The Claremont Serial Killings

This book is a literary documentary by investigative journalist Debi Marshall into the Claremont Serial Killings Police Investigation in Perth in Western Australia. To this day the killings which occurred in 1995/6 have never been solved. In 1995 three girls went missing in the wealthy, fairly serene and innocent, leafy outer western suburb of Perth, Claremont. Sarah Spiers, 18, went missing on 26 January 1996.On 9 June 1996, Jane Rimmer, 23 went missing and was found dead at Woolcott Road at Wellard on August 1996, she was a child care worker. Her body was found on 3 April, near a track in scrub off Pipidinny Road in Eglinton, a northern suburb of Perth.All spent a Friday or Saturday evening at both the Claremont Hotel and Club Bayview a nightclub close by. On 14 March 1997, Ciara Glennon, a 27-year-old lawyer went missing.They later left on their own nobody saw anything suspicious. A twist though is that CCTV in club Bayview picked up Jane Rimmer talking to a mystery man who has never been identified.

All the hundreds of other people in the club that night were identified, hunted down and interviewed. The mystery man was the last person to see her alive and police are still searching for him. It is thought at least three other girls were also possible victims of the Claremont Serial Killer. 22 year old Julie Cutler went missing in 1988 from the same area. Her Volkswagen car was bizarrely found floating in the surf at Cottesloe beach the day after she went missing, she was never seen again. 17 year old Hayley Maree Dodd went missing in Gin Gin on, a country town about 50 kilometres west of Perth in 1997, while hitching a ride on the road. Circumstances- Hayley made a telephone call at 10.30am on Thursday 29/7/1999 and was given a lift by a lady to the North West Road, Badgingarra, WA. She was then sighted by a motorist on the North West Road walking towards the farm where she was going at 11.35am on the same day. That was the last sighting of her. The book covers the controversial, and sometimes ridiculous methods the police used in their search for the Claremont serial killer.

Initially it was thought the girls were taken by a taxi driver, so the police interviewed and took DNA samples from every taxi driver in Perth. There were over 1500 of them. Police then had local businesses print, and donate wanted, and information posters in regard to the horrific crime, and had them handed out or posted all over Perth. This author owned a company called Eureka printing at the time and donated 10,000 posters. The state government then introduced a one million dollar reward, and the Macro Taskforce was formed. Headed by Detective Paul Ferguson, who later had to resign from this position, as he was charged with the rape of two prostitutes and later acquitted. He was later accused of stealing a dealers drugs, and again nothing happened to him. The next head of the task force was corrupt cop David Caphorn. Controversially and rather stupidly this taskforce invited members of the public to ring in and nominate suspects.

These mostly innocent people were then interviewed and DNA tested, in other words harassed. There were over 4000 suspects! I was later nominated as a suspect and interviewed and DNA tested only to be cleared and then 15 years later interviewed again and cleared in June, 2011 as were another 2000 innocent men! I am not happy about it. The ironic part about this is I was living in Perth at the time of course and had rung the police nominating a suspect of my own. A promiscuous, eccentric, lawyer mate of mine had started acting rather suspiciously. He had come to my home at 4 am one morning and broke down crying drunk in front of my wife and I, claiming he had killed somebody, but when questioned further he would not elaborate. The matter was forgotten until much later, when this bloke’s wife informed me that he had been at Club Bayview and the Claremont Hotel the nights all three girls went missing. He also had in his possession a replica 9mm Beretta which I had lent him.