‘It’s just not his nature’: What happens when you discover your best mate’s a serial rapist and killer
He was the loveable Melbourne tradie, with a long-term girlfriend and kind heart. Or so his best mate thought. Until he discovered his friend, Peter Dupas, was a serial rapist and killer.
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Two young blokes walk into apprenticeships in an electrical appliance manufacturing company in southeast Melbourne.
One leaves a qualified electrician, the other becomes a fitter and turner, and, one of Australia’s most prolific serial killers and rapists, Peter Dupas.
But before Dupas was convicted of multiple violent sex offences and the murders of three young women, he was just a “nice, ordinary guy”.
Former electrician Kevin Elliott worked his apprenticeship alongside Dupas in the early 70s, and once called him his “best mate”.
In six years of close friendship he never saw Dupas display signs of aggression, animosity, misogyny or violence.
The two men worked together daily, drank together at the local pub, the landmark Notting Hill Hotel, went on double dates to the drive-in with Elliott’s wife, Sheila, and Dupas’s fiance, Heather, and even took couples holidays together.
“Peter never spoke of any disrespect or anything about Heather. And she was just a pleasant girl.
“The funny thing to understand is that if you knew Peter, like I did, it just wasn’t possible. It’s just not him. It’s not his nature,” Elliott said.
“If he walked down the street and said a whole lot of things about a girl or expressed violence or loved violent films … it just was not him at all.
“I sometimes wonder whether, because we had a pretty good friendship, we never really did anything we shouldn’t or wrong or anything — I don’t know if he used me as a front or just trying to lead a normal life or what. I don’t know what his intentions were.”
Yet bubbling beneath his wholesome ‘Mr Ordinary’ act, Dupas was leading a depraved double life as a violent sex offender.
His criminality began at 15, when he visited his next-door neighbour and asked to borrow a knife for peeling vegetables. Instead, he stabbed the woman in the face, neck and hand as she fought off his attack.
After a two-week stint in a psychiatric facility Dupas was released.
Police suspect a year later he was responsible for breaking into the morgue of the Austin Hospital and mutilating the bodies of two elderly women.
The bizarre wound he left on the thigh of one body matched the mutilation he inflicted on a later murder victim, Nicole Patterson.
These were all offences Dupas had notched up by the time his friendship with Elliott began to blossom in his late teens.
But with no cause for alarm, Elliott and Dupas became so close, Elliott often frequented his family home at Mount Waverley.
“Peter interacted well with family and us. Very normal relationship as far as I could see,” Elliott said.
And when Elliott got married in 1974, the same year Dupas was charged with rape, Dupas was front and centre at his wedding, featuring prominently in his wedding photos.
“The first clue I ever had was we got called into the boss’s office, and he said: Peter’s been picked up for rape,” Elliott said.
The rape occurred when Dupas broke into the house of young mother, threatening her with a knife before raping her and threatening to harm her baby.
The sentencing judge described the offence as “one of the worst rapes that could be imagined”.
“I did not believe it one bit at all. And anyway, he got nine years jail,” Elliott said.
He recalls Dupas’ fiance Heather ended the relationship with Dupas “pretty quick” upon the revelation, but Elliott was in disbelief about his mate.
“I was just so convinced in my mind that he was innocent – ‘it can’t be him, he couldn’t do that, that’s not his nature’,” Elliott said.
He even took along his wife kids to visits in Pentridge and Ararat prisons.
Elliott says the kids thought of Dupas fondly, referring to him as ‘Uncle Pete’.
“I had two kids. He seemed to think the world of them and made them some toys while he was in jail.
“One was a wooden train but you’d swear a machine had made all the pieces. It was so perfect. It was sort of a big star with lots of pieces that were fitted into each other. I don’t know how he made it fit so perfect.
And he made a big teddy bear, probably about as high as your knee, only threw that out recently,” Elliott said.
“We did not discuss his charges as we couldn’t believe his guilt. Just light everyday conversations. I would no way have taken my children or my wife there if we thought he had really done it.”
Two months after Dupas was released from prison, serving just five years of his maximum sentence, he molested women in four separate attacks over a 10-day period.
“Peter was released in 1979,” Elliott said.
“Soon after his release he came to my place for a visit and we had a day trip to Cowes [Phillip Island].
“Whilst at the beach, I left him alone with my wife in the car while I walked down to the water. I would never have done this if I had any suspicion of his guilt.
“I was notified soon after this day trip that Peter had been arrested again with the knife and balaclava in his car.”
Dupas was sentenced to another five years for the attack.
While at this point, Elliott finally ceased contact he received a compassionate letter from Dupas several years later when his wife died, it read:
“Mate I just don’t know how to express how sorry and upset I am for you and the girls. Its been a long time since we’ve communicated but I’ve always loved Sheila and yourself. The news really knocked me out … If you ever need an ear to talk to I’m yours … Yours sincerely, Peter.”
Upon Dupas’s release in 1985, he had raped another woman again with one month of release. He later told police: “I’m sorry for what happened. Everyone was telling me I’m OK now. I
never thought it was going to happen again. I only wanted to live a normal life.”
But normality was impossible for Dupas who continued to escalate in violence every time he was let out of prison.
In 1999, he murdered psychotherapist Nicole Patterson in her Northcote home, and once in custody, police were able to link him to the 1997 murder of sex worker Margaret Maher, using DNA.
In 2009, he was convicted of the murder of 25-year-old Mersina Halvagis, whom he attacked while she leant down to visit her grandmother’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery, in north Melbourne.
For Elliott, he has often been plagued by the question of how two such opposing personalities – the loveable, rule-abiding tradie and the sadistic serial killer – could inhabit the one body so seamlessly and has considered reaching out to Dupas for some semblance of an explanation.
“I don’t think there was anything I could pick up on really … I don’t know if he just played me for the fool or whether he was just a flip personality that could turn on and off like a light switch, I just don’t know,” he said.
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