Serial killer Ashley Mervyn Coulston loses Supreme Court bid to clear name
SERIAL killer Ashley Mervyn Coulston — a man so dangerous he will never be released — has lost an audacious bid to clear his name, despite claiming he is the victim of a high-level cover-up.
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SERIAL killer Ashley Mervyn Coulston — a man so dangerous he will never be released — has lost an audacious bid to clear his name, despite claiming he is the victim of a high-level cover-up.
The monster executed Kerryn Henstridge, 22, Anne Smerdon, 22, and Peter Dempsey, 27, the brother-in-law of one of the women, in Burwood in July 1992.
The trio were hogtied using cable ties before Coulston shot them execution style in the back of the head at the Summit Road property.
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He has never explained why he killed the trio, who had advertised in a newspaper for a house mate.
Coulston was later named as a suspect in a murder and a series of rapes on the Gold Coast and in northern NSW in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Coulston has been agitating for a fresh inquest into the Burwood murders for years, but the state coroner formally refused to reopen an investigation in February last year.
He had appealed to the Supreme Court claiming he had new evidence which showed he could not have been at the house.
According to documents lodged by Coulston with the court hospital records of his girlfriend Janice McLeod, who he visited on the night of the murder, and “Honda letters” show he did not commit the murders.
“As I have tried to explain ... any fair-minded person would know that I could not have driven my girlfriend’s car from either the Frankston Hospital or the Hastings Marina on the night in question,” Coulston claimed in a submission to the court.
“Not being able to travel between two locations in a given time, surely must bring into question any other piece of information or argument that relies on that very point to convict someone of a very serious crime.”
Coulston — who is housed at Barwon Prison as prisoner number 85620 — also claimed he was the victim of a high-level cover-up.
“I am also aware that some Police members, the OPP and the Justice Department do not want sections of my Submission to the State Coroner to come to light in a public forum
Coulston is a dangerous loner who Kerryn and Anne, both 22, were country girls from good families.
Anne, from Kyabram, was doing postgraduate studies after qualifying as a primary school teacher.
Kerryn’s family lived on a property just outside Hamilton, and after less than six months in the city she’d had enough.
With her mum due to come up and take her back home in a few days, the girls had advertised in the Herald Sun for a new housemate.
Anne’s sister Liz was married to Peter Dempsey, 27, an electronics technician for Telecom, and theirs was a close family.
Coulston was a dangerous loner who had a troubled childhood. He craved attention and tried to cross the Tasman in a self-built boat on January 26, 1988, without the publicity he’d hoped for.
It was 46 days later that Coulston finally made headlines, with his ocean rescue earning him media attention both in New Zealand and back home.
At the time of the murders. Coulston was living on a yacht Gulliver, berthed at Hastings Marina with Ms McLeod.
“He’s the dearest man I have ever known. As far as I’m concerned he’s treated me like no one else ever has,” Ms McLeod told the Herald Sun after a jury convicted Coulston of the murders in 1993.
“We all have our peculiarities, me most of all would say, but I am not an easy person to live with and he has patience like you would not believe.”
In April of 1971, when Coulston was just 14, Coulston began watching two schoolteachers at their flat in Tangambalanga, in the Kiewa Valley.
Armed with a .22 rifle, Coulston broke in, forced them at gunpoint into a car and made one of the women drive north, across the NSW border.
By 1979 Coulston was living in southern Queensland, and he moved to Sydney the following year.
His latest legal bid failed on Thursday when Justice Greg Garde denied the appeal.