Life of serial sleaze Kevin Correll before he died after a drink at the bar
Details have been revealed of a chief suspect in an Australian woman’s murder who would often carouse at the sex district meeting people half his age, until one fateful night.
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Kevin Correll wasn’t interested in drinking at a sports bar attached to his Phuket hotel – instead, he preferred to flirt with pole dancers half his age in the middle of the sex district.
The 69-year-old, who is suspected of killing his former employee Rachelle Childs, turned up last Wednesday at Richy Bar – his pole dancing club of choice in Patong. Instead of talking to his 31-year-old bartender girlfriend while she worked her shift, he nursed a beer while having a heart attack.
Veins were bulging from his face, he was clutching his chest, complaining about back pain and dizziness, but refused to go to hospital and later died on the bathroom floor at The Expat Hotel.
It was a fitting end for a serial sleaze who probably raped three women, assaulted another, and killed a fourth. The coroner found his death was likely caused by an irregular pulse and cardiomegaly – in other words, his heart was too big. Ironic, for someone whose crimes could be described as heartless.
Mr Correll’s Thai girlfriend was too distraught to speak to this masthead and has no idea about his previous criminal charges, nor did her pole dancer friend and colleague Mayom, who spoke with this masthead.
The women also don’t know that he often travelled to Thailand to befriend young women and hook up with various local lovers. Prior to the bartender, he was dating another woman who ran a milkshake shop on the Cambodian border. They broke up in April, she said, due to conflicting opinions.
His heartbreak was short-lived. That same month, his whirlwind romance with the Richy bartender began. They had known each other for a number of years because he was a regular customer, but their intimate relationship was recent.
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For context, Richy Bar is in the heart of the very sleazy Bangla Road – a thriving precinct, even in the low season, surrounded by restaurants, bars, strip clubs, and sex shops.
Music is blaring, poles line the bar and various tables, neon shots are delivered by the dozen on tiered platters, promo girls stand out the front advertising cheap drinks, and young female staffers are dressed almost exclusively in bikinis, lingerie, and platform stilettos.
That is where Mr Correll chose to spent his evenings in Phuket. Mayom said he would buy the girls drinks, laugh and dance with them – everyone liked him, they didn’t see any reason not to.
In truth, given the option, Mr Correll probably would have chosen to spend his last hours on Earth surrounded by half-naked Thai women – after all, his former haunt was a seedy south Sydney nightclub called Scaramouche, he hunted singles at mingling events, assaulted women at knifepoint, and once described his own rape victim to police as a “moll” who was asking for it.
After being caught mid-rape in the 1980s, he told police: “I’m not sure of her name but I picked this moll up at Scara’s, we drove round for a while and then I pulled up near Woodward Park.
“We talked for a little while [and] I felt like a bit, so I pulled my duds down, she didn’t seem to mind, so I grabbed her – not actually grabbed – but brought her head down … she struggled a bit, then took her head away”.
When asked whether he forced her to have oral sex, he replied: “She’s only a moll, she’s fair go for anybody.”
He faced four sexual assault charges for separate incidents and got away with all of them.
While Mr Correll’s criminal charges took place decades ago, his offences didn’t stop. He just didn’t get caught.
Since the Dear Rachelle podcast launched in March, looking at the 2001 murder of Rachelle Childs, south of Sydney, a number of women have come forward to say they were abused by Mr Correll but were too scared of him to do anything about it. Some have families who are still unaware of the violence they once endured, while others knew they’d be torn to shreds on the witness stand if they made a complaint.
Various offences that never made it to the courtroom include smashing his ex-wife’s head against a pole in front of his young children. Her only crime was speaking to someone at a party who he didn’t like.
He drugged another girlfriend during a weekend away, and once tried to hire a young woman for a car sales job – ended up offering her $150 for sex, and flew into a rage when she declined.
His own daughter, Jazz, has no doubt he raped women and killed Rachelle. She previously said that she loved her father, but she also described their relationship as being fashioned by love and fear.
She said he could be funny and entertaining – he was a doting grandfather who supported her through teenage motherhood, but he also lied and made up stories to damage other people and protect himself.
His views on women were chilling, she said. He was calm if they were kind and compliant, but those who fought his coercive control were menaced.
“I know a lot of women are terrified of him,” Jazz said.
“As cruel as he has been to me, I’ve never experienced those threats, but I don’t have a second’s hesitation in saying that all the accounts these women speak of are 100 per cent true.”
But that was a side of Mr Correll that most people didn’t see. For his Thai girlfriends, Mayom, and the workers at Richy Bar, he was a friendly and charismatic man who wanted to have a good time.
He never told them about his life in Australia – omitting details about his job as an RSA officer at a leagues club, his many brothers and sisters, children or grandchildren, or his former career as a used-car salesman.
Their immense distress over this death is genuine.
Mr Correll didn’t have travel insurance and once again left his family to pick up the pieces from his mistakes.
Unable to foot the tens of thousands of dollars to repatriate his body, his children have little option but to fly to Thailand for a cremation.
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