Salt Creek kidnapper Roman Heinze built collection of extreme, violent pornography and took it with him to the scene of his crimes
EXCLUSIVE: Roman Heinze kept hardcore bondage-style rape pornography on his phone and viewed it the day he offered to take two tourists — whom he kidnapped and brutalised — to Salt Creek.
- Defence lawyer asks for appeal extension
- Guilty: Salt Creek kidnapper convicted of vile crimes
- Secrets: What the Salt Creek jury didn’t hear about kidnapper
- Unmasked: Salt Creek kidnapper revealed as Roman Heinze
- Defiant: Victim tells Heinze “You cannot break me”
SALT Creek monster Roman Heinze kept hardcore bondage-style rape pornography on his phone and viewed it on the day he offered to take two tourists — whom he kidnapped and brutalised — to the Coorong.
The Advertiser can today reveal the extent of Heinze’s obsession with violent sex, including videos on his computer and a “ball gag” seized from his home by police.
Jurors in his trial were given only a “watered-down” glimpse of Heinze’s collection, which a judge branded as “extremely graphic, extremely violent, next-level pornography”.
The public, meanwhile, was banned from knowing about it — a suppression order was imposed because defence counsel feared Heinze’s three subsequent trials could be tainted.
“It indicates that he has bad character, that he is simply not a nice person,” Bill Boucaut SC, for Heinze, argued before the trial began in March.
“He could never get a fair trial ... they are so graphic (and) somewhat overwhelming ... potential jurors would be completely overawed by it.”
Heinze, 61, will on Monday seek permission to appeal against his multiple convictions.
He will be sentenced on Wednesday for crimes including aggravated kidnapping, sexual and physical assault, and endangering life.
All three of his victims were foreign backpackers he contacted on the Gumtree website’s ride-sharing section — in defiance of bail conditions banning him from doing so.
He indecently assaulted his first victim in September 2014, molested his second three months later, and committed heinous acts at the remote Coorong beach on February 9, 2016.
Heinze had responded to a Gumtree ad posted by one of those women, from Brazil, agreeing to take her and a German companion to Melbourne.
At Salt Creek, he attacked the Brazilian from behind, tied her up with pre-cut lengths of rope, sliced off her bikini with a knife and sexually assaulted her.
When the German tried to come to her companion’s aid, Heinze repeatedly struck her in the head with a hammer and ran her down with his four-wheel drive.
Following his arrest, police found condoms, a box of Viagra and a bottle of Passion Pop — a flavoured sparking wine — in his vehicle.
Heinze was found guilty of the Salt Creek crimes, confessed to the September 2014 incident, was acquitted in his third trial and charges for his scheduled fourth trial were dropped.
Between his crimes, Heinze contacted a further 13 backpackers through the website while also using the internet to build a collection of perverse sexual imagery.
One of those women, from Japan, agreed to travel to Salt Creek with Heinze but he cut their trip short after she revealed she had posted photos of him and his car online.
During pre-trial legal argument in March, which was suppressed until now, prosecutor Jim Pearce, QC, said Heinze remained “obsessed” with that woman after her narrow escape.
He said that, between August 2015 and January 2016, Heinze used multiple internet search terms that included the words “rape”, “hardcore”, “fetish” and “brutal”.
Other terms were in the form of questions, seeking to know “how to hurt a woman” during sex and whether Japanese woman “like being raped”.
Mr Pearce said Heinze’s interest dated back even earlier to November 2011, when he spent half an hour shopping for bondage products.
Items considered by Heinze that evening included leg, wrist, ankle, neck and full body harnesses, metal chains, a silicon ball open-mouth gag and a “slave bondage set”.
“It should be a matter for a jury (to decide) whether that is normal behaviour or behaviour that’s outside the norm,” he said.
“Our submission is that it is behaviour outside the norm, that it shows he has a demonstrated interest in such conduct, and that’s a fact a jury should be allowed to consider.”
He said police recovered 95 exploitative images from Heinze’s computer, 37 of which featured women being gagged and 34 with their arms or wrists bound.
A further 29 images showed women with their hands or feet bound, five with their hands bound only and 20 depicted forced sex acts.
Mr Pearce said Heinze’s iPhone, which he took with him to Salt Creek, was also pre-loaded with two illicit videos.
The first showed two women on a bed, both gagged with their arms bound behind their backs with rope, while the other had two women wearing matching gags with their arms and legs bound.
Mr Pearce said Heinze had saved still pictures from those videos, and had last accessed those files on February 7, 2016 — he day he answered the Brazilian’s ad.
He urged the court to allow jurors to know the depths of Heinze’s depravity, including the police discovery of a homemade ball gag in his home following his arrest.
“(The defence case) is that these women are inventing the story, that they have lied, that this was all a mistake,” he said.
“Our case is the fact Heinze accessed images showing women whose hands and feet have been tied and are engaged in what I’ll loosely call ‘sexual activity’ (proves) his intent.”
In her formal ruling, Justice Trish Kelly noted there was “some force” in defence counsel’s objections because the prosecution case remained “extremely strong” without the pornography.
She said she was “very concerned” jurors might be prejudiced by full details of the collection and ordered prosecutors provide “a more watered-down version” at trial.
“These are extremely graphic, extremely violent, seems to me of a next-stage pornography,” she said.
When the evidence was given in court on March 21, Justice Kelly suppressed it from publication — that order was revoked ahead of Heinze’s sentencing on Wednesday.
His searches:
ROMAN Heinze’s offending began in September 2014, but his obsession with violent sex acts began much earlier.
From 10.14pm to 10.40pm on November 13, 2011, Heinze searched a sex fetish supply store’s online site using the following terms:
BONDAGE leg restraint harness straps
BODY harness wrist ankle hand cuffs restraint
BONDAGE restraint harness handcuff set
SILICON ball fetish open mouth gag harness
RESTRAINT leg open wrist cuffs fetish slave bondage harness set
RESTRAINT bondage rope body harness
RESTRAINT harness neck collar hand and ankle cuffs bondage
METAL chain fetish body bondage neck restraint