(i) Retirement Dreams aboard the Four Winds
Note: This is the first in a series based on the Susan Blythe Neill-Fraser murder case. The version submitted to UTAS and The Age Investigations team was not well written and thus like all good snippets of my head… it has been rewritten and is published here. I hope you enjoy the series: part 1 is 588 words long.
It was Australia Day, 2009. There was no sense on the quiet Hobart waterfront that anything was amiss, no building expectation of calamity and no signal from a starter’s pistol to tell Bob Chappell his life was nearly over. Like most murder victims he had no idea his life would end in the approaching night and unlike most murder victims his body may never be found to fill in the back story.
Bob, 65, was a respected medical physicist at the Royal Hobart Hospital with dreams of retiring on a small yacht. The Global Financial Crisis had postponed that dream and extended his work-life for another 12 months but the conflict around that extension, or the postponement of the dream retirement, is said to have caused stress in his relationship.
Susan Blythe Neill-Fraser, 57, was Bob’s de-facto partner of 18 years. She was independently wealthy and received a weekly salary from Bob to maintain her lifestyle.
The couple had found the 53 foot ketch, Four Winds, at Scarborough Marina in Brisbane. It was a larger yacht than their initial plans and at $203,000 it was a lot more expensive than their budget had forecast. However, they agreed this was the yacht of their dream retirement and they invested equal shares in its finance.
After purchasing the Four Winds, two months before Bob’s murder, there was extensive trade-work undertaken at Scarborough Marina to make it seaworthy and through that month the couple raised concerns that their new purchase had been illegally boarded by strangers. The wheelhouse was never locked and nothing was taken but they noticed items had inexplicably moved. They also harboured growing paranoia about drug trafficking links in the Four Winds’ recent past and became even more curious after discovering “loose panels” that could have been used to secrete contraband. Luxury yachts are a growing concern to the Australian Federal Police.
Meanwhile, the bills for the Four Winds mounted and the monetary stress increased as their dream yacht absorbed tradesmens’ time and materials. The Four Winds was turning from their dream into a drama queen – there was later speculation they had purchased “a lemon” – and there appears to have been little joy left for the couple after that first month in Brisbane.
Then, as they sailed the Four Winds south toward Tasmania, their savings continued to deplete and serious equipment failure compounded their misfortune. It was in that circumstance Bob suffered through several grueling days of serious nose hemorrhaging and eventual hospitalisation before he was left behind.
In December, 2008 Neill-Fraser finished the voyage and they were re-united in Hobart in a less-than-warm wharf-side greeting. The couple was financially and emotionally strained and a tired Neill-Fraser, exhilarated by the trip but possibly with bigger dreams than her older partner, saw herself as the more competent sailor. She looked out over the deepest natural harbour in the Southern hemisphere and small world of the Hobart elite and dreamed of bigger challenges and experiences.
Four weeks later, on 27 January, 2009 Bob stood on the Four Winds moored off the exclusive suburb of Sandy Bay and probably thought about mundane things. He might have thought about dinner, what to buy somebody for a birthday present or something he read in that morning’s newspaper. He may well have taken in views of the Casino, the Hobart Bridge, historic Battery Point and the beckoning channel to the Great Southern Ocean that romances every expectant sailor.
He may have even thought about the person who would murder him in the coming hours.
[part 5 of this series will be published on this website in the next few days.]
Installments in the Neill-Fraser Story
- (i) Retirement dreams aboard the Four Winds
- (ii) Disarray & Sabotage on the Mooring
- (iii) The Scene at Marieville Esplanade
- (iv) The Ketch with a Billion Dollar View
