Night stalker: Terror in a small town

On Australia Day 1996, 18-year-old Sarah Spiers left Club Bayview in Claremont’s popular nightlife strip. She walked to a nearby phone box and called a cab. By the time it arrived just minutes later, she was not there. Sarah was never seen alive again. Her disappearance marked the start of Australia’s longest running and most expensive police investigation.

Five months later, another young woman, Jane Rimmer, disappeared. The circumstances were strikingly similar. Jane had been out with friends in Claremont and was last seen on CCTV talking to a man outside the Continental Hotel. Nobody knew what happened next. Her body was discovered by chance in bushland south of Perth. Police had no idea who the culprit was, but the discovery of a body presented forensic opportunities.

Then, in March 1997, Ciara Glennon, a 27-year-old lawyer, disappeared. She too had been out with friends at the Continental Hotel. After leaving the pub, she walked down Stirling Highway, presumably looking for a ride home. A witness spotted a car stop next to her and Ciara leant in the window to talk to the driver. When the witness looked back, the car and Ciara had gone. The discovery of her body 17 days later confirmed what everybody feared – a serial killer was on the loose in Perth.

Huge resources were poured into the case. At its peak, several hundred police officers were assigned to the investigation. Thousands of people who were in Claremont on the nights the women disappeared were interviewed. But the investigation turned up nothing. Then, the police had a breakthrough. They homed in on a man who had been driving around Claremont at night, often passing the same women dozens of times. His name was Lance Williams. He became the prime suspect and was under police surveillance for years. But by 2004, the police still didn’t have the evidence to charge him.

The case appeared to have gone cold. To try and uncover new leads, a team of independent experts conducted a review. One of their recommendations was to pursue new forensic opportunities. Back in the 90s, when the crimes occurred, DNA testing was in its infancy, and it was discovered that material from under the fingernails of Ciara Glennon had never been tested. The samples were considered too small at the time and were put in storage. In 2009, the fingernails were sent to the UK, at the time a world leader in DNA technology. There was a result. The police now had the DNA of profile of the killer. They discovered it matched the DNA profile from the perpetrator of a brutal rape in Karrakatta Cemetery in 1995, a year before Sarah went missing. But that crime remained unsolved, and the police stilled didn’t have a name.

The police began examining forensic material held in storage from previous crimes in Perth which could possibly be related. A massive task. Then, in 2016, an item of clothing from a sexual assault in Huntingdale in 1988 was sent for testing. It produced another match. But still no name.

The police looked into the Huntingdale case and discovered a disturbing pattern. There had been a series of over 20 attacks and ‘peeping Tom’ incidents in the area in the late 80s by the ‘Huntingdale Prowler’. In 2016, the police re-examined all the evidence from these attacks and discovered a set of fingerprints had been left behind on a sliding door. They conducted a manual search of their database and discovered that this person had a previous conviction for common assault on a nurse at Hollywood Hospital in 1990. The police finally had a name. It was Bradley Robert Edwards.

Edwards was arrested during a dawn raid on his home in Kewdale. Under interview he denied ever having been to Claremont. Yet the evidentiary DNA tests confirmed what police already suspected. He was the Claremont serial killer.

After Edwards’ arrest, it was discovered that he worked for Telstra when the women were abducted, and he had access to a work vehicle. That vehicle was tracked down and fibres discovered in it matched fibres found in the hair of Jane Rimmer.

Edwards’ trial began in 2019. This was a case which attracted extraordinary media interest and to ensure the trail was fair, it was judge only. The defence argued was that there had been contamination of DNA evidence and that although Edwards had committed the rape at Karrakatta Cemetery, he had not killed Ciara Glennon. Edwards did not gave evidence.

Justice Hall found Edwards guilty of the murders of Jane and Ciara but, as Sarah’s body has never been found, could not find him guilty of her murder. The search for Sarah goes on.