IDENTITY THIEVES
Sometimes the desire to step into someone else’s shoes has deadly consequences WANTING TO BE RACHEL
Caroline Reed Robertson now lives anonymously somewhere in Victoria after serving 16 years in jail for murdering Rachel Barber, the 15-year-old dance student she wanted to be.
In March 1999, Rachel had the world at her feet. A talented dancer with elfin looks, a close-knit family and a steady boyfriend, Rachel had everything Robertson, then 19, felt she didn’t have and desperately desired.
Robertson would often babysit Rachel and her younger siblings at their family’s Melbourne home. But the more time she spent in Rachel’s company, the more envious and dangerous Robertson became. She secretly applied for a copy of Rachel’s birth certificate, and on March 1 she invited Rachel to her apartment, telling the teenager she would earn money by taking part in a survey.
Instead, Robertson strangled Rachel with a telephone cord and hid her body in a wardrobe for two days. She then put Rachel’s body in an army bag and buried her at Robertson’s father’s farm in Kilmore, outside Melbourne. On March 12, when investigations eventually led police to Robertson’s flat, they found Rachel’s clothes and notes highlighting Robertson’s obsession with the younger girl.
“Rachel was always ‘wild’... Strikingly attractive – dancer’s body. Very clear pale skin, hypnotic green eyes, dyed hair lots of different colours,” she wrote.
But Robertson loathed herself. She drew pictures of herself with a “pizza” face and described herself as a “loser”. During Robertson’s trial in 2000, a psychiatrist told the Supreme Court that Robertson had convinced herself that after killing Rachel she could “magically” assume her identity.
Robertson led a quiet life in prison and in 2015, on her release from Melbourne’s Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, Rachel’s parents Michael and Elizabeth graciously asked for Robertson to be left alone.
“It has taken time, but Mike and I have forgiven Caroline,” Elizabeth told reporters.
“If we continued to hate her, we would be angry and bitter, and I can’t do that to my own children.”