Twisted Minds podcast: Why serial sex predator Mark Errin Rust was driven to kill women

A forensic psychologist has revealed how serial sex predator Mark Errin Rust’s small penis drove him to chase women he also murdered.

Mark Errin Rust is a serial sex murderer with a dangerous pastime.

Long before he was convicted of the murder of 30-year-old Maya Jakic and 18-year-old Japanese student, Megumi Suzuki, the killer would pore over the newspaper social pages, searching for his next victim.

The chilling revelation comes from decorated forensic psychologist Dr Jack White who treated Rust over a number of years.

“He used to keep and cut out the local Sunday Mail. He’d get the social pages and he cut out people who he subsequently followed up and attacked, sexually attacked and assaulted. He was a very scary person indeed,” Dr White said.

Rust’s history of sexual offending began in his early teens. From the age of 13 he began following pretty women. He would go on to be convicted of between 11 and 13 sexual offences between 1983 and 1999.

In a cliche straight from a Hollywood cop show, it’s believed Rust’s sexual behaviour was driven by his sexual inadequacies – in this case the shrunken genitals he acquired through the genetic condition known as Klinefelter syndrome.

SA convicted murderer Mark Errin Rust. Picture: Martin Dean

The syndrome causes males to be born with an extra copy of the X chromosome, which means they have smaller-than-normal testicles and produce less testosterone. This causes a small penis, breast growth and can result in delays in speech and language.

“Ultimately, that made him sterile and he had certain feminine characteristics as well,” Dr White said.

“Most sex offenders are quite vulnerable, quite shy, quite insipid. He was quite the opposite. He was a person who is probably about as close to this I could come. He had no emotion whatsoever. He didn’t care what he did.”

Dr. Jack White has spent over 30 years working as a psychologist with some of the most infamous serial killers. Picture: Matt Loxton

Rust’s initial offending consisted of flashing and masturbating in front of women. He later admitted he got a thrill from seeing the women’s horrified reaction to his shrunken genitalia.

“The nature of his offences were almost regarded as a joke by the police because he just seemed to be constantly doing it and they would sort of think it’s a bit funny and give him a slapping on the wrist. When it got to about 20 or 30 offences of that type, they realised they actually would have to do something.”

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Rust then diversified his criminal behaviour to arson.

“He actually used the same modus operandi for lighting fires. He would go to old, empty warehouses and break into them.

“But he would always be checking his escape route, because that’s what he did when he was exposing himself. He’d go to a location, find where there were people coming, and then he would make sure that he would expose himself and then run away,” Dr White said.

One of his most significant fires caused more than $640,000 of damage.

Maya Jakic. Picture: Supplied

Megumi Suzuki. Picture: Supplied

“The next stage on from there was his involvement with murdering people and he would set a little fire next to the body as part of his signature.

The police never put it together, they seem to miss these sorts of things, which I find quite remarkable,” Dr White said.

Rust’s first known murder victim was in April, 1999, when he saw Maya Jakic, walking down the street in Adelaide. He pulled over in his car and offered her “a lift and some fun”, which she declined.

Rust then exposed himself and when Jakic laughed, he attacked and killed her, dumping her body at the disused Payneham Police Station.

He personally contacted the police twice to tell them about the body, but both attempts failed and Rust was not initially linked to the murder.

In August, 2001, after being released from prison on a trespassing offence, Rust killed again, stuffing the body of Japanese exchange student Megumi Suzuki into a rubbish bin.

Thirteen days later, he raped a woman in her office but reportedly let her live because she pretended to enjoy the attack.

When Rust was arrested for the rape, he boasted to inmates about the murders and told them he had Megumi’s CD player in his cell.

After he was charged, Rust pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to life without parole, and a concurrent sentence of 12 years for rape, assault and gross indecency.

“You know, he was quite happy about being found. But I think they [police] also feel that there could be another dozen or so murders that he could be involved with as well,” Dr White said.

Despite interviewing thousands of dangerous offenders in his 30-year career in forensic psychology, Dr White says Rust is particularly memorable.

“He was your classic psychopath. If he got upset, he was going to get revenge. And most of the time, the women who were killed by him, they did something ‘wrong’. So he killed them.

“The Rust murders were the most unusual murders that I’ve been involved with, partly because I’d known him for a long period of time and I’d worked with him in a therapeutic context, when he was a sex offender, and later, as an arsonist. He really was an extraordinary individual as far as crime was concerned.”