Murderer and serial rapist Mr Stinky faces new sex charges
The notorious murderer and serial rapist nicknamed Mr Stinky will face court on Friday after Victoria Police cold case detectives laid new sex crime charges dating back to 1971.
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EXCLUSIVE: The notorious murderer and serial rapist nicknamed Mr Stinky will face court on Friday charged with 31 historic sex and other offences dating back to 1971.
Mr Stinky is already serving life behind bars in Victoria after being convicted of the murders of teenagers Abina Madill and Garry Heywood and the rape of Ms Madill.
Ms Madill, 16, and Mr Heywood, 18, disappeared from a rock and roll dance at Shepparton on February 10, 1966 — their bodies were found 16 days later at Murchison East.
DNA DATABASE SOLVING OLD CRIMES
FREEZER FULL OF CRIME SCENE SAMPLES NABBING CROOKS
POLICE HOPE DNA CLUE WILL SOLVE COLD CASE RAPE
Detectives from the cold case team of Victoria Police’s sexual crimes squad charged Mr Stinky on Tuesday with 31 historic offences relating to 11 attacks against women in several Melbourne suburbs between 1971 and 1984.
He is due to appear via video link at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday.
The charges against Mr Stinky, who is aged in his 70s, include eight counts of rape, causing grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment and abduction of a female by force.
Cold case detectives started investigating Mr Stinky in 2017 after the force’s DNA database matched Mr Stinky’s DNA with DNA extracted from sex crime scenes samples that were frozen and stored in the 1980s.
Sexual Crimes Squad detective Inspector Steve Wilson told the Herald Sun the charges should send a strong message to both victims and offenders of sexual offences.
“We won’t give up and it doesn’t matter how many years go past, these crimes can always be solved,” he said.
“I want victims to feel heartened that we are charging someone this week over incidents that occurred as much as 47 years ago.
“It is never too late for you to speak to police, to come forward and tell your story or make a report.
“I also want offenders to understand that police won’t give up trying to provide these victims with the justice they deserve.
“We are continually seeing the evolution and improvement of technology that can assist with these investigations, particularly our cold case sexual assaults.
“I would strongly encourage anyone who has been a victim of a sexual assault, no matter how many years may have gone by, to come forward and report it to police.”
Victoria Police assistant commissioner Tess Walsh praised the work of the cold case team detectives.
“It has been about 18 months of hard work by a number of dedicated investigators and forensic officers to achieve this result,” she said.
“They have worked methodically and tirelessly through each of the existing investigations to reach this point.
“It also highlights the strong commitment they have to supporting victims of sexual assault, regardless of how many years go by.”
Mr Stinky was initially nabbed decades ago by old-fashioned fingerprints and by the more futuristic genetic testing method of DNA this time.
It was pure chance the murderer and mass rapist was identified in 1985 and just as random in 2017 when Victoria Police’s DNA database matched his DNA with DNA left at the scene of historic unsolved sex crimes.
Mr Stinky was caught the first time 19 years after he murdered Victorian couple Garry Heywood, 18, and Abina Madill, 16, in 1966.
DNA TRAPS A KILLER
It started as just another routine job for the detective in the Central Fingerprints Bureau.
Every fingerprint in Australia had to be assessed and filed by the Sydney bureau.
The form Ray Butterfield picked up from the top of the pile on March 21, 1985, contained prints obtained from a bloke caught flashing to a woman in Albury, New South Wales.
Sen-Det. Butterfield noticed the strongly defined index fingers and the scar on a little finger. He had seen distinguishing marks like that before so grabbed the folder containing fingerprints from serious unsolved crimes.
His hunch was right. The flasher’s prints matched those the killer left at the scene of the Heywood and Madill double murder.
Mr Stinky wouldn’t have been identified if he had chosen to masturbate in Victoria as, unlike NSW police, they did not then have the right to fingerprint without consent.
The excitement of the fingerprint bureau detective who recognised Mr Stinky’s dabs was matched in 2017 by the thrill the forensic scientist got when Mr Stinky’s DNA matched DNA obtained from sex crime scene samples that had lain frozen and untested in a freezer since the early 1980s.
It was in 1982, when DNA was just about unheard of, that the then director of the Victoria Police forensic services centre, Dr Tony Raymond, had the foresight to say to colleagues that they might one day be able to do something with the grubby marks left on a rape victim’s underwear.
And so the stain was cut out of the underwear and stored in the -70C freezer Dr Raymond had bought specifically to store samples gathered from the scenes of unsolved crimes.
Hundreds of samples from such diverse items as clothing, weapons and hair were put in plastic bags and thrown into the new freezer.
By the time the now Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton became aware of the freezer full of untested samples in late 2009, when he was appointed as the lab’s director, there were 1936 samples from the scenes of 582 unsolved crimes.
It wasn’t until 2011 that scientists at the police lab were confident that DNA technology had advanced sufficiently to enable them to successfully test the samples for DNA.
Mr Ashton was back at the force’s crime department as an assistant commissioner by that time and had the clout to allocate significant resources to getting every sample tested.
He then created the cold case team of detectives to investigate the results.
Since then, more than 80 rapists have been identified directly as a result of getting DNA from the crime scene samples from the hundreds of decades-old unsolved cases.
Mr Stinky is just the latest of many to have been charged as a result of the contents of the freezer.