The Claremont serial killings is the name given by the media to a case involving the disappearance of an Australian woman, aged 18, and the killings of two others, aged 23 and 27, in 1996–1997. After attending night spots in Claremont, a wealthy western suburb of Perth, Western Australia, all three women disappeared in similar circumstances leading police to suspect that an unidentified serial killer was the offender. The case was described as the state's biggest, longest running, and most expensive investigation.
In 2016, a suspect, Bradley Robert Edwards, was arrested. He was held on remand and his trial began in November 2019 and ended on 25 June 2020, after seven months of hearings and evidence from more than 200 witnesses. On 24 September 2020, he was found guilty of the murders of Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon, and not guilty of the murder of Sarah Spiers, whose remains have yet to be located. On 23 December 2020, he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years.
Background
The case began with the disappearance of Sarah Spiers (18) on 27 January 1996, after she left Club Bayview in the centre of Claremont at around 2:00 am. At 2:06 am, Sarah called Swan Taxis from a public telephone booth. Although she was living in South Perth with her older sister at the time, she had requested to be taken to the nearby suburb of Mosman Park. She was then sighted waiting alone near the corner of Stirling Road and Stirling Highway by three eyewitnesses, who also mentioned seeing an unidentified car stopping where she was waiting. However, she was not at the site when the responding taxi arrived at 2:09 am and, in the dark, could have been missed by the driver. Her disappearance soon attracted massive publicity and her fate remains unknown.
In the early hours of Sunday 9 June 1996, Jane Rimmer (23) from Shenton Park, also disappeared from the same part of Claremont. Similar to Sarah, she had been out socialising with friends the night before. Jane's friends explained how they had moved from the Ocean Beach Hotel to the Continental Hotel and then Club Bayview. Noting the long line at the club, her friends then caught a taxi home, but Jane opted to stay, and she was last seen on security footage waiting outside the Continental at 12:04 am. Fifty-five days later, on Saturday, 3 August 1996, her naked body was found south in bush-land near Woolcoot Road, Wellard by a family picking wildflowers.
Nine months later, in the early hours of Saturday 15 March 1997, Ciara Glennon, a 27-year-old lawyer from Mosman Park, also disappeared from the Claremont area. Like the others, she was with friends at the Continental and had decided to make her own way home. Three men at a bus stop saw Ciara walking south along Stirling Highway at approximately 12:30 am, and observed her interacting with an unidentified light coloured vehicle which had stopped by her. Nineteen days later, on 3 April, her semi-clothed body was found by a bush walker, north, near a track in scrub off Pipidinny Road in Eglinton.
Investigation
Within 48 hours of the disappearance of Sarah, the case was taken over by the Major Crimes Squad. After the disappearance of Jane, the Western Australia Police set up a special task-force called Macro to investigate the two similar cases. After the disappearance of Ciara, police confirmed that they were searching for a serial killer, and the Western Australian Government offered a $250,000 reward, the largest ever offered in the state at that time.
Initial suspicion centred on the unidentified vehicles seen at two of the locations, and on an unidentified man seen in the video footage. Suspicion then focused on Perth's taxi drivers, because the women were last seen in circumstances where they may have used taxis. This included a driver who claimed to have transported Sarah the night before her disappearance. A massive fingerprint and DNA-testing exercise was then carried out on the thousands of taxi drivers licensed in Western Australia. Given evidence of a number of unlicensed operators, examining standards for eligibility were raised, and 78 drivers with significant criminal history were de-licensed. Stricter standards were also applied to verifying that decommissioned taxis were stripped of insignia and equipment. In December 2015, investigators finally revealed that fibres taken from Jane were identified as coming from a VS Series 1 Holden Commodore, one of the cars seen that night.