From the early ‘80s to 2019 a string of shocking murders have rocked Melbourne’s southeast
A wife’s body stashed in a barrel for decades, six women killed and dumped in scrubland and the unsolved murder of a Cranbourne security guard. They are just some of the grisly crimes from Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs.
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Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs have seen some their fair share of cold-blooded killings — some remaining unsolved.
Here are some of the most shocking crimes we’ve seen.
TYNONG NORTH MURDERS
Six women – aged 14 to 73 years old – were murdered in a string of killings in the 1980s and their bodies dumped in scrubland.
Their killer or killers have never been found.
Each victim was on foot and did not have access to a car, with the majority intending to travel on public transport on the day they vanished.
Each woman was stripped of their personal belongings before her body was dumped.
The first body was found on McClelland Drive, Frankston on July 5.
It belonged to 59-year-old Allison Rooke, who was last seen leaving her Hannah St, Frankston North home on May 30 to catch a bus to Frankston shops.
Teenage girls Catherine Headland, 14, and Ann-Marie Sargent, 18, and 73-year-old Bertha Miller were found dumped near a quarry off Brew Rd in Tynong North on December 6, 1980.
A group of men made the grisly discovery and quickly alerted police.
Each had disappeared months earlier.
Ms Headland, who lived in Berwick, was last seen on August 28 after leaving her boyfriend’s home on High St, Berwick and setting out for Fountain Gate Shopping Centre by bus.
Fellow teen Ms Sargent was last seen at her mum’s home in Cranbourne Dr, Cranbourne about 9.30am on October 6.
She was also due to catch a bus and was heading toward a Dandenong employment office, then on to Clyde Post Office.
Glen Iris woman Ms Miller was last seen leaving her home on August 10 and was intending on catching a tram from Malvern Rd and High St to the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Prahran.
On November 29, 34-year-old Narumol Stephenson was last seen outside a friend’s home in Park St, Brunswick in the early hours of the morning.
Her body was discovered more than two and a half years later by a man who pulled over on Princes Freeway, Tynong North to change a flat tyre.
He found her bones concealed under a bush on February 3, 1983.
Before her remains were discovered, a sixth woman had been found dead.
Carmel Summers, 55, was found in scrubland near Skye Rd, Frankston North on 22 November 1981.
She had last been seen at a bus stop at Chile St and Frankston-Dandenong Rd, Frankston about 1pm on October 8, 1981, intending to catch a bus to the Frankston shops.
Over the years, investigators have spoken to more than 2000 people in relation to the murders and a number of persons of interest were identified.
In October 2017, police offered a record six $1 million rewards in a bid to help solve the Tynong North murders.
BODY IN A BARREL
Fred and Edwina Boyle met in Wales and married in 1972 and had two daughters.
Less than four months after tying the knot the couple migrated to Australia and lived in the Dandenong district from the 1970s to early 80s.
Most of their family time was spent at a local ice skating rink.
Fred took on a skating club committee role and began an affair with a committee member.
“That relationship had been going for something like 12 months prior to the disappearance of Mrs Boyle,” Crown prosecutor Gavin Silbert, SC, would say during Boyle’s eventual Supreme Court murder trial.
Boyle murdered Edwina, 30, on the night of October 6, 1983.
“As she lay, probably asleep, in the bedroom of your matrimonial home,” Justice Jack Forrest would explain, “you used a .22 calibre weapon to shoot her in the head. Your two young daughters were in the next bedroom.”
The following morning, Boyle showed his visiting brother-in-law a fabricated note from Edwina which said she had left for another man.
Boyle told his daughters their mum had gone away “with some truck driver named Ray”.
The following month Boyle told local detectives the same story.
But relatives of Edwina in Wales reported her missing in February 1984 after not receiving traditional Christmas letters and gifts from her.
Interpol notified Victorian police who began an investigation.
Police were convinced Edwina was murdered and followed several unsuccessful leads.
In 1989, acting on information she was a victim of the Tynong North mass murderer, they searched a six hectare site in Harkaway for two days.
Four years later detectives probed for links between Edwina and convicted murderer-rapist Raymond Edmunds, known as “Mr Stinky”, who had lived near an Officer chicken farm where she worked and shared the first name with the man Boyle said she had run away with.
Years later, Boyle’s daughter Careesa’s future husband Michael Hegarty moved in with them.
Mr Hegarty noticed how a metal drum went with them when they moved house to Carrum Downs and asked Boyle about it.
At first Boyle said it was good carpet glue, but later said it was glue that had turned toxic and therefore could not be dumped.
It was in August 2006 that Mr Hegarty’s curiosity prevailed.
With the help of his brother and a mate, he cut the barrel open with an angle grinder, discovering women’s clothes and a hessian bag inside — but no body.
During a clean-up of the garage in October 2006, Mr Hegarty found the hessian bag stuffed under boxes of power tools and garbage bags in a wheelie bin.
He later told the court he tentatively reached inside and “pulled out what appeared to be a pelvis and human leg bone”.
“I just had to confirm to myself that it was human so I continued to look through the bag and found the skull.”
Boyle was sentenced to 21 years’ jail with a 17-year minimum term.
CHARLES FOUSSARD
Charles Foussard was just 21 years old when he was locked up for killing another man. Foussard ended up serving the world’s longest period of incarceration, inside Ararat’s notorious J Ward – Victoria’s asylum for the criminally insane.
J Ward researcher and historian Ron Roberts said Foussard murdered an elderly rabbiter named Bill Ford in Ford’s hut at Skye, near Cranbourne, in July 1903.
Ford was shot five times with a rifle that Foussard had previously stolen.
He was found not guilty on the grounds of insanity and was incarcerated at the Governor’s pleasure, first at the Melbourne Gaol, on August 18, 1903.
On September 19, 1903, he was transferred. His prison record was marked: “To Ararat Asylum by order of His Excellency”.
Mr Roberts said Foussard may have been transferred around the age of 90 to a secure ward of the nearby Aradale asylum.
He died in Ararat on June 17, 1974.
Prison records list the cause of his death as “senile degeneration and dementia”. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in the Roman Catholic section of the Ararat Cemetery.
SLAWOMIR TOMCZYK
Slawomir Tomczyk’s bashed body was found at the back of the Casablanca reception centre in Cranbourne in 2002.
Mr Tomczyk was working as a security guard at the time of his murder.
Former detective Ron Iddles initially charged the wrong man with the killing, Peter Samuel Smith, and later apologised to him for the mistake.
He now believes the killer is a person named by an anonymous caller to police on the morning after the murder.
That person was interviewed and eliminated because his partner gave him an alibi. But Sen-Sgt Iddles now believes the alibi was false.
The suspect died before the evidence was available to charge him.
MILLIONAIRE FOUND DEAD IN GARAGE
Michael Griffey, 45, was found lying dead in a pool of blood in a garage on his family’s sprawling Pakenham property on January 2, 2006 — up to four days after he was killed.
The suburban slaying resulted in a police probe involving arrests, charges and confessions — all from within the family.
His son Kenny Griffey was arrested but released.
The murder victim’s estranged wife Diane was then charged with the murder, until their daughter later confessed to the crime.
Police were forced to abandon the case against Mrs Griffey and never charged Cassandra Griffey.
Mr Griffey, 45, had run a successful business transporting plasterboard, but was in some financial difficulty just before his death, with a reported $1 million debt to the taxman, among other creditors.
His murder remains unsolved.
RANI FEATHERSTON MURDER
A butcher and knife fanatic who stabbed a woman to death in an unprovoked attack was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2017.
Rani Featherston’s April 2014 murder remained an unsolved mystery for more than two years before Christian Bain-Singh confessed to the bloody killing.
He said he did so after returning to the church and finding God.
Following an altercation during a chance street encounter, Bain-Singh, who was armed with a hunting knife, stabbed Ms Featherston in the back.
She tried to run away but he chased her down and stabbed her another 19 times. After she went to the ground, the callous killer stabbed Ms Featherston one more time in the throat.
Before leaving the bloodied scene Bain-Singh posted a message on Facebook that read: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
“I guess looking at it now, it’s like a, bragging, it’s like victory, it’s like saying ‘I gotcha’,” he later told police when quizzed about the post.
Justice Christopher Beale found it was likely that Ms Featherston had abused Bain-Singh.
“Whether she threatened you or not, she was unarmed and you should have just walked away,” he said.
Imposing a maximum sentence of 29 years imprisonment Justice Beale said Bain-Singh’s offences were shocking but he had shown remorse and had good rehabilitation prospects.
DANIEL ECKERSLEY
Daniel Eckersley, 39, pleaded guilty this year to murdering his partner Amanda Harris with a kitchen knife at their Cranbourne North home in July 2018.
On the day of the murder, Eckersley and Ms Harris, 36, had a loud argument after the killer cleared out their kitchen cabinet and fridge, smashing items with a hammer and throwing them in the bin.
After punching and kicking his partner of 17 years, Eckersley stabbed Ms Harris repeatedly with a kitchen knife.
One of the couple’s three children tried to grab his father’s hand to stop the attack.
Eckersley then used a cigarette lighter to set fire to the property, bundling up the children and dog into the couple’s sedan and attempting to flee.
Associate Professor Andrew Carroll told the Supreme Court of Victoria he believed Eckersley suffered temporary psychosis from overusing the pain medication Tramadol.
He was sentenced to 18 years in prison on January 30 this year.
KYLIE BLACKWOOD MURDER
Mia and Holly Blackwood were just 11 years old when they discovered their mum, Kylie Blackwood, in a pool of blood at their Pakenham home after school on August 1, 2013.
Parolee Scott Alan Murdoch, 42, pleaded guilty to her brutal murder in 2019.
In a pre-sentence hearing in Victoria’s Supreme Court in February this year, Mia and Holly, now 17, opened up in harrowing victim impact statements about how the loss of their mother would torment them for the rest of their lives.
Holly took the opportunity to be able to speak to her mother’s killer for the first time.
“You have taken away memories,” she said.
Justice Dixon will sentence Murdoch at a later date.
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