PRISON SHOWDOWN WITH ROBERTA WILLIAMS
The first time I met her was on an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon in the Visitor Centre. I had fought very long and very hard to have Shannyn and Sarah visit with me alone—completely free from interference from my ex-husband or anyone else. Those precious hours together were almost at the spiritual centre of my life; times when I could just be Mummy and attempt to nourish the strained bond with my girls. The Visitor Centre was a sacred escape hatch. Then Roberta turned up. I was sitting outside in the sun with Shannyn and Sarah when Roberta sauntered past with her own daughter in tow. Her gorgeous little girl had her hair in braids and someone mentioned how nice they looked. “Yeah, f--king oath. It’d wanna look good— that shit cost me $1,700,” Roberta bragged in a loud hacksaw of a voice.
My girls looked at me with a mixture of alarm and confusion but Roberta just continued spouting obscenities like she was on the set of a hip-hop video shoot. “The f--king dog motherf--kers have got me down in the slot because they’re so f--king worried about what might happen if they put me on the compound. F--king stupid c---s have got no f--king idea ...”
By now the girls were completely shocked by the angry, fetid invective that poured out of Roberta’s mean little sewage pipe of a mouth. So was I. “Come on, girls, let’s go inside for a while,” I said, taking them each by the hand and ushering them into the Visitor Centre building. “Don’t worry about that lady, she’s silly. I think she’s a little bit angry to be honest and doesn’t really understand what she’s saying.”
Internally, I was fuming but I kept a calm and happy face on for the rest of the girls’ visit. An hour or so later Roberta and I were locked in a holding cell together, waiting to be stripsearched and returned to our units. “You must be Roberta Williams,” I said flatly.
“Yeah, you probably knew that though, eh?” she said, clearly delighted by her C-list status.
“No, I didn’t know that,” I said. “I was just guessing. But since we’re acquainted now, let me tell you that after the language you used in front of my little girls, my ex-husband will probably stop visits. He will stop me from seeing my children because they will go back and tell him what you were like with your ‘f--king c--t’ this and your ‘dog motherf--ker’ that.”
“I’m ... I’m f--kin’ Roberta Williams!” was all she could manage in response. “Well, I’m Kerry Tucker!” I explained. “So? I was married to Carl Williams!” “I was married to Colin Tucker!” “Who the f--k cares?” “That’s my point exactly, sweetheart. Now, if you ever do that again in the Visitor Centre, I’m going to let everyone on the compound know that you have just risked their visits with their children. You will become an endangered species overnight and you will never see the light of day for the entire time you are here. Do you need me to go over that?”
I had a huge heart for the run-of-the-mill, overlooked, traumatised, abused and forgotten drug addicts who no-one gave a thought to. The likes of Roberta Williams? I had her in my crosshairs right from the word go. Her notoriety didn’t stir any feelings of respect in me.
Eventually, Roberta was moved out of Isolation and onto the compound but she was far from the hard-as-nails gangster’s moll
you’d have expected. When she wasn’t curled up in a ball crying, she was whining or demanding extra attention because, y’know, she was Carl Williams’ ex-wife. She even had the audacity to beg me for help. “Kerry, I’ve got to be transferred to Tarrengower,” she’d sob. “You’ve gotta help me. I’m not coping.”
“No, I don’t actually,” I was pleased to inform her.
Although I had made a solemn vow to help every woman I could in DPFC, there were some exceptions to the rule and Roberta was at the top of the list at that time. I outright refused to render her any assistance whatsoever— such was the anger I felt at the slightest hint of losing contact with my girls. The 300-odd women in DPFC shared an iron-clad understanding about the Visitor Centre. It was hallowed ground where any kind of bad behaviour— swearing or even the slightest negative vibes— was strictly forbidden. It was a refuge where prisoners could concentrate on trying to be Mum for a few precious hours a week. By arrogantly putting that all at risk, Roberta had placed herself outside the circle of trust and privilege.
It wasn’t that I had a vendetta against her, it’s just that her demands for attention paled alongside the genuine needs of other women. I was in Medical one morning to visit with a young girl who’d been raped the night before she was brought into prison, and found Roberta sitting at the front door crying. “It’s harder for me. I’m Carl Williams’ wife!” she sobbed. “Ex-wife, sweetheart,” I reminded her. Eventually, Roberta felt so threatened by her own celebrity she decided to get herself a minder. Amanda was a six-foot-tall, thin, ageing prostitute from the mean streets of St Kilda. She was known for wearing rollerskates and tiny little shorts as she glided up and down the red-light pavements selling drugs. We called her Deals on Wheels, which she thought was fantastic. Roberta ended up in the same unit as Amanda and one day it appeared they’d become Siamese twins. Roberta refused to go anywhere without her.
“Amanda, what are you doing following her around?” I asked one day.
“She needs a shadow, Kerry,” Amanda said matter-of-factly.
“No, she doesn’t! No one gives a stuff about her. Tell her to f--k off.”
Then the truth came out. Amanda revealed that Roberta—the influential ex-wife of a multi-millionaire mega-gangster—had promised to buy her a beautiful house the minute she was released, only if she served as Roberta’s private bodyguard for the remainder of her sentence. I had never heard such nonsense before. “Um, Amanda—think about it!’ I said. “She’s in here on credit-card fraud.” “Yeah, so?” “It’s a fair indicator that she doesn’t have any money. You’re not getting a house.”
Six months later Roberta was released from DPFC and a year or so after that the rest of Australia was spellbound by actress Kat Stewart’s portrayal of her in Underbelly. If I’d had anything to do with it, Kat would have won the Gold Logie.
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“I had her in my crosshairs right from the word go” —Kerry Tucker