Peter Dupas: Born wired wrongly

a very sinister figure called Peter du Pass. Peter Tupas is known to most of us as the creepy man who killed a series of women over many years and was ultimately sentenced to I think three life sentences. But the existence of people like you pass raisues that thorny question is it nature or nurture? Is someone like Peter

Gupas born bad? Or was he made that way? It seems to me that many of the people that we deal with in life and Crimes, probably most of them, many of the worst killers and violent crooks, were actually the products of abusive childhoods. And I know that sounds like a a trendy psychological angle, but it's become increasingly clear to me after looking into people's early lives that what happened to them as children did have a huge

effect on the way they behaved later. But sprinkled through those are some of these absolutely terrible people for whom there doesn't seem to be a logical reason for their behavior. And it would appear that some people were just born wired wrongly. They're just bent units. And I'd suggest that Peter Dupass is probably one of those. You know, we

so often read the signs with these guys. They were sent to boys homes very young, some of them, and so the happy little kid who was happy at seven or eight or nine years old becomes a sullen, violent teenager after incarceration in a boy's home, where they would be beaten and often very seriously abused, often sexually abused, which would create deep seated anger that played itself out

in criminal acts throughout their lives. And some of the biggest names in crime and the most notorious figures in crime have had that sort of background. Russell Cox, known as Mad Dog Cox, real name I think Melville Schnitzeling. He was sent to a boy's home, I understand, and for stealing a bike when he was a little boy, and the story he told to other crooks was that he'd won a bike in a raffle or something like a competition of some sort, but it hadn't been given

to him. Somebody else took the bike and he didn't get it, and in a fit of rage or petulance or whatever, at the age of ten, he went and stole the bike, and that put him on the path to criminality because he was put in the boy's home and what happened to him in the boy's home turned him into a young criminal who became one of the most notorious arm robbers and probably killers, and certainly one of the most famous escape artists in Australian criminal history.

And that pattern has happened over and over again. Du Pass, on the other hand, came from what has been described as a fairly normal family. Now fairly normal covers a lot of ground. What is a fairly normal family will In this case, it wasn't absolutely normal because Dupass, although he had two siblings, they were much older than he was.

He was a child born a long time after his brothers or sisters, and his parents were quite old when he was being brought up and effectively he was the only child of aging parents rather than a happy little kid who was one of three or four or five running around together, so he was a bit unusual from an early age. Dupas was born in Sydney in nineteen fifty three, but when he was a little boy a toddler, he moved with his parents to Melbourne and he grew

up in the Southeastern suburbs of Melbourne. Nothing really is known about his early childhood, but in October nineteen sixty eight, when he was fifteen, he was visiting the next door. Now this woman was a married woman with some age on it. It wasn't a teenager. It was the married lady next door who was probably the age of Dupas's mother, and he requested to borrow a knife for peeling vegetables. Back in those days, people peeled their potatoes and things

with small vegetable knives. He asked to borrow a knife. The lady handed him a knife and he just turned around and stabbed her with it repeatedly in the faith, the neck, and the hand. He later told police that he could not help himself and he didn't know why he had attacked her. Interestingly, given that we often think that, you know, the courts are softer now than they used

to be in the good old, bad old days. Back in nineteen sixty eight, he was placed on eighteen months probation, though not locked up at all, and admitted to the l Arundel Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation. He was released after two weeks there and treated as an outpatient. So here's this fifteen year old teenage boy big enough to kill somebody who stabbed a woman who lived next door for no reason. He's back on the streets in a fortnight,

and he's clearly got psychiatric problems. We don't know what happened over the next twelve months, but what we do know is that in October nineteen sixty nine, one year later, October was a bad month for the young petitive Pass. There was a break in at the Austin Hospital mortuary and apparently the bodies of two elderly women were mutilated.

One body had a particularly strange thigh wound. Later on, when the adult du Pass offended repeatedly, police looked back at that unsolved case of who broke into the mortuary in nineteen sixty nine and said, we think it was Dupass When he was a teenager, because that is such a weird thing that he would take a knife to the bodies of elderly women and mutilate them. A very rare psychological case, and it would seem clear that it

was probably him. Nineteen seventy three, So now we're jumping forward another four years and that makes him twenty odd, roughly twenty. A senior detective called Ian Armstrong, who interviewed dupass at Nanea Wadding after he must have come to police attention. Obviously, He said that the young Peter Gupaz was weak and compliant when confronted by authority, but there was something unsettling about his personality. He was a spooky, strange boy. And Armstrong said, and I quote to me,

the guy was just pure evil. His attacks were all carefully planned and he showed no remorse. We could see where he was going. I remember thinking, this guy could go all the way. He's an unmitigated liar, a very dangerous person who will continue to offend where females are concerned, and will possibly cause the death of one of his victims if he is not straightened out. Well, nostrodamus, he got that one right, because the twenty year old pet dupas As He was then went on to become one

of the worst offenders in Australian weirdo killings history. He wasn't a bank rubber, he wasn't a hit man, he wasn't a car He was just the very strange man who did very strange, terrible things. There was a screw loose in his brain, string of sex offenses. His offenses were sexually related. July nineteen seventy four Jupas, who at this stage is twenty one, He was sentenced to nine years with a minimum of five for an attack on a woman in her home. Yet again woman at home.

He broke into the victim's house and threatened her with a knife before tying her up with cord and raping her. He threatened to harm her baby when she resisted. The sentencing judge said it was quote one of the worst rapes that could be imagined. Back in those days, there was a prison psychiatrist called doctor Alan Bartholomew, known when

I was a young reporteriss Dr Bart. He was the Pentridge prison shrink and was always a colorful character to talk about crooks and Doctor Alan Bartholomew noted that Dupas was in constant denial and I quote, this youth has a serious psychosexual problem using denial as a coping device, and he has to be seen as potentially dangerous. The denial technique makes for you huge difficulty in treatment, meaning Gepass would never fess up, never say I did it

and why, and wouldn't talk about it. And by denying it, he basically just set himself up to offend and reoffend and reoffend. He was released in nineteen seventy nine. Sure enough, five years only minimum. Again, we make the point that in the past, I think judges and courts were every bit as lenient as they are today in most cases. In most cases nineteen seventy nine, is released and within a matter of days he does four separate attacks in

a ten day period. Twenty eighth of February nineteen Eightyjupas received a five year minimum prison sentence for these serious sex assaults. A nineteen eighty report on Jepaz stated that there is little that can be said in his favor. Here remains an extreme, disturbed, immature and dangerous man. His release on parole was a mistake. Well, at least they told it how it was served the five years February nineteen eighty five. You can see the pattern that's emerging

with this fellow. Just how predictable an offender. He was released February eighty five. A month later, he rapes a twenty one year old woman on a beach at blair Gowry down on the Mornington Peninsula. Jupas followed this woman and attacked her, holding her to the ground at knife point before raping her on the twenty eighth of June eighty five. He's sentenced to twelve years for that rape

at blair Gary Beach. He's released in nineteen ninety two after seven years, so twelve year sentence seven year minimum gets out again. You'd think someone in the system after all these offenses would have said this fellow should serve every day he possibly can, and then a bit more as well. But that's not what happened. They put him through the system. They shoved him out at the other

end in the minimum of seven years. Less than two years after that release, Jupez was arrested on charges of false imprisonment over an incident at Lake Epilock in January nineteen ninety four. Wearing a hood and armed with a knife, insulation tape and handcuffs. He followed a woman and held her at a knife point in a toilet block, but was chased off by her friends. He crashed his car

and was caught. So he's not a master criminal. He's a consistent offender, recidivus offender, but nothing he does is particularly well planned. It seems that he's a total creature of his own impulses. Eighteenth of August nineteen ninety four, he faces caught at Bendigo over the epilock business. He's then sentenced to three years and nine months imprisonment with a minimum of two years and nine months. So he's tried to abduct a person in a toilet block, arm

with a knife. He's a multiple offender all his life, from the time of fifteen, and he still really only gets a minimum of two years and nine months. He's released in September ninety six and moved into a house in Pascal Vale, and this is where the rest of us start to hear about him. Before this, he's a guy that is known to some police and to the court system, and would have been known in jail as

a sex offender. He would have served his time with other sex offenders as they used to do it then, probably places like sale or Arrowrat prison where they would send people like him. April nineteen ninety nine, Nicole Patterson was a twenty eight year old psychotherapist and youth counselor employed to assist young drug users. Nicole wanted her own private practice and was using her northgot home to practice. She placed ads in a local newspaper to attract clients.

Two neighbors reported hearing the screams of a young woman coming from Nicole Patterson's house on the day of her murder. Her boyfriend could not contact her in the afternoon and he would have gone around or called the police or whatever. On a nineteenth of April that year, nineteen ninety nine, Nicole Patterson's mutilated body was discovered by a friend in the front room of her house. There were twenty seven

stab wounds to her chest and back. Her body was naked from the waist down, and here is the telltale sign of dupass's depravity. Both her breasts had been removed using a sharp knife. Her handbag and driver's license was stolen. The murder weapon and Nicole Patterson's breasts were never recovered. Police investigations of the crime scene revealed that Nicole Patterson had a nine am appointment with a new client by the name of Quote Malcolm, as noted in her personal diary,

alongside a mobile telephone number. The number was traced to an Indian student named Harry. Police learned that Dupass had approached Harry with an offer of work. On twenty second of April nineteen ninety nine, police arrested du Pass at midday at the Excelsior Hotel in Thomastown and charged him with murder. The same day. According to telephone records, Jewpass had made three calls to Nicole Patterson to arrange counseling

for Quote depression and a gambling addiction. Over the next six weeks, Duwpass made calls to Nicole Patterson, police believe, to gauge her vulnerability, to see when she be home alone and all that sort of stuff. Police noticed scratches on Jipass's face and hand. Gepaz claimed that these were from working in his shed and that a piece of wood had hit him while using a lathe in a woodworking lathe, but he didn't own a lathe. Small problem

with his story so he changed his story. A search of his home revealed bloodstained clothing, PVC tape of the type used to bind the col Patterson, a scheme mask, newspaper clippings detailing Patterson's murder, and also a paper containing her advertisement for psychotherapy services. He faced trial in the year two thousand, and the jury was quick to give a guilty verdict, as you would imagine a jury would.

On twenty second of August that year two thousand, while sentencing your past to life without parole, Judge Frank Vincent Frank the Tank, as he was fondly known, a man who represented I think several hundred murderers over his career. He was an extraordinarily skilled and willing defense advocate who became a much admired judge. We hear at life and crimes. We admire judges. We just like to put that in.

Frank Vincent said, the prospects of your eventual rehabilitation must be regarded as so close to hopeless that they can be effectively discounted. There is no indication whatsoever that you have experienced any sense of remorse for what you have done, and I doubt that you are capable of any such human response at a fundamental level. As human beings, you present for us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question, how

did you come to be as you are? I think one of the more memorable judgments made in Victoria, especially in that era, Frank Vincent was truly appalled at what he'd seen and heard in court. You can hear that reflected in the words he used in that judgment. Jupass appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal the following year to try and appeal his conviction for

the murder. His appeal was dismissed, so it was clear to police that they should look at du Passes other movements and see whether they lined up with unsolved sex murders committed with knives where bodies were mutilated. In nineteen ninety seven, there was an unsolved case that year where a woman called Margaret Josephine mar a sex worker, last scene alive at the Safeway supermarket just after midnight in broad Meadows again in October. Interestingly, October nineteen ninety seven,

she was last sent. Her body was found under a cardboard box on October the fourth by a fellow called Ronald mac donald. Who made the discovery while collecting aluminium cans in the suburb of Somerton, which in those days was semi rural and near broad Meadows. A black glove was found near Mar's body, which police later confirmed contained

du Passes DNA. A post mortem examination revealed that Margaret Mar had suffered a stab wound to her left wrist, bruising to her neck, blunt forced trauma to the area of her right eyebrow, and lacerations to her right arm, but her left breast had been removed and put into

her mouth. At the time, dupass had been out of prison just over a year after serving time for rape and was no longer under the supervision of Corrections Victoria, and so police working backwards were able to deduce that he was the best candidate for this crime, because there aren't that many people going around killing women and cutting off their breasts. Gepaz was already serving a life sentence

without parole for the murder of Nicole Pattison. Of course, at this time, when he was re arrested for the murder of Margaret Mahr with gupassing custody, police were able to obtain a DNA sample which linked him to Mars murder three years earlier. During his trial, evidence presented that the removal of breasts were so strikingly similar as to be a signature stamp to both crimes, identifying Gepaz as the killer of both women. The jury, who was not

told that Gepaz was already serving life convicted. Upon hearing the jury delivered the guilty verdict, Dupass claimed it's a kangaroo court before he was led away After the guilty verdict. Kylie Nicholas, Nicole Patterson's sister, discribed him as the most evil predator, a psychopath, a true evil, predatory, cunning, repulsive person. It's such a rare evil that comes into this world

that has destroyed these women and our lives. We're just praying that this man is held accountable for everything that he has done. In August two thousand and four, Dupas was convicted of killing Margaret Maher back in nineteen ninety seven and sentenced to a second term of life imprisonment. So he's already in for Nicole Patterson and he copies second life imprisonment. Then comes a case that many of us have heard of because it became a bit of a coarse celeb and that it was the unsolved murder

of a young woman called Messina Helfargas. Messina was twenty five. She was murdered on November the first of nineteen ninety seven that year again same year as Margaret Mah, while visiting her grandmother's grave in the Greek Orthodox section of the Faulkner Cemetery. The alarm was raised by Mersina's fiance when she failed to meet with him later that day.

Now you'll recall it earlier we mentioned it. Jupas had been arrested in a pub in Thomastown for one of his offenses, and of course the Faulkland Cemetery is out in that direction, out on that side of Melbourne. Messina's body was discovered at four thirty five am on November fifth by her fiancee in the cemetery, in an empty plot,

three graves from where her grandmother was buried. Police believed that Mersina was attacked from behind while kneeling to attend to a flower arrangement, and that she died from massive injuries, including eighty seven stab wounds around her kne's neck, but with most of the wounds concentrated around her breasts. Her upper clothing had been pulled over her head towards her chest. Du Pass's home in Cone Street, Pascoe Vale was near

the cemetery. Halvargaz's murder had remained unsolved since nineteen ninety seven, with the Victorian government together with police, offering a one million dollar reward for information leading to an arrest. It was only the fourth million dollar re ward in Victoria's history. We should point out here that Mersina Halvargaz's father, mister Halvargus, had a long concerted campaign for a big reward to

solve his daughter's murder. And he spoke i think to Jeff Kennett, but certainly to senior politicians and senior police, and he pointed out correctly that there'd been a million dollary wood posted over the murder, a terrible murder of Jane Thurgood Dove at her Nidriy home on Oaksday in nineteen ninety seven. And that of course was the murder where a pop bellied gunman jumped out of a car, chased Jane Thurgoodove around her car and shot it dead in front of a children who were in her car.

And it was a case of mistaken identity. The stupid gunman alleged hitmen had been hired by another crook to kill the wife of yet another crook, and the woman that they intended to kill lived in the same street as Jane Thurgoodove, and they shot the wrong one. It's not better or worse. Killing anyone's bad, but proh Jane Thurgoodove was shot dead in front of her kids because she happened to look a little bit like another woman

living in the same street. But Jane Thurgodove was a young, blonde, attractive and her case attracted a lot of attention, naturally, and there was a million dollar reward posted for it, and Mersina Helvargas's father, Bless his soul, pointed out that it didn't seem fair that his daughter's death did not attract a similar reward, and he made his case to the authorities, and they agreed, and they posted a million dollar reward to try and solve the Messina Helvargas case.

This led to renewed interest in the case. It was fairly clear to investigators that Jupass would have to be a prime candidate for these reasons, and these reasons were cited at the inquest into Mersina's death. Nine witnesses identified Youpass as a man they saw at Fulkland Cemetery on the day of the attack of the murder. Jupasz's grandfather's gravesite is located one hundred and twenty eight meters from the crime scene. He'd been there before with his family.

Dupaz frequented the First and Last Hotel, which is located just opposite the cemetery. Dupas lied to police about a facial injury received at around the time of the attack on Helvagas. Jupaz attempted to alter his appearance. After the Helvagas murder, Dupaz was identified by a woman from police photographs. She said she'd seen him a few minutes before the attack,

twenty meters from where Messina Helvagas was murdered. These would seem to be a comprehensive and re damning list of witnesses against Peter Dupaz, who of course was already serving two life sentences for similar murders. A senior detective told the inquest that a car used by Dupass at the time of the murder was sold to a work associate

soon after the murder just another thing. Forensic pathologist David Ransom, who compared wounds suffered by Helvagas to the wounds suffered by Patterson and mar told the Inquest that strictly speaking, there was insufficient evidence to show that the wounds were inflicted by the same knife. That doesn't mean it wasn't

inflicted by the same man, of course. Dupasz's lawyer, David Drake said the only evidence linking Dupas to the murder of Messina Halvargas was the fact that Dupas had lived near For con symmetry and his reputation based on prior convictions for similar offenses. Well, he makes a good point that he did live near there, and he did have a very powerful reputation for similar offenses, and the list

of witnesses would seem to make it overwhelming. The upshot was that in two thousand and six, the inquest was adjourned indefinitely following charges laid by police for the murder of Messina Helvagas. After obtaining a court order granting permission to interview dupass in relation to Messina Halvagas's murder, police collected him from Bown prison in September two thousand and six and took him to Saint Kilda Road Police station

for questioning. They charged Dupass with the murder, and they did this after receiving certain key information from our old friend of the late rogue lawyer Andrew Fraser, who it's well known, while serving time at Fulham Prison near Saal, told detectives who came up there to talk to him that in fact Dupas had confessed to the killing while they were gardening together in Port Philip Prison back in

two thousand and two. Fraser told police he had once found a home made knife concealed among the weeds at Port Philip Prison and that he called Dupas over to inspect it, which is when they got talking and Gepass confessed the crime. He confessed to killing Mersina and Phraser said this. We regularly used to find stuff hidden in the garden, drugs, weapons and other stuff. I once found a home made knife and called Gepass over to show it to him. He took it off me and started

handling it, almost caressing it in a sexual way. Gepass then started saying Messina, Mersina over and over with this strange look on his face. I was left in no doubt that Dupass murdered Mersina. This wasn't some sort of jail house confession where somebody's gone in and sat in the cell one night and had a brew with another prisoner and somebody has allegedly said something. It's a lot stronger than that. Gepass and I spoke regularly, just the two of us. This was over months, months that he

was talking to me and confiding in me. There was one occasion when another prisoner came up to us when we were gardening and started abusing Gupass. This prisoner was yelling at Gipaz, saying, you killed Merceina, You killed Mersina. After he had gone, Gepaz turned to me and said,

how does that expleeve deleted? No, I did it. After agreeing to give evidence against Gepasz, Andrew Fraser was released from Fulham Correctional Center in September two thousand and six, a few weeks early of his five year sentence for drug trafficking. We all know that Andrew Fraser's story. We have talked to him in this very studio at length about that and other matters. Of course, he died last year.

The Victorian government, in its wisdom, said that Andrew Fraser was eligible for a share of the one million dollar reward because without Fraser's key evidence about pass, they wouldn't have got the conviction against Dupas for the Helvagas murder, a conviction which in one sense didn't matter because he was already serving life, but it mattered a lot to Mersina Helvargas's family, and so it was worth doing. The

exercise was worth doing. And the key evidence that Fraser gave was that Dupas had demonstrated to him miming how he had stabbed Mersina whilst she was in a kneeling position, and he was able to come up with details which the police knew accorded with the facts, and those facts. Not all those facts have been made public, so if Fraser hadn't got them from Dupaz, there was no other way for him to get these certain details. And so the court accepted his evidence and he received part of

the reward. How much he got, I don't know, but I always got the impression that was several hundred thousand dollars. It wasn't, you know, twenty grand or something, but it was probably not north of half a minute. There are some postscripts to the terrible story of Peter Gupaz and later on police were able to look through files and see if they could match up Dupas's whereabouts with other unsolved crimes. There was the murder of a woman called

Helen McMahon. She was a forty seven year old bashed to death at a Rye beach in February nineteen eighty five. Although Dupas was technically imprisoned at the time of her murder and was not formally released until two weeks later, investigators learned that he was on pre release leave and in the Rye area when she was killed. Well, that was handy. Just goes to show that records can be misleading.

The record showed that he was in jail, was in the control of corrections, Victoria or something, but the reality was he was on a temporary release and he took the opportunity, probably to kill that woman. Halen McMahon was sunbathing topless on the beach when she was attacked. Her body was discovered naked, covered by her beach tail. The location was near where Gepass had earlier raped the twenty one year old woman at Blair Garry. The case we

spoke about. Police believed that Helen McMahon in the nineteen eighty five was probably Dupass's first murder victim, although her murder officially remains unsolved. Then in nineteen ninety three, there was the murder of a thirty one year old woman called Rnita Brunton in Sunbury that was never solved, but some elements of that make police think that Dupass was good for it. And this case a case that I remember writing about when it happened, it was a mystery, strange, disturbing,

terrible thing. A ninety five year old woman called Kathleen Downs, who was living at the Brunswick Lodge nursing home, was stabbed to death at six thirty in the morning on December the thirty first, that is New Year's Eve, nineteen ninety seven, one month after Messina Halvagas's murder. Police investigations later revealed that Jupass had telephoned the nursing home some time before the murder. No charges have been laid regarding Kathleen downs murder. At the time I recall this, it

was regarded as just a complete mystery. Who had done this? A shocking crime, complete mystery. Who was Only later on police Rabela join the Dotson work out that it was probably him, and so that rules a line under the Terrible Life and Crimes of a terrible man, Peter Dupaz, someone who we suspected was probably born bent in the way that very few people are. It's conceivable that some other notorious offenders were also born with a kink in

their brain. And you'd have to wonder about Paul Charles Daniel, who killed three young women back in the late nineties. You would have to wonder about Derek Edward Percy, who had shown very sinister and strange impulses from the time that he was a young child. However, most of the people who go on to be violent offenders have been offended against themselves, and mostly it's a case of as the Twiggies bent the tree shall grow, only a handful are born as bent as Peter Jupaz. Thanks for listening.

Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heraldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew Rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at News dot com dot au that is all one word news podcasts sold and if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.