Peter Dupas avoids trial over 95-year-old Kathleen Downes’ murder

Prosecutors have been forced to drop Peter Dupas’ fourth suspected murder charge, meaning the evil serial killer won’t stand trial over the stabbing of 95-year-old Kathleen Downs.

Peter Dupas has avoided trial over the death of a 95-year-old in her nursing home bed.

Evil serial killer Peter Dupas won’t stand trial for his fourth suspected murder after prosecutors were today forced to drop the case against him.

Dupas, already convicted of murdering three women, was due to stand trial for the murder of 95-year-old Kathleen Downes who was stabbed to death in her nursing home bed in Brunswick in 1997.

But prosecutors were today forced to drop the case against him after losing their key witness, disgraced lawyer Andrew Fraser.

Kathleen Downes, 95, was horrifically murdered in her nursing home at Brunswick.

Fraser, who did time with Dupas after he was jailed in 2001 for smuggling cocaine, was crucial to helping secure another conviction against his former cellmate.

But the Supreme Court was told he was unable to give evidence after because of a life-threatening spinal cancer diagnosis.

Prosecutors were hopeful Fraser would eventually be in a position to testify, but Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth, the principal judge of the court’s criminal division, flagged concerns about a potential never-ending delay.

The case had already suffered significant delays since Dupas was charged in February last year with Mrs Downes’ murder.

Prosecutors met with Director of Public Prosecutions Kerri Judd, QC, before deciding to drop the case.

Part of their considerations included the fact that Dupas already has no prospect of ever being released back in to the community.

Dupas is serving three life sentences with no parole for the murders of Nicole Patterson, Margaret Maher and Mersina Halvagis.

The remorseless killer has unsuccessfully appealed against each conviction.

Fraser was also crucial in securing a conviction for Ms Halvagis murder.

Dupas has been convicted of murdering three women, and was due to face trial with Mrs Downes’ murder.

The evil killer is serving three life sentences without the prospect of parole.

Homicide squad detectives told the Herald Sun Dupas could not have been charged without Fraser’s evidence.

That evidence included Dupas telling Fraser in a jailhouse confession how he stabbed Ms Halvagis to death.

Dupas chillingly recreated the crime for Fraser, acting out how he surprised Ms Halvagis from behind and repeatedly stabbed her.

Fraser had told police Dupas also made reference to killing Mrs Downes.

The comment allegedly made to Fraer referred to “the other old sheila down the road’’ while discussing the murder of Ms Halvagis.

Dupas killed Mersina Halvagis, then confessed to the killing to cellmate Andrew Fraser.

Mrs Downes was killed on New Year’s Eve 1997, less than two months after the murder of Ms Halvagis.

Evidence implicating Dupas included:

TWO unexplained phone calls to the nursing home from Dupas’s home in Pascoe Vale five weeks before Mrs Downes was killed,

AN attempt three days later to break into the home in Brunswick at the same point of entry used the night she was killed — the day after Dupas returned from holidays,

PHONE calls made by Dupas from his home soon after Mrs Downes was stabbed to death to establish a false alibi,

THE timing of her death, which occurred on the anniversary of when Dupas’s ex-wife — an older woman who worked in a nursing home — walked out on him three years earlier, and;

THE comment to Fraser.

Dupas, who appeared at the Supreme Court today via videolink, made no reaction as prosecutors revealed the case before him would not go ahead.

Mrs Downes’ granddaughter Jodi Downes was in court for the decision.

“While the family are disappointed about the outcome, we completely understand under the circumstances and would like to thank police and prosecutors,” she said.

Ms Halvagis’ father George was also in court for the short hearing.

Dupas remains a suspect in at least two other murders, the 1985 murder of Helen McMahon in Rye, and the 1993 murder of Renita Brunton in Sunbury.

There remains a $1 million reward for anyone able to help solve either cold case murder.

Renita Brunton was murdered in Sunbury in 1993.

Helen McMahon was murdered on a Rye back beach in 1985. Dupas was on prerelease day leave from prison at the time.

Dupas was serving a jail sentence for rape but was out on prerelease day leave the day of the McMahon murder.

He has long been a suspect in the murder of Ms McMahon, but has never been charged.

He was questioned but denied having anything to do with the crime.

Ms Brunton, 31, was found dead in the back of her Link Arcade, Sunbury, shop after being repeatedly stabbed on November 5, 1993.

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Dupas’ alibi for that day has been looked at by police and he has never been charged.

The killing is similar to others he committed.

Dupas was born in Sydney on July 6, 1953, and was the youngest of three children.

The family moved to Melbourne while he was an infant and he spent his childhood in the Frankston and Mount Waverley areas.

He was spoiled as a child and later told a psychiatrist his mother was over-protective and his father was a perfectionist who made him feel inadequate.

He was a poor student and claimed to have been teased by other pupils who called him Pugsley.

He was fat and a slow learner.

His first victim was a 27-year-old woman with a five-week-old baby.

Dupas was just 15.

The introverted, insignificant boy with no close friends went on to become one of the country’s most notorious sex killers.

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