Bradley Robert Edwards’ second wife says she feared for her life during her marriage to the accused Claremont serial killer.
She has told his murder trial she compiled a notebook of his bank transactions, but the statement covering the period of Ciara Glennon’s murder was missing.
The ex-Telstra technician is battling accusations he murdered secretary Sarah Spiers, 18, child care worker Jane Rimmer, 23, and Ms Glennon, a 27-year-old lawyer, after they spent nights out drinking with friends in 1996 and 1997.
Bradley Robert Edwards’ (pictured) second wife says she feared for her life during her marriage to the accused Claremont serial killer
Edwards’ second wife, whose identity is suppressed, testified in the Western Australia Supreme Court on Thursday that in 2014 – the year before she left him – she took detailed notes from his bank statements.
At least one, covering the period from late December 1996 to early April 1997 was missing.
Ms Glennon was abducted or lured into a car on March 15, 1997 and her body was found in bushland the following month.
An earlier statement showed two withdrawals from a Bayview Terrace ATM in December 1996.
In his police interview, Edwards claimed he had no association with the affluent suburb so had no reason to go there.
But another woman who casually dated Edwards in the mid-1990s said they ‘certainly’ went to Claremont and ‘more than likely’ visited The Continental Hotel, where Ms Glennon and Ms Rimmer were seen shortly before they were abducted.
Asked by prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo why she took the notes, the second wife said their relationship ‘started to escalate’.
‘I feared for my life’, the woman said but was prevented from expanding further.
Asked if she wrote the notes in chronological order, she replied she was ‘terrified while writing this’.
When defence counsel Paul Yovich asked if she wrote them in one go, she volunteered she was ‘scared stiffless’ but the barrister cut her off, telling her he didn’t need ‘editorial’.
With a clear recollection of specifics, the woman said the pair ‘fell in love pretty quickly’ after meeting on April 1, 1997.
But about two months later while driving her home, Edwards pulled over, seeming ‘very edgy’, and confessed he had a criminal record.
‘He said it was just an assault,’ she said.
Edwards’ second wife, whose identity is suppressed, testified in the Western Australia Supreme Court on Thursday that in 2014 – the year before she left him – she took detailed notes from his bank statements
‘His first wife, when they were boyfriend and girlfriend, she had cheated on him and he couldn’t cope with it.
‘He cried and everything … I felt sorry for him.
‘He was all “woe is me”.’
She said she later learnt the ‘brain snap’ was Edwards’ attack on a Hollywood Hospital social worker in 1990, which earnt him an assault conviction and an order to complete a sex offenders program.
He grabbed the woman from behind and tried to drag her into toilets, and cable ties were found in his pocket.
‘He minimised it and that’s all I knew about it – it was just an assault,’ the second wife said.
Earlier, an ex-girlfriend, whose name is also suppressed, said he spoke about his first marriage breakdown without anger or bitterness and was ‘matter-of-fact about it’.
Their relationship ‘started to fizzle’ after they spent a weekend in Margaret River in February 1997 and ended weeks later, adding it had ‘well and truly finished’ by late April.
‘He told me he’d met somebody else,’ the woman said, agreeing with the suggestion it came as a surprise.
They then had sex.
Mr Yovich asked if Edwards was ‘trying to be nice about it’ and the woman replied: ‘I guess so.’
The next morning, Edwards said he still wanted to break up, then left.