The man who raped and murdered Irish woman Jill Meagher in Melbourne in
September 2012 has been found guilty of the rape of three more young women.
Adrian Bayley (43) is serving a life sentence, with a non-parole period of 35 years, for the rape and murder of Ms Meagher as she walked home from a night out with work colleagues.
Until Bayley was convicted in these cases, suppression orders prevented the publication of any details from the trials. The orders have been lifted now that he has been found guilty in all three cases.
Ms Meagher’s parents George and Edith McKeon have subsequently asked for a Coronial Inquest into the circumstances of their daughter’s death not to proceed.
“As a family we have until now been very mindful not to make any statement or take any actions that might delay the outstanding criminal proceedings against Gillian’s murderer,” they said in a statement.
“However now that these proceedings are completed, we want to try and obtain closure and to ensure that other families don’t have to endure this trauma.”
The McKeon family made two requests – that awareness continues to be raised about violence against women and that the inquest does not go ahead.
“Following the Callinan report, the May 2013 amendments to The Corrections Act 1986 (Vic) and the criminal proceeding in relation to her murder, we see little to be learned or gained from an open Inquest into her death,” they said.
“Nothing can bring back our daughter, but as was clear from the Callinan report the Victorian Parole Board failed to protect our daughter and many others in the community.”
Bayley has now been found guilty of raping a prostitute and a Dutch tourist in 2012, and another prostitute in 2000. He pleaded not guilty in all three trials, forcing the victims to give evidence in trials that began last year and ended today.
The defence argued that the victims had mistaken their attacker for Bayley because he had been so prominent in the media as a result of the Jill Meagher case, which made headlines in Australia and Ireland.
In the first trial, held in July last year, the court heard that Bayley threatened to kill the 18-year-old victim. “[Bayley] said ‘you little slut, no-one will miss you’,” Senior prosecutor Peter Rose told the jury.
“She was frozen with fear ... she had never felt such fear in her life. She believed he was taking her somewhere to kill her.”
The teenager later told police “it all added up” when she heard about Ms Meagher’s murder, and saw Bayley’s image.
“When she read about Jill Meagher, she immediately identified his face,” Mr Rose said.
The court heard when she was first approached by Bayley, the victim had just been given a pamphlet with warnings of “bad men” who had been harassing local prostitutes.
She was reading the pamphlet when she got into Bayley’s car and told him she could not believe “how many bad people are out there”. Bayley told her he was “one of those bad guys”.
Bayley committed two more rapes in the months before he attacked Jill Meagher.
Mr Rose told the court in the second trial that when the victim struck out with her legs, cracking Bayley’s car windscreen, he told her he could “keep her for ages” and no-one would know she was missing.
In the third trial, the victim gave evidence via video-link from the Netherlands.
The prosecutor told the court the woman was walking home alone from a pub in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda in July 2012 when she was attacked.
Mr Rose said the 27-year-old was “a little drunk” and when Bayley offered her a lift home, she got in. He drove to a small dark parking space.
“He then hit her to the side of the face ... he covered her mouth to stop her yelling and held her throat. He told her she couldn’t get out and no-one would hear her. She was afraid she was going to be killed.”
Bayley then raped the woman.
Two months later, he murdered Jill Meagher and left her body in a shallow grave about 50 kilometres north of Melbourne.
Bayley has now been found guilty of more than 20 rape offences. His other victims included his 16-year-old sister’s friend 25 years ago, a teenage hitchhiker and several St Kilda prostitutes in 16 rapes a decade later.
It was for those crimes that Bayley spent eight years in jail before his release on parole in 2010.
“As your criminal record reveals, you are a recidivist violent sexual offender ... in terms of moral culpability your killing of the deceased ranks among the worst kinds conceivable,” Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Nettle told Bayley in June 2013 as he sentenced him to life in prison for the rape and murder of Ms Meagher.
