By COLLEEN EGAN
ANDREW Mallard has spoken up about the 12 years he spent behind bars for a murder he says he did not commit.
Mr Mallard, who was released from prison this week after a charge of wilfully murdering Mosman Park jeweller Pamela Lawrence was dropped, wept with relief and sadness as he spoke of his time in jail.
Now 43, he says he was under a lot of stress at the time of the 1994 murder, with mental-health problems and rampant marijuana use that made him act suspiciously and left him vulnerable to police manipulation.
Born in England, Mr Mallard was an extraordinarily tall teenager, with low self-esteem. He joined the army as a young man to impress his father, a long-time soldier with British forces, but hated the regimented life and was discharged with a sleeping disorder.
He slipped into a deep depression, exacerbated by heavy marijuana use. In a feeble attempt to escape Perth, he went to Kalgoorlie where he was caught stealing a motorcycle.
He spent two weeks in prison; the only time he served before the Lawrence murder.
After short stints in the eastern states and Britain, he had a nervous breakdown and went to live with his parents. He stopped smoking marijuana and spent a year under the care of a clinical psychologist.
But he moved back to Perth and before long started smoking pot again.
"I kept on going to job interviews and getting rejected," he said. "All my money was going on marijuana. It all went downhill. My flatmates asked me to move and I had nowhere to go."
In the month before the murder, Mr Mallard racked up a criminal record for petty theft and dishonesty.
He attached himself to a girl who lived in Mosman Park, around the corner from Lawrence's jewellery shop, and scored marijuana for her in exchange for a place to sleep.
In a condition that was later diagnosed as manic-phase bipolarity, Mr Mallard claimed his name was "Andre" and he was working undercover for Interpol.
"I was always trying to impress people by exaggerating or giving a false name," he said. "I wasn't in a fantasy world. I knew what was real. But I didn't want to deal with the reality that I was on the street, I had no money and I felt like a failure. I was trying to impress people and get them to like me."
Mr Mallard said the crime that brought him to the attention of police, for which he was in the lock-up the morning of the murder, was part of this cycle.
He pretended to be a drug squad detective and kicked in the door of the woman's former boyfriend's flat.
It resulted in him being assessed at Graylands Psychiatric Hospital, where detectives visited him about a week after the murder. As one of 136 suspects, he gave several alibis, but they all turned out to be things he'd done on different days.
Before long he was out of Graylands and straight into a police interview room, where a video-record button was never pressed. But detectives later claimed he confessed.
"I was just freaking out," he said. "I tried everything I could to convince them I was innocent and to answer every question. The detective said, `I know you're a cold-blooded killer'.
"He brought a photograph of Mrs Lawrence's bloody head and shoved it in my face. I felt awful, horrible. I can't comprehend how someone could do that to someone else."
The detective has denied showing the photograph.
Mr Mallard was released into the night and, unbeknown to him, befriended by an undercover cop. He didn't even think to get a lawyer.
"I was trying to survive with no food or money," he said. "I was thinking, `I'm a man. I can handle this'."
Brought in a second time, Mr Mallard did a short video interview "to clear my name" and thought the ordeal was over until a detective re-entered the room. "He said, `We think you did it. You're sick and you're blocking it out of your mind. You need help', " Mr Mallard said.
He was given a Legal Aid lawyer who had never worked on a murder trial. He asked for a QC, but the judge refused. He was convicted and sentenced to life in jail.
Mr Mallard coped with prison by drifting into a fantasy world where he believed he was the victim of a vast conspiracy. He gained a reputation for being mad, which he believes stopped him being picked on.
"I was frightened of being raped, of being killed," he said. "I just kept my head down and was polite. I didn't talk to anyone.
"By the time my appeals failed I believed I was a scapegoat for a huge organised crime conspiracy and that Casuarina Prison was a huge facility for brainwashing innocent people. I believed they were trying to brainwash me into believing I was a killer.
"I thought my cell was fitted with a camera and microphones, and that while I was asleep they would whisper in my ear to convince me I was guilty. I would point to the ceiling and say, `You won't get me, you bastards'. It made me look like a real nutter."
Mr Mallard was known for standing all day behind a solitary tree in the middle of the exercise yard and spending endless hours on intricate Celtic art. Records show he was disciplined for cutting the Ministry of Justice logo out of his towels "because he was innocent".
He said he was beaten up once and threatened with death at knifepoint.
"I believed that was part of the conspiracy as well, so I just told them to go ahead and do their worst," he said. "In hindsight that probably helped with my reputation, too."
Mr Mallard's deep paranoia led him to cancel visits with his family because he believed they were being threatened and manipulated by corrupt police. In early 1998, his beloved father died of cancer, but he thought the news was part of the conspiracy.
He did not go to the funeral and for the next two years continued writing to his father in the belief he was not dead.
NEXT WEEK: How Andrew Mallard and a support team fought to reopen his case.
. Colleen Egan has been investigating the Mallard case since 1998. During those years she has been a supporter of Mr Mallard's family and his legal team.
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