Catching the Claremont killer: Why no body means no justice for one family | Australian Story

[Music] when bradley robert edwards was arrested in december 2016 it really came out of the blue he probably thought he'd gotten away with it that nobody was going to get him for these crimes [Music] i never thought they'd find anybody you know it had been going on for so long and i just thought it was a lost cause really i guess i've always had a gut feeling that he would eventually be arrested because forensics were getting better and the police were very determined to to get an end result one of the senior officers in this investigation said to me the answer to this particular investigation is in a box somewhere in the wa police force and so it turned out to be it took a new generation of detectives to come along who understood forensics they understood the power of it who went back to all the old material and an avalanche opened up before them the police had caught up with him because really science had caught up with him it was the dna that got police to bradley robert edward's door it was the dna that got him into court in 2019 for the trial [Music] [Music] what we've just witnessed is a saga that started back in the 1980s and the significance of it you can't underestimate it that was the massive amount of interest massive amount of human resources and a massive amount of human misery incredible i mean it was it was an extraordinary thing to witness it was profoundly shocking that three young women who were going out enjoying themselves of an evening could just suddenly vanish crimes such as these inflict unforeseeable collateral damage they take their toll physically emotionally and spiritually on those left behind the clermont case began back in 1996 with the disappearance of 18 year old sarah spears her body has never been found sarah was a bubbly girl that whenever she walked into the room she had an aura about her that made people feel good sarah's been missing since she went dancing at a clermont nightclub on friday night her distraught father don a shearing contractor and sarah's mother carol have come up from darkin in the southwest to help the search we're very close and it is very much out of character and that's what makes it so concerning i sat in the front lounge just waiting for her to to walk in and as if nothing had happened but deep inside i knew that it was more i effectively cried myself to sleep for 12 months when sarah first went missing every night i just went to bed and cried myself to sleep so i'm not i'm not ashamed to say that i cry so four and a half months after sarah spears was last seen jane rimmer also went missing from claremont she was only 23. she was a lovely lovely little girl very bubbly and she was just a delight to be around the police came round on the tuesday afternoon to mum and dad's and said that they think that jane had gone in a similar fashion to sarah spears and we said oh no that would never happen you know jane's really feisty and she'd be able to fight off an attacker or whatever like that and then obviously we started getting married and then we made posters and put them out [Music] police identified the body as that of jane rimmer very quickly but they won't say how the the body was um uh concealed in dense bush was it buried no the body had not been buried there had been an attempt to conceal the body i mean you wonder when it happens why was it my daughter that no i mean which is not a very nice thing to say but you naturally think that [Music] when they found jane the police came round and [Music] i could see straight away that it was not good news trevor was not very well anyway and i think this was just the final straw they were just devastated and that devastation never left my father's face he was always like looking tortured and devastated until the day died immediately after jane rimmer disappeared police set up a task force known as macro to investigate the disappearance of the two women when a third young woman went missing in march the following year it was pretty clear that they were dealing with a serial killer kira elish glennon was celebrating st patrick's day with friends at the popular continental hotel she left alone just after midnight telling friends she was heading straight home kira glennon was at university at the same time as i was and i know a lot of the same people that knew her i didn't know her myself they've told me what a fun-loving person she was how she was very serious about her career i would not want any mother or any family to go through the pain and anguish and sheer heartbreak that dennis denise and i are experiencing i saw mrs clennan on tv when cura went missing and i knew the torment that she was going through and that did rip me apart tony what have you got for us what's the latest a preliminary investigation the scene reveals a body to be that of a female that appears to be that of kyra glennon there were similarities in the ways that jane rimmer and kyra glennon had been disposed of jane rimmel was left in an area more than 40 kilometres south of perth hiro glennon was left in an area more than 40 kilometers north of perth they both had neck injuries and the forensic pathologist said that the neck injuries were caused by sharp force instruments which we took to mean a knife [Music] amid growing fears the killer would strike again soon a breakthrough macro task force detectives swooping on a suspect at three o'clock sunday morning as he prowled around clermont streets in his car lance williams was a prime suspect in the eyes of the police they were desperate for somebody to look at for these crimes and he definitely put his head up over the parapet he was driving around in the area and he was exhibiting very strange sexually motivated behavior are you the serial killer no are you innocent yes how has this surveillance affected you um it's been very distressing i mean my family i actually knew of lance when he missed because one of my friends was his cousin i'd say uh the police still you know harassing lights and she'd go oh yeah but he'd never do anything like that you know uh he just he was just trying to protect women or warn them and i thought well that's pretty good and i i believed her the police became fixated on him and believed that he was the culprit and that sent the inquiry off the rails tonight's story takes us inside australia's longest running and most expensive murder investigation eight years ago three young women went missing from the wealthy perth suburb of claremont now pressure is building for a fresh approach [Music] people have to realize that serial killers don't walk around with horns sticking out of their head they look like normal people to you and i they look like your neighbor sixteen years ago when i appeared on australian story i suggested the unsolved claremont killings could do with an independent case review just the sort we used to do in the uk when i used to work with professor david barclay from what we've seen of what's been done it's been pretty good and pretty extensive the thing that hasn't been done i think is this this giant workshop where we all get together back in 2004 the police were very unhappy that australian story was running a program that didn't follow the official line the macro task force said that they didn't need any outside input that they'd done 10 external reviews already but soon after that program went to air the police announced that they were basically going to implement the ideas put forward on that program these five experts from australia and overseas may hold the key to solving the claremont serial killings their task to review every aspect of the macro investigation in the hope of unearthing fresh leads the review consists of two detective officers from australia including sram who led the review a psychological profiler from seattle and two forensic scientists of which i was the lead forensic scientist that was a turning point in the investigation it was a long slow turn but it was a turning point [Music] we had access to absolutely everything everything about the cases was presented to us we had conversations about fingernails and about the fact they were one of the best opportunities to get dna the other possibility was fibers there were a lot of strange fibers which did not originate from the clothing of the two girls we'd been led to believe that everything possible had been done in examining any clues any physical clues they had a different opinion to that they believed there were there were all sorts of leads that had not been pursued the psychological profile she was strongly of the opinion that this offender could not have done the murders as the first offenses one of the reasons for doing the review was to try and link the existing three cases to previous cases and to get more evidence from those cases which would identify an offender [Music] professor barclay was a very skilled forensic scientist and had a lot of experience in major case investigation and i thought he made some great recommendations that we did follow in wa police macro was disbanded and the special crime squad was formed but it was about four years before this team got a breakthrough about the middle of 2008 two sergeants decided to re-examine all the forensic evidence records they did discover that a lot of those 4 000 exhibits had not been tested and one item in particular really whacked them between the eyes that was that there was a scraping from the thumbnail of the left hand of keira glennon had been recovered at her autopsy put in a sealed sterile jar labelled and never ever tested there were two full dna profiles in that sample one was kiera glennon's and the other was an unknown male so for the first time in something like 11 or 12 years there was a direct connection between one of the victims and her murderer then investigators made another breakthrough they matched the dna with an unsolved rape that happened in caracada cemetery in 1995. a young woman had been plucked from the streets of claremont while she'd been walking home late at night the 17 year old was hooded bound and gagged and forced into a vehicle and driven to nearby karakata cemetery where she was brutally and repeatedly raped she was very lucky to survive she could have been the first of the murder victims they all just thought it would be a matter of weeks before they had the culprit because they figured that they'd already dna tested every likely suspect in perth but it was not to be no you have to understand how much material is held by the police force for all the crimes that have occurred over the past 30 or 40 years it takes a monumental effort to go back through all of those and hope that one of them and we're talking tens of thousands of exhibits does have a link [Music] by 2015 that again run out of ideas and my newspaper published a series of front page stories which really rocked the population back on its heels these stories revealed that the glendon murder and the caricature rape were connected by dna until then the public had never heard of any connection between kiera glennon and the carrick had a rape it was a total bombshell the special crime squad suddenly got a new injection of resources they got to a series of crimes that had happened in huntingdale which was nearly an hour from claremont back in the 1980s a young girl asleep in a parent's home in huntingdale woke to find a male person sitting on her back he had a hand around her mouth she managed to struggle free called out to her father who was in the bedroom next door the offender then jumped off the bed and ran out of the house but he left behind this unusual cream kimono embroidered on the back lined and well used so in november 2016 state ops discovered this silk kimono in an exhibits box took it out had it tested for dna and there was this eureka moment they discovered that it matched dna recovered from kyra glennon and from the karakata rape victim police believed the same perpetrator had committed the 1988 home invasion the 1995 rape and the murder of kiera glennon so while they had the dna of somebody they still didn't know who it was so they started to investigate other crimes similar crimes that had occurred in huntingdale in 1988. [Music] they discovered one where a man in a woman's 90 had opened a sliding door and four unidentified fingerprints had been recovered from that door the police thought that the crime from which the fingerprints were recovered and the kimono attack were by the same man [Music] they found that those fingerprints matched a man named bradley robert edwards and the reason he was on the database was because of a crime that he had committed in 1990 edwards was a telstra technician who'd come to work on the phone lines at hollywood hospital and he attacked a social worker who was sitting at her desk and gagged her and dragged her across the room [Music] she kicked as hard as she could all of a sudden he just let her go and said sorry sorry he went to court and i was given probation after he pleaded guilty to assault he managed to keep his job at telstra and not only that he actually got a promotion uh later on so they had a name but they didn't know whether his dna matched the kimono which in turn matched the kiera glenn murder and the karakata rape and the only way to do that was to obtain his dna [Music] the investigation then focused on undercover officers following bradley edwards and in fact they went into a movie theater [Music] and sat behind him in a movie theater and he drank from a bottle of sprite when he left the movie theater he left the bottle of sprite behind and the undercover officers took that and then were able to get dna which proved that they were dealing with the same person it was very very clever police work that that that finally put all those things together and tracked him down [Music] it's taken 20 years but police say the hunt for the claremont serial killer is finally over with a suspect tonight behind bars the news of an arrest in the clermont murders was it hit the town like a thunderbolt it was it was incredible i mean people are actually weeping we never give up it was such a shock when we you know heard that he'd been arrested but a happy shock i guess if you could call it that these crimes shocked the west australian public it was actually a time of mixed emotions for me it felt really good it felt to me like a highlight of my career although we had a long way to run at that stage we'd made an arrest but we had to go to trial and get a conviction we got to see the arrest video in court and edwards was there kneeling on the floor being incredulous saying he couldn't believe why they were there what are you talking about by the time we see the record of interview at the police station he's looking a little bit more together but he still is a man denying everything that the detectives are saying about him the detective said we're interested in talking to you about these murders we want to know why your dna is associated with a rape at karakata a home invasion at huntingdale and the murder of kiera glennon even when they produced his dna in front of him he was still in denial and they left edwards in the room and you could see sort of the weight of the world coming down on edward's shoulders one of the things that caused the greatest shock was how ordinary this bloke was he had a good job he had won community awards for his work with the local sports club played in a football team he was living among us and in plain sight he sort of comes across as a bit of a nerd a bit of a geek a bit of a loner i would guess that the reason why he didn't commit any offences as far as we know after kiera glennon is either that he formed a stable relationship or kiera frightened him so much that he decided that he nothing would persuade him to do that again it took years to get to trial and in that time they went back to the physical evidence and discovered all sorts of things that had never been investigated crucial fibres from edwards's car and from the clothing he wore as a telstra technician were found on both jane rimmer and kiera glennon's bodies and also on the clothing of the rape victim because there was no dna associated with jane rimmer's body no foreign dna it was the fibres that helped link edwards to that murder there has been a dramatic development in the clermont serial killer case with accused murderer bradley edwards pleading guilty to attacks on two women all the way along he'd been adamant that he was not guilty of the eight charges against him in about a month before the trial edwards pleaded guilty to the charges against him relating to the carracato rape and to the woman in huntingdon the whole courtroom was just astounded when he pleaded guilty to these charges it had been denying for for three years and that he had adamantly denied on the day of his arrest accused serial killer bradley robert edwards is about to stand trial in western australia's supreme court the parents of the three young women who disappeared from clermont in the 1990s were in court to hear more about what happened all those years ago after 20 years of questions and speculation it's hoped the six-month trial will deliver some answers and ultimately justice it's likely to be some months before we know whether edwards himself will give evidence the first time i cited edwards was when he appeared in court he never ever through the duration of the hearings look back at the victims or their families not once [Music] he had his face like turned you know um conveniently that way and all of us were like here he never spoke never went in the witness box once never spoke about anything once he just sat there and drilled with a pencil and took no notice not too much notice of what was actually happening in the court what was it like looking at him [Music] just hated the man for what he'd done to those girls [Music] i think it must have been incredibly painful for the families when the state prosecutor carmel barbagillo laid out exactly what the state's case was hamil barbagallo opened the prosecution's case by describing bradley edwards as an enigma of the dark a sexual deviant who preyed on vulnerable women they went into great detail about the terrible way the young women had died there were details about the final hours of sarah spears but because nobody had been found there was that lack of forensic evidence you were left with a feeling that it was going to be more difficult for the prosecution to prove that case if it wasn't for carmel and the task force i would have been in quite a bit of difficulty mentally because they are the ones that actually helped me get through i did go to a counsellor but i found i was getting no no relief at all after a 20-year police investigation and subsequent seven-month supreme court trial we'll finally get a verdict in this case that's hung over perth for decades on the day of the verdict the crowds outside the district court were just incredible they'd waited over 20 years to hear the judge deliver this verdict and people didn't want to miss a single word stand up please mr edwards on count six that on or about the 27th of january 1996 at clermont and elsewhere you willfully murdered sarah ellen spears my verdict is that you are not guilty we knew that there was a chance that he would not get convicted on sarah because of the lack of evidence but in our hearts we knew that he was guilty the propensity evidence makes it more likely that the accused was the killer of miss spears but it cannot prove it beyond reasonable doubt of course we're disappointed but maybe if he was convicted for sarah maybe he could have had grounds for an appeal on count 7 that honor about the 9th of june 1996 at clermont and elsewhere you willfully murdered jane louise rimmer my verdict is that you are guilty on count eight that honor about the 15th of march 1997 at clermont and elsewhere you willfully murdered kira eilish glennon my verdict is that you are guilty you can sit down [Music] we were all very very relieved and happy that we got the result we wanted the conviction does make it a tiny bit easier knowing that he's going to get his just deserts that gave us great peace of mind that he was going to be put away and out of the community he'll never bother anyone again hey everyone i feel really good actually there was at one point i thought he was going to be not guilty but no we got the result we wanted and now we just have to keep working for the spears family and hope someone finds sarah our thoughts and prayers will continue for don and carol spears they too deserve justice especially they deserve to know where sarah is we had a great bond with the other victims and families the karakata victim is an amazing girl she gave us huge support all of those families gave carol and i extra support because they knew the predicament that we're in i also thought it would be difficult to get a conviction on the sarah spears matter it's very sad for the spears family and i know that the police have not given up on that yet and that case remains open you want closure and i guess that until the day that she is found there will never be closure there's probably not an hour of any day that passes that i don't think of sarah not a day not an hour [Music] this situation's been devastating on my family we've suffered it now for more than a third of our lives carol and i and it's not going to end it's not going to go away and we will live with this for the rest of our lives i feel that we've had part closure yes but i know that that torment will continue it doesn't matter how hard you try to forget it because we'll never forget it you know that was our lovely daughter and we'll never forget that never ever yeah it'll never be over i mean nothing will ever bring those girls back but yeah at least we can we know that he can't hurt anyone else we really enjoy going to see jane over the years [Music] that's beautiful cheers happy birthday darling happy birthday 31. [Music] i miss her you know i just think of children that she would have had and the life and it's just so sad that she never got to do that i'm just glad it's all over we can be a little bit happier that he's going to get what he deserves and i think things will get easier now [Music] [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 640,442

Keywords: news, abc, abc news, australia, Australian Story, Claremont, Claremont killer, Claremont serial killer, Claremont murders, Claremont killings, Jane Rimmer, Sarah Spiers, Ciara Glennon, women missing Perth, Bradley Robert Edwards, Bradley Edwards, unsolved murders, perth

Id: Ia8aQKoQwCA

Length: 31min 7sec (1867 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 16 2020