The Frankston Serial Killer

by Vikki Petraitis

  Julia had chatted to Paul and his girlfriend Sharon before the break-in, she immediately suspected that it might have been Paul who attacked her things. She had seen him peeping through her windows, and a couple of times, he had appeared in her backyard. There was something strange about him…

  At Julia's urging, the police questioned Paul, but the young man denied any involvement. The intruder was never caught.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Elizabeth

  Elizabeth Stevens

  As eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Stevens stepped down off the bus which had brought her from Frankston to Cranbourne Road, Langwarrin, she was unaware that she was being watched.

  It was 7.15 pm on the evening of Friday 11 June 1993, and heavy rain had soaked Elizabeth's short wavy hair so that it clung damply to her neck. She didn't usually come home this late, but she had been working at the Frankston Library for a bothersome English assignment - one she had already completed but her teacher had asked for more research on the topic.

  A couple of weeks earlier, Elizabeth had dropped a history course that she had been taking at the Frankston TAFE college. While she enjoyed her English course, history wasn't a subject that she was good at. She figured that she was at a disadvantage because she hadn't studied it in Year 11. Her real dream was to join the army and the TAFE course was a means to that end.

  Elizabeth shivered in the cold June rain and hurried quickly towards the home she shared with her aunt and uncle, Paul and Rita Webster. Her own parents were separated and Elizabeth had lived in a children's home in Tasmania from the time she was 14 until her 18th birthday the previous October. She had lived for a while with her mother, and then another aunt, before the Websters had offered her a home in Langwarrin. It was only a 20-minute bus ride to the TAFE college and Frankston Library, so the arrangement suited Elizabeth perfectly and she finally felt settled.

  As she walked along Cranbourne Road that Friday night, she was unaware that a man had followed her. He was drawing closer as she turned into Paterson Avenue.

  The rain grew heavier and it was hard to see.

  Out of the darkness, the man in the green army jacket and navy baseball cap lunged at her from behind, clasped a hand roughly around her mouth and pushed what felt like the barrel of a gun to her head. She screamed in fright but the sound was drowned out by the wind and the rain. He dragged her onto the front lawn of somebody's house. She struggled against him, thinking she could protect herself; she had taken karate lessons for four years, but he was a big man, strong, and he had a gun. There was nothing she could do.

  The sexual urges that had apparently overcome the man when he first saw Elizabeth step off the bus, were replaced by urges of a much more deadly nature.

  'Shut up or I'll blow your head off,' he shouted at her, his voice rising above the heavy rain, chilling her into submission.

  'Kiss the end of the gun!' he ordered.

  Elizabeth was too afraid to move.

  'We're going to take a walk,' he told the young woman, pushing her to her feet and leading her on down the road.

  She was terrified. What did he want with her? Was he a rapist? Or worse? A couple of cars drove past and the man grabbed her hand trying to make their walk down Paterson Avenue look innocent.

  As they walked past one house, a man and a woman ran from the driveway towards a car parked in a street. They barely noticed the man and his captive hurrying past them. If it hadn't been raining so hard, the couple would have recognised the large man whom they had both known at school.

  The man forced Elizabeth Stevens down another street towards Lloyd Park. He knew exactly where he was going. Passing bushland and the park's tennis courts, the man dragged Elizabeth into a clump of bushes; still holding the gun to her head. He stopped her when they had passed a dirt track near some sand hills.

  'Can I go to the toilet?' she asked, desperately trying to think of some way to get away from the man. He agreed and led her to a mound of dirt and grass, gesturing that she go behind it. It was dark.

  The man watched Elizabeth open her school bag and remove two pieces of folder paper to use as toilet paper. She went behind the mound and he turned away, not wanting to watch.

  'What's your name?' he asked when she reappeared.

  'Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Liz,' she told him, not believing what was happening to her.

  'How old are you?'

  'Seventeen,' lied the eighteen-year-old. Perhaps she thought seventeen sounded younger and he wouldn't hurt her.

  She was wrong.

  'Do you want a fuck?' he asked bluntly.

  The terrified young woman stalled. She told him she didn't know how and her abductor asked if she was a virgin. She nodded.

  'Well, I won't rape you or anything,' he assured her.

  Elizabeth Stevens's relief was very short-lived. The man began walking her towards the football oval goal posts and the urge to kill overcame him. He grabbed her around the throat and started choking her. Elizabeth had enough oxygen in her body to struggle feebly for a couple of minutes before darkness overcame her and she collapsed onto the wet grass.

  The man pulled a red-handled knife from his pocket and lunged at her throat, slashing in a frenzy until the blade bent. Elizabeth momentarily regained consciousness, struggled against her killer and tried to stand. He grabbed her and she slowly stumbled around him in circles, bleeding heavily. Her track suit top was up around her head. The man grabbed it, pulled it off and flung it in a puddle. He slashed at her as her arms flailed wildly, cutting her arms, her hands and her face.

  When he finally let her go, she fell to the ground where he stamped his foot viciously on her neck. The frenzy was over. He took a couple of steps backwards to survey his work. He could hear the blood and air gurgling from her neck and calmly watched for a full five minutes as the life blood drained from her body.

  Impatient for her death, the man lifted his foot above her head and brought it crashing down on her face, shattering her nose and cutting her cheek and eyebrow with the sheer force.

  Elizabeth Stevens died.

  The man dragged her by the legs the short distance to a creek bed flowing with shallow dirty brown drain water. Blackberry bushes clawed viciously at her skin but she was beyond feeling now. As she was dragged, her bra top ended up around her neck, exposing her chest.

  Then the man broke the blade off the bent knife and slowly and methodically made long cuts from her breasts right down to her stomach. He didn't slash; he wasn't in a frenzy now. He was enjoying himself. The rain fell heavily all around him but he hardly noticed. When he had finished carving the vertical lines, he then carved four lines across at right angles. After the crisscross pattern was complete, the man plunged the knife into her chest six times.

  When he had finished his handiwork, he put the broken pieces of the knife back into his pocket. Water lapped around Elizabeth's body washing away her blood. He grabbed a branch from a tree above the culvert, wrenched it free and partly covered the body. The rain and the creek water would wash away clues of footprints and blood.

  The man threw Elizabeth's bag 10 metres from where her body lay and began the long walk to his girlfriend's mother's house for dinner. When he passed the golf course on Cranbourne Road, he tossed the pieces of knife into bushes and continued on through the night.

  This man just wanted to kill. He had wanted to kill since he was fourteen. Now he had fulfilled the urge that had been gnawing inside him for seven years.

  Elizabeth Stevens died because she was the only person to get off the bus on that cold June night. She had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Less than an hour after the brutal murder, the man tucked into a hearty meal of soup and a roast, and waited for his girlfriend to come home from work.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A missing person

  Paul Webster arrived home on Friday 11 June at 4pm. He had picked up his motorcycle from a bike shop in Bentleigh after working an early shift at the Ven
tura Bus Company. When he left for work at 4.35am, his wife Rita and his niece Elizabeth had been asleep.

  He pulled the Yamaha into the driveway of his Langwarrin home and saw the family dog, Blaze, in the back yard. He realised that Elizabeth must be out because she always put Blaze outside and turned on the alarm when she left the house. Paul Webster flicked his remote switch to de-activate the alarm, entered the house and put the kettle on to make a cup of coffee. He glanced at the bench and saw a note from Elizabeth.

  Uncle Paul or Aunty Rita,

  I will be at the Frankston TAFE Library or the Frankston City Library. Home about 8pm. Frankston TAFE Library 784-8241. Frankston City Library 783-9033.

  Liz

  He thought to himself that Lizzie must have left late to go to the library because she was normally home well before eight o'clock in the evening. It meant she would have to catch the last bus to Langwarrin. If she missed the bus, she would be stranded. He could imagine her voice over the telephone. Uncle Paul, I've missed the bus, can you come and get me please? Not that he'd mind. He and Rita had become very fond of their niece since she had come to live with them. She had been looking for a family and found one with them. Now it seemed like she had always been there.

  When he took his coffee into the lounge room, the alarm's siren sounded. He was sure he had turned the alarm off outside; this was the first time the switch had failed to work. Puzzled, he turned it off again.

  Rita Webster arrived home around 6.30pm after doing some shopping at Chadstone. Driving home from the mall, she'd been caught in the atrocious storm that had swept the city. She hadn't seen her niece that morning either, having left for work at 6.30am.

  'Where's Liz?' she asked her husband in a voice showing faint traces of her childhood in England.

  'She's at the library and she won't be home until eight. She left a note with the phone numbers on it.'

  Paul and Rita ate dinner in front of the television and waited for Liz to come home. Sale of the Century finished with the host, Glen Ridge, congratulating the winning quiz contestant who'd decided to return after the weekend to play on for the cash jackpot. As the credits rolled, Paul told his wife that he needed cigarettes. After checking that the rain had at least temporarily stopped, the two decided to walk the dog up to the local shops. They set off, wrapped warmly in thick coats, figuring they could probably meet Liz as she got off the bus.

  At the shops, Paul and Rita Webster saw the eight o'clock bus pull into the nearby bus stop and watched as one person get off. It wasn't Lizzie.

  Rita wasn't overly concerned. She thought they may have mistaken the time that Liz said she would be coming home. Besides, her niece had just been paid her Austudy allowance so if worse came to worst, she could always catch a taxi home or ring them for a lift.

  After buying Paul's cigarettes, the Websters walked back home and settled in front of the television to watch a movie. When nine o'clock came around, Rita began to get a little anxious. It wasn't like Liz to be late. She always telephoned to let them know where she was and when she was coming home. It was one of the rules they had decided on when Liz had moved in six months before.

  Rita remembered the three of them sitting around the kitchen table discussing what they expected of each other. When Rita had told her niece that she always wanted to know what time she would be home, it had been mostly for the practical reason of planning meals but Liz had taken it to the extreme and always let them know exact times and left detailed notes for them. Rita knew that Liz was in many ways much younger than her 18 years.

  The two women had had great fun since Elizabeth joined the family, cooking and painting; things that Liz hadn't done much of. For Rita, it was the daughter she never had. Rita smiled to herself remembering one of the other rules they had decided upon. Since Rita and Paul both worked, Liz took responsibility for cooking one meal each week. Liz would go through cook books and had so far produced rubber chicken fillets and a cake half an inch high and solid as a rock. Her roasts however, were improving under Rita's guidance.

  Trying not to overreact, Rita reasoned that the library didn't close until nine; Liz had probably got caught up in her studies. She didn't mention her concerns to her husband.

  The movie finished at 10.30pm and by then both the Websters were worried. They figured that Liz must have missed the bus and decided to walk home so Paul suggested that he drive around and try to find her while Rita waited at home in case she arrived or telephoned.

  Paul drove up Paterson Avenue and along Cranbourne Road and then all the way to Frankston TAFE; his eyes scanning the footpaths for his niece. He stopped the car and went to the front door of the college but the place was in darkness; there were two security cards pushed into the locked door which told Paul it had been closed for a while. Worried, he drove around to the Frankston Library, but that too was deserted. Pulling out of the car park, Paul had a quick look in McDonalds, but the place looked like it was about to close. He knew his niece didn't have any friends in Melbourne. She wasn't interested in boys and her closest friends lived in Tasmania. She was a bit of a loner and he was at a complete loss as to where she could be.

  He couldn't see her at the Frankston railway station nor at the bus stop, so he drove once again around the main streets of Frankston before heading home. Perhaps he would find her at home and she would have some reasonable explanation for her lateness and he could breathe easy again.

  But it was not to be.

  As soon as her husband arrived home alone, Rita wanted to ring the police but was torn between her fears and not wanting to over-react. Paul headed off once again in his car to shine a torch in the darker areas all the way to the TAFE college and then to the railway station. Driving past Ballam Park, he stopped the car and illuminated the barbecue area and the children's playground with his torch beam. When he saw no sign of the missing teenager, he came home and finally agreed to call the Frankston police.

  He told the officer who answered the phone that his niece Elizabeth was missing and that she was a very reliable girl. After taking a description, the police officer said that he would pass on the information to Cranbourne because the Webster's house was in the Cranbourne police district.

  Around 1.10am, the Websters were visited by Sergeant Steve Lewis and Senior Constable Alan Robinson who had received the missing person call through D-24 about twenty minutes earlier. The two officers had been making a routine patrol of their district in a marked police car. The weather was shocking and the night had been quiet.

  Sergeant Steve Lewis, with seventeen years experience in the police force, usually knew what to expect with a missing persons call. In the first couple of questions, the person making the report usually admitted to some sort of domestic fight or family trouble and the missing person invariably returned home. Hurrying through the heavy rain to the shelter of the Webster's carport, Lewis stepped up to the front door and knocked.

  Paul Webster answered the door and invited the two officers inside, leading them through the kitchen to a dining area where they all sat down at a wooden dining table. Rita offered them coffee but the officers refused - these reports usually didn't take very long.

  Paul and Rita Webster began by explaining that Elizabeth had gone to the library to study and had been expected home at 8pm. Lewis sensed that they were worried yet trying to keep their fears in check. Her disappearance was totally out of character, they said. Paul explained how he had driven around Frankston but he couldn't find Liz.

  Lewis asked the customary question, 'Could she have gone off with a friend or boyfriend?'

  The Websters explained that while Liz was free to do as she chose, she was a homebody with no friends that they knew of since she had only moved from Tasmania at the beginning of the year and had been living with them since mid-January.

  Steve Lewis got the impression that Elizabeth Stevens was a nice young woman who loved her school work and while being friendly to everyone, had yet to find close friends in Melbourne.

&nb
sp; Lewis asked if there had been any domestic difficulties but the Websters couldn't think of anything that could have upset their niece. The only fight they'd had was when Liz had ridden a pushbike home from Frankston after dark without lights a couple of weeks earlier. Rita had been angry at the risk her niece had taken.

  'But I could see all the cars,' Liz had said.

  'Well, you might have been able to see them but they couldn't see you!' Rita had cried, exasperated.

  Liz didn't always show common sense but she always saw reason and wouldn't repeat her mistakes.

  When Lewis asked if Elizabeth had any money on her, Rita Webster told him that she had just received her Austudy cheque. A possibility that occurred to the sergeant, although he didn't share it with the concerned couple, was that Elizabeth Stevens had been robbed for her meagre student allowance.

  There was something about the Websters and their story that gave the sergeant a strong gut feeling that something was terribly wrong. Elizabeth didn't drink or take drugs and she always let them know where she was and what time she would be home. To illustrate the point, Paul showed the police officers the note that Liz had written.

  As soon as Steve Lewis read it, he became really concerned about the safety of Elizabeth Stevens. He thought that any kid who left such a detailed note was unlikely to change plans without phoning to let her uncle and aunt know. According to the Websters, they didn't exercise strict control over their niece. She had chosen from the outset to leave notes regarding her plans and she had always let them know where she was. It sounded to the officers as if it were as much for Elizabeth's own security as her uncle and aunt's peace of mind.

  The sergeant asked to see Liz's room on the off chance that it could contain clues to her whereabouts, perhaps a diary or an address book. The Websters showed the officers into a neat bedroom with a double bed which made the room look smaller. Next to the bed was a free-standing wardrobe and chest of drawers. The room was sparse and confirmed the Websters' description of their niece. It seemed to be the bedroom of a neat, conscientious young adult. Lewis had a quick look around but he couldn't find a diary or address book or anything else that might suggest what had become of the missing teenager.