Why police think Telstra trechnician Bradley Robert Edwards is the notorious Claremont serial killer

Accused serial killer Bradley Robert Edwards was just 19 when he donned a woman’s nightie, crept into a bedroom and climbed on top of a sleeping 18-year-old woman. 

It was seven years before the first of three young women would disappear from a popular Perth entertainment precinct and become victims of a predator dubbed the Claremont serial killer.

Edwards, who admits attacking the teenager 32 years ago, has for the past five months been denying he murdered the trio in Western Australia’s ‘trial of the century’.

The case has been described as is the state’s biggest, longest-running, and most expensive criminal investigation.

Bradley Robert Edwards is alleged to be the Claremont serial killer, responsible for abducting and murdering three young women from a Perth entertainment precinct in 1995 and 1996. The last of the evidence in his triple murder trial was heard this week

Ciara Glennon, 27, was the last victim of the so-called Claremont serial killer. She disappeared after a night out in Perth on March 15, 1997 and her body was found in bushland 40km away

Jane Rimmer, 23, (left) disappeared from Claremont on June 6, 1996 and was the second alleged murder victim of Bradley Robert Edwards. Sarah Spiers, 18, (right) was the first alleged victim of Edwards. She disappeared on january 27, 1996. Her body has never been found

As the trial in the Supreme Court of Western Australia draws to a close the 51-year-old former Telstra technician’s fate will be decided by a judge sitting without a jury of his peers. 

The Crown says it has strong DNA evidence linking Edwards, who provided hair and saliva samples to police, to the three murders. The defence case is simply that Edwards did not commit the crimes. 

What happened to the teenager who found Edwards in her bedroom in 1988 forms an integral part of trying to establish him as the Claremont serial killer.  

On February 15 that year the 18-year-old was sleeping on her stomach in the bedroom of her family home at Huntingdale in Perth’s south-east. Edwards knew her and lived in the same suburb.

When the woman woke to feel someone straddling her back she initially thought it might have been her boyfriend, with whom she had spent Valentine’s Day only hours earlier. 

‘There was no noise but then a hand came over my mouth,’ the woman, now 50, told the court in December last year.  ‘I said, “It’s OK, I won’t scream’.

This kimono was left by Bradley Robert Edwards at a house in Huntsdale after he broke in and assaulted an 18-year-old woman in 1988. It is alleged to have provided DNA evidence linking Edwards to the murder of Ciara Glennon in 1997 and the rape of a 17-year-old girl in 1995

Accused serial killer Bradley Robert Edwards was just 19 when he donned a woman’s nightie and crept into the bedroom of a sleeping 18-year-old woman. He has pleaded guilty to that attack in 1988 but denies murdering three women who disappeared from Claremont

‘Another hand came onto the back of my head and was pushing.’

The woman thought her partner might have been covering her mouth so she did not wake her parents and get them both into trouble. 

‘I was trying to work out what was happening, shaking my head from side to side,’ she said. ‘I said, “What are you doing?” and “Let me go” at some point.’

When Edwards tried to cover her mouth with a piece of cloth the woman said, ‘I love you’ and he stopped what he was doing.

Still believing the intruder could be her boyfriend she reached up to stroke his face but felt stubble when she knew he was clean shaven. She then dug her fingernails into him as hard as she could.

As Edwards got off her and walked away the woman braced herself to be hit.

When that didn’t happen she looked to her doorway and saw a tall man standing there in a long-sleeved nightie, ‘similar to what my mother wore’.

Hammering the wall to alert her parents as she stared at Edwards, the woman cried out, ‘Dad! Dad! Dad!’ and he ran. 

A forensic police officer measures where tree branches have been torn off near the area where Ciara Glennon’s body was dumped at Eglington, about 40km north of Perth, in 1997

Jane Rimmber disappeared from Claremont on June 6, 1996 and her body was found in bushland about 40km south of Perth. This watch belonging to Ms Rimmer was found near her remains

As he fled the woman’s bedroom that night, Edwards left behind knotted black stockings, a piece of fabric and a silk kimono.

That kimono is now central to the Crown’s contention that Edwards would years later go on to abduct and murder three women who were having a night out in Claremont when they disappeared. 

This Identikit image shows a man seen on the night Sarah Spiers vanished from Claremont

Edwards has admitted the attack on the 18-year-old as well as twice raping a 17-year-old girl at Karrakatta Cemetery, near Perth’s central business district, on February 12, 1995. That teenager had been abducted from Claremont.

He maintains he did not murder secretary Sarah Spiers, 18, and childcare worker Jane Rimmer, 23, in January and June 1996 respectively, and solicitor Ciara Glennon, 27, in March the following year.

The bodies of Ms Glennon and Ms Rimmer were located in bushland north and south of Perth respectively weeks after their disappearance and had suffered neck injuries. The remains of Ms Spiers have never been found. 

The prosecution argues Edwards’s offending escalated over time. 

The girl he raped in the cemetery less than a year before Ms Spiers disappeared gave evidence against Edwards in four statements read out in the court.  

‘I thought at the end of it all that he was going to kill me,’ she said. 

Edwards has admitted  twice raping a 17-year-old girl at Karrakatta Cemetery, (pictured) near Perth’s central business district, on February 12, 1995. That teenager had been abducted from Claremont

On the night of the rape the girl had left Club Bayview at Claremont – the same venue where Ms Spiers was last seen – and was walking a few hundred metres to a friend’s house. 

As she made her way through a dimly-lit park, she was grabbed from behind, pushed to the ground and straddled, then had a thick cloth like a sock shoved deep into her mouth.

‘I didn’t scream, I just froze,’ she said. It happened really quickly. He told me to shut up at one point.

‘I didn’t say anything to him. I was too frightened. I kept my eyes shut – I thought it would be better if he thought I couldn’t see him.’

Edwards tied up the girl’s hands tightly with a restraint ‘as thick as a telephone cord’, carried her to his van, bound her ankles and covered her head with a cotton bag.

‘I was very frightened,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to die.’

Edwards drove for about 30 minutes then carried and dragged the girl through Karrakatta Cemetery where he raped her twice.

‘I started to cry but not loudly,’ she said. ‘I remember repeating, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this is happening”. It was very painful. I remember my face lying against the dirt.’

The Claremont serial killer case has been described as is the state’s biggest, longest-running, and most expensive criminal investigation and has received constant media coverage in Perth. Alleged killer Bradley Robert Edwards is pictured during his first marriage in the 1990s

Don and Carol Spiers, the parents of murdered secretary Sarah Spiers are pictured arriving at the Supreme Court of Western Australia on the opening day of her alleged killer’s trial

Edwards flung the girl into scrub, then left. About two minutes later he returned and threw her into denser bushes. 

After the girl heard him drive off she opened her eyes and ran to the cemetery’s nearest exit. Semi-naked, she fled to a care facility near the Hollywood Hospital where she dialled a phone at the front door with her chin and yelled for help.

A picture showing drag marks on the ground where Bradley Robert Edwards raped a 17-year-old girl in a cemetery was tendered during his murder trial

A woman inside the hospital called police while the still-bound teenager ran off. She then called her father from a phone box and ran back to the hospital.

‘I said, “Dad can you come and get me?” she recalled. ‘While I was crying I said I’d been raped.’

Edwards, who was convicted of assaulting a social worker at Hollywood Hospital in 1990, was arrested over the Claremont murders in December 2016 after DNA on the kimono was re-tested. 

‘What the f***?’ the former Little Athletics coach exclaimed while sitting handcuffed on the floor of his Kewdale house when police told him he was suspected of being the Claremont serial killer. 

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said as detectives read him his rights. ‘My head is spinning. I understand. I’m just trying to process what’s going on.’

Edwards went to trial in late November and the courtroom has been packed throughout the hearing.

The families of the three murdered women were in attendance this week, as was the 17-year-old and 18-year-old women Edwards attacked, and his parents. 

Alleged serial killer Bradley Robert Edwards was arrested at his home at Kewdale in December 2016. Police are pictured as the continued to search the premises on December 23 

Prosecutors say Edwards’s DNA was found in semen on the silk kimono left behind after the Huntington attack, on the cemetery victim, and under Ms Glennon’s fingernails.

It has been part of Edwards’s defence that the scientific evidence may have been contaminated.  

Defence counsel Paul Yovich SC urged Justice Stephen Hall in his opening address in November to ‘beware the tendency to smooth out the rough edges’ in the Crown’s case.

‘The defence is simple,’ Mr Yovich said. ‘It wasn’t him.’

‘We are not pointing the finger at any specific person, all we are saying is the nice, neat picture the state wants to present… is not the full picture.

‘The proper approach in any case is to fit the case theory to the evidence, not to try to fit the evidence to the case theory.’

Bradley Robert Edwards is pictured at the back of a van while he was married to his first wife, who gave evidence the couple had separated in late 1995 or early 1996

The Crown also says fibres from Edwards’s work trousers and Telstra-issued car were found on the rape victim and the remains of Ms Rimmer and Ms Glennon. 

Mr Yovich said DNA and fibre evidence could have been contaminated and that storing of such materials in the 1990s was much less sophisticated than it was now.

Edwards’s defence was expected to get under way on Wednesday after five months of evidence from more than 200 prosecution witnesses but was over almost before it began. 

He chose not to step into the witness box or to give a detailed response to the murder charges. 

The only evidence his barrister called for was weather records for the day Ms Spiers disappeared. 

The Crown’s case closed with the playing over two days of a video of Edwards’s interview with police after his arrest.

That video showed Edwards appearing to be stunned when confronted with DNA evidence linking him to one of the Claremont killings, the Huntingdale attack and the rape of the teenager.

Bradley Robert Edwards (pictured) will not learn his fate for several months. His defence case finished this week and closing submissions are due to be heard next month

‘Brace yourself Bradley, I have some results,’ Detective Senior Sergeant Joe Marrapodi said in the interview, before telling Edwards of the positive matches.

Edwards responded: ‘How could that be? I didn’t do it.’

Police showed Edwards a photograph of the silk kimono left behind at the Huntingdale attack which allegedly contained his DNA.

‘How can it be?’ he asked Senior Sergeant Marrapodi. ‘I don’t know what it is or where it’s from.’

Senior Sergeant Marrapodi told Edwards his DNA was also found on the 17-year-old victim of the cemetery rape. ‘I’m struggling to explain that,’ Edwards responded.

‘I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there. I didn’t do any of this.’ 

It was not until October last year before the start of his murder trial that Edwards pleaded guilty to the Huntingdale attack and the rape at Karrakatta.

Edwards was also shown a photograph of Ms Glennon, who he denied knowing, and told DNA gathered from the rape victim matched a sample found on Ms Glennon.

‘What happened Bradley?’ the detective asked.

Ciara Gleenon’s father Denis Glennon is pictured arriving at the Supreme Court of Western Australia for the opening day of the trial of Bradley Robert Edwards on November 25 last year

‘I don’t know,’ Edwards replied. ‘I wish I could explain it and say I was wherever.’ 

Senior Sergeant Marrapodi tried to appeal to Edwards’s connection to his stepdaughter. 

‘Your daughter said your most prized virtue is your honesty, this is your chance to show that she’s right,’ he told him. 

Edwards: ‘I’m being honest.’

Senior Sergeant Marrapodi: ‘Are you a man who accepts responsibility for his actions?’

Edwards: ‘Yes I am. I accept responsibility for stuff I’ve done, not stuff I haven’t done.’

The case has been adjourned until June 8 when closing submissions will begin. Justice Hall is then expected to take some months before delivering his verdict. 

The 18-year-old woman Edwards attacked at Huntingdale in 1988 is now married to the boyfriend she had thought was on top of her. 

Bradley Robert Edwards’s defence team arrives at court on the first day of his murder 

KEY DATES IN MARATHON CASE OF THE ALLEGED CLAREMONT KILLER 

 February 15, 1988

– An 18-year-old woman is indecently assaulted in her sleep during a break-in at a Huntingdale home but her attacker flees after a struggle.

February 12, 1995

– A 17-year-old girl is abducted while walking through Rowe Park in Claremont and taken to Karrakatta Cemetery where she is sexually assaulted.

January 27, 1996

– Secretary Sarah Spiers, 18, disappears after leaving Club Bayview in Claremont after calling a taxi from a nearby phone booth. Her body has not been found.

June 9, 1996

– Childcare worker Jane Rimmer, 23, similarly vanishes in Claremont and is last seen outside the Continental Hotel.

June 10, 1996

– Western Australia Police sets up Macro task force.

August 3, 1996

– Ms Rimmer’s body is found by a mother and her children picking flowers in Wellard, south of Perth.

March 15, 1997

– Lawyer Ciara Glennon, 27, is last seen in Claremont after also visiting the Continental Hotel.

April 3, 1997

– Ms Glennon’s body is found in bushland at Eglington, north of Perth.

October 16, 2015

– A newspaper claims police have established a forensic link between Ms Glennon’s murderer and the man who raped a teenager in Karrakatta two years earlier but police refuse to comment for ‘operational reasons’.

December 23, 2016

– Bradley Robert Edwards, 48, from Kewdale, is charged with eight offences related to the deaths of Ms Glennon and Ms Rimmer and the Karrakatta and Huntington attacks, but no charges are laid over the disappearance of Ms Spiers. Edwards is remanded in custody.

February 22, 2018

– Edwards is charged with the wilful murder of Ms Spiers.

October 21, 2019 

– Edward pleads guilty to five of eight charges against him, including the Huntingdale attack and raping the 17-year-old girl at Karrakatta, but maintains he didn’t commit the murders. 

November 25, 2019

– A judge-alone trial begins in the Western Australia Supreme Court.

May 6, 2019 

– The trial is adjourned after all evidence has been heard.  

Source: AAP

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk