The Claremont serial killings of Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon shocked Perth to its core

Updated

The disappearance of three young women from the upmarket suburb of Claremont in the mid-1990s changed the face of Perth. Two decades later, a man faces court charged with their murders.

It's a horrifying mystery that has haunted Perth for decades and become a dark stain on the city's psyche.

How three young women in the prime of their lives could disappear from a popular nightspot in Perth's wealthy western suburbs seemed beyond belief.

The fact that the crimes have remained unsolved for more than two decades added an element of grim fascination, fuelling endless speculation over water coolers and barbeques.

This is a case that has gripped the city like no other.

Their names are forever etched in our minds — Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon.

Sarah, the youngest victim and the only one whose body has never been found, was still a teenager when she disappeared. Just 18, she was just one of countless people celebrating Australia Day with mates on the night of January 26, 1996, when she vanished.

Jane Rimmer, a 23-year-old childcare worker, went missing six months later. Like Sarah, she had enjoyed drinks with friends at the same two popular pubs in the affluent suburbs of Cottesloe and Claremont.

When young lawyer Ciara Glennon also disappeared from Claremont nine months later, it was clear something was very amiss in Perth.

A city on the move

Perth in the 1990s was beginning to grow up.

No longer a sleepy backwater — that image was buried a decade earlier when the spectacle of the Americas Cup threw a global spotlight on the city — Perth was consolidating its place in the world.

By the mid-1990s WA had its first female premier in Carmen Lawrence, its resources industry was expanding into a national powerhouse and two teams had been successfully launched in the AFL.

The corporate excesses of the 1980s were a thing of the past, with the imprisonment of Brian Burke following the WA Inc Royal Commission and the bankruptcy of Alan Bond.

Few could have predicted this burgeoning metropolis would be harbouring a serial killer in its suburbs.

Claremont was a popular nightspot in the 1990s, and not just for those from the affluent western suburbs.

Students from the nearby University of Western Australia and surfers wanting to party after a day at Cottesloe beach mixed with locals who flocked after-hours to Claremont, which enjoyed a reputation as a party mecca.

Then suddenly, everything changed.

A woman goes missing

On January 27, 1996, 18-year-old Sarah Spiers disappeared after a night out in the wealthy enclave.

The fun-loving teenager had been celebrating Australia Day with a group of girlfriends, beginning their evening at the popular Ocean Beach Hotel in Cottesloe.

Sarah's older sister, Amanda, picked up the group at midnight from the "Obie", as it's colloquially known, and dropped them in Claremont, where they headed to Club Bayview to continue the fun.

The nightclub — which continues to operate today — was in its heyday from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. It was affectionately known as "Clubba" or "Club Bayspew" to its alcohol-fuelled 18- to 25-year-old clientele, who partied up a storm on its shaky dancefloor and sticky carpet.

It had been a big day for Sarah, who'd been socialising for many hours by this time and was beginning to get tired. She told her girlfriends she'd catch a taxi home.

She stopped to have a brief chat outside the club with the security guards, one of whom she knew quite well, then walked down to the phone box on Stirling Road, near the intersection of Stirling Highway, where she called a cab.

A couple of young men driving past would later report to police they'd seen the young secretary standing at the corner of Stirling Highway and Stirling Street, apparently waiting for the taxi.

But when the taxi arrived, just three minutes after she called for it, Sarah could not be found.

She was never seen again.

A second victim

Five months later, in the early hours of June 9, 1996, 23-year-old childcare worker Jane Rimmer vanished from the same area.

Like Sarah Spiers before her, Jane had begun her evening with friends at the Ocean Beach Hotel in Cottesloe.

The group stayed there for about an hour before jumping in a taxi to travel the 3.5 kilometres to Claremont, arriving around 9:30pm at their destination — the Continental Hotel.

Sitting on the corner of Bayview Terrace and Gugeri Street, the historic Continental Hotel — known simply as "the Conti" to a generation of young people — was good times central during the 1990s.

After a couple of hours enjoying themselves at the pub, Jane and her mates headed to Club Bayview — the same place Sarah Spiers left her friends before disappearing.

But they changed their minds when they saw the long queue outside, deciding instead to head back to the suburbs to party at a friend's house.

As they reached the taxi rank outside the Continental, Jane suddenly decided she'd rather stay out, telling her mates she was going back to the pub.

More than a decade later, police would release chilling CCTV footage of Jane standing outside the Continental shortly after midnight.

The grainy vision shows an unidentified man approaching the young blonde woman, whose face lights up when she sees him.

They appear to converse before the camera pans to another part of the pub. When the recording returns to where she has been standing, both she and the mystery man have disappeared.

Immediately concerns were raised the cases were linked — sending shockwaves through the community.

Jane's family had reported her missing when she failed to turn up work on Monday morning, having also been a no-show at the family's weekly Sunday roast lunch, and police were quick to act.

The Macro Taskforce was set up to investigate and would go on to become the longest-running and most expensive police probe in the state's history, involving hundreds of officers and thousands of suspects.

Hundreds of people who were identified as being in Claremont at the time were interviewed as police scrutinised CCTV footage in minute detail. DNA swabs were taken from all of Perth's taxi drivers.

As fear grew in Claremont and the wider Perth community, police appealed for help from the public.

Young women were repeatedly warned not to walk alone at night and people became fearful to take taxis.

Six weeks after she disappeared, Jane Rimmer's body was found in bushland in Wellard, 40km south of the CBD.

The gruesome discovery was made by a woman out picking wildflowers with her young child.

Sarah Spiers's family, meanwhile, were no closer to knowing what happened to their daughter.

Large billboard posters featuring her image were plastered around the city and flyers were handed out, but there was no breakthrough in the case.

Death returns to Claremont

Like Sarah Spiers and Jane Rimmer before her, 27-year-old Ciara Glennon had been drinking in Claremont before her disappearance.

The young lawyer had recently returned from a year-long European holiday and was back home in Perth for her sister's wedding in March 1997, where she was to be a bridesmaid.

She had returned to her old job as a solicitor and was enjoying after-work drinks with colleagues at the Continental Hotel on the night of Friday, March 14 — a night that was documented in a police re-enactment of her final moments.

Just before midnight Ciara told her workmates she was heading home, and walked down Bay View Terrace to Stirling Highway.

A man sitting at a bus stop called out to her that she was "crazy" for hitchhiking, but Ciara dismissed him with a wave.

On Stirling Highway, Ciara walked past the Claremont Baptist Church and was seen talking with the occupant of a light-coloured car near the traffic lights at the intersection with Stirling Street.

The man at the bus stop described her leaning over to talk to whoever was in the car.

But when he turned to look back, both Ciara and the car were gone.

When she failed to turn up to a hairdressing appointment the next day, then missed her sister's hen's party, the young lawyer's family called police.

Three weeks later, her body was found, partially clothed, in bushland at Eglinton, north of Perth.

Police started openly talking about what everyone feared.

A stain across a suburb

Claremont, for a while at least, stopped being Perth's premier place to party.

It remained the home of Perth's monied elite, who continued to send their sons and daughters to the suburb's prestigious Christ Church Grammar and Methodist Ladies College, but a pall had been cast over the area.

For a time, young people in Perth were not only wary about catching taxis, they were nervous about going out at all.

But as the years and then the decades went by, the case grew cold.

There were several reviews of the investigation and police openly targeted a number of suspects, who were later ruled out.

But the people of Perth never forgot the shocking nature of what happened.

While the blithe optimism of youth overcame fear and revellers returned to their favourite nightspots, the events remained scarred in people's minds over the subsequent decades.

As Sarah Spiers's family eloquently put it on the 20th anniversary of her disappearance.

"It's hard not to wonder what Sarah's life, and ours, could have been had she not been taken from us."

Perth is a vastly different place in 2018 to what it was in the mid-1990s.

The city looks markedly altered, thanks to a building frenzy funded by a mining boom, there are a multitude of new cool nightspots dotted with small bars.

But the horror of the Claremont serial killings never went away.

Every time a body was found for the ensuing two decades, it brought hopes that it would be Sarah Spiers.

But there was a growing resignation that the case may never be solved.

After 20 years, a breakthrough

In December 2016, out of the blue, police raided an unassuming home in the eastern Perth suburb of Kewdale.

It would be many hours before police confirmed that the huge number of heavily armed Tactical Response Group officers and forensic staff swarming around the property were investigating the Claremont serial killings — but rumours of a link began circulating almost immediately.

The city held its breath.

Finally, more than 24 hours later, police announced they had charged Telstra technician Bradley Robert Edwards, 48, with murdering both Ciara Glennon and Jane Rimmer.

Now well into middle age, Mr Edwards would have been the same age as Ciara when she disappeared, and not too much older than Jane.

He was also charged over sexual attacks on two other young women, including the alleged rape of a 17-year-old at Karrakatta cemetery in Shenton Park in 1995.

Police say the teen was snatched as she walked through a park in Claremont and sexually assaulted at the nearby cemetery.

Several years beforehand, in 1988, Mr Edwards was also alleged to have entered the bedroom of an 18-year-old girl in the southern Perth suburb of Huntingdale — the other side of the city and a world away from Claremont — and attacked her while she slept.

He has made several court appearances since his arrest, but is yet to enter a plea to the charges.

Then police announced Mr Edwards had also been charged with Sarah Spiers's murder.

Coming just days before Mr Edwards was set to face court to enter a plea, it threw a glaring national spotlight back on the case.

For the victims' families — and the city of Perth — this tragic story still has a way to run.

Credits

Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, crime, law-crime-and-justice, claremont-6010, cottesloe-6011, perth-6000, kewdale-6105, wellard-6170, eglinton-6034

First posted