Crimes that shocked Melbourne: The most appalling incidents in the city’s northern suburbs
SERIAL killers Peter Dupas, Leslie Camilleri and Carl Williams are behind some of Australia’s most chilling crimes, all in our backyard.
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VICTORIA’S northern suburbs have been witness to many horrific crimes which have stunned the community.
For the latest of our series on the worst crimes in Melbourne and our suburbs, True Crime Scene has chosen five of the most shocking in the northern suburbs in recent memory.
Our series on our most shocking crimes will also revisit the scenes in other parts of the city.
Evil serial killer picked his female victims at random
MERSINA Halvagis was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time the day she was tending her grandmother’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery.
Evil serial killer Peter Dupas was lurking, and pounced on his young and unsuspecting victim.
Dupas was a craven predator.
It was November 1, 1997 when he savagely stabbed Ms Halvagis to death.
“Just as Ms Halvagis’ presence at the cemetery was typical of her goodness, your presence at the cemetery was typical of your evil: cunning, predatory and homicidal,” Supreme Court judge Justice Philip Cummins said when he sentenced Dupas to life with no minimum term.
Dupas was also sentenced to life for the slaying of young psychotherapist Nicole Patterson.
He tricked his way into Ms Patterson’s Northcote home, from where she worked as a psychotherapist, in April 1999.
Dupas stabbed Ms Patterson 27 times.
A friend discovered her mutilated half-naked body on the floor.
Dupas carefully planned the murder, having booked an appointment with Ms Patterson under an assumed name.
In sentencing Dupas, Supreme Court judge Justice Frank Vincent outlined the full horror of the attack.
“You struck her again and again ... her breasts were cut completely from her body, probably, but not necessarily, after death in a depraved act of contempt.
“You regarded Nicole Patterson as nothing more than prey to be entrapped and killed.”
SPECIAL REPORT: Dupas is the beast who roam free to rape and kill
MORE PICTURES: Faces of a remorseless killer
Kylie Maybury: The death of an innocent
SIX-year-old Kylie Maybury was raped and murdered on Melbourne Cup Day in 1984.
She was abducted while returning home from an errand to her local milk bar.
Her dead body was dumped in a Preston gutter like a discarded toy.
Investigators treated child killer Robert Lowe as a prime suspect.
Lowe was working as a travelling salesman in the Preston area when Kylie was abducted.
About a month before the little girl’s murder, Lowe had exposed himself to two young girls in a street not far from where Kylie’s body was found.
Kylie’s distinctive Strawberry Shortcake handbag was found in Wantirna, near Lowe’s Glen Waverley home.
But DNA tests cleared Lowe.
Kylie’s grandfather John Moss was hounded by rumours that he had raped and killed his granddaughter.
He was cleared by police but, a few days before the first anniversary of Kylie’s murder, he committed suicide.
Kylie’s uncle Mark Maybury was also cleared of involvement.
Haunted, he ended up in Pentridge Prison on violence and theft charges and killed himself in his cell.
In a suicide note, he wrote he’d been involved in the murder of two sex offenders and named who he believed was Kylie killer.
Police could not substantiate the claims.
Kylie’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery was tampered with.
No one has ever been charged in relation to her death.
SPECIAL REPORT: New investigation 30 years after Kylie’s murder
Gangland war crosses the line at kid’s footy clinic
A CRIMINAL we shall refer to as “The Runner”, for legal reasons, brought terror to a kids’ footy clinic the morning he blasted to death crime figure Jason Moran and Moran’s mate Pasquale Barbaro.
The two men were sitting in the front seats of Moran’s family van at the Cross Keys Reserve in Essendon on the morning of June 21, 2003, when the gunman moved in with the intent to kill Moran.
The triggerman was acting on the order of vengeful crime boss Carl Williams.
Armed with a shotgun, and at least one handgun, the hitman blasted Moran as several children sat in the rear of the vehicle.
He also shot Barbaro dead, before fleeing.
“It was committed in the open, in daylight. It was quite brazen,” homicide squad boss Detective Inspector Andrew Allen said at the time.
“Counselling has been offered to the children and other people.”
The gunman later pleaded guilty.
Did suburban demon kill young Prue for revenge?
DEPENDING on which argument you believe, young teenager Prue Bird was either the victim of a random abduction or the pawn in a game of criminal retribution.
Double killer Leslie Alfred Camilleri pleaded guilty to killing Prue, who was snatched from her Glenroy home on February 2, 1992.
Camilleri said he suffocated Prue after grabbing her while he was looking for a man he claimed had molested him years earlier.
In court in 2013, Camilleri disputed the Crown contention that he and a criminal associate kidnapped Prue and held her captive, before she was killed.
Camilleri claimed it was an opportunistic crime and that he acted alone.
He claimed he dumped Prue’s body in a Frankston tip.
Supreme Court judge Justice Elizabeth Curtain said she was satisfied Camilleri and his associate had driven around Glenroy looking for the house where a young girl lived prior to February 2, and that Camilleri and two others snatched Prue from her home.
It was a police theory that Prue was killed as payback for statements made against those who bombed the Russell St police complex in 1986.
Justice Curtain sentenced Camilleri to 28 years for Prue’s murder.
The sentence was to be served concurrently with the life sentences without parole Camilleri was already serving for the 1997 murders of raped Bega schoolgirls Lauren Barry and Nichole Collins.
Prue’s body has never been found.
“To even think of the fear Prue must have suffered — it breaks my heart,” Prue’s mother, Jenny Bird, said.
SCHOOLGIRL KILLER: The demon inside Leslie Camilleri
Tortured to death for a fortune that didn’t exist
Elderly businessman Orfeo “Alf” Baldissera died the most horrific death imaginable, according to a former veteran homicide squad investigator.
In January 1996, at least two men — no doubt more — broke into Mr Baldissera’s Preston home looking for a non-existent hidden fortune.
During an ordeal lasting over two hours, Mr Baldissera was tied down and slashed, bashed, cut and stabbed as his house was ransacked.
The former gold miner and construction company boss’s mouth was gagged, his wrists bound with tape, and his ankles tied with a coat hanger and belt.
He received more than 60 injuries inflicted by fists, knives and jemmy bars.
A pathologist found defensive injuries and a brain haemorrhage that looked as if it had been caused in a road accident.
The detective in charge of the case, Det-Sgt Chris Enright, told the Herald Sun at the time: “Mr Baldissera was systematically tortured. He received over 60 wounds.
“He had a knife put up his nose. There were cuts between his toes. He had stab wounds and lacerations on various parts of his chest and back.
“There were defensive wounds on his arms and ultimately he was strangled.
“It was the most barbaric of tortures and murders ... that you could ever wish to imagine.”
The attack even shocked one of the crooks involved, who told the Supreme Court: “I remember looking at his face. He looked terrible. I was completely shocked.”
That man, and an accomplice, were jailed for their roles.
A third man, the alleged ringleader and main assailant, was acquitted of the torture and murder after spending seven years in custody and facing three separate trials.
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