On 9 May 2003, Fraser was found guilty of the murders of Sylvia Benedetti and Beverly Doreen Leggo and the manslaughter of Julie Dawn Turner. The verdict of manslaughter meant that the jury believed that Fraser did not intend to kill Julie Turner. Fraser stood silent and red-faced in the dock and then yawned and stretched his hands behind his head as the verdicts were handed down. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On 31 December 2006, Leonard John Fraser died in his sleep aged 55 in the secure unit at Princess Alexandra Hospital. He had been in the hospital since Boxing Day 2006, when he had suffered a cardiac arrest.
JOHN WAYNE GLOVER, AKA THE GRANNY KILLER
John Wayne Glover (b. 1932) was in his late fifties when he became one of the most despised and despicable murderers in the annals of Australian crime history. His warm and friendly personality disguised a monster lurking within. Glover was a petty thief with a gambling habit and a number of minor convictions for sexual offences against women. In 1989, in the North Shore suburb of Sydney, he started to prey on poor, frail, defenceless old ladies, initially robbing them. With his later victims, he brutally murdered them and then stole their money.
His first non-fatal attack on an elderly woman was on 11 January 1989, when an 84-year-old woman was walking along a quiet road. On seeing her, he parked his car and approached her, punched his unsuspecting victim in the face and stole her handbag and its contents. On 1 March 1989, he found his second victim, Gwendoline Mitchelhill, who was walking along with a stick. Glover went back to his car and armed himself with a hammer. Then he slowly followed the old lady back to her accommodation and, as she entered, he came up behind her and repeatedly hit her over the head and body with the hammer. After stealing her purse, he made off. She died from her injuries a short time later.
Two months then passed before another old lady fell victim to Glover. On 9 May, Glover was out on his own when he saw Lady Winifreda Ashton walking slowly towards him in a red raincoat with the aid of a walking stick. Glover followed her into the foyer of her apartment building where he attacked her, again using his hammer. Later evidence revealed that the frail Lady Ashton put up an incredible fight for her life. After rendering her unconscious, Glover removed her tights and strangled her with them. He did not sexually assault her. Then, as if in respect for the dead woman, Glover laid her walking stick and shoes at her feet before stealing her handbag. The police now knew that they were dealing with a homicidal maniac and not just an ordinary mugger.
By now, Glover had gained confidence but also became complacent and more brazen. Police received complaints of old ladies confined to their beds in nursing homes being sexually assaulted. These crimes would turn out to have been committed by Glover, who worked as a pie salesman delivering to many nursing homes. On one occasion, Glover visited one such home. He made his way upstairs and into a bedroom where he lifted the dress of an elderly woman and fondled her private parts. He then went to another old lady’s room where he put his hand down the front of her nightdress and stroked her breasts. The terrified woman cried out. Staff spoke to Glover but he was not detained. The staff did report the incident to the police who, at this time, failed to make any connection between these incidents and the murders. And so Glover continued to commit other non-fatal attacks on old ladies.
On 8 August 1989, Glover attacked elderly Effie Carnie in a quiet street and stole her groceries. On 6 October, again in a nursing home, he passed himself off as a doctor and put his hand up the dress of an elderly female patient. The old lady called for help but Glover escaped. At no time while committing these nonfatal assaults was he ever identified. By the time the police did make a connection, Glover had gone on to commit several more murders of old ladies.
On 18 October 1989, Glover came upon 86-year-old Doris Cox slowly making her way home. He walked with her into the secluded stairwell of her accommodation, attacking her from behind by smashing her face into a brick wall. She collapsed at his feet. After finding nothing worth stealing, he left her for dead and went home. However, she survived. When spoken to by the police, she was not able to give an accurate description of her attacker, but nevertheless the police prepared an identikit picture. Unfortunately, it turned out to be nothing like Glover and for a time this impeded the police enquiry. Their worst fears were realised on 2 November with the murder of another old lady, 85-year-old Margaret Pahud. She was killed in identical fashion to the previous victims by being hit over the head with a blunt instrument as she walked home. Her handbag was also missing. Within hours of the murder of Margaret Pahud, they had the report of a second victim. Glover had called at a nursing home in the early afternoon in his capacity as pie salesman. On his way through the garden, he struck up a conversation with 81-year-old Olive Cleveland, who was sitting on a bench reading. When she got up and walked towards the main building, Glover grabbed her from behind and forced her into a secluded area, dragging her to the ground. He repeatedly slammed her head onto the concrete before he removed her tights and knotted them tightly around her neck. Glover then made off with money from her handbag. Unbelievably, no one connected this murder with the attack on an elderly lady at the same nursing home only six months earlier. There were no clues; the murderer vanished into the afternoon.
The police now knew they were dealing with a dangerous serial killer who had to be caught. As a result, a $20,000 reward was offered for information on him. After cross-checking statements, one distinct description kept appearing in relation to several of the murders. The police finally realised that they had been looking for the wrong type of man based on the identikit and previous description given. But still Glover continued his killing spree.
On 23 November 1989, Glover spotted 92-year-old Muriel Falconer struggling down the street with her shopping. He returned to his car, collected his hammer and gloves and followed her to her front door. As Falconer was partially deaf and blind, she did not notice Glover slip through the door behind her with his gloves on and his hammer raised. He silenced her by holding his hand over her mouth as he hit her repeatedly about the head and neck. As she fell to the floor, he started to remove her tights but she regained consciousness and cried out. Glover struck her again and again with the hammer and only when he was satisfied that she was unconscious did he remove her undergarments and strangle her with them. He searched her purse and the rest of the house before he left, taking with him cash and his hammer and gloves in a carrier bag. A neighbour discovered Falconer’s body the following afternoon. Forensic experts found a perfect footprint in blood on the carpet, their first solid clue since the investigation had started, but they still needed a suspect for comparison purposes.
The major break came when Glover again became careless. On 11 January 1990, he called at the Greenwich Hospital for an appointment with the administrator. Afterwards, Glover dressed in his blue-and-white salesman’s jacket and, carrying a clipboard, walked into one of the wards, where four very old and very sick women lay in their beds. He approached Daisy Roberts, who was suffering from advanced cancer, asking if she was losing any body heat, then pulled up her nightgown and began to indecently assault her. Mrs Roberts became alarmed and rang the buzzer beside her bed. A sister at the hospital answered the call and found Glover in the ward; she called out and Glover ran from the ward. She chased him and took down the registration of his car as he sped off. She notified the police. Staff at the hospital was able to identify and name Glover from previous visits on his pie round. But it would be a further three weeks before the incident reached the investigating officers involved in the murders. Now armed with the information, detectives confirmed Glover’s name with his employers. They rang him at home and asked him to come to the police station at 5pm the following day. When he hadn’t turned up by 6pm, police called his home where his wife told them that he had attempted suicide and was in hospital. Police went to the hospital but Glover was too sick to be interviewed. Staff at the hospital handed police a suicide note that included the words ‘no more grannies’. Th
e police still had not made the connection between the nursing home assaults and the murders. Eventually though, the connection was made and Glover suddenly became the prime suspect in all the murders. Due to the lack of direct evidence, they decided not to arrest him but instead kept him under 24-hour surveillance. During this time, his conduct was exemplary.
On 19 March 1990, at 10am, police saw him call at the home of a lady-friend, Joan Sinclair; they saw him spruce himself up in the rearview mirror. He went to the door and was let in. The watching police had no reason to believe that it was anything other than a social visit. At 1pm, there was no sign of Glover nor any sign of life from the house. The police became concerned. At 5pm, all was still quiet, and at 6pm, deciding that all was not well, the police decided to enter the house. As they entered, they noticed pools of blood. With guns drawn, they silently moved from room to room. They saw a hammer lying in a pool of drying blood on the mat. As they peered further around the doorway, they saw a pair of women’s knickers and a man’s shirt covered in blood. Then a woman’s body came into view. Joan Sinclair’s blood-splattered head was wrapped in a bundle of blood-soaked towels. She was naked from the waist down and her tights were tied around her neck. Her genitals had been mutilated. But where was her attacker? They continued searching and found Glover unconscious and naked, lying in the bath. One wrist was slashed and there was a strong smell of alcohol. They found he was still alive. He was taken to hospital and, after recovering, told the police of the final chapter in the Granny Murders.
Glover had known Joan Sinclair for some time and they were extremely fond of each other in a platonic way. However, after he entered the house he got his hammer out of his briefcase and struck Mrs Sinclair about the head with it. He then removed her tights and strangled her with them. He rolled her body over onto the mat, wrapped four towels around her massive head wound to stem the flow of blood and then dragged her body across the room, leaving a trail of blood. When he had done that he ran a bath, swallowed a handful of Valium with a bottle of Vat 69, slashed his left wrist and lay in the bath to die. During his interview, he was asked ‘why?’ And he kept giving the same answer: ‘I don’t know. I just see these ladies and it seems to trigger something. I just have to be violent towards them.’
He was charged with murdering the six elderly women. His wife Gay and their two daughters, both in their late teens, were stunned. There had never been the slightest indication that the man they loved as husband and father was the infamous Granny Killer. At his trial in November 1991, John Wayne Glover pleaded not guilty to six counts of murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility, claiming that he had been temporarily insane when he carried out the murders. The jury did not agree and it took them just two and a half hours to find that Glover was both sane and guilty.
Justice Wood sentenced Glover to six life terms of imprisonment, and said in summary: ‘The period since January 1989 has been one of intense and serious crime involving extreme violence inflicted on elderly women, accompanied by the theft or robbery of their property. On any view, the prisoner has shown himself to be an exceedingly dangerous person and that view was mirrored by the opinions of the psychiatrists who have given evidence at his trial. I have no alternative other than to impose the maximum available sentence, which means that the prisoner will be required to spend the remainder of his natural life in jail. It is inappropriate to express any date as to release on parole. Having regard to those life sentences, this is not a case where the prisoner may ever be released pursuant to order of this court.’
In September 2005, John Wayne Glover, the Granny Killer, hanged himself in his prison cell.
ARCHIBALD MCCAFFERTY, AKA MAD DOG
Before turning to murder, Archibald McCafferty (b. 1951) was already known to the police. By the age of 24, he had 30 previous criminal convictions involving theft and stealing cars, but no convictions for serious violence. This, however, changed following his marriage. He took to drinking and taking drugs and subjected his wife to a series of violent assaults. As a result of this, he received treatment at various psychiatric hospitals. More mental problems were soon to befall McCafferty. His young baby died while sleeping in bed with his mother. The death was investigated and a coroner recorded the death as accidental. Janice McCafferty, while sleeping, had rolled over onto the baby and suffocated it. Archibald McCafferty did not agree with the verdict and made accusations that his wife had murdered their son. Was the death of his son all that McCafferty needed to tip him over the edge? It was a question about which psychiatrists in the future would sharply disagree. Certainly the tragedy of his son’s death played constantly on his already troubled mind. But did it light the fuse of the dynamite that was about to explode? McCafferty took to getting tattooed, until almost his entire body was covered with more than 200.
So affected was he by the loss of his son, he believed that to avenge the death seven people must die, seven being a significant number to his troubled mind. His wife had bricks thrown through her window with notes attached, which were obviously from McCafferty. The first note read: ‘You and the rest of your family can go and get fucked because anyone who has anything to do with me is going to die of a bad death. You know who this letter is from so take warning. Bill is the next off the rank. Then you go one by one.’ It was signed ‘you-know-who’. The man referred to as Bill was Bill Riean, the boyfriend of Janice’s mother. The second note read: ‘The only thing in my mind is to kill your mother and Bill Riean. This is not a bluff because I’m that dirty on all of you for the death of my son but I can’t let it go at that. I have a matter of a few guns so I am going to use them on you all for satisfaction so beware.’
On 24 August 1973, the first day of the inquest into the death of his son, the killing started. A week earlier, McCafferty had formed a gang from an odd assortment of teenagers along with Carol Ellen Howes, a 26-year-old woman with whom he was living. McCafferty had met her and 16-year-old Julie Ann Todd when he was a patient at a psychiatric centre. The rest of the gang was made up of Michael John (Mick) Meredith and Richard William (Dick) Whittington, two 17-year-olds McCafferty had met in a tattoo parlour a few days earlier. Mick and Dick had a couple of rifles. The sixth member of the gang was 17-year-old Donald Richard (Rick) Webster, whom McCafferty had met only days earlier. Led by McCafferty, the gang chose their first victim, 50-year-old George Anson, who, on the evening of 24 August 1973, was spotted by the gang as he staggered down the street towards his home after drinking heavily at a local bar. The gang was in a stolen Volkswagen. Anson was far too drunk to put up a fight. They dragged him into a side street. McCafferty kicked Anson repeatedly in the head and about the body. McCafferty later stated that he heard voices for the first time, saying ‘Kill seven. Kill seven. Kill, kill, kill… ’ As a result, McCafferty pulled out a knife and plunged it into Anson’s back and neck seven times. McCafferty gave the dying man one final kick in the face before running back to the car. One of the gang, Rick Webster, was not happy about what had happened and voiced his concern to McCafferty. This would later prove to be Webster’s demise.
Still hearing voices telling him to kill seven, McCafferty and his gang planned another crime en route to the cemetery to visit the grave of his son. They dropped Julie Todd and Mick Meredith off to pose as hitchhikers. The plan was that as soon as a car stopped they would force the driver to the cemetery at gunpoint and then rob him. Moments later, a car pulled into the cemetery and stopped about 150yd from the graveside. In the car were Julie Todd and Mick Meredith. They were holding 42-year-old Ronald Neil Cox at gunpoint. Cox had felt sorry for the two kids hitchhiking in the rain and had stopped to give them a lift. McCafferty left the graveside and ran over to them. Ronald Cox was forced to lie face down in the mud while McCafferty and Meredith held rifles to the back of his head. Cox begged for his life as the voices in McCafferty’s head spurred him on. Ronald Cox was still begging for his life, telling them that he was the father of seven children. Although he had no way of knowing, this w
as a fatal mistake. On hearing the word ‘seven’, McCafferty and Meredith each shot Ronald Cox through the back of the head.
After the killing of Cox, the gang members returned home. But McCafferty could still hear the voices telling him to ‘kill seven’ and he told two of his gang to go out and find him another victim. In the early hours of the following morning, 24-year-old driving instructor Evangelos Kollias picked up Julie Todd and Dick Whittington as they hitchhiked along the road. Once in the car, Whittington produced a .22 rifle from under his coat. They forced Kollias into the back seat and told him to lie on the floor while Julie drove the car back to the flat. McCafferty then took over. They went out in the victim’s car with McCafferty driving. They all knew that McCafferty had murder on his mind. Kollias was told to lie low, as they did not want him to see where they were going. Assured that he would come to no harm, Kollias lay on the back floor and went to sleep. McCafferty’s plan was to kill Kollias then drive his car to where his wife, Janice McCafferty, her mother and her mother’s boyfriend were. Killing them would make the total six. The seventh victim was to be one of his own gang, Rick Webster. McCafferty felt that Webster was likely to betray him to the police. McCafferty told Whittington to kill Kollias. As Kollias woke up in the back of the car, Whittington held the sawn-off .22 rifle to his head and pulled the trigger, killing him instantly. McCafferty told Whittington to shoot Kollias again to make sure he was dead. Whittington fired another bullet into the dead man’s head. They then dumped the body in a deserted street nearby. Unfortunately McCafferty’s plan backfired and, thankfully, saved the lives of more potential victims. There was not enough petrol in the car to get to where the other intended victims lived so McCafferty aborted the plan for that night.
The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 6