Thousands of drivers voluntarily submitted to fingerprinting and giving saliva samples in Australia's first mass DNA-testing exercise. But the samples collected from drivers didn't match the evidence police had collected. There was no breakthrough. One driver to attract police attention early in the piece was Steven Ross, who had told officers he believed he had given Ms Spiers a lift the night before she disappeared.
Mr Ross lived in a granny flat at the back of a house owned by then Claremont mayor Peter Weygers, who would himself also come under suspicion in the case but has never been charged. He said he had been driving taxis on the nights the three women disappeared, but always maintained his innocence. Then in his home was raided by Macro Task Force officers and his taxi was seized for forensic analysis. He was forced to provide a DNA sample. Mr Ross said at the time he believed police "want a taxi driver to be charged" over the murders.
By September , police had begun to hone in on one particular suspect — a mild-mannered public servant with some odd behavioural quirks. Lance Williams, then aged 41, lived with his parents in beachside Cottesloe, adjacent to Claremont and home to the Ocean Beach Hotel, where both Ms Spiers and Ms Rimmer had been drinking on the nights they disappeared. The unremarkable looking middle-aged man had never been married, had recently been treated for depression following the death of a friend and came across as socially awkward and eccentric.
It had been six months since Ms Glennon went missing and Claremont remained the focus of heavy police attention, with dozens of uniformed and undercover officers present in the area after dark.
Mr Williams attracted their attention because of his habit of cruising around the streets of the affluent suburb after dark on weekends in his white Hyundai. Undercover female officers were a major part of the police operation in Claremont.
It was hoped that the officers, dressed like the throngs of other young women who flocked to the area to socialise at night, would attract the attention of the serial killer. When Mr Williams gave one of the officers a lift in the early hours of the morning after she asked him where the nearest bus stop was, police had reason to pay close attention to him. Then in the early hours of Sunday February 5, , they pounced, arresting him as he drove through Claremont's central entertainment precinct.
Detectives would spend more than 12 hours interrogating Mr Williams that night and well into the daylight hours — without him having a lawyer present. However, the interrogation was not fruitful and, lacking evidence to lay charges, police released him. By that stage officers had been watching him covertly for months — now their surveillance of him became round-the-clock, both at home and at his workplace in the Main Roads Department.
His parents' home was searched and parts of their backyard dug up, and both his car and his parents' cars were forensically tested. Hungry for a new development on the case, the media's focus on Mr Williams became almost as relentless as the police's, and the farcical spectacle of Mr Williams leaving his home being tailed by police vehicles, which were being tailed by news cars, became a regular occurrence.
Mr Williams was hounded by reporters, as was his family, with his elderly parents forced to contend with packs of journalists and cameramen descending on their modest bungalow seeking interviews. When it emerged Mr Williams had failed a polygraph, or lie detector, test administered by US expert Ron Homer, the media frenzy went into overdrive.
The fact that polygraph test results were not permitted to be used as evidence was irrelevant — finally police appeared to have made a breakthrough.
Mr Williams was ambushed by reporters as he left work, who asked him point blank if he was the serial killer as he tried to protest his innocence. 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 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, described as the state's biggest, longest running, and most expensive investigation, remains unsolved. The case began with the disappearance of Sarah Spiers 18 on 27 January , after she left Club Bayview in the centre of Claremont at around am. Her disappearance soon attracted massive publicity [5] [6] and her fate remains unknown. Nine months later, on 14 March , Ciara Glennon, a year-old lawyer from Mosman Park, also disappeared from the Claremont area. Three men at a bus stop saw Glennon walking south along Stirling Highway at pm, and observed her interacting with an unidentified light coloured vehicle which had stopped by her.
Within 48 hours of the disappearance of Spiers, the case was taken over by the Major Crimes Squad. Initial suspicion centred on the unidentified vehicles seen at two of the locations, and on an unidentified man seen in the video footage. This included a taxi-driver who claimed to have transported Spiers the night before her disappearance. Her disappearance soon attracted massive publicity [5] [6] and her fate remains unknown.
Nine months later, on 14 March , Ciara Glennon, a year-old lawyer from Mosman Park, also disappeared from the Claremont area. Three men at a bus stop saw Glennon walking south along Stirling Highway at pm, and observed her interacting with an unidentified light coloured vehicle which had stopped by her. Within 48 hours of the disappearance of Spiers, the case was taken over by the Major Crimes Squad. Initial suspicion centred on the unidentified vehicles seen at two of the locations, and on an unidentified man seen in the video footage.
This included a taxi-driver who claimed to have transported Spiers the night before her disappearance. Macro attracted both praise and criticism for their handling of the case.
To avoid leaks, strict confidentiality protocols were implemented, and details of the nature of the deaths and injuries were suppressed. As with similar cases, experts suggested that the suspect was probably a single white male, aged 25—35, who had a residence in the area, who appeared trustworthy, was organised, social, and probably well educated. In April , a public servant from Cottesloe, Lance Williams 41 , was identified by police as the prime suspect, after his behaviour attracted their attention i.
0コメント