusted. That's the time to say here's what else I know; here's what I haven't told you over the past six months.
After one case had finished the Advertiser published a five page spread on the history of the offender. It was information I'd had in my possession soon after the first charge, and so I held onto that information for three years before it could be disclosed.
David Jobling: So you would find yourself in the position of actually walking around knowing much more than any person in the street. That must create quite a lot of pressure on you.
Sean Fewster: Not so much - you do know more than the average person on the street, you know less than the police officers and the lawyers who are doing their jobs to actually handle the case. The best way I find dealing with it is to remember that it's a job at the end of the day, and to put it away when you finish.
David Jobling: Must be a special sort of person that can do that.
Sean Fewster: Special in the helmet wearing sense perhaps.
David Jobling: Protective. And, fair enough. I suppose since you had an interest in court reporting from such a young age I guess you've steeled your nerves in the process haven't you?
Sean Fewster: I guess so. I'm not prone to introspection like that but it's certainly a viable theory. The other thing that helps is remembering that at the end of the day, you're not the person that this happened to and there's (again) an accused that has fair process rights, a victim that deserves justice, if the allegations are proven - that sort of thing - you're not them, and so you always need take that step back and realise that you may be upset at what you just herd in court but it happened to somebody else. They're going to be far more upset about it than you are. The Brooks case in the book where a masked man raped four women. They had no idea of who he really was. For eight years they were going through life wondering 'is it that guy over there?', 'Is it that man who is looking at me strangely?'. It's horribly distressing to sit in court and listen to that as a reporter but it's nothing compared to what these women went through for eight years. And so the onus is on the reporter to remember that. And say it's not about me it's about them (and I haven't done it anywhere near as hard as they have)
David Jobling: Is the book written and put together in one draft or do you work over a long period of time redrafting, proofing, coming back to the original notes - that sort of thing?
Sean Fewster: I wrote it in nine months. It went through one revision and then was printed.
David Jobling: And you've contributed to two other books before? Or just the one?
Sean Fewster: Just the one (Cold Blooded Murder) that was a chapter on John Eric Gassy who murdered Margaret Tobin, the mental health director. The chapter in the new book is an expansion of that original chapter with the information that followed the publication of that book - his second trial - his High Court Appeal.
David Jobling: Good reason for people to go out and look at both books in order to get a clearer picture of what happened there. Very interesting case that one.
Sean Fewster: Very interesting case, I quite often say to people that if ever there was a case that resembled a comic book case or a murder mystery it's the Gassy one. To use a comic-book term, if ever there was a person who trained himself like Batman to achieve an end that was motivated with goals similar to the Joker.
David Jobling: And made such stupid mistakes as you point out. Hiring a car using a false name, but using his own identification to put a deposit down or something, it's really silly.
Sean Fewster: Yeah he was a very intelligent man who was undone by his delusional state it's the sort of case where one may think that if Doctor Gassy had gone for a mental health defence the case may have gone very very differently but he was not prepared to accede to that.
David Jobling: You get that look into the eye of the black hole in that regard seeing people standing there in the dock, denying denying until they end up being found guilty. You must observe some very interesting human behaviour on that level.
Sean Fewster: One of the interesting ones that didn't make it into the book was an armed robber who had robbed a series of banks and fired some shots at police officers - this is several years back now - and he was on the stand and he was defending his shooting accuracy - saying that it couldn't possibly have been him shooting at these police officers because he was a trained pistol and rifle shooter who always hit his targets much closer - and that sort of thing.
The prosecutor got up and said, "So you must be lying then; you must be an absolutely terrible shot, because you clearly did this, so you must have been an absolutely woeful shot."
"No no no. I'm a wonderful shooter."
"Then you've got no grace under pressure; nerves of water. You're no good at what you do?"
"No no I am," he kept going and going, and then finally the accused barks out, "Listen if I'd wanted to shoot those cops they would've been dead; I could've killed 'em three times from where I was."
The prosecutor just sat back down the defense lawyer put his face in his hands and shook his head and the Judge said "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury I direct you to find a verdict of guilty."
The accused sat in the dock going, "What?"
That's the sort of bizarre thing that can happen in Adelaide.
David Jobling: A bit of a "D'oh!" moment?
Sean Fewster: Absolutely.
David Jobling: You've reminded me of the chapter about the fellow who became a bit of a local legend, photographed in a hotel room on the bed with his spoils..
Sean Fewster: His ill gotten gains.
David Jobling: There's a real character. Do you think in twenty or thirty years you may start off anew as a fiction writer? Could that happen?
Sean Fewster: It is something that a lot of people have suggested to me since they herd I was writing the book. I could certainly see myself doing it someday.
David Jobling: A cowl wouldn't cost much and you're easily big enough to be Batman what about that sort of direction?
Sean Fewster: No interest. I was raised with too much respect for the law to go vigilante. Besides I don't have Bruce Wayne's money.
David Jobling: Is there another book in the offing?
Sean Fewster: Possibly. Sales dictate everything. If there was another book I've spoken to some of my friend reporters and they all have interesting stories of their own to tell so if there is a second it may be a bit more of a group effort. An anthology similar to what Cold Blooded Murder was with a group of different reporters telling their own stories from South Australia.
David Jobling: Is it par for the course that if you are a court reporter a publisher will come along and tap you on the shoulder at some point and offer you a deal?
Sean Fewster: Apparently not judging how shocked everybody was when they found out I had a book deal. I was contacted by Hachette maybe three and a half years ago and asked to write a book and I said "No." I didn't have the time. They contacted me every six to eight months after that repeating the offer and I think they must have thought I was playing hard to get because when I finally said "Yes." the deal that was made was substantial and very very good for a young writer especially a basically unknown writer and they've been fantastic to work with.
David Jobling: Have they explained why they did that, pursued you that way?
Sean Fewster: They believed there was a gap in the true crime market that noone's ever told these stories of Adelaide before. To use Underbelly as an example the first Underbelly series was Melbourne, the second was Kings Cross, the tele-movies have been different places. Apparently the Underbelly producers are looking at a Queensland version but nobody's ever sat down and looked at South Australia as a crime thing. They've looked at "the family" with the Young Blood book they've looked at Gassy with the chapter I wriote in Cold Blooded Murder, they've looked at the Snowtown bodies in the barrels case as well but nobody's sat down and looked at Adelaide as a whole. Recently there was that visiting American crime writer who said "You could never set a book here in Adelaide it would just be too boring," and I was in the midst of writing this at the time and I thought "well, yeah, I'll send you a copy when I'm done."
David Jobling: Are the film rights being negotiated as we speak?
Sean Fewster: I'd have no idea. If we're lucky.
David Jobling: Would you make a cameo appearance?
Sean Fewster: Absolutely not. It's bad enough that my picture is in the newspaper and in the book.
David Jobling: Ah but you look so different - in fact no one would know you are a negro from that photo.
Sean Fewster: (laughs)
David Jobling: Thanks for talking with me - and all the very best in the future.
Sean Fewster Stay safe.
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