Fifty-year-old former Telstra technician is charged with murdering three women in the affluent Perth suburb in 1996 and 1997

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

Multiple people heard high-pitched screams on the nights two victims of the accused Claremont serial killer were murdered, a Perth court had heard.

Confessed rapist Bradley Robert Edwards is fighting accusations he murdered three women – secretary Sarah Spiers, 18; childcare worker Jane Rimmer, 23; and lawyer Ciara Glennon, 27 – after each of them spent a night out with friends in the affluent suburb of Claremont in 1996 and 1997.

The 50-year-old former Telstra technician was re-arraigned in the WA supreme court on Monday and again pleaded not guilty.

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In her opening address, prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo said that on the night Spiers vanished on 27 January, 1996, four people heard screams several streets apart in Mosman Park.

One couple was woken by the screams and saw a light-coloured station wagon, while a second woman said she heard a high-pitched scream that abruptly stopped.

“In the still of the night, the screams of a female in distress can carry long distances and may be difficult to accurately ascertain the direction from which they come,” Barbagallo said.

The court also heard the call Spiers made for a taxi minutes before she vanished.

Barbagallo said Rimmer declined a taxi ride with friends on 9 June 1996, and that was the last time they saw her.

Security footage outside the pub was played in court but none of the four cameras at the venue captured everything.

The camera showed Rimmer outside, then panned away and when it returned 13 seconds later, she had vanished.

She said Rimmer’s naked body was discovered by “absolute chance” 55 days later in Wellard, in an advanced state of decomposition metres from the road.

A couple said they were woken by the sound of a female yelling that night then a car driving off, while another couple about one kilometre away also heard screaming that stopped suddenly, the prosecutor said.

Rimmer’s watch was found the next day by a man who did not realise its significance.

Glennon had returned from a year of travelling overseas 14 days before she disappeared, and was supposed to be her sister’s bridesmaid.

The court heard 12 people saw a lone woman matching Glennon’s appearance walking away from the Continental Hotel on 15 March 1997, including a group referred to as the “burger boys” who told her she was “crazy to hitchhike”.

They later saw her leaning into the window of a station wagon.

Barbagallo said each of the young, bright and beautiful women vanished “under the cover of darkness”.

“Two were found dead, dumped in bushland, covered in foliage and left to rot in the killer’s hope that they would never be found ... so that any evidence that might connect the killer to the crimes would be lost forever – lost in the bush, in the dirt, in the foliage that he left them in,” she said.

“Despite the killer’s best efforts, miraculously the bodies of those two young women were found.”

Barbagallo said the absence of Spiers’ body meant the killer’s identity would be proved in other ways.

She said the community had lived in fear “caused by an enigma of the dark” and in coming months the prosecution would demystify that enigma.

“There was one killer and that killer was Bradley Robert Edwards,” she said.

Among those in the packed public gallery were the parents of the victims including Don and Carol Spiers, Jenny Rimmer and Denis Glennon.

The trial is being held without a jury owing to the publicity surrounding the case. Justice Stephen Hall is expected to reserve his judgment for months before handing down a lengthy written verdict.