CATCHING A SERIAL KILLER

When three young women were abducted and murdered in Perth during the ’90s, the unsolved crimes haunted the city for decades. Finally, following the most expensive police investigation in Australian history, the Claremont serial killer has been brought to justice. Those close to the case tell Michael Crooks their stories

- Michael Crooks

For 20 years, they were the unsolved crimes that devastated families, changed the way women went out at night and left a city in fear: three young women plucked from the streets and taken to their deaths.

It began with Sarah Spiers, an 18-year-old receptionist who disappeared on January 27, 1996, after a night out in Claremont. The wealthy riverside suburb had a thriving night scene that included the iconic Continental Hotel and Club Bayview, where Spiers was last seen. Her body has never been found.

Six months after that, childcare worker Jane Rimmer, 23, vanished following drinks at the Continental. Her body was found two months later in bushland 40 kilometres away.

Then, on March 15, 1997, after a night out at the Continental, lawyer Ciara Glennon, 27, was last seen interacting with someone in a car before going missing. A man stumbled across her body three weeks later in bushland 50 kilometres north of Perth. Both Rimmer’s and Glennon’s necks had evidence of injuries consistent with knife cuts, and they both bore defensive wounds on their arms.

The murders sent shockwaves through the city, but as the Claremont serial killer loomed large, police grappled to find a suspect.

Twenty years later, following a breakthrough from improved DNA testing, police announced on December 22, 2016, that they had made an arrest. The suspected killer was 48-year-old Bradley Robert Edwards.

The former Telstra technician, who had been married twice and volunteered at his stepdaughter’s Little Athletics club, was charged with the murders, as well as two other historical crimes: the attack on an 18-year old at her home in 1988; and the rape and abduction of a girl, 17, in a Claremont cemetery in 1995. Edwards pleaded guilty to the two attacks but denied he was a killer.