Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: The Claremont Killer

Episode Date: June 18, 2018

Since 1996, people in Claremont had been looking over their shoulders when they go out for a night on the town. Over the span of a few years, three girls were taken from the same place in nearly identical fashions. Many years later, those crimes would be connected to other attacks dating back to 1988. And somehow, in 2016, a man was arrested for these crimes... But we still don't know exactly how police got his name. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/serial-killer-claremont/    

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm Ashley Flowers and I'm Britt and you guys, we did it. After many, many requests, we have started a Patreon and there are a couple of levels but at the bare minimum for just $5 a month, you can get an extra Crime Junkie full-length episode. Yeah, if you give up one fancy coffee a month or if you're like me, a fancy tea, you can have another happy commute to or from work. And it's not just episodes you guys, we're giving away stickers and window clings which are so much better than bumper stickers by the way.

And we're doing mini-sodes, merch giveaways and the thing that so many people have asked for, our theme as a ringtone, which is like my favorite. Yeah, so many people want that, I honestly wasn't expecting it. So if after today's episode you need an extra fix, go to patreon.com, that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com and search for Crime Junkie, there's already two episodes in there waiting for you. I want to thank you to anyone who goes and helps support the show, you guys are amazing. Britt, I have gotten a couple of messages now from our Australian listeners asking me

when we are going to venture out of the States and cover an Australian crime. And today, you guys, we are doing it, finally, it's a little overdue, I know we actually have a surprisingly big listener base in Australia and I absolutely love it. It is super-duper rare that I start researching a case without having ever heard about it. And I think of all of our episodes, this is probably the first for me, where every single thing I look up is brand new information I've never seen before and it was so much fun. A little nerve wracking not knowing what I was jumping into, but it reminded me of the good old days when I would just deep dive into cases for enjoyment and not just for

podcast research. So the case I chose, based on some listener suggestions, took place in the area of Claremont, which for listeners like me and you, not from Australia, is on the western side of the country. And I'm going to pick up the story in 1996 when a young girl named Sarah Spears goes out for a night on the town. Sarah is 18 years old, living in a flat, I know I'm going to try, but I don't promise that I won't screw something up, so please bear with me, be kind, all of our Australian listeners.

So she's living in a flat with her older sister in South Perth. And Friday the 21st of January is actually Australia Day, which is the country's national founding day, like our 4th of July here. So Sarah and some of her friends had a picnic dinner in the park and Sarah's sister Amanda picks them up and then drops them off at a place called Ocean Beach Hotel. The girls all decide to leave that hotel around midnight and Amanda again picks them up and then again drives them to another club in the Claremont area and drops them off again. Now even though she was kind of taxing them around, Amanda wasn't actually with her sister

and her friends that night. She was doing her own thing, but just kind of acting as their ride being a good big sister. Normally she would have even picked up Sarah at the end of the night, but Amanda had been working a couple of part-time jobs and wanted to rest that night. So she had asked Sarah to catch a taxi home. So Sarah is out having a great time, but around 2am she decides to separate from her group and call it a night. On her way out of this club area, she chats a little with a security officer and then

walks to a pay phone at the end of the road. We know that at exactly 206, she called Swan Taxis. When she calls them though, she tells them that her destination isn't South Perth where her apartment is. She tells them that her destination is Mosman Park. What the heck? It's 2am, right? Do we know where she was going?

No, not as far as we've been told. She didn't give them her exact address that she was going to, but one of the friends that she was with earlier in that day did live in that area. And it's reported that that friend told Sarah she was welcome to crash at her place instead of taking a cab to South Perth because taking a cab to her place would have been much cheaper. And from everything I can tell, that's what police think she was doing. So she puts in that call at 206 at this pay phone on the corner of Sterling Highway and Sterling Road.

After she's off the phone, a car with three men drive by and they end up stopping at a red light. And when they're stopped, they can still see Sarah behind them in their rear view mirror. And as they're sitting there, they kind of make note about how she's kind of the only girl on the street. It's dark and they see another car approaching from behind them. So Sarah is basically in between them and this car coming at them. At about this same moment, the light turns green and the guys in the car turn.

But as they're keeping an eye in their rear view mirror, they notice that the car that was coming up behind them never passes through the intersection. So they're thinking they stopped when they got to Sarah. The guys in the car even have a discussion about whether or not they should go back and check on her, being that she is a girl alone in the street so late at night. But they were in a pretty decent area of town and of course, they kind of had this thought that we all have like, oh, I'm sure it's fine. Nothing bad could happen.

It's going to be okay. Well at 209, just three minutes after she placed that call to the taxi service, Sarah's taxi arrives and Sarah isn't there. Wait, just three minutes later? Yeah. And no one knows that she's missing right away because again, those guys who passed didn't actually know her. They just didn't turn around.

Her friends were still out thinking she went home. Her sister assumed she probably stayed at a friend's. What about the friend that her sister thought she was going to stay with? That friend kind of just gave her an open invite. So I assume like, just like her sister thought she was staying at a friend's, this friend probably just assumed, oh, she decided not to come tonight anyway. She probably just wanted to go home. So Sarah had gone out on a Friday night.

She's last seen in the early morning hours of Saturday. And then it's not until Monday morning when her sister Amanda really starts to worry because not only did Sarah not come home, but she has not even been in contact with her, which is really abnormal. Amanda had tried calling her at 815 just for that very reason, just to check in, say, haven't heard your voice, we haven't talked, but she couldn't get ahold of her and she starts calling her friends. They hadn't talked to her since she left that night.

So she ends up calling police and then telling her family that she's finally a missing person report. Very early on, police believed that this was more than just a missing person. And within 48 hours, major crime squad took over the investigation. Pictures of Sarah and her clothing were circulated around town. Over 35,000 posters were distributed around Perth and friends and families walked the streets at night just to see if they could jog anyone's memory, see if they were out the night before, doing anything they could to get any lead that would let them know what

happened to Sarah. Police were even making public appeals for anyone who was out that night that she went missing to come forward. And they actually had hundreds of people respond saying, I was in Claremont that night, but no one had any real valuable information to provide. And the number one thing that people were looking for was any kind of sighting or information related to that second vehicle, the one that the guys saw approaching as they were turning, the one that they thought maybe Sarah had gotten into.

But of course, whoever was driving that never came forward and no one was able to provide a ton of information on exactly the make model or license plate of that car. Now at this point, I know we've heard this before, the case goes cold for five months until another woman goes missing under very similar circumstances. At this point, it is June of 1996 and a 23 year old woman named Jane Rimmer is out in Claremont. It's worth noting that these girls looked eerily similar, like Jane and Sarah, if you saw them out, I would think that they were sisters kind of.

So on the night of Saturday, June 8th, Jane meets up with a friend at Ocean Beach Hotel. That's the same hotel that Sarah was dropped off at, right? Right. And she had dinner and drinks and then went to the Continental Hotel. Wait, didn't Sarah go there too? Yes, she did. It's a popular night spot and it's packed on the weekends with a young Saturday night crowd.

So they're all at the Continental. They're upstairs. They're dancing. I assume dropping it very, very low. I don't think anyone was dropping it low until the early 2000s, but that is, that is fair. That is probably fair. Well, around 1130, they went to leave and go to another place called Club Bayview, which

was within walking distance. Jane isn't super feeling it, but she goes along with them anyways. And there's ended up being a line to get in when they all get there. So the whole group of girls just like decides to forget it. We're all kind of tired. Let's just go home. Once they're walking though, Jane is kind of lagging behind and when the group of girls goes to catch a cab, Jane all of a sudden is like, you know what, I'm going to stay

behind. Wait, what? Yes. And this is something that really stood out to me super, super strong and it's something that's been speculated to death. One of Jane's own friends suggested that maybe she just wanted to stay out to meet somebody like no one in particular because she didn't talk about meeting anyone and she didn't have a boyfriend as far as I know, but Jane was a single girl.

It was Saturday night. Like half the reason you go out when you're single and in your early twenties is to meet someone, but no one knows for sure what her plans were, where she would have been going. Her friends just know that she wasn't ready to go home. So her friends go on ahead, get a taxi and they even have the taxi swing back around one more time and they call out to her, are you sure you don't want to go home with us? And she says, nope, I'm good, I just want to stay out and have a good time. And her friends drive away and that's the last time they see Jane.

But what we don't learn until years later is that Jane was seen again after that. The next day, Sunday, Jane's family knows that something is wrong when she doesn't show up for lunch. They check her flat, she hasn't been home, so they call the police and almost immediately the police link Jane's case to Sarah's. It's the same area, they look very similar, they literally went missing after visiting the same places around the same time. So there's no doubt in anyone's mind that they have a serial predator.

Just like in Sarah's case, family and friends of Jane start distributing pictures of her. But no one claims to have seen her. 55 days go by when a family picking wildflowers in a town about 40 kilometers south of Claremont. Oh my god, you're really adopting the Australian lingo. I'm pretty sure I've said it before, I'm terrible at math. What's the conversion in miles? I think it's about 25 miles. And actually, I don't know if anyone notices this, but I try my hardest not even to speak

in miles when I do US cases because I know we have a broad listener base. I really try and measure distance by time it takes to drive somewhere because I think that's the easiest thing to follow. But maybe I'm just making that up. Or maybe you're a time traveler. I don't think that's it, I don't think that's it. Bad pun. Either way, I think it's about a half hour-ish drive.

And the family's picking wildflowers and the mother is stunned when she comes across the body of a young woman. She can hardly speak and she just says she is there. And her husband says who's there and literally it's all she can get out, she is there. And her husband comes to look and he's like okay, we have to all get in the car, we're going to the police, but she says no way, I'm not leaving her, I will not leave her alone by herself. Detectives arrive and shortly after determine that this is the body of Jane.

And they now know that this guy isn't just taking these girls. Everyone's worst fears have been confirmed, he is murdering them. And police begin a national manhunt for Jane's killer and Sarah's abductor. So they just have Jane's body at this point, right? Not Sarah's? Right, they have no clue where Sarah is when they find Jane. And just nine months after Jane had gone missing, they have another abduction. Another young woman disappears again from Claremont.

Another girl named Kira Glennon is out in Claremont on a Friday night. She works at a local law firm and she had been out having some drinks with coworkers. After the first stop of drinks, they go to, and this name should sound familiar, the Continental Hotel. Kira separates from the group for a bit and when she comes back to get her jacket, she says that she's going to head out. So she grabs her coat, walks out of the Continental, and a group of men actually claimed to have seen her after she left.

They said she was near a bus stop. And they watch her as she walks south down on Sterling Highway. And again, this is the same place that that pay phone was that Sarah used the night she went missing. So she's walking down Sterling Highway toward her home and one of the men that was watching had actually called out, thought maybe she was hitchhiking and kind of made a joke and yelled that she was crazy for hitchhiking. And she wasn't actually, I don't think, they were just making a joke and she kind of waves

them off. And just a few moments later, they saw her talking to someone in a car. And they remember that the car was light colored, but they don't have any details on the make and model or year or license plate, nothing, just a light colored sedan. Now keep in mind, the guys aren't staring her down. That would be super creepy in itself. They're just kind of hanging out casually and looking up every once in a while and noticing her.

So they see her talking to this person in a car. They look away and then when they look back, she's gone. And as far as we know, that is the last sighting of her. Now Saturday morning, Kira's mom finds that she has not returned home. She calls her friends and learns about where the last place she was seen, leaving this group of work friends out of the continental. News that a third woman is missing spreads alarm. Radio stations start broadcasting safety messages, like take your cell phone, stay in lighted

areas. Basically broadcasting all of the crime jerky rules, right? All of them. Yeah. Be alert, don't get in cars with strange men, even if they're cute and you never know anyone ever. There is even a reward put out for information leading to the person who's doing this for a quarter of a million dollars back in the nineties.

Yeah. Quarter of a million with inflation and conversion rates. This would be over half of a million US dollars today. It was a massive reward. They knew this guy wasn't going to quit. They still need to define Sarah and Kira. They wanted to know who killed Jane, but unfortunately it was too late for Kira. Just 19 days after her disappearance, her body was found out in the brush.

Police confirm publicly that they are looking for a serial killer and they bring in profilers to analyze their suspected perpetrator. And this is the profile that they came up with. They said he's likely a white male, unremarkable in appearance, clever, has a high IQ. He's probably social, used to dealing with women, holds his own in social situations. If he's single, he probably has a long history of dating. If he's married, he's maintaining the illusion of being a good husband and father. He may have a history of abuse in his childhood.

He's likely well educated with high hygiene levels. He's mobile in his work and leisure and he probably drives a new ish car. Before Jane was discovered, he possibly returned to the site where her body was found. He could have returned to the scene after the discovery as an onlooker or a volunteer and he could have contacted police to offer help. At the time of the abductions and murders, he was likely between 25 and 35. And he would probably think that the killings weren't his fault and blame them on society or someone else.

Was there any information given about how Jane and Chiara were discovered, like say to their bodies or anything? Zero. Even to this day. They kept the condition of their remains very secretive. I mean, we don't know if they were found clothed, unclothed, we don't know the cause of death, we don't know if there were any markings on them or what items they had or didn't have with them and they were open with the public saying that they were doing

this to weed out all of the false confessions. So I still don't know how either of the girls were found and like what the condition of their bodies were. And that's because the MO of this whole investigation was for the police to release damn near nothing. In fact, the task force that was made to work on this case even had to sign this confidentiality agreement basically saying that they agree they're only going to talk to other investigators and not just any investigators like only investigators on the case and they're only allowed to talk about it at specific locations.

They couldn't just go out to a bar after work and talk about the case. It was very tight-lipped. And even to this day, the things that we know are still barely anything. In the months following the discovery of Kira, around 50,000 tips are made to crime stoppers. 2,000 calls a day almost. And you guys, this shows you just how important the crime stoppers organization is. But even despite these thousands of tips coming into crime stoppers, the case goes cold again for years and years.

And during this time, they're of course investigating leads. They're investigating suspects. But at the time, the public never heard anything about it. One of the investigative measures taken by the task force back in the day was to set up secret security cameras. The girls were all getting taken in almost the exact same spot. So they figured this guy felt comfortable coming back to this area over and over. Now with these security cameras, they caught men following women.

They caught rogue taxi drivers, like more than one. And all of these people have been eliminated, except at the time, there were two that couldn't provide alibis. One was this guy who, when they pulled him over, he had an automatic rifle concealed under the seat of his car, and he was also familiar with the area where Kira's body was found. But they were eventually able to rule him out after some scrutiny. The second guy was a martial arts practitioner.

He was from a wealthy English family. He was about 34 years old. And he actually worked closely with Sarah and he had once met Jane. This guy lived alone and he lived alone, not far from the Claremont area. When they interviewed him, he told lots of lies in his interview. He totally played down his relationship with Sarah. He gave false alibis. And eventually he took a polygraph, but it was inconclusive.

Another avenue that they went down was investigating these rogue taxi drivers that they would find. And taxi drivers had been a part of a tax on women in recent Perth areas. And there was this big, like, underground industry of, like, illegal taxi drivers where basically they weren't registered, they weren't vetted. They would just put signs on their cars and start picking up women, which this was actually my initial thought when I heard about Sarah calling a cab and then kind of disappearing very quickly. And then when I heard about Kira talking to that person in the car, it made me wonder

if there was, like, somebody who they thought either who really was a taxi driver or who they thought was a taxi driver had come by when they were looking to go home. And to put it into recent terms, you hear stories all the time about fake Uber drivers, fake Lyft drivers doing the same thing. Yeah. There was even a case here in Indiana where a guy who actually was a taxi driver had picked up a girl. It's one of those things where you somehow feel safe getting into a car with a complete

stranger. It's very bizarre. But they examined over 800 taxi vehicles but never found anything conclusive. One of the head investigators took a lot of flak during the investigation because he was obsessed with one man in particular that he thought was the prime suspect. He believed that the man they were looking for was Lance Williams. And they put this Lance guy under heavy surveillance. Literally at one point, it seemed like their entire investigation revolved around him.

But to be fair, he was a pretty good suspect. Every Thursday through Sunday, he would leave his house at midnight, get in his car, cruise around, go to this place called Hungry Jacks, get a chocolate shake, and he would drive about 20 minutes away, drink his shake, circle back, throw the cup away in the same bin every single night. And then when he was done with his chocolate shake, he would just circle the Claremont area up and down like 30 times. Ash, you know me more than anyone.

I am also a creature of habit, but dang, that seems like a pretty creepy habit. Yeah, and it's what made him look so fishy. So he's literally just like on the nights, the weekend nights, when all these girls went missing, it looks like he's looking, he's like a predator looking for prey. And I can see why they had such like a heavy eye on him. And they followed him night after night. They even put decoy girls out on the streets as prey to try and catch him. And when he didn't go after any of them, the task force leader actually had one of the

girls approach him. She approaches his car and asks him where the bus stop is, and he says, no, don't even worry about it. I'll just take you wherever you need to go. And when she gets in the car, they get to the location that she had told him. And he said that he didn't want to leave her because it isn't safe out there. And she just said, no, I'll be fine. She gets out of the car.

And of course, she immediately goes and reports back to the detectives. And she says that all he did was mostly talk about himself. Like nothing crazy had happened. And that was that. Now you would think at this point maybe they would have called it off, but the task force was like, well, our decoy girl was taller than the girls he normally goes after. She was older. She was of a bigger build.

So maybe he's still our guy, but she just wasn't his type. So they keep the surveillance on him. And after months more of this, they end up just stopping him and bringing him in for questioning. But when they stop him, he actually wets his pants. Um, wetting your pants does not make you look innocent. Not even a little bit. They bring him in and question him for 13 hours.

He didn't ask for a lawyer and he ends up taking a polygraph, which of course he fails. Oh, always get the lawyer and never take the polygraph. That's the rule. Come on. I don't know if we've actually ever said always get a lawyer, but take no guys. Always get a lawyer. I feel like it's implied. Totally implied.

Luckily, though, for him, they didn't get anything from his interviews, but they couldn't let him go. They just kept the surveillance on. They were sure that they had found their guy. And they found that he was picking up sex workers sometimes multiple times a day. And sometimes these sex workers would look a lot like the Claremont victims picking up girls that look like the victims, also not making this guy look innocent. Yeah.

They just couldn't let go of this guy and this guy isn't giving them any reason to. If you're under surveillance and you know you're under surveillance, maybe don't pick up a bunch of sex workers like three a day, like tone it down, but he, and he knows he's under surveillance too. Like he, it got so bad to the point where if he was going to do anything to break his normal routine, he would actually call the police ahead of time and tell them like, Hey, not going to work today. Like I'm going to go visit my grandma instead.

So I just want you guys to know if you're going to follow me, like that's what's up. You don't have to call in like backup. I'm not going to go kill a girl. Like this is just my plans for today. Now I will say that another thing that looked fishy for this guy is that while he was under surveillance, no other women went missing. But how stealth were the cops? Like if people do cops were constantly patrolling the area undercover, it would keep anyone away.

Right? Right. So not just him. Of course he knew that they were watching, but they had sometimes like 15 girls a night out there walking. They had cars patrolling. So it was like a hot area at the time. People knew that police were probably around.

So I would imagine, I mean, if they were even like the least bit in discreet that whoever it was doing this was staying away. Well in 1999, the surveillance stops. They get nothing and eventually it has to come to an end. The next thing we hear is in 2004 when police tell us that they're looking for missing items from all three victims. They're looking for a sunflower key ring that Sarah had, a small bag that Jane had, and a small brooch that Kira had.

Okay. So they know it's missing from Jane and Kira because they've both been found. But Sarah's still missing, right? How did they know that she's missing something? We had no idea back then. But in 2008, we learned that police had so much more that they weren't releasing to the public. Britt, no lie, what they release gave me the full body chills.

It was so haunting. Police finally revealed that they had video footage of Jane the night that she went missing. From where? Right outside the Continental Hotel. In the video, you can see Jane and her friends come out. They kind of congregate around this pole deciding what to do next. This is when maybe they were talking again about going to another place, there's a line, and you see Jane stay behind.

And she's just waiting there, like the girls leave and she's posted up against this pole looking down the street and every once in a while kind of glances at her watch. She sent me this link earlier and I didn't get a chance to watch it before we recorded. Can you walk me through it as I watch right now? Okay, so where it's highlighted, that's her. And this is after her friends have left. So she's like just standing there and this is what I can't figure out is why she stayed behind just to stand there.

She kind of like walks out into the street, looks like she's looking down the street, and then she comes back to stand by that pole and we've got two different angles and it kind of switches and we lose a little bit of time in between each one. But it kind of looks like she's waiting for somebody. Yeah, it looks like she's like waiting for someone to show up or waiting to see somebody. But she didn't say she was waiting for anyone. Now look, this guy comes. She looks so happy.

Yeah. I don't look that happy ever. She like runs into him, she's so excited, and they end up like talking for a little bit. And the next thing though, like the next clip that we have, he's out of the frame. And then she stands there for like another two and a half minutes or so and then we get another clip and she's just gone. And that's it. That's so bizarre.

And like people around her are like hanging out and like seeing people and interacting. Yeah. She's still just standing there. And it looks like she's like waiting for an Uber or something. So that's the thing that like I could not figure out and that sticks with me so much is all of your friends that you were out with are leaving. You stay behind. It's the nineties.

It's not like you texted somebody and we're going to meet up with somebody. As far as all of her friends knew she was going to, wasn't going to meet up with somebody. And it's not even like they all planned to be done at 1130 and then she was going to meet up with somebody. So I cannot for the life of me figure out what she was doing and did that guy have anything to do with it. Cause she obviously recognized him. She was excited to see him.

They talk for a little bit, but then we know at least at some point he left and she was there alone. And we had to be swing back by because the part where she actually walks away, we don't have on video. You guys have to look at this video to know what we're talking about. We're going to post it on our website. I'm going to try and see if I can get it on Facebook and Instagram as well. But you need to see what's going on.

You need to see her reaction when she sees this guy. It is so crucial. And obviously the police think it's crucial because there's a reason they released it in 2008. And even though, you know, they just released it in 2008, they've had this the whole time and they tracked down every single person in this video, every single one. And it was a busy weekend and they have nothing. No one has any important information.

No one that they talked to is a suspect. Everyone is cleared except that man that walks into the frame from the angle that we have, Jane is looking at us and the man walks into the frame with his back to us and he gets close to her and she recognizes him. I mean, we talked about it. She breaks out into a huge smile, almost a laugh. Yeah, I don't look that happy to see most people and she is elated in the video. Right.

And they have some kind of interaction, but they were never able to track down this man and he would never come forward. Do you think it's possible that they have unreleased footage of Sarah too? Otherwise, how do you know what's missing from her? She is missing. It doesn't make sense. Well, all the girls went missing in the same area. So I have to think like not even the same area like Claremont, the same area as in they

all came out of the same hotel. They were all on the same street. So I have to think that they have video of probably all of the girls, right? But I'm more wondering if maybe they found something of Sarah's, like a purse maybe, like something tangible that they have, but that thing that they have is missing something specific. I don't really know. So the public waits, they fear, they watch and rewatch that same security footage of

Jane smiling at the stranger and they wonder who that man is that never came forward. Surely he had something to hide. And the public theorizes and every year that goes by that he doesn't strike, the city feels a little bit safer and it all gets a little bit further away until boom out of nowhere on December 22nd, 2016, an arrest is made. What? That was my reaction to police charged a 48 year old man named Bradley Robert Edwards with the murders of Jane and Kira.

At the same time, they also charge him with abducting a 17 year old girl in February of 1995 and they charge him with indecently assaulting an 18 year old woman during a break-in in February of 1988. Wait, wait, wait. Back up. Was the Claremont killer just now connected to these cases after he got arrested? No. Actually, in 2009, the police made a forensic connection between Kira's rape and murder

and the case in 1995. They just didn't tell the public until years later. The girl in 1995 had gone to club Bayview and was walking home alone when a man jumped out, put a bag over her head, tied her hands and put her in his van. He raped her and then put her on the ground, took her clothes with him and she got away and ran to a hospital. And the girl that he attempted to attack in 1988, like he had gone into her home but was scared off when she started screaming.

These are wildly different MOs. Totally. And people are actually afraid that this guy is responsible for way more than just the five that we're talking about today. So I'm still confused. How did they actually find this guy? It wasn't the DNA link they had back in 2009, right? This is the thing that's been eating me alive and like I went and tried to like scour the

internet for. I don't know. Police keep referencing back to this DNA. They say that in 1988, when he attempted to break into that girl's home and rape her, she screamed and it scared him. And as he was running away, he dropped a white kimono. And I always picture when I hear kimono, like this white silk robe. But this picture that I saw looked more like a giant big T-shirt.

But he drops it and it went into evidence. And when police tested that evidence like 20 years later, the DNA sample that came back matched with the samples in the police database. It matched the sample that was found on Kira's body. And it matched that 17 year old woman who he had jumped out and attacked and stole the clothes from in 1995. Wait, that doesn't tell me how they ended up with him. Girl, I know.

And that is the most they say when police are asked about it. They just keep saying, oh, we made this DNA connection. You know, I get that you linked crimes A, B, and like D, or E, but that doesn't tell me how you figured out who did all of them. And also, we're really unversed in Australian crime, so we don't know what the procedures are and what needs to happen before they link things together. I'm completely in the dark about this. And I don't know either.

I'm kind of interested to hear from our Australian listeners. Is it normal for them to keep things this under wraps, especially after they have an arrest? Normally, we have a big press conference where they are like so excited to tell you about how they were so smart and caught the criminal and the good guys win. And this guy was arrested back in 2016. And we still have no idea how the police found him. Now, one of the theories that's out there is, do you remember we were talking about how

they put up those secret cameras and they saw those guys following girls and they saw the rogue taxi drivers? Yeah. So, some people think that maybe they also got a bunch of license plates that they were running and then cross-checking, but again, that seems really crazy to me because they put those security cameras up years and years and years and years and years ago. So I don't think it would take them until 2016 to go through everyone and kind of whittle it down.

Another theory is that it goes back to that DNA. And some people say that, okay, let's say they only had a partial DNA on the Claremont victims. There was a full sample from that first Kimono crime. And once they kind of linked those, they were able to use the full DNA and then match it to like one of his relatives maybe in the system and then work their way to them. That's a theory that people are throwing out on Reddit online all the time. I kind of wonder if maybe they didn't use the same investigative efforts that were used

in the Golden State Killer where they put it into like a genealogical database. Really? That's the first time that I know of that that was ever used. No. And this is crazy to me because when I heard about the Golden State Killer, I thought that that's the first time they used a genealogical database to find a killer as well. But I was actually doing some research for an episode that I'm going to be releasing on Patreon.

And I found out that at least here in the States, it was done as early as 2014. So if we're talking about 2016 in Australia, it's super likely that that's the method that they used as well. And if it was, I can kind of see why they're keeping it under wraps. Of course, it's going to come out in the trial, but if I were investigators, I would be keeping this on the down low for any case as long as possible because you know as soon as the legal system catches up with it, there's going to be a ton of blockades, a ton of red tape. Who knows if they're going to be able to continue to use this information.

So if I were an investigator, I'd be like, I'm going to ride this train for as long as I can to solve as many cases as I can. So this is one of the theories of maybe how they got to him, but again, we still have no idea. The only thing we kind of know is we've learned a little bit about this guy. He lived in a four bedroom house in Perth, like a suburb right outside of Perth. He enjoyed computer gaming, photography, video, like his life was nothing out of the ordinary.

He had a couple of long term relationships. There was not related to him specifically, but as I got like down in the rabbit hole online, there's some stories on Reddit of people who have had interactions with a man that they thought was the Claremont killer that had chased them down, but they had gotten away and they say it looked a lot like Bradley. There must have been more that came out after his initial arrest in late 2016. And I don't know if they got it through more investigative efforts or through a confession, but in February of this year, 2018, he also got charged with the willful murder of Sarah,

even though her remains still have not been located. The hunt for this guy was Australia's longest running and most expensive murder investigation with more than 3000 people investigated under the task force. And what's crazy is not only was it the most expensive to investigate, it's going to be the most expensive to try as well. The West Australian actually reported that the state budget set aside $1.5 million last year, like in preparation for the trial that's coming up in July, and their treasurer Ben Wyatt actually included another $1.8 million for like additional anticipated costs of the

proceedings, so that's $3.3 million that they budgeted to spend on his trial, which again starts in July. And again, I'm still so shocked we have a trial starting next month and nothing has leaked out. The one thing that police are still looking for is apparently he owned a 1992 white Toyota Camry station wagon, and it was deregistered, which I assume means just like no longer registered in his name or just kind of like fell off the grid in 2008, and police cannot locate it.

The vehicle's identification number I'm going to put on the website, so they know exactly the vehicle that they're looking for. They believe that this car is connected to the murder of Sarah, and of course she is the girl that we still can't find, so they think it's super important to find this car. He obviously got rid of it for a reason and won't tell them where it's at, so they're still looking for any information. If you have any information, recognize that car, know anyone that bought one in 2008, again it's a 1992 white Toyota Camry, you can contact the crime stoppers there, 1-800-333-000.

And I would love if our Australian listeners would keep us abreast of all of the things happening in the trial, send us the links, get in our Facebook discussion group and talk about it. I think this is again the first Australian case that we've all covered, so you've got now thousands and thousands of thousands of people to talk to about this case, and we're all so excited for the updates. So if you guys want to talk about this episode, don't forget you can go to our Facebook discussion group.

You can also follow us on Instagram at CrimeJunkiePodcast. We're on Twitter as at CrimeJunkiePod. And don't forget, if you guys are sad that the episode's over and you have to wait until next week, but you don't want to, you can go now to Patreon and we've got two episodes waiting for you. Hope to see you there. CrimeJunkie is written and hosted by me. All of our sound production and editing comes from Brit Praewod, and all of our music, including

our theme, comes from Justin Daniel. CrimeJunkie is an audio check production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?