Police didn’t initially believe Kate Moir who escaped Australia’s worst serial killers

A WOMAN who endured multiple rapes before escaping the clutches of Australia’s worst serial killers believes there are more victims.

“YOU can’t tell me that this happened in just a space of four weeks all of a sudden, you just wake up one day and say, ‘Let’s do this, this sounds like fun’. And not have done it before.”

That is the view of Kate Moir, who endured multiple rapes while in the clutches of Australia’s worst serial killers, David and Catherine Birnie, in 1986.

Kate’s harrowing ordeal ultimately saw the pair jailed for life for the murder of four women, but it’s long been believed there were more victims.

Explosive new TV show Murder Uncovered investigated three more cases last night, naming them as possible victims: Cheryl Renwick, Barbara Western and Lisa Mott.

Perth civil libertarian Brian Tennant believes David Birnie was on the verge of confessing to three more crimes before he hanged himself in prison.

He told the program he asked during a prison visit: “Dave did you and Cath knock the other three off?

“He nodded his head and said yeah.”

David Birnie demanded a conjugal visit with his killer wife in return for divulging the names.

It was refused.

With David Birnie dead, Catherine Birnie remains the only one who knows if there are more victims.

She remains in prison but is eligible for parole later this year.

Her youngest son, Peter, abandoned with his siblings by her at the age of six, won’t be giving her a character reference.

He said he would support the death penalty for his mother.

“I don’t have a mother. It wouldn’t bother me. I would party for a week. It would be 30 years of stress off my shoulders,” he said.

His message to her? “Hurry up and die. Quickly.”

Cheryl Renwick.

Daughter Michelle Renwick.

CHERYL RENWICK

Single mother of two Cheryl Renwick, 33, disappeared on May 25, 1986.

Her daughter Michelle told Murder Uncovered her that before some her disappearance, a couple had been following her mother. She was disturbed enough to move house, but the stalking continued by telephone.

Daughter Michelle recounted two incidents in which a mystery woman came to their house when her mother was out, after a couple pulled up in a car outside. A friend who saw the woman identified her as Catherine Birnie.

After the Birnies were arrested, police searched charity bins and rivers looking for items they’d taken from their victims. Among them, Michelle found a shirt her mother used to borrow from her, and a car key with the same emblem as her mother’s car. She has not been reinterviewed by police.

BARBARA WESTERN

Barbara Western was last seen leaving a Perth pub on June 27, 1986.

The 38-year-old mother of two was known to hitchhike home sometimes and her disappearance came at the same time the Birnies were on their frenetic killing spree.

Her body was found in bushland in March 1991.

Her killer had removed her jewellery and other items and placed them beside the body: a hallmark of David Birnie’s.

Police officer Vince Katich was so convinced the Birnies had killed her, that he got permission to take him from prison to the murder site.

“Am I supposed to say something now?” was all David Birnie offered.

LISA MOTT

Lisa Marie Mott disappeared from the West Australian town of Collie on October 9, 1980. It was thought by some she had been killed by David Birnie before he teamed up with Catherine.

She was last seen getting into a yellow panel van. Years later police were told anonymously David Birnie owned a similar car and worked in the area.

David Birnie’s first wife told Murder Uncovered he was with her in Perth for that entire day. And she has no reason to give the man that walked out on her and their children to become a serial killer an alibi.

COPS DIDN’T BELIEVE RAPE VICTIM’S PLEAS

Police officers told a rookie constable interviewing the woman who escaped Australia’s worst serial killers to “stitch her up” for a false report, initially not believing Kate Moir’s harrowing survival of multiple rapes.

“I was told that it was a bizarre story and to ... just stitch her up for a false report. And I’ll never forget those words, that is verbatim, I have lived those words for 30 years,” former police officer Laura Hancock told Channel Seven’s Murder Uncovered.

Ms Hancock was the only woman on duty when Kate was brought into the station after escaping the clutches of serial killers David and Catherine Birnie on November 10, 1986.

Kate, 17, had been abducted, chained, and endured three rapes and a night of terror and torture before managing to escape.

It was the first police statement Ms Hancock had ever taken, she told Murder Uncovered.

“It became apparent fairly quickly that Kate was in some sort of form of shock,” she said.

“She believed that there had been others, and that they had died, and she was going to die ... and she was very emphatic with that.”

Kate was “calm, tired, very, very blank, very factual, matter of fact ... little emotion at that point,” Ms Hancock said.

“The focus was ‘This is who they are, go get them’ not ‘oh my God this is what I’ve just been through, the poor me’. It was ‘listen to me, here’s my story, this is why, this is how and this is who, go get them’.

David Birnie.

Asked was Kate believed, Ms Hancock said not initially. She left the interview room multiple times to stress her belief Kate was telling the truth. Eventually the persistence paid off, and Kate provided a critical name — David Birnie — which she had spied on a pill bottle during her ordeal. Then a task force set up to investigate the disappearances of four other women heard Kate’s story, and police moved to arrest the Birnies.