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A guide to the Claremont serial killings trial so far
Three years ago, West Australians woke to news few had seen coming, someone was arrested over the infamous Claremont serial killings. Here’s what the first 17 days of the trial revealed.
thewest.com.au
Days 1-8 (of 17)
John Flint
The West Australian
Sunday, 22 December 2019 5:00AM
Three years ago today, West Australians woke to news few had seen coming, but all had hoped for.
Finally, after two decades of waiting, someone had been arrested and charged over the Claremont serial killings.
This bolt from the blue, just three days before Christmas, had everyone clamouring to find out: who is Bradley Robert Edwards and what is his back story?
Today as the former Telstra technician begins his fourth year in custody, people know a a lot more about the 51-year-old who showed deviant sexual inclinations even as a boy growing up in Huntingdale.
What started out as a fascination with women’s underwear — stealing them from neighbours’ clotheslines — graduated to night-prowling the suburb and more risky behaviour such as break-ins and an assault on a sleeping girl before he turned 20. Two years later, he attempted to drag a woman into a toilet cubicle at Hollywood Hospital. At 26 he was a sadistic rapist, plucking his victim off a footpath in Claremont.
His escalating violent and predatory behaviour was an evolution to the most heinous of offender classifications; that of serial killer, the State contends.
Mr Edwards’ defence team, on the other hand, say his offending peaked at rape.
The first 17 days of the trial brought a deluge of new information on the case that has gripped the State. Here, The Sunday Times brings you a day-by-day snapshot of the evidence so far.
DAY 1: THE OPENING
The trial started with the accused re-iterating his pleas of not guilty to the murders of Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon.
It was then followed by the defence citing some 37 admissions. These undisputed facts included details of the Telstra-supplied vehicles he drove at the time of the offences.
It was then time for chief prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo to launch her opening submission, which set out in fascinating detail the State’s case against Mr Edwards. She spoke of the fear created by the killing spree, which she said was caused by an “enigma of the dark”.
“The State over the coming months will demystify that enigma.” she said. “The State will prove there was one killer, and that killer is Bradley Robert Edwards.”
With the families of the victims all present, she went through the tragic narrative of each victim’s disappearance and the “miraculous” discoveries of the bodies of Ms Rimmer and Ms Glennon, which would provide crucial clues.
The public learnt that both women had suffered big and jagged neck wounds, which had likely killed them. They also had “classic defensive wounds” to their forearms, indicating they had fought for their lives.
Ms Barbagallo also narrated Mr Edwards’ abduction and brutal rape of a 17-year-old female in Karrakatta Cemetery one year before Ms Spiers vanished in the same area, as well as his earlier brazen assault on a young woman as she slept in her bedroom, with her parents in the next room.
She explained how these offences were forensically tied to the Claremont murders.
DAY 2: THE DNA LINKS
The prosecutor continued her opening submission, explaining the nature of fibre and DNA evidence and its fundamental importance to the prosecution case.
She told how the painstaking cold-case investigation suddenly became very hot, culminating in detectives beating a path to Mr Edwards’ front door in Kewdale on December 22, 2016.
Just days earlier undercover police had pounced on a discarded a bottle of Sprite that Mr Edwards had been drinking from.
It was quickly tested and, according to Ms Barbagallo, matched samples from the Huntingdale and Karrakatta offences and, most crucially, DNA obtained from under Ms Glennon’s fingernails.
When she finished her long outline in the afternoon, Mr Edwards’ barrister Paul Yovich rose to summarise the defence’s approach. Although he did it in much less time — just 25 minutes — he said enough to dispel any notion that this would be plain-sailing for the State.
Foreshadowing what he claims are major weaknesses in the integrity of the key forensic evidence, he cited contamination of exhibits and inadequate processes at Pathwest.
He said 2017 tests on intimate swabs, taken from the bodies of Ms Glennon and Ms Rimmer, revealed they’ve subsequently been contaminated with the DNA of two Pathwest scientists.
The DNA of a third Pathwest scientist was also found when nail samples from Ms Rimmer were tested by the same lab. And testing on a branch taken from the site where Ms Rimmer’s body was dumped also showed up the DNA of the victim of a completely unrelated crime
DAY 3 :MARRIAGE COLLAPSE
The first witness in the marathon trial was Mr Edwards’ first wife, who gave evidence via video link from another part of the court complex. She was an important witness because the State suggested the collapse of the marriage could have been thecatalyst for murder.
But the woman, who can’t be named, said there was little acrimony, despite her leaving him for another man, who’d been lodging with them at 10 Fountain Way, Huntingdale. She eventually fled the marital home to live with the lodger, who she also fell pregnant to.
She had been Mr Edwards’ first lover and having met in 1989, they married in November 23, 1991. He bought her a horse soon after. But the relationship floundered in late 1994, when Mr Edwards began spending more time with his computer than with her.
“He wasn’t present in the marriage and it slowly deteriorated,” she said.
She described the eventual split as civil and said he continued to pay off her car loan after she moved out. They had sex one more time, but the next morning he gave her the impression the marriage had no future.
The matrimonial home was sold on March 2, 1997, less than two weeks before Ciara Glennon vanished.
Ms Barbagallo did ask about whether anything had happened the night before her then-boyfriend attacked a social worker at Hollywood Hospital. The witness said they had had an argument when she asked Mr Edwards if marriage was on the cards. Both had got upset, she said, but they hugged and made up afterwards.
Her cross-examination by defence barrister Paul Yovich cast doubt on the prosecution’s timeline of “emotional triggers” in the marriage breakdown that it claims correlated with the offences.
DAY 4: SECOND WIFE
The highly animated testimony of Mr Edwards’ second wife captivated the courtroom, but there were puzzled looks afterwards at what was teased, but not said.
She told the court she feared for her life towards the end of their relationship, but wasn’t asked why?
The witness, who can’t be named, also wasn’t asked what drove her to copy details of Mr Edwards’ bank statements into a secret notebook in 2014.
“I was terrified when I was writing this, so I was under a lot of pressure,” she told Ms Barbagallo.
The notebook entries were the subject of most of the questions put to her. They covered ATM withdrawals from October 1996 to 2000. They included two withdrawals from “Bay View ATM” in Claremont.
She had noted that one of her husband’s bank statements was missing. It covered a three-month period during which Ms Glennon vanished in Claremont.
The pair had met on April 1, 1997 (two weeks after Ms Glennon vanished) and were married on December 16, 2000. They eventually separated in 2015.
She recalled that while they’d been courting, Mr Edwards had told her about the Hollywood Hospital incident, describing it as a “brain snap”. “He said it was just an assault ... he said his first wife had cheated on him and he could not cope with it,” she recalled.
One of Mr Edwards’ closest friends testified that the accused was “drinking quite a bit” and appeared “depressed” after splitting from his first wife.
Paul Luff, 53, said he and Mr Edwards formed a “friendship that lasted a very long time” after they had started apprenticeships together at Telstra in 1986.
“It was a long time ago but I remember him being a bit broken up about (his marriage split),” Mr Luff said.
He’d been asked by Mr Edwards’ concerned parents to keep an eye on their son at the time.
A woman, who can’t be named, testified that she dated Mr Edwards from late December 1996 until April 1997.
The woman, who was 20 years his senior, said he never spoke with “anger or bitterness” about his first wife. She was upset when he broke up with her because she was “very fond” of him.
DAY 5: ‘WHAT THE HELL’
Murray Cook, 55, a former Telstra colleague and pool playing partner of Mr Edwards, recalled how the accused mysteriously failed to show up at a holiday house on the night he is said to have murdered Ms Glennon.
Mr Cook said he had a clear memory of seeing Mr Edwards on the mornings of both January 27, 1996 and March 16, 1997 — hours after he is alleged to have killed Ms Spiers and Ms Glennon.
But it was Mr Edwards’ absence from an arranged Friday night trip to a Dawesville holiday home, after an invitation from Mr Cook and his wife Brigita, which the prosecution homed in on.
Mr Cook’s memory was so clear because it was in the same month he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
“I told him what the problem is with my illness and (said) if you’re interested, come,” Mr Cook said. “And he said, ‘I’ll be there Friday’.”
But Mr Cook said after waiting all night, Mr Edwards failed to turn up until 11am the next day. “I said words to the effect of, ‘What the hell, you were supposed to be here’,” Mr Cook said.
“He said, ‘I was trying to reconcile with my wife’. I said, ‘Well, how did you go?’ and he just shook his head.”
Mrs Cook also remembered Mr Edwards’ late arrival.
Mrs Cook also kept meticulous diaries of the time, which also pinpointed an overtime day her husband had worked on January 27, 1996.
Mr Cook said he clearly remembered Mr Edwards being with him at Dumas House that morning.
Mr Edwards has admitted he also worked that day — the day after Ms Spiers had gone missing
DAY 6: ‘I WILL KILL YOU’
The other man in Bradley Edwards’ first marriage described how Mr Edwards once threatened to kill him in a phone call.
Speaking via video link from Britain, the witness, who can’t be named, gave candid evidence on the turbulent period, which included sex sessions with Mr Edwards’ wife, while living under his roof as a lodger.
Things didn’t get nasty between the two men until after she left her husband for the man, who had moved out of the Huntingdale address and into a rental property in Warnbro. At Warnbro, she fell pregnant to the man.
“He accused me of having an affair. I said to him, ‘I thought that was plain and clear to see’, and he said, ‘Oh, I will kill you’,” the man said.
“I said, ‘Well, you know where I live, you have my address’.”
Mr Edwards’ first wife had her pregnancy confirmed by a doctor on June 4, 1996. Shortly after, she phoned Mr Edwards to give him the news and let him know he wasn’t the father, which the State claims would have caused him emotional turmoil.
Jane Rimmer disappeared from Claremont on June 9, 1996.
The witness described an occasion at Huntingdale when the accused caught him kissing his wife.
“I said: ‘I’m gone ... I don’t fancy sleeping here another night knowing what he’s got in his room,” he said
What was in Mr Edwards’ room was not elaborated on.
Earlier in the day, much of the evidence centred on Telstra uniforms in the mid-1990s. Mr Edwards signed a receipt for delivery of two replacement navy blue “pinched pleat” Yakka shorts on November 2, 1995, and ordered trousers a few days later.
Prosecutors allege fibres consistent with coming from Telstra-issued shorts or pants were found on Ciara Glennon’s shirt and in her hair, Jane Rimmer’s hair and the shorts worn by the girl Mr Edwards raped in Karrakatta cemetery in 1995.
DAY 7: LATE-NIGHT ENCOUNTERS
The so-called “Telstra living witnesses” were introduced on this day. These are witnesses who reported unnerving, late-night encounters with a lone driver of a Telstra car at the height of summer 1996.
Jane Ouvaroff, Natalie Clements and Trilby Smith gave separate accounts of these encounters after nights out in Claremont in the days before Christmas 1996.
Sarah Spiers and Jane Rimmer had already been abducted and murdered by this time.
And as detailed by Ms Barbagallo in her opening last week, the “Telstra Living Witness Project”’ — originally just the “Living Witness Project” — was launched by police after Ciara Glennon then went missing in March 1997.
Ms Smith was hitch-hiking with a friend after struggling to get a taxi. She got in the back of a vehicle that stopped for them. She recalled it was full of cables and “electrical things”, and the driver was wide shouldered, dark to black hair, tanned skin. She only saw him from the back
She was “quite drunk” at the time and said her friend suddenly yanked her out of the back, but it was unclear why.
Ms Clements told the trial she and friend Rebecca Bushell thought a taxi was coming towards them. The vehicle was a white Commodore station wagon, with a shape on the roof. As it got closer and stopped for them, they realised it wasn’t a taxi but a Telstra vehicle with a ladder on the roof.
She’d seen the same vehicle twice earlier in the night doing laps outside the Ocean Beach Hotel.
“As we kept walking, it had come from behind us again (twice),” she said.
Ms Ouvaroff said in late 1996 or early 1997 she mistakenly jumped into the back of a Telstra station wagon that she had thought was a taxi. She got the driver to take her to a nearby park where she’d left her shoes just earlier.
Her male friends were still at the park and they joined her getting in the back of the vehicle, which took them to Shenton Park. She didn’t get a good look at the driver, who had dark, short hair. But she remembered he wasn’t chatty.
The most compelling testimony of the day was the survivor of the attack at Hollywood Hospital in 1990.
With Bradley Edwards sitting 10m across from her in the courtroom, the diminutive woman vividly explained how she was attacked from behind during a 10-second struggle with the accused, who’d tried to drag her backward into a toilet cubicle.
“I honestly thought I was going to die,” the 69-year-old-said. She was a social worker at the hospital where Mr Edwards was fixing the phone system.
Mr Edwards’ first move was to place a cloth over her mouth. She eventually fought him off and called security. Mr Edwards was convicted of assault and given two years’ probation. Incredibly, he was allowed to keep his job.
Later, psychologists Paul McEvoy and Lyn Millett both told the court how Mr Edwards told them of his emotional state at the time of the Hollywood attack.
He told them he felt pressured to marry, had been arguing with his girlfriend, and had argued the night before the attack
DAY 8: TAXI MISSED
The taxi driver who was supposed to pick up Sarah Spiers on the night she disappeared gave evidence.
Jaroslav Krupnik had agreed to pick up a fare from the corner of Stirling Highway and Stirling Street in Claremont.
It was about 2am, and it took him just moments from pressing the button on his on-board computer to reaching the intersection. But when he got there, there was no one in sight.
The trial of Mr Edwards has already heard Ms Spiers’ final call, made to Swan Taxis at 2.06am on January 27. She wanted to go to Mosman Park, just 4km away.
“I didn’t see anybody and I kept going,” Mr Krupnik said.
Alec Pannall may have been the last person, other than her killer, to see Ms Spiers alive. He told the court he saw a woman fitting her description on the other side of Stirling Road from the phone box she’d called for a cab. He was in a friend’s car after a night with friends at the Continental Hotel and Club Bay View.
“(My friends) made me aware of a young lady on the left-hand-side of the road,” he said.
“I turned to my left and on the side of the road was a female, probably around 20 years old, slim build, waiting next to a (bollard) ... She looked as though she was waiting for someone.”
In other evidence, Telstra global payroll manager Tony Vomero admitted the company did not have any record of Bradley Edwards’ attack on a social worker at Hollywood Hospital in May 1990. However, records showed Mr Edwards was promoted to a senior telecommunication technician on June 4, 1992.
Another “Telstra living witness” told the court about her own strange experience with a Telstra vehicle on the night Ms Spiers vanished.
After leaving Club Bay View, Julie-Anne Johnstone was waiting for a taxi near Hungry Jack’s on Stirling Highway when a car pulled up behind. She was stared at by a man, who had leant over to the passenger side and had wound down the window.
“It was a white sedan, four-doors and it had a Telstra sign on the passenger side-door,” she said.
“I did sort of turn and go, ‘What?’, and there was no response ... He was just looking at me.”
In late 1998, she helped police produce an identikit image of the driver. But when the identikit was shown in court, it bore little or no resemblance to Mr Edwards.
