FRANKSTON KILLER - 'HE CAN'T BE SET FREE!'

With their daughter's murderer now eligible for parole, Brian and Carmel won't stop fighting

- Sarah Marinos

Casting her mind back to Friday, July 30, 1993, Carmel Russell still remembers the unnerving feeling that gripped her as time ticked by and her 17-year-old daughter failed to arrive home from school. If Natalie was ever going to be late, she always called.

"I drove Natalie to school that morning because it was raining and as she got out of the car, she said she might go to Frankston City Centre after school," Carmel, 79, tells Woman's Day.

"Later that afternoon I took my youngest son Damien to footy training and we got home just after 6pm, but there was still no sign of Natalie. She wasn't on the next bus or the one after that, and there was no phone call either."

REPEAT OFFENDER 

When Carmel's husband Brian, 81, a mechanic, arrived home from work about 6.30pm, the anxious couple called the police, with officers immediately concerned as 21-year-old Elizabeth Stevens and 22-year-old Deborah Fream had been abducted and killed in the Frankston area in the weeks prior.

"At about 10.30pm, the police told us they'd found a body. I asked if she was wearing the same school uniform as Natalie and she was," says Carmel.