How many of Perth’s missing and murdered women fell prey to serial killers?

IT’S one of the most remote cities on the planet, but it has become a hunting ground for serial killers with an awful death toll.

IT’S one of the most remote cities on earth, yet no less than four serial killers and suspected serial killers have chosen Perth as their hunting ground since the 1980s.

The arrest of a man in connection with the most notorious of them all — the Claremont murders — has renewed interest in Western Australia’s other unsolved cases. And there are many.

Over the past four decades, dozens of women and girls have disappeared from the Perth area. A handful have turned out to be murdered but the vast majority have never been found.

Some of these cold cases are being rexamined for possible links to other unsolved cases, while others bear the hallmarks of solved murders and notoriously violent criminals.

The waters have been muddied thanks to some major screw ups by the Western Australian Police, who have developed a reputation for collaring the wrong man (Andrew Mallard, the Mickelburg brothers and John Button to name a few) while the real killers roamed free, and in some cases struck again.

The town of Claremont has feared there may be a serial killer in their midst since the deaths of Jane Rimmer, 23, and Ciara Glennon, 27, in 1996 and 1997.

Speculation about other serial killers has been rife for years as police, amateur sleuths and journalists chip away at WA’s growing list of unsolved crimes.

Two cases which have come up again and again are those of Julie Cutler and Kerry Turner, who vanished in 1988 and 1991 respectively.

Ms Turner’s decomposed remains were found near Canning Dam four weeks after she disappeared. Ms Cutler’s upturned car was found in the surf off Cottesloe Beach two days after she was last seen but her body has never been recovered.

The parents of both Ms Cutler and Ms Turner believe their daughters may have fallen prey a serial killer and have appealed to detectives to investigate possible links.

Just before Christmas, police charged Bradley Robert Edwards with the abduction and murders of Ms Glennon and Ms Rimmer.

The 48-year-old Telstra technician and amateur photographer was arrested after cold case detectives allegedly linked DNA from Ms Glennon to a 1995 rape at Perth’s Karrakatta Cemetery and a kimono linked to the scene of a 1988 assault on a sleeping teenager in Huntingdale.

Mr Edwards faces two counts of deprivation of liberty, two counts of aggravated sexual penetration without consent, one count of breaking and entering and one count of indecent assault with respect to the earlier cases.

The investigation regarding 18-year-old Sarah Spiers, who also disappeared from Claremont in 1996 but whose body has never been found, remains open. Mr. Edwards has not been charged with any offences in relation to Ms Spiers.

IN an unrelated case, police are investigating the disappearance and suspected murder of 20-year-old Sarah McMahon in 2000, the murder of street worker Darylyn Ugle, 25, in 2003 and to numerous missing persons cases involving prostitutes.

Ms McMahon was not a prostitute. A 2013 inquest into her death heard that one man was a person of interest in both Ms McMahon’s disappearance and Ms Ugle’s murder and heard evidence that at least one of his associates feared he was a “serial killer”.

Serial killers David and Catherine Birnie murdered four of the five women they abducted over a period of just five weeks in 1986.

Their murder victims were Mary Neilson, 22, Noelene Patterson, 31, Denise Brown, 21 and Susannah Candy.

It is feared, however, that many more women and girls fell prey to the twisted couple.

They include 12-year-old Lisa Mott, who vanished in 1980, 33-year-old Cheryl Renwick, who was last seen in May 1986 and Barbara Western, 38, who vanished a month later.

Self-described serial killer Richard Edward Dorrough left a note confessing to the murders of three people before killing himself in Perth in 2014.

The 37-year-old navy mechanic is believed to have named 21-year-old Broome woman Sara-Lee Davey, Sydney prostitute Rachael Campbell, 29 and an unknown person in the note.

The confession came four years after Dorrough was acquitted of Ms Campbell’s 1998 murder, despite DNA evidence linking him to the crime.

At his 2010 trial, he admitted having sex with her and even biting her but denied killing her. His legal team successfully advanced a theory Ms Campbell’s estranged boyfriend was the killer and the jury handed down a not-guilty verdict.

Years earlier he had served just 12 months of a five-year sentence for attempted murder after being convicted of deliberately running down a pedestrian in Queensland in 2000.

Ms Davey vanished in January 1997 after hooking up with Dorrough at a Broome nightclub while he was on shore leave from the HMAS Geelong.

Despite testimony from witnesses who claimed to have seen the pair wander down a pier together and heard “screams” and a “splash” shortly afterwards, investigators found there was “insufficient evidence” to charge Dorrough with any crime.

Since his shocking confession, Dorrough, who was born in Queensland but lived all over the country thanks to his line of work, has been posthumously investigated in connection with hundreds of cold cases.

HOW MANY OF THESE WOMEN ARE SERIAL KILLER VICTIMS?

FELICIA MARIE WILSON, 19

Orelia resident Felicia Wilson’s battered, mutilated body was found behind a shopping centre at Kwinana on January 10, 1979.

KERRYN MARY TATE, 19

Kerryn Tate disappeared from the Perth metropolitan area on the 28th of December 1979. Her remains were found draped over a burnt tree stump off the Brookton Hwy at Boulder Rock two days later.

A pendant found at the site was used to help identify her.

ANNETTE DEVERELL, 19

Annette Deverell was last seen heading to Mandurah to buy cigarettes on September 13, 1980.

Two years later, her burnt, skeletal remains were found in bush at Pinjarra. A shotgun was found nearby and a post mortem examination revealed her skull had been fractured.

LISA MOTT, 12

Lisa Mott vanished on October 30, 1980. She was last seen getting into a panel van on Forrest St, Collie, after a basketball game. Her body has never been found.

Serial killers David and Catherine Birnie are considered suspects in her case.

PAULINE WALTER, 22

Pauline Walter was last seen at a Perth backpacker hostel in June 1980.

Her headless body was found in a Forrestdale ditch six years later.

SHARON MASON, 14

Perth schoolgirl Sharon Mason vanished on February 19, 1983. Her butchered body was found by workman under a shed behind a shop run by Arthur Greer later that year.

Greer was convicted of Sharon’s murder in 1994 and received a life sentence.

However, there is a widely held belief that Greer did not kill Sharon and the WA Innocence Project have conducted a long-running campaign to appeal his conviction but his requests for parole have continually been knocked back.

His pro bono lawyer Jonathan Davies has applied to the board to allow Greer parole in light of the new evidence, which may explain his longstanding refusal to accept responsibility for the schoolgirl’s murder.

The evidence uncovered by John Button, who was also wrongly convicted over a murder committed by serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke, was presented to the Innocence Project in WA and Edith Cowan University law students, as well as criminologists and psychologists.

His years as a builder meant he was able to find a discrepancy about where the plumbing was on the Mosman Park site where Ms Mason’s remains were found.

It is now suggested that the remains were above pipes that were installed after the girl’s disappearance in 1983, and were not located under a shed then belonging to Greer, which was thought to have concealed the burial spot.

CHERYL RENWICK, 33

The last time Cheryl was known to have had contact with anyone was when she answered a phone call from a friend on May 25, 1986.

Her car was found abandoned at Perth Airport three days later but investigators do not believe she took a flight.

Serial killers David and Catherine Birnie remains the prime suspects in her case.

BARBARA WESTERN, 38

Barbara was last seen drinking at a pub on the Albany Highway on June 26, 1986.

Her skeletal remains were eventually found in bush near Karragullen and suspicion also fell on

the Birnies, who are considered suspects in this case.

JULIE CUTLER, 20

Julie Cutler disappeared on June 22, 1988 after leaving a staff party at the Parmelia Hilton in Perth. Two days later, her upturned car was found in the surf at Cottesloe but her body has never been found.

Shortly before she went missing, she told her family somebody unknown to her had tried to run her car off the road.

LISA GOVAN, 28

Lisa Govan was last seen near the bottle shop of the Foundry Hotel in Kalgoorlie on October 8, 1999.

At the time, the hotel was also used as a clubhouse by the Club Deroes outlaw motorcycle gang.

Her body was never found and despite a $50,000 reward and two anonymous calls made to her parents in connection with her suspected murder, the case remains unsolved.

SARAH MCMAHON, 20

Sarah McMahon was last seen leaving work at Claremont on November 11, 2000.

Her car was later found abandoned and unlocked at a hospital carpark.

KERRY TURNER, 18

Kerry Turner vanished while hitchhiking from Victoria Park to Armadale on June 29, 1991 after a night out.

Her badly decomposed body was found four weeks later near Canning Dam.

SARA-LEE DAVEY, 21

Sara-Lee Davey was last seen alive on January 14, 1997, when she picked up a handbag from a house in Saville Street, Broome, where she had been staying for a few days, telling relatives she would return later. The car she was driving has never been found.

The police’s strongest lead was that Ms Davey was murdered by a sailor — suspected to be Perth-based, self-confessed serial killer Richard Dorrough, who confessed to her murder in a 2014 suicide note.

LISA BROWN, 19

Lisa Brown was a street worker and mother-of-two who vanished on October 11, 1998 and is believed to have been murdered.

She was last seen looking for clients in the Lake Street area of Perth.

DARYLYN UGLE, 25

Ms Ugle vanished on March 25, 2003, from Highgate.

Her badly decomposed body was found in bush near Mundaring Weir about two weeks later.