Herald Sun [Melbourne]
October 2, 2003

INSIGHT

Murder in Bali

Part 2 continued: The Fatal Night

Federal agent Haigh was flown to Australia on the Monday and taken to
Royal
Brisbane Hospital, where she spent the next month.

HOSPITAL burns director Stuart Pegg treated her and said if she hadn't
had
the cuts made to her arm in Bali to allow circulation to continue she could
easily have lost it.

Members of the Perth Kingsley Cats football team were enjoying an end of
season trip in Bali at the time of the bombing.

Player Bradley McIlroy, 20, was feeling lucky after meeting three Swedish
girls in the Sari Club.

"I was getting on very well with one of them. She was called Joanne,"
Bradley said.

"I was sitting there with my left arm around Joanne, my mate David and
another mate Ashley were on the other side of the table.

"A couple of good songs had come on, a few drinks had passed, then I heard
what I thought was a firework so I turned around and looked in the air to see
the finish of it but there was nothing.

"So I looked outside to where there looked to be a bit of commotion and I
saw the top of a white van. Whether it was the van or not I don't know and
then
the second explosion went off.

"All I remember seeing was like a huge orange flash. I am now deaf in my
left ear because that was the way my head was actually facing.

"I remember being blown away from the bomb. I got up and looked around and
saw the fire go up and the screams started.

"I was about four metres from Joanne. I took one step towards her and then
realised I couldn't do anything for her.

"I couldn't see my mates on the other side of the table, but I could see
the
top half of Joanne on the top of the table we had been sitting at.

"Something had obviously cut through her and cut her in half. How it
didn't
go through me has me stuffed.

"I don't know whether a piece of tin has hit her but she was clean cut in
half . . . just a bit higher than her belly button. She was obviously dead. No
one survives with only half a body."

Bradley said it was incredible how some had been hurt or killed while
others
right next to them were spared.

"It was just so selective," he said.

WHEN the bomb went off he was so close to Joanne their bodies were
touching
and his arm was around her.

"Yet I haven't got a scratch on me and she is cut in half," Bradley said.

He learned over the next few days that seven of the 20 Kingsley Cats
members
in Bali had died.

Among them was David Ross, who had been sitting opposite Bradley and
Joanne.

Eighteen-year-old Renee Fowler was a student at the Australian
International
School, living in Bali for five years with her mother, Lynda Makawana, 49.

"Mum rang me about 4pm and asked me if I would like to go to Legian St,"
Renee said.

"We were just going to go bar-hopping that night, have a fun night out
together."

They got to the Sari Club about 9pm and got chatting to a bunch of
footballers from Forbes, New South Wales, three of whom later died.

Renee went out to get some cigarettes a few minutes before the bomb went
off.

"I remember Mum saying to me, 'Just smoke mine', but I said no that I was
going out to get some and I would be back in a minute," she said.

"So I was standing in a line at the Circle K convenience store, which is
about 30m down from the Sari Club, and about to buy some cigarettes when the
window glass blew out.

"I grabbed some man on the side of the road and asked what had happened.
He
told me Paddy's had been bombed and I thought well, OK, if it is Paddy's then
my
mum is going to be OK. That's all I could think about.

"But as I got closer I actually saw that it was the Sari Club. I saw
flames
coming out of it and ran to try to get in, but the heat was too intense.

"I remember running up and down lanes to see if I could find my mum.

"I went to a friend's shop and used his phone to ring Mum's mobile and was
given some hope when it rang, but she didn't answer."

Renee spent the night visiting hospitals and morgues, but didn't find her
mother.

She got a phone call from a friend at 6.30 the next night saying her
mother
had been found dead in a hospital.

Police later gave Renee her mother's mobile phone. It had been recovered
undamaged outside the Sari Club, which is why it had rung when Renee called it
on the night.

"Mum was sitting in the first seat as you go in the Sari Club at the
front,"
Renee said. "The phone was sucked out into the street. They actually found Mum
in the street too.

"The vacuum effect sucked the air from around her. That's what the experts
told me."

Southport Sharks player Jake Ryan, 22, was drinking with mates in the Sari
Club, including his brother Mitch, 18, when something hit him and knocked him
flat on his back.

"I actually thought that I had been king hit," he said.

"I took a girl home the night before and I thought her boyfriend had just
whacked me."

Jake quickly realised something far more serious than a fight over a girl
had happened.

He remembers people running over him as he lay on the floor.

"I sat up and pushed two bodies off me and saw all the fire and thought
s---, it's time to get out of here," Jake said.

"I heard an Australian voice shouting out to me to get across to the wall.
He said, 'Up here mate'.

"I told him my brother was in the club and I couldn't leave him and he
told
me to look around. I did and saw all these people on fire."

Jake then climbed the wall and scrambled over a roof to safety.

He was still determined to find his brother and ran round to the front of
the Sari Club, where he bumped into Melbourne AFL player Steven Febey.

Jake played football with Febey for Sandringham and knew him well.

"Febes and I went back into the Sari Club to see if we could help anybody,
but couldn't get in more than a few metres," he said.

"There was a lady that was on fire and asking us for help. She had no legs
and she was just looking at us and screaming. We tried to get to her, but the
fire was too intense.

"She burnt up in front of us."

Realising there was nothing he could do to help, Jake spent a couple of
hours wandering the streets looking for his brother before friends insisted he
go to hospital.

"I had my heel severed off and a massive shrapnel wound in my stomach,
which
touched by abdomen," he said. "I was lying in hospital the morning after the
bombing looking at a TV screen and my brother's name came up as being dead.

"It wasn't until a few hours later that our team manager found me in
hospital and told me Mitch was OK."

Unfortunately, fellow Southport Sharks player Billy Hardy wasn't so lucky.
The 20-year-old sibling of the Big Brother TV show participant Jessica Hardy
died in the Sari Club.

JAKE returned to Bali this year for the trials of some of the bombers and
confronted field commander Samudra in the court.

"You're a f------ dog, mate. You are going to die," he yelled at Samudra.

Jake may well be right, as Samudra has since been sentenced to death by
firing squad.

Perth IT consultant Morgan MacLachlan, 19, was pretty chuffed to run into
Kangaroos footballers Mick Martyn and Jason McCartney in Paddy's.

Morgan introduced himself and chatted to the holidaying AFL stars.

Morgan was blown off his feet within seconds of bragging to his mates
about
having talked to Martyn and McCartney.

"It blew me into the bar," he said.

"I turned around to see this wall of flame sweep around down the side of
the
bar and over the dance floor and that was when I jumped over the bar.

"I landed on somebody. It turned out to be my mate Damian Sheridan. We
both
had the same thought, to get behind the bar to protect ourselves from the
flames.

"The flames sort of went over the top of us. We stood up and had a look
around and there wasn't another person standing. People were piled up
everywhere, burnt people.

"Then two of our friends, Chad and Michael, came up to us.

"Damian pointed to where another friend, Aaron Lindsey, was face down on
the
dance floor with a person on top of him.

"The guy on top of him was really f----d up. His arm was missing and he
was
black.

"Damian pulled Aaron out a bit and I checked for a pulse and found it
after
a bit.

"He wasn't conscious. His eyes were open, looking straight ahead, just
staring.

"When we got him outside and sat him down his neck sort of fell forward,
which exposed a big hole in the back of his neck."

AARON, 19, a printing assistant with the West Australian newspaper, has
no
memory of the bomb going off or his mates rescuing him.

"I woke up when they had me outside," he said.

"They were ecstatic, going, 'He's alive, he's alive'.

"I was later told in hospital that the shrapnel damage to my neck went
right
down next to my spinal cord.

"My local GP in Perth finally got my medical records and he goes, 'I can't
believe you are not in a wheelchair' -- it was that close to my spinal cord."

Aaron has made a full recovery.

Gary Nash, 58, had been out to dinner with Mick Martyn, Jason McCartney
and
Peter Hughes, and walked into Paddy's Pub with them shortly before the bomb
went
off.

"I had just got a round of drinks, handed them to the boys and turned
round
to pay for them when there was this explosion which singed my ears," Gary
said.

"The next thing I know I am knocked off my feet by a woman off the dance
floor.

Continued page 13

"She flew through the air and hit me. Her back hit me on my front. I was
unconscious for a short time. I've come to and she's lying on top of me.

"I've said to her, 'Love, I've got to get up,' but there was no answer. So
I've rolled her off me and got up.

"In the light of the flames I could see there was no chance for her
because
she was absolutely shredded from the front of her down."

Gary made his way outside.

"I was standing there doing a recce of myself and I looked down at my arms
and my legs and saw the flesh was just hanging off from the burns," he said.

"I sat myself on a little brick wall next to Paddy's and there were a
couple
of other people like me, just sitting in disbelief wondering what the hell had
happened.

"That's when we saw this guy run past holding his severed arm. We tried to
stop him. We yelled at him because the blood was pouring out. He was in shock
and just kept going."

T WO young Australians later got Gary into the back of a ute that was
headed for hospital.

"I was taken into the emergency ward. I managed to see Micky Martyn. I
asked
him where Jason McCartney was and he said Jas was nearby," Gary said.

Gary was taken into surgery. He had burns to 49 per cent of his body and
shrapnel wounds to his stomach and right ankle.

He and Jason McCartney were next to each other in the recovery ward.

"He was conscious, but he was in a bit of a mess. He was worrying that he
wasn't going to make it out of there," Gary said. "We talked to each other and
calmed each other down."

Gary was later flown to Darwin and seen by doctors there.

"I don't know what happened next, but I woke up three weeks later in
Brisbane Hospital," he said.

"I was in a coma all that time."

McCartney, his mate Peter Hughes and Stuart Anstee were chosen to
represent
Australia and tell the Bali bombing trials what happened.

Peeling the bandages off his left arm to reveal his injuries, McCartney
told
the court: "I believe it is my duty to not only represent Australia, but the
people of the world as one to take a stance against terrorism."

McCartney tried to get Bali bomber Amrozi to look him in the eye during
his
testimony -- but Amrozi hid.

"I suppose it just proves what I already had in my mind -- what a gutless
coward he is," he said.

Perth roofing contractor Peter Hughes, 43, told the court he had been
having
a drink with mates -- including Martyn and McCartney -- in Paddy's Pub when
all
hell broke loose.

"It reminded me of a war movie or a horror movie," Peter said. "Arms and
legs and bodies just weren't where they should have been."

Tasmanian Stuart Anstee, 24, told the court he was sitting at the front of
the Sari Club when the explosion knocked him unconscious and killed three of
his
mates.

"When I woke up I noticed blood spurting from my neck," Stuart, whose
jugular vein was slashed, said.

Cairns customs broker Desmond Swain's feeling of devastation is typical of
parents who lost children in the Bali bombings.

His son Nathan lived in Jakarta and played rugby for the International
Sporting Club of Indonesia.

He and his mates were on the island playing in the Bali 10s competition.

Nathan, 24, was thinking about calling it a night, having won through to
the
semi-final to be played the next morning, when the bomb exploded.

"There is not a day goes by that the events of October 12, 2002 are not
imagined," Mr Swain said.

"I think about Nathan and the events of that night regularly. Almost every
night I wake up and have to watch television or read to take my mind off that
train of thought.

"As my grief slightly reduces I have thoughts as to the senselessness of
this criminal act and the need not only for myself, my family, but for human
beings as a whole, for the perpetrators of this crime to be punished.

"Nathan is responsible for one of the most joyous days of my life. When
Nathan was born at 5.03am on Tuesday, March 14, 1978, I witnessed his birth.
To
me it seemed a miracle.

"Following his birth I would not take my eyes off him until the nurse put
the identification band on his arm. At this point I felt very proud.

"The nurse asked me to go to the fathers' room. As I entered the room the
sun rose and the city started to come to life. To me, that was a sign.

"I love my three sons equally, but your first born has such an effect on
your life."

Of the 28 members of Nathan's team, only 22 survived.

Five died on the night and one player died on November 7, 2002, in a
Singapore hospital.

Byron Bay menswear shop owner Barry Wallace emotively summed up the
frustration of the parents of victims in a written statement about the death
of
his daughter, Jodi; one of a number of victim impact statements submitted to
the
Indonesian court.

"As I write this statement I must tell you that our family is totally
shattered and traumatised," Mr Wallace's statement says.

"From her grandparents to her younger sister, we are all desperately
struggling to just survive each day.

"We are all aware that our life will never ever be the same again.

"We look for Jodi in every face. We wait for her phone call. We deal with
our grief and our loss everyday.

"We try and come to terms with the terrible thing some of your people have
inflicted on our girl, our sister, our granddaughter, our niece, our friend,
our
country.

"You find yourself daydreaming Jodi will phone you shortly or finally get
home from that damn holiday.

'THEN, like a bolt of lightning or a knife in your gut, every now and
then
(depending on how successful you are with your mind games) the reality of the
situation hits you.

"The nightmare feeling at that moment is almost physical. I can certainly
understand people fainting or having a heart attack at these times.

"I find that I have become quite intolerant since October 12. Certainly
and
perhaps understandably have little tolerance towards Muslims.

"My personal life has become very sad. I constantly remember our daughter,
she was also our friend.

"I remember her growing up, her first job, her first boyfriend, her
excitement, her happiness, her positiveness, her sense of humour and her sense
of honour, her beauty, her achievements, her love and friendship.

"I also think of all the things we were looking forward to, to live our
lives with her as part of us.

"We were looking forward to Jodi having her own family -- our
grandchildren
-- all taken from her and from us by a bunch of mindless fools.

"Anger and hatred? I suggest we don't even go there. Pain and suffering?
How
could you even begin to calculate or quantify?

"Jodi Wallace was 29 years of age when she was so cruelly and
treacherously
murdered by religious fanatics.

"Australians have always felt a fondness and affection for Bali and she
and
her girlfriends had only arrived several hours prior to their killing.

"Our country has never murdered your civilians, yet some of your
countrymen
have chosen to murder unarmed and unsuspecting Australians whilst you are
hosting us.

"Why?"

-end 3 of 5-