Melbourne’s north worst murders: Jill Meagher, Aiia Maarsarwe, Eurydice Dixon
Jill, Aiia, Eurydice — names Melburnians will never forget. Their horrific murders are among a shocking spree of tragic deaths, vicious attacks and mysterious slayings which have made their awful mark on Melbourne’s north. WARNING: GRAPHIC
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Melbourne’s northern suburbs have been home to some of the state’s most depraved crims and its most heinous of crimes. From acts of passion to cold blooded killings, here are some of the worst killings we’ve seen.
Warning: this article contains upsetting content.
Mr Cruel
In April 1991 in Templestowe a man armed with a knife abducted 13-year-old Karmein Chan.
Karmein’s body was found a year later with three gunshot wounds to the head in a remote area of Thomastown.
The killer was never caught but one suspect was a man known as ‘Mr Cruel’.
Wanted since 1987, the man dubbed as ‘Mr Cruel’ has been suspected of the kidnapping and sexual assault of 12 children between 1985 and 1995.
But the mystery man, believed to be in somewhere in his mid-30s to late 40s at the time of the offences, has only been officially linked to four attacks between 1987 and 1991.
Known for his trademark black balaclava, his first known crime was in Lower Plenty on August 22, 1987 when he broke into a home, locked two parents in a wardrobe and tied their 7-year-old son to a bed.
He then raped their 11-year-old daughter.
Mr Cruel cut the phone lines before leaving and was so well prepared for his crimes, including dressing one child in garbage bags before release to remove any evidence left on her clothes, he has been compared to the notorious Californian Golden State Killer.
The next attack was on December 27, 1988 in Ringwood. Mr Cruel entered the back door of a family home armed with a knife and a handgun.
He tied up the girl’s parents and disabled their phones before abducting their daughter.
She was released at a Bayswater high school about 18 hours later.
Then on July 3, 1990 in Canterbury, he broke into a house at 11.30pm and gagged a 13-year-old girl.
He placed tape over her eyes, disabled the phones and searched the house for money.
The girl was then molested at another location for 50 hours before released into a public space in Kew.
The operation to find Mr Cruel cost $4 million, with police interviewing around 27,000 people, searching 30,000 properties and arresting 70 people.
If he was alive today, it is believed he would be in his 60s and likely to be living in Melbourne’s northeastern suburbs.
The Body in the Boot
The shocking attempted murder of Maria Korp is perhaps best remembered for the controversy it created over end-of-life care and euthanasia.
The 50-year-old was reported missing on February 9, 2005 and had last been seen at her Mickleham home.
She was found four days later, barely alive, in the boot of her own car.
Rushed to Alfred Hospital, Korp was suffering from oxygen deprivation, dehydration and head injuries and had to be placed into a medically induced coma.
Ms Korp eventually went into a state of post-coma unresponsiveness and Victoria’s Public Advocate decided to stop her artificial nutrition and hydration.
About 10 days later, on August 5, Ms Korp died.
During the investigation it was discovered Ms Korp’s husband Joe was having an affair with Tania Herman, a woman he had met online.
Victoria Police charged both husband Korp and his mistress Tania Herman with attempted murder, and Korp with conspiracy to murder.
Herman pleaded guilty to the charge on June 8 and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Korp pleaded not guilty.
He was released on bail and committed suicide on the day of her funeral, surrounded by photos of Korp, football memorabilia and a note professing his innocence.
Herman was released on February 14, 2014 after spending more than eight years in a maximum-security prison.
Missing Maybury
In 1984 Kylie Maybury was in grade one and living with her mum and sister in Gregory Grove, Preston.
She was sent to buy some sugar from the corner store on November 6 and did so about 5.30pm.
But after she didn’t return home by 6pm, her mother and neighbour went looking for her and a passer-by told them a girl had been driven away in a white Holden station wagon.
Around 12.45am her body was found in the gutter of Donald St.
It was determined Kylie had died of asphyxiation while being raped.
She suffered severe internal injuries and diazepam was found in her blood, indicating she had been drugged.
There were a number of suspects during the investigation, including grandfather John Moss, who committed suicide in 1985.
Her uncle Mark Maybury was also a suspect and committed suicide in jail in 1987.
Media attention and the creation of a new cold case squad in Victoria Police rebooted the investigation, and led to a number of new suspects being reported to police.
But it was an old suspect, 73-year-old Gregory Keith Davies, who was charged with the crimes more than 30 years after he committed them.
Police had interviewed Davies just days after Kylie’s body was found as he had previously hit a girl with a hammer and drove a white Holden.
He was excluded because of an alibi.
But on May 29, 2017 Davies pleaded guilty to the murder and rape of Kylie Maybury and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
He will be eligible parole in 2045, when he is 101 years old.
Eurydice Dixon
The tragic death of a popular 22-year-old comedian sparked hundreds of social media tributes and a candlelit vigil attended by about 10,000 people, including Premier Daniel Andrews and then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Ms Dixon was walking home from a performance at Highlander Bar on June 12, 2018 when she was attacked by 20-year-old Jaymes Todd in Princes Park.
The court heard Todd, who handed himself in to police after they released CCTV footage of him, had stalked Ms Dixon for more than 4km through the CBD.
Ms Dixon died of compression of the neck and asphyxiation, and had received blunt force injuries to the head and body.
Victorian Supreme Court Justice Stephen Kaye said the attack was “perverted and depraved”.
“In a most callous and cowardly manner, you set upon her, sexually assaulting and humiliating her, before cruelly strangling her to death,” he said.
Todd pleaded guilty to her rape and murder and on September 2, 2019 was sentenced to life in prison.
Todd appealed for a lighter sentence but was rejected by the Supreme Court on March 12, 2020.
His lawyers argued Todd’s “good character” and poor upbringing meant he should be released from jail before he is 54-years-old.
The State Government introduced Stand Up! Grants as a tribute to Ms Dixon, supporting the next generation of women in comedy.
Aiia Maasarwe
Just seven months after Melbourne was rocked by the murder of Eurydice Dixon, 21-year-old Aiia Maasarwe was found dead in Bundoora.
On January 16, 2019 the Arab-Israeli student was attacked by Codey Herrmann while walking home from the Route 86 tram.
Ms Maasarwe had been on the phone to her sister, who was in Israel, at the moment of the attack.
Herrmann beat her with a pipe, dragged her behind some bushes, raped her and tried to set parts of her body on fire.
Then 20-years-old, Herrmann pleaded guilty to rape and murder and on October 29, 2019 was sentenced to 36 years in prison.
Members of the public joined a tribute on the Route 86 tram line, travelling up to Bundoora and placing flowers at the site of the attack.
Ms Maasarwe was buried in her hometown of Baka al-Gharbiyye, near Tel Aviv in Israel.
Sanaya Sahib
A family was left in shock after 14-month-old Sanaya was found dead and dumped in Darebin Creek in Heidelberg West on April 10, 2016.
Mother Sofina Nikat, then 22, first told police a man of African appearance snatched her baby from her pram, but her story came undone after police found CCTV footage of the mum wheeling her daughter in a pram to Olympic Park.
The body was discovered around 3pm on April 10 by a member of the public.
Nikat eventually confessed to the killing, saying she believed her daughter was possessed, and told of how she smothered Sanaya with her hands and hugged her until she stopped breathing.
Initially charged with murder, prosecutors changed the charge to infanticide after it emerged she was suffering from mental health issues related to the birth of her daughter.
Nikat was sentenced to a 12-month Community Corrections Order after spending 529 days in custody.
About 200 people gathered at Olympic Park for Sanaya’s memorial and hundreds attended her funeral service in Dandenong.
The Vampire Gigolo
The self-labelled vampire Shane Chartres-Abbott was due to appear in court for rape when he was killed outside his Reservoir home on June 4, 2003.
Abbott had appeared in court in May for the rape and mutilation of a woman in 2002 while working as a prostitute specialising in BDSM.
It was alleged that Abbott met the woman, also a prostitute, to have sex in a South Yarra motel.
She was found in the bathtub barely conscious with parts of her tongue removed.
The victim said Abbott told her he was a vampire who needed to drink blood to survive.
Abbott was due in court to face the rape allegations and made claims he would expose Victoria Police corruption when he was shot dead outside his home.
It launched a massive investigation which remains unsolved.
Mark Perry, Warren Shea and Evangelos Goussis were charged with his murder but another man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, claimed he fired the killing shots.
The men were acquitted in the Supreme Court in 2014.
The bizarre case would pop up again in the Lawyer X Royal Commission, which unearthed an unsigned statement from Nicola Gobbo alleging Mr Perry confessed to the killing.
The investigation remains open.
The Black Widow
Labelled a “femme fatale”, the infamous Robyn Lindholm twice convinced men to murder the lovers she had soured on.
Lindholm was in jail for orchestrating the murder of lover Wayne Amey when she was found guilty of using Amey to kill another former lover, George Templeton.
Lindholm originally reported him as a missing person, and fronted TV cameras to make an appeal for help.
Mr Templeton was 38 when he was killed on May 2, 2005 and his body was never found.
The court was told he was likely shot at his Reservoir home and possibly dismembered, before the killers dumped his body in Port Phillip Bay.
Eight years after that murder Lindholm, then addicted to ice and living out of her car, convinced Torsten Trabert to ambush Amey in a carpark.
In December 2013 Trabert and John Ryan beat Amey with a baseball bat and tossed him into the car boot, before stabbing him several times and strangling him.
Amey’s body was found wrapped in canvas and partially hidden at Mt Korong.
Lindholm was serving her 25-year sentence for Amey’s murder when she was sentenced for a further 28 years.
She will be 71-years-old when she is first eligible to apply for parole.
The Body in the Bin
A garbage truck driver got the fright of his life when he discovered a dead body had been dumped in a Preston kerbside recycling bin.
Ashley Phillips, 44, went to the home of Jason Considine and Natasha Hogan on May 25, 2017 after striking up a relationship with Hogan online.
Considine and Hogan had agreed to have a threesome with Phillips but during the visit Considine attacked him, strangling him and hitting him over the head with a pole.
The couple then grabbed a recycling bin from another flat and dumped the body headfirst inside.
The garbo found the body after he thought he saw something fall from the bin in the truck’s CCTV system.
The police traced the garbage bin back to Considine and Hogan’s apartment and found blood inside.
Considine pleaded guilty to murder and was jailed for 21 years.
Hogan pleaded guilty to assisting him and received a sentence of time served, one year and ten months, for helping stash the body and clean the crime scene.
Mersina Halvagis
Ms Halvagis was visiting her grandmother’s grave in Fawkner Cemetery on November 1, 1997 when she was attacked from behind, and stabbed in the neck, chest and abdomen more than 50 times.
The deranged killer, Peter Dupas, had already approached several other women that day.
And less than a month before he had murdered prostitute Margaret Maher, dumping her body near the Hume Highway in Somerton.
Dupas’ violent life of crime began when he was just a teenager and stabbed a female neighbour without warning.
He would spend years in psychiatric care, repeatedly offending whenever he was on the outside.
At 18 years old he was charged with the rape of a woman in Mitcham and sent to prison for nine years.
He was released in 1979, and within two months raped a woman at knifepoint in a Frankston public toilet.
He was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and then just four days after he was released he raped a 21-year-old woman sunbathing in Blairgowrie.
A woman had been murdered in the same area 16 days earlier and it was later revealed he was on leave from prison when it occurred.
He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Less than two years after his release, on January 3, 1994, he was caught running away after he cut a young woman’s hands who fought off his attempted rape in a Lake Eppalock toilet cubicle.
Police found his station wagon with knives, handcuffs, a balaclava, condoms, sticking plaster, insulation tape, a shovel and sheets of plastic.
The charges were reduced to false imprisonment and he was sentenced to three years and nine months in jail.
Then in October 1997 he stabbed Margaret Maher to death, and killed Mersina Halvagis in Fawkner.
In April 1999 he butchered psychotherapist Nicole Patterson in her Northcote home’s treatment room after pretending to need treatment and booking an appointment.
He stabbed her 27 times.
Dupas is serving three life sentences for the murders and was due to stand trial for the murder of 95-year-old Kathleen Downes until a key witness, Dupas’ former cell mate, became too unwell to give evidence.
Ms Downes was killed on December 31, 1997 and Dupas was a prime suspect.
Police said his home phone had been used to contact Ms Downes’ nursing home twice in November and another call was allegedly made just two hours before her death.
Dupas will never be granted parole.
The Islamic State Sympathiser
A father of three forced his children to watch him mutilate their mother and flush her eyeball down the toilet.
The Broadmeadows man, who cannot be named, was sentenced to life in prison in 2018 for the brutal killing of his 27-year-old wife.
The children, who were aged 2, 4 and 6-years-old, watched as the man gouged out his wife’s eye and cut two fingers from her left hand.
He then slashed at her with scissors, a knife and a meat cleaver.
The man dumped her body in some bushes near the car park of a Broadmeadows tennis club.
She was wrapped in plastic and electrical tape and had injuries to her face and genitalia.
He took his children with him to dump the body, before driving to a bakery to buy pastries.
Police were performing a welfare check at the home in July 2016 when they charged him with the murder of his wife.
During the trial it emerged all three children had signs of physical abuse and lived in a house with milk crates for furniture, urine-soaked mattresses and blood on the walls.
Between 2000 and 2007 the man was jailed a number of times for theft, intentionally causing injury and driving offences.
Police believed the man may have killed his wife because she didn’t want him to join Islamic State in Syria.
Jill Meagher
Jill Meagher’s disappearance captured the attention of the city, with more than 100,000 people following the story on social media.
Ms Meagher had gone out for after work drinks with colleagues from the ABC on September 21, 2012.
She left a Brunswick bar around 1.30am and set out to walk home, calling her brother Michael McKeon on her way.
She never made it back.
Her husband Tom Meagher called police after he woke up and realised she wasn’t home.
Her ABC colleagues took to social media to aid the investigation.
The Facebook page ‘Help us Find Jill Meagher’ gathered more than 100,000 followers.
On September 25 police received CCTV footage from a Sydney Rd store which showed Meagher speaking to a man in a blue hoodie around 1.42am.
Around 2.30pm on September 27 police arrested 41-year-old Adrian Ernest Bayley at his Coburg home and took him for questioning.
During the interrogation Bayley confessed, admitting he had strangled her near Hope St, Brunswick.
Later that night Bayley led police to a shallow grave on Black Hill Rd, Gisborne South.
Bayley was already on parole for sexual offences and attempted to commit suicide while in custody.
On April 5, 2013 he pleaded guilty to her rape and murder and not guilty to other sexual assaults.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
By March 2015 he has been found guilty of three more rapes, bringing his total sex crimes to 12 people.
He will be eligible for parole in 2055.
The case created a lot of discussion about the role of social media in court cases after many anti-Bayley Facebook pages were created before the trial, potentially prejudicing the jury.
It also led to a review and tightening of parole laws.
Teresa Mancuso
On July 15, 2013 Teresa Mancuso was getting ready for bed after enjoying a dinner with her two sons.
It’s believed the 49-year-old was investigating strange noises when she was ambushed by her jealous ex-husband Fernando Paulino in the garage.
An enraged Paulino viciously stabbed her 16 times in the chest, stomach and back and hit her with a metal bar, breaking her jaw and causing bleeding to her brain.
A neighbour heard the commotion and called triple-0, leading police to discover the flight attendant’s body near the garage of the Massey Ave, Reservoir house she shared with her mother.
Her sons Luke and Dan went on television and pleaded with the murderer to hand themselves in.
It took almost two years for her ex-husband to be arrested by detectives, the man she had divorced in 1998 but maintained a relationship with for another 10 years.
The then 53-year-old faced court on June 24, 2015 charged with murder, and maintains his innocence to this day.
During a lengthy court process it was revealed Ms Mancuso moved from her family home after Paulino threatened her, stalked her and spread rumours.
Among his crazed acts were sharing a pornographic video with others, including his sons, telling them the woman on screen was his ex-wife.
She took out an intervention order against him.
His sons told the court he asked them to take a paternity test to know if she was faithful, and had threatened to kill her up to 30 times.
On June 14, 2017 he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 30 years in jail.
The Home Gym
Snezana Stojanovska, 26, was found dead in her garage, lying on an ironing board propped up on phone books with a barbell lying across her throat.
She was wearing pyjamas and gardening gloves but had no socks, shoes or bra.
Snezana was 12 weeks pregnant when she died.
Her husband Dragi Stojanovska told police he found the body around 11am on November 28, 2010.
His brother Vasko called triple-0 and mother Pisana removed the barbell from Snezana’s throat.
Witnesses in the State Coroner investigation described the crime scene as bizarre and said the injuries she sustained pointed to death by strangulation.
State Coroner Sarah Hinchey said she believed the death was a homicide, but did not find any evidence to support the involvement of Mr Stojanovska, Vasko or Pisana.
The case has been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions and remains open.