Killing Time (23 page)

The above three murders are those we know Dupas has committed. What about those for which he has never been convicted?

Helen McMahon

It is believed that Helen McMahon may have been Dupas's first victim. On 13 February 1985 she left the Willows Caravan Park where she was living at Rosebud, in coastal Victoria, and went to the nearby Rye back beach. From the car park she walked about 800 metres into the sand dunes. For those of you who know this area, it is semi National Park Coastal Reserve, deserted and covered with very large sand dunes, which affords privacy and quiet. Helen McMahon liked this area because it was her habit to sunbake nude and it provided the isolation she required. What probably ended up being her undoing was the fact that she always went to sunbake in the same place, making her easy prey for a stalker.

At about 3.30 pm on that afternoon a passer-by noticed McMahon lying naked and partially wrapped in a towel. At first the person who saw the body thought nothing much of it until he noticed that the towel covering her was blood soaked and the surrounding sand was covered in blood. The passer-by then realised McMahon was dead and reported his gruesome discovery to the Rye police.

A police pathologist who conducted a post mortem said that McMahon died as a result of inter-cranial haemorrhage and contusions resulting from multiple blows to the head. There was also bruising on her hands which suggests that she was trying to protect herself during this violent and obviously unprovoked attack. When the crime scene examiners went over the area with a fine-toothed comb they found, among other things, a piece of blood-splattered wooden stake next to the naked body.

At the time of McMahon's death Dupas was serving a twelve-year sentence for rape, so how could he possibly be in the frame for this particular murder? Originally, when all of the other murders took place, he was not considered a suspect because of the fact that he was undergoing sentence. The catch comes in the form of the fact that, when McMahon was killed, Dupas was almost at the end of this particular sentence and was released from prison on an eight-day temporary release program in order to assess his suitability for release on parole.

The crime for which Dupas was serving a sentence was a violent rape of a 26-year-old female in a public toilet in Frankston. Frankston, Rye and Rosebud are all beachside suburbs outside Melbourne on the Mornington Peninsular and are in relatively close proximity. On his eight-day release Dupas was residing with his elderly parents in the Frankston area. He returned to prison, as per the conditions of his temporary release, on 14 February 1985, the day after the murder of Helen McMahon. Dupas was released from prison on parole a short time later, and was again residing with his parents in Frankston when he drove his car to the Blairgowrie back beach, not far from the Rye back beach, where, armed with a knife, he attacked and raped a twenty-one-year-old while she was on the beach.

What sort of supervision, if any, was Dupas under while he was on day leave? It would appear not much if he was able to travel to the beach and kill somebody, and to date get away with it.

While I was on day release from jail I was required to be at certain places at certain times and the jail rang and checked on me repeatedly. It seems they check drug users but not rapist/murderers.

As in the case of Halvagis and Kathleen Downes, no forensic evidence has come to light.

Renita Brunton

Renita Brunton died on 5 November 1993 at her store, Exclusive Pre-loved Clothing, at 3 Link Arcade, Sunbury, in regional Victoria. She was a strong-willed woman and set in her ways. She was apparently easygoing but not afraid to say what was on her mind. She made friends easily.

On the day of her death Ms Brunton was at her store in Sunbury, which was open for business. Several people had been in and out the store in the morning. The police have revealed that unusual noises were heard coming from the vicinity of Brunton's shop early that afternoon. While witnesses described the noises as “concerning”, nobody investigated further at the time. Had anybody gone to investigate, chances are Renita Brunton would be alive today. Instead, the noises stopped and nothing else transpired for the remainder of the day – until about 5.30 pm when someone came to visit Brunton. The shop was still open, which was unusual at that time, and Renita Brunton's body was found in the back of the shop. Brunton had died as a result of multiple stab wounds to the chest.

At the time Peter Dupas was living in Woodend, close to Sunbury, with the woman to whom he was then married, Grace McConnell. On Fridays, where would Grace McConnell go to do her weekly shopping? Sunbury! On 5 November 1993, guess who went to Sunbury with Grace McConnell to do some shopping? Peter Dupas!

While Dupas has not been charged with this murder he is a suspect. If my involvement in the Halvagis matter is anything to go by, it is never too late to bring new evidence to light in such cases. Anybody who has any recollection of, or information about, anything relevant that took place or was noticed in Sunbury all those years ago, on 5 November 1993, they would be doing a community service to contact Crime Stoppers.

Kathleen Downes

Kathleen Downes was born on 29 January 1902, and on 31 December 1997, at nearly ninety-six years of age, she was murdered in the Brunswick Lodge Nursing Home. Mrs Downes has been described by staff at the Brunswick Lodge Nursing Home as a dear old lady with a wonderful nature. She was considered the matriarch of the nursing home.

On 30 December 1997, the residents had all gone to bed by approximately 8.00 pm. Staff always ensured that all external doors were locked and the premises were secure. In the early hours of the following morning, at about 12.30 am, staff made a routine check and confirmed that the residents in the eastern wing, including Kathleen Downes, were asleep.

At 6.20 am the same morning the day shift staff arrived and that was when one of the staff observed that the door leading into Mrs Downes's room was ajar. As she pushed it open she found to her dismay the bloodied body of dear old Mrs Downes on the floor. At the time of this murder Dupas had just moved from a flat in Rose Street, Brunswick, close to the nursing home, to a house in Cone Street, Pascoe Vale.

The Homicide Squad have now made a direct link between Dupas and the nursing home. That link is phone calls made from Dupas's phone in the weeks preceding Mrs Downes's murder.

More important, and far more explicit than the phone conversations, is Dupas's conversation with me in prison and his astounding voluntary admissions against his interest, which you can see in my statement. There I mention having talked to Dupas about the significance of the DNA evidence on the glove at the scene of the Maher murder, to which Dupas replied that he had not left any “forensics at Fawkner”, meaning Halvagis, nor, more significantly with “the old sheila down the road”. I have absolutely no doubt that Dupas was admitting to me that he killed Margaret Downes and that he had left no forensic evidence at the scene. When one combines the phone calls with the admission to me, Dupas is, in my view, a certainty to have been the killer of Mrs Downes.

Once again, if anybody has any evidence at all they should contact Crime Stoppers.

Chapter 14

The Vexed Question of
Capital Punishment

Men are naturally disposed to do wrong, in public and
private matters, and increasingly severe penalties have
failed to check this.

– DIODOTUS, SON OF EUCRATES, TO THE GREEK POLIS AT THE
TIME OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS

The Peloponnesian wars took place approximately 2,500 years ago. Aren't we slow learners? We still haven't got it. Increasingly severe penalties, such as life imprisonment, are not a deterrent to people like Dupas who are predisposed to commit horrendous offences.

Whatever is governing the behaviour of such offenders – genetics, childhood experiences, conditioning, or whatever else – deterrence does not enter their thought processes. In Peter Dupas's case, as has been seen from the catalogue of convicted and suspected crimes, it is obvious that jail has no impact whatsoever, save to say that each time he is released he promptly reoffends. All the evidence shows a similar modus operandi in all his offences, the only difference between offences being that with each murder the attack has become more violent and vicious.

Dupas sits and talks to ministers of religion who visit the units inside prisons. I wonder whether he ever confesses his crimes to a priest or minister and whether on his death bed he will finally make a dying admission about
all
his past crimes. This man is so bereft of humanity that I doubt it.

This leads one to the question: Should capital punishment be reintroduced?

I have given this question a lot of thought in the five years while I was in prison. During that time, I was forced to live with people like Ray Edmonds, Peter Dupas and Leslie Camilleri, and three indisputable facts became clear to me from this contact.

One: These people, if released into society, would reoffend, and I say that without one moment's hesitation.

Two: Let's be practical. It costs you the reader, as an Australian taxpayer, somewhere in the vicinity of $75,000 a year to keep a man alive in prison. That does not include the medication they take all the time, or the around-the-clock maximum security. In total the cost would be more like $100,000 a year. On the basis of pure economic rationalism, are we getting much bang for our buck? The answer is unequivocally no.

Three: These people have no chance of being rehabilitated. Apart from anything else, are we as a society prepared to take the risk that these people
may
be rehabilitated? A classic example is Peter Read, a notorious cop killer. Peter Read served well over twenty years and he was supposedly rehabilitated to the degree that he was able to practice as a draftsman in jail, readying him for release. Much to the disgust of the Victoria Police (with some justification, I hasten to add), Read had not been on parole long when he committed a number of serious armed robbery offences. No, nobody was killed, but his willingness to again use a firearm to commit a serious offence was indicative of the fact that it would only have been a matter of time before Read would have killed again if he had not been apprehended.

In my case the only way I overcame my drug problem was that I stopped using, and that was it. What rehabilitation did jail offer me? All I was offered was further medication! In other words, I had the chance to replace one drug with another – a one-way street to oblivion.

In any event, how do we ascertain that somebody is rehabilitated? Is it the sheer effluxion brought about by having to serve a very long term of imprisonment? Is it, like with Read, a matter of them indicating that they have equipped themselves adequately for the life awaiting them outside jail? Is it a result of intensive assessment by counsellors, psychiatrists and psychologists? If the latter, then this system is fundamentally flawed, because people like Dupas, Camilleri and Read are veterans of having been assessed and interviewed by such health professionals. They know the questions they are going to be asked, and they know precisely how to answer those questions so as to be seen in a most favourable light.

The problem with psychiatry and psychology is that it is all based on psychological assessments, and conclusions are all based on what you are told by the person you are assessing or interviewing. There are few, if any, objective physical symptoms on which to base a diagnosis.

A mate of mine who has a psychiatric qualification is of the opinion that, if psychiatry is all smoke and mirrors, where does that leave the practice of psychology? It logically follows that if somebody knows the ropes, and is devious, as most of these blokes are, then you will get the answer that will require you to give the go ahead to release the prisoner on parole. Unfortunately, the proof of the pudding as to the honesty of those answers, is well and truly in the eating, and no amount of speculation or guesswork by a health professional can change that.

Take, for instance, Paul Haig, who has recently made an application for a minimum term to be fixed by the Supreme Court in Victoria. Haig is serving life with no minimum for a number of murders. I served time with Paul Haig. He is mad, dangerous and has a very short fuse. If he were ever released into the community he is sure to wreak havoc. He is still at Port Phillip, not in protection, but in a unit where the better behaved prisoners are put. Everybody tiptoes around Haig like they are walking on eggshells, and that's because he is likely to go off at the drop of a hat. The worst of Haig's murders was when he shot a mother in front of her child – I think the boy was about ten years of age – a life-shattering experience by any account, but this child didn't have to worry about that, because Haig then comforted the boy before murdering him as well. His reason for murdering the child was that the child could potentially identify him. Anybody who is prepared to murder a child in cold blood like that, has in my view, forfeited the right not only to live in our society but to live at all.

The next contentious aspect of this is what categories of offences should carry capital punishment. In my view the first and most obvious category that should
not
carry capital punishment, and probably the one that elicits more hysterical and uninformed opinions than any other (both for and against), is that of drug offences. And no, this is not because I was a drug offender. I hold this view because prohibition never has worked and never will work. Like it or not, the drug war is lost, and it was lost before it even started. Drugs are here to stay. What are you going to do? Swing every second person in Victoria? I don't think so. Drugs are a health issue, and must be treated as such. If drugs were treated as a health issue, the constant squawking by politicians, police and other do-gooders that the police are undermanned would stop overnight.