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The Claremont Killer

rjh01 said:
Planigale - I agree these are good questions and points. Pity they are only now being asked. It was the sort of post I was looking for when I asked my questions. Instead of which I just got mostly garbage. As a result I will not make any attempt to answer them. Sorry.
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Garbage in, garbage out.
 
rjh01 said:
Planigale - I agree these are good questions and points. Pity they are only now being asked. It was the sort of post I was looking for when I asked my questions. Instead of which I just got mostly garbage. As a result I will not make any attempt to answer them. Sorry.
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There is nothing more mature than starting up a game with the neighborhood and then taking your ball and going home when the game isn't going the way you want it to. You got good answers in my opinion but didn't like that some of us would find it maybe slightly offensive that it would be suggested that victims and their families simply be forgotten and move on because you deemed them too old an not cost effective.
 
kali1137 said:
There is nothing more mature than starting up a game with the neighborhood and then taking your ball and going home when the game isn't going the way you want it to. You got good answers in my opinion but didn't like that some of us would find it maybe slightly offensive that it would be suggested that victims and their families simply be forgotten and move on because you deemed them too old an not cost effective.
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That's much nicer than anything I could muster in reply. Thank you.
 
It looks as though the Claremont murders trial is finally due to start in a couple of weeks after various delays related to new evidence.

It looks as though the defence will be challenging the DNA evidence. Prosecutors just won a last minute bid to use new statements and evidence in rebuttal.

Edwards has now pleaded guilty to two attacks (but not the murders).
 
I don’t want to say I’m looking forward to this trial (starting tomorrow) as it sounds ghoulish, but I want it to finally happen and be over after all the delays. At the time of these murders, I was living in Shenton Park, where one of the murder victims also lived, close to Karrakatta cemetery and Hollywood hospital where attacks took place. I was a postgraduate student at UWA, with the main entrance to the campus on Stirling Highway where two of the murder victims were abducted. I didn’t know any of the victims, but knew people who did. The level of paranoia at times was almost unbelievable. People constantly told me I was mad just to cross Stirling Highway at night to get to the bus stop. I was already going through a lot of stress at the time and it was hard to not be affected. Then there were the absurd and prolonged attempts to go after the wrong man, with everyone knowing who the suspect was and where he lived. At the time I moved to the UK in 2000 I believe poor Lance Williams was still under surveillance.

The trial is set to take around six months (less than the original nine as Edwards has pleaded guilty to some charges). Apparently the defence will challenge the DNA evidence on the grounds of contamination and/or casual contact. I hope the families are able to hold up through all of it.
 
I saw some discussion earlier in the thread (in between the bickering) about the question of whether it was worth spending a lot of money and effort on such an old case. This prompted me to recall that we have one of our own coming up in Scotland maybe in the New Year.

In 1976, the year I passed my finals at university (I'm now retired), Renee MacRae and her three-year-old son Andrew disappeared in suspicious circumstances. The chief (and indeed I believe the only) suspect was Bill MacDowell, Renee's lover and Andrew's natural father, but there was never enough evidence to charge him. For some reason there was a flurry of activity relating to the case earlier this year, and the police drained an old quarry at Culloden which I believe had been searched by divers back at the time of the original investigation.

If they found anything they didn't tell the media. Yes they found a child's push-chair but that turned out to have nothing to do with the case. It was reported that they were taking samples of the mud at the bottom of the quarry to test for DNA, but the only report of results from that that I read was that they'd found DNA from various animal species.

But then, suddenly, in September, it was announced that Bill MacDowell had been charged with the two murders and would be going on trial in due course. Bill MacDowell was about 34 at the time of the murders. He's 77 now. I don't think he is suspected of having murdered anyone else in the intervening 43 years.

I'm not sure if this is some sort of record. I'll be fascinated to see what is revealed at the trial and I'll probably start a thread on the case once it starts. However I just wanted to compare the timescale of the case this thread is about with the MacRae murders to demonstrate that 20-odd years isn't really all that long considering.
 
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Judge only trial

Bradley Robert Edwards is being tried by a judge alone and no jury - something which can be requested in WA law:
Rather than taking the normal route of a trial by jury, the prosecution for the Claremont case sought a judge-only trial.

Defence for Edwards didn’t oppose the request.

Factors that come into play when asking for a judge-only trial can include the length – a very long trial places huge burdens on a juror’s life – the complexity of the evidence, and high-profile cases that attract a large chunk of media and public interest.

In April 2019, Justice Michael Corboy said the deciding factors for a judge-only trial in the Claremont case was a "lingering" prejudice against Edwards, and evidence that may be "too graphic and disturbing" for a jury to be objective.
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https://7news.com.au/original-fyi/c...eed-to-know-about-the-serial-murders-c-563875
 
psionl0 said:
His DNA under the fingernails of Ciara Glennon (the third victim) should seal his fate - unless the evidence gets thrown out for one reason or another.
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It seems the defence may try to argue that the fingernail DNA was contaminated with samples from the 1995 rape victim (Edwards having now confessed to the rape).
 
Doesn't this depth of detail in recollections of events over two decades a go seem a bit unlikely?

Despite being asked about events more than 20 years ago, Mr Cook said he had a clear memory of seeing Mr Edwards on the mornings of both January 27, 1996 and March 16, 1997 — hours after he is alleged to have killed Sarah Spiers and Ms Glennon.

But it was Mr Edwards’ absence from an arranged Friday night trip to a Dawesville holiday home, after an invitation from Mr Cook and his wife Brigita, which the prosecution homed in on.

Mr Cook’s memory was so c ear because it was in the same month he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, with the invitation for Mr Edwards coming on the back of him telling his friend that bad news.

“I asked him at the beginning of the week, I told him what the problem is with my illness and (said) if you’re interested, come,” Mr Cook said. “And he said, ‘I’ll be there Friday’.”

But Mr Cook said after waiting all night, Mr Edwards failed to turn up until 11am the next day.

“I said words to the effect of ‘what the hell, you were supposed to be here’,” Mr Cook said.

"He said ‘I was trying to reconcile with my wife’. I said ‘well, how did you go?’ and he just shook his head.”

Mrs Cook also rememred Mr Edwards’ late arrival.

“He said to Murray and I he was trying to reconcile with first wife," she said. "Once he said that Murray and I had no reason (to doubt him) . . . and at the time there was no TV in the house . . . so we didn't hear what happened.”

Mrs Cook also kept meticulous diaries of the time, which also pinpointed an overtime day her husband had worked on January 27, 1996. Mr Cook said he clearly remembered Mr Edwards being with him at Dumas House that morning.

That would have meant Mr Edwards was at work just hours after Ms Spiers went missing.
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https://www.pressreader.com/australia/the-west-australian/20191130/page/4
 
Sergei Walankov said:
Doesn't this depth of detail in recollections of events over two decades a go seem a bit unlikely?



https://www.pressreader.com/australia/the-west-australian/20191130/page/4
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Dates might be pinpointed through reference to events and the use of diaries, but obviously details in memories are the result of reconstruction.
Brigita Cook claims to have seen Edwards the morning after Sarah Spiers disappeared:

"On Friday Brigita Cook recalled seeing Edwards about five hours after Spiers was last sighted. He turned up early at the Cook home. She believed Edwards got a lift with her husband into work that day, but did not leave a car at her house so he may have walked to their house or got dropped off." (from The Australian, November 30th).

Although she kept meticulous diaries, memory details could be constructed by inference based on these.
 
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Sergei Walankov said:
Doesn't this depth of detail in recollections of events over two decades a go seem a bit unlikely?



https://www.pressreader.com/australia/the-west-australian/20191130/page/4
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No not really. I was once asked in court (by a supercilious silk trying to score points and discredit my evidence) where I had been on a particular date, some eleven years earlier; I could state this exactly, including the names of fourteen witnesses, sources or corroboration at cetera.
Some events stick in one's mind, utter due to external stimuli.
 
It appears that as expected, the defence is trying to discredit the DNA evidence on the basis that the DNA found on Ciara Glennon's fingernails got there by contamination.

So far I haven't seen any evidence that samples from the woman Edwards confessed to raping were processed around the same time as the fingernail samples. The tactic seems to be more focused on attacking general forensic practice at the time, and procedures at the lab where the samples were processed.
 
The prosecution case has finished or is about to finish, ending with the video of the initial interview with Edwards where he denied all charges including those he later confessed to.

Not sure what the defence will do. It does seem that the case will rest on whether they create a reasonable doubt about DNA contamination. A forensic scientist testified that it is 'very unlikely' the evidence was contaminated. It does seem that there is evidence of many errors and incidences of accidental contamination at the lab, but no specific evidence that the sample from Ciara Glennon was ever examined close to the same time as the sample from the rape victim.

The prosecution also called in 'homicide pattern experts' to give evidence regarding the murder of Sarah Spiers, since her body was never found.
 
Cold case contamination of Claremont DNA samples

Elaedith said:
It appears that as expected, the defence is trying to discredit the DNA evidence on the basis that the DNA found on Ciara Glennon's fingernails got there by contamination.

So far I haven't seen any evidence that samples from the woman Edwards confessed to raping were processed around the same time as the fingernail samples. The tactic seems to be more focused on attacking general forensic practice at the time, and procedures at the lab where the samples were processed.
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Jane Taupin, the author of a number of books on DNA forensics and the coauthor of a book on the forensics of clothing, wrote, "The possibility of the crucial fingernail DNA evidence being contaminated has been raised by the defence at the start of the trial. Four other exhibits in the matter were shown to be contaminated with DNA from PathWest scientists. An intimate swab from the second deceased Jane Rimmer was analysed by PathWest in 1996 with no male DNA result, but later found in 2017 by Cellmark to have an almost complete profile of a male Pathwest scientist involved in preparing the evidence. An intimate swab from Ciara Glennon also yielded an almost complete profile of another PathWest scientist involved in testing the exhibit between 1997 and 2001. Fingernail samples from Jane Rimmer were found by Cellmark to have a DNA profile of another PathWest scientist who was not involved in testing but standing nearby. Two DNA results from branches at the crime scene of Jane Rimmer tested in 2003 years later yielded DNA of another PathWest scientist who examined them."

Ordinarily fingernail DNA evidence is highly useful, in part because so many studies have been done on it. Based on the case of Gregory Turner, I would say that when a sample is contaminated with a forensic worker's own DNA, it was by definition mishandled and should not be considered as evidence. The Australian cases of Farah Jama and Jaidyn Leskie should are cautionary tales with respect to DNA contamination. I am not offering an opinion on the overall innocence or guilt of the accused.

EDT
"Earlier, Mr Bagdonavicius was questioned about the role he played in selecting and preparing a series of "negative control blanks" to be sent to New Zealand, where additional forensic testing was being carried out on the evidence by an agency called ESR.

The "blanks" were supposed to be control samples that did not contain any traces of DNA, however, four out of the 21 samples tested at ESR were contaminated." abc

Here is an article that is skeptical of contamination in this case, although it lists one counterexample to its thesis.
 
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The flight of the helix

"Prosecutor Carmel Barbagallo emphatically insisted in her opening address that "DNA within a particular sample did not just fly around a laboratory" — a point reinforced by PathWest scientist Martin Blooms in his testimony last month...There is also another documented instance of contamination of a sample by a person who had not come into contact with it. This is another twig from Ms Rimmer's burial site which was found to contain the DNA from the teenage victim of a totally unrelated crime in 2002. It turns out samples from that crime were processed five days before samples from the twig were examined, in the same area of PathWest and using the same batch of single-use sample tubes later used for the Rimmer samples." link

Especially when dealing with low levels of DNA, the problem of DNA traveling within a lab is something that is taken into account in the design of the laboratory. I wrote a blog entry some years ago which touched upon this point.
 
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