Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killers
Disclaimer: Topics in this blog post may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion advised. CW: serial k*llers, m*rder, SA, a$$ault, child ab*se/infanticide.
Hi friends! I was scratching my head about what should be my next blog post, and then Luke and I were watching Crime Night, and they started talking about the Claremont Killer, who I hadn't heard of before, and that inspired me to take a bit more of a look at some of Australia's most notorious serial killers. I mean, when you think of Australian serial killers, the first person that comes to mind is Ivan Milat, right? Let's explore him and some others!
For the purpose of this blog post, the definition of a serial killer is someone who commits at least three murders, with a cooling-off period in between, with a modus operandi (e.g., all the victims are s*x workers, or there is a type of way the perpetrator k*lls in each crime). Serial killers often are extremely intelligent and can go for a really long time without getting caught - some of them even turn themselves in eventually.
I also think that nowadays, with the rise in surveillance technology, it's become increasingly harder for serial killers to exist, as a lot of the time, the perpetrator is usually caught after the first m*rder. Not always, but back in the 1970s-1990s, there was much less surveillance and technology in general.
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Australia's Most Notorious Serial Killers
Ivan Milat (The Backpack Murderer)
I feel like we can blame the fact that Belango State Forest has such a creepy, unsettling, "haunted" vibe to it on the fact that Ivan Milat lured his victims there and dumped the bodies, and there are probably more buried bodies yet to be found. Unfortunately, Milat passed away in 2019, so I don't know if some of them will ever be found. I also want to note that the Wolf Creek movies are based on Ivan Milat's crimes and make things scarier too.
Ivan Milat was convicted of abducting, a$$aulting, and m*rdering 2 men and 5 women between the years of 1989 and 1992. His modus operandi was to approach backpackers/hitchhikers along the Hume Highway in NSW and "offer" them transport to places they were going in NSW. However, instead of actually taking them there, he took the victims into the Belango State Forest, where he would incapacitate them and then kill them.
Authorities knew that they were looking for a serial k*ller when they found the victims' bodies, so they created a task force and a reward if the public could find who they were looking for, and they had already started to survey Milat's home early in 1994. But it wasn't until they spoke with UK-based Paul Onions that they were able to identify Ivan Milat. On the 25th of January, 1990, Paul Onions had been hitchhiking from Liverpool station towards Mildura while he was backpacking around Aus, where he accepted a ride from a man named "Bill". South of Mittagong, and VERY close to Belanglo, Bill pulled out a g*n and some rope with the intention of robbing Onions. Onions was able to flee the car while Bill shot at him. Onions was able to flag down another car, which was Joanne Berry from Canberra. Both of them went to the Bowral police with a description and reg. It wasn't until the 13th of April, 1994, that detectives rediscovered this incident report/note about his call. Paul Onions then contacted the police on the 13th of November, 1994, to confirm the story. In 1996, Milat went to trial and was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2019, and he maintained his innocence right until the very end (even though there was SO much evidence).
RIP to all of Milat's victims. They were: Deborah Everest (19), James Gibson (19), Simone Schmidl (21, German), Anja Habschied (20, German), Gabor Neugebauer (21, German), Caroline Clarke (21, British), and Joanne Walters (22, British). And all the other ones who we will probably never know.
The Snowtown Murders
The Snowtown Murders (also called bodies in barrels" refers to 12 murders that took place around Adelaide, South Australia, between August 1992 and May 1999. The perpetrators were John Justin Bunting, Robert Joe Wagner, James Spyridon Vlassakis, and Mark Ray Haydon (Mark, who was only convicted of disposing of the bodies and covering up a crime).
Most of the victims' bodies were found in barrels in an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown in May 1999. However, only one of the victims was m*rdered in Snowtown (140 km north of Adelaide). A MO has not been proven, but it is believed that the ringleader of the group was Bunting and the other perpetrators were told they were targeting p*dophiles, LGBTQIA+, overweight people, or "weak" people (i.e., socially isolated and/or vulnerable people). All the victims were tortured before being m*rdered. Allegedly, Bunting was s*xually a$$aulted by a friend's older brother when he was just 8 years old and, from there, developed a hatred of p*dophiles and gay men.
After police discovered the bodies in the bank vault thanks to a tip-off and ongoing missing persons cases, they were able to trace the crime back to a house that Bunting used to live in and there, police found more bodies buried in the backyard. In May/June of 1999, they arrested the perpetrators.
The trial lasted for almost a year, going from October 2002 to September 2003. Bunting pleaded not guilty, and Wagner pleaded guilty to some of the m*rders. All the perpetrators were found guilty and sentenced to life. However, Haydon had been given 25 years and was released from prison in 2024.
The victims were:
Clinton Douglas Trezis (20) - Bunting accused him of being a p*dophile (he wasn't).
Suzanne Allen (47) - Bunting's ex GF and he kept collecting her pension when she passed and hid the d*ath.
Ray Allan Peter Davies (26) - A disabled man who in 1993 had a s*xual relationship with Suzanne Allen. Allegedly, Davies made advances towards Suzanne's grandchildren, and she ended the relationship, but they remained friends.
Michelle Gardiner (19) - A trans woman.
Vanessa Lane (42) - Wagner's ex-partner who was also a trans woman and her relationship started with Wagner when he was 15. I believe Lane was convicted of CSA. She lived with Wagner, and when Wagner and Lane met Bunting, he accepted her at first. In 1996, Wagner ended his relationship with Lane and Lane continued to go after younger men. This p*ssed off Bunting, and then Bunting, Wagner, and Thomas (discussed next) str*ngled, tortured her and k*lled her sometime in 1997.
Thomas Eugenio Trevilyan (18) - Thomas was Lane's latest victim and also had paranoid schizophrenia, where he believed he was a soldier. He helped Bunting and Wagner k*ll Lane. On the 4th of November, 1997, Thomas saw Wagner's GF's son playing with a dog, then Thomas started to chase the dog with a knife. Thomas was stopped, and Bunting told others that he was going "mental" and becoming a liability to the group. He was driven to Adelaide Hills and then had a noose put over his neck. At the time, the coroner determined Thomas had k*lled himself due to having a history of prior attempts.
Gavin Allan Porter (47) - A man with schizophrenia who Bunting referred to as a "waste".
Troy Youde (21) - The half-brother of Vlassakis who Vlassakis told Bunting had SA'd him when he was 13 (I don't know if the alleged SA is true in this case).
Frederick Robert Brooks (18) - The group believed Brooks was SAing young girls.
Gary O'Dwyer (29) - A neighbour of Bunting who was intellectually and physically disabled, and Bunting wanted to take his money.
Elizabeth Haydon (37) - Mark Haydon's wife who was k*lled because Mark told Bunting he had confided in her about the m*rders. Wagner believed Elizabeth Haydon to be a "wh0re" and "low life".
David Johnson (24) - Vlassiki's stepbrother who was disliked by Bunting as he was a "yuppie". Apparently, some flesh of David was also eaten by Wagner and Bunting (I am going to be sick).
RIP to all those people. It's such a f*cked up case, and to me, I hate when serial k*llers are like "let's clean up the streets" of just human beings.
The Night Caller (Eric Edgar Cooke)
Eric Edgar Cooke (also known as The Night Caller and later The Nedlands Monster) was a serial k*ller who terrorised Perth, WA from September 1958 to August 1963. Cooke committed at least 20 violent crimes, 8 of which resulted in death. He was arrested in August 1963 and pleaded insanity at trial - the jury rejected his defence, and he was sentenced to death by h*nging Cooke was the last ever person to be executed in WA.
Over 4 years, Cooke's k*lling spree involved hit-and-runs, st*bbings, str*ngulations, and sh**tings. A few of the victims were k*lled after waking in their homes when Cooke was robbing them. In one crime, Cooke st*bbed a victim and took lemonade from their fridge and sat on their verandah drinking it. There was even necrophilia involved in another crime.
Cooke's victims were: Penny Berkman, Jillian McPherson Brewer, John Lindsay Sturkey, George Ormond Walmsley, Shirley Martha McLeod, Rosemary Anderson, Constance Lucy Madrill, and Brian Vincent Weir.
Interestingly (that's not the right word here, but you get the point), two other men were wrongfully convicted of Cooke's crimes. These were Darryl Beamish - who was deaf and did end up committing different crimes, such as SA of young girls- and John Button (who never committed any crimes). They both went to prison for Cooke's crimes, and it wasn't until the early 2000s that they were acquitted. They were both given around $400,000 ex gratia by the government.
The Claremont Killer
So, the Claremont Killer is the one I recently learned about and the serial k*ller who inspired me to make this post (thank you to the TV show Crime Night - which is a fantastic watch; it's literally like being in a criminology class).
The Claremont Killer/Claremont serial killings) was a name given by the media to a sensational case that involved the disappearance of an 18-year-old Australian woman, and two m*rders of women aged 23 and 27 respectively between 1996 and 1997 (they were st*bbed). These crimes took place after the women had attended nightclubs in Claremont, Perth, WA. As the crimes were very similar, authorities suspected at the time that there was an unidentified serial k*ller on the loose. According to Wikipedia, the case has been described as Western Australia's most expensive and longest-running investigation.
It wasn't until 2016 that a suspect was finally identified. A man called Bradley Robert Edwards was arrested and went to trial in November 2019. The trial went until June 2020, and there were over 200 witnesses. Advanced DNA testing from Glennon's fingernails was matched to a sample from an SA case in 1995 at Karrakatte Cemetery, which was coupled with unique clothing fibres that were traced to Edwards. Edwards was found guilty of two m*rders (Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon), but not guilty of the m*rder of Sarah Spiers (whose remains are still missing). Edwards was sentenced to life in prison (with the possibility of parole after 40 years).
It's not super clear to me whether he did k*ller Sarah, but people strongly suspect that he did, and it's alleged that there were more victims of SA and m*rder. Edwards likely started out as a SA perpetrator and then continued on to m*rder, and I am going to say that he most likely was a serial k*ller.
The Baby Farmers (aka The Hatpin Murders)
This one is pretty rough, so feel free to skip if you think it will be too much. It kinda reminds me of the Minnie Dean case in NZ. Anyway, John and Sarah Makin were Australian "baby farmers" - aka a historical form of foster care, where individuals took on custody of children in exchange for payment from the parents who operated their business in Sydney, NSW, in the early 1890s. John and Sarah were convicted for the m*rder of infant Horace Murray. Authorities ended up finding at least 15 babies buried in their backyard, and it was thought that the cause of death was being "stabbed in the heart with a large needle".
The couple were found guilty in 1893 and both sentenced to the d*ath penalty. However, Sarah's sentence was changed, and in 1911, her daughters petitioned for her release, and she was let out of prison. John was hanged.
This case led NSW to pass the "Children's Protection Act 1892", which regulated adoption and made people report infant d*aths. What the actual f*ck?
The Granny Killer (John Wayne Glover)
I feel like there's a conspiracy with men named "John Wayne" who end up being serial k*llers (like John Wayne Gacy). Anyway, John Wayne Glover was an English-Australian serial k*ller who was convicted of m*rdering at least six elderly women (aged from 60 - 93) in Sydney's North Shore from 1989 to 1990. As the victims were elderly women, the name "The Granny Killer" was given. Glover's victims were as follows:
Gwendolin Mitchelhill (82) - Glover hit her over the head with a hammer.
Lady Winfreda Isabel Ashton (Hoggard) (84) - Glover also attacked her with a hammer.
Margaret Pahud (85) - A woman walking home with groceries who was hit on the back of the head with a blunt object.
Olive Cleveland - A woman who Glover k*lled 24 hours after he had k*lled Pahud.
Muriel Falconer (93) - Who was hit in the neck and head with a hammer.
Joan Sinclair (60) - Again, with his hammer, and he had allegedly been having some sort of relationship with her after he and his wife separated.
I believe that Glover k*lled his victims in this way so that authorities would believe that some of them had succumbed to a bad fall. In 1989, Glover was diagnosed with male breast cancer, and he and his wife separated, and the wife took the children to New Zealand.
In 1991, Glover went to trial and pleaded "not guilty to his crimes on the grounds of diminished responsibility." He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but did not finish his sentence as he hanged himself in 2005 in his cell. One psychiatrist who reviewed Glover's trial suggested that Glover had a pile of rage and aggression inside him against his mother and mother-in-law, and when they both passed, he needed somewhere to let out that built-up tension. Another psychiatrist, Dr John Shand, who testified at Glover's trial, claimed that Glover had a severe personality disorder.
The Mutilator
The Mutilator refers to a serial k*ller who was known as William MacDonald (born Allan Ginsberg in Liverpool, England). He also used the alias "Alan Brennan". MacDonald m*rdered five men altogether: four men in Sydney, and one man in Brisbane between 1961 and 1962. His modus operandi (MO) was to target random male victims (usually homeless or derelict) and lure them into dark and secluded areas, beat them up, st*ab them repeatedly and then sever their genitals. As the style of k*lling was so gruesome, that's where the nickname "The Mutilator" came from. MacDonald's victims were as follows: Amos Hugh Hurs (63) - whom MacDonald had befriended outside a train station, Alfred Reginald Greenfield (41), Ernest William Cobbin (36-37), Frank Gladstone McLean, and Patrick Joseph Hackett (37).
One of the early victims was mistaken by authorities to be Alan Brennan (MacDonald's alias), which allowed MacDonald to flee. The name Brennan was incorrectly published in a newspaper obituary. During this time, MacDonald was living in Brisbane and then moved to New Zealand with the belief that authorities would still be looking for them. MacDonald felt the need to k*ll again and believed he had to return to Sydney to do so. When in Sydney, MacDonald bumped into a former work colleague (John) who said, "I believed you had died", and MacDonald said, "Leave me alone" and ran away. MacDonald then went to Melbourne. His work colleague went to the authorities, who did not believe him, and he was told to "go home and sleep it off", dismissing his concerns. The work colleague went back to the police the next day, and they still didn't believe him, so he went to the Daily Mirror newspaper and spoke to a crime reporter called Joe Morris (who believed the story to be credible). Joe Morris wrote a story called "Case of the walking corpse", and authorities then had to exhume the other corpse, which actually belonged to the victim Hackett and not MacDonald himself.
On the 13th of May, 1963, William MacDonald was finally arrested while working as a railway porter at Spencer Street Station, Melbourne, where he confessed. MacDonald was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences at Long Bay Prison. I believe he was also classed as "insane" and transferred to a secure mental health hospital. He was the longest-serving inmate in NSW. He passed away in 2015 from natural causes.
The Melbourne Ripper
I don't really know if this case is "Australian" in the same way that the others are, but I thought it was kinda interesting with the connection to Jack the Ripper. The Melbourne Ripper refers to a man called Frederick Bailey Deeming (1853 - 1892) who was an English serial k*ller who was convicted and executed for k*lling his entire family in Merseyside, England. He k*lled his second wife in Melbourne, Australia. The name "The Melbourne Ripper" is given to Deeming, as many suspect he was in fact the real Jack the Ripper. However, there is no conclusive proof that he was.
Deeming was executed at the Old Melbourne Gaol, and the gaol has one copy of Deeming's death mask on display. Ghost tour anyone? Authorities were able to catch Deeming pretty quickly due to foul smells coming from his home in Melbourne.
Toxic Tea Lady
The Toxic Tea Lady refers to a woman called Caroline Grills (also known as Aunt Thally) who was an active serial k*ller between the years 1947 and 1953 in NSW. Grills m*rdered her victims by lacing their tea with thallium (a chemical that was used as rat poison at the time). She started by targeting "well-off" members of her family (I assume for financial gain), but over time, the motive wasn't as clear.
Following the d*aths of four of Grill's family members: her stepmother Christine Mickleson (87), relatives by marriage John Lundberg & Angelina Thomas, and her SIL Mary Anne Mickleson. Authorities tested the tea and found thallium in the tea. In court, she was charged with four m*rders and three attempted m*rders and was sentenced to d*ath originally and then later changed to life imprisonment. Grills died at the age of 71 or 72 from a ruptured gastric ulcer.
Grill was caught by one family member - John Downey noticed Grills dropping something into a cup of tea for Eveline Lundberg, so he switched the cups and gave it to the police.
Stay safe, friends!
Ash
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