WEBVTT - Catching the Ascot Vale rapist 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:02.840 Listeners should be born that this episode of Life and 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:08.039 Crimes contains graphic imagery and language, and there is no 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:11.799 doubt that the story we tell today is extremely disturbing, 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:16.720 which it has to be. He was an unidentified intruder 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.959 who preyed on women home alone, after studying their movements 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:25.200 the way a crocodile watches and waits for prey. Born 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:29.000 to a violent alcoholic father and a frightened mother, trapped 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:34.240 by poverty to a life of family violence, His origin 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:36.680 raises the question of whether he was born bad or 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:39.440 made that way? Was it nature or nurture, a question 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:44.720 we've asked many times in these podcasts. I'm Andrew Rule. 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:49.199 This is Life in Crimes. It's thirty years since a 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:53.680 prison officer took hold of a convicted rapist and led 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:55.560 him out and put him in a van and took 0:00:55.600 --> 0:01:01.400 him off to prison, where he has remained until this day. 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:07.760 That man's name was Christopher Clarence Hall, but he was 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:11.760 known for many months as the Ascot Veil rapist, the 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:17.959 sex attacker who terrorized Melbourne for nine long months in 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:22.800 nineteen ninety two and nineteen ninety three, And as it 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:27.080 turns out, he was a man who had raped other 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:33.959 people even before that. I'm now going to read a short, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:40.679 sharp story that sums up the life and crimes of 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:47.080 Christopher Clarence Hall, who might soon walk amongst us again. 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:52.000 This is a version of the story I wrote for 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.600 the Sunday Herald Sun. It was a big day for 0:01:55.680 --> 0:01:59.559 crime news. Serial self mutilator and would be mass killer 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:04.000 Garret David finally died in a security ward from bizarre 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:09.040 self inflicted wounds, such as slicing off his penis three times. 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:15.360 Some pitied the tortured soul, but few mourned him, saydistic 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:20.720 sex offendern certified scum ian Melrose Patterson died of cancer 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:26.320 that same day, not before time. Even the palliative care 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:32.320 nurses hated being near the dying Patterson because he was 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:37.639 such a creep. Finally, the man dubbed the ascot val 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:44.520 rapist was arrested after nine months of terrorizing women across 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:49.160 the northwestern suburbs of Melbourne. It was June the eleventh, 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:53.600 nineteen ninety three. Melbourne's long night of fear and loathing 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:59.600 was over. In daylight and in handcuffs. The figure who'd 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:03.440 caused such anguish and terror didn't look like a monster. 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:10.240 In daylight, he'd shrunk back into a pathetic human, just 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:14.200 an ordinary looking forty year old man with an ordinary name. 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.360 Anyone looking for outward signs of the cruelty he displayed 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.200 to the women he attacked might have glimpsed it in 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:26.040 eyes that seemed as dead as a shark's. He stopped 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:29.040 short of murder, but extreme violence never seemed far away. 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:33.040 He usually carried a knife during his string of sex assaults, 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:38.760 and often bound and sometimes gagged his victims. His attacks 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.920 were brutal and left women bruised or bleeding, and, in 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.840 one case, with a seventy two year old with broken ribs. 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.880 He taunted his victims and deliberately terrorized four of them 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:55.440 by returning to attack them again, one of them four 0:03:55.480 --> 0:04:00.800 separate times. His youngest known victim was twenty two, the 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:05.200 oldest was eighty two. One was eight months pregnant. Another 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.000 had an eight year old daughter in the house, who 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.680 he threatened to harm if the mother resisted. His willingness 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.680 to attack old and young made him one of the 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.480 most feared rapists in our history and one of the 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:22.719 most despised prison inmates of the last thirty years. Like 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:28.440 Raymond mister Stinky Edmonds, he was an unidentified intruder who 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:32.760 preyed on women home alone after studying their movements the 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:37.680 way a crocodile watches and waits for prey. Like the 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.040 silver gun rapist Peter Vatos, he was a burglar who 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:46.159 discovered rape, an opportunist who became addicted to terrorizing defenseless women, 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:50.240 just as he had become addicted to theft to feed 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:56.400 his gambling addiction. For months before his arrest, this increasingly 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:01.080 bold predator caused fear and loathing among thousands of women 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:05.839 in the Northwestern suburbs where he struck most often. Asket 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.360 Vale was just one suburb of many where he preyed 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.640 on women living alone, but it was roughly the center 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.120 of a broad sweep extending from Carlton, where he lived 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:18.800 in a lodging house, to Airport West, near where he 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:23.039 had grown up in extreme poverty and abuse. The spate 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:26.640 of ugly home invasions that drew police and public attention 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.080 to the unknown rapist apparently began in late nineteen ninety 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:35.599 two and would continue until his arrest on June eleventh 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:39.800 the following year, But forensic tests revealed that the same 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:44.080 man was responsible for twice raping a middle aged woman 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:48.159 in Mooney Ponds more than five years earlier. It was 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.560 a double attack that shocked police who thought themselves unshockable. 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.440 That woman, by then in her fifties, had been a 0:05:56.520 --> 0:06:00.600 nune most of her adult life. Before leaving her order. 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:06.880 She was a virgin. On Remembrance Day, November the eleventh, 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:10.960 nineteen eighty seven, the rapist broke into her home in 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:15.560 a quiet Mooney Pond's street. He didn't just ignore the 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:20.200 former nun's terrified protests. It was as if he enjoyed 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:25.520 inflicting extra pain, physical and mental to a Catholic authority figure. 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:32.200 He specifically mocked her religion, asking her why God didn't 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:36.040 save her. He tied her up, took her bank card, 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.800 and forced her to tell him the security number so 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.000 he could empty her account. He gagged her and went 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:44.480 to get the cash, threatening to return and hurt her 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.320 if the number was wrong. He stole three hundred dollars 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.760 using the card, then returned and raped the poor woman again, 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:58.320 a crime wrongly attributed for years to another unidentified sex offender, 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:04.640 the child abductor, dubbed mister Crule. It wasn't until early 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:08.280 nineteen ninety three that a rash of rapes was alarming 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:12.920 so many people that public meetings were held in northwestern suburbs. 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:17.040 Detective Inspector Peter Harvey, acting head of the rape squad, 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:21.080 called on local police to help saturate key areas with 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:25.840 plain clothes police and cars. They formed a task force, 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:31.200 Operation Century, named after the rapist's habit of ordering frightened 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:35.000 victims to count to one hundred after he left them. 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:38.160 Many of the victims did not want to stay alone 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:42.720 in their homes and went to stay with relatives or friends. Sometimes, 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.120 an armed policewoman in casual clothes would move into a 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:52.600 victim's home and wait, acting as bait. Meanwhile, officers in 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:55.520 plain clothes wandered the streets looking from a man who 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:59.400 fitted the description that most victims gave, in his late 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.200 twenties or three thirties, with dark hair an Australian accent. 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:08.320 After four months, and with public fears still rising, the 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:12.960 rapist was still at large. Late on the night of 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:18.400 June tenth, nineteen ninety three, four task force members were 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:22.160 near the Essendon tram terminus when they saw a man 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:26.560 walk from a nearby street. As soon as he saw 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:29.600 them he knew he knew they were police. He spun 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.360 around and ran down the side street. The police chased 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:36.840 on foot. One of them, Constable Lindsey Hansen, was almost 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:40.160 run over as he pursued the fleeing man across Mount 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:45.200 Alexander Road before catching him and tackling him to the ground. 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:51.240 His name was Christopher Clarence Hall. He was interviewed, his 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.839 address confirmed, and then he was released in the early 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:59.240 hours of the morning after providing a blood sample. This 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:04.640 was because his criminal record, which stretched back to his childhood, 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:09.080 was all for burglary and theft, not sex crimes. So 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:12.959 on the night that the police grabbed this wandering person 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.240 who ran away from them when they thought, well, this 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.560 looks promising, but they looked up his record and it 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:22.800 was all for burglaries and thefts, long record, but no 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.680 sex crimes, and so on that night four in the morning. 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.760 By the time they'd finished with him, they turned him 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.080 back on the street because they didn't really have enough 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:38.240 to go on. But around noon next day police went 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:42.600 to Hall's rooming house, a boarding house re stayed in 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:47.720 Cardingen Street in Carlton, and they searched his room, and 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:52.720 they found incriminating items, including a pair of runners identical 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.760 to those that the unknown rapist had worn at a 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:01.559 crime scene three weeks earlier. It was then that an 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:06.840 alert policewoman, Jacqueline Curran, saw a man matching Hall's description 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:12.040 in a nearby street. She grabbed him. In Hall's pocket 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:14.560 was a one way bus ticket to Catherine in the 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:17.440 Northern Territory. If the police had waited just a few 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:19.800 more hours, he would have been on his way to 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.720 the far North, where so many wanted men had gone 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.920 and vanished. Once there, he might have done the same, 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:32.640 but he had left his run too late. Hall faced 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.880 the County Court in May nineteen ninety four. He was 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:40.320 represented by respected criminal lawyer Brendan Wilkinson, who happened to 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:44.720 live in the Yessendon area and knew the school. Wilkinson 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:48.600 was personally very relieved to see that his new client 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:53.600 had been caught. Wilkinson, being a criminal lawyer, had seen 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:56.800 a lot of bad endings, especially for those with bad 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:02.160 starts in life. Hall's criminal records started in nineteen sixty five, 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:06.040 when he was just twelve. Hall was a loner who 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.920 was socially and sexually dysfunctional, one of a dozen children 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.920 born to a violent alcoholic father and a frightened mother, 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:19.080 trapped by poverty to a life of family violence. His 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:21.880 origin raises the question of whether he was born bad 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:24.400 or made that way? Was it nature or nurture, a 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:30.319 question we've asked many times in these podcasts. Police noted 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:33.240 that most of All's siblings had not been in trouble 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:35.760 with the law, and that his mother was the only 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.880 one in the family to support him during his trial. 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:43.319 He wasn't at all popular with his siblings, particularly his sisters. 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:48.480 A troubled child at school, he'd been sent away to 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:53.000 institutions such as the notorious Saint a Gastine's orphanage run 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.720 by the Christian Brothers of Geelong and the Morning Star 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:02.640 Home run by Franciscan monks at Morning. Both institutions would 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.880 later be shut down after the exposure of systematic sexual 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:11.760 and physical abuse that produced a generation of ultraviolent offenders. 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.640 Gary David, the one we mentioned at the start that 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:21.280 did bizarre self mutilations until he died in hospital. He 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.240 was one of dozens and dozens of the children who 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:29.600 went through those sort of places. The notorious hit man. 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:37.240 Chris Rentikil Flannery was another. There were many of them, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:43.800 including Stan Taylor, the man who took two young brothers 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:49.840 and turned them into bombers. The boys homes and orphanages 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:54.600 have a terrible record when it comes to producing ultraviolent men. 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:59.040 Judge Glenn Waldron tried Hall for nineteen counts of rape, 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:02.520 to have attempted rape, and six counts of causing serious 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:06.079 injury and threats to kill and injure. He was also 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:09.640 charged with a total of eighteen burglary and theft offenses. 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.920 With his lawyer's agreement, Hall pleaded guilty. Rather than subjecting 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.520 his traumatized victims to cross examination about the worst hour 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:23.920 of their lives. He was meek in court, intimidated by 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:27.480 the presence of some of those he had hurt so grossly, 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:33.760 who came there to see justice done. A psychiatrist stated 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:38.160 that Hall did not suffer a mental illness. He wasn't normal, 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:43.360 but he certainly knew what he was doing. Judge Waldron 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.800 sentenced him to thirty four years with a minimum of 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:49.720 twenty seven, longer than most murder sentences, but in the 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:55.600 eyes of many or most well deserved The judge said 0:13:55.720 --> 0:14:01.960 Hall had subjected the women quote to a humiliating, repulsive, 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:07.920 as well as terrifying experience, an evil that constituted the 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:13.560 high water mark of antisocial behavior unquote. An appeal court 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.920 did not quite agree, reducing the sentence to twenty nine 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:22.120 years with a minimum twenty five. But Jacqueline Curran, the 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.880 detective who had arrested Haul in Carlton before he could flee, 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.400 knew that he must have attacked other women. He didn't 0:14:30.800 --> 0:14:36.280 just appear as an adult burglar in his thirties. She 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:40.680 interviewed Hall in prisons several times until he revealed other 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:45.920 rapes to her. In nineteen ninety seven, he was charged 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:50.400 with four more attacks. The extra convictions pushed his sentence 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:54.840 to thirty two years with twenty seven minimum. If Hall 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.040 had received full remissions for good behavior, he would have 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.680 been released in the year twenty twenty. Even if he 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:04.600 serves all of his sentence, he will be due for 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:12.040 release from the John Hopkins Facility for Sexual Offenders at 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:18.080 Ararat next year, maybe sooner. Whether he will be let 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.400 back on the street or be required to live in 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.280 the Village of the Damned, so called the community for 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.480 Sexual deviates at Ararat. He is hard to say. Judge 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.520 Waldron had no doubt about Hall's potential to re offend, 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:36.760 and he said this, even in comparative old age, there 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.920 is a real risk that you would offend again, he 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:44.560 told Hall when he sentenced him. His lawyer, Brendan Wilkinson, 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:50.600 recalls Christopher Hall as a pathetic figure, hated as much 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:55.240 in prison as he was on the outside. He also 0:15:55.320 --> 0:16:00.640 recalls his grateful client, who had no money, no friends, 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.160 no family who wanted to know him, apart from his 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:11.040 mother making him. The lawyer a coffee mug in the 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:17.160 prison workshop as a gift. Wilkinson told me he used 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:21.560 that mug for years while he was at work, but 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:25.080 when the time came to clean out his office, his 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:31.720 wife told him not to bring it home. Thanks for listening. 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:35.120 Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:40.560 true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:45.120 features and more, go to herold'sn dot com dot Au 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:50.840 forward slash andrew rule one word for advertising inquiries. Go 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:55.680 to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. 0:16:56.560 --> 0:17:01.400 That is all one word news podcasts soul and if 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:05.879 you want further information about this episode, links are in 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:06.840 the description.