Pride of Australia: How detective Dave Butler and his team solved Jill Meagher’s murder

VETERAN detective Dave Butler will never forget the moment he realised Adrian Bayley was a killer who had randomly chosen a victim on one of Melbourne’s busiest streets.

Sen Sgt Dave Butler has been nominated for a Pride of Australia award for his extraordinary work on the Jill Meagher case. Were it not for his skill, killer and serial rapist Adrian Bayley may still be on our streets. Picture: Mark Stewart

THE hairs stood up on the back of murder investigator Dave Butler’s neck when the breakthrough was made on a killer with a track record for rape.

Veteran detective Dave Butler will never forget the moment he realised Adrian Bayley was a killer — who had randomly chosen a victim on one of Melbourne’s busiest streets.

“Just at that moment, you get that sudden rush of anxiety ... we’ve got the guy,’’ Butler said. “The hairs just stood up on the back of my neck.’’

It was the fifth day of an exhaustive investigation under intense public scrutiny when Bayley emerged as a suspect. But until that fateful Wednesday when Bayley came on to their radar, there was no suspect in sight.

With two nations looking for answers, it dawned on Butler, a self-described “10-pound Pom”, who emigrated with his family to Australia on a DC 10 jet at the age of eight, this was not a normal case.

Ms Meagher was an Irish national who worked for the ABC and had been out with colleagues for Friday night drinks. She was 29, educated, warm, optimistic and beautiful.

The almost iconic picture of her, released by her husband, Tom, is angelic. Her face and smile is flawless. And no one she knew had any idea what had happened to her.

There were bare clues. The most intriguing was Jill’s abandoned bag, taken by a local before mysteriously being returned to where he found it off Hope St. It was a sign she may have been abducted.

She had also been on the phone to her brother and was not answering minutes later in the early hours of September 22.

In the first interview Sen Sgt Butler has given about leading more than 20 homicide detectives and analysts and countless others who helped solve the case, he concedes Bayley put himself in the frame.

“To some extent, we were working blind,’’ he said. “There was no crime scene. No report, other than a missing person. It makes it hard.’’

At one low point, days into the major probe, a detective even asked the methodical, cautious lead investigator: “How are we going to solve this case?’’

The answer was typical of Sen Sgt Butler. A football fanatic, he put it into sporting parlance.

“I talked about one percenters,’’ he said. “If we do the little things well, somewhere along the way we will discover something.’’

Regardless, Sen Sgt Butler believed it might be months, not days before they would make a breakthrough.

Ms Meagher had been missing for little more than 24 hours when it became a priority for the newly established missing persons unit — a squad not fully embraced at that point as the right direction for homicide.

By Sunday afternoon, September 23, 2012, Sen Sgt Butler had read the “case narrative’’.

Moreland police officer Steve Bull thought something was wrong. So did Butler — Jill had never gone missing, not even overnight.

“There was just something about it,’’ Butler said. “With missing persons, you develop a sense for it. Something was just not right. Who she was, the overall circumstances, there was no history of going missing.’’

Her case, by Sunday night, was leading the news. By Monday, the lack of a sighting or any other indication Ms Meagher was alive led Butler to assume the worst.

“That was the moment it crystallised for me: this is what I think it is,’’ he said.

“It was important to focus and then eliminate those closest to Jill as a priority.’’

Murder investigations are often processes of elimination, working from the family outwards. After two interviews they had eliminated Tom Meagher by the Tuesday, leaving them with an abandoned bag, some witnesses who had spoken or seen Ms Meagher and little else.

The pressure on Sen-Sgt Butler, his crew, and for Victoria Police was immense.

Then they caught a break.

The following day, a “one per cent’’ play would turn their focus on a monster.

Homicide detectives Jason Wallace and Shane O’Connell had volunteered to help, and were given the task of checking vehicle registrations driving through CityLink, where Ms Meagher’s phone was tracking.

Hundreds of vehicles, if not more, had gone through the toll road’s gantries in the hours after Ms Meagher had gone missing.

Sen-Constable Wallace found one of the cars snapped on CityLink was an Astra hatchback registered to the bailed serial rapist Adrian Ernest Bayley, formerly Edwards.

Bayley, in his panic, had returned to the murder scene — a laneway off Hope St — to collect and dispose of Ms Meagher’s body.

The SIM card found at Adrian Bayley’s house.

He had felt compelled to because he was paranoid he had left DNA on his victim, and his DNA had been taken by police years earlier.

It was a lead that would turn the probe on its head.

Ms Meagher had been missing for five days and this flashpoint would uncover Bayley’s trail. Sen-Constable Wallace checked Bayley’s criminal record and brought up his licence.

Bayley’s driver’s licence photo would be compared to the “man in the blue hoodie’’ footage taken from CCTV at the Duchess Boutique dress shop on Sydney Rd.

The footage was released, showing a blond man talking to Ms Meagher, sending a chill down our collective spines.

And when investigators found Bayley’s and Ms Meagher’s phones to be side-by-side pinging off towers along the Calder Freeway, they knew they had their man.

Sen-Sgt Butler and his crew followed the trail right to Bayley’s door. “If he never got on that road would we have found him?’’ he ponders. “The one per cent. That was CityLink.’’

A conviction, however, takes more.

A CCTV image of Adrian Bayley from a petrol station after Jill Meagher’s murder.

Enter another key member of Sen-Sgt Butler’s team, Paul Rowe. Days before Bayley was even a suspect, the groundwork on how an interview would be conducted was under way.

Sen-Sgt Butler had told Rowe, a skilled questioner, he would be sitting opposite whoever they found.

A second team was deployed to search Bayley’s home and his cars — armed with information a phone SIM card had been detected by Bayley’s girlfriend.

Sen-Sgt Butler described feeling a wave of relief at the news.

Rowe entered the “custody suite’’, armed with the knockout blow, and would calmly tell Bayley of the development and ask him to explain why Ms Meagher’s SIM card would be in his home.

Bayley could only answer: “I don’t want to explain that.’’

They took a break, so the weight of the news could dawn on Bayley, and the silence broke him.

Sen-Sgt Butler says he hopes the case has not made Melbourne a different place.

His crew’s work, in particular the methods they employed, has changed homicide investigations forever.

But solving one of Australia’s highest-profile cases has not changed Sen-Sgt Butler one bit, he says. “I’m still the same 10-pound Pom,’’ he said.

Sen-Sgt Dave Butler has been nominated for a Pride of Australia award for his work on the Jill Meagher case.

You can nominate an outstanding individual worthy of recognition and read about other nominees at Pride of Australia.

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