The Case Of John Walts

• Jake Gavan, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2020

Sophia Brown was an up-and-coming lawyer from a renowned law firm in Sydney, Australia, who since childhood has always held the dream of becoming a highly successful well-respected lawyer.
One sunny morning upon arrival at her DA’s office, she received an email from her firm’s founding partner requesting a meeting that afternoon. This left Sophia worried as there was no reason provided and she never had meetings with this level of management prior.

In the meeting, her worry soon subsided as she was praised for her hard work and awarded her first high-profile criminal case, prosecuting a famous actor by the name of John Walts. John had recently been arrested for the murder of his live-in housekeeper Marie Stoves whose body was found in a local creek and had two years prior had been investigated for the disappearance of his previous housekeeper. The police officer who was assigned to the case was named Lucas David who was a veteran in high profile murder cases.

Sophia and Lucas had just learned that John had been released on bail that morning due to a lack of evidence, in particular, no motive or murder scene; so they decided to head out and carry a second search of Johns property.

When they arrived, the door was wide open yet John was nowhere to be found, so they posted the search warrant on the door and entered. They searched every room including the roof space but no new evidence was found so they decided to leave the property. As they were leaving, they heard the faint sound of an alarm clock, so, they decided to find out where it was coming from.

The sound was coming from behind some clothes hanging inside a walk-in wardrobe. When they slid the clothes aside, they found a door leading to a basement. They proceeded down the stairs and then realised that they found the murder scene as the stairway was covered in blood, they proceeded into the room below and found a drug lab. As soon as they found this, Lucas called for backup and forensic scientists. Lucas and Sophia then began to gather evidence and take photographs of the crime scene, whilst doing so, Sophia tripped on a security tripwire which instantly set off an alarm, shortly after, they heard somebody running through the house followed by a thumping on the basement door and when they looked up, they found themselves staring into the barrel of a shotgun held by John while the police backup could be heard pulling into the driveway with their sirens blaring.