JEALOUSIES POWER A WRONGFUL CONVICTION

Catt has always had aspirations. When she moved to Taree in the early 1980s, the then divorcee drove a white Corvette and enjoyed socialising. She was the blonde blow-in who would later divide the town and be labelled one of Australia's most hated women.

Arrested in 1989 and charged with assaulting, stabbing, poisoning and conspiring to kill her second husband, Taree mechanic Barry Catt, Roseanne denied the charges, claiming she had been framed by her husband, his lifelong friend Adrian Newell and the police officer in charge of the investigation, detective Peter Thomas, who has since left the police service. The sordid small-town saga included threats, rumours, tit-for-tat pettiness, family breakdown, domestic violence and sex abuse. At Catt's 1991 trial, judge Jane Matthews said she was either "an evil, manipulative woman or the innocent victim of a monstrous conspiracy". She was jailed for 12 years.

She served almost 10 years before being released on bail in 2001 after fresh claims that evidence against her was fabricated and her trial tainted by Thomas. The then NSW attorney-general, Bob Debus, asked for a fresh appeal against her convictions. On Wednesday, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal upheld the appeal against seven of Catt's nine convictions, leaving it to the Director of Public Prosecutions to decide if she should be retried. The court found that there was "significant fresh evidence available which, if accepted by the jury, would support the conspiracy allegation".

Fronting the court, which was crowded with family, supporters from the Free Roseanne group and media, Catt was a model of composure with her blonde coiffured hair, manicured nails, meticulous make-up and matching accessories. This was a woman who had waged a 16-year battle to clear her name and hoped to be acquitted. She beamed, convinced she would be exonerated.

For a few minutes following Justice Peter McClellan's judgement, the teary 58-year-old appeared rattled. It was not the clear-cut result she had been seeking. But after a meeting with her counsel, Catt emerged smiling. "It is good. It is good," she repeated like a mantra. And later: "I feel as though I'm still living under a cloud, but it's still a victory. I've done very well considering what I was up against."

During the rare and costly 2003 District Court inquiry into whether Catt was wrongfully convicted, the mother-of-two worked day and night with her "guardian", Sister Claudette Palmer, to prepare her case. The pair would walk into the drab room with a suitcase filled with files and throughout proceedings take notes, cross-reference statements and scan hundreds of documents. Catt, always well-dressed, displayed the spectrum of behaviour of someone obsessed. She was moody and abrupt, embracing friends and then snapping orders at them. She would talk manically about every legal detail and occasionally, very occasionally, she'd simply sit in the punishing straight-backed benches, shoulders hunched, hands clasped, deflated and exhausted. And while her declarations that God's support and the example set by Nelson Mandela and Lindy Chamberlain motivated her to keep going were predictable, there was no doubt that something extraordinary sustained her.

Critics - and there are many - would suggest a hunger for compensation was driving her. "Nothing, no amount of money, could ever make up for what I've been through," she has said. "None of my family should have had to endure it. It's wicked. If I was a criminal I'd have stood up and said I was guilty rather than put them through all of this." As her book about her ordeal in jail (Ten Years, PanMacmillan) is readied for publication and Harry M. Miller organises her publicity schedule, Catt will be preoccupied with the possibility of a retrial. One thing is certain: she will continue to divide people. Maybe a girl from Dapto who became one Australia's most infamous women isn't supposed to have aspirations.

More here



(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)