The Frankston Serial Killer

by Vikki Petraitis

  But in front of her sat a mother just wanting to know. Crime scenes, forensics and evidence meant little to Carmel Russell. The only thing that mattered was her daughter.

  Brian woke up and came back into the lounge room. In a quiet moment between husband and wife, he turned to Carmel and said, 'I think we're in trouble.'

  Seventeen-year-old schoolgirl Natalie Russell

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A small piece of skin

  Around 1.15am, Detective Sergeant Brad Penno arrived at Monterey Technical School. He and other officers from homicide were briefed by the head of the squad, Chief Inspector Peter Halloran. Since the victim was wearing a John Paul College uniform and fitted Natalie Russell's description, detectives were working under the assumption that they had found the missing girl, even though formal identification wouldn't be made until the body was taken to the city mortuary.

  Half an hour after he arrived, Brad Penno together with Peter Halloran and John Noonan walked past the tennis courts and through the entrance of the bike track where two uniformed police officers wearing raincoats stood guard. They walked along the track and climbed through the hole in the fence to where the schoolgirl's body lay. With the aid of their torches, the officers could see her lying on her side, face down. Large quantities of blood were clearly visible around her head and shoulders. Her school bag lay a short distance away.

  At 6am, homicide detective Sergeant Mick Hughes received a telephone call from Rod Wilson. Whatever plans Hughes had for his Saturday morning, they were soon shelved when his senior sergeant told him that a body had been found which was believed to be that of missing student, Natalie Russell. Wilson himself had been called in the middle of the night by Peter Halloran who had briefed him on the latest murder. Halloran told him to get a couple of hours sleep. They would all have a long haul in front of them. However, Rod Wilson had not been able to sleep and finally gave up trying. He got dressed and drove to Frankston.

  Hughes met Wilson and other homicide squad members at Monterey Technical School and they were soon briefed by Brad Penno. The detectives walked down the bike track, through the hole in the cyclone wire fence and stared down at the body of the young woman in the early morning light. Brad Penno was on hand at 9.30am when pathologist Dr Tony Landgren arrived to perform a preliminary examination of the deceased in situ.

  Crime scene examiners Brian Gamble and Tony Kealy had been working around the immediate crime scene since first light to collect samples and anything that might be regarded as evidence before the body could finally be moved. They had found both her shoes and collected her heavy school bag.

  On overhead vegetation, Kealy's trained eye noticed a single fibre which he bagged and labelled. Around a metre from the dead girl's head, Kealy and Gamble found a leather strap stained with what appeared to be blood. On the other side of her body was another leather strap which looked as if it had been broken off from the first.

  Landgren manoeuvred through the undergrowth and gently turned the body. For the first time, the extent of her injuries became obvious. She had received multiple stab wounds to her face and neck and her throat had been cut. The doctor certified death at 9.35am.

  Crime scene examiners found a broken leather strap near Natalie Russell's body.

  Just before 11am, Constable Scott Jasper was asked by homicide detectives to escort the body of Natalie Russell to the Institute of Forensic Pathology mortuary. Jasper had been at the crime scene since 5am maintaining a log of everyone who entered the area of the bike track. The constable watched as the government undertakers placed the body onto a stretcher which they carried to the end of the track and placed in the rear of an SES four-wheel drive. The body was driven to the command post and transferred to the undertaker's van. The whole procedure took around five minutes and then Jasper followed the van in a police car to the South Melbourne mortuary.

  Natalie Russell was placed in a room adjacent to the brightly lit post-mortem examination room, awaiting the pathologist. Dr Landgren had made the cursory examination at the crime scene and half an hour after the arrival of the body of the schoolgirl, he prepared for the post-mortem examination.

  Natalie body was transferred onto a stainless steel trolley and photographed by crime scene photographer, Howard Hopper.

  Tony Landgren began dictating his observations into a hand-held tape-recorder. He began by describing her school uniform, noting that the insignia on her school jumper - 'John Paul College the Fullness of Life' - was heavily stained with her blood. The irony of those words did not escape those watching.

  Inspector Claude Minisini, who had profiled the killer, also attended the post-mortem. He studied the dead schoolgirl's wounds carefully and had no doubt that her murderer was the same person who had killed Elizabeth Stevens and Debbie Fream. Minisini was particularly struck by the long cut down her left cheek and noted that the savagery against Natalie Russell was much worse than the other two victims.

  What had she done to make the killer so mad? Minisini wondered. Had she fought him or angered him by something she said?

  Landgren continued his dictation, beginning with her head and neck area. He described her long brown hair, her earrings and her brown-green eyes before detailing the injuries. Injury number one was a long cut extending from the right-hand corner of her mouth upwards to her hairline opposite her right eye. Landgren measured it at 10 centimetres.

  He counted four other shorter cuts on her face. Natalie Russell's throat had been savagely cut and the pathologist measured the horizontal throat wound at 12.5cm.

  Howard Hopper steadied his camera as he bent over the pathologist while Landgren gently washed around the neck injuries with a white cloth.

  Both men saw a small piece of skin come away onto the cloth. It looked like a piece of skin from someone's finger. Dr Landgren gently removed it from the cloth with a pair of tweezers. He noted that it measured 2.7cm by 0.6cm.

  If the skin didn't belong to Natalie Russell, then there was a very strong possibility that the killer had cut himself while cutting her throat and had left the tiny piece of skin behind.

  It was just the clue that detectives needed. DNA tests could match the skin and blood type with an offender once he was caught. It wouldn't help find him, but once found, it could be used to prove he was the killer. It would be difficult for a suspect to explain how a piece of his skin was found inside the throat of a murder victim.

  Most importantly, if a suspect was interviewed in the next week or so, detectives could look for a cut matching the size of this piece of skin.

  Landgren carefully sealed the evidence in a small jar and continued the examination. He listed and described 11 separate injuries to the head and neck before moving to the chest and abdomen. A tiny one-centimetre area of skin loss near where her collarbones met was the only injury he found there.

  In her right hand, Landgren found five short dark hairs measuring up to 5cm in length. Since her own brown hair was long, there was a chance that she had grabbed her killer's hair and pulled out the few strands. In her left hand, the pathologist found 10 similar short dark hairs. They too could help link an offender to the crime. The evidence was mounting.

  Natalie Russell's hands showed cuts and grazes suggesting that she fought her attacker before he had a chance to inflict the fatal injuries.

  When Dr Landgren performed the internal part of the post-mortem examination, he found that the right carotid artery and both external jugular veins were horizontally transected. The left carotid artery and the left internal jugular vein were intact, suggesting that the killer held her head to the left thereby exposing the right veins and arteries. The killer could have stood behind her, holding her head with one hand and cutting with the other. That could've been how he cut himself. If the killer was right handed, he had probably held her head with his left hand while he cut with his right. This would account for the main damage to the right side of her neck. If the skin was indeed from the killer, detectives could look for a suspec
t with a cut to his left hand, probably one of his fingers.

  When he finished the examination, Dr Landgren and his assistants bagged the clothing and jewellery for forensic testing. Samples taken from the body during the examination, as well as the piece of skin, were labelled for further testing.

  Dr Landgren listed the cause of death as 'multiple neck and facial injuries'. The examination had taken a little over two hours.

  Natalie Russell's aunt, Bernadette Naughton, was a nurse at the Freemasons Hospital close to the Melbourne CBD. She'd been working the Friday nightshift when she learned her niece was missing. She had stayed at work, hoping Natalie's absence was nothing more than Nat telling her mum she was staying with a friend and her mum had simply forgotten. What else was there to think? When the message reached her, on Friday night, that a body had been found, Bernadette rang the Russell house. Constable Angela Butts answered and told Bernadette there would be no formal identification till morning.

  Bernadette had spent her younger years as a nun. When she heard about the body in Frankston, she had a feeling that Natalie was with God, so she said a silent pray. She didn't rush to her sister's house because she figured if she arrived in the middle of the night, it was like admitting to her sister that she thought Nat was dead. And she couldn't do that. What if her feeling was wrong?

  As soon as her shift was over, however, Bernadette drove to Carmel and Brian's house. When she pulled up outside, the police car parked out the front and the gathering of waiting reporters made the situation more real.

  Inside the house, the family had gathered to wait with Carmel and Brian. Detectives asked more questions and others made small talk. Bernadette settled on the floor. Carmel and Brian looked tired but they answered the many questions the detectives asked. Without voicing it, everyone knew that such questions were an important part of the process. When Nat's two sisters rang - Lisa from Exmouth and Janine from Sydney - Bernadette spoke to them.

  'We do not know yet, but we should prepare ourselves,' she told them.

  Around 10am, more detectives arrived at the Russell house. Bernadette could tell by their faces that they brought bad news. They went into a bedroom with Carmel and Brian, leaving the rest of the family waiting in the lounge room. It seemed like forever. Then Carmel and Brian came out of the bedroom and walked out into the garden. From the windows, Bernadette could see them embracing each other. After taking a moment, they came back inside and sat down on the couch.

  Bernadette knelt in front of them. 'What do you want me to do?' she asked. 'Should I ring Lisa first? She is the eldest.'

  Carmel nodded.

  Bernadette stood up and walked over to the telephone. She rang Lisa to tell her that it had been confirmed; the body found was Natalie.

  It was 2.30pm when Bernadette finally left the Russell house. She had worked all night and been with her family all day, and she had to get home for some much-needed sleep. As soon as she opened the front door, she saw the crush of reporters, all still waiting since the early morning. Two police officers walked over to her and offered any assistance she might need.

  Bernadette sensed, however, that it would be better to talk to the reporters so that the pressure would be taken off Carmel and Brian. She also wanted the public to know that the body found was a person: a 17-year-old school girl, a daughter, a sister and a niece. Her name was Natalie and she was loved by all.

  Not only did Bernadette deliver her short speech to the gathered media, but she also noticed neighbours and friends in the crowd. They looked shocked and frightened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Piecing the puzzle

  Twelve hours after his arrival at the bike track, homicide detective Brad Penno drove to the Frankston police station, leaving the crime scene to the forensic experts. It had been hard staring down at the body of the teenager - still in her school uniform. Dead. Seeing her so brutalised only spurred investigators on. Catching Natalie Russell's killer was top priority for all the detectives working the investigation.

  And this time, hopefully, the killer had slipped up. Penno was there when Tony Kealy and Sergeant Brian Gamble had discovered the two strips of leather near the body. The straps could have been used to strangle the victim and if so, then they would be the first pieces of solid forensic evidence obtained that was left behind by the killer.

  Meanwhile Kealy and Gamble, with the aid of some other police officers, took whipper-snippers and rakes and began clearing the area around where Natalie Russell's body had lain. They cut down all the long grass and began the laborious task of raking through the clippings in the search for any additional evidence. They worked until late afternoon finding little more than two tiny silver earring clasps. Nonetheless, the blood, the cuts in the wire and the leather straps were like hitting the jackpot after the failure to turn up anything of evidentiary value at the other two murder scenes.

  Within the spacious offices of the new Frankston police station, homicide detectives pieced together Natalie's last movements. People had seen her leave school and enter the bike track where her body was found. Chances were that she was killed within minutes of entering the track and the time of death was probably between 2.45 and 3pm.

  Constable Joseph Aiello walked into the makeshift homicide squad office and told Mark Woolfe about the yellow Toyota Corona he had checked near the bike track the previous day at 3pm. Woolfe sent him to get the running sheet, then looked over the details. The postal worker was called to the police station and she repeated her story about seeing a man slouching down in the yellow Corona.

  Mark Woolfe asked her if she would recognise the man if she saw him again and she said she would. The detective showed her a blue school bag which she identified as being similar to the one she had seen the schoolgirl carrying as she crossed the road.

  Brown and Aiello had taken details of the registration from the sticker on the windscreen of the yellow Toyota Corona, and Mark Woolfe ran a check on the owner of the vehicle. Within seconds, the computer gave the name of the registered owner.

  Paul Charles Denyer.

  According to registration records, Denyer lived in a block of flats on the Frankston-Dandenong Road. Woolfe entered Denyer's name into the database and learned instantly that the car had been checked before - once at Kananook railway station and earlier Friday morning at the Flora and Fauna Reserve in Langwarrin.

  At 3.40pm, Mick Hughes and Charlie Bezzina went to the home of Paul Charles Denyer.

  There was no reply to their knocking, so Hughes left a card which explained that the police were conducting a doorknock in the area and requested that the occupants phone the Frankston police station when they returned home.

  The only thing to do now was to wait. The pieces seemed to be falling into place. At last detectives had a suspect who they could place at the scene at the time of the murder. The man seen by the postal worker had been in his car minutes before Natalie Russell entered the bike track, and his car had been empty 15 minutes later when Brown and Aiello had checked it.

  If Paul Charles Denyer was the killer, he would have been down the bike track at the same time that the officers were checking his car.

  At 5.15pm, detective Mick Hughes received the telephone call he had been waiting for. A young woman, who introduced herself as Sharon Johnson, explained that she had found the calling card in her door. Hughes told her that detectives would be around shortly to speak with her.

  Ten minutes later, Hughes, Rod Wilson, CIB detective Darren O'Loughlin and a number of other detectives converged upon the modest block of flats at 186 Frankston Dandenong Road.

  Sharon Johnson was walking out to the letter box when they arrived. Hughes identified himself and after a quick introduction, left the surprised young woman and proceeded to the flat.

  Hughes approached the flimsy, wooden door and knocked. A tall, overweight young man with a round face appeared in the doorway. Hughes could see him through the flywire.

  'I'm Detective Sergeant Hughes from the homi
cide squad,' he said. 'We are conducting investigations into the murders of Deborah Anne Fream and Natalie Jayne Russell. Do you mind if we come in and have a talk to you?'

  'Yeah sure, come in.' Paul Denyer pushed open the wire door.

  'I got your card but I didn't expect a whole heap of you,' he said smiling, looking at the group of detectives who followed him into the lounge room.

  The flat was messy and sparsely furnished and the lounge room was small with a worn green modular lounge suite and a cluttered coffee table.

  Hughes began by asking Denyer his full name and date of birth which the young man gave willingly.

  'Who do you live here with?' Hughes asked him.

  'My girlfriend, Sharon Johnson,' Denyer replied.

  Mick Hughes asked Denyer if he and Sharon were living in a de facto relationship.

  'What does that mean?' he asked. 'I've heard people say de facto before but I've never really known what it means.'

  'It just means in fact,' Hughes explained patiently. 'Are you in fact living with Sharon as husband and wife when you are not married? That's all it means.'

  Denyer told the detectives that he did have a de facto relationship with Sharon.

  Hughes then asked the young man if he had a job.

  Denyer spoke in a quiet, confident voice, explaining that he didn't have a job and hadn't had one since he had worked at Pro Marine in Seaford a couple of months back.

  Without further preamble, Mick Hughes asked Denyer to account for his movements on the previous day.