The Tragic Story Of Raechel Betts | Crimes That Shook Australia | Crime Stories

just 90 minutes drive southeast of melbourne phillip island with its rugged beauty is the perfect destination for a short break but in august 2009 that tranquility was shattered when human remains began to wash up onto the shore police are hoping missing person reports could shed some light on a gruesome find at phillip island the grisly discovery would stun a family there was a black and white photo of a tattoo and something about a leg being found and i looked at it and i thought what's that they say they're confident they're closing in on rachel's killer and quickly she asked her whether she'd like to come in and see a dissection the dark past of a killer would shine a light on the nation's justice system this guy is a master manipulator he had people wrapped around his little fingers and the system allowed him out to do this there is no such thing as closure for me and there never will be there never has been any sense of closure at all revelations in court would uncover one of australia's most evil killers god knows what he really did or even definitely where he did it because no dna was recovered from the bathroom where she was supposed to have been cut up the murder of rachel betts was a crime that shook australia [Applause] [Music] in august 2009 27 year old child care worker rachel betts went missing from her home in epping a northern suburb of melbourne what happened to her would leave a family devastated and shine a light on the nation's criminal justice system [Music] at the start of rachel's life rachel was an only child for about 11 years i had her at a time when most of my friends didn't have children so she was very popular with my friends [Music] she was a real asset to the family all the time she was great with her cousins my nieces she was the eldest of the seven girls rachel was a very loving girl it's not unusual in a step parenting situation where the children are not too happy about one of their parents having a new partner and vice versa and possibly having step siblings and rachel built bridges between my children and the younger two girls rachel was really good at making friends with strangers pretty much on the spot anybody she wanted to meet she would just march right up and do so like very bubbly and very good at making people feel feel welcome and like they were instantly the most important person around her just fun and lovable [Music] although we lived together sometimes we didn't see each other every day she'd be a hero get up in the morning i always knew she was up and awake and getting ready because i could smell the toast and coffee she was always happy and bouncy she was always happy to see you happy to help she was just one of those people who inspired you to be better she was rachel you got a problem you call her she's there i could always call and talk to her if i would say like having an argument at home or worried about school or my personal issues with friends or anything like that she always made us feel that she would never judge us as she got older she began to be interested in other things like education she really wanted to be like a teacher in a care of children which might have been influenced by a babysitting us all the time [Music] rachel had devoted her life to children by the age of 27 she had a successful career as a child care worker but unfortunately she wasn't able to have children of her own in late 2008 she met two teenagers who were looking for a place to stay rachel's caring nature meant she was quick to welcome them into her home [Music] rachel had met them through a friend of ours neighbor so they started dropping and they were both having issues at home so great so being rachel when any problems you can always come here and stay here when rachel took the girls in october 2008 november 2008 the second one they really took over her life and it at first i thought that they were the source of the problems the longer the girls were with her the more she seemed run down and and i was sort of thinking well she's overworked and this is getting too much for her she was always stressed about money and being able to get by basically being able to provide it had two jobs and she lost one of them [Music] faced with an ever dwindling income looking after the two girls was beginning to take its toll on rachel and left her in an increasingly vulnerable situation when an opportunity to make some extra money arose rachel was keen to take advantage reitel had met her fellow and this fellow had been working with an older man and that older man had said to this guy that he was looking for young people to recruit to sell drugs and for some reason this guy introduced rachel to him and as i understand it came round and did a cell you know oh look at you you're trying to look after two kids and you're working so hard with two jobs and you know you could have the girls through the day and run them around and at night time you could go out to some nightclubs and pubs or whatever and you can meet up with people you can sell some drugs you'll make a lot of money your life will be easier things will be better for you if you if you do this how he managed to make that sell i don't know but she decided to give it a go i guess she probably thought i could stop work for a while see how it goes you know the problem with when you're moving with people who take those drugs rather than just selling it she was actually taking it and it began to have quite a severe effect on her after a while [Music] rachel began abusing crystal meth or ice an insidious drug that is ravaging parts of australia it began to take a terrible toll on rachel both physically and mentally and her life began to spiral out of control we actually end up having after living together for years end up having a bit of an argument and i moved out in march of 2009 i can honestly say she probably knew me better than anybody and same for me with her but by that time i couldn't tell you what she'd been up to for the day usually i could tell you what she ate for breakfast lunch and dinner she started to develop some of these symptoms of paranoia and it was obvious that something was wrong she said there were all these people she didn't know were coming around friends of the young girls were coming around and she was feeling uncomfortable and unsafe this paranoia thing that comes with taking these drugs was affecting her she started becoming delusional she had all kinds of strange experiences where she thought she was being watched or being followed she was involved in a car accident where this car came through a red light and she thought that it had been set up and somehow deliberate these sort of delusional ideas that do come with that particular drug ice her teeth were very important to her smile was beautiful and here she is taking this drug that is making her grind her teeth and that really distressed me i i cried when i saw she had a baby's dummy by the bed to put between her teeth so that she wouldn't grind them and that she'd protect those those front teeth that my god was going on here and i could see that there was this deterioration in her the final straw for her friends and family came when rachel collapsed at her friend's home she went to hospital to be examined because they thought they may have been drugged and raped so talking to the doctors make sure everything was checked out they were safe blood tests the um crisis assessment team came because she she wasn't well unfortunately i think it was the drugs that got to her and made her paranoid they assessed her took her to the hospital got her into rehab to dry her out and july she was back here with us with her sisters and myself and in a safe place despite returning home the temptations of her other life were proving too much for rachel [Music] she had a party one night a couple of friends around and the girls were here and they had come out to stay for a couple of nights and they were getting noisy the point is to keep her away from any drugs and there wasn't supposed to be any drugs so i i asked them to leave anyway rachel took it as an opportunity to go and take the girls and go off to this other place that she had been organising for them to live at when she was leaving she was distressed and i was quite distressed too she just felt i think stifled living under her mother's roof again i remember saying to her that you're being looked after here that it had been a positive thing that she was here i think she felt guilty and the last words she ever said to me in person were if i leave tonight will you still love me tomorrow and i started to cry and said of course i will i felt like i had only just gotten my big sister back for the first time in quite a while and to have her leave that night i was filled with dread i knew that nothing good could come with it what her family couldn't have known was that it would be the last time they would see rachel alive human remains have washed up on a beach southeast of melbourne the gruesome discovery was made by a man jogging along ventna beach on phillip island in august 2009 the friends and family of rachel betts were becoming increasingly worried for her welfare the 27 year old child care worker had in the last few months been involved with both drug abuse and dealing and her loved ones were growing concerned i rang her up especially to say to her to please come home here to this house i said to her i'm really worried you're not safe there you're safe here please come home i said they were they were my last words to her please come home [Music] on the 18th of august a new story broke about a grisly discovery at a popular tourist destination police are hoping missing person reports could shed some light on a gruesome find at phillip island a woman's tattooed left leg the tattoo features red and violet flowers on a twisting vine the revelation about the tattooed leg set off alarm bells for sandra holding on to the slender hope that her daughter was alive and well she began frantically calling rachel's friends i phoned epping and asked the girls where's rachel and have you heard from her have you spoken to her and the youngest one lied to me and said oh you know yes i i heard from her about lunchtime and this is this isn't right and so i said put the other girl on the on the phone and she said oh no i haven't seen her for days and we've been calling and she's not answering and this was just totally out of character if rachel was doing something those girls would know exactly where she was going exactly when she'd be back how to contact her while she was away [Music] rachel had disappeared and we didn't know where she was and sandra was getting very frantic she'd started placing calls to friends and family and sent text out to everybody that she thought rachel knew [Music] her mother called me up one time and messaged me so 12 at night time midnight and i've gone who's messing me at midnight you know and i found i was okay to recall with sandra rachel's mum have you seen rachel so i played this david no i haven't seen her for two months she's supposed to be in rehab and that's when she told me about the foot they found on the beach where they tattoo the same as rachel's so they're starting the course to worry that rachel may have died that may have happened to her [Music] at the location of the grim discovery on phillip island detectives were beginning to arrive at the beach that was now a crime scene i was afternoon on call on sunday the 16th of august 2009. i was contacted by executive sergeant sean ordly and he advised that a leg had been found at newhaven beach phillip island it was a female leg a full female leg had been severed around the hip joint but it appeared that i guess it would be a non-survivable incident that had occurred so um expected foul play pretty much straight away there was a floral tattoo on the foot and that gave us something at least to go and start checking our records to see if there were missing persons firstly and there's various databases of people with tattoos they were looked at in the following days and we weren't really getting any with that that came to nothing rain got onto the computer and looked up some photos on facebook and she saw a photo of rachel dancing barefoot and it was definitely the left foot that had the tattoo on it and that's when i phoned the police and said look i i think that this is my daughter dna testing conclusively proved sandra's worst fears the leg did indeed belong to her daughter three weeks later further remains were found on another beach followed by reports of a right leg cited by the crew of a ferry tragically the rest of rachel's body was never recovered [Music] now they had identified the victim police began to investigate rachel's background for clues as to what had led to her tragic death it wasn't long until her associations with the world of illegal drugs came to light she was working in childcare until about end of 2008 and after that point in time 2009 it appears that that's when the drug dealing took off rachel being given the impression that she could make easy money quickly it meant for rachel that she could get that bigger house have that money for the brenton bond to move myself herself to girls they'd have their own room it wasn't for a lavish lifestyle it was so that rachel felt that she could provide for them it just didn't work out that way for her rachel's mother sandra was aware that her daughter was mixing with nefarious characters and one name in particular was causing her great concern 54 year old parolee john leslie combs i had conversations with her about john coombs and said this man sounds really wrong to me and she said well he's got a criminal history i said well you've got to avoid this person this is this is not good a search of rachel's home in epping was also making detectives suspicious about john coombs there were various diaries they mentioned to various people that she knew lots of phone numbers also some drug dealing type of equations were in these things as well there's a reference to being scared of a jc whom we believed to be john coombs but the more digging we did i suppose speaking to friends of rachel we realised that john coombs was her boss in relation to drug dealing and we also spoke to one person who said that um rachel told them that she was going fishing with her with her boss and she was looking forward to it but going fishing seemed to be code for going away and dealing in drugs or drug drug type of trip and those closest to her knew that's what the terminology meant and we also go through the list of names of people that you knew and obviously john coombs stood out because of his prior criminal history rachel's family they knew obviously how close rachel was with these girls in her care and they found it very hard to believe that these girls didn't know where rachel had gone on that tuesday evening these girls were very fearful they were told by rachel that she was gone and she'd be on a fishing trip for 48 hours at the latest sort of thing so after that period of time they became increasingly concerned they did know that she went away with john coons but they were terrified to to speak with us about it they thought the best conservation was to keep it to themselves i think they got a bit of an idea that we were on the right track with mr coombs anyway i dealt with the two girls fairly regularly over that first two months i end up taking about half a dozen statements from the youngest one who was probably closest to rachel and she took a while to to warm to us as well because all she'd really known i suppose was um she'd seen racial drug trafficking i guess police were the enemy if you're out there drug trafficking and uh after a while she decided that it was okay to divulge what she did know and um she knew a lot with the help of the young girl detectives were able to trace rachel's last movements on the 10th of august six days before her remains were found rachel drove the 20 minutes from epping to heidelberg where she left her car and was allegedly picked up at some nearby shops by john coombs [Music] the last time anyone was in contact with rachel was 6 30 that night when she spoke to her friend diane on the phone the call betrayed none of the imminent danger rachel was in she'd said to me she was going fishing she'd be back and i said well you know because we'd plan to meet up on the monday and it's no no no i'll be fine i'll be back and i said seemed happy and to be doing whatever it may be she was doing it sounded to me like she was jumping in the car she didn't seem scared to my understanding when rachel was talking she was happy about wherever she was going so at no point did she sound threatened or anything like that i don't believe rachel thought that she wasn't coming back [Music] when questioned by police combs provided a seemingly solid alibi to explain his movements at the time of rachel's disappearance his associates corroborated his story however using mobile phone tracking and other techniques detectives were quick to cast doubt on his version of events as their suspicions grew and in order to establish the facts the decision was made to arrest john coombs also arrested were his associates combs 54 year old partner maureen renwick another acquaintance nicole godfrey and friend ryan besima we believe we had sufficient evidence to arrest him and to charge him with the murder of rachael betts but also the other people that we arrested the time too is in maureen renwick ryan besema and nicole godfrey so it was a coordinated arrest of all of those people to get their version of events at the same time so once we arrested him we placed him in the vehicle and lee smith said to him the hardest part saying it and he said yeah i know she pushed my buttons and he said i killed her she made me [ __ ] angry she taunted me that's what he said police now had rachel's alleged killer in custody they now had to determine exactly what had happened to her [Music] with the suspected murderer of rachel betts in custody the dark chilling past of john leslie combs began to emerge in the first of a series of interviews with the alleged killer the detective's first task was to try and establish from combs exactly how rachel had met her tragic and untimely death no one really knows exactly what happened to rachel we've got mr coombs version of events as to when when i interviewed him uh he said that they drove down there together to phillip island two three terry crescent woman in heights um nicole godfrey's house and that they arrived there after midnight and it's nicole godfrey had a cup of coffee or a cup of tea with the two of them mr coombs says that after they had their coffee or whatever rachel went and lay in one of the rooms on the bed detectives were stunned when in an effort to explain what had happened to her combs claimed that rachel was implicated in the abuse of the two girls she was caring for mr coombs claimed that rachel let him know that she'd allowed for the girls to be sexually assaulted and that um she made money out of it and because the girl's got to pay her debts and uh coombs claimed that that infuriated him and he decided to put him asleep behold and strangle her or i said how did you do it and he showed with our movements as to what he did in relation to strangling rachel combs went on to describe how he mutilated rachel's body he said that she deserved to to die didn't deserve to go to you know to leave this earth as a woman so he says he's you know stabbed her petal in the breast region and i believe that was after she she died you had to look at it as it was a side of beef that's how he kind of described it it was something where the life had gone um it's a piece of meat that he had to just make the cuts separate the joints and treat it like like that that's how he referred to it he did that when i interviewed him he would explain it that way and he also explained it this the same way to maureen renwick in a prison phone call he said to had to make something bigger smaller pretty horrendous another chilling version of events came from nicole godfrey combs his acquaintance who was present in the house on a supposed night of rachel's murder she talked about limbs popping and things like that that she could hear and that at one stage she asked her whether she'd like to come in and see a dissection so she was certainly present whilst this was going on in her bathroom it was quite a small three-bedroom house down there despite the detail and the description detectives questioned the veracity of coombs version of events at one point he he did talk to maureen on the phone about it and he said something about the manner of death and it was like one click it was the cleanest kill ever so you hear that and you say to yourself what is that then is that a strangulation is that um breaking of the neck or what is that you know it could be it but i don't know in my mind i saw him cutting out her tattoos on her abdomen he also cut her breasts off and again we've got all kinds of stories i used five different knives oh no he used a box cutter that you keep cutting the thing it's hard to believe word that comes out of mr kung's mouth it's very difficult to know when it was that she was actually killed there was no forensic evidence but they did clean um with bleach-based cleaning products god knows what he really did or even definitely where he did it because no dna was recovered from the bathroom where she was supposed to have been cut up it came as no surprise to sandra betts when john leslie combs was charged with her daughter's murder in november 2009 [Music] when the police asked us who did we think it would likely to be we said john coons because we knew he had some kind of criminal history and at the time that was all i knew i now know a great deal more about him there was a lot of police reports a lot of coronal reports that we had to go through to to look at kum's past and it's a very dark past we were told that coombs had had two previous convictions and the two major previous convictions where he'd killed he'd killed two people he killed a fellow by michael spironi in february 1984. michael sparrani lived in the seaside town of mount martha in 1984 he was selling his car and his potential purchaser was one john leslie combs on the pretense of confirming whether the car could tow a boat combs hitched up a trailer and then offered michael the chance to accompany him on a trip out to sea john coombs enticed michael spironi had come out for a ride on the boat it transpired that spirani was dating one of coombs friends a relationship that his friend disapproved of coombs seemingly had thought of a solution to this problem depe was a soldier on the boat and then he was stabbed by combs he was thrown into the water and coombs then ran over him with the boat propeller and then after a while uh went up to him and pulled him up slightly and then stabbed him some more and uh coombs made a comment to his wife at the time when he later relayed what happened and um said that he stabbed him a little bit so the fish could finish him off [Music] 44 year old henry desmond kells was asleep in his edith vale home when he was attacked in the early hours of the 17th of november 1984 another good friend of yours by the name of opie it appears that kells was socializing with uh opi's landlady and this upset opie and opie complained to coombs about and kum said he can't fix that problem as well broke into the bungalow knowing he would be asleep and and drunk and attacked him and attacked him in a really vicious way he pinned him down there were bruises on kel's feet and knees there's evidence that he'd be punching and that sort of thing and then combs went to the kitchen got a knife and and stabbed him and killed him and also mutilated his genitalia we believe it's probably uh you know to try and give the impression that there's been some sort of sexual transgression and maybe a revenge had taken place something like that which has to be another theme with mr coombs as well he seems to blame sexual misbehavior or he alleges sexual misbehave on behalf of victims and um and he did that with that in that occasion with spironi and i believe he was probably trying to give the same impression in relation to what happened with desmond kills as well in 1985 combs was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of henry desmond kells he was granted an 11-year minimum term on appeal at his parole hearing the board was told the combs did not pose a substantial threat to the community what they weren't aware of though was that he had murdered michael sperrani eight months before killing kells and had got away with it satisfied he was safe to release combs left prison in october 1996 within three months of being paroled combs was arrested again and convicted of sparrani's murder despite being now responsible for the deaths of two men but supposedly rehabilitated he was handed a minimum term of just 10 years by 2007 combs was released on parole back into the community where he started a relationship with maureen renwick and began dealing drugs just two years after his release while still on parole rachel would be dead [Music] then he did try and present as the jovial you know grandfatherly type figure he was quite cunning and devious the way he operated [Music] to look at him you wouldn't think he was dangerous to that extent i'd met him twice my first reaction to him was well why are you hanging out with someone at that age this guy is a master manipulator he had people wrapped around his little fingers and he cultivated a facade there was this nice jolly plump guy who would never harm a fly while rachel's loved ones tried to comprehend combs his dangerous past and began to ask questions of a justice system that let a killer out onto the streets not once but twice detectives were preparing to go to trial in 2011 john leslie combs was about to appear in court charged with the murder of rachel betts for his victims family the trauma and devastation of the past two years was about to be played out in public john leslie combs will face the melbourne magistrates court for allegedly strangling the 27 year old and throwing her off a pier on phillip island [Music] first you have the committal in the magistrates court where they test to see whether the proceedings will be successful in the supreme court it means that coombs was able to introduce things in the magistrates court claims about rachel which were untrue the committal process the media report all the things that um they've been sensational and made rachel look to be a drug-using drug selling woman the worst parts i suppose that came out from the witnesses that was what was reported he claimed that rachel had set these girls up for sex acts for money and all this rubbish and the girls were interviewed in the court and they said no that didn't happen rachel would never do that to us etc but he did succeed in besmirching her name which was what he wanted to do he got this rubbish into the press he said that rachel said that if he played his cards right she could have his way with the little one as in the young girl the younger of the two girls i interviewed about that and told him that he didn't say that previously to me he goes i did well he didn't we went back and checked the transcripts from the interview and he never did to me it was just another excuse to paint what he'd done in a bit of light like as if he was doing society a favor by what he'd done i don't believe that she exposed those girls to or encouraged any sort of interference of them allow it to happen there's no evidence at all to suggest that apart from what comes out of coombs mouth which cannot be believed at all little could prepare rachel's family for the emotional torment of being exposed to the baseless allegations about their sister peddled by john coombs we had to put up with a lot of lies being told about rachel in the media and we weren't allowed to say anything back we'll do anything back which was very hard for a long time i never realized how much the journalists themselves are able to pick and choose interesting or sort of headline grabbing elements of any given case and put it together in their own way because the way that cases like these are portrayed to the public have a really quite a large influence on how the public then see the victim or see the perpetrator the way victims and their relatives are treated in court was a shock to the bet's family and something they have been inspired to try and change it's an issue i'm i'm raising at the moment along with the issue of um having your own barrister in in court to represent the victims interests specifically as a third party and i think that that's something that happens in a lot of countries around the world and it needs to be looked at here we need the pendulum to shift a bit the other way at the moment the victim doesn't have equal rights to the accused and the right to counsel i think is very important one after the committal we were booked off for trial so organised all the witnesses and then on the day one of the trial they decided to plead guilty on the 26th of august 2011 john leslie combs was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility for parole for the murder of rachel betts the judge ordered that his sentence would be served cumulatively with his existing term for the spherani murder in passing sentence the judge described combs as someone with a frightening predilection for murder i think the thing that stuck out the most was on the day of sentencing when he was in court and they read out the sentence and he was being led from the dock out the side door and he gave the finger up known as the bird to the courtroom on the way out as if to say well i don't really care he stuck his finger up at him like screw you i killed your daughter and i'm still alive [Music] like he's a monster who doesn't deserve to be alive it's really hard to say what justice is isn't it we got the best outcome that could be created in the circumstances we got a judge who who saw through all the lies and the stories and the accusations that coombs made and who saw that this is a person who had to get a life sentence with no minimum and he really saw it clearly for what it was because it didn't make them concurrent he made consecutive life sentences it will be life followed by life and no minimum set as a way of coping with the loss of her daughter sandra betts has fought for a more rigorous examination of the parole system something that is a cornerstone of the australian legal process parole is a system that enables the gradual supervised release of people from prison into the community so typically when someone is sentenced to a term of imprisonment they will get a minimum sentence and a maximum sentence and what determines when they're released after serving that minimum sentence is a decision by the parole authority the parole board and they have to decide is it appropriate for that person to be released well the parole system was so broken coombs was recommended parole on the basis that he was assessed as a low risk low risk a double murderer i wouldn't have thought that that could be possible given the sentence he had but because he was assessed as low risk and the parole board didn't question this he was assigned to a junior corrections person he wasn't monitored very much so this weren't the checks the cross-checking on what he's saying is true or not true and what he's doing is what he says doing what accommodation is the appropriate accommodation what we have seen in victoria most recently is some very serious failures that have shown a light on the parole system and that's been a good thing it shouldn't have taken those horrific crimes for this kind of reform to happen there's been a substantial increase in the parole board's budget there's been improvements in the quality of information that is being presented to the parole board to enable it to make proper decisions around managing the risk to the community we saw something like 10 000 decisions being made every year with only a few minutes for the parole board to consider each one of those decisions when you consider the potential risks involved and the importance around those decisions it really was an unsustainable practice that we had that's now changing and that's a positive thing [Music] the death of rachel betts and other high-profile murders has made the australian justice system question itself and its processes but despite the improvements that have and continue to be made it is little comfort for rachel's friends and family who still have to live their lives without her [Music] the grief that comes with the sort of experience where your daughter is murdered is really intense and invasive and it pervades daily life most mornings i will wake up with some thoughts of rachel and it's six years down the track and there's always the important times that her birthday she'd be 33 now it's awful and i know it's not just me that's affected my children have been very affected i miss my confidant i miss the support the unconditional support i was looking forward to her teaching me how to drive and being there when i graduated high school i have a sense of what she's lost as well though is what i've lost i've lost my sister my hero but she's lost the potential of a full life it makes me really both angry and sad that she didn't get to see me become an adult myself and then to be able to have that relationship with her on a different level and like every you know new step i take in life she doesn't get to know about that or to see that and you see me become someone that we probably could have been even closer now than we were before and i'm also kind of irrationally scared of overtaking her age to become older than my older sister is really strange but scary to me i dread time moving forward i remember dates and numbers anniversaries and i feel more hopeless and frustrated that every year goes by is another year further away from what happened [Music] you

Channel: True Crime Central

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Length: 44min 6sec (2646 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 18 2022