Dear Rachelle investigation: Key details of Rachelle Childs’ grisly unsolved murder
More than two decades after a young woman was murdered and her remains set alight – the killer is still on the loose. Here’s what you need to know.
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A young woman was murdered, set on fire and left to rot in the bush more than two decades ago, but police botched the investigation so badly that no one was ever charged – and her killer is still on the loose.
When Rachelle Leigh Childs’ scorched, half-naked body was uncovered along a lonely stretch of highway in the early hours of June 8, 2001, it was one of the biggest crimes to rock the sleepy town of Gerroa, south of Sydney.
The podcast team at News Corp are now working with Rachelle’s family and ex-detectives to re-investigate the case and uncover long-forgotten evidence. So far, the podcast has had more than a million downloads and captivated international audiences, dominating the charts on Spotify and Apple.
What the rudimentary police investigation did uncover was that unleaded petrol was poured on the face of Rachelle, who was 23, and very specific parts of her body in an apparent attempt to hide DNA evidence, before she was dumped at a concrete tank near Gerroa, about 100km away from her home.
Her semi-nude state suggests her death was sexually motivated, and the killing was violent – likely by smothering or strangulation. She also knew her attacker because she sat with him in her prized 1978 Holden Commodore as they drove down the NSW south coast together.
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The grisly details of the murder terrified the small community and triggered fears that a serial killer might prey on more women.
There was a police investigation, but it was marred by incompetence and ultimately failed to attain vital evidence within the first critical 48 hours. When a local senior constable thwarted the handing over of the case to the NSW homicide squad, the investigation was doomed to errors and distractions.
Possible CCTV of Rachelle and her killer at a petrol station between Camden and Gerroa, in the hours before she died, was lost by police. DNA from a bedsheet in Rachelle’s car was contaminated by an officer on the scene, her phone records weren’t obtained properly, and suspects weren’t duly eliminated from a long list.
Vital evidence was lost, the offender got away with murder, and the cold case was effectively swept under the rug. As a result, it’s unlikely the average Australian is aware of Rachelle Childs’ case.
Her photo has now been languishing at the back of police cold case records for about 24 years, the $200,000 reward for information hasn’t changed in 14 years, and her file has volleyed between detectives and unsolved homicide squads for the best part of the last five years.
While the official investigation effectively stalled, Rachelle’s family never stopped campaigning to find her killer. The podcast investigation team has now tracked down the prime suspect in Rachelle’s murder, Kevin Steven Correll, and all the circumstantial evidence surrounding her death.
Mr Correll was Rachelle’s boss selling used cars at Camden Holden when she died. What Rachelle and the rest of the community probably didn’t know was that he was previously acquitted of four violent rapes under his birth name, Kevin Cornwall.
In one alleged instance, police caught him with his pants down in the middle of an alleged sexual assault. The woman was screaming and telling officers on the scene she was assaulted. The police officers later said that he told them the woman was “only a moll, she’s fair go for anybody” and even admitted he got “a bit carried away”.
Mr Correll was charged with sexual assault and tried in court, but the jury found he wasn’t guilty. This happened four times in the same decade.
In the 1980s, alleged rapists were often acquitted because their alleged victims were humiliated in court. Their clothing choices, past behaviour, and relationship history was all used to destroy their character, discredit their claims, and imply they were asking for sexual attention.
Another alleged victim said Mr Correll responded to a spare room ad in the paper, but turned up at her house using a different name and looked at the room. She alleged he returned to her property later in a balaclava and raped her at knifepoint, threatening to kill her children if she screamed.
The woman was able to pick his mugshot out from a list of hundreds because she recognised his eyes, and a mark between his eyes. She was also humiliated on the witness stand, before a jury.
A third woman who accused Mr Correll of rape incident had a strikingly similar story. The alleged victims did not know each other.
Past allegations aside, it’s possible Mr Correll was among the last people to see Rachelle alive when she left work on the afternoon of June 7, 2001. Some said she told them she was meeting up with someone at the Bargo Hotel that evening, but she didn’t tell anyone who it was.
After a brief telephone call with her sister in the car after leaving work, she was never heard from again.
A motorist later came forward and told police they saw a car matching the description of Rachelle’s Commodore parked off the highway at about 10.20pm on June 7, about 200m from where her body was eventually found.
One man saw what could have been Rachelle’s car with its boot open in a similar area before 11pm, telling police at the time that one person was on the ground and another was standing. A couple then passed the car half an hour later and noticed the driver was slumped over the wheel as though they were asleep or trying to hide.
Another woman saw a fire in the bush at about 2.05am. She described an older, square-shaped car – similar to a Holden – made a U-turn about 20m ahead of her, with its headlights off. Ten minutes later, a security guard found Rachelle’s burning body.
A former employee of Camden Holden, Fiona, said Mr Correll “looked like shit” when he turned up to work the following morning. He and Rachelle had a good working relationship, but Fiona said he didn’t offer to help search for her and didn’t appear to care about her disappearance at all.
The following day, on June 9, Rachelle’s car was found parked out the back of Bargo Hotel. There was no CCTV at the hotel at the time, and only about half the patrons from the pub that night were questioned by police.
Mr Correll was voluntarily questioned by police over Rachelle’s death on three separate occasions and he denies any involvement in it. His alibi was that he had driven Camden to Campbelltown on June 7, before going to his partner’s house in Picton to find she wasn’t home. He then drove 10 minutes to Tahmoor where he ordered a bag of chips, a piece of fish, a battered sav and a coke.
No one was able to corroborate his alibi. Further, it bore striking resemblance to his alibi for an alleged rape in the 1980s. During that case, he told police he ordered a bag of chips, a piece of fish, a battered sav, and a loaf of bread.
Detective Inspector Mick Ashwood said it “stands out to you” that the sameness of the alibis “could be manufactured evidence”.
Mr Correll’s partner later testified that he didn’t mention eating fish and chips during a phone call on the night of June 7, but did speak of plans to get pizza for dinner.
Phone tower records also appeared to place him in the area Rachelle was last believed to have been alive, a fair distance away from Tahmoor.
A coronial inquest into Rachelle’s death in 2006 failed to identify her killer, and delivered an open finding, but ex-detectives working with the podcast have described the case as “solvable”.
As the podcast investigation unfolds, some of Mr Correll’s friends, ex-girlfriends, colleagues and family members have come forward, shedding new light on the man they knew and who is the main suspect in Rachelle’s murder.
For more information about our investigation, including early access to new episodes and case files, visit dearachelle.com.au.
If you have any tips or confidential information, please contact investigative journalist Ashlea Hansen at dearrachelle@news.com.au.
You can also join our Dear Rachelle podcast Facebook group.
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