Why I wrote a book about murderer Lindsay Rose, my hitman mate from the pub: Campbell McConachie
McConachie knew little of Rose’s past before he pleaded guilty to five murders in 1998. Here, he describes the logistics and ethical quandaries of not only profiling a murderer, but giving him a microphone by printing his letters
Campbell McConachie was just a teenager when he first met Rose, six years before the double murder, at a pub in Sydney’s inner west. He only knew snippets of his drinking buddy’s various and past lives, which comprised brothel owner, drug dealer, ambulance officer, private investigator, car thief, hijacker, volunteer firefighter – and arsonist – and mercenary.
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As McConachie recalls in his new book, The Fatalist: “When I first drank beer with Lindsay, he’d already killed three people. Oh, we had no idea. He’d walk into the front bar of the Burwood Hotel and he’d scan the room. To the eyes he met and knew he’d nod a hello, or perhaps he’d bellow it if it was late-night noisy, and if I’d looked up from the form guide or the pool table I’d look away and hope it was me he came to talk to. He was ebullient and he would give you his full attention.”
During the course of 50 visits to the High-Risk Management Correctional Centre at the Goulburn Correctional Centre – a “supermax” security prison in New South Wales – McConachie interviewed Rose about his life and crimes.
Of their first meeting there, McConachie describes a man who “zips his lips a couple of times when about to mention people or actions that could incriminate others. He’s perfectly comfortable with who he is and what he has done and he tells me a myriad of stories, often punctuated with his infectious, wheezing laugh, his chin drawn down into his throat. But some of his stories involve the misfortune of others – his victims – and I stop myself from joining him in laughter.”
