WARNING: Graphic content
Extreme pornography, women's underwear with holes cut in them, bizarre homemade sex toys, and disturbing scenarios to attack women.
In the secret lair of
Claremont serial killer Bradley Robert Edwards
,
Deviant secrets in serial killer's garage: What the Claremont murders trial didn't hear
By Candace Sutton
news.com.au·
8 mins to read
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Bradley Edwards hid his deadly secrets away. Photo / Supplied
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were the vile objects of an obsession which began in childhood.
And, like the fingernail scrapings taken two decades earlier from murder victim Ciara Glennon, the objects hidden away inside the lockup garage attached to his modest suburban home on Acton Ave, Kewdale, were covered in Edwards' DNA.
So disturbing was the evidence found in the house occupied by the serial killer in the eastern Perth suburb, much of it was ruled too prejudicial for his trial.
Now that the former Telstra technician has been convicted of two of the Claremont murders — Jane Rimmer, 23, and Ciara Glennon, 27 — what his trial didn't hear can be examined.
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Edwards was found not guilty of the murder of Sarah Spiers, whose body has never been found and whose 1996 disappearance remains a mystery.
Although the secrets hidden inside his home did not include any trophies from his two murders and two sex attacks, they provide chilling parallels to his actual crimes.
Some of the evidence struck out by Justice Stephen Hall for Edwards' judge-only trial echoes the sick compulsions of other violent killers or rapists.
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Like murderer Canadian Army officer Colonel Russell Williams and Australian serial killer Reginald Arthurell, Edwards was sexually aroused by wearing women's clothes.
It would fuel Edwards' fantasies on his path from sex prowler to rapist to eventually becoming a killer.
At Edwards' pre-trial hearing in February last year, Justice Hall struck out some of the more sinister or sordid evidence aired over three days.
The court heard that one of Edwards' family members had walked in on him when — at age 13 or 14 in the early 1980s — he was in the bedroom of a family friend near an underwear drawer.
The court also heard that some of his peers indicated he had a collection of women's clothing, and that this escalated into a fetish and an obsession with rape and abduction.
Also ruled out by Justice Hall was most of what state prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo called the "Huntingdale prowler series".
The evidence related to allegations he stole items of women's underwear from clotheslines — a practice once called "snowdropping" — and broke into or attempted to break into houses to commit sexually motivated crimes.
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His Honour allowed the prosecution to use some of that evidence for the 1988 Huntingdale sexual assault.
But Edwards pleaded guilty to this as well as the 1995 abduction and Karrakatta Cemetery double rape of a 17-year-girl, after his defence counsel's application for a separate trial on these offences was denied.
Barbagallo told the pre-trial hearing that at the time he allegedly stalked the streets and homes of nearby strangers, he was living with his parents and two younger siblings.
From the "socially awkward teenager" he was then, she said Edwards was an offender "who has evolved".
But Edwards pleaded guilty to this as well as the 1995 abduction and Karrakatta Cemetery double rape of a 17-year-girl, after his defence counsel's application for a separate trial on these offences was denied.
"A socially awkward teenager with a fetish for wearing — and stealing — women's underwear", Barbagallo said, became a man with an "obsessive sexual interest in the abduction, imprisonment and rape of women".
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She told the court that the women's underwear Edwards stole from clotheslines included the silk kimono he wore in the Huntingdale attack.
Edwards, who was 19 at the time, straddled an 18-year-old girl while trying to shove a piece of fabric into her mouth.
The teenage victim was the sister of a boy with whom Edwards had attended Gosnells Senior High School.
The kimono left at the scene had semen stains, which in 2016 were DNA tested and proved a match to Edwards.
Barbagallo told the court that Edwards had demonstrated "clear sexual motives" from his early attacks.
"[He] had a tendency to prowl an area of familiarity in a distinct manner to create or seize opportunity," she said.
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"He was motivated by his fetish for women's clothing and stealing women's clothes off lines. He created an opportunity to feed his fetishes."
Two years after the Huntingdale assault, Edwards attacked a social worker while on a Telstra job at Hollywood Hospital.
Edwards used some of the same modus operandi for his abduction and rape of the Karrakatta Cemetery victim, and Barbagallo said this attack in particular mirrored "violent erotica" found at the Kewdale house.
In the cemetery attack, Edwards grabbed the 17-year-old from behind, bound her with telephone cord, stuffed a sock gag in her mouth and bound her ankles before he raped her.
She, too, believed she was "going to die".
Prosecutors wanted to call evidence relating to Karrakatta of nearby resident's claim that in the mid-90s a Telstra van was parked in the area at least four or five times.
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Edwards worked for Telstra from leaving school until his December 2016 arrest.
Barbagallo argued it was relevant because it showed a person in a Telstra van was looking for opportunities to abduct, sexually assault and murder young women.
Judge Hall ruled this inadmissable, as he would the evidence of "graphic and extreme" pornography found on a computer seized from Acton Ave after Edwards' arrest.
At the time, Edwards' home and garage were stashed with hidden objects.
Police found homemade sex toys, women's hair ties, sandwich bags and women's underwear with holes cut for male genitalia.
DNA on the items would match Edwards' profile, and his estranged wife told police that Edwards would masturbate into the sandwich bags and seal them with the hair ties.
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At the time, Edwards spent hours in front of his computer and in the garage, on gaming sites and accessing pornography.
In evidence ruled inadmissable because it was "not relevant" to his murder trial, documents found by police included depraved first-person stories about women being abducted and sexually assaulted.
The stories on Edwards' computer bore striking similarities to his offending, Barbagallo argued.
The prosecutor mentioned certain "violent erotica" documents, called "Chloe's story", "Sophie's story" and "Nicola's story", that Mr Edwards was alleged to have possessed, authored or contributed to.
"Chloe's story", Barbagallo said, depicted a man abducting a woman, stripping her,
binding her and sexually assaulting her.
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The story had "marked similarities" to the 1995 Karrakatta abduction.
"Nicola's story", had a male narrator portrayed as "driving around at 2am and abducting a visibly drunk 19-year-old".
"The content … is unusual and depraved," Barbagallo said.
"The idea that somebody that's arrested and charged in respect of these matters is ultimately found to have stories that are similar … to some of the activities that we say he has engaged in is quite striking."
Other evidence police found while analysing material deleted on Edwards' devices was the 2002 extreme pornography film, Forced Entry.
Based loosely on the crimes of serial killer Richard Ramirez, California's 1980s so-called "Night Stalker", it graphically depicts the rape and murder of women.
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As detectives from Strike Force Macro were gathering evidence that would eventually culminate in December 2016 with exact DNA matches and Edwards' arrest, the then suspect was still working on his debauched pornography.
Prosecutors could not ascertain when Edwards' violent erotica stories were created or downloaded.
But they would confirm they were modifed
between July 17, 2014 and December 11, 2016, just 11 days before Edwards' arrest at the Kewdale house.
In early August that year, Edwards posted an image of Italian YouTube producer Matteo Moroni's Killer Clown character.
On YouTube the character runs at people with hammers or chainsaws, or sets up a dummy's head with fake blood and hammers the head to simulate murder.
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A relative then posted "take it down", to which Edwards replied "NO!!!!!!!" and then added "Everyone loves a clown".
At dawn on December 22, 2016, heavily armed members of the WA Police's Tactical Response Group forced their way into the Kewdale house and arrested Edwards.
The game was up.
