Speaker 1: Some people were just born wired wrongly, and I'd suggest
Speaker 1: that Peter Tupaz is probably one of those. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a hit man, he wasn't a carth He was just
Speaker 1: the very strange man who did very strange, terrible things
Speaker 1: at a fundamental level. As human beings, you present for
Speaker 1: us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question, how did you
Speaker 1: come to be as you? I'm Andrew Ruhle. This is
Speaker 1: Life and Crime. Today We're going to look back at
Speaker 1: a very sinister figure called Peter du Pass. Peter Tupas
Speaker 1: is known to most of us as the creepy man
Speaker 1: who killed a series of women over many years and
Speaker 1: was ultimately sentenced to I think three life sentences. But
Speaker 1: the existence of people like you pass raisues that thorny
Speaker 1: question is it nature or nurture? Is someone like Peter
Speaker 1: Gupas born bad? Or was he made that way? It
Speaker 1: seems to me that many of the people that we
Speaker 1: deal with in life and Crimes, probably most of them,
Speaker 1: many of the worst killers and violent crooks, were actually
Speaker 1: the products of abusive childhoods. And I know that sounds
Speaker 1: like a a trendy psychological angle, but it's become increasingly
Speaker 1: clear to me after looking into people's early lives that
Speaker 1: what happened to them as children did have a huge
Speaker 1: effect on the way they behaved later. But sprinkled through
Speaker 1: those are some of these absolutely terrible people for whom
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be a logical reason for their behavior.
Speaker 1: And it would appear that some people were just born
Speaker 1: wired wrongly. They're just bent units. And I'd suggest that
Speaker 1: Peter Dupass is probably one of those. You know, we
Speaker 1: so often read the signs with these guys. They were
Speaker 1: sent to boys homes very young, some of them, and
Speaker 1: so the happy little kid who was happy at seven
Speaker 1: or eight or nine years old becomes a sullen, violent
Speaker 1: teenager after incarceration in a boy's home, where they would
Speaker 1: be beaten and often very seriously abused, often sexually abused,
Speaker 1: which would create deep seated anger that played itself out
Speaker 1: in criminal acts throughout their lives. And some of the
Speaker 1: biggest names in crime and the most notorious figures in
Speaker 1: crime have had that sort of background. Russell Cox, known
Speaker 1: as Mad Dog Cox, real name I think Melville Schnitzeling.
Speaker 1: He was sent to a boy's home, I understand, and
Speaker 1: for stealing a bike when he was a little boy,
Speaker 1: and the story he told to other crooks was that
Speaker 1: he'd won a bike in a raffle or something like
Speaker 1: a competition of some sort, but it hadn't been given
Speaker 1: to him. Somebody else took the bike and he didn't
Speaker 1: get it, and in a fit of rage or petulance
Speaker 1: or whatever, at the age of ten, he went and
Speaker 1: stole the bike, and that put him on the path
Speaker 1: to criminality because he was put in the boy's home
Speaker 1: and what happened to him in the boy's home turned
Speaker 1: him into a young criminal who became one of the
Speaker 1: most notorious arm robbers and probably killers, and certainly one
Speaker 1: of the most famous escape artists in Australian criminal history.
Speaker 1: And that pattern has happened over and over again. Du Pass,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, came from what has been described
Speaker 1: as a fairly normal family. Now fairly normal covers a
Speaker 1: lot of ground. What is a fairly normal family will
Speaker 1: In this case, it wasn't absolutely normal because Dupass, although
Speaker 1: he had two siblings, they were much older than he was.
Speaker 1: He was a child born a long time after his
Speaker 1: brothers or sisters, and his parents were quite old when
Speaker 1: he was being brought up and effectively he was the
Speaker 1: only child of aging parents rather than a happy little
Speaker 1: kid who was one of three or four or five
Speaker 1: running around together, so he was a bit unusual from
Speaker 1: an early age. Dupas was born in Sydney in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, but when he was a little boy a toddler,
Speaker 1: he moved with his parents to Melbourne and he grew
Speaker 1: up in the Southeastern suburbs of Melbourne. Nothing really is
Speaker 1: known about his early childhood, but in October nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: when he was fifteen, he was visiting the next door.
Speaker 1: Now this woman was a married woman with some age
Speaker 1: on it. It wasn't a teenager. It was the married
Speaker 1: lady next door who was probably the age of Dupas's mother,
Speaker 1: and he requested to borrow a knife for peeling vegetables.
Speaker 1: Back in those days, people peeled their potatoes and things
Speaker 1: with small vegetable knives. He asked to borrow a knife.
Speaker 1: The lady handed him a knife and he just turned
Speaker 1: around and stabbed her with it repeatedly in the faith,
Speaker 1: the neck, and the hand. He later told police that
Speaker 1: he could not help himself and he didn't know why
Speaker 1: he had attacked her. Interestingly, given that we often think that,
Speaker 1: you know, the courts are softer now than they used
Speaker 1: to be in the good old, bad old days. Back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, he was placed on eighteen months probation,
Speaker 1: though not locked up at all, and admitted to the
Speaker 1: l Arundel Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation. He was released after
Speaker 1: two weeks there and treated as an outpatient. So here's
Speaker 1: this fifteen year old teenage boy big enough to kill
Speaker 1: somebody who stabbed a woman who lived next door for
Speaker 1: no reason. He's back on the streets in a fortnight,
Speaker 1: and he's clearly got psychiatric problems. We don't know what
Speaker 1: happened over the next twelve months, but what we do
Speaker 1: know is that in October nineteen sixty nine, one year later,
Speaker 1: October was a bad month for the young petitive Pass.
Speaker 1: There was a break in at the Austin Hospital mortuary
Speaker 1: and apparently the bodies of two elderly women were mutilated.
Speaker 1: One body had a particularly strange thigh wound. Later on,
Speaker 1: when the adult du Pass offended repeatedly, police looked back
Speaker 1: at that unsolved case of who broke into the mortuary
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine and said, we think it was
Speaker 1: Dupass When he was a teenager, because that is such
Speaker 1: a weird thing that he would take a knife to
Speaker 1: the bodies of elderly women and mutilate them. A very
Speaker 1: rare psychological case, and it would seem clear that it
Speaker 1: was probably him. Nineteen seventy three, So now we're jumping
Speaker 1: forward another four years and that makes him twenty odd,
Speaker 1: roughly twenty. A senior detective called Ian Armstrong, who interviewed
Speaker 1: dupass at Nanea Wadding after he must have come to
Speaker 1: police attention. Obviously, He said that the young Peter Gupaz
Speaker 1: was weak and compliant when confronted by authority, but there
Speaker 1: was something unsettling about his personality. He was a spooky,
Speaker 1: strange boy. And Armstrong said, and I quote to me,
Speaker 1: the guy was just pure evil. His attacks were all
Speaker 1: carefully planned and he showed no remorse. We could see
Speaker 1: where he was going. I remember thinking, this guy could
Speaker 1: go all the way. He's an unmitigated liar, a very
Speaker 1: dangerous person who will continue to offend where females are concerned,
Speaker 1: and will possibly cause the death of one of his
Speaker 1: victims if he is not straightened out. Well, nostrodamus, he
Speaker 1: got that one right, because the twenty year old pet
Speaker 1: dupas As He was then went on to become one
Speaker 1: of the worst offenders in Australian weirdo killings history. He
Speaker 1: wasn't a bank rubber, he wasn't a hit man, he
Speaker 1: wasn't a car He was just the very strange man
Speaker 1: who did very strange, terrible things. There was a screw
Speaker 1: loose in his brain, string of sex offenses. His offenses
Speaker 1: were sexually related. July nineteen seventy four Jupas, who at
Speaker 1: this stage is twenty one, He was sentenced to nine
Speaker 1: years with a minimum of five for an attack on
Speaker 1: a woman in her home. Yet again woman at home.
Speaker 1: He broke into the victim's house and threatened her with
Speaker 1: a knife before tying her up with cord and raping her.
Speaker 1: He threatened to harm her baby when she resisted. The
Speaker 1: sentencing judge said it was quote one of the worst
Speaker 1: rapes that could be imagined. Back in those days, there
Speaker 1: was a prison psychiatrist called doctor Alan Bartholomew, known when
Speaker 1: I was a young reporteriss Dr Bart. He was the
Speaker 1: Pentridge prison shrink and was always a colorful character to
Speaker 1: talk about crooks and Doctor Alan Bartholomew noted that Dupas
Speaker 1: was in constant denial and I quote, this youth has
Speaker 1: a serious psychosexual problem using denial as a coping device,
Speaker 1: and he has to be seen as potentially dangerous. The
Speaker 1: denial technique makes for you huge difficulty in treatment, meaning
Speaker 1: Gepass would never fess up, never say I did it
Speaker 1: and why, and wouldn't talk about it. And by denying it,
Speaker 1: he basically just set himself up to offend and reoffend
Speaker 1: and reoffend. He was released in nineteen seventy nine. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: five years only minimum. Again, we make the point that
Speaker 1: in the past, I think judges and courts were every
Speaker 1: bit as lenient as they are today in most cases.
Speaker 1: In most cases nineteen seventy nine, is released and within
Speaker 1: a matter of days he does four separate attacks in
Speaker 1: a ten day period. Twenty eighth of February nineteen Eightyjupas
Speaker 1: received a five year minimum prison sentence for these serious
Speaker 1: sex assaults. A nineteen eighty report on Jepaz stated that
Speaker 1: there is little that can be said in his favor.
Speaker 1: Here remains an extreme, disturbed, immature and dangerous man. His
Speaker 1: release on parole was a mistake. Well, at least they
Speaker 1: told it how it was served the five years February
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. You can see the pattern that's emerging
Speaker 1: with this fellow. Just how predictable an offender. He was
Speaker 1: released February eighty five. A month later, he rapes a
Speaker 1: twenty one year old woman on a beach at blair
Speaker 1: Gowry down on the Mornington Peninsula. Jupas followed this woman
Speaker 1: and attacked her, holding her to the ground at knife
Speaker 1: point before raping her on the twenty eighth of June
Speaker 1: eighty five. He's sentenced to twelve years for that rape
Speaker 1: at blair Gary Beach. He's released in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: after seven years, so twelve year sentence seven year minimum
Speaker 1: gets out again. You'd think someone in the system after
Speaker 1: all these offenses would have said this fellow should serve
Speaker 1: every day he possibly can, and then a bit more
Speaker 1: as well. But that's not what happened. They put him
Speaker 1: through the system. They shoved him out at the other
Speaker 1: end in the minimum of seven years. Less than two
Speaker 1: years after that release, Jupez was arrested on charges of
Speaker 1: false imprisonment over an incident at Lake Epilock in January
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. Wearing a hood and armed with a knife,
Speaker 1: insulation tape and handcuffs. He followed a woman and held
Speaker 1: her at a knife point in a toilet block, but
Speaker 1: was chased off by her friends. He crashed his car
Speaker 1: and was caught. So he's not a master criminal. He's
Speaker 1: a consistent offender, recidivus offender, but nothing he does is
Speaker 1: particularly well planned. It seems that he's a total creature
Speaker 1: of his own impulses. Eighteenth of August nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: he faces caught at Bendigo over the epilock business. He's
Speaker 1: then sentenced to three years and nine months imprisonment with
Speaker 1: a minimum of two years and nine months. So he's
Speaker 1: tried to abduct a person in a toilet block, arm
Speaker 1: with a knife. He's a multiple offender all his life,
Speaker 1: from the time of fifteen, and he still really only
Speaker 1: gets a minimum of two years and nine months. He's
Speaker 1: released in September ninety six and moved into a house
Speaker 1: in Pascal Vale, and this is where the rest of
Speaker 1: us start to hear about him. Before this, he's a
Speaker 1: guy that is known to some police and to the
Speaker 1: court system, and would have been known in jail as
Speaker 1: a sex offender. He would have served his time with
Speaker 1: other sex offenders as they used to do it then,
Speaker 1: probably places like sale or Arrowrat prison where they would
Speaker 1: send people like him. April nineteen ninety nine, Nicole Patterson
Speaker 1: was a twenty eight year old psychotherapist and youth counselor
Speaker 1: employed to assist young drug users. Nicole wanted her own
Speaker 1: private practice and was using her northgot home to practice.
Speaker 1: She placed ads in a local newspaper to attract clients.
Speaker 1: Two neighbors reported hearing the screams of a young woman
Speaker 1: coming from Nicole Patterson's house on the day of her murder.
Speaker 1: Her boyfriend could not contact her in the afternoon and
Speaker 1: he would have gone around or called the police or whatever.
Speaker 1: On a nineteenth of April that year, nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Nicole Patterson's mutilated body was discovered by a friend in
Speaker 1: the front room of her house. There were twenty seven
Speaker 1: stab wounds to her chest and back. Her body was
Speaker 1: naked from the waist down, and here is the telltale
Speaker 1: sign of dupass's depravity. Both her breasts had been removed
Speaker 1: using a sharp knife. Her handbag and driver's license was stolen.
Speaker 1: The murder weapon and Nicole Patterson's breasts were never recovered.
Speaker 1: Police investigations of the crime scene revealed that Nicole Patterson
Speaker 1: had a nine am appointment with a new client by
Speaker 1: the name of Quote Malcolm, as noted in her personal diary,
Speaker 1: alongside a mobile telephone number. The number was traced to
Speaker 1: an Indian student named Harry. Police learned that Dupass had
Speaker 1: approached Harry with an offer of work. On twenty second
Speaker 1: of April nineteen ninety nine, police arrested du Pass at
Speaker 1: midday at the Excelsior Hotel in Thomastown and charged him
Speaker 1: with murder. The same day. According to telephone records, Jewpass
Speaker 1: had made three calls to Nicole Patterson to arrange counseling
Speaker 1: for Quote depression and a gambling addiction. Over the next
Speaker 1: six weeks, Duwpass made calls to Nicole Patterson, police believe,
Speaker 1: to gauge her vulnerability, to see when she be home
Speaker 1: alone and all that sort of stuff. Police noticed scratches
Speaker 1: on Jipass's face and hand. Gepaz claimed that these were
Speaker 1: from working in his shed and that a piece of
Speaker 1: wood had hit him while using a lathe in a
Speaker 1: woodworking lathe, but he didn't own a lathe. Small problem
Speaker 1: with his story so he changed his story. A search
Speaker 1: of his home revealed bloodstained clothing, PVC tape of the
Speaker 1: type used to bind the col Patterson, a scheme mask,
Speaker 1: newspaper clippings detailing Patterson's murder, and also a paper containing
Speaker 1: her advertisement for psychotherapy services. He faced trial in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, and the jury was quick to give
Speaker 1: a guilty verdict, as you would imagine a jury would.
Speaker 1: On twenty second of August that year two thousand, while
Speaker 1: sentencing your past to life without parole, Judge Frank Vincent
Speaker 1: Frank the Tank, as he was fondly known, a man
Speaker 1: who represented I think several hundred murderers over his career.
Speaker 1: He was an extraordinarily skilled and willing defense advocate who
Speaker 1: became a much admired judge. We hear at life and crimes.
Speaker 1: We admire judges. We just like to put that in.
Speaker 1: Frank Vincent said, the prospects of your eventual rehabilitation must
Speaker 1: be regarded as so close to hopeless that they can
Speaker 1: be effectively discounted. There is no indication whatsoever that you
Speaker 1: have experienced any sense of remorse for what you have done,
Speaker 1: and I doubt that you are capable of any such
Speaker 1: human response at a fundamental level. As human beings, you
Speaker 1: present for us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question, how
Speaker 1: did you come to be as you are? I think
Speaker 1: one of the more memorable judgments made in Victoria, especially
Speaker 1: in that era, Frank Vincent was truly appalled at what
Speaker 1: he'd seen and heard in court. You can hear that
Speaker 1: reflected in the words he used in that judgment. Jupass
Speaker 1: appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal
Speaker 1: the following year to try and appeal his conviction for
Speaker 1: the murder. His appeal was dismissed, so it was clear
Speaker 1: to police that they should look at du Passes other
Speaker 1: movements and see whether they lined up with unsolved sex
Speaker 1: murders committed with knives where bodies were mutilated. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, there was an unsolved case that year where
Speaker 1: a woman called Margaret Josephine mar a sex worker, last
Speaker 1: scene alive at the Safeway supermarket just after midnight in
Speaker 1: broad Meadows again in October. Interestingly, October nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: she was last sent. Her body was found under a
Speaker 1: cardboard box on October the fourth by a fellow called
Speaker 1: Ronald mac donald. Who made the discovery while collecting aluminium
Speaker 1: cans in the suburb of Somerton, which in those days
Speaker 1: was semi rural and near broad Meadows. A black glove
Speaker 1: was found near Mar's body, which police later confirmed contained
Speaker 1: du Passes DNA. A post mortem examination revealed that Margaret
Speaker 1: Mar had suffered a stab wound to her left wrist,
Speaker 1: bruising to her neck, blunt forced trauma to the area
Speaker 1: of her right eyebrow, and lacerations to her right arm,
Speaker 1: but her left breast had been removed and put into
Speaker 1: her mouth. At the time, dupass had been out of
Speaker 1: prison just over a year after serving time for rape
Speaker 1: and was no longer under the supervision of Corrections Victoria,
Speaker 1: and so police working backwards were able to deduce that
Speaker 1: he was the best candidate for this crime, because there
Speaker 1: aren't that many people going around killing women and cutting
Speaker 1: off their breasts. Gepaz was already serving a life sentence
Speaker 1: without parole for the murder of Nicole Pattison. Of course,
Speaker 1: at this time, when he was re arrested for the
Speaker 1: murder of Margaret Mahr with gupassing custody, police were able
Speaker 1: to obtain a DNA sample which linked him to Mars
Speaker 1: murder three years earlier. During his trial, evidence presented that
Speaker 1: the removal of breasts were so strikingly similar as to
Speaker 1: be a signature stamp to both crimes, identifying Gepaz as
Speaker 1: the killer of both women. The jury, who was not
Speaker 1: told that Gepaz was already serving life convicted. Upon hearing
Speaker 1: the jury delivered the guilty verdict, Dupass claimed it's a
Speaker 1: kangaroo court before he was led away After the guilty verdict.
Speaker 1: Kylie Nicholas, Nicole Patterson's sister, discribed him as the most
Speaker 1: evil predator, a psychopath, a true evil, predatory, cunning, repulsive person.
Speaker 1: It's such a rare evil that comes into this world
Speaker 1: that has destroyed these women and our lives. We're just
Speaker 1: praying that this man is held accountable for everything that
Speaker 1: he has done. In August two thousand and four, Dupas
Speaker 1: was convicted of killing Margaret Maher back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven and sentenced to a second term of life imprisonment.
Speaker 1: So he's already in for Nicole Patterson and he copies
Speaker 1: second life imprisonment. Then comes a case that many of
Speaker 1: us have heard of because it became a bit of
Speaker 1: a coarse celeb and that it was the unsolved murder
Speaker 1: of a young woman called Messina Helfargas. Messina was twenty five.
Speaker 1: She was murdered on November the first of nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven that year again same year as Margaret Mah, while
Speaker 1: visiting her grandmother's grave in the Greek Orthodox section of
Speaker 1: the Faulkner Cemetery. The alarm was raised by Mersina's fiance
Speaker 1: when she failed to meet with him later that day.
Speaker 1: Now you'll recall it earlier we mentioned it. Jupas had
Speaker 1: been arrested in a pub in Thomastown for one of
Speaker 1: his offenses, and of course the Faulkland Cemetery is out
Speaker 1: in that direction, out on that side of Melbourne. Messina's
Speaker 1: body was discovered at four thirty five am on November
Speaker 1: fifth by her fiancee in the cemetery, in an empty plot,
Speaker 1: three graves from where her grandmother was buried. Police believed
Speaker 1: that Mersina was attacked from behind while kneeling to attend
Speaker 1: to a flower arrangement, and that she died from massive injuries,
Speaker 1: including eighty seven stab wounds around her kne's neck, but
Speaker 1: with most of the wounds concentrated around her breasts. Her
Speaker 1: upper clothing had been pulled over her head towards her chest.
Speaker 1: Du Pass's home in Cone Street, Pascoe Vale was near
Speaker 1: the cemetery. Halvargaz's murder had remained unsolved since nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: with the Victorian government together with police, offering a one
Speaker 1: million dollar reward for information leading to an arrest. It
Speaker 1: was only the fourth million dollar re ward in Victoria's history.
Speaker 1: We should point out here that Mersina Halvargaz's father, mister Halvargus,
Speaker 1: had a long concerted campaign for a big reward to
Speaker 1: solve his daughter's murder. And he spoke i think to
Speaker 1: Jeff Kennett, but certainly to senior politicians and senior police,
Speaker 1: and he pointed out correctly that there'd been a million
Speaker 1: dollary wood posted over the murder, a terrible murder of
Speaker 1: Jane Thurgood Dove at her Nidriy home on Oaksday in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. And that of course was the murder
Speaker 1: where a pop bellied gunman jumped out of a car,
Speaker 1: chased Jane Thurgoodove around her car and shot it dead
Speaker 1: in front of a children who were in her car.
Speaker 1: And it was a case of mistaken identity. The stupid
Speaker 1: gunman alleged hitmen had been hired by another crook to
Speaker 1: kill the wife of yet another crook, and the woman
Speaker 1: that they intended to kill lived in the same street
Speaker 1: as Jane Thurgoodove, and they shot the wrong one. It's
Speaker 1: not better or worse. Killing anyone's bad, but proh Jane
Speaker 1: Thurgoodove was shot dead in front of her kids because
Speaker 1: she happened to look a little bit like another woman
Speaker 1: living in the same street. But Jane Thurgodove was a young, blonde,
Speaker 1: attractive and her case attracted a lot of attention, naturally,
Speaker 1: and there was a million dollar reward posted for it,
Speaker 1: and Mersina Helvargas's father, Bless his soul, pointed out that
Speaker 1: it didn't seem fair that his daughter's death did not
Speaker 1: attract a similar reward, and he made his case to
Speaker 1: the authorities, and they agreed, and they posted a million
Speaker 1: dollar reward to try and solve the Messina Helvargas case.
Speaker 1: This led to renewed interest in the case. It was
Speaker 1: fairly clear to investigators that Jupass would have to be
Speaker 1: a prime candidate for these reasons, and these reasons were
Speaker 1: cited at the inquest into Mersina's death. Nine witnesses identified
Speaker 1: Youpass as a man they saw at Fulkland Cemetery on
Speaker 1: the day of the attack of the murder. Jupasz's grandfather's
Speaker 1: gravesite is located one hundred and twenty eight meters from
Speaker 1: the crime scene. He'd been there before with his family.
Speaker 1: Dupaz frequented the First and Last Hotel, which is located
Speaker 1: just opposite the cemetery. Dupas lied to police about a
Speaker 1: facial injury received at around the time of the attack
Speaker 1: on Helvagas. Jupaz attempted to alter his appearance. After the
Speaker 1: Helvagas murder, Dupaz was identified by a woman from police photographs.
Speaker 1: She said she'd seen him a few minutes before the attack,
Speaker 1: twenty meters from where Messina Helvagas was murdered. These would
Speaker 1: seem to be a comprehensive and re damning list of
Speaker 1: witnesses against Peter Dupaz, who of course was already serving
Speaker 1: two life sentences for similar murders. A senior detective told
Speaker 1: the inquest that a car used by Dupass at the
Speaker 1: time of the murder was sold to a work associate
Speaker 1: soon after the murder just another thing. Forensic pathologist David Ransom,
Speaker 1: who compared wounds suffered by Helvagas to the wounds suffered
Speaker 1: by Patterson and mar told the Inquest that strictly speaking,
Speaker 1: there was insufficient evidence to show that the wounds were
Speaker 1: inflicted by the same knife. That doesn't mean it wasn't
Speaker 1: inflicted by the same man, of course. Dupasz's lawyer, David
Speaker 1: Drake said the only evidence linking Dupas to the murder
Speaker 1: of Messina Halvargas was the fact that Dupas had lived
Speaker 1: near For con symmetry and his reputation based on prior
Speaker 1: convictions for similar offenses. Well, he makes a good point
Speaker 1: that he did live near there, and he did have
Speaker 1: a very powerful reputation for similar offenses, and the list
Speaker 1: of witnesses would seem to make it overwhelming. The upshot
Speaker 1: was that in two thousand and six, the inquest was
Speaker 1: adjourned indefinitely following charges laid by police for the murder
Speaker 1: of Messina Helvagas. After obtaining a court order granting permission
Speaker 1: to interview dupass in relation to Messina Halvagas's murder, police
Speaker 1: collected him from Bown prison in September two thousand and
Speaker 1: six and took him to Saint Kilda Road Police station
Speaker 1: for questioning. They charged Dupass with the murder, and they
Speaker 1: did this after receiving certain key information from our old
Speaker 1: friend of the late rogue lawyer Andrew Fraser, who it's
Speaker 1: well known, while serving time at Fulham Prison near Saal,
Speaker 1: told detectives who came up there to talk to him
Speaker 1: that in fact Dupas had confessed to the killing while
Speaker 1: they were gardening together in Port Philip Prison back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Fraser told police he had once
Speaker 1: found a home made knife concealed among the weeds at
Speaker 1: Port Philip Prison and that he called Dupas over to
Speaker 1: inspect it, which is when they got talking and Gepass
Speaker 1: confessed the crime. He confessed to killing Mersina and Phraser
Speaker 1: said this. We regularly used to find stuff hidden in
Speaker 1: the garden, drugs, weapons and other stuff. I once found
Speaker 1: a home made knife and called Gepass over to show
Speaker 1: it to him. He took it off me and started
Speaker 1: handling it, almost caressing it in a sexual way. Gepass
Speaker 1: then started saying Messina, Mersina over and over with this
Speaker 1: strange look on his face. I was left in no
Speaker 1: doubt that Dupass murdered Mersina. This wasn't some sort of
Speaker 1: jail house confession where somebody's gone in and sat in
Speaker 1: the cell one night and had a brew with another
Speaker 1: prisoner and somebody has allegedly said something. It's a lot
Speaker 1: stronger than that. Gepass and I spoke regularly, just the
Speaker 1: two of us. This was over months, months that he
Speaker 1: was talking to me and confiding in me. There was
Speaker 1: one occasion when another prisoner came up to us when
Speaker 1: we were gardening and started abusing Gupass. This prisoner was
Speaker 1: yelling at Gipaz, saying, you killed Merceina, You killed Mersina.
Speaker 1: After he had gone, Gepaz turned to me and said,
Speaker 1: how does that expleeve deleted? No, I did it. After
Speaker 1: agreeing to give evidence against Gepasz, Andrew Fraser was released
Speaker 1: from Fulham Correctional Center in September two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: a few weeks early of his five year sentence for
Speaker 1: drug trafficking. We all know that Andrew Fraser's story. We
Speaker 1: have talked to him in this very studio at length
Speaker 1: about that and other matters. Of course, he died last year.
Speaker 1: The Victorian government, in its wisdom, said that Andrew Fraser
Speaker 1: was eligible for a share of the one million dollar
Speaker 1: reward because without Fraser's key evidence about pass, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have got the conviction against Dupas for the Helvagas murder,
Speaker 1: a conviction which in one sense didn't matter because he
Speaker 1: was already serving life, but it mattered a lot to
Speaker 1: Mersina Helvargas's family, and so it was worth doing. The
Speaker 1: exercise was worth doing. And the key evidence that Fraser
Speaker 1: gave was that Dupas had demonstrated to him miming how
Speaker 1: he had stabbed Mersina whilst she was in a kneeling position,
Speaker 1: and he was able to come up with details which
Speaker 1: the police knew accorded with the facts, and those facts.
Speaker 1: Not all those facts have been made public, so if
Speaker 1: Fraser hadn't got them from Dupaz, there was no other
Speaker 1: way for him to get these certain details. And so
Speaker 1: the court accepted his evidence and he received part of
Speaker 1: the reward. How much he got, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I always got the impression that was several hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: It wasn't, you know, twenty grand or something, but it
Speaker 1: was probably not north of half a minute. There are
Speaker 1: some postscripts to the terrible story of Peter Gupaz and
Speaker 1: later on police were able to look through files and
Speaker 1: see if they could match up Dupas's whereabouts with other
Speaker 1: unsolved crimes. There was the murder of a woman called
Speaker 1: Helen McMahon. She was a forty seven year old bashed
Speaker 1: to death at a Rye beach in February nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Although Dupas was technically imprisoned at the time of her
Speaker 1: murder and was not formally released until two weeks later,
Speaker 1: investigators learned that he was on pre release leave and
Speaker 1: in the Rye area when she was killed. Well, that
Speaker 1: was handy. Just goes to show that records can be misleading.
Speaker 1: The record showed that he was in jail, was in
Speaker 1: the control of corrections, Victoria or something, but the reality
Speaker 1: was he was on a temporary release and he took
Speaker 1: the opportunity, probably to kill that woman. Halen McMahon was
Speaker 1: sunbathing topless on the beach when she was attacked. Her
Speaker 1: body was discovered naked, covered by her beach tail. The
Speaker 1: location was near where Gepass had earlier raped the twenty
Speaker 1: one year old woman at Blair Garry. The case we
Speaker 1: spoke about. Police believed that Helen McMahon in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five was probably Dupass's first murder victim, although her
Speaker 1: murder officially remains unsolved. Then in nineteen ninety three, there
Speaker 1: was the murder of a thirty one year old woman
Speaker 1: called Rnita Brunton in Sunbury that was never solved, but
Speaker 1: some elements of that make police think that Dupass was
Speaker 1: good for it. And this case a case that I
Speaker 1: remember writing about when it happened, it was a mystery, strange, disturbing,
Speaker 1: terrible thing. A ninety five year old woman called Kathleen Downs,
Speaker 1: who was living at the Brunswick Lodge nursing home, was
Speaker 1: stabbed to death at six thirty in the morning on
Speaker 1: December the thirty first, that is New Year's Eve, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, one month after Messina Halvagas's murder. Police investigations
Speaker 1: later revealed that Jupass had telephoned the nursing home some
Speaker 1: time before the murder. No charges have been laid regarding
Speaker 1: Kathleen downs murder. At the time I recall this, it
Speaker 1: was regarded as just a complete mystery. Who had done this?
Speaker 1: A shocking crime, complete mystery. Who was Only later on
Speaker 1: police Rabela join the Dotson work out that it was
Speaker 1: probably him, and so that rules a line under the
Speaker 1: Terrible Life and Crimes of a terrible man, Peter Dupaz,
Speaker 1: someone who we suspected was probably born bent in the
Speaker 1: way that very few people are. It's conceivable that some
Speaker 1: other notorious offenders were also born with a kink in
Speaker 1: their brain. And you'd have to wonder about Paul Charles Daniel,
Speaker 1: who killed three young women back in the late nineties.
Speaker 1: You would have to wonder about Derek Edward Percy, who
Speaker 1: had shown very sinister and strange impulses from the time
Speaker 1: that he was a young child. However, most of the
Speaker 1: people who go on to be violent offenders have been
Speaker 1: offended against themselves, and mostly it's a case of as
Speaker 1: the Twiggies bent the tree shall grow, only a handful
Speaker 1: are born as bent as Peter Jupaz. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for
Speaker 1: True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns,
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