By Mark Russell
- Adrian Bayley trials: full coverage
- How the system failed to keep Adrian Bayley off the streets
- Why the Adrian Bayley trials were kept secret
- Bayley had 'evil eyes', Tatts IDed Bayley, Backpacker feared Bayley would kill her
One of Victoria's most notorious criminals - the man who brutally raped and murdered Jill Meagher in 2012 - has been found guilty of raping three other women, with some of the offences committed while he was on parole for a string of other heinous crimes.
A jury of seven men and five women began deliberating at 10am on Tuesday before returning their guilty verdicts just before 11am on Thursday in the last of three rape trials that had been kept secret.
Bayley's name has been suppressed for the past eight months while these most recent cases were heard, but now Fairfax Media can reveal the full extent of Adrian Bayley's reign of terror.
The killer's shocking back story was laid bare in the three separate rape trials, all of which ended in a guilty verdict.
Killer's back story revealed: Adrian Ernest Bayley has now been found guilty of more than 20 rape offences.
Two of the victims, a Dutch backpacker and a St Kilda sex worker, were raped just months before Bayley raped and murdered Ms Meagher. At the time he was out on parole after serving time for a string of sex worker rapes in 2000.
Bayley now has more than 20 convictions for rape.
When Bayley, 43, was charged with the rape and murder of Ms Meagher in a Brunswick laneway, he became infamous. His arrest made headlines throughout Australia. In the weeks after Ms Meagher's death, more than 30,000 people marched down Sydney Road in her memory, demanding greater focus on women's safety. His shocking crime led directly to a new law that makes breaching parole a criminal offence.
But for eight months, Bayley's name has been completely suppressed in the media. The judge ordered the suppressions after Bayley's legal counsel unsuccessfully argued that the trials should not go ahead because notoriety meant the defendant could not get a fair trial.
Criminal history: Adrian Bayley being driven away by homicide detectives after being arrested.
In the third and most recent trial Bayley was accused of attacking a Dutch backpacker at Balaclava on July 15, 2012, and charged with one count of rape, two counts of indecent assault, one count of false imprisonment and one count of assault.
In his closing address to the jury, Crown prosecutor Peter Rose, SC, said Bayley's phone records revealed he may have been in the St Kilda area at the time the backpacker was attacked and raped about 3am in a car in a laneway off Westbury Street.
Tragic death: Jill Meagher and her husband Tom on their wedding day.
The prosecutor said Bayley made several calls to his girlfriend between 2.42am and 2.47am which were not answered but was then off the air until 4.13am. Bayley's girlfriend made two calls to him which were also unanswered around the time of the rape.
Judge Sue Pullen had warned the jury not to convict Bayley because of who he was but only if the evidence proved his guilt.
A laneway where Adrian Bayley took one of his victims in Balaclava.Credit: Pat Scala
On Thursday, Judge Pullen remanded Bayley, who shook his head when the guilty verdicts were read out, for a pre-sentence hearing on May 27.
She had earlier rejected a no-case-to-answer submission from Bayley's defence barrister Saul Holt, SC, who claimed there was just no evidence to prove Bayley's guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Killed: Jill Meagher. Credit: ABC
But the judge said it would be up to the jury to decide Bayley's guilt or innocence given the Crown case, at its highest, showed he was not home that night, a car similar to his was in the St Kilda area at the time, and the victim had identified his photo from a police photoboard of 12 suspects, saying she was 75-80 per cent sure it was him.
The jury sent a note to the judge at 11.45am on Wednesday indicating they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict and wanted to know how they should proceed.
A police photo fit of Adrian Bayley.
Judge Pullen called the jury back into court at noon to tell them she would accept a majority 11-1 before asking them to continue their deliberations. They were later allowed to leave for the night before returning to the jury room on Thursday to resume their deliberations at 10am.
They found Bayley guilty of all five charges by majority verdict less than an hour later.
In the second trial, Bayley was found guilty of raping a sex worker in Elwood, just five months before he would rape and murder Ms Meagher.
Bayley picked up his victim, who was 25 at the time and struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, about 2am on April 5, 2012, before driving her to a dead-end lane off Dickens Street in Elwood.
Parking up against a wooden fence so his victim could not get out, Bayley jumped on top of her, pinning her arms down and placing one hand on her throat before raping her.
The victim later told police she noticed her attacker had a tribal band tattoo on his left arm as well as a woman's name on the underside of his arm.
His legal aid defence barrister, Saul Holt, SC, told the jury there was no doubt the victim had been raped but not by Bayley. He said the victim had "jumped on the Adrian Bayley bandwagon" and used details from media reports to add to her police statement to blame him.
Bayley was found guilty on March 12 of one count of rape and one count of false imprisonment.
In the first trial, which began on July 1, 2014, the jury was told Bayley raped a teenage sex worker between October 31 and December 1, 2000.
Mr Rose told the jury the victim had come from a good family but became addicted to heroin after trying the drug when she was 14.
She was walking along Grey Street in St Kilda when Bayley pulled up in a 1974 red Mini Minor and asked her, "You wanna make some money?"
Bayley was 29 at the time, working shift work at the Sweet by Nature bakery and had a pregnant girlfriend.
The victim had earlier been to the Prostitutes Collective in Inkerman Street, St Kilda, and taken a pamphlet which featured information on dangerous men in the area.
She agreed to get into the car and Bayley drove her to a secluded laneway.
The victim was reading the pamphlet when she told Bayley, "I can't believe how many bad people there are out there".
Bayley suddenly punched her in the face, saying "Do you know I'm one of those bad guys?".
Mr Rose said Bayley digitally raped the victim, telling her "You little junkie slut, you're sick, you like this, you're getting off on this".
Bayley then threw the victim into the back seat "like a rag doll" and raped her.
The victim was trapped in the car because the laneway was so narrow she couldn't open the doors. Bayley ignored the victim's pleas to stop.
Mr Rose said the victim had never felt so much fear in her life.
When another car drove down the lane, the victim banged on Bayley's car window pleading for help.
An enraged Bayley told her, "Shut up you junkie slut, I'll kill you now" and put his fingers down her throat so she couldn't breathe.
He continued to rape her while she cried out in agony and fear before she managed to escape.
Mr Rose said the victim recognised Bayley's face after reading about Jill Meagher's rape and murder in September 2012, and contacted police.
Mr Holt said there was no doubt the victim had been abducted and raped but the issue at trial was the question of identity.
He said the case had to be determined by reason and logic that Bayley was the man responsible, and urged the jury not to fill in the gaps because of everything they knew about Bayley and the rape and murder of Jill Meagher.
He claimed the trial was not about fairness to Bayley but the integrity of the justice system.
An expert on memory, Associate Professor Richard Kemp, was called to give evidence via videolink from Britain on July 4 by Bayley's defence team.
Professor Kemp told the court people's memories continued to decay as time passed and often even the most sincere eyewitnesses made mistakes and wrongly identified people as the offender.
Cross-examined by Mr Rose, Professor Kemp agreed that if a person suffered a terrifying event and had been exposed to an attacker for up to half an hour then it was more likely to be imprinted in their memory.
The jury found Bayley guilty on July 13 of three counts of rape, two counts of assault, one count of false imprisonment and one count of making threats to kill between October 31 and December 1, 2000, at Elwood.
Bayley was expected to immediately face the two other rape trials back-to-back before a furious Judge Sue Pullen postponed them until March 2015 after the media repeatedly breached a suppression order banning anything about Bayley's criminal history being published or aired until the end of his three trials.
Bayley's second trial began on March 4 when he was accused of attacking and raping a 25-year-old sex worker at Elwood.
The three most compelling pieces of evidence against Bayley were how the sex worker identified him from his distinctive tattoos; how the sex worker had kicked out at one stage during the rape and cracked the windscreen of his car; and how clothes and shoes similar to what the sex worker claimed Bayley was wearing on the night were later found in a bag at his home.
Bayley's defence was that the sex worker had been a deeply troubled young woman with drug, alcohol and mental health issues who had used unprecedented details published about him in the media and online following the Meagher case to pin the blame on him.
Bayley argued the sex worker had wrongly claimed he had "crater-like" acne scars on his face; had been wearing a distinctive watch during the rape when he never wore a watch; and had failed to mention an obvious seven-centimetre cut to Bayley's forehead.
The jury took less than an hour on March 12 to find Bayley guilty of one count of rape and one count of false imprisonment.