
1. 18-year-old Sarah Spiers was last seen on January 26, 1996. Twenty-two years later, a ‘serial killer’ has been charged with her murder.
On the evening of Friday the 26th of January, 1996, 18-year-old Sarah Spiers was celebrating the Australia Day public holiday with friends in the Perth suburb of Claremont.
At 2.06 am, Sarah phoned for a taxi from a phone box at an intersection. Three minutes later, when the taxi pulled up to where she had requested to be picked up, she was gone. Sarah has been missing ever since.
The 18-year-old became the first suspected victim in the so-called Claremont serial killings, after two more women disappeared and were found murdered in the same area under similar circumstances in the space of 14 months.
In 2016, a man named Bradley Robert Edwards was taken into custody and charged with the murder of 23-year-old childcare worker Jane Rimmer and 27-year-old lawyer Ciara Glennon.
Jane’s body was discovered in Wellard in August 1996, while Ciara’s body was found in bushland in Eglington in April 1997. Sarah’s remains have never been found.
Now, police have confirmed they have also charged Bradley Robert Edwards with Sarah’s murder.
“This is a significant development in a long-running and high-profile investigation,” Western Australian Police Commissioner Chris Dawson told reporters, according to AAP.
He also said the Spiers family did not want to comment during what was a “very traumatic time” for them.
The fear that a serial killer was stalking Claremont streets in the 1990s terrified Perth residents at the time and is believed to be Australia’s longest-running and most expensive police investigation.
Edwards is also charged with abducting and raping a 17-year-old girl in February 1995 in Claremont and indecently assaulting an 18-year-old woman during a break-in at a Huntingdale home in February 1988.