Perth forensics experts are testing a white Holden commodore station wagon that was recently seized from its current owner. It once belonged to Bradley Robert Edwards; the man accused of being the Claremont killer. The car has had three owners since it was used by Edwards.
The 21-year-old VS model belonged to Edwards at the time three young women went missing during 1996/97. It was taken away from its current owner -- who was flabbergasted when police turned up to seize his car -- on the same day Bradley was charged with the murder of two of the women.
The current owner was asked by police to provide DNA samples, so his genetic profile can be ruled out of any samples taken from the car. Perth police believe Edwards used the car when he was working as a Telstra technician.
Edwards has been charged with the murders of Jane Rimmer in 1996 and Ciara Glennon in 1997. Both girls disappeared from the affluent suburb of Claremont, in a case that has involved the biggest manhunt in Australian history, across two decades. Edwards has also been charged over two sexual assaults in Perth in 1988 and 1995.
Police have been trying for years to identify car upholstery fibres found on the remains of Rimmer, whose body was discovered in July 1996; leading to the understanding the killer was driving a VS Commodore made in the mid-1990s.
When Glennon vanished nine months later, she was seen leaning into the passenger window of a light-coloured station wagon.
Edwards is also charged with two sexual assaults that took place shortly before Glennon and Rimmer went missing.
Post Newspaper editor Bret Christian has been covering the case for decades. Christian was the first journalist to report the theory linking the Claremont killings to an horrific rape of a teenage girl in Karrakatta cemetery, the year before the murders.
"Post newspapers have had, over the years, new information come to us from members of the public; including a woman who was kidnapped and never reported it," Christian told The Huffington Post Australia. "Another woman was lured into a car in Claremont and never reported it. She had some interesting information that we passed onto the police.
"The problem has never been a lack of information as the public has been keen to see it solved. But, in a way, that's been a problem – the police have been so swamped with information, it takes a long time to sort through it all."
Claremont resident Jacky Moir told HuffPost Australia she reported to police, back in 1997, that a man in a white car had followed her as she walked home from the Claremont Hotel (where the missing girls had been socialising the night they disappeared).
"It freaked me out so much I went into somebody's front yard and hid in the bushes. I could see the man sitting in the car waiting to see if I reappeared. Thankfully, he gave up and eventually drove away," Moir said.
"I memorised the car's number plate and called the police. But I never heard from them -- or so I thought -- but about 10 years later the police called me. They told me the man who had followed me that night was a 'known nuisance' but not a suspect. So it goes to show that the cops really did sift through all the public information even if it took a decade to let me know."
Edwards made a brief court appearance last December and will face court again on January 25.
Timeline
Sarah Spiers, 18, went missing from outside a Claremont bar in January 1996. Her body has never been found.
Jane Rimmer, aged 23, was abducted from Claremont in June 1996 and her body found in bushland south of Perth that August. Edwards has been charged with her murder.
Ciara Glennon, aged 27, disappeared in March 1997. Her body was found in bushland north of Perth, 19 days after she was last seen in Claremont. Edwards has been charged with her murder.
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