The vile crime that fell through the cracks

Alan Nelson holds a family portrait of his granddaughter, Seana Tapp, daughter Margaret Tapp and grandson Justin Tapp. Picture: News Corp Source: News Limited

THIRTY years after Margaret Tapp and her daughter Seana were found dead in their suburban Melbourne home, the identity of the killer is still a mystery. But could a pair of Dunlop volleys be the key to cracking this case? And could a suspect appear out of the blue?

THE deviate who murdered Margaret Tapp then raped and killed her little girl 30 years ago this week is probably reading this, hoping no one notices his fascination. What he wont know is that he has claimed another victim: Margarets only son, Justin.

Justin Tapp wasnt strangled like his mother and his little sister, Seana. He was slowly poisoned by the horror of what happened to them. He rarely spoke about it but was haunted by the thought that if hed been at home at the time, maybe it wouldnt have happened. He was only 14 then just old enough to blame himself over the evil act that took two lives and destroyed his.

Calendars are cruel for the broken-hearted. For Justin, the unbearable became too much recently as time moved closer to the 30th anniversary of the murders at Ferntree Gully in early August, 1984.

He had left Australia in 2001, but could not escape the demons that had already cost him a career and a marriage in Melbourne. In England, he was Tappy the chirpy, cricket-loving Aussie who was good at cooking and computers. He soon met Wendy ODonovan, the woman who would be his greatest support besides his mothers older sister, Joan Nelson, but it wasnt enough.

Behind the cheerful false front was a broken man who lost jobs and wore down relationships because he drank to blot out the nightmares. He ended up alone and unemployed in a tiny rented apartment north of London, a prisoner of his past and his crumbling psychological state. Not that he was abandoned. His Australian relatives stayed in touch as best they could.

His former partner Wendy and her two daughters remained friends and tried to stop him brooding alone in his flat. It was Wendy who found him dead on June 3 when she went to check on him. No one knows if he deliberately suicided or accidentally drank and drugged himself into oblivion.

The body had deteriorated so much the British coroner insisted on not only a toxicology report but formal identification by DNA testing.

This is ironic, because it is bungled or incomplete DNA tests that have covered the trail of the man who murdered Margaret and Seana Tapp. Justins death is the third act of a tragedy in a family let down by modern forensic science and old-time police work.

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The vile crime that fell through the cracks