Claremont serial killings trial podcast: ‘If he wanted to kill her, she’d be dead’

The defence told court today that Bradley Edwards did not intend to kill his rape victim.

That he planned his attack carefully and carried it out efficiently, but murder was not in that plan.

During their closing statements, the prosecution said the Telstra worker intended to kill his rape victim, but was spooked by a passing security officer, dumped his victim in the bushes and left with the intention of coming back to finish his crime.

But the rape victim, who had pretended to be unconscious, ran for help when she realised her attacker was gone.

She said in one of her statements to police in the days after the attack, she thought she was going to die.

As Tim Clarke explains in this episode, for the victim —who was in court — today would have been difficult to hear her account of the terrifying attack being scrutinised.

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Paul Yovich stressed that they weren’t questioning her account of what happened, and as Tim Clarke says he seemed sympathetic to the fact it was a very serious crime. But his argument was Bradley Edwards is a sexually motivated attacker, but not a murderer.

The third day of the defence’s closing argument focussed on trying to prove just that, why the Karrakatta rape and the murders are different - through attempting to pick apart the fibre evidence, witness statements and the prosecution’s propensity evidence.

Namely, that the Karrakatta rape victim was not killed after her horrific ordeal.

Defence lawyer Paul Yovich also pointed to differences in the circumstances surrounding the rape and the murders.

He told the court the Karrakatta rape victim was abducted in a ‘blitz-style attack’, whereas the prosecution say at least Jane Rimmer and Ciara Rimmer were lured into the car, and there was no evidence that Jane or Ciara were sexually assaulted.

However, the court was previously told because of the level of decomposition of their bodies, while there was no evidence of sexual assault, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

The two cases, now poles apart tell two very different stories.

As Damien Cripps explains, this would be an extremely difficult task for Justice Hall to undertake, especially when evidence used by the prosecution —the Telstra Living Witness project — was seen by the defence as a weakness to the prosecution, rather than strengthening their case.

Join Natalie Bonjolo, Tim Clarke and Damien Cripps as they discuss day 92 of the Claremont Serial Killings Trial.

If you have any questions for the Claremont in Conversation podcast team, send them in to claremontpodcast@wanews.com.au

The West Australian has also released a two-part video series, as Tim Clarke takes you through the areas which are key to the trial, from Claremont, where the women went missing, to Hollywood hospital and to the sites were Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon’s bodies were found.

To watch those videos, head to Part One and Part Two.