Loophole that helped evil bully



This was published 10 years ago

Loophole that helped evil bully

There's no place among us for James Ramage, now free after serving his time for strangling his wife.

By John Silvester

IMAGINE grabbing a large jar from your pantry only to find it won't open. You apply all your strength but it stubbornly refuses to move. So you try again, squeezing for 10, 20 and finally 40 seconds, then it gives way.

Your arms ache and your wrists hurt, but then there is fleeting satisfaction over a minor victory.

James Ramage leaves Beechworth Prison yesterday.

James Ramage leaves Beechworth Prison yesterday.Credit:Justin McManus

Now imagine using the same strength while having those hands around someone's throat - a person flailing against you, fighting for life.

That is what you have to do to strangle someone. It takes a particularly determined, strong and manic person to kill with bare hands, holding that grip for a minimum of 40 seconds but usually for more than three minutes.

When drug dealer and body builder Attila Erdei strangled a man in 1992 over a $60,000 debt, he was later recorded complaining: ''My hands, they hurt for three days.''

Which brings us to the case of James (Jamie to his handful of friends) Ramage, a successful businessman who murdered his wife Julie by strangling her in the family room of their Balwyn home.

For the sake of accuracy we should point out that his criminal record shows he was acquitted of murder and found guilty of manslaughter. But make no mistake, the law should have recognised it was murder - in its most evil form.

Ramage exploited a legal loophole (since closed) that saved him from a longer murder sentence.

Domestic violence - such a sanitised term - involves a family member bullying and beating a victim, usually a wife or child.


The offender usually claims to have ''lost control'' or to have ''anger management issues''. Of course, these uncontrollable rages never seem to surface when facing an opponent they cannot physically dominate. Never do they ''flip out'' when confronted by bikies or coppers or bouncers - kids and mothers are more their speed.

We often see family violence as an underclass problem and certainly not something involving the latte drinkers of The Age. The sad truth is that it is the dirty little secret of every Melbourne suburb. You probably know a wife-beater - you just choose to ignore the signs.

From the outside the Ramages had the picture-postcard life. She was blonde and pretty, he was ruggedly handsome. Their kids went to prestigious private schools and they lived in a double-storey in Balwyn. She rode horses on weekends and he enjoyed collecting wine and driving his Jaguar.

But behind the facade he dominated every facet of her life. He picked her clothes, told her how to wear her hair and sabotaged her plans to complete a tertiary degree. By any definition he was a bully, a bastard and an emotional pygmy.

Even when their two kids were still at kindergarten there were signs that Julie Ramage was an assault victim. Twice she turned up with bruises that make-up and dark glasses couldn't conceal.

Finally she asked a friend for the name of a plastic surgeon, confiding that a head-butt from her husband had left her with a broken nose and blackened eyes.

Yet she stayed. ''Jamie had a financial hold over her,'' the friend said. Once she summoned the courage to leave but relented when he persuaded her he could change.

However, after further emotional and physical abuse she picked her moment and in June 2003 when Jamie was overseas on a business trip she moved to a rented house in Toorak.

Friends and family noticed the changes in her almost immediately. Her confidence flooded back, she started to socialise and, most importantly, began to laugh again.

Jamie Ramage tried to woo her back. He tried meditation, sent her flowers, opened up to counsellors and renovated the home.

But she knew he couldn't change. In her farewell letter she wrote: ''I know you would really try to do anything to keep us together but that is not the point because it's what is truly in your heart that matters and I know that you can't help yourself and the real you bubbles to the surface and I don't like that person.''

She had left him - physically and emotionally - and about a month later started to see another man. Julie Ramage knew her husband well so she chose a public event - a Scotch College football game - to break the news to him. She knew he would control himself if there were witnesses.

Friends and family say she was wary of being left alone with him so it was a surprise when she agreed to meet him at the partially renovated Balwyn home at lunchtime two days later. Almost certainly she expected the builder to be there but Ramage had given him the rest of the day off.

Ramage would claim in a series of self-serving statements that as he showed her how he had patched the house and wanted to patch their relationship, his estranged wife mocked him. ''You don't get it, do you? I'm over you. I should have left you 10 years ago,'' was his version of what was said.

When he asked about their daughter, he claimed she said, ''It's none of your f---ing business.'' She then allegedly denigrated him sexually until he lost control and punched her hard enough to leave his hand swollen and red.

''As she stood up I … I stood up and hit her and then I just wanted it to stop and that's when I strangled her and you don't know how much I wish I could change that,'' he said.

His version of events beggars belief. She was 172 centimetres and 67 kilos and he was a former rugby player of 185 centimetres and 95 kilos, around the same weight as heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. She was terrified of the man who had beaten, intimidated and head-butted her. And yet he claimed she baited him until he lost control.

Rather than react with remorse when he came out of his red fog, he cleaned the house of clues and immediately began building an alibi on the run.

He put the body in his Jag's boot, first placing her on a sheet to minimise any DNA contamination. He then drove her Mini to the rear car park of Colombo's, a pizza restaurant in Whitehorse Road, before walking the 700 metres home.

He grabbed a shovel and drove to Kinglake where he dug two shallow holes in the bush, leaving the body in one and his compromised clothing, towels, sheets and her handbag containing $51.15, phone, licence and a bank cheque for $194 in the other. He left, bought petrol and tried to conceal any forensic evidence by washing the Jag at a Diamond Creek service station.

That afternoon he coolly checked a piece of imported granite ordered for the kitchen renovations from a firm in Reservoir. He then went home, washed his second set of clothes and had a bath.

Ramage later ''confessed'' to police - leaving open the claim he was provoked by a woman he had beaten repeatedly. The jury bought it and returned a verdict of not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter. (The government later changed the law so cockroaches like Ramage could no longer slip through that legal crack.)

In sentencing Ramage on December 9, 2004, Justice Robert Osborn of the Supreme Court used eloquent judge-speak to state the obvious. The law, as it stood, was a crock.

''I, of course, must apply the current law whatever view I may hold as to the desirability of change to it,'' he said.

He also found that, as always, Ramage was motivated by pure self-interest.

''I have no doubt that you feel regret for your actions and the consequential disintegration of your former way of life, but I am not persuaded you have felt or expressed genuine remorse for the brutal killing of your wife.''

He sentenced Ramage to 11 years with a minimum of eight.

Now that time is up and the Parole Board authorised yesterday's release. And so they should. He has been a model prisoner who is unlikely to reoffend.

They are bound by the letter of the law, but we are not.

James Stuart Ramage should be shunned like a rabid dog. Julie's family and friends should not have to live with the risk of seeing him again. If there is one shred of decency in his rancid soul he should move interstate and live the rest of his life in anonymity. He deserves a chance to rebuild his life - but not with us.


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