Detective Jeff Maher takes us inside the hunt for one of Australia's most evil serial killers. Maher and his team brought to justice the man responsible for 3 murders.
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00:00He's doing triple life.
00:30He'll die in jail, he'll rot in jail.
00:33My personal opinion is he'll never, ever, ever give up anything to us.
00:40Homicide squad detectives will question former patients of a 28-year-old psychoanalyst
00:45found stabbed to death in her Norfolk home.
00:48He stabbed her 27 times. He cut off her breasts.
00:51Homicide detectives are investigating the discovery of a woman's body in Somerton.
00:56Her left breast had been removed.
00:58He did it. We knew he did it.
01:00Police are puzzled by the murder of a 25-year-old woman visiting her grandmother's grave.
01:05She had been stabbed and there were signs of a struggle.
01:08He's got to be the worst we can imagine.
01:11So here's a man that continually preyed on women over 30 years.
01:15He kept being released. What has been learned?
01:19Jeff Maher is my name. I'm a retired detective senior sergeant with Victoria Police.
01:32April 1999 I was in charge of a crew at the homicide squad.
01:37So it was a Monday night and I was the on-call senior sergeant and we had pages at that time.
01:49I think it was around about 7pm that night. The page went off.
01:54We had a job out in Northcote. It was a homicide.
01:59We rolled out and we went down to the address.
02:13So we went in and they showed us a scene in the first room.
02:17That's the view as you come in the front door.
02:20You're looking down the hallway. The door to the left is a bedroom but it was set up as a consulting room.
02:27And that was where Nicky's body was found.
02:34Nicole Patterson, Nicky to her friends and family, was just 28 years old.
02:40That Monday the 19th of April was the day that Nicky opened her new practice.
02:45And she was going to see her first client as a psychotherapist.
02:50Rennie was a friend of Nicky's that turned up to go out for dinner with Nicky.
02:56Rennie arrived around 6.30pm. That's her blue Subaru parked outside Nicky's house.
03:04She's knocked on the door several times and the door was sort of semi-ajar.
03:09And the door cracked open, pushed open and then she walked in, looked left into the front room and saw Nicky's body.
03:21My job is to investigate homicides and to do it clinically and not to tie too much emotion into it.
03:28But at the end of the day when I walked in there it was pretty confronting the scene that we saw.
03:33You know it was a sight that you sort of couldn't comprehend.
03:42We began the gruelling job of processing the crime scene.
03:46I assigned jobs to my crew of detectives and tasked them with informing Nicky's family that she had been murdered.
03:53My name's Kylie and I'm the sister of Nicole Patterson.
03:57The Monday evening of April the 19th, 1999, John and I were getting ready for bed.
04:10I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and I heard the phone ring and I thought,
04:16I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and I heard the phone ring and I thought,
04:23gee that's odd to be getting a phone call late at night.
04:29And I went and answered the phone and it was my step mum Katie and she said,
04:35Kylie it's Katie, Nicky's been murdered.
04:41And there was such an incredulous tone in her voice that actually made me realise
04:48that what she was saying was true even though I couldn't believe it.
04:53I could hear my father howling in the background and I don't remember falling to the ground
05:00but my husband recounted that he came to the door and he saw me go ash white and collapse to the floor.
05:07And John said that I also uttered this guttural howl, this really terrifying scream he said.
05:18I felt like my head was going to explode with the pain.
05:21I actually felt like I had this terrible headache and it actually felt like someone had thrust their hand
05:28or their whole arm into my chest and was ripping my heart out.
05:32That's actually what it felt like.
05:34You're also thinking, well who could have done this?
05:44We started to examine the crime scene straight away.
05:50It was a difficult scene to process because Nicky had been murdered in a frenzied stabbing attack.
05:55It was brutal.
05:58The significant stuff that we uncovered as we processed the scene were yellow bits of electrical tape
06:07which were found on Nicky's body which would become important later on.
06:14Thanks.
06:15Thanks.
06:19First photo here is a diary which was located on the left hand side of that lounge suite in the lounge room.
06:31It was a normal calendar style diary and on the 19th of April, nine o'clock it had Malcolm,
06:38the words Malcolm written on there and it had a mobile phone number.
06:44What we were looking at was an appointment book for Nicky's psychotherapy business.
06:49If Malcolm was her nine o'clock appointment, then we had to find Malcolm.
06:53He may have been the last person to see Nicky alive.
06:56We did a subscriber check of the mobile phone number and found that the phone was owned by a university student.
07:12We went and spoke to him and he was alibi-ed up.
07:17He said yes, I was in class that day, I was at uni that day and I've got 20 alibi witnesses which was entirely correct, he did.
07:25So we've gone, well, that's a dead end.
07:30The next photo, you've got basically a photograph of the landline,
07:35Nicky's landline on that coffee table where the notes were
07:38and we were able to get the incoming phone calls to Nicky Patterson's landline
07:43which were some 100 people over a month period.
07:50I assigned the task of checking those incoming calls to my team.
07:53I said I want you to go through all these phone numbers and subscriber checks and see who we've got there.
08:00It didn't take long for the team to track down a number which kept popping up in the call records.
08:05The number, an incoming number a number of times to Nicky Patterson's landline
08:10from another landline which was Peter Norris Dewpass.
08:15He contacted Nicky on a number of occasions leading up to her murder.
08:20Dewpass had prior convictions, he'd done probably 25 years of violent sexual crime against women
08:27and he was currently at large.
08:45She was cheeky, feisty.
08:50She always had a heart for the underdog.
08:53I loved that if there was a child left out, that was the child that Nicky would gravitate towards.
09:01An animal wounded, that was the animal she wanted to bring home.
09:09I love this photo, Nicole, Andrew and I when we were kids.
09:14Mum used to make our clothes and what I see in that photo is our matching velour tops and handcrafted skirts
09:23and of course we're all colour coordinated, the three of us.
09:26That's a beautiful memory.
09:31Ah, now this is another favourite.
09:34This was my sister's last birthday.
09:40So this was her 28th birthday, so it's been taken with both my kids and they absolutely adored Nicole
09:50and yeah, she absolutely adored them.
09:54She didn't get the opportunity to be a mum, but she was a natural.
10:01We would speak almost every night.
10:05Arden, the youngest, would get on the phone and want to talk to Nicky.
10:10All she would say to Nicky was, is Bella there? Is Bella there, Nicky's dog?
10:15And Nicky would say, woof woof.
10:19And then Arden would say, Bella there? Bella there?
10:23And Nicky would say, woof woof.
10:27And that conversation would go on for as long as Arden wanted it.
10:36So this was the last night that we saw Nicole.
10:42I look at this photo and I just see like this shining light.
10:49So this is the Saturday night and she was on this precipice of starting her own business.
10:56So she'd set up the front room at home as her office
11:01and she'd just shared how excited she was that she was having her first client coming on Monday morning.
11:11Homicide squad detectives will question former patients of a 28-year-old psychoanalyst
11:16found stabbed to death in her Northcote home.
11:21We established that Nicky Patterson had received a number of calls at her home office
11:25from Peter Norris Dewpass, a violent sex offender.
11:30So we tracked him down with great haste.
11:34We've ended up finding him out at the Excelsior Hotel in Thomastown.
11:38He was playing the pokies there and it looks like he's got a scratch down the side of his face.
11:45We then sent a couple of detectives into the hotel and arrested him.
11:51We went round to Cohen Street in Pascoe Vale, which was his home address, with him.
11:57As we walked in to the front of the premises, we look over to the right to the front garden tap
12:04and there was a hose, a garden hose, and lo and behold on the garden hose
12:11it had been repaired with yellow electrical tape.
12:16And I looked at it and it was the same style of tape that had been found on Nicky Patterson's body.
12:25We found further evidence linking Dewpass to the crime scene by going through his rubbish bin.
12:31Photograph 13 is a note, a ripped up note, that was found located in the rubbish bin.
12:38That photograph is basically the top of the Northcote Leader newspaper.
12:42I think on the same page that Nicky's advertised her services as a psychotherapist.
12:50Written on the top is there Nicky at nine o'clock in the morning, Northcote.
12:57And also Malcolm down the bottom there and the mobile phone number that he gave her.
13:05Well the story that we pieced together was that Dewpass, I think,
13:14had seen Nicky's photograph in the Northcote Leader newspaper
13:19and it was an article in relation to psychotherapy, counselling and welfare and so forth
13:25and that's when he started the stalker.
13:28He's contacted her and made the appointment for that Monday morning on the 19th of April 1999
13:34and then he's turned up there.
13:39We took this photo in the room where Nicky was murdered and I think it tells the story.
13:45Jug of milk, cups, some sugar on a tray.
13:51I think that she was attacked.
13:53I think that she was attacked when she was plunging the coffee.
13:58She had defensive injuries, she tried to fend off him.
14:05We know that two people in the street heard the blood curdling scream and then there was nothing.
14:15He went there that day and committed the most atrocious crime.
14:19He went there that day and committed the most atrocious crime.
14:26He stabbed her 27 times, he stabbed her to death and then afterwards he mutilated her body
14:35and he cut off her breasts.
14:38Once we completed the search warrant at his home address at Cowan Street, Pascoe Vale,
14:43he was then taken back to the homicide squad where he was formally interviewed.
14:48All the allegations were put to him, all the exhibits were put to him
14:51and it didn't engage and it didn't take part,
14:54made no comment in relation to all the questions that were put to him.
14:59He was taken back to the homicide squad where he was formally interviewed.
15:03It didn't engage and it didn't take part, made no comment in relation to all the questions
15:08put to him in the interview.
15:12Turns out we didn't need a confession, we had a smoking gun.
15:16Back at the house where Dupas lived in Pascoe Vale we found what we believed a key exhibit.
15:23It was a green trucker's jacket with a distinctive ripped pocket.
15:29On the right hand sleeve there was some blood.
15:33Down the zipper there was also some more blood.
15:40The DNA after being analysed that it was 6.3 billion times more likely
15:45to be Nicky Patterson's blood than any other randomly selected female from the population
15:52and there was also blood from Dupas mixed in with that particular blood as well.
15:58We've got phone records linking back to Dupas.
16:01We've got the yellow electrical tape.
16:03We had the jacket with Nicky's DNA and his DNA on it.
16:07We also had the ripped up note and other evidence.
16:12As a circumstantial and evidentiary case it was strong.
16:17So we charged him with the murder of Nicky Patterson, one count of murder and we went to trial.
16:22I remember that was the first time that I saw Peter Dupas.
16:27He looked up and I got chills.
16:31His eyes were dead, black, evil.
16:39His defence was that I was corrupt and I was carrying a vial of Nicky Patterson's blood
16:46and I was corrupt and I was carrying a vial of Nicky Patterson's blood
16:51ran in my pocket and when I found a good suspect I tipped the vial of her blood onto that jacket.
17:00At the end of the day the truth spoke for itself and the jury came back with a correct verdict.
17:07It took a jury of four women and eight men just two and a half hours to reach their verdict.
17:12Nicole Patterson's family cheered and applauded in court as Peter Dupas was found guilty of her murder.
17:18We're so upset about the horrible circumstances of our daughter's death that's devastated our family.
17:25I hope that he rots in hell.
17:35Peter Dupas has been freed from jail several times but that will never happen again.
17:40Justice Frank Vincent today permanently removed him from society because his chance of rehabilitation was close to hopeless.
17:48He got life no minimum, never to be released.
17:52We thought Justice Vincent was fantastic.
17:55He had this man's measure, he knew that this man was a monster and he gave the appropriate sentence.
18:07In what was considered an unusual move at the time, Judge Vincent read out a detailed account of Peter Dupas' prior convictions as a violent sexual predator dating back to 1968.
18:21I don't think we knew all the facts until it was all read out in court and even then how do you absorb that?
18:30How is this man that has preyed on women for over 30 years, how is he even free to kill?
18:41He had 16 prior convictions before he even started murdering, 16 prior convictions.
18:47He'd been before the courts so many times and yet he was free to kill?
18:53How do you make sense of that?
19:00The Victoria Police
19:12Chris O'Connor is my name.
19:15In 1999 I was in charge of the child exploitation squad and also the sexual crime squad of the Victoria Police.
19:24In the wake of Nicole Patterson's murder, Peter Dupas was reinvestigated over a number of unsolved homicides.
19:31I became part of that reinvestigation but I was not surprised to discover the extent of Dupas' prior offending.
19:39He's one of three children, his two older siblings were significantly older than him.
19:46So that he was brought up ostensibly as a single child.
19:51He was bullied at school because he was slightly overweight and it seems that it bottled up inside of him.
20:00His mother was demanding an overprotective of him which may have caused some sort of reaction from him.
20:11At the age of 15 he knocked on his neighbour's door.
20:14A woman in her 20s who had just given birth to her baby.
20:21And he said, oh look can I borrow a knife, I want to peel some potatoes for mum.
20:25She said, what a good boy you are, come in.
20:31He came inside, she gave him a knife and before she knew it he was sitting on top of her trying to stab her to death.
20:38But as she's defending herself she grabbed the knife at one stage and then it's as if a light went off in Dupas' head.
20:48And he basically said, what am I doing?
20:51And he burst out into tears.
20:54He was arrested by police.
20:57He was given 18 months probation and was ordered to attend to his family.
21:03He was given 18 months probation and was ordered to attend psychiatric testing.
21:09And it was determined that he didn't need to be an inpatient, he could be an outpatient and really very little occurred as a consequence.
21:22As a 20 year old he committed the worst rape imaginable.
21:26He went to this young mum's home, he threatened her and her baby with a knife, forcing her to comply.
21:37He tied her up with rope, he threatened to kill her and her baby.
21:41So that was as a 20 year old.
21:49Now he received nine years for that.
21:52Of the nine years he received, he served five years.
21:58Do you know within two months of being released, he then terrorised four women.
22:04He was charged with rape, attempted rape, aggravated assault.
22:11He went before the courts.
22:14The maximum sentence allowed is 25 years.
22:18He received six and a half years.
22:20Of that six and a half years, he served five years.
22:26Within, I think it was four days after being released, he raped again.
22:32He was given 12 year sentence with a minimum of 10.
22:37He served seven and a half years.
22:40So here's a man that continually terrorised, preyed on women over 30 years,
22:45continually terrorised, preyed on women over 30 years,
22:49never once received the maximum sentence.
22:52He kept being released.
22:55Peter Dupas stabbed my sister to death and mutilated her body.
23:00The system actually let him do it.
23:02I hold the system responsible.
23:04And I tell you, if this is still happening in 25 years, what has been learned?
23:11What has been learned?
23:15She lived so close to the amphitheatre, so she would regularly go there with Bala and with friends.
23:30And we had over 700 mourners there.
23:33It was just beautiful.
23:37We were able to have Bala there.
23:39And I do remember when I was speaking that Bala would howl.
23:45And she was howling when Nicky's Coffin did leave the amphitheatre.
23:51It was like she was connecting with Nicole.
24:01After we charged Dupas in April 1999, it was starting to unfold that in fact this wasn't his first time.
24:10We started to look at other unsolved homicides with similar injuries.
24:14Task Force Mikado was formed.
24:17And Margaret May was the first one that we uncovered.
24:25Her body was found in 1997.
24:30She had a body part removed in a similar style to Nicky Patterson.
24:39That was linking the two homicides together.
24:50A task force had been established called Mikado to look into Peter Dupas specifically as a person of interest for several murders.
25:00I was requested to take over command of the operation in January of 1999.
25:07And I stayed with it until August of 1999.
25:14Margaret May is one of the sad stories of our community.
25:20Margaret was at one stage a bank officer until she was introduced to heroin.
25:27As a consequence she became hooked on the drug.
25:32Margaret supported her heroin addiction by becoming a sex worker.
25:36She had to prostitute herself.
25:43Margaret left her flat at approximately 7 o'clock on October the 3rd in 1997.
25:51She told her daughter that she was going out to try and get money for drugs.
25:57At five minutes past eight she attended at her pharmacy.
26:02And from there she was seen at Broadmeadows Town Shopping Centre in Pascoe Vale Road.
26:10Margaret did spend some time at the Safeway, which is now Woolworths.
26:16She was safe in this place.
26:19And consequently she spent quite some time there.
26:25At approximately 12.15 she was seen walking through the car park of Safeway towards Pascoe Vale Road.
26:37And that was the last sighting of Margaret May alive.
26:49At approximately 1.45 on the following afternoon a gentleman, his wife and a relative
26:58were looking for aluminium cans in the Cliffords Road, Somerton area.
27:05And they came upon what they thought was a mannequin.
27:10On closer inspection realised it was a human being and it was the body of Margaret Josephine May.
27:19Homicide detectives are investigating the discovery of a woman's body in Somerton.
27:24She had injuries to her upper body and detectives have appealed to anyone with information to contact them.
27:31Her left breast had been removed.
27:39You can imagine the horror and the sense of indignity that beheld anybody
27:45who stood over that poor woman's body.
27:51A black woolen glove was located just beside Margaret's body.
27:57This woolen glove was examined for any potential DNA residue at the time and nothing was able to be identified.
28:06DNA technology fortunately took several very important steps of development.
28:19By 1999, which is only 18 months, significant movement had occurred in this whole area of research.
28:27The glove was re-examined and Dr Roberts identified there were two contributors to DNA
28:36that was located inside one of the fingers of the glove.
28:43An unknown person was one, the other one was Peter Norris Dupas.
28:52We knew that in 1997 he was living in Pascoe Vale.
28:57Pascoe Vale Road leads into Somerton Road, off which is Cliffords Road.
29:06So it's almost a direct line to where the deceased was located.
29:15This afternoon police charged the 49-year-old with murdering Ms Maher. He'll reappear in December.
29:23He did it. We knew he did it. All we needed was for him to tell the court that he did it.
29:29He sat there, he started talking initially, then all of a sudden a light went off in his head and he said
29:36No comment.
29:43He had no alibi for the night and of course the DNA was the smoking gun.
29:54The jury was satisfied that Dupas murdered Margaret Maher.
30:00It's the second time Peter Dupas has been sentenced to life.
30:04He brutally murdered Margaret Maher in October 1997 and 18 months later killed psychotherapist Nicole Patterson
30:12in similar cold-blooded fashion.
30:15Nicole Patterson's sister expressed anger in court, telling Dupas to burn in hell as he was led away.
30:21He's the most evil, sadistic, cruel, cunning perpetrator.
30:27He's got to be the worst you can imagine.
30:34Who else had Peter Dupas killed?
30:38We decided to reinvestigate the unsolved homicide of a young lady who'd been brutally stabbed to death
30:44less than four weeks after Margaret Maher was killed.
30:53Good evening. Police are puzzled by the murder of a 25-year-old woman
30:57visiting her grandmother's grave at 4.30pm.
31:00A 25-year-old woman visiting her grandmother's grave at Faulkner Cemetery in Melbourne's north.
31:05Masuna Helvagus was killed in a random attack at a cemetery.
31:10In the days following, police interviewed several witnesses who told them a stalker had been active in the cemetery
31:18in the lead-up to her murder.
31:21When we reviewed the file, there was a face image done of the offender.
31:27It was just a mirror image of a photograph of Dupas.
31:42Masuna Helvagus's body was found close to her grandmother's grave in the north-eastern corner of the Faulkner Cemetery.
31:50She had been stabbed and there were signs of a struggle.
31:57Masuna had attended the Faulkner Cemetery on the 1st of November 1997.
32:04It was All Saints Day.
32:08She'd gone out to attend to the grave of her grandmother.
32:15She was taken by surprise in a horrific attack.
32:19She was struck, blunt force trauma to the face.
32:24A frenzied attack.
32:27Then she was dragged up into a vacant plot not far from her grandmother's grave.
32:37She was shot in the head.
32:40She was shot in the head.
32:42She was dragged up into a vacant plot not far from her grandmother's grave.
32:49I worked on the reinvestigation with Paul Scarlett, who had been a detective with the Sexual Crime Squad.
32:57We started at the beginning and we just went through absolutely everything.
33:01All the statements, the information reports, all the exhibits.
33:05Masuna had been stabbed multiple times in the chest area,
33:09as had Margaret Marr and Nicole Patterson.
33:17Petit Dupas lived just a few kilometres away from the cemetery.
33:21He drank at a pub nearby and he was stalking women in the days before the murder.
33:27We had Petit Dupas as a cemetery stalker.
33:32So we had him at the cemetery stalking women, and a number of women, over a period of time.
33:37But we didn't have him there as a murderer.
33:46The witness at the time said that that particular person
33:50was wearing a green style truckers jacket with a ripped pocket.
33:56The jacket described by the witness was a dead ringer for the jacket worn by Petit Dupas
34:02when he killed Nicole Patterson.
34:05There was some record in the file in relation to Dupas being spoken to
34:10after the murder of Masuna Halivagas.
34:13He was spoken to.
34:16And then he was released.
34:25In 1997, there simply wasn't enough evidence to launch a prosecution against Dupas.
34:31But after his conviction for the Patterson and Ma murders, it was time to have another crack.
34:44I'm Paul Coghlan. I was then the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the state of Victoria.
34:50The homicide squad had come to see me and I'd say,
34:53look, you're allowed to presume that the person you've got in your sights
34:58is the right person.
35:01Your case doesn't look too bad.
35:04But can you prove beyond reasonable doubt this is the right person?
35:08Well, you haven't quite got there.
35:12As a result of that, we sat down and we discussed what was our next plan of attack.
35:18To speak to anyone, basically in the prison system, that had done time with Dupas
35:25and to see whether they could help in relation to any information that may give us a nexus or a link.
35:36We discovered that Andrew Fraser, a lawyer that had been imprisoned for cocaine trafficking,
35:43had done time with Dupas.
35:54I'm Andrew Rule. I'm a crime writer primarily, but I've covered all sorts of things in journalism.
36:01I knew who Fraser was. How could you not if you're covering crime in Melbourne?
36:06Of course, I'd written stories about him going to jail.
36:10In 2002, Fraser is outside doing gardening out, you know, in the garden area of the jail with Peter Dupas.
36:20Fraser found a homemade knife, you know, a shiv that prisoners make,
36:25and he picked it up and said, oh, look at this.
36:28Dupas walked over and took the knife from Fraser and handled it.
36:32And Fraser said it was almost loving. He said it was weird the way he handled it.
36:37And he started to talk about the Messina Helvagus thing and said, Messina, Messina.
36:43Fraser became a confidant of Dupas. He told him things that he hadn't told anyone else.
36:50Fraser was more than happy to pass on that information when police reached out to him in jail.
36:56And what he said when contacted by the police was Dupas had confessed him.
37:05I looked at the form of confession and I thought, well,
37:08if you've got the confession as a coat hanger, you can hang the rest of the case of it.
37:15And that's really what happened.
37:18Good evening. A Supreme Court jury's heard a man accused of murdering Messina Helvagus
37:23at Faulkner Cemetery ten years ago gave a clear, unequivocal confession to a fellow prisoner.
37:28A man very familiar with the legal system, Andrew Fraser, today returned to the Supreme Court.
37:33Fraser told the court Dupas once re-enacted Messina Helvagus' stabbing in his jail cell.
37:39The witness was excused from the dock and in the middle of the courtroom demonstrated
37:44how Dupas allegedly made several forceful stabbing motions.
37:48It was a re-enactment in the Supreme Court that really nailed it.
37:52And Fraser was the only person in the world who could do that. And he did it.
37:58A Melbourne mother says triple murderer Peter Dupas has been charged with murder.
38:03Dupas will rot in hell after he was found guilty today of the frenzied stabbing murder of her daughter.
38:09Ten years of uncertainty were banished by a word and the large Helvagus family sighed as one.
38:16It doesn't change anything. Messina is never coming back, unfortunately.
38:20But it does help to relieve a little bit of pain for us.
38:23Gods will pay him. He'll rot in hell.
38:28I can say on behalf of Inspector Greg Hough, Detective Paul Scarlett and myself
38:35that it's been a long and winding road and we're glad it's over.
38:45You have no prospect of rehabilitation. None.
38:49You do not suffer from any mental illness.
38:53Rather, you are a psychopath driven by the hatred of women.
38:58Your attack was swift, savage and brutal, but directional.
39:04She had no chance against your strength, your knife and your hate.
39:10For the murder of Messina Helvagus, I sentence you to life imprisonment.
39:14I refuse to set any minimum term. Life means life.
39:18Petty Dupas clearly didn't like what he was hearing. He appealed the life sentence.
39:24The matter was then referred to the High Court.
39:27We then travelled, myself and Paul Scarlett, to the High Court
39:31and it was referred back for a retrial on a number of grounds.
39:35And then we retried him again.
39:39The jury heard the evidence, went out, deliberated
39:43and came back and convicted him of murder again.
39:48He got life, no minimum, never to be released.
39:58Peter Norris Dupas is serving three life sentences
40:02for the murder of three women in the state of Victoria.
40:06He may yet be charged with more unsolved murders that are still under investigation.
40:11Helen McMahon's body was found in sand dunes near Rye Back Beach on February 13th, 1985.
40:19Helen McMahon was a 48-year-old mother of four who regularly sunbathed on the Rye Back Beach.
40:26She was befell by somebody who has beaten her to death
40:32and her body covered by sand.
40:34She was befell by somebody who has beaten her to death
40:39and her body covered by her beach towel.
40:44Detectives investigating Helen McMahon's murder in 1985
40:48were told that Peter Dupas was behind bars at the time of her murder.
40:52However, the reality was that he was on two-week day leave,
40:57he was living nearby and had ample opportunity
41:01and the propensity we now know to have committed this crime.
41:09Renata Brunton was a 31-year-old woman who owned a second-hand store in Sunbury.
41:16She was killed in the back room of her shop,
41:20stabbed multiple times in the chest,
41:26predominantly around the breast area
41:31At the time of Renata's murder, 1993, Dupas was living nearby.
41:42A staff member of the Loyola Avenue Nursing Home discovered the body at 6.30 this morning.
41:49Kathleen Downs was on the floor beside her bed in a room closest to the street.
41:54Kathleen Downs, who was a 95-year-old,
41:58whose throat was slashed in the early hours of the morning
42:02while she was asleep in her bed in the aged care facility.
42:06Dupas lived nearby in Pascoe Vale.
42:10We had evidence that he had made several phone calls
42:14to the aged care facility prior to Kathleen's murder.
42:18We also took a statement from Andrew Fraser.
42:21He reported several conversations he had about Kathleen Downs with Dupas
42:25when they served time together in jail.
42:28He is the quintessential sociopath and psychopath.
42:32Well, an inquest has been told notorious serial killer Peter Dupas
42:36allegedly admitted to killing Brunswick grandmother Kathleen Downs
42:39because she reminded him of his mother.
42:42Dupas talked about the old sheila Dupas.
42:45Dupas has been formally charged with murdering Kathleen.
42:50Unfortunately, due to some legal issues,
42:54there was a discontinuance on the matter.
42:57The case against the monster was thrown out
43:00because key witness, disgraced lawyer Andrew Fraser,
43:03is too ill to give evidence.
43:06Fraser has spinal cancer and is too unwell to testify.
43:10That case is now closed.
43:13That case died with Andrew Fraser,
43:17who died in the winter of 2023.
43:28When we put all these six butchering murders together,
43:33there's one person who stands out above all others that I know of.
43:42That's the type of animal that we're dealing with here.
43:47Sex offending lives in the fantasy world.
43:51Its origins, its genesis is the fantasy world.
43:55Sex offenders try to live out their fantasies and can't.
44:00I can do it better next time.
44:03So they go next time, and then there's a next time, and then there's a next time.
44:08This is a genesis of serial rapists.
44:12This is a genesis of serial rapists.
44:21Will Dupas ever own up to his horrendous behaviour?
44:25I believe he made his mind up a long time ago.
44:29Over a protected period of time,
44:32we have spoken to Dupas in relation to multiple murders.
44:36He appears that he's heading towards the cliff and he's going to say something,
44:39and then he just comes back.
44:43He's doing triple life, never to be released.
44:46He'll die in jail, he'll rot in jail.
44:49My personal opinion is he'll never, ever, ever give up anything to us.
44:55But, you know, never give up, never take anything for granted,
44:59and just make sure that you keep on top of the investigation file,
45:03and, you know, at the end of the day you may get a result, and you probably will.
45:09Will Dupas ever own up to his horrendous behaviour?
45:15I did have this repetitive dream where it was all a mistake,
45:20and there's Nicole, and she's like, it's OK, I'm back.
45:25But then you come back to the acceptance of the reality.
45:29Will Dupas ever own up to his horrendous behaviour?
45:40Will Dupas ever own up to his horrendous behaviour?
45:46The darkness cannot overcome the light.
45:49You know, the light will have the final victory.
45:52He might have taken Nicole, but he's not going to take us.
45:58Since 1999 I've had a continuous connection with the Patterson family.
46:04They're decent human beings.
46:07I am in awe of the police.
46:11They were working 18 hours a day to catch these predators.
46:19You know, we are incredibly lucky with the work that they do.
46:24The police capture them and get them in front of the courts.
46:27The courts need to keep them behind bars.
46:36Will Dupas ever own up to his horrendous behaviour?