The long wait for justice for the families of Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon is almost over, with Claremont killer Bradley Robert Edwards to be punished for his despicable crimes.
Edwards, who terrorised Perth’s suburbs for almost a decade, will be sentenced on Wednesday in the Supreme Court of Western Australia.
He faces life imprisonment after being convicted in September of abducting and killing Ms Rimmer, 23, and Ms Glennon, 27, in 1996 and 1997.
Edwards, 52, was found not guilty of the 1996 murder of 18-year-old secretary Sarah Spiers.
All three women disappeared after a night out with friends in affluent Claremont. The bodies of childcare worker Ms Rimmer and solicitor Ms Glennon were discovered in bushland weeks after they were killed but Ms Spiers’ body has never been found.
Justice Stephen Hall found the evidence showing the confessed rapist’s propensity for violent abductions made it likely that he also killed Ms Spiers.
Edwards could face one of the harshest punishments ever handed down in WA, with prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo flagging she might ask for a non-parole sentence.
Family murderer Anthony Robert Harvey became the first person in WA to receive such a term when Justice Hall ordered in March that he never be released from prison.
Edwards, who opted not to give evidence during his seven-month trial, shook his head when the guilty verdicts were delivered.
There were emotional scenes afterwards with Ms Barbagallo and Police Commissioner Chris Dawson embracing the victims’ loved ones.
Hundreds of people had queued outside from 4am and a similarly large turnout is expected on Wednesday.
Edwards committed his first known attack on women in 1988, breaking into the Huntingdale home of an 18-year-old acquaintance and indecently assaulting her as she slept.
It provided the crucial piece of evidence homicide detectives needed to arrest him almost 29 years later.
He’d left behind a semen-stained silk kimono stolen from a washing line and when it was finally tested in November 2016, DNA matched swabs taken from a teenager he abducted from Claremont then raped at nearby Karrakatta Cemetery in 1995.
It also matched cellular material found under Ms Glennon’s fingernails, with Justice Hall satisfied it got there during a violent struggle shortly before her death.
Fibre evidence established that both the murder victims had been in Edwards’ Telstra work vehicle shortly before their deaths, he added.
