Despite all the circumstances surrounding this offence and what police saw as Dupas’s meticulous planning of what looked to be a sexual abduction, murder and concealment of the body, the prosecution stated that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with an attempted rape charge. Consideration was given to a lesser charge of false imprisonment, to which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years and nine months. He was released on 29 September 1996, to find his wife had left him. Dupas, it seems, suppressed his urges for almost 12 months. Then it is suggested that he once more unleashed his violent and sexual side with a vengeance.
On 4 October 1997, a local prostitute, Margaret Maher, was abducted and murdered. Her body was found in long grass on industrial land. She had been stabbed many times and her breasts had been grotesquely mutilated. Four weeks later, on 1 November 1997, Mersina Halvagis, 25, was attacked as she tended a grave at a cemetery. She was repeatedly stabbed and left to die. Coincidentally, the grave of Dupas’s grandfather is only 300ft away from where Halvagis was murdered. At 6.30 am on New Year’s Eve 1997, Kathleen Downes, a frail 95-year-old woman, was found stabbed to death in her room at Brunswick Lodge nursing home.
On 19 April 1999, another female, Nicole Patterson, a psychotherapist who worked from home, was found dead on her consulting-room floor. Patterson was naked from the waist down. Her clothes had been ripped and cut. An autopsy revealed that the 28-year-old had been dead since that morning. She had been stabbed 27 times. There were numerous defence wounds to both her hands. It was impossible to say whether she had been raped. Both of Patterson’s breasts had been sliced off and were nowhere to be found at the murder scene. Patterson’s mutilations were similar to those of Margaret Maher, murdered 18 months earlier. Her killer had been thorough. It appeared that he had attempted to clean up the crime scene before leaving. There were no fingerprints or footprints. The killer even took Patterson’s purse, containing her driving licence and her mobile phone.
However, the killer had missed the most incriminating piece of evidence. Under clothing in the lounge, detectives found Patterson’s appointment book. It contained a 9am appointment for a ‘Malcolm’ that morning and a mobile phone number written next to it. The police soon traced ‘Malcolm’ and he turned out to be a student who had no idea who Patterson was. He was asked if he had given his phone number to anyone recently. He then gave police a list of people to whom he had given his number. One of the names was Peter Dupas, for whom he had been doing casual work.
The investigating officers believed that the killer had used someone else’s name to make an appointment and had given a false mobile number. Patterson advertised her business to clients in the local papers. Without this appointment, it would have been difficult to get into her house. Her killer had made an appointment under a false name for that morning using the false mobile phone number to avoid detection. What he didn’t count on was police finding the appointment book.
Three days after the murder, police decided to arrest Dupas at his home address, which was only 30 minutes from where Patterson was murdered. Dupas had what appeared to be a fingernail scratch on his face. A search of the premises uncovered a bloodstained green jacket in a bundle of clothing in a workshop cupboard. Subsequent DNA testing linked this with Patterson’s blood.
As the search continued, police found a black balaclava and a page from a local newspaper, which reported the murder of Patterson. The photo of Nicole Patterson in the article had been slashed. In a rubbish bin, they found torn-up pieces of newspaper, and when the pieces were put together, they formed a handwritten note with the words ‘nine o’clock Nicci’ and ‘Malcolm’ written on it. Other enquiries showed that on the day of the killing, Dupas was caught on video buying petrol near Patterson’s home.
When interviewed, Dupas denied any knowledge of Patterson’s death, suggesting that the police had planted the evidence. Peter Dupas was charged with the murder of Nicole Patterson and remanded in custody for trial, which took place in August 2000. He entered a plea of not guilty and still maintained that he was innocent and that the police had planted the evidence. However, the jury thought otherwise and duly found him guilty. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation from the judge that it should be for the rest of his natural life, without the opportunity for release on parole.
Peter Dupas was later questioned about the unsolved murders of Margaret Maher, Mersina Halvagis, Helen McMahon and Kathleen Downes. He has denied any involvement and for the time being these crimes remained unsolved.
However, police then reopened the murder of Margaret Maher, a prostitute aged 40 who was last seen alive at midnight on 4 October 1997. Her body had been discovered under a cardboard box containing computer parts at 1.45pm. A black woollen glove was found near Maher’s body, which police later confirmed contained DNA matching that of Dupas, who was already serving a life sentence without parole for the murder of Nicole Patterson. At the time of his arrest, police were able to obtain a DNA sample, linking him to the 1997 murder of Maher.
A post-mortem examination revealed Maher had suffered a stab wound to her left wrist, bruising to her neck, blunt force trauma to the area of her right eyebrow and lacerations to her right arm. Her left breast had been removed and placed into her mouth. At the time of Maher’s murder, Dupas had been out of prison for just over a year after serving time for rape offences.
Dupas was charged and brought to trial and he pleaded not guilty. The trial lasted for three weeks, during which evidence was presented to the jury that the removals of Patterson’s and Maher’s breasts were so ‘strikingly similar’ as to be a signature or trademark common to both crimes, thereby identifying Dupas as the killer of both women. The jury, who were not told that Dupas was already serving a life term for the murder of Patterson, took less than a day to convict him of his second murder. Upon hearing the jury deliver the guilty verdict, Dupas claimed, ‘it’s a kangaroo court’.
On 16 August 2004, Dupas was convicted of the murder of Maher and sentenced to a second term of life imprisonment. On 25 July 2005, Dupas appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal to appeal his conviction for the murder of Maher on the grounds of;
whether the judge erred in ruling that the facts of the mutilation of Patterson’s body should have been admitted at trial
whether the directions of the judge aimed at keeping the evidence of the Patterson murder discreet were sufficient
whether the judge incorrectly directed the jury regarding the compression applied to the deceased’s neck as one of three possible causes of death
if the matters relied upon in the other grounds listed above did not result in a miscarriage of justice, their ‘aggregate effect’ did.
His appeal was dismissed.
PAUL DENYER, AKA THE FRANKSTON SERIAL KILLER
In the summer of 1999, Frankston, a small suburb of Melbourne, was almost brought to a standstill as a result of the violent murders of three young women. Over a seven-week period, three women aged 17, 18 and 22 were violently attacked, one in broad daylight. They were all repeatedly stabbed and slashed to death in frenzied attacks. During the same period, another 41-year-old woman was violently assaulted but managed to escape with her life.
The first murder was that of Elizabeth Stevens, aged 18. On Saturday, 12 June 1993, her partially clothed body was found in a local park a short drive from Frankston. The teenager had been reported missing the previous evening. Naked from the waist up, Elizabeth Stevens had had her throat cut, and there were six deep knife wounds to her chest, four deep cuts running from her breast to her navel and four more running at right angles forming a macabre criss-cross pattern on her abdomen. Her face had several cuts and abrasions and her nose was swollen, indicating that it had been broken. Her bra was up around her neck. A postmortem revealed that she had not been sexually assaulted.
On the evening of 8 July 1993, 41-year-old bank clerk Rosza Toth was making her way home from work when she was violently attacked by a m
an who said he had a gun and tried to drag her into a nearby nature reserve. Toth put up a fight for her life, during which the man pulled out clumps of her hair and she bit his fingers to the bone on several occasions. She eventually fought the man off and, with torn stockings and trousers and no shoes, she managed to flag down a passing car as her assailant fled into the night. Rosza Toth had little doubt that had she not resisted so strongly she would most definitely have been murdered. Later that same evening, police had a report that 22-year-old Debbie Fream had gone missing after she drove to her local store. Four days later, her body was found by a farmer in one of his paddocks. She had been stabbed in the neck, head, chest and arms 24 times. She had also been strangled, but not sexually assaulted.
On the afternoon of 30 July, 17-year-old Natalie Russell was reported missing. Eight hours later, her body was found in the bushes beside a cycle track. Like the previous victims, she had been stabbed repeatedly about the face and neck and her throat had been cut. It appeared that the savagery in Natalie Russell’s slaying was far worse than in the previous two victims. Natalie had not been sexually assaulted either.
Up until that time, the extensive police enquiries had proved negative. However, this time they were able to gather important evidence and information. A piece of skin, possibly from a finger, was found on the neck of the dead girl. It didn’t belong to the victim; the only other possible explanation was that the killer had cut himself as he attacked the student and the sliver of flesh had attached itself by dried blood onto her skin. The other evidence was the sighting of a yellow Toyota Corona by a police officer on a road near the bike track at 3pm, the time the coroner estimated that Natalie Russell had been murdered. The observant police officer had written down its number from its registration tag (the Australian equivalent of a UK road fund licence) because the car had no number plates. Detectives fed the registration number into their computer. It matched up with a report from a postman who had spotted a man acting suspiciously, as if to avoid being seen, in the front seat of a yellow Toyota Corona.
Further enquiries revealed that this same car had been seen near to where Debbie Fream’s body had been found. The police believed that three separate sightings of the same vehicle were too much of a coincidence. The car was registered to a Paul Charles Denyer (b. 1972). Police officers went straight to his home address. Denyer was out. They subsequently received information that he had now returned home and went back to his house. The spoke to Denyer and questioned him about his car. He told them that his car had no number plates but that he had a permit to drive it for 28 days while he made the necessary repairs. While questioning him, detectives noticed that he had cuts to his hands. They observed that from one cut, a piece of skin was missing, and they mentally noted that the missing piece could have resembled the piece of skin on Natalie Russell’s body. Although he admitted to being in the vicinity of two of the murders at the time they were believed to have taken place, Denyer emphatically denied any knowledge of the killings. He offered weak excuses for being at the murder scenes, saying that his car had broken down near the place where Natalie Russell was murdered and that he was waiting to pick up his girlfriend from the train on the other occasion. He explained the scratches away by saying that he got his hands caught in the fan while working underneath the bonnet of the car. From this moment on, police believed that Denyer was the killer.
He was arrested and questioned at length. Denyer continued to protest his innocence up until the time the police requested a blood sample and a sample of his hair for a DNA test. After a short period of deliberation, he finally admitted killing all three women. Just before 4am on 1 August 1993, Paul Denyer began his confession to the murders of Elizabeth Stevens, Debbie Fream and Natalie Russell, and the attack on Rosza Toth. He told them that at around 7pm on the bleak, rainy evening of 11 June 1993, Elizabeth Stevens got off a bus on Cranbourne Road, Langwarrin, to walk the short distance to her home. Paul Denyer was waiting – but not for Elizabeth in particular; just someone to kill. Elizabeth Stevens just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Denyer followed the young student along the street in the driving rain and grabbed her from behind, telling her that he had a gun and that if she screamed or tried to run away he would kill her. He told detectives that the ‘gun’ he held in her back was in fact a piece of aluminium piping with a wooden handle. At ‘gunpoint’, Denyer marched the terrified girl to nearby Lloyd Park. Denyer’s statement said in part: ‘Walked in a bit of bush land beside the main track in Lloyd Park. Sat there, you know, stood in the bushes for a while just – I can’t remember, just standing there I suppose. I held the “gun” to the back of her neck, walked across the track over towards the other small sand hill or something. And on the other side of that hill, she asked me if she could, you know, go to the toilet, so to speak. So I respected her privacy. So I turned around and everything while she did it and everything. When she finished, we just walked down towards where the goal posts are and we turned right and headed towards the area where she was found. I got to that area there and I started choking her with my hands and she passed out after a while. You know, the oxygen got cut off to her head and she just stopped. And then I pulled out the knife … and stabbed her many times in the throat. And she was still alive. And then she stood up and then we walked around and all that, just walking around a few steps and then I threw her on the ground and stuck my foot over her neck to finish her off.’
The manner in which Denyer gave his confession chilled the detectives to the bone. It was devoid of emotion or remorse, almost flippant. When the detectives asked questions, they were answered in an almost condescending manner, as if Denyer was in complete control of the situation because he was the only one who knew what had actually happened. Denyer matter-of-factly described and demonstrated how he had pushed his thumb into Elizabeth Stevens’s throat and strangled her. He made a stabbing motion, showing how he stabbed and slashed her throat. Then, to the astonishment of the detectives, he demonstrated for the video camera how Elizabeth Stevens’s body had begun shaking and shuddering as she went through the death rattles before finally dying.
Denyer then told police how he had dragged Elizabeth Stevens’s body to the drain and left it, where it was eventually found. He explained that the blade of the homemade knife he had used to stab Elizabeth had bent during the assault and had broken away from the handle. He dumped the pieces beside the road as he made his way from the murder scene. When asked why he had killed Elizabeth Stevens, Denyer replied: ‘Just wanted … just wanted to kill. Just wanted to take a life because I felt my life had been taken many times.’
Paul Denyer went on to tell of the events of the night of 8 July 1993. He told detectives that he had approached Rosza Toth from behind after he had seen her walking near Seaford station. He put a hand over her mouth and held a fake gun to her head with the other hand. Roszsa resisted strongly and bit his finger to the bone. The couple wrestled and she escaped from his grasp and ran out into the middle of the road, but none of the passing cars stopped. Denyer chased after her, grabbed her by the hair and said: ‘Shut up, or I’ll blow your fucking head off’, and she nodded in agreement but again escaped and this time managed to flag down a passing car while Denyer fled. When asked what he intended to do to Rosza Toth, Denyer replied coolly: ‘I was just gonna drag her in the park and kill her, that’s all.’ Denyer said that as well as the fake gun, he was carrying one of his homemade knives with a razor-sharp aluminium blade in his sock.
After the near-miss with Rosza Toth, Denyer went to the nearby railway station and casually boarded the Frankstonbound train. He got off at Kananook, the next station along, and crossed over the rail overpass bridge in search of another victim. Here he saw Debbie Fream get out of her car and go into the milk bar on the corner. Denyer said that while Debbie Fream was in the milk bar, he opened the rear door of her car, let himself into the back and closed the door behind him. He crouched in the back seat, listened as her footsteps came back to the car a
nd she got in and drove away. ‘I waited for her to start up the car so no one would hear her scream or anything,’ Denyer said in his confession. ‘And she put it into gear and she went to do a U turn. I startled her just as she was doing that turn and she kept going into the wall of the milk bar, which caused a dent in the bonnet. I told her to, you know, shut up or I’d blow her head off and all that shit.’ Denyer said that he held the fake gun in her side.
The detectives asked Denyer if he had noticed anything in the back and he said that he had seen a baby carrier beside him in the back seat. Denyer must have known that he was about to kill a young mother. Obviously it made not the least scrap of difference to him. Denyer told Debbie Fream in which direction to drive. It was to an area that he knew well and where he knew he wouldn’t be seen as he murdered her. ‘I told her when we got there that if she gave any signals to anyone, I’d blow her head off, I’d decorate the car with her brains,’ Denyer told the police. Denyer told her to stop the car near some trees and get out, and he pulled a length of cord from his pocket. ‘I popped it over her eyes real quickly, so she didn’t see it … ’cos I was gonna strangle her. But I didn’t want her to see the cord first. I lifted the cord up and I said: “Can you see this?” And she just put her hand up to grab it to feel it and when she did that I just yanked on it real quickly around her neck. And then I was struggling with her for about five minutes.’ Denyer said that he strangled Debbie Fream until she started to pass out. He then drew the knife from his sock and repeatedly stabbed her about the neck and chest. When she fell limp at his feet, he set upon her with the knife, stabbing her many times in the neck and once in the stomach. ‘She started breathing out of her neck, just like Elizabeth Stevens,’ he told the detectives. ‘I could just hear bubbling noises.’ When asked if Debbie Fream put up any resistance, Denyer replied: ‘Yeah, she put up quite a fight. And her white jumper was pulled off during that time as well. I just felt the same way I did when I killed Elizabeth Stevens.’
The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 4
