The detectives then asked Denyer what happened after he had stabbed her round the chest and throat area. ‘I lifted up her top and then ploughed the knife into her gut. I wanted to see how big her boobs were.’ He said that when he saw Debbie’s bare stomach he ‘just lunged at it with the knife’. Satisfied that Debbie Fream was dead, Denyer dragged her body into a clump of trees and covered it over with a couple of branches he broke from the nearest tree. He then spent about five minutes looking for the murder weapon, which he had dropped after the killing, found it and put it in his pocket. He drove off in Debbie Fream’s car, dumped it close to where he lived and walked home in time to ring his girlfriend Sharon at work and pick her up at the Kananook railway station.
The following morning, he brazenly returned to Debbie Fream’s car, collected her handbag and the two cartons of milk, eggs, chocolate and a packet of cigarettes she had purchased from the milk bar the previous evening and took them home with him. The only thing of value he found in the purse was a $20 note. He emptied the milk down the sink, threw out the eggs and burnt the carton, as he considered this to be evidence that could be used against him. He then buried the dead woman’s handbag in the nearby golf course and near the bike track where he would later kill Natalie Russell. Denyer then dismantled his homemade knife and hid the parts in the air vent in the laundry room of his apartment. ‘Why did you kill her?’ the detectives asked him. ‘Same reason I killed Elizabeth Stevens. I just wanted to,’ he replied.
His account of the murder of Natalie Russell chilled the officers to the bone and showed what a vicious and callous killer he was. What they were about to hear would shock them. Denyer’s almost unbelievable confession to the murder of Natalie Russell would put him among the most despicable monsters Australia has ever known. Denyer had planned this next murder in advance. His intention was to abduct a young woman, any young woman, as she walked along the bike track. His intention was to drag his victim into the reserve and murder her. He had gone to his planned abduction spot earlier in the day and, with a pair of pliers, had cut three holes a few yards apart in the wire cyclone fence that ran between the bike track and the reserve. Each hole was cut big enough to fit him and his victim through into the cover of the tree-lined reserve. At about 2.30 that afternoon, he drove back to the start of the bike track and waited for a victim to enter on foot. His plan was to follow his victim and, as she approached a hole in the fence, he would grab her and take her through it and into the reserve. He was armed with a razor-sharp homemade knife and a leather strap, which he intended to use to strangle his victim. After a wait of about 20 minutes, he saw a girl in a blue school uniform come along the road and enter the bike track. He followed. ‘I stuck about 10 yards behind her until I got to the second hole,’ Denyer told the detectives. ‘And just when I got to that hole, I quickly walked up behind her and stuck my left hand around her mouth and held the knife to her throat … and that’s where that cut happened.’ Denyer then indicated the cut on his thumb from which the piece of skin was missing. ‘I cut that on my own blade.’
Denyer said that Natalie was struggling at first when he grabbed her but stopped when he told her that if she didn’t he would cut her throat. The terrified girl then offered Denyer sex, which disgusted him as he clearly failed to see that Natalie must have realised that she was in the hands of the Frankston Serial Killer and would have done anything, even if it meant having sex with him, to save her life. ‘She said “you can have all my money, have sex with me” and things – just said disgusting things like that, really,’ Denyer told the detectives as he shook his head in revulsion at what he obviously interpreted as the schoolgirl’s loose morals. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Upset, Denyer forced Natalie to kneel in front of him and held the point of the knife very closely over her eye. Then he forced her to lie on the ground and he knelt over her, holding her by the throat and still holding the point of the knife over her eye. When she struggled he cut her across the face. She somehow managed to stand up and started to scream. ‘And I just said, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” And, “If you don’t shut up, I’ll kill you. If you don’t do this, I’ll kill you, if you don’t do that,”’ Denyer told the detectives. ‘And she said, “What do you want from me?” I said, “All I want you to do is shut up.” And so when she was kneeling on the ground, I put the strap around her neck to strangle her and it broke in half. And then she started violently struggling for about a minute until I pushed her onto her back again – and pushed her head back like this and cut her throat.’ Denyer then demonstrated how he had held Natalie Russell’s head back. ‘I cut a small cut at first and then she was bleeding. And then I stuck my fingers into her throat … and grabbed her cords and I twisted them.’ The detectives could hardly believe what they were hearing, but somehow managed to contain their abhorrence so that they could prompt him to continue with his confession of horror. ‘Why’d you do that?’ ‘My whole fingers like, that much of my hand was inside her throat,’ Denyer said as he held up his hand, indicating exactly how much of it he had forced into the wound in the schoolgirl’s throat. ‘Do you know why you did that?’ the detective asked again. ‘Stop her from breathing … and then she slowly stopped. She sort of started to faint and then when she was weak, a bit weaker, I grabbed the opportunity of throwing her head back and made one big large cut which sort of cut almost her whole head off. And then she slowly died.’
‘Why did you kill her?’ the shocked detectives asked, just managing to hold themselves back from being physically ill. ‘Just the same reason as before, just everything came back through my mind again. I kicked her before I left.’ Denyer then told the stunned detectives that he had kicked Natalie Russell’s body to make sure she was dead, slashed her down the side of her face with his knife and left her where she lay. As he walked back the way he had come in, his blood-soaked hands concealed in his pockets, Denyer saw two uniformed officers taking details from the registration sticker on his car, so he turned around and walked home the other way. At home, he washed his clothes and hid the murder weapon in his back yard. Denyer told the detectives that he had been stalking women in the Frankston area ‘for years, just waiting for the right time, waiting for that silent alarm to trigger me off. Waiting for the sign.’
‘Can you explain why we have women victims?’ a detective asked Denyer. ‘I just hate ’em.’ The detectives said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘I just hate ’em,’ Denyer repeated. ‘Those particular girls,’ asked the detective, referring to the victims, ‘or women in general?’ Denyer replied ‘general’.
Paul Charles Denyer was charged with the murders of Elizabeth Stevens, Debbie Fream and Natalie Russell and the attempted murder of Rosza Toth, which was later changed to the lesser charge of abduction. At his trial, on 15 December 1993, he pleaded guilty to all charges. He showed no remorse for his crimes. During the trial, it emerged that his murderous intentions started at an early age when he regularly dissected his sister’s teddy bears with a homemade knife and, when he was 10, he stabbed the family kitten and hung it from a tree in the back yard. Later on, while working at what would be his last place of employment, he allegedly slaughtered and dismembered two goats in a paddock next door.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no fixed nonparole period. He appealed to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria against the severity of his sentence and, on 29 July 1994, he was granted a 30-year non-parole period, making him eligible for parole in 2023.
During his imprisonment, Denyer has requested to be allowed to purchase and wear cosmetics, but this has been denied. He has sought to learn of the state government’s policy on gender reassignment for prisoners and asked for evaluation to determine his suitability for such surgery, but this was rejected.
LEONARD FRASER
From the age of 15, Leonard Fraser (b. 1951) became involved in petty thefts, before going on to commit more serious offences of robbery and numerous offences of rape. The first of these rapes took pl
ace on the morning of 11 July 1974, just three weeks after he was released from prison. He accosted a young woman as she walked along a road in Sydney’s outer western suburb of St Mary’s and attacked her from behind. The MO (modus operandi) he used in committing this offence was unique to him and would turn out to be his signature, connecting him to a subsequent string of similar offences. The method he used on this occasion was that he physically took hold of the woman, forcing her arm up behind her back and forcing her down an embankment, where he raped her. Fraser believed that his victim had enjoyed him sexually assaulting her and, after getting back up, he held her hand as he walked her back up onto the roadway, before making off.
On 17 July, Fraser struck again. He went into a shop where a 20-year-old female was working alone. When she went into the back of the shop, he followed her and again took hold of her by forcing her hand up behind her back. Fortunately for his victim, someone came into the shop and Fraser fled before he was able to rape her. However, his sexual urges remained, and three days later he accosted a woman as she walked along a quiet road. He punched her in the face and forced her arm up against her back. As she struggled, she tried to remain calm, and by talking to him somehow convinced him that she was indeed in the mood for sex, and suggested that they go back to his house and have sex there. This ploy worked and Fraser walked the woman hand-in-hand back up onto the road and, as soon as she saw her chance, she broke free and fled to the nearest house and raised the alarm. Fraser was soon arrested. He had dropped his wallet, containing his birth certificate, at the scene of the last attack. When interviewed, he readily confessed to the series of attacks and to the surprise of the police he also confessed to another rape of a French tourist two years previously in Sydney.
Fraser was sentenced to a term of 22 years’ imprisonment with a maximum seven-year non-parole period. He was released in 1981, having served seven years. However, in 1985 he struck yet again. In broad daylight he stalked, attacked and raped a 20-year-old woman on an isolated beach. He approached his victim from behind and held her arm up against her back. Referring to this MO, police were soon able to identify the attacker and Fraser was arrested. He was sentenced to a further 12 years’ imprisonment. In sentencing Fraser, Justice Derrington said he regarded the prisoner as a dangerous man who preyed on women who were strangers and alone. ‘They [the victims] would regard you as being the equivalent of a filthy animal,’ he said. ‘It [rape] is one of the worst forms of degradation on another human being you can think of and it deserves no sympathy whatever.’ He was made to serve the full 12 years. Following his release from prison he managed to avoid further brushes with the law.
On 22 April 1999, nine-year-old Keyra Steinhardt disappeared on her way home from school. An eye-witness to the abduction told police that she saw a man catch up with the little girl and hit her from behind around the head. The child fell to the ground and the witness couldn’t see her in the long grass but she saw her assailant fall on her and move as if he was raping her. Then the assailant ran off and returned shortly afterwards in a car, picking the little girl up, placing her in the boot and driving off. Sadly, the witness took 20 minutes to call the police. From the description given by the witness of the car, police were soon able to trace Fraser. Despite intense questioning, it was two weeks before Fraser finally confessed to the abduction and murder of Keyra and he then took police to her naked body. He had disposed of it in a thick bed of grass near the Rockhampton racecourse. Her throat had been cut and Fraser had draped her green school jumper over her torso. To further corroborate his confession, DNA samples taken from the blood and hair found in the trunk of Fraser’s car matched that of Keyra Steinhardt. There was also another female’s blood on the hinges of the boot and on a cigarette paper in the glove compartment. On 7 May, Fraser was charged with the rape and murder of Keyra Steinhardt.
Strangely enough, he pleaded not guilty at his trial. The court was told that due to the advanced decomposition of the girl’s body, it was impossible to determine what the actual cause of death was or if she had been sexually assaulted. But the prosecution highlighted the damaging evidence of a tape recording of Fraser talking with another prisoner, in which he had asked the prisoner whether, on his release, he would go and dispose of a knife Fraser had hidden in his own apartment. The prosecution suggested that Fraser used this knife to stab and kill the young girl.
Leonard Fraser was found guilty of the abduction and murder of Keyra Steinhardt. ‘Lone females in a public place, as is present in this case, were compelled by force and threats to go to a place where the risk of disturbance was less,’ Justice Mackenzie said. ‘The offence involved severe, indeed extreme, violence on a child. Fraser’s story is that of a sexual predator of the worst kind.’ Justice Mackenzie went on to say that he could see no reason to suppose that Fraser had any prospect of rehabilitation and sentenced him to an indefinite life sentence. Under new Queensland legislation enacted in 1997, an indefinite life sentence means that, unlike a life sentence where the prisoner could automatically apply for parole after 15 years, he must not only apply to the Parole Board but also to a Supreme Court judge before he can ever be released. Both would have to be satisfied that Fraser no longer posed a threat to the community before the indefinite order could be lifted. This sentence left Fraser in no doubt that he would spend the rest of his natural life in prison.
Police still believed that Fraser was responsible for other murders. A young schoolgirl and three other women had all gone missing without trace between September 1998 and April 1999. Natasha Ryan, 14, had disappeared on 2 September 1998, while on her way to school in the same area where Keyra Steinhardt was killed. Julie Dawn Turner, 39, had worked with Fraser for a couple of months in 1998 at a local abattoir. On 28 December 1998, Julie left a nightclub in the early hours of the morning, heavily under the influence of alcohol. She was last seen walking home alone. Beverly Leggo, 36, also had a connection with Fraser. They met at a local hostel where he was staying in 1997. She was last seen on 1 March 1999. Sylvia Maria Benedetti, 19, disappeared on 17 April 1999. Six days later while police were searching for the body of Keyra Steinhardt, who had disappeared the day before, they received a call to go to a derelict hotel that was in the process of being demolished. The demolition workers had made a grisly discovery. In one of the rooms, the carpet was soaked with blood and there was blood splattered all over the ceiling and walls. They also found bone fragments in the carpet. In a downstairs freezer, police found a pair of women’s shoes submerged in filthy water. A forensic examination revealed that the blood was human and, given the spate of missing women in recent months, police had good reason to believe the blood to be that of one of the missing women. They soon matched the blood found in the room to that found in the boot of Fraser’s car and to the missing woman, Sylvia Benedetti. Experts suggested that the attack had been so ferocious and savage that the victim had lost about four litres of blood, which was about as much as a woman the size of Sylvia Benedetti would have in her entire body. Police believed that Sylvia Benedetti was known to Fraser and was seen with him on the night before she disappeared.
Police now suspected that all four missing women had been murdered by Fraser, but knew that without their bodies or a confession they would not be able to charge him. Then they got lucky. Fraser started talking to his cell-mate, Alan Quinn, and confessed to the murders. Fraser said he killed Natasha Ryan by knifing her because she was pregnant by him. He then buried her body in a shallow grave. Fraser also said that he murdered Sylvia Benedetti and ‘bled her like an animal’ in a disused hotel and made a bloodied hand mark on the wall before smearing over it. Fraser also alleged that he had met Julie Turner in a shopping mall and was giving her a lift home. He then ‘flogged into her’ (attacked her) after she had slapped him when he put his hand on her leg. When confronted by detectives about the confessions, he confessed and volunteered to take them to where the bodies of Beverly Leggo and Julie Turner were hidden. A short time previously, skeletal remains
had already been discovered in bush land. These were later identified as those of Sylvia Benedetti. Fraser was unable to lead police to where the rest of the remains were. Fraser was charged with those murders and brought back for trial.
During the trial, there was a sensational revelation when one of the alleged victims, 18-year-old Natasha Ryan, was discovered by police hiding in a cupboard at the home of her boyfriend, 26-year-old Scott Black. Having charged Fraser with her murder, the court directed the jury to find him not guilty. Natasha Ryan appeared in court as a defence witness and stated that she had never seen Leonard Fraser before. She said that on the day she was reported missing, her mother had dropped her off at school. She decided that she had had enough of school, had decided to run away and stay with Scott Black, and had been with him ever since.
The defence lawyers suggested that there was now a major doubt about some of the evidence provided by Alan Quinn, as he had stated that Fraser had confessed to Ryan’s murder and given specific details as to how he carried out the crime. There was also doubt as to whether Fraser’s subsequently recorded confessions were genuine or whether he had made them up. However, the prosecution soon negated these suggestions. One admission had been that Beverly Leggo was strangled with her black knickers and a bra. Fraser made this admission three days before forensic scientists revealed that that was indeed how she had died. Fraser also said that where Julie Turner had been murdered he had abandoned a pair of her sandals. A subsequent search found a sandal and Julie Turner’s bra.
The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 5
