Revealed for the first time, the Claremont serial killer’s final insult to one of his victims that left veteran cops seething – as prison insiders expose his deluded life behind bars

For more than two decades, the Claremont serial killings cast a long, uneasy shadow over Perth.

It wasn’t just the brutality of the crimes – it was the maddening silence that followed. Three young women vanished from one of the city’s most affluent neighbourhoods. Two were found in bushland. One was never found at all.

For years, despite the largest and most expensive police investigation in Australian history, the killer remained unidentified.

And even when answers came, they brought with them a grim postscript: that justice had been delayed by years of misdirected suspicion, links to previous assaults overlooked, and opportunities lost.

The arrest and conviction of Bradley Robert Edwards, a former Telstra technician, brought long-awaited relief to a city that had feared the worst for years. 

But the story of how he evaded capture for so long is just as important – and almost as disturbing – as the crimes he committed.

In the mid-1990s, fear seeped into the bones of a city that once considered itself safe. Between 1996 and 1997, three women – Sarah Spiers, 18, Jane Rimmer, 23, and Ciara Glennon, 27 – vanished after nights out in Claremont, in Perth’s western suburbs.

I remember it vividly. As a young journalist living in Perth, I felt the tension settle over the city like a second skin. We were heartbroken. We were scared. 

Those poor, beautiful young women. What happened to them could have happened to any of us. 

So many Perth people had a connection to the murders; my friend’s ex-boyfriend once dated one of the victims. And the father of my family friend had worked with a victim’s father. She told of the unspeakable horror of the girl’s parents when police broke the news that their beloved daughter’s body had been discovered. 

My friends and I had walked home from the Claremont pub (then called the Continental) more times than I can count. Sometimes we foolishly hitchhiked. We thought nothing of it. But never again.

Women stopped going out alone. The fact that all three women had told friends they were getting a taxi home became a key focus for police. 

Taxis quickly became objects of suspicion. The phrase ‘Don’t catch a taxi’ was whispered across Perth’s social circles and splashed across headlines. 

But, in hindsight, it was a distraction. The man responsible, Bradley Edwards, was never a taxi driver. He was a Telstra technician, hiding in plain sight.

Let’s look at the multiple blunders of the WA Police ‘Macro Taskforce’ which meant a monster was left roaming the suburbs for two decades.

And then we’ll expose how the killer is ‘coping’ with his life behind bars.

An investigation in freefall

Bret Christian is the Managing Editor of the Post Newspapers and author of the bestselling book Stalking Claremont: Inside The Hunt for a Serial Killer by HarperCollins. 

He has covered the case from the very beginning and was the first to publicly link the Claremont murders with a violent rape of a 17-year-old girl in 1995 at Karrakatta Cemetery – at a time when police had not told the public the two cases were connected. His front-page investigation in 2015 forced a turning point in the stalled inquiry.

‘The biggest blunder of the Macro Taskforce was focusing on the wrong suspects early on,’ Christian says. 

‘There were over 100 detectives working the case, and while some had other leads, they were treated as the “B team”. The “A team” had tunnel vision on the people they’d already identified. 

‘Another key mistake was dismissing the Karrakatta rape case because the DNA of the suspects the police were focusing on – who were all innocent – didn’t match the DNA found on the Karrakatta victim. 

‘So they excluded that case as being connected, but it turned out to be crucial. That rape was later seen as part of Edwards’ “apprenticeship”.

‘Another major mistake was not DNA testing the sample taken from Ciara Glennon’s thumbnail – for 11 years. That was a massive oversight.’

Why, in a case that consumed the city and engaged more than a hundred detectives, did it take 11 years to test DNA from beneath a murder victim’s fingernail?

‘In 2004, they finally did what British police usually do after a month in a stalled major case: they brought in a fresh team from another police district to look at the evidence with fresh eyes. That only happened after pressure from the ABC. They brought in an international team, who put together a plan for reinvestigating the killings,’ Christian says.

‘Once they realised the cold case team’s map hadn’t been followed properly, they decided to start from the beginning. Over time, things had been muddled – exhibit numbers changed, duplicated, swapped – so they re-examined every single item.’

Part of that process included a large colour enlargement of Ciara’s left thumb. According to Christian, one of the detectives noted damage on the nail and said, ‘There’s something here.’ So they went looking for the original sample; the one that should have been taken at the morgue.

They found a jar in the back of the fridge, labelled as Ciara’s thumbnail, with her DNA. This critical evidence had just been left there and forgotten. And that’s what eventually led to the match with Edwards’ DNA.

‘Ciara really fought for her life. Edwards took her life, but she took something from him that would eventually take his,’ Christian says.

It was 2008 when it was confirmed that the DNA from Ciara’s thumbnail matched the DNA from the Karrakatta victim. But the police kept it secret – for seven years.

‘I found out about this in 2015 and published it on the front page of our paper. I hadn’t anticipated the storm it caused. The victims’ families and the public turned to police and said, “What have you been doing all this time? Why haven’t you solved this?”

‘As a result, the police immediately created two new squads to reinvestigate the case properly. And a year after our story ran, they finally identified Edwards.’

Forensic teams also discovered blue polyester fibres on the bodies of Jane and Ciara. These matched the seat covers used in Telstra vans in the 1990s, leading police to a list of technicians who drove those vehicles. One of them was Bradley Edwards.

Key police blunders

Tunnel vision on taxi drivers:

Police focused intensely on taxi drivers early on, requesting DNA from more than 5,000 and placing one innocent man under 24/7 surveillance for years.

This narrow approach ignored other potential suspects and set the investigation on the wrong path.

Dismissal of the Karrakatta rape:

A year before the first murder, a 17-year-old was abducted and raped at Karrakatta Cemetery. The case was dismissed as unrelated when suspects’ DNA didn’t match, despite striking similarities.

Unforgivable forensic delay:

DNA found under Ciara Glennon’s thumbnail from when she tried to fight off her killer wasn’t tested for 11 years. That sample eventually identified Edwards, but the delay cost valuable time and may have allowed him to strike again.

Poor evidence handling:

Evidence from the case was mislabelled, duplicated or lost. Investigators had to go back and re-examine everything from scratch, wasting years and undermining the integrity of the investigation.

Flood of false leads:

A self-proclaimed FBI profiler encouraged the public to report vague behaviour, leading to thousands of calls about neighbours and ex-partners. The volume of irrelevant tips overwhelmed investigators.

Withheld DNA breakthrough:

When police linked the Claremont DNA to the Karrakatta rape in 2008, they kept it secret for seven years. It took Bret Christian’s front-page story in 2015 to pressure police into reopening the case properly.

Delayed release of CCTV footage:

Footage showing Jane Rimmer with a ‘mystery man’ was released 12 years after her disappearance – far too late to jog the public’s memory or help identify him in time.

The ‘mystery man’

More than a decade after the murders, police released CCTV footage, taken outside the Claremont pub, where Jane Rimmer was seen talking to a man, clearly known to her. Contrary to some media reports, the man is the video was not Edwards.

‘All you could make out was that the man had broad shoulders and lightish hair, whereas Edwards had dark hair. At that stage, they didn’t even know about Edwards,’ Christian says.

‘When the first edition of my book Stalking Claremont was released, a friend phoned me and said, “I know who the mystery man is. It’s me.”

‘When I spoke to “mystery man” he said he had no idea police had been looking for him for 12 years. He said that after the public release of the video he didn’t come forward because he’d had a previous bad experience with WA Police when he was a witness in a serious case. He knew that if he came forward, he’d be treated as a suspect, as the last person seen to speak to Jane.

‘He told me, “They’d absolutely do me over. I know how they operate.” I ran that past a detective who worked on the case, and he said, “We sure would have.”‘

Delays and secrets

During the years the Claremont killer remained at large, police also missed disturbing, potentially vital information from members of the public.

According to Christian, one young woman phoned to report that she had been at Rowe Park – the same location where the 17-year-old Karrakatta rape victim was abducted – when a man in a Telstra van pulled up and offered her a lift.

Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. Her boyfriend, who the driver hadn’t seen at first, was nearby. But despite the obvious connection, police never followed up with her at the time. It wasn’t until Edwards was arrested that she received a call from officers asking for details she had reported years earlier.

‘I said to the cops, “It’s only taken you 20 years to get around to taking statements from us,”‘ the boyfriend said.

Another piece of missed evidence was that the 17-year-old rape victim had been tied up around the legs and wrists, with what at first appeared to be long Telstra cables.

A photo of the cables was introduced during Edwards’ trial. He pleaded guilty to the rape as well as an earlier home invasion and assault, but ‘not guilty’ to the murders.

A journalist’s brush with Taskforce Macro

Journalist Ros Thomas was working as a reporter for the Seven Network’s Today Tonight at the time of the killings when she was invited to spend a night with Taskforce Macro.

‘All of a sudden, one of the cops turned to me and said, “You’d be the killer’s perfect victim. You’re a size 12, fair-haired and curvy”,’ Thomas said.

(Another WA journalist told me, when I repeated what Thomas had said: ‘That’s something only a Perth cop would say.’)

‘It was a strange night following the taskforce around. They’d sit in cars, waiting outside the Claremont pub and making sure any women leaving would be safely getting in cars with friends. But most people stayed well away from Claremont. Of course nobody dared to catch a taxi,’ Thomas says.

The first suspect in the killings was a taxi driver, because Jane, Ciara and Sarah had let friends know they were catching a taxi home. The phrase, ‘Don’t get a taxi!’ was thrown at anybody going out for a drink in Claremont.

Police wasted countless hours on 24/7 surveillance of an innocent taxi driver who said it ruined his life. The police also ruined the life of a former Claremont mayor who became a suspect but was completely innocent. He tells his story here.

Ros Thomas says there were so many theories and stories swirling around as people were living in fear.

‘I heard stories that a man was driving around Claremont with an axe, masking tape and black plastic. Stories that a 13-year-old girl who was murdered years ago was his first victim,’ Thomas says.

‘The cops told me that most serial killers practise a lot before they get their “perfect murder” and there was a string of crimes that had similarities to the Claremont killings. Then the killer got good at what he was doing and that the three Claremont murders were finally his “perfect murders”.

‘On a personal note: the photograph the police used of Jane Rimmer showed her in a dress that was identical to a dress I’d recently worn to a friend’s wedding. That always freaked me out – that Jane and I had the same dress, and that dress was all over the news.’

A creepy return

One of the most disturbing details about Bradley Edwards didn’t even make it into the courtroom. 

Years after Ciara Glennon’s murder, Edwards reportedly returned to her grave and left a pair of her underwear there. It was an act so unsettling, so ritualistic, that even seasoned investigators were shaken.

‘That detail didn’t come up at trial – only indirectly, when DNA was introduced. I picked up immediately on what they were talking about. The prosecution shut down the questioning quickly, but they’d said enough to confirm what I already knew,’ Christian says.

‘It was particularly creepy. Some serial killers do that – revisit the graves of their victims.’

It was a final, grotesque gesture that hinted at a darker obsession – a need to return to the scene of the crime, to exert control long after death.

Life behind bars

Bradley Edwards is now serving a life sentence – but by all accounts, it’s far from harsh. Inside prison, he’s reportedly doing just fine. 

‘From what I’ve been told, he’s having a lovely time,’ Christian says.

‘He’s very much enjoying himself and is quite content playing video games all day.

‘He’s got protection, and three good meals a day. He’s definitely not in danger of being bashed or anything. He thinks of himself as a celebrity so he’s quite happy.’

The contrast between his comfortable existence and the suffering he inflicted is hard to stomach – for victims’ families, and for the city that lived under his shadow. 

Christian says Edwards did show signs of strain before the trial began: ‘He drove a pencil into his ear in a bid to kill himself, but he didn’t succeed.’

Still, for a man who evaded justice for decades, his day-to-day now seems remarkably easy, living out his sentence in quiet satisfaction as Perth continues to carry the trauma he left behind and the Spiers family still hopes for closure.