Claremont killer probe kept open amid fears of more victims
Australia’s longest running criminal investigation will be kept open as police fear Bradley Robert Edwards is responsible for more deaths.
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It took almost a quarter of a century and more than $72 million to bring Claremont Serial Killer to justice but police will keep open Australia’s longest running criminal investigation because they still believe there might be more victims.
Late last year, 52-year old former phone technician Bradley Robert Edwards was found guilty of the murders of two Perth women – Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon.
But he was acquitted of the murder of a third, Sarah Spiers, whose body has never been found.
The judge concluded that Edwards most likely also killed her but there was insufficient evidence to convict.
Throughout his highly-public arrest and mammoth trial, Edwards showed no remorse.
He declined to testify in court and never admitted to the crimes that terrified a generation in the 1990s.
Two days before Christmas, he was sentenced to two life terms with a minimum of 40 years.
In a Sky News documentary airing at 8pm on Thursday February 4 – Catching the Claremont Killer: The Untold Story – WA Police Minister Michelle Roberts says she believes Edwards is responsible for Sarah’s death and possibly others.
In a direct message to the convicted killer, she tells him: “Try and be honest, try and tell some truth, try and get some form of redemption with your maker … let us know where Sarah is.”
“He’s clearly an evil person so appealing to his better nature may be in vain,” she said.
“But I can but hope, especially on behalf of Sarah’s parents, that he does have that change of heart, that he does have some little bit of compassion in him.”
This June will mark 25 years since the Macro Taskforce was formed after Sarah and Jane went missing, kicking off a police operation unprecedented in its scale.
To date, the probe alone has cost $61 million.
More than 700 police officers have been directly assigned to the Macro team with hundreds more involved in extensive searches, door knocking and answering the tens of thousands of calls.
The original head of the investigation, former homicide Detective Paul Ferguson, said that when leads ran dry, police had been concerned the killer had either died or gone overseas and might never be caught.
“But I always believed that if the offender was in Perth or in WA, or in Australia, then forensic science would identify that person and that they would be apprehended,” he said.
The breath through finally came in 2008 when retesting of evidence in the UK uncovered a male DNA profile underneath Ciara’s fingernails which matched an unsolved rape in the WA database.
This ultimately led police to Edwards – a suspect who had never been on the radar – and a string of brutal attacks on women stretching back to the 1980s, some of whom testified in court.
Edwards’ subsequent trial was also one of the longest and most resource intensive ever conducted in Australia, with its cost estimated before the verdict at more than $11 million.
The prosecution brief comprised 41,982 pages and 164 volumes. The total number of e-trial submitted items – including all of the video footage – is estimated to have been around 2.1 terabytes.
“We wanted to be sure at every stage – as I know other governments did over that period of time – that police had the resources to get a result,” Ms Roberts said.
“And that not getting a result for the Claremont serial killings wasn’t going to be for lack of money or for want of trying.”
Mr Edwards has until February 3 to lodge an appeal against his sentence and conviction.
In the meantime, police have confirmed they will not shutter the Macro task force and it will continue its work with the primary focus now on finding out what happened to Sarah Spiers.
Ms Roberts said police were also looking into the cases of other women who went missing around the same time but no links had yet been proven.
“I think he’s been in denial and denied things for a very long time.
“If he wants to make peace with himself and with his maker (then) he really needs to be honest about it and admit what he’s done.
“If he’s got any shred of human decency, he needs to tell us where Sarah is.
“We want to find Sarah,” Ms Roberts said.
“And ideally we’d like a confession.”
CATCHING THE CLAREMONT KILLER: THE UNTOLD STORY premieres Thursday 4 February at 8pm AEDT and 11pm AEDT / 5pm AWST and 8pm AWST on Sky News on Foxtel.
Originally published as Claremont killer probe kept open amid fears of more victims
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