Why the Claremont killer will take his secrets to grave just like backpacker murderer Ivan Milat

As a ‘violent psychopath’, Claremont killer Bradley Robert Edwards is set to follow backpacker murderer Ivan Milat’s footsteps.

Claremont killer Bradley Robert Edwards will likely take the true extent of his murderous rampage to his grave – following in the footsteps of Australian serial killers Ivan Milat and ‘Granny Killer’ John Wayne Glover who refused to assist police or give solace to victims’ families even in their dying breaths.

Edwards is serving a minimum 40-year sentence for the murders of Perth women, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon, after being found guilty late last year.

However, the 52-year-old former phone technician was acquitted of the murder of Sarah Spiers, despite the judge conceding he was probably responsible.

Edwards was acquitted of the murder of Sarah Spiers, 18. Picture: AAP Image/Supplied by The West Australian)

WA Police believe Edwards may be culpable in a number of other unsolved murders.

But according to renowned criminologist Dr Xanthe Mallett, Edwards’ offending profile of a “violent psychopath” makes it unlikely he will ever feel remorse enough to provide valuable information – such as the location of Sarah Spiers’ body.

“There’s nothing in it for him. Someone like Edwards doesn’t care about the victims, he doesn’t care about their families. He only cares about him,” Dr Mallett said.

“The only reason I could see someone like Edwards confessing to where a body is if there were some bonuses for him, if he wanted to move to a different prison (for example)”.

Dr Mallett believes Edwards falls into the “typical” offender category of the suburban white male with violent psychopathic tendencies – killers able to fly under the radar for their ordinariness.

A youthful Ivan Milat worked on the roads. Picture: Supplied

Milat, a road worker who murdered seven backpackers from the late 80s to early 90s, and Glover, a pie salesman who killed six elderly women on Sydney’s North Shore between 1989-1990, share the same classification.

“They’re white guys, living in the suburbs, living these double lives, hidden in plain sight. They’re very normal,” she said.

“They’re holding down jobs, they’re having families but they’ve all got trigger points that set them off and that’s when they offend.

John Wayne Glover was known as the 'Granny Killer' for murdering a number of elderly women on Sydney’s North Shore. Picture: Supplied.

“Ivan Milat is a good example – when he had relationship breakdowns he felt out of control in his personal life and therefore he needed to control somebody to fulfil that need in himself, and he did that by abducting and murdering, often couples.”

“We see this pattern with these offenders, when something goes wrong in their personal lives

that’s when they feel the need to offend against often total strangers, which makes them really difficult to catch.”

One of Edwards’ earliest known attacks, in which he grabbed a female social worker attempted to drag her to a toilet block at Hollywood Hospital in 1990, occurred recently after his de facto admitted she had been unfaithful.

Solicitor Ciara Eilish Glennon (27), last seen at Continental Hotel, Claremont, was the third person to disappear from the nightclub. Picture: Supplied.

Jane Rimmer, 23, disappeared after a night-out at The Continental Hotel. Edwards was found guilty of her murder. Picture: AAP Image/Supplied by The West Australian

Clinical psychologist Paul McEvoy who examined Edwards after the attack, noted Edwards “was actually deeply distressed by her admission”.

“That would be the trigger,” Dr Mallet said.

“Something sets them off emotionally and they need to go and satiate themselves. It’s all about power and dominance and control with these people. They feel the need to get that in another way because it’s not being satisfied in their personal lives.”

Dr Xanthe Mallett appears in Catching the Claremont Killer: The Untold Story, 8pm Thursday, 4 February on Sky News.