Victim reveals bizarre break that stopped a killer

A woman who escaped a serial sex attacker and killer by throwing herself from a speeding car has revealed the moment she realised she had accidentally nabbed the key piece of evidence needed to put him behind bars.

Families flock to the holiday destination of Melros Beach, WA, lured by long stretches of pristine white sand and sparkling, clear aqua-marine waters.

The quiet coastal locale holds fond memories for most — ice creams dripping down fingers on hot summer days, the squeals of happy children crabbing in the shallow waters, freshly caught prawns sizzling on the barbie.

Justine Woosnam threw herself from a moving car to escape her attacker. Picture: Martin Hunter

But for artist Justine Woosnam it’s a site of trauma, conjuring frightening memories.

The smell of her attacker, a sickening mix of body odour and stale cigarettes. The hot, burning sensation of fists pounding into her face and chest, the sound of material ripping as her top and underwear is torn from her body — and the terrifying moment his car speeds towards an expanse of bushland with Ms Woosnam inside, wondering whether she would ever come home alive.

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Now, Ms Woosnam breaks her 20-year silence to detail her escape from serial sex attacker and murderer David Ronald Thompson. As his final victim, it was her evidence that helped catch the sex predator and solve the cold case murder of an elderly woman, after Thompson led a gang of cross country thieves to break into her home, stabbing pensioner Hilda Fry to death.

DESPERATE STRUGGLE

In 1998, Ms Woosnam, was a new arrival in Melros Beach after moving into the area with her mother.

On the day of her attack, the pretty 27-year-old had spent the morning painting, until the stunning blue skies and balmy October temperatures lured her out for a walk.

“I walked down towards the beach and as I approached the car park there were two cars. A man was leaning up against one of them smoking a cigarette,” she told True Crime Australia.

“I immediately got this gut feeling and I thought, ‘I don’t really want to walk past him’, so instead of walking through the car park past him I walked up on a track, towards the sand dunes.”

David Ronald Thompson was convicted of a series of attacks on women and the murder of a pensioner in her own home. Picture courtesy of ABC

The man came running up behind her, jumping in front of her to block her path.

“You scared me,” Ms Woosnam said with a laugh.

But Thompson grabbed her by the wrists.

She struggled and her sunglasses fell from her face.

“He ripped my top off and he started hitting me. He grabbed me around the throat and he had a really, really tight grip on my wrist and I can remember thinking, ‘what the hell is going on?’.

Ms Woosnam wrestled with Thompson’s large 6ft frame, twisting her arms to shake his grasp, pleading with him to let her go. As the pair battled, Thompson’s ring slipped off his finger and on to Ms Woosnam’s.

He began to drag her down the path.

She knew she was going to be raped when he flung her into the front passenger side front seat of his car.

“He told me he would ‘f---ing kill me’, that there was a shotgun in the boot,” she recalls.

The car made its way out of the car park.

FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL

Ms Woosnam was topless and Thompson gripped her by the shorts to restrain her.

Once his car hit the road, he picked up speed, heading towards the bushland.

She fumbled with the door lock. Thompson grabbed her in a head lock.

“He must have been going about 70 (km/h) — I don’t know. All I can remember thinking is, ‘I’m getting out of here. I don’t care what it takes. I’m getting out of here, just this incredible feeling of nothing else matters’.”

Then Thompson went to change gears.

For a split-second he released Ms Woosnam and she took her chance.

Throwing open the door she flung herself from the speeding car.

“I hit the road and I rolled. I can remember opening my eyes and looking up, seeing the brake lights of the car, and I just got up and ran to the nearest house.

I knocked on the door but there was no answer,” says Ms Woosnam.

Topless and bleeding from cuts and grazes covering her body, she sat on the house’s front steps.

“I saw a vehicle go by. They were looking at me and I yelled out, ‘help me, help me. Somebody help me, I’ve been attacked!’”

Justine Woosnam still refuses to walk anywhere alone two decades after the terrifying attack. Picture: Martin Hunter

The 4WD stopped and two women got out. They helped Ms Woosnam into the car and took them back to a house where they called the ambulance and police.

As Detective Mark Doyle arrived at the house to interview the young woman, Ms Woosnam looked down at her shaking hands.

“I was trembling. That’s when I saw his ring on my finger and I said to the detective, ‘I’ve got his ring. I don’t know how but I’ve got his ring’.”

It was a simple, woven silver ring, exchanged accidentally in a desperate struggle, yet the innocuous piece of jewellery would become key to catching a serial sex predator who was terrorising victims across Mandurah.

A SUSPECT CRUMBLES

Woosnam was able to provide the make and model of Thompson’s car, a stolen Mitsubishi Sigma.

A call went out over local radio with the description of the offender and his vehicle, and a listener looked out the window and spotted the car outside a house in Falcon, Mandurah.

By the time police arrived at the house, Thompson was getting into the vehicle.

They took the large framed man in his twenties back to the station.

But the ring didn’t fit.

The young detective on the case ruled him out as the suspect.

Then a constable from a neighbouring station threw up a curveball.

He told managing detective, Senior Sergeant Jeff Beaman, he’d charged Thompson previously with stealing Mitsubishi Sigmas. They were his specialty.

Moreover, he had a photo of Thompson in one of the cars, wearing the ring, on his little finger.

Snr Sgt Beaman confronted Thompson.

“I said to him, ‘that’s your finger, that’s your ring. We’ve got photographs of you wearing that ring. It’s your ring.’

“He just sort of rolled over,” Beaman said. “He’d walk all over you, a big bully boy, but if you could stand him up, he’d crumble.”

Thompson was charged with Ms Woosnam’s attack.

After Thompson was charged with attacking Ms Woosnam he was linked to other incidents.

Then another detective noted the similarity between her kidnapping and a recent rape of a 13-year-old girl who had been picked up by Thompson while hitchhiking.

“When I find somewhere where nobody will be able to hear you scream, I’ll stop,” it’s alleged Thompson said, before raping the girl.

When police linked the attacks forensically, they realised they had a serial sex predator on their hands.

He was also charged with the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl whom he pushed her off her bike before pulling her into a bush to touch her genitals and breasts in December 1997.

And another two weeks later, in which he grabbed at the private parts of another woman cyclist.

Beaman is adamant Thompson was likely responsible for a sex attack on an elderly woman in her backyard but by the time police tried to lay charges her dementia prevented her from identifying him.

THE TIPTOE KILLER

In 1999 Thompson was convicted of four charges of indecent assault, one of sexual penetration, two of kidnapping, one of unlawful detention and charges of car theft and burglary.

He was sentenced to 15 years before beginning an indefinite term at the governor’s pleasure. The rarely handed- down sentence means Thompson can only be released after the Parole Board considers he no longer presents a risk to the community.

However, the sexual assaults were just the beginning of Thompson’s problems.

Hilda Fry was brutally murdered in her own home. File picture

When he was arrested, the 1993 cold case murder of pensioner Hilda Fry had been a mystery for five years.

The brutal killing shocked the small community, and the murderer on the loose became known as “the Tiptoe killer” after investigating police found particles left behind by his socks.

Beaman reopened the file.

“He (Thompson) was all over it. His name was on it but not as a suspect — he was an informant and he provided the investigators with a false story about who did it,” says Beaman.

But when police investigated his claims, they didn’t add up and Thompson was charged with giving a false report to police.

Yet officers at the time never thought to ask more questions.

“So, I got him out of the cell and I said, ‘I need to speak to you’ and I started talking to him about Hilda Fry,” says Beaman.

“You could see straight away he was it, he had this look about him, he knew he had a problem.”

“I can’t tell you who did it because I’ll get killed,” Thompson told him.

“Well, how do you know who did it?” Beaman replied.

“I was in the car,” Thompson said.

“Well, who killed her?” Beaman pushed.

“I did,” said Thompson.

With two words, the long-running cold case had just been solved.

The solving of the ‘Tiptoe’ case made front page news.

It emerged Thompson had led a cross country gang of criminals — a young woman from Sydney and a male from Victoria — in a burglary of Mrs Fry’s house.

But when the old lady woke and began screaming, Thompson attacked.

“He grabbed her the same as he grabbed Justine (Woosnam), by the front of the nightie, punched her and ripped her clothes off,” says Beaman.

He then stabbed her several times, leaving a bloody murder scene that would traumatise her family for years to come.

In addition to his sentence for sex crimes, Thompson was given a mandatory life sentence with a minimum of seven to 14 years.

He is currently in Bunbury prison, his case up for review in September.

Ms Woosnam now lives in New Zealand. She returned only once to Melros Beach but found it too traumatising. Two decades later, she still refuses to walk anywhere alone.

But she’s proud of her actions and thankful to those of Snr Sgt Beaman.

Most of all though she’s still in awe of the fortuitous accident that resulted in her retrieving Thompson’s ring and how the single piece of silver jewellery could apprehend a serial sex attacker and solve the murder of Hilda Fry.

Originally published as Victim reveals bizarre break that stopped a killer