Penguin Books Australia

Afterword

Why would you?

The criminal justice system looks at the motivations and psychology of the killers of Herman Rockefeller – it doesn't concern itself with the victim's state of mind.

This leaves the question: why would a wealthy, attractive man like Herman Rockefeller arrange a sexual liaison with people like Bernadette Denny and Mario Schembri?

After the killing, Denny and Schembri were pilloried in the media and on the Internet for being ugly, poor and from the wrong side of town. The contrast between the well-groomed, successful businessman with his millions, his large home and loving family, and the pensioners in Hadfield could not have been greater. It is exactly this contrast that might have aroused Herman Rockefeller's interest and drove him to make two visits to South Street to have sex with people he would never meet in his normal life.

Before Rockefeller's first visit to Denny and Schembri in early January 2010, he had no idea of what they looked like or knew anything about their circumstances. After that meeting, Rockefeller knew exactly what was being offered to him – no-frills sex on a mattress on the floor of a messy house with an overweight woman besieged by alcoholism, low self-esteem and family dysfunction and a taciturn, simple man as an audience. That he returned to the unit for a second liaison suggests Rockefeller got exactly what he wanted the first time. It also shows that for Rockefeller, having sex with strangers was not about attractiveness – it was about fulfilling an overwhelming need.

Why did Herman Rockefeller, with all that he had, have that need? Given the fatal consequences of his visit, the answer can only be inferred from his behaviour.

In the local media, Rockefeller was described as a 'swinger' with a double life. Was this the truth behind his behaviour?

Dr Curt Bergstrand is a Professor of Sociology at Bellarmine University in Kentucky, America, and an acknowledged expert on swinging. His definition of a 'swinger' is a person who practises recreational sex without emotional involvement, with people outside their marriage with the full consent and participation of their marital partner. The purpose of swinging, according to Dr Bergstrand, is to enhance the emotional and sexual relationship with one's partner. By this definition, Denny and Schembri are swingers but Herman Rockefeller was not.

Dr Bergstrand thinks that the participation of people in organised swingers' events, such as house parties, group holidays or themed balls, is not required to make them swingers. That definition is too narrow. He has found that many swingers never join clubs of this kind and others just visit them occasionally. With the rise of the Internet as a more convenient, and private, way to meet sexual partners, swingers' clubs are becoming less popular.

In Dr Bergstrand's view, modern swingers have a code they stick to. These include total honesty with a spouse about swinging, giving women the right to veto any sexual activity, openness in communication with the swinging partner, and not swinging as a single male. Even with the increased use of the Internet by swingers, Dr Bergstrand finds that most swingers are reluctant to break the rules.

Bruce Williams, the unofficial representative of swingers in Melbourne, doesn't think Herman Rockefeller was a swinger either. For 30 years Bruce has been organising swingers' parties, publishing swinging contact magazines, such as Vixsin, and writing articles on the etiquette of swinging. He worked with Dianne Toulson, who published the Australian Contacts Magazine, in which Herman Rockefeller placed his fatal ad. Bruce is certain that the 'real' swingers of Melbourne didn't know Herman at all and they certainly don't like his killing being mixed up with their 'lifestyle choices'.

According to Bruce, swinging is a lifestyle that is based on openness and revolves around organised events and parties. It is not a 'double life' or a sordid secret that a husband keeps from his wife, or the other way round. Swinging is done by couples, so single men are not welcome at parties unless they get permission. Rockefeller wasn't seen at any of Bruce's regular swinging events.

Adam, a Melbourne swinger under 40, disagrees with Bruce's definition of swinging. He finds friends to play with online whenever he wants to. He is a single and swings alone with no difficulties. His experience of Melbourne's swinging scene is that there really is no scene. Instead, hundreds of anonymous sexual encounters are arranged through the Internet and executed each day between consenting adults. This type of swinging has no accountability, isn't about lifestyle choices – it's simply about the physical act of sex.

David and Katherine, a Melbourne couple, share Adam's experience of swinging. They are in their 40s and feel that house parties and organised events are old-school swinging. They have met many others who have never been part of the 'scene'. These Internet swingers rely on the use of aliases and sites such as 'AdultFriendFinder' or 'Redhotpie' to meet or 'hook up' with others for sex. This swinging often involves single men or women rather than couples, and meetings are arranged in an ad hoc fashion. The benefit of this form of swinging is that there is no outside organisation; it is quick, discreet and the parties never have to exchange any personal information about each other if they don't want to. These hook-ups have a looser set of rules than traditional swinging. If Herman Rockefeller had used these sites, the swingers of Melbourne in Brian's scene wouldn't have ever met him. Rockefeller could have arranged his sexual liaisons silently over the Internet, without using one of his five mobile phones. The police investigating his death didn't find any evidence of Rockefeller using the sex sites – as a man in his 50s he seemed to prefer to use the sex papers to advertise.

Dr Bergstrand doesn't think that Herman Rockefeller was any sort of swinger at all. In the professor's opinion, because Rockefeller did not include his wife or his girlfriend in his search for sex, he was 'just a cheater'.

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Dr Janet Hall has her own theory about Herman Rockefeller's behaviour. As a clinical psychologist with over 30 years' experience working as a sex therapist in Melbourne, she sees a lot of men with 'double lives' in her inner-city practice. Dr Hall knows Rockefeller's 'type'. She has treated men who are extremely successful in finance and business, and who have a happy family and yet seek sex elsewhere. Dr Hall believes that men like Herman want anonymous sex for the escape it gives them from their tightly controlled lives. The sleaziness, the anonymity, the 'chase' for sex, the thrill of the hook-up, provides such men with a release and a rush of excitement missing from the other parts of their world. Dr Hall's opinion is that these men have no challenges left in the legitimate areas of their life and they need to break out of the oppressiveness of their class. She also thinks that a feeling of power, the idea of sex as conquest, is another motivator.

Dr Hall's view is that the compulsive aspects of Herman Rockefeller's behaviour on the night he was killed suggest that he had a sex addiction. She explains that no amount of rational explanation would have talked him out of driving to Denny's home despite the lack of time he had and the fact that his wife was at home waiting for him.

Dr Hall thinks that Herman Rockefeller, like the other men she has met with double lives, would have engaged in sexual liaisons because he craved excitement and had a sense of entitlement about having his sexual desires met. Men like Rockefeller often believe that their sexual lives with others makes them special, unique and interesting. Dr Hall finds that this leads to a compulsion to have more and more sexual encounters. She believes that Rockefeller would have been positively reinforced in having such a secret every time he had sex with a stranger.

Rockefeller was in some ways a typical sex addict, Dr Hall believes, because he was a rich man. Wealth, in her opinion, buys both privacy and favours and makes it easier to conduct a 'double life'. So, too, does frequent travel for business, and hobbies that involve hours away from home, such as Rockefeller's marathon training.

Sex addiction is a controversial psychiatric disorder. Some psychiatrists consider it an excuse for bad behaviour, a disguise for infidelity. Others believe it ought to be included in the forthcoming edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, along with other addictions, like gambling.

Patrick Carnes is a world-renowned proponent of the classification of sexual addiction, and to him the signs of sexual addiction are clear. Some of them include an inordinate amount of time spent in obtaining sex, being sexual, or recovering from sexual experience; a preoccupation with sexual behaviour and preparing for it; and frequently engaging in sex when expected to fulfil other occupational, academic, domestic, or social obligations. Carnes' research has shown that sex addicts often try to stop having sexual encounters but then cannot help going back for more.

Herman Rockefeller showed some of these signs. His frequent and long-term advertising for sex stopped for a time, only to return with vigour. His intelligence probably enabled him to juggle his addiction with his normal life with relatively few problems – until his visit to Hadfield. Sex addicts are not interested in their sexual partners as individuals; instead they represent a conquest, a compulsion satisfied. Because of this, Rockefeller probably didn't care what Bernadette Denny or Mario Schembri looked like.

Dr Marcus Squirrell has been treating men in Melbourne with sexual disorders for many years and he believes that sex addiction is a very real psychiatric disorder. Like Dr Hall, he thinks that Herman Rockefeller was acting like a sex addict because the night he was killed he had a hook-up at the forefront of his mind. He seized the opportunity to satisfy his need for sex, despite only having a limited amount of time to do so.

In Dr Squirrell's experience, addicts make the need for sex the organising principle of their time and will rearrange their other obligations to satisfy it. For a short time, sex addicts, like Herman Rockefeller, can let their guard down and be as base as they like – anonymously and with no consequences.

After such men get away with a secret sexual encounter, they pursue it again, chasing the rush such liaisons bring. Dr Squirrell finds that other obligations are forgotten or manipulated so that the compulsion can be satisfied. In this way, sexual encounter by sexual encounter, a double life is established. Despite the risks, the payoff for the sex addict is immense. For Rockefeller it was fatal.

The location of Bernadette Denny's townhouse, across the city from the areas where Herman Rockefeller was known and loved as a respectable member of society, would have added to its attraction. No one knew 'Andy Kingston' in Hadfield. No one had heard of him, met him through business, run into him at a school speech night or shaken his hand at a church service. Hadfield is another planet, a class away from the east Malvern streets where Herman Rockefeller lived.

His creation of aliases through the sexual contact magazines further helped Rockefeller distance his secret life from his real one. In Hadfield with strangers, Herman could, as 'Andy Kingston', be as rough and dirty, quick and demanding as he liked. 'Andy' was the anonymous visitor to Hadfield; 'Herman' was on his way home. Devastatingly, for those who loved him, he never arrived.