Crime Investigations Australia: Catching a Killer - The Claremont Murders examines case that haunted WA

The former head of the Macro task force whose forward-thinking led to the discovery of key pieces of evidence that helped convict Claremont killer Bradley Edwards has spoken about the major breakthroughs for the first time. For seven years, Det-Sgt Jim Stanbury was in charge of the team tasked with tracking down the man who kidnapped and killed Jane Rimmer, Sarah Spiers and Ciara Glennon. And during that time he spearheaded a forensic review of all the material collected from the victims and the crime scenes which found some of it had never been forensically tested before. Now decades after that discovery, Det-tSgt Stanbury opens up in a special episode of Crime Investigations Australia about the moment he received the phone call about the breakthrough that changed the trajectory of the Claremont case — and would eventually bring down the man who haunted Perth all those years ago. “So after I joined the investigation team really myself and a colleague looked at it and thought really the only way we could progress this was via the forensics,” Det-Sgt Stanbury tells Catching a Killer — The Claremont Murders, which airs on Seven on Wednesday, April 19 at 8.55pm. “So, as part of the forensic review we identified that there was some material that had never been subjected to any forensic testing from the moment it had been seized by police. And it was some material that had been recovered from the thumbnail of Ciara Glennon.” That minuscule piece of material was sent to a UK lab to be tested using a new extraction technique at the time called low copy number DNA — the same technique used in the conviction of Bradley John Murdoch for the murder of British tourist Peter Falconio. And it was also Det-Sgt Stanbury’s job to transport those samples to Britain. “I had to carry that in my luggage on the plane and keep it with me at all times,” he says in the interview. “That bit of evidence we were excited about because it had not been tested before.” And they had even more of a reason to be excited when in December 2008, Det-Sgt Stanbury took a call that changed the entire Claremont case. He was told a male DNA profile had been matched to the male DNA found on Ms Glennon, and the male DNA found on the victim of a rape in Karrakatta cemetery in 1995. “It was a massive milestone for the investigation,” he said. “It didn’t give us the name of the offender but it gave us a description of the offender, it gave us a method of how he worked, it gave us something discerning where we could eliminate suspects from an investigation which at times can be just as important as implicating a suspect. Just to get rid of people from the investigation to narrow your focus.” For more than a decade, police had focused their attention on civil servant Lance Williams after he offered to give a woman in Claremont a lift during an undercover sting in 1997. Unbeknown to Mr Williams, the woman was a police officer. Detectives then followed his every move for years with officers also stationed in police cars outside his Cottesloe home almost every day. During Edwards’ trial, it was revealed Mr Williams’ samples were also sent to the UK lab but were not found to be a match to the male DNA profile on Ms Glennon’s thumbnail. Mr Williams was officially cleared in 2008. Det-Sgt Stanbury also revealed as part of the review, ChemCentre scientists found a number of fibres in Ms Rimmer’s hair and quickly identified where they likely came from. “They came to us in a relatively short time to say these fibres matched a Holden Commodore,” he said. “And that again was a significant breakthrough for investigation.” Edwards, a Telstra technician, drove a Holden Commodore VE Series Executive model in 1996 and 1997 — the years the women went missing. Fibres collected from inside that car — which police were able to track down decades after it had been sold by Telstra — matched those found on the bodies of Ms Rimmer and Ms Glennon, and were also key in his conviction. Edwards was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 40 years for the murders of Ms Rimmer and Ms Glennon as well as the attacks on the women in Karrakatta and Huntingdale. He was found not guilty of murdering Sarah Spiers — whose remains have not been found. The one-hour program also features interviews with former police commissioner Chris Dawson, who pays tribute to all the officers involved in WA’s longest-running police inquiry. And it features the detectives who led the investigation in the latter years and were responsible for uncovering the silk kimono that contained the same DNA profile found on Ms Glennon’s thumbnail and the Karrakatta rape victim — and who later had the pleasure of arresting Edwards. Det-Sen. Sgt Joe Marrapodi tells the program that after they matched the DNA profiles they began searching through other cold cases and discovered an assault on a teenage girl in Huntingdale, as well as a series of break-ins. That led to the ultimate breakthrough — the discovery of a fingerprint which was put through the fingerprint database and threw out the name of a man who had pleaded guilty to attacking social worker Wendy Davis — who also takes part in the program — at Hollywood Repatriation Hospital in 1990. That man was Edwards. Covert officers then followed Edwards to a cinema and retrieved a Sprite bottle he discarded. The bottle was sent to a lab to be tested. “We sat around waiting nervously for the outcome,” Det-Sen. Sgt Marrapodi said. “It was later in the evening on the 21st of December 2016. And our forensic supervisor received a phone call from PathWest to give him the news that there’d been a match between the DNA taken from the Sprite bottle against the profile for Karrakatta and ultimately what had been taken from the kimono.” The program, which is told through interviews and re-enactments, also features The West Australian’s legal affairs editor Tim Clarke, who not only covered the mammoth trial but also wrote a gripping book about the case, Enigma of the Dark. The veteran reporter chats extensively about the history of the case and how the disappearance of the three women haunted Perth for decades. Seven News reporter Alison Fan also takes part in the program, which also features snippets of a previously recorded interview with Ms Spiers’ father, Don.