Nightmare begins for third family

  https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/nightmare-begins-for-third-family-ng-b88337795z

                                                   
                               
                                                   Claremont serial killer victim Jane Rimmer

                              This story was first published in January 2016, 20 years after Sarah Spiers went missing from Claremont.

                                It was the phone call former homicide squad boss Insp. Paul Ferguson had been dreading, but also expecting.

                    With two unsolved murders already on his plate, his quiet Saturday afternoon would be shattered by the news that the Claremont serial killer had struck again.

                                         “It was the worst possible thing, the worst possible thing ... you can’t help but feel guilty, ” Mr Ferguson, now retired, said.

                                    “I knew we (investigators) had done everything possible. But we had been unable to prevent it from happening again.”

                                

                                                      “I knew we had done everything possible” … Former Macro boss Paul Ferguson

                         Police tonight were refusing to confirm reports the search was linked to the Macro investigation into the Claremont serial killings.

                           Like the first two victims, lawyer Ciara Glennon was young, blonde, smart and attractive.

                    The similarities between all three were overwhelming and police would finally be forced to say the words that until then they had not dared to say in public.

             “I think it’s fair to say that we certainly have fears that there is a serial killer at loose in Perth, ” State crime commander Bob Ibbotson told a press conference two days after Ciara vanished.
 

                                Steve Penn photo montage of Jane Rimmer, Sarah Spiers and Ciara Glennon - Claremont Seral killings.
                                        
                                        Continental Hotel Bay View Terrace, Claremont, Western Australia
                                         

          After an extended holiday in Ireland, the 27-year-old had only recently returned to Perth to attend her sister Denise’s wedding.

          On Friday, March 14, 1997, she had been having drinks at the Continental Hotel with colleagues from the law firm where she had worked before going overseas.

           It was about midnight when Ciara told them she was tired, before setting off to presumably catch a taxi back to her parents’ house in nearby Mosman Park.

          Her mother had warned her daughter when she had returned from Ireland about the two earlier disappearances from Claremont.

          But streetwise Ciara did not think twice about walking off alone down Bay View Terrace towards Stirling Highway.

                                    
                                   
      







A teenage university student who was abducted and sexually assaulted in Claremont five years before the first known victim of the Claremont Serial Killer or killers ... has told her story publicly for the first time...Bret Cristian, Editor of the Subiaco Post Newspaper ....a man kidnapped her from a car park opposite the Cottesloe Hotel and drive her to the abandoned Lakeway drive-in theatre in Swanborne, where he tried to rape her. She espacpaed but he staked and recaptured her in Claremont and bundled her into the back of his station wagon, The girl came forward after friends read in the Subiaco POST that police ar investugating the three known Calremont serial killings of the mid-1090's have now positively linked prior offences to the last known victim, Ciara Glennon (Subiaco Post Octover 17th)
I think he was more stocky than tall ...

                                      
                                  Inspector Paul Ferguson ex macro taskforce boss, spoke to The West Australian on the 20th anniversary of Sarah Spiers' disappearance. 

A group of young men who had been sitting at a bus stop on the highway told police they had seen her walking south, looking for a lift.

The men went back to talking among themselves and a short time later one noticed that Ciara was now much further down the road, leaning in through the passenger side window of a light-coloured car that had pulled up alongside her.

When the men looked again a few moments later, she and the car were gone.

The nightmare was about to begin for a third Perth family who would soon discover their beloved daughter was missing.

Alarm bells began ringing for Denis and Una Glennon the next morning when their daughter missed a hairdresser’s appointment and then failed to show up at her sister’s hens’ party that was organised for that afternoon.

At 4.30pm, Mr Glennon would telephone police to share his concerns.

Within hours, the Macro task force’s members had been recalled to duty and were beginning the hunt for clues all over again.

Although bitterly disappointed at having failed to prevent another murder, Mr Ferguson said his investigators also understood that a fresh case presented them with fresh investigative opportunities.

A copy photo of Ciara Glennon. Picture: Supplied.

Had the killer finally made a mistake? No expense would be spared to try to find out.

Within days, Richard Court’s government announced a $250,000 reward for information to help catch the killer — the biggest ever offered at that time.

Mr Glennon would also appear before a packed press conference to reveal the depth of his family’s despair.

“Only now do I even begin to understand the terrible trauma that the parents of Jane (Rimmer) and Sarah (Spiers) went through, ” he said.

“No parent who loves their child ... can even begin to comprehend the devastating thing that this is.”

Mr Glennon was also confident that his daughter would be found alive.

But it would not take long before his family’s worst fears were realised.

Almost three weeks after Ciara vanished, a bushwalker stumbled across her body near Pipidinny Road in Eglinton on what was then Perth’s far northern fringes.

                               
                            Sarah Spiers has never been found

The location of the body made sense to police. Eglinton was north of where the Mitchell Freeway ended.

Jane Rimmer had been dumped near the end of the Kwinana Freeway.

No attempt had been made to bury either of the bodies. Though Jane Rimmer was naked, Ciara was reportedly fully clothed.

The details of how they died have never been released, but police did confirm that the women’s gravesites had given them a valuable insight into the mind of the killer.

The public were keen to do their bit and more than 15,000 calls to the Crime Stoppers hotline were logged in the first month after Ciara disappeared. But still there was no breakthrough.

To help, Mr Glennon appealed to his network of business contacts who dug deep and established a fund to give police additional resources.

The Secure Communities Foundation raised more than $750,000 , which would help pay for international experts to join the investigation as well as funding new technologies.

One of those technologies was lie-detector testing, or polygraphs. More than 50 people of interest would sit those tests, but one man in particular would fail it.

That man was firming as the prime suspect.

WHAT WE KNOW

Friday March 14, 1997: Ciara Glennon catches up with former work colleagues at Claremont’s Continental Hotel.

Midnight: The 27-year-old lawyer says she is tired and leaves the pub to find a lift home to Mosman Park.

Minutes later a group of young men see her on Stirling Highway talking to someone in a light coloured vehicle.