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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, Grace Tame here. You might know me as the 2021 Australian of the Year or quote unquote difficult woman. But did you know I'm also autistic? It took me a long time to get diagnosed. And sadly, that's true for a lot of women. I want to know why that's the case. That's why I'm taking over Ladies We Need To Talk for a series called Autistic AF.
Find it by searching Ladies We Need To Talk on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
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40 years after Sharon Fulton disappeared, her husband was found guilty of her murder. He was Robert Fulton. He is now Raymond Reddington. And in this episode, the surprising link between the name change and the woman that he killed. I'm Stephen Stockwell. This is the case of Sharon's disappearance.
Special Crime Squad detectives extradited Reddington back to Perth. They were experiencing marriage difficulties and Reddington thought he would suffer financially if she left him. I'm instructed to assert that he protests his innocence.
Today it's about my mother, Sharon. A dedicated, loving mother. Mum, you are not forgotten. You are not erased. You are not just a case file.
Sharon Fulton's body has never been found. There's no direct evidence her crime was even committed, but that didn't stop a jury finding her husband, Raymond Reddington, guilty of her murder. His constantly changing stories and benefit from her disappearance would have been weighing in their mind as they made that decision.
And there throughout the trial, David Webber, the ABC's court reporter in Perth. Welcome, David. Yeah, g'day. Also joining us for this episode is the KSOB's executive producer, Claire Rawlinson. Hi, Stockie. Something you've heard us wrestle with throughout this series has been the identity of the murderer, or rather, the name.
Robert Fulton, when he killed his wife Sharon Fulton, Raymond Reddington throughout his murder trial. It's a name change that seems to be inspired by the lead character in the TV show The Blacklist. It all seemed so random until I discovered while preparing for this series that The Blacklist also has a character called Sharon Fulton, the same name as the woman who disappeared in 1986.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Sharon Fulton and how was her husband involved?
The name change is a really odd one. But I think, you know, the most neutral reading of it would be this is someone who wants to disassociate from or disconnect from his former life. There's really negative memories with his wife's disappearance. But I think it's when it's combined with the fact that there is this character, Sharon Fulton.
And if he's been watching the TV show and has changed his name to Raymond Reddington, the protagonist of the show who is, you know, in the trailers, he's America's favourite criminal, played by James Spader, this incredibly smug anti-hero that is always outsmarting authorities.
And for him to choose that name and for him to choose it after the episodes aired where there's a character introduced called Sharon Fulton, it does just feel like it's more purposeful than purely trying to just remove or distance yourself from your former life or your former name. To me, it just raises questions about why he chose to adopt this particular character's name.
I mean, it would be speculation on my part, but maybe there's a part of him that's saying, this is how confident I am with what I've done, that I'll do something that might... even be a tip of the hat. If you are going to investigate this and you are going to investigate me, this is me getting away with it.
I mean, the defence, and this is not an argument that's put forward, somebody in his defence might say, well, he was so distraught about the loss of his wife this period of time later, and then he happened to like this TV series and found this coincidence and decided to tap into it. We simply don't know.
Yeah, exactly. We just don't know.
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Chapter 3: Why did Robert Fulton change his name to Raymond Reddington?
But it is so strange. I haven't really been able to make heads or tails of it throughout this series. And I mean, as far as the timeline of all of this goes, there was the investigation in 2017, as you mentioned, David. There's also a coronial inquest in 2022, and that's the year that Robert Fulton changes his name to Raymond Reddington. Again, all a bit strange.
The other thing I've been thinking about a lot is the letter that was sent to the coronial inquest. Now, this is the letter we spoke about in our last episode that pointed investigators to a carport slab somewhere where Sharon Fulton's body they had heard was had been buried after Michael Harrison had apparently got her pregnant and killed her.
And, you know, that letter was anonymous to the coronial inquest, but it was found to have Raymond Reddington's DNA on it. And the conclusion being that he had sent that letter. Claire, I mean, this is something you immediately liken to the Bob Durst case. in America. This is featured in a true crime series called The Jinx.
Now, I haven't seen this series, and please don't tell Rachel Brown that because I had promised her in Morwell where we lived last year that I would watch it. So without knowing what's happened here, Claire, can you explain the similarities between the letter that Robert Reddington sends and Bob Durst? Well, I'm going to spoil it for you, unfortunately. You really should have watched it.
But I did. I immediately saw sort of shades of the Bob Durst case in Raymond Reddington, Robert Fulton's case. So just a bit of background. Bob Durst, he was suspected of three murders. The first was his wife, who, like Sharon, her body has never been found. The second was his neighbour. And the third was his best friend. Her name was Susan Berman.
So Susan Berman was found dead in her Beverly Hills home. She was shot in the back of the head. Police found her because they received a handwritten tip-off saying that there was a body, or actually a cadaver, at her address. And it was never clear throughout their entire investigation who had sent this note.
Now, in that documentary, the filmmakers, they are able to find another handwritten letter that Bob Durst has written to his friend Susan Berman. They present him with this letter that they found of his and compare it to the letter that police received with the tip-off, the handwriting is a perfect match. They capture this moment on camera. It's absolutely riveting. And he is clearly rattled.
And eventually it is this letter, this tip-off that he wrote, that's what leads to him being arrested and then convicted of Susan Berman's murder. But what I think is so similar about both of these cases is there's just sort of... smoking gun and it's through a means that actually both perpetrators thought would absolve them or thought would enable them to control what investigators were doing.
I think the other thing that I see as such a parallel in these cases is Both Bob Durst and Raymond Reddington, Robert Fulton, there's like an element of enjoyment in these moves, like changing your name to a fictitious kind of anti-hero character. And a sort of participation in popular culture, like Bob Durst couldn't resist the temptation to be a part of this HBO documentary.
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Chapter 4: What connections exist between the TV show The Blacklist and Sharon's case?
They also... confessed to what they'd done and they never mentioned Sharon Fulton. So we can only assume the jury just didn't buy that. And the fact that his kids have suspected and have said that, you know, they felt that there wasn't something right, they felt the control as well, and that they ultimately do believe that their father is the one that's responsible.
Yeah, I think it just shows that they didn't have a plausible alternative their whole lives to believe in either.
With the minds of children at the time, they're relying on their father as the provider. They don't know what's happened to mum, but there would have been a certain amount of conditioning which wasn't their fault because kids only want what's best. They want a future that's safe. I would suspect the very young ages be thinking, gee, maybe dad murdered her.
That terrible, I guess, perspective or outcome would not have been strong in their minds until maybe they got older. I know that Heath had talked about how he carried guilt. He was only three years old at the time, but he does have strong memories. of what happened and the loss and the fact that mum was missing.
But kids do tend to think about the positive and they're trying to get through things day by day. Yeah, I mean, they would have been keenly feeling the loss as the days and weeks and months went past, but if dad didn't want to talk about it, there was no sort of evidence that there was a sort of sit down and talk about this kind of thing. In fact... seeing that dad was trying to move on.
And that does create the impression in the minds of the kids that mum did leave them. That's why he doesn't want to talk about it because he can't deal with the reality that mum didn't want to be with us. We didn't hear in the trial that level of detail about what the kids were going through. So this is speculation, but we do know that they keenly felt the loss.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think David, you're spot on there with just how the children would have been thinking about this. You know, they just want to continue living their lives. They want to be somewhere safe. They want to be cared for.
And, you know, if Robert Fulton, Raymond Reddington is providing that for them and, you know, is kind of steering them away from this conversation, you can see how they would end up in this position. David, what sentence was handed down to him?
So it was a life term with a minimum of 20 years. The sentencing comments were interesting. They focused on domestic violence. This was an extreme act of domestic violence. I mean, the sentencing was brought on relatively quickly because, as the prosecutor said when Raymond Reddington was found guilty, he said it would be a perversion of justice if he can avoid sentence by dying.
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