WEBVTT - Peter Dupas: Born wired wrongly 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:06.320 Some people were just born wired wrongly, and I'd suggest 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:11.080 that Peter Tupaz is probably one of those. He wasn't 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:15.000 a hit man, he wasn't a carth He was just 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.840 the very strange man who did very strange, terrible things 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.840 at a fundamental level. As human beings, you present for 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:28.080 us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question, how did you 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:32.239 come to be as you? I'm Andrew Ruhle. This is 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:36.160 Life and Crime. Today We're going to look back at 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:40.600 a very sinister figure called Peter du Pass. Peter Tupas 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:43.720 is known to most of us as the creepy man 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:49.320 who killed a series of women over many years and 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:53.519 was ultimately sentenced to I think three life sentences. But 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:58.360 the existence of people like you pass raisues that thorny 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:03.560 question is it nature or nurture? Is someone like Peter 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:08.080 Gupas born bad? Or was he made that way? It 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:10.720 seems to me that many of the people that we 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:15.360 deal with in life and Crimes, probably most of them, 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.959 many of the worst killers and violent crooks, were actually 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.720 the products of abusive childhoods. And I know that sounds 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:29.559 like a a trendy psychological angle, but it's become increasingly 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:34.280 clear to me after looking into people's early lives that 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:37.920 what happened to them as children did have a huge 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:42.520 effect on the way they behaved later. But sprinkled through 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:46.640 those are some of these absolutely terrible people for whom 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:51.240 there doesn't seem to be a logical reason for their behavior. 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.920 And it would appear that some people were just born 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:03.280 wired wrongly. They're just bent units. And I'd suggest that 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:08.480 Peter Dupass is probably one of those. You know, we 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:11.520 so often read the signs with these guys. They were 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.320 sent to boys homes very young, some of them, and 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:18.840 so the happy little kid who was happy at seven 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:23.240 or eight or nine years old becomes a sullen, violent 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:27.880 teenager after incarceration in a boy's home, where they would 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:34.040 be beaten and often very seriously abused, often sexually abused, 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:39.880 which would create deep seated anger that played itself out 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.799 in criminal acts throughout their lives. And some of the 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:48.600 biggest names in crime and the most notorious figures in 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.799 crime have had that sort of background. Russell Cox, known 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:56.600 as Mad Dog Cox, real name I think Melville Schnitzeling. 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:00.040 He was sent to a boy's home, I understand, and 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:03.160 for stealing a bike when he was a little boy, 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:06.040 and the story he told to other crooks was that 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.880 he'd won a bike in a raffle or something like 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:13.560 a competition of some sort, but it hadn't been given 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:15.600 to him. Somebody else took the bike and he didn't 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.880 get it, and in a fit of rage or petulance 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.799 or whatever, at the age of ten, he went and 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.280 stole the bike, and that put him on the path 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:28.160 to criminality because he was put in the boy's home 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.360 and what happened to him in the boy's home turned 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:35.760 him into a young criminal who became one of the 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:41.840 most notorious arm robbers and probably killers, and certainly one 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:46.320 of the most famous escape artists in Australian criminal history. 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:51.920 And that pattern has happened over and over again. Du Pass, 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:56.640 on the other hand, came from what has been described 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:01.200 as a fairly normal family. Now fairly normal covers a 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.200 lot of ground. What is a fairly normal family will 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:08.560 In this case, it wasn't absolutely normal because Dupass, although 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:11.760 he had two siblings, they were much older than he was. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.320 He was a child born a long time after his 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.560 brothers or sisters, and his parents were quite old when 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:25.120 he was being brought up and effectively he was the 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:30.040 only child of aging parents rather than a happy little 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:31.839 kid who was one of three or four or five 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.400 running around together, so he was a bit unusual from 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.800 an early age. Dupas was born in Sydney in nineteen 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:42.160 fifty three, but when he was a little boy a toddler, 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.760 he moved with his parents to Melbourne and he grew 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:51.440 up in the Southeastern suburbs of Melbourne. Nothing really is 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:56.039 known about his early childhood, but in October nineteen sixty eight, 0:04:56.080 --> 0:05:00.600 when he was fifteen, he was visiting the next door. 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:04.159 Now this woman was a married woman with some age 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.839 on it. It wasn't a teenager. It was the married 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:11.720 lady next door who was probably the age of Dupas's mother, 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.400 and he requested to borrow a knife for peeling vegetables. 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.600 Back in those days, people peeled their potatoes and things 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:23.480 with small vegetable knives. He asked to borrow a knife. 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:26.799 The lady handed him a knife and he just turned 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:29.719 around and stabbed her with it repeatedly in the faith, 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.560 the neck, and the hand. He later told police that 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:37.120 he could not help himself and he didn't know why 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:42.440 he had attacked her. Interestingly, given that we often think that, 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:44.960 you know, the courts are softer now than they used 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:47.479 to be in the good old, bad old days. Back 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.240 in nineteen sixty eight, he was placed on eighteen months probation, 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.240 though not locked up at all, and admitted to the 0:05:55.320 --> 0:06:00.000 l Arundel Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation. He was released after 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.960 two weeks there and treated as an outpatient. So here's 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.719 this fifteen year old teenage boy big enough to kill 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:11.200 somebody who stabbed a woman who lived next door for 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.320 no reason. He's back on the streets in a fortnight, 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.919 and he's clearly got psychiatric problems. We don't know what 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:22.800 happened over the next twelve months, but what we do 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:26.040 know is that in October nineteen sixty nine, one year later, 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.080 October was a bad month for the young petitive Pass. 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:34.479 There was a break in at the Austin Hospital mortuary 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:40.839 and apparently the bodies of two elderly women were mutilated. 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:46.560 One body had a particularly strange thigh wound. Later on, 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:53.159 when the adult du Pass offended repeatedly, police looked back 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:57.719 at that unsolved case of who broke into the mortuary 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.960 in nineteen sixty nine and said, we think it was 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:05.039 Dupass When he was a teenager, because that is such 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:09.080 a weird thing that he would take a knife to 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:14.080 the bodies of elderly women and mutilate them. A very 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.960 rare psychological case, and it would seem clear that it 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.239 was probably him. Nineteen seventy three, So now we're jumping 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.080 forward another four years and that makes him twenty odd, 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:30.120 roughly twenty. A senior detective called Ian Armstrong, who interviewed 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:33.520 dupass at Nanea Wadding after he must have come to 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.800 police attention. Obviously, He said that the young Peter Gupaz 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:42.840 was weak and compliant when confronted by authority, but there 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:47.200 was something unsettling about his personality. He was a spooky, 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:52.640 strange boy. And Armstrong said, and I quote to me, 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:56.200 the guy was just pure evil. His attacks were all 0:07:56.280 --> 0:08:00.000 carefully planned and he showed no remorse. We could see 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:04.720 where he was going. I remember thinking, this guy could 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:09.440 go all the way. He's an unmitigated liar, a very 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:15.560 dangerous person who will continue to offend where females are concerned, 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:17.600 and will possibly cause the death of one of his 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:22.800 victims if he is not straightened out. Well, nostrodamus, he 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:26.560 got that one right, because the twenty year old pet 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:30.520 dupas As He was then went on to become one 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:37.720 of the worst offenders in Australian weirdo killings history. He 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:41.040 wasn't a bank rubber, he wasn't a hit man, he 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:45.880 wasn't a car He was just the very strange man 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:49.680 who did very strange, terrible things. There was a screw 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:54.080 loose in his brain, string of sex offenses. His offenses 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:59.079 were sexually related. July nineteen seventy four Jupas, who at 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.120 this stage is twenty one, He was sentenced to nine 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:05.040 years with a minimum of five for an attack on 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:08.080 a woman in her home. Yet again woman at home. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:10.880 He broke into the victim's house and threatened her with 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.120 a knife before tying her up with cord and raping her. 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:18.040 He threatened to harm her baby when she resisted. The 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.240 sentencing judge said it was quote one of the worst 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:25.280 rapes that could be imagined. Back in those days, there 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:29.800 was a prison psychiatrist called doctor Alan Bartholomew, known when 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.240 I was a young reporteriss Dr Bart. He was the 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:37.640 Pentridge prison shrink and was always a colorful character to 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:43.280 talk about crooks and Doctor Alan Bartholomew noted that Dupas 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:48.640 was in constant denial and I quote, this youth has 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.720 a serious psychosexual problem using denial as a coping device, 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:57.959 and he has to be seen as potentially dangerous. The 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:03.120 denial technique makes for you huge difficulty in treatment, meaning 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.480 Gepass would never fess up, never say I did it 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.920 and why, and wouldn't talk about it. And by denying it, 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:15.800 he basically just set himself up to offend and reoffend 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:21.440 and reoffend. He was released in nineteen seventy nine. Sure enough, 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:25.520 five years only minimum. Again, we make the point that 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:29.839 in the past, I think judges and courts were every 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.439 bit as lenient as they are today in most cases. 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:37.680 In most cases nineteen seventy nine, is released and within 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:42.320 a matter of days he does four separate attacks in 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:46.400 a ten day period. Twenty eighth of February nineteen Eightyjupas 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:50.320 received a five year minimum prison sentence for these serious 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:55.160 sex assaults. A nineteen eighty report on Jepaz stated that 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:58.160 there is little that can be said in his favor. 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:03.040 Here remains an extreme, disturbed, immature and dangerous man. His 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:07.280 release on parole was a mistake. Well, at least they 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.720 told it how it was served the five years February 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:13.160 nineteen eighty five. You can see the pattern that's emerging 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.920 with this fellow. Just how predictable an offender. He was 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:21.680 released February eighty five. A month later, he rapes a 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.280 twenty one year old woman on a beach at blair 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:29.280 Gowry down on the Mornington Peninsula. Jupas followed this woman 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:31.360 and attacked her, holding her to the ground at knife 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.960 point before raping her on the twenty eighth of June 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:39.160 eighty five. He's sentenced to twelve years for that rape 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:43.400 at blair Gary Beach. He's released in nineteen ninety two 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.800 after seven years, so twelve year sentence seven year minimum 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:54.200 gets out again. You'd think someone in the system after 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:58.320 all these offenses would have said this fellow should serve 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.760 every day he possibly can, and then a bit more 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:04.640 as well. But that's not what happened. They put him 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:06.439 through the system. They shoved him out at the other 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.959 end in the minimum of seven years. Less than two 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:13.800 years after that release, Jupez was arrested on charges of 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:18.600 false imprisonment over an incident at Lake Epilock in January 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.520 nineteen ninety four. Wearing a hood and armed with a knife, 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:25.920 insulation tape and handcuffs. He followed a woman and held 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.200 her at a knife point in a toilet block, but 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:31.920 was chased off by her friends. He crashed his car 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:38.400 and was caught. So he's not a master criminal. He's 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:44.400 a consistent offender, recidivus offender, but nothing he does is 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.360 particularly well planned. It seems that he's a total creature 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:50.920 of his own impulses. Eighteenth of August nineteen ninety four, 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:55.040 he faces caught at Bendigo over the epilock business. He's 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.960 then sentenced to three years and nine months imprisonment with 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.600 a minimum of two years and nine months. So he's 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.240 tried to abduct a person in a toilet block, arm 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:10.079 with a knife. He's a multiple offender all his life, 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.080 from the time of fifteen, and he still really only 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:17.280 gets a minimum of two years and nine months. He's 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:20.920 released in September ninety six and moved into a house 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:26.600 in Pascal Vale, and this is where the rest of 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:30.240 us start to hear about him. Before this, he's a 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:32.600 guy that is known to some police and to the 0:13:32.640 --> 0:13:36.960 court system, and would have been known in jail as 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:39.960 a sex offender. He would have served his time with 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:43.439 other sex offenders as they used to do it then, 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.800 probably places like sale or Arrowrat prison where they would 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:55.200 send people like him. April nineteen ninety nine, Nicole Patterson 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:58.960 was a twenty eight year old psychotherapist and youth counselor 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:03.360 employed to assist young drug users. Nicole wanted her own 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:07.120 private practice and was using her northgot home to practice. 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.560 She placed ads in a local newspaper to attract clients. 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:15.120 Two neighbors reported hearing the screams of a young woman 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:19.400 coming from Nicole Patterson's house on the day of her murder. 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:23.960 Her boyfriend could not contact her in the afternoon and 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:27.240 he would have gone around or called the police or whatever. 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:31.200 On a nineteenth of April that year, nineteen ninety nine, 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:35.480 Nicole Patterson's mutilated body was discovered by a friend in 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:39.360 the front room of her house. There were twenty seven 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.760 stab wounds to her chest and back. Her body was 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:47.880 naked from the waist down, and here is the telltale 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:53.040 sign of dupass's depravity. Both her breasts had been removed 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:57.640 using a sharp knife. Her handbag and driver's license was stolen. 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:04.720 The murder weapon and Nicole Patterson's breasts were never recovered. 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:09.520 Police investigations of the crime scene revealed that Nicole Patterson 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:14.280 had a nine am appointment with a new client by 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:18.480 the name of Quote Malcolm, as noted in her personal diary, 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:23.080 alongside a mobile telephone number. The number was traced to 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:27.920 an Indian student named Harry. Police learned that Dupass had 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:31.920 approached Harry with an offer of work. On twenty second 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.240 of April nineteen ninety nine, police arrested du Pass at 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.960 midday at the Excelsior Hotel in Thomastown and charged him 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:45.560 with murder. The same day. According to telephone records, Jewpass 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.760 had made three calls to Nicole Patterson to arrange counseling 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.560 for Quote depression and a gambling addiction. Over the next 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:59.600 six weeks, Duwpass made calls to Nicole Patterson, police believe, 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:03.480 to gauge her vulnerability, to see when she be home 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:07.880 alone and all that sort of stuff. Police noticed scratches 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:11.840 on Jipass's face and hand. Gepaz claimed that these were 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:14.880 from working in his shed and that a piece of 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.520 wood had hit him while using a lathe in a 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:22.000 woodworking lathe, but he didn't own a lathe. Small problem 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.840 with his story so he changed his story. A search 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:31.560 of his home revealed bloodstained clothing, PVC tape of the 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.320 type used to bind the col Patterson, a scheme mask, 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:41.840 newspaper clippings detailing Patterson's murder, and also a paper containing 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:46.680 her advertisement for psychotherapy services. He faced trial in the 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:50.960 year two thousand, and the jury was quick to give 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:56.000 a guilty verdict, as you would imagine a jury would. 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:00.240 On twenty second of August that year two thousand, while 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:04.640 sentencing your past to life without parole, Judge Frank Vincent 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.080 Frank the Tank, as he was fondly known, a man 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:12.760 who represented I think several hundred murderers over his career. 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:18.240 He was an extraordinarily skilled and willing defense advocate who 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:24.080 became a much admired judge. We hear at life and crimes. 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:26.639 We admire judges. We just like to put that in. 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:31.800 Frank Vincent said, the prospects of your eventual rehabilitation must 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.320 be regarded as so close to hopeless that they can 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:40.159 be effectively discounted. There is no indication whatsoever that you 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:43.880 have experienced any sense of remorse for what you have done, 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:46.720 and I doubt that you are capable of any such 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:51.600 human response at a fundamental level. As human beings, you 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:57.480 present for us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question, how 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:01.960 did you come to be as you are? I think 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:07.119 one of the more memorable judgments made in Victoria, especially 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.600 in that era, Frank Vincent was truly appalled at what 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.800 he'd seen and heard in court. You can hear that 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:17.840 reflected in the words he used in that judgment. Jupass 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.639 appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:23.800 the following year to try and appeal his conviction for 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:29.000 the murder. His appeal was dismissed, so it was clear 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:33.960 to police that they should look at du Passes other 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:39.000 movements and see whether they lined up with unsolved sex 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:44.480 murders committed with knives where bodies were mutilated. In nineteen 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:49.280 ninety seven, there was an unsolved case that year where 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:53.920 a woman called Margaret Josephine mar a sex worker, last 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:59.040 scene alive at the Safeway supermarket just after midnight in 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:05.480 broad Meadows again in October. Interestingly, October nineteen ninety seven, 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:08.919 she was last sent. Her body was found under a 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:14.400 cardboard box on October the fourth by a fellow called 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:18.480 Ronald mac donald. Who made the discovery while collecting aluminium 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.119 cans in the suburb of Somerton, which in those days 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:26.520 was semi rural and near broad Meadows. A black glove 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:31.760 was found near Mar's body, which police later confirmed contained 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:37.640 du Passes DNA. A post mortem examination revealed that Margaret 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:40.080 Mar had suffered a stab wound to her left wrist, 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.320 bruising to her neck, blunt forced trauma to the area 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:46.920 of her right eyebrow, and lacerations to her right arm, 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.919 but her left breast had been removed and put into 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:55.439 her mouth. At the time, dupass had been out of 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:59.600 prison just over a year after serving time for rape 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.320 and was no longer under the supervision of Corrections Victoria, 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.359 and so police working backwards were able to deduce that 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:12.320 he was the best candidate for this crime, because there 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:16.320 aren't that many people going around killing women and cutting 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:21.800 off their breasts. Gepaz was already serving a life sentence 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:24.960 without parole for the murder of Nicole Pattison. Of course, 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.600 at this time, when he was re arrested for the 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:33.800 murder of Margaret Mahr with gupassing custody, police were able 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:38.040 to obtain a DNA sample which linked him to Mars 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:43.560 murder three years earlier. During his trial, evidence presented that 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:48.280 the removal of breasts were so strikingly similar as to 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.960 be a signature stamp to both crimes, identifying Gepaz as 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.560 the killer of both women. The jury, who was not 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:01.679 told that Gepaz was already serving life convicted. Upon hearing 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:05.920 the jury delivered the guilty verdict, Dupass claimed it's a 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:10.680 kangaroo court before he was led away After the guilty verdict. 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:17.440 Kylie Nicholas, Nicole Patterson's sister, discribed him as the most 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:25.199 evil predator, a psychopath, a true evil, predatory, cunning, repulsive person. 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:29.280 It's such a rare evil that comes into this world 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:33.320 that has destroyed these women and our lives. We're just 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:37.040 praying that this man is held accountable for everything that 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:41.080 he has done. In August two thousand and four, Dupas 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:46.320 was convicted of killing Margaret Maher back in nineteen ninety 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.960 seven and sentenced to a second term of life imprisonment. 0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:53.640 So he's already in for Nicole Patterson and he copies 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:59.879 second life imprisonment. Then comes a case that many of 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:02.679 us have heard of because it became a bit of 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:06.440 a coarse celeb and that it was the unsolved murder 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:11.359 of a young woman called Messina Helfargas. Messina was twenty five. 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:14.879 She was murdered on November the first of nineteen ninety 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:18.440 seven that year again same year as Margaret Mah, while 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.359 visiting her grandmother's grave in the Greek Orthodox section of 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:27.360 the Faulkner Cemetery. The alarm was raised by Mersina's fiance 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:29.800 when she failed to meet with him later that day. 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:35.439 Now you'll recall it earlier we mentioned it. Jupas had 0:22:35.440 --> 0:22:39.000 been arrested in a pub in Thomastown for one of 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:42.359 his offenses, and of course the Faulkland Cemetery is out 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:46.600 in that direction, out on that side of Melbourne. Messina's 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.040 body was discovered at four thirty five am on November 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:54.359 fifth by her fiancee in the cemetery, in an empty plot, 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:59.280 three graves from where her grandmother was buried. Police believed 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:03.639 that Mersina was attacked from behind while kneeling to attend 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:07.160 to a flower arrangement, and that she died from massive injuries, 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:12.800 including eighty seven stab wounds around her kne's neck, but 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:16.640 with most of the wounds concentrated around her breasts. Her 0:23:16.760 --> 0:23:19.960 upper clothing had been pulled over her head towards her chest. 0:23:21.000 --> 0:23:24.160 Du Pass's home in Cone Street, Pascoe Vale was near 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:29.240 the cemetery. Halvargaz's murder had remained unsolved since nineteen ninety seven, 0:23:30.000 --> 0:23:33.840 with the Victorian government together with police, offering a one 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:39.040 million dollar reward for information leading to an arrest. It 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:43.439 was only the fourth million dollar re ward in Victoria's history. 0:23:43.920 --> 0:23:49.879 We should point out here that Mersina Halvargaz's father, mister Halvargus, 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:57.360 had a long concerted campaign for a big reward to 0:23:57.440 --> 0:24:01.359 solve his daughter's murder. And he spoke i think to 0:24:01.840 --> 0:24:05.720 Jeff Kennett, but certainly to senior politicians and senior police, 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:09.000 and he pointed out correctly that there'd been a million 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:12.480 dollary wood posted over the murder, a terrible murder of 0:24:13.680 --> 0:24:18.320 Jane Thurgood Dove at her Nidriy home on Oaksday in 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:22.320 nineteen ninety seven. And that of course was the murder 0:24:22.359 --> 0:24:26.560 where a pop bellied gunman jumped out of a car, 0:24:27.840 --> 0:24:30.960 chased Jane Thurgoodove around her car and shot it dead 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:33.800 in front of a children who were in her car. 0:24:34.600 --> 0:24:37.800 And it was a case of mistaken identity. The stupid 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:42.560 gunman alleged hitmen had been hired by another crook to 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:45.879 kill the wife of yet another crook, and the woman 0:24:45.960 --> 0:24:48.159 that they intended to kill lived in the same street 0:24:48.720 --> 0:24:51.680 as Jane Thurgoodove, and they shot the wrong one. It's 0:24:51.720 --> 0:24:55.840 not better or worse. Killing anyone's bad, but proh Jane 0:24:55.840 --> 0:24:59.280 Thurgoodove was shot dead in front of her kids because 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:03.560 she happened to look a little bit like another woman 0:25:03.600 --> 0:25:08.280 living in the same street. But Jane Thurgodove was a young, blonde, 0:25:08.359 --> 0:25:13.200 attractive and her case attracted a lot of attention, naturally, 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:15.959 and there was a million dollar reward posted for it, 0:25:16.600 --> 0:25:21.840 and Mersina Helvargas's father, Bless his soul, pointed out that 0:25:21.960 --> 0:25:24.520 it didn't seem fair that his daughter's death did not 0:25:24.600 --> 0:25:28.199 attract a similar reward, and he made his case to 0:25:28.200 --> 0:25:31.399 the authorities, and they agreed, and they posted a million 0:25:31.400 --> 0:25:35.280 dollar reward to try and solve the Messina Helvargas case. 0:25:37.359 --> 0:25:42.080 This led to renewed interest in the case. It was 0:25:42.760 --> 0:25:46.920 fairly clear to investigators that Jupass would have to be 0:25:47.440 --> 0:25:50.840 a prime candidate for these reasons, and these reasons were 0:25:50.840 --> 0:25:55.960 cited at the inquest into Mersina's death. Nine witnesses identified 0:25:56.040 --> 0:25:59.119 Youpass as a man they saw at Fulkland Cemetery on 0:25:59.240 --> 0:26:04.879 the day of the attack of the murder. Jupasz's grandfather's 0:26:04.960 --> 0:26:08.560 gravesite is located one hundred and twenty eight meters from 0:26:08.560 --> 0:26:11.320 the crime scene. He'd been there before with his family. 0:26:11.960 --> 0:26:16.440 Dupaz frequented the First and Last Hotel, which is located 0:26:16.520 --> 0:26:20.359 just opposite the cemetery. Dupas lied to police about a 0:26:20.400 --> 0:26:24.200 facial injury received at around the time of the attack 0:26:24.240 --> 0:26:29.840 on Helvagas. Jupaz attempted to alter his appearance. After the 0:26:29.880 --> 0:26:35.920 Helvagas murder, Dupaz was identified by a woman from police photographs. 0:26:36.440 --> 0:26:40.119 She said she'd seen him a few minutes before the attack, 0:26:40.720 --> 0:26:46.680 twenty meters from where Messina Helvagas was murdered. These would 0:26:46.720 --> 0:26:49.840 seem to be a comprehensive and re damning list of 0:26:49.960 --> 0:26:54.600 witnesses against Peter Dupaz, who of course was already serving 0:26:54.920 --> 0:26:59.920 two life sentences for similar murders. A senior detective told 0:27:00.040 --> 0:27:02.040 the inquest that a car used by Dupass at the 0:27:02.119 --> 0:27:05.639 time of the murder was sold to a work associate 0:27:05.720 --> 0:27:10.400 soon after the murder just another thing. Forensic pathologist David Ransom, 0:27:10.480 --> 0:27:14.040 who compared wounds suffered by Helvagas to the wounds suffered 0:27:14.040 --> 0:27:17.760 by Patterson and mar told the Inquest that strictly speaking, 0:27:17.800 --> 0:27:22.440 there was insufficient evidence to show that the wounds were 0:27:22.480 --> 0:27:26.000 inflicted by the same knife. That doesn't mean it wasn't 0:27:26.000 --> 0:27:30.280 inflicted by the same man, of course. Dupasz's lawyer, David 0:27:30.359 --> 0:27:33.560 Drake said the only evidence linking Dupas to the murder 0:27:33.600 --> 0:27:37.400 of Messina Halvargas was the fact that Dupas had lived 0:27:37.400 --> 0:27:41.040 near For con symmetry and his reputation based on prior 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:44.639 convictions for similar offenses. Well, he makes a good point 0:27:44.800 --> 0:27:47.800 that he did live near there, and he did have 0:27:48.359 --> 0:27:52.920 a very powerful reputation for similar offenses, and the list 0:27:52.960 --> 0:27:57.720 of witnesses would seem to make it overwhelming. The upshot 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:00.320 was that in two thousand and six, the inquest was 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:05.720 adjourned indefinitely following charges laid by police for the murder 0:28:05.760 --> 0:28:09.920 of Messina Helvagas. After obtaining a court order granting permission 0:28:09.960 --> 0:28:14.920 to interview dupass in relation to Messina Halvagas's murder, police 0:28:14.920 --> 0:28:18.840