Police hunting for the Claremont serial killer
used a policewoman as a decoy, according to a
report in a Sydney magazine.
The sting operation went wrong after the
under-cover officer had been picked up by Cottesloe
man Lance Williams and asked to be driven to Mosman
Park, the report says.
Police then surrounded the car and took the
driver in for questioning.
The report was written after a months-long
investigation by ABC Radio presenter Liam Bartlett
and published in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph magazine
last weekend.
"Only the surveillance team knows if one of
their members panicked and they're not admitting to
anything," Mr Bartlett wrote.
Mr Williams denies he had anything to do with
the killings and says police are looking at the
wrong person.
He says he picked up the woman as a good
Samaritan.
He is one of hundreds of people who have been
questioned, but no charges have been laid.
Police were keeping Mr Williams, a 45-year-old
public servant, under 24-hour surveillance.
In his report, Mr Bartlett makes a series of
assertions, many of which have never been aired
publicly, about the three Claremont murders.
He wrote that police have told the father of a
fourth missing woman, 22-year-old Julie Cutler,
that his daughter was probably the first victim of
the Claremont killer.
Ms Cutler, a university student from Fremantle,
vanished after leaving a staff function at the
Sheraton Hotel in Perth at 9pm one night in
1988.
Her car was found in the surf near the groyne at
Cottesloe Beach two days later. Her body has never
been found.
The first girl to disappear from Claremont,
Sarah Spiers, vanished almost exactly seven years
ago in 1996.
The report also says that police found no
offender's DNA on the bodies of the two women who
have been found, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon.
The bodies were exposed to the elements for too
long.
The report says that certain items of clothing
remain missing from the murder scenes of both the
women whose bodies have been found, Jane Rimmer and
Ciara Glennon.
It says police are convinced both women were
killed close to where they were abducted, and on
the same nights that they were abducted.
They were not murdered where they were
found.
The report says Mr Williams is in his seventh
month of stress leave from his government job.
He is living with his parents in Eric Street,
Cottesloe, has suffered several bouts of depression
and has had an extended stay in hospital.
Other sources say that police have spent more
than $2 million investigating Mr Williams.
Trevor Rimmer, of Shenton Park, the father of
Jane, is quoted as saying that it would be less
worrying for his family if the police did not
appear to have all their eggs in one basket.
He says he would like to see a more open
approach.
His comments tie in with those of overseas
investigators of serial killings, who say that in
similar cases it is common for investigators to
develop tunnel vision.
One overseas investigator has told the POST that
that the geographic area where serial killings
occur is not necessarily fixed.
It is common for serial killers to switch their
activities to other states and even other countries
when one location becomes too hot.
The overseas investigator told the POST that
there was a high possibility that the Claremont
murderer had been killing for many years before and
was still operating.
It was likely he was the worst serial killer
Australia had seen.
"He is highly organised, very, very clever and
has his methods of entrapping and killing women
down to a fine art," he said.
It was likely he had some sort of security or
military training.
"I believe that many other women who are missing
in WA or interstate are the work of the Claremont
killer," he says.
He said that it was a myth that the same serial
killers used the same methods once they had
developed a technique.
"Western Australia has a notorious example of
this, Eric Cooke."
Eric Edgar Cooke, who was hanged for murder in
1964, attacked 20 people, killing eight.
He used many different methods - attacking them
in their beds with knives, strangling, shooting and
running them down with stolen cars.
Many women have gone missing in WA in the past
two decades, including another from Claremont.
Sarah McMahon (20) was last seen leaving the
reticulation shop where she worked in Stirling
Highway, Claremont, on November 8, 2000.
The white Ford Meteor she was driving was found
in the carpark of Swan Districts Hospital some days
later.
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