Brisbane true crime: New Farm double murder by desperate fantasist

SHE was a young newlywed in the wrong place at the wrong time, visiting an elderly neighbour whose goddaughter’s husband had dropped by unannounced.

The murder scene in Kent St, New Farm.

HE LED a fantasy life, pretending to be an undercover investigator and partially writing detective novels starring himself.

He wore a realistic-looking toy gun in a holster under his suit, and carried business cards stating he was a secret agent for the “Crescent Information Bureau” and “any assistance given to him will be duly rewarded”.

When Jack Harper’s facade finally unravelled under the pressures of real life, it would cost the lives of two innocent women in a stabbing frenzy — but one of them would finger him in a deathbed court hearing.

As a 17-year-old in NSW Harper enlisted in the army, and during periods back home pretended to be an undercover detective.

But that’s not where his make-believe world ended. On the army base he would wear stripes on his uniform, even though he was not entitled to, and he once took home a medical kit. On the odd occasion he would go AWOL.

When he was discharged from the army, his mother Jean questioned his state of mind. She took him to three NSW mental hospitals, and the doctors all reached the same conclusion: that his condition was not severe enough to be institutionalised.

Convicted killer Jack Anthony Harper

Harper went on to get a job at Gladesville Hospital, but was dismissed after he started investigating fellow male nursing staff. The NSW police took no action against Harper, but they did admit his detective work had unearthed a person they had been looking for, who had used a number of aliases.

By the time Harper was 21 he had made his way to Queensland, where he became a successful insurance salesman and met his future wife Patricia.

Even though he was making good money, Harper changed companies. The move backfired. It was a lower-paid job and he fell behind on hire purchase agreements and an overdraft with the bank.

Compounding the situation was that Patricia was heavily pregnant with their first child. He reapplied for a better job, but that fell through.

With no job, no money and no way of returning to his home at Kingston Park south of Brisbane, Harper decided to pay a visit to Patricia’s wealthy godmother at her block of flats in Kent St, New Farm. It was a meeting that would prove fateful.

Harper did not know Olimpia Rossi, 69, that well, having met her only on a couple of occasions, but he knew she was well off.

When he arrived at her home it was early evening, and Ms Rossi was alone watching TV.

Though surprised by Harper’s unannounced visit, she offered him a glass of wine.

Soon they were joined by neighbour Janice Lane, 21, who was just one week away from celebrating her first wedding anniversary, and the trio settled in to the lounge room and started watching TV.

Janice Lane, 21, was murdered by Jack Harper.

But Harper had not visited Ms Rossi to watch TV, and soon became agitated. Patricia was due to give birth in a few days, and he not only needed cash for their new arrival, but simply to survive.

Eventually he went to the toilet, and when he returned he opened his briefcase, pulled out a sheaf knife and stabbed Ms Lane in stomach, and then turned and stabbed Ms Rossi.

He struck both women multiple times in the back, chest and stomach before grabbing his briefcase and fleeing empty-handed.

Neighbours who heard the women’s violent screams rushed to their aid, and found Ms Rossi covered in blood leaning against a gate post. Ms Lane was dead.

It took police three days to find Harper, who was arrested while buying a newspaper outside the Grosvenor Hotel on the corner of George and Ann streets.

Unfortunately for Harper, Ms Rossi survived long enough to identify her attacker in a dramatic bedside sitting of the magistrates court at North Brisbane Hospital.

Harper sat at the foot of the hospital bed during the hearing, which occurred two weeks after the attack.

When the prosecutor asked Ms Rossi if she could identify who stabbed her and killed Ms Lane, everyone in the room — police, media and Harper — were asked to stand.

Pointing at Harper, Ms Rossi said: “That is him.”

When asked to recall the horrific event, Ms Rossi said that Harper had looked “so friendly” and had said his wife was going into hospital on Sunday to have a baby.

The lounge where the two women were stabbed

However he returned from the bathroom and “jumped” and stabbed Ms Lane and before he attacked her.

“When he stabbed me, I run away,” she said.

“I ran into the street and I scream, come help quick. There is a madman in my house.”

She said she was stabbed six or seven times, that she did not give Harper any reason to attack her, and she had treated him like a son.

Ms Rossi signed her deposition then asked for Harper to be taken out of the room.

It was the last time Ms Rossi would give evidence. She died the next day.

During the committal hearing, Harper pleaded “guilty with an explanation” to two wilful murder charges, but senior stipendiary magistrate E.J. Pearce rejected it and entered a not guilty plea.

Harper was first tried for the wilful murder of Ms Lane, and said he never went there with the intention rob Ms Rossi.

“I did not go there intending to rob her. I did not go there to kill her,” he told the court.

“I thought if I sat there and frightened Mrs Lane away I would be able to talk to Mrs Rossi. Looking at it now, there seems to be no logic behind it.

“I think I stabbed Mrs Lane because she was screaming. I wanted her to be quiet.

“After that I don’t really know what happened. I think I tripped on the floor.”

His defence counsel called Sydney psychiatrist John McGeorge, who had examined Harper years earlier.

He said the accused had a psychopathic personality and was living in a largely fantasy world.

“I think he probably understood he was stabbing a person,” Dr McGeorge said.

“It may have been the moment of impact of the knife on the human body, or just before when that understanding occurred. He probably knew he ought not to.”

The jury deliberated for just 85 minutes before returning a guilty verdict.

In October 1965, Harper was sentenced to life for the murder of Ms Lane.

A month later Harper was remanded for the murder of Ms Rossi, but soon after Crown prosecutor L.G. Martin withdrew the charge and said he would file a nolle prosequi.