PLUM FORGOTTEN

I want to talk about a man today. A man whose awful fate has almost been forgotten in the headlines of a current court case. His name is Patrick Plumbe. I should say his name was Patrick Plumbe because he is dead.
He apparently died in a car accident when his car crashed into a tree not far from his home in Glenrowan back in 2005 and caught fire. Only two days after he got married. That was the original story. Even though his car was travelling at only 30 kilometers an hour and there were no skid marks.

And that’s how the story would have stayed if his new bride Margaret Vandergulik hadn’t eventually confessed to her lover Tony Calandro that she killed him in an argument.

Her original story –and it changed a lot – was that they’d argued. Plumbe had hit her with a chair. She pushed him away and he hit his head on the floor.

This, only a day after he changed his will leaving everything to her. Did the new bride call for an ambulance? No. Call Police. No? She instead got her son Michael to help stage the accident to cover her tracks.

After her pillow talk confession Calandro went to Police. The body was exhumed. Plumbe had a fractured skull that couldn’t have happened in the accident.

But it gets worse. The husband wasn’t dead when placed in the car. And Vandergulik, a nurse, would have known that. She and her son burnt him alive. For money. A pathologist found soot in Patrick Plumbe’s lungs. The poor bastard was breathing his last.

But this heartless, cunning bitch, wasn’t finished. When she thought her lover was going to give her up she told police Calandro had threatened her. Predicted she’d be shot or killed ‘in the next few weeks’. And then calmly shot herself in the arm to back up her story.

Both Vandergulik and her son were charged with murder. Her response:  ‘Would I be that effing stupid to kill my husband two days after marrying him and the day after signing the wills”. Not that stupid. Just that brazen.

Yesterday this scheming creature ended her murder trial by pleading guilty to manslaughter. And the murder charge against her son was dropped. In my opinion Justice died as surely as Patrick Plumbe did. The court should not have accepted a plea bargain.

This calculating, money-grubbing duo burnt a man alive. One will now get  a lesser jail sentence for pleading guilty and the other walks free.

And she had the unmitigated gall to apply for her bail to be continued. The court refused. It was the only correct decision all day.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008