Killing Time (9 page)

So young Peter is released on parole. He is living in the southern bayside suburb of Frankston when, on 9 November 1979, he rapes a woman, again wielding a knife. He has been out two months and he is on parole. Two days later, on 11 November, he chases a woman with a knife but she runs away. Lucky for her. Seven days later, on 18 November, out of the blue Dupas attacks and stabs an elderly woman in the chest. He makes a run for it and gets away. The very next day Dupas tries to grab a Frankton woman and abduct her. She screams and he bolts. This offending, all committed in Frankston, is becoming repetitious, isn't it?

Between his release on 4 September and 19 November 1979, a period of ten weeks, he commits no fewer than four sexually related assaults, all in the same area, two of them with knives, against single women. Has it crossed anybody's mind yet that there's a pretty clear pattern emerging in this bloke's offences and that he is extraordinarily dangerous? Finally he is arrested, bail is refused and he is held on remand pending trial.

On 2 June 1980 he is sentenced to six years with a minimum of five years for the Frankston offences. What about his unfinished parole? He should be serving the unexpired portion of his parole as well as any penalty for the breach of his parole, in addition to the sentence received for the Frankston offences. On my calculations this adds up to a ten-year minimum sentence to serve. That he got half of this needs to be explained.

Significantly, because Dupas's sentence was of a period of more than three years, he was entitled to temporary release from jail before his release on parole. The idea of temporary release is to help people get ready for re-entry into society. For eight days from 6 to 14 February 1985, Dupas is allowed pre-release from jail. Then, on 27 February 1985, he is finally released from jail, on parole, again.

Four days later, Dupas rapes a 21-year-old woman at Blairgowrie back beach. This time the courts are a little quicker in dealing with him because he pleads Guilty. On 28 June 1985 Dupas is sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment with a minimum of ten years. However, he is released on parole in March 1992 after having served less than seven years of a ten-year minimum. Don't forget that, all along the way, unexpired portions of parole are accumulating, including the five years he was currently completing on parole. It is not clear from his history precisely what has happened to all those unexpired periods of parole, save to say that he doesn't seem to have ever served them.

After Dupas's release on this occasion it takes a little longer for him to start reoffending – a whole eighteen months. As far as we know! The inevitable happens on 23 September 1993, when he attempts to assault a girl while she is horse-riding at Kyneton. Don't forget that this is a man who has now been in and out of jail since October of 1968 and we are now at September 1993. Over this extended period of time Dupas has repeatedly and violently offended, but on this occasion the Director of Public Prosecutions does not authorise a prosecution for these offences and again the system fails to protect the community. Why was he not breached on his parole and sent back to jail? I would love to know.

Once again patterns continue to emerge. On 5 November 1993, less than two months after the attempted assault at Kyneton, Renita Brunton is murdered and stabbed up to 106 times in her Sunbury shop. I often wondered how difficult it would be to stab somebody more than a hundred times in a short space of time with the amount of strength required. The reader should pick up a knife and just try stabbing the air ten or twenty times and see how hard that is on your arm. To punch a sharp knife into a human body a hundred times must require super-human strength, obviously brought about by some adrenaline driven frenzy. (This sort of strength would be demonstrated to me later by Dupas.) Brunton's murder remains unsolved and I understand that Dupas is the only suspect for it. The pattern from all of his offending is that he picks women who are alone so that he feels in control of the situation. If he feels that way then he will attack and, given the opportunity, kill – but not just kill, mutilate in what's clearly a frenzy. If he feels like he might be caught, he goes elsewhere for his next victim. This murder is typical of Dupas in that she was a woman on her own – there were no males within the immediate vicinity.

Two months later, on 3 January 1994, Dupas goes to Lake Epaloch. Lake Epaloch is a water storage area in the general vicinity of Woodend. Woodend, Kyneton, Sunbury, all north-west of Melbourne … see the pattern emerging yet again? He attacks a woman in the toilet block and indecently assaults her.

The next part leaves me speechless with its ineptitude by the courts and the barristers, who are after all, officers of the court. Dupas is charged over the attack on 3 January and he pleads Guilty on 21 November 1994. His barrister does a deal with the prosecution and Dupas is jailed for three years and nine months for false imprisonment. At this stage Dupas is well and truly in the frame for an indefinite sentence under the dangerous offender's legislation. This is not raised by the prosecution nor are the many years of unserved parole and Dupas again crawls through the cracks of a system that is fundamentally flawed in its inability to protect you and me against such offenders.

Three years and nine months for a count of false imprisonment is a straight sentence with no parole involved. Three years and nine months from 21 November 1994 would take you to August 1998. Why he is released on 29 September 1996, I do not know. No one from Corrections has ever volunteered an explanation and I doubt they will ever do so because to do so would leave someone's arse hanging out in the breeze!

Ten months after Dupas walks from jail, on 4 October 1997 Margaret Maher's body is found dumped near the Hume Freeway at Somerton. Dupas will later be convicted of her murder and sentenced to life with no minimum. But meanwhile, on 1 November 1997, less than a month after Margaret Maher's murder, Mersina Halvagis is stabbed to death at the Fawkner Cemetery in Melbourne while visiting her grandmother's grave – a most shocking crime. After Mersina's death, there is a bit of a break for a couple of months, until 30 December 1997, when Kathleen Downs, a 95-year-old widow, is found stabbed to death in a Brunswick nursing home. Dupas is the only suspect for this murder but has never been charged.

But Dupas is still a free man and on 19 April 1999, Nicole Patterson, a psychologist, is murdered at her home, where she also ran her consulting suite. Once again the attack was a frenzied knife attack with a severe blow to the side of the head and both of the victims breasts removed. The pattern is well and truly set: Margaret Maher, Mersina Halvagis, Kathleen Downs and Nicole Patterson all murdered in similar circumstances, with a concentration of stab wounds around the chest area and the Dupas signature of a slash to the inner thigh of each of the deceased. Interestingly enough there was also a previous break-in at the mortuary at the Austin Hospital in 1969, when the bodies of two elderly women were mutilated in a similar way, also with a very sharp knife.

From my experience as a criminal lawyer, serial killers or recidivists of just about any nature, even including armed robbers, have a signature in the way they offend. If it's an armed robber they may use a similar disguise, they may use a similar type of car to drive away from the scene or use a similar type of weapon or say similar things. No matter what it is, patterns invariably emerge if you study a series of cases closely enough. The murders Dupas committed were no exception. They were all violent to the point of being frenzied. The stab wounds were concentrated on the chest area and there was a slash on the inner thigh and a severe blow with a blunt instrument to the side of the head. If that's not a signature of a serial killer, I don't know what is.

On 15 August 2000, Dupas pleads Not Guilty to the murder of Nicole Patterson and is convicted by a Supreme Court jury. He is
finally
sentenced to life with no minimum.

This is not the end, however. The police are so horrified with Dupas's behaviour and so fixated on the clear pattern of offending, that a task force called Micardo is set up to investigate him further in relation to other unsolved murders. This is where I come in, but first let me finish the chronology.

On 2 October 2000, while serving one life sentence with no minimum, Dupas is charged with the murder of Margaret Maher. Breathtakingly, though, despite the presence of DNA evidence at the scene linking Dupas to that crime, a learned (and I use that word advisedly) magistrate refuses to commit Dupas to stand trial after a committal hearing. Fortunately the Director of Public Prosecutions, Paul Coghlan QC (now Mr Justice Coghlan of the Supreme Court of Victoria) presents him directly to the Supreme Court. It was a good call because one year later, after a lengthy trial in which Dupas once again has pleaded Not Guilty, he is convicted of the murder of Margaret Maher. Dupas is sentenced for a second time to a term of life imprisonment with no minimum.

After my release on 11 September 2006 and having made my formal statement to the police regarding Halvagis on the same day, Dupas is taken from jail without warning directly to the Supreme Court where he is charged with the murder of Mersina Halvagis. This charge is laid by means of what is called a direct presentment. With a direct presentment the Director of Public Prosecutions elects not to have the matter dragged through the Magistrate's Court again by way of committal proceedings and instead asks a Supreme Court judge to deal with the matter from the word go.

The eleven months leading up to 9 August 2007, when Dupas was finally found guilty of murdering Mersina Halvagis, were long and arduous for me. The verdict came after a lengthy trial where he pleaded – you guessed it – Not Guilty. He is now serving three life sentences without a minimum and will never be released back into society.

That is still not the end of the story. The police continue to investigate Dupas for some of the other unsolved murders that I have mentioned.

As you read this extraordinary criminal history one thing jumps out at you time and again, and that is the complete failure of the court system to protect precisely those they are there to protect – you, me, the general public. Dupas was released early time and again after having breached his parole. The normal position is that if you are released on parole and you breach that parole, it is cancelled and you go straight back into custody and start serving the unexpired portion of your parole. When you then go to court over the charges that you breached your parole, you can be sentenced to an additional term of imprisonment for the breach, on top of the remaining original term.

In the case of Dupas, it is apparent that no treatment was given to this man while he was in jail – and I have witnessed that with my own eyes. Occasionally a pastoral worker came in and talked to him, and apart from that he took medication that would stop a herd of stampeding elephants in its tracks. That was while he was serving three life sentences. He clearly wasn't that restrained when he wasn't on medication and he was released into the community. What treatment was afforded Dupas at that time, and how effective it was, no one is saying. Nobody has revealed what medication he was on, if any; what supervision he was subjected to, if any. When these questions are asked of the Parole Board, the Corrections Commissioner, the politicians involved, everybody ducks for cover and does the usual trick of keeping their head down and hoping like hell it will all go away. Sooner or later somebody is actually going to ask them to account for their lack of action and to respond to the allegation that, by their omissions, they knowingly exposed the community to increased danger. I will be among the first to level this allegation because if you think for one moment that Dupas is the only person who is capable of committing these sorts of offences, then you are sadly mistaken. I lived with thirty-seven of these blokes for fifteen months and it is not pleasant. Many, but not all, are never to be released and can never be rehabilitated. They lack any remorse, are even proud of what they have done and often sit around skiting about their crimes.

Chapter 5

Living Next Door to Peter

The evil men do lives after them: the good is oft
interred with their bones.

– WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
JULIUS CAESAR

Standing there on muster on my first night in Sirius East, it strikes me that nothing could be blacker. Somehow I have ended up in a unit of thirty-eight blokes: thirty-seven psychopaths and me. It soon becomes apparent to me that Andrew Davies, my new cell mate, is despised by all the members of the unit with the exception of the other paedophiles. Rock spiders carry no weight in jail; they are despised. Most of the rock spiders spend their time as cave dwellers – that is, blokes who sit in their cells all day with the curtains drawn and the door closed. There they sit chain smoking and watching television for the entirety of their sentence. If that's what they want to do that's what the screws let them do – it keeps them quiet.

The person facing me, however, was different. Peter Dupas had killed and killed often. But standing there was an insignificant, pudgy-looking man, motionless, as still as a sphinx except for his eyes which darted everywhere. He had a brooding, calculating malevolence about him. He oozed passive aggression. He was clearly somebody to keep a very close eye on, as time would soon tell.

Even on that cursory first glance, it was apparent that Dupas stood apart from the others in the unit, notwithstanding their collectively horrific crimes. There was something about him that made him different and in my first couple of months in the unit I was to find out what.