A bombshell twist has emerged in the case of the Claremont serial killings after a former police commissioner said evidence of a Telstra vehicle stalking young women was identified in 2004 — more than a decade before a Telstra employee was arrested over the crimes.

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Karl O’Callaghan said there was also a witness statement about a Telstra vehicle after the 1995 abduction and rape of a young woman in Karrakatta Cemetery, which was a year before the Claremont murders began.

Bradley Robert Edwards, who has pleaded not guilty to the cemetery attack and murders of Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon between 1996 and 1997, was working for Telstra as a technician and drove its company vehicles at the time.

The 50-year-old was arrested and charged in 2016 after a fresh investigation of the unsolved serial killings and is due to face trial in July. Stunning allegations about a Telstra connection to the case surfaced publicly for the first time during a pre-trial submissions hearing last month when prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo listed six occasions when the activities of a Telstra vehicle and its male driver were reported between 1995 and 1997.

Now, The West Australian can reveal that a Telstra link was highlighted by an independent review of the Claremont investigation, headed up by then South Australian detective superintendent Paul Schramm in late 2004.

“If I am correct, the Schramm review made a comment that the angle around a Telstra vehicle should be followed up,” Mr O’Callaghan said yesterday.

“It was a line a of inquiry that he wanted closed off.”

Camera Icon Det. Supt Paul Schramm. Credit: The West Australian

But Mr O’Callaghan, who became commissioner in 2004, said he was unsure if the Macro Taskforce — in charge of investigating the Claremont cases — pursued the Telstra line or whether it was “actioned”. “Exactly how much emphasis they put on the Telstra inquiry at that time I don’t know,” Mr O’Callaghan said.

“I assumed they would have gone through the recommendations one by one and crossed them off.

“I never personally checked with anyone and it would have been up to the senior investigating officer to work through those things and tick them off. ”

He said that he became aware of the Telstra vehicle evidence years after the Schramm review, when a senior officer raised it as part of a new inquiry into the serial killings. That inquiry resulted in Mr Edwards’ arrest.

WA Police declined to comment yesterday.

In December 2004, Supt Schramm said his review had found “additional investigative opportunities”, but he did not elaborate. He also said the series of crimes had been “thoroughly and comprehensively investigated”. “It is now our considered opinion that if these crimes are to be solved it will probably be through careful and incremental progress or new information,” Supt Schramm said at the time.

The pre-trial hearings revealed Mr Edwards was convicted of common assault in 1990, when he grabbed a woman from behind at Hollywood Hospital in Nedlands while working there as a Telstra technician.

There was also new evidence about a Telstra knife being found on the same day and along the same stretch of road in Wellard where Miss Rimmer’s body was located in 1996.

Whether the knife was linked to the discovery of her remains at the time is unclear.

Camera Icon A Telstra vehicle, similar to this Holden Commodore wagon, was seen driving around Claremont. Credit: Supplied

But Ms Barbagallo went through, in detail, a series of incidents involving a Telstra vehicle which form part of what the prosecution has dubbed the “Telstra Living Witness Project”.

“The State’s case is that the accused was the man involved in the Telstra living witness incidents and that this is relevant to the identity of the person alleged to have committed counts 3 to 8 — that is the Karrakatta sexual assault and the Claremont murders,” Justice Stephen Hall said in a judgment last week.

Mr Edwards worked as a Telstra technician from January 1986, when the company was called Telecom, until his arrest in December 2016.

According to the fresh evidence, a Telstra vehicle being driven by a solo male offered lifts to young women in the Cottesloe and Claremont areas between 1995 and 1997.

Most reports described the vehicle as a white Holden Commodore station wagon.

“There was a series of incidents involving a sole male driver driving around the Claremont area approaching young women who are on foot and seemingly alone, and in some cases offering them a lift,” Ms Barbagallo said. “The sole driver was either a man who was driving a Telstra vehicle or identified himself as working for Telstra.”

In one incident that occurred on a Saturday night in early December 1995, a man driving a white vehicle on Stirling Highway in Claremont offered a young woman a ride before telling her he was a Telstra technician and that he was out looking for “damsels in distress”.

“He drove her to her requested location in Innaloo,” Ms Barbagallo told the court.

“When she got out the male driver also got out and followed her. He grabbed her at least once and tried to kiss her, prompting her to push him away. The driver’s description, very broadly, did not exclude the accused man.”

On January 27, 1996 —the same day that Miss Spiers went missing in the early hours from Claremont after leaving Club Bay View — a woman reported a Telstra vehicle pulling up alongside her, the window being wound down and the driver staring at her before driving away.

There was another incident in late November or early December 1996 when a man driving a Commodore wagon with a Telstra logo offered two women a lift on Stirling Highway.

Camera Icon Bradley Edwards. Credit: Supplied

When one of the women felt “uneasy” about being in the car she made an excuse and the two passengers got out.

What wasn’t explained during the pre-trial submissions was when these accounts of a Telstra vehicle were given to police. Mr O’Callaghan said there was another Telstra connection made before the serial killings, after a 17-year-old teenager was abducted on Gugeri Street in Claremont and raped in Karrakatta Cemetery in February 1995.

Ms Barbagallo made reference to that link during the pre-trial hearings.

“Prior to the complainant arriving at Hollywood Village Nursing Home a security guard employed at Hollywood Hospital observed a white van, which appeared to be new and had Telecom markings on it, drive past the main entrance of the hospital towards Karrakatta Cemetery,” Ms Barbagallo said.

Mr O’Callaghan, who resigned after 13 years as commissioner in 2017, said all of the Telstra matters were raised with him before a cold case review of Claremont began using a team of new detectives.

“This was mentioned to me some years later by a senior officer,” the former commissioner said.

“It was one of the lines of inquiry that Schramm thought the investigative team should follow. That was what was said to me in the last five years.”

The pre-trial hearings have also heard that Mr Edwards entered into a sex offender’s treatment program after his 1990 conviction for the assault of a worker at Hollywood Hospital.

Mr Edwards was also placed on two years probation and continued to work for Telstra.