Australian town talks of troubled boy in their midst

By GREG ANSLEY

PT CLARE - A single lily, its stem wrapped in silver foil, lies on the matting of thick grass covering an empty section in Northwind Ave, Pt Clare.

Courtney Morley-Clarke, just 3 years old, died there early on Monday morning, within easy sight of the house where her parents and two brothers were sleeping.

Her alleged killer is the 13-year-old adopted son of close family friends, who every year organised the street Christmas party from their home 300m up the street.

Prosecutors will allege that the boy crept out of his own room some time after 1 am, slipped down the street to take Courtney from her bed, and carried her across the road to the vacant block to kill her.

Courtney's tiny body, clad only in her nappy, was found at 10.47 am.

The knife that killed Courtney has pierced the heart of the small town on New South Wales' central coast, and reopened much wider wounds in a country chilled by earlier child murderers and outraged at suggestions the killers of British 2-year-old James Bulger may be given freedom and new identities in Australia.

The murder has also renewed debate on lowering the age of criminal culpability, an argument given force last year during the trial of a 12-year-old Sydney boy accused of throwing a 6-year-old child into a river to drown.

But above all is the single question: why?

There are no simple answers in Pt Clare. The town lies about 85km north of Sydney, one of a ribbon of similar communities that rims the bush-covered fringes of Brisbane Water, a large inlet with its apex at Gosford.

Its closest neighbour is Woy Woy, a time capsule blossoming now as a retirement centre.

Pt Clare is comfortably middle class, with brick and tile homes - entry price about $A250,000 ($308,500) - and sandwiched between ocean and the low, bush-covered hills of Brisbane Water National Park.

Northwind Ave winds around the back of the town, rising from a cul-de-sac abutting the national park to the Aubrey Downer Memorial Retirement Village.

It is a town in which the local paper reports damage to a letterbox and bruises and abrasions suffered by sightseers slipping from nearby lookouts.

"You would think this is too lively a place for anything like this to happen," said one resident. "But I suppose everyone says that when something awful happens."

Lawrence and Tamara Morley-Clarke moved into their home in the lower end of Northwind Ave about 10 years ago, building both a new family and a mechanical repair business in nearby Hornsby. Tamara Morely-Clarke worked as a veterinary assistant.

They have two sons, Nathan, aged 15, and Justin, 13 - and Courtney, a vivacious, blond child whose antics endeared her to neighbours.

Up the hill, at the peak of Northwind Ave, Courtney's alleged killer lived behind a mission brown paling fence with his adoptive parents, a well-liked professional couple who had become good friends with the Morley-Clarkes.

Neighbours said the boy had moved in when he was about 4 years old.

Long-time residents said it was commonly believed the boy had previously been a state ward, removed from disturbed or drug-addicted parents.

He lived a troubled and lonely life in Northwind Ave.

Although he at times played with other children in the street and attempted to make friends, he was regarded by both adults and his own age group as odd - some calling him "eerie" and "weird."

Often he played alone in the street and at other times he would try to befriend younger children.

Neighbours said the boy was emotionally disturbed and went to a special school.

One resident said the boy had a sister and an older brother, who had once come to stay at the adoptive home: "He [the brother] was really scary."

Even so, no one in a street overflowing with young children considered the boy to be dangerous.

"He was strange, definitely very strange, but you would never have picked that he would do anything like [the alleged murder]," one neighbour said.

On Sunday night the Morley-Clarkes tucked Courtney into bed, checking her again at 1 am. When they looked in at 7 am the bed was empty.

As their parents frantically called the police, Nathan and Justin ran to their neighbours' homes, in the hope that Courtney had woken and wandered off, as she had done once or twice before.

Within 30 minutes Northwind Ave was blockaded by police and emergency workers, searching through bush and checking house to house. One resident was called home from work to open a garage door and unlock a car boot. A helicopter hunted from the sky.

Hope died with the discovery of Courtney's doll-like body.

Attention focused fast on the strange boy from up the hill. He was first taken in for questioning then, at about 7 pm, escorted back for a tour of the murder site.

He appeared in court on Wednesday, charged with kidnap and murder. He was ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment and will appear again on Tuesday.

In a house several doors up from the vacant block Elizabeth Pandja, is minding her daughter Natalie's three young children, aged from 7 months to 4.

"It almost feels like it happened to my family," she said. "That boy walked this street every day ... How many times did he look at my grandchildren?

"My daughter said to me 'Mum, at 3 am I was feeding [her son] Matthew and I looked in on the other two. They were sleeping so peacefully and I was thinking how lucky they were, with parents who loved them, a good home to live in ... and at the very same time that little girl was being murdered.' This has just changed our lives forever."