The Frankston Murders - Episode 1

With Casefile on a short break, we thought this would be a great time to shine a light on some of the shows that may have flown under the radar for many of you. These are shows we've put our hearts into and are really proud of.
Today, we’re showcasing The Frankston Murders. When Vikki Petraitis and I found out that Paul Denyer, the man convicted of the Frankston serial murders, had applied for parole, we strongly felt that the Frankston case deserved a more in-depth series, something that went beyond the headlines to explore the full impact of Denyer’s crimes. The series details the lead-up to the crimes as well as the aftermath, the families, the survivors and the many women who were targeted in the lead-up to the murders, but whose stories hadn’t yet been told. The series went to number one and has been downloaded more than three million times to date.
I hope you enjoy the series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A cast recommends Hello, this is blind By.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Around every two years or so, I'm contractually obligated to
record an advertisement for my own podcast, the blind By Podcast.
I'm a writer and I like to use the podcast
space for writing. I write with my mouth for you
to read with your ears. I write about curiosity, and
I've delivered an episode every week for the past eight years.

(00:25):
I love doing it. If you want to listen to
If you don't, I'm sure we'll be grand, but most importantly,
mind yourself. The blind By podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
A cast is home to the world's best podcast including
Crime World, The Other Hand, and the one you're listening
to right now.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Hello, it's Casey.

Speaker 5 (00:49):
Here.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Over the past couple of weeks, you might have noticed
something a little different here on the case Fail feed.
I recently had the chance to meet some of our
listeners at the case Fall live shows, and something kept
coming up in conversations that really surprised me. A lot
of people don't know what case File presents is, or
that we produce other podcasts in addition to case File.

(01:14):
It occurred to me that if someone is a big
enough supporter of the show to come to a live
event but hasn't heard of Case File Presents, then clearly
we need to do a better job of highlighting the
other stories we've put so much work and care into.
For those who don't know, case File Presents is our
broader production platform, while case File is our flagship show.

(01:39):
We've also created a number of other podcasts under the
Case File Presents banner. Our level of involvement differs from
project to project, but we've played a direct role in
all of them, whether that's financing, research, editing, music, or production.
I even narrate a few myself. With case File currently

(02:00):
a short break, we felt this was the perfect opportunity
to bring some of those other stories into the spotlight
series that may have slipped under the radar for many
of you, but that we've poured a great deal of time,
care and energy into. We started with Missing Neam, followed
by the Bakersfield three, and now we're turning our attention

(02:22):
to the Frankston murders. You might remember this case from
episode twenty three of Case File, which we released way
back in June twenty sixteen. It ran for just over
an hour and was split across two parts. Those were
very early days for the show, when our episodes were shorter,

(02:42):
the production was much more basic, and our format was
still evolving. A few years after that original episode aired,
I met Vicki Petratus. Vicki is an author who had
written a book on the Frankston murders and was living
in the area as the crimes were happening. Over time,
she came to know many of the victims loved ones personally.

(03:05):
Vicky is one of the hardest working people I know.
She somehow manages to juggle multiple in depth projects while
balancing everything else life throws her way. She has spent
decades giving voices to victims and their families, and she
brings both compassion and commitment to honoring victims through detailed,
respectful storytelling. I knew right away that she was exactly

(03:30):
the type of person I wanted to collaborate with on
case file, Presantce projects. We first worked together on other
podcast series, but then we found out that Paul Daniel,
the man convicted for the Frankston serial murders, had applied
for parole. While I was mind boggled to know that

(03:50):
a serial killer could apply for parole, this news triggered
many unwelcome feelings for the victim's families. In addition to
fear it plays huge emotional burden on them. There were submissions, paperwork,
legal processes, having to relive the worst days of their
lives just to keep a serial killer from being released.

(04:14):
Vicki and I both strongly felt that the Frankston case
deserved a more in depth series, something that went beyond
the headlines to explore the full impact of Daniel's crimes.
In March twenty twenty three, we released a brand new
eleven part series titled The Frankston Murders. The series details

(04:35):
the lead up to the crimes, as well as the aftermath,
the families, the survivors, and the many women who were
targeted in the lead up to the murders but whose
stories hadn't yet been told. The response was incredible. The
series went to number one and has been downloaded more
than three million times to date. If you missed it

(04:58):
the first time round, now is it's a perfect time
to give it a listen. We're releasing episode one here
on the case file feed. If you like what you hear,
you can find the rest of the series by searching
the Frankston Murders wherever you get your podcasts now here
is episode one. My podcast Case File True Crime covered

(05:26):
the Frankston serial murders in a two part episode on
Case twenty three. Back in twenty sixteen, when we asked
the true crime author Vicki Petraytus to make a Case
File present series on the disappearance of Sarah McDermott from
the cannonill Grailway station in nineteen ninety it was a
natural progression for her to move on to the Frankston
murders of nineteen ninety three for her next podcast series.

(05:50):
It was especially timely since serial killer Paul Daniel's thirty
year non parole period on his life sentence was up
in mid twenty twenty three and there was a likelihood
he would apply for parole. Vicki wrote the book on
the Frankston murders and the case has remained close to
her heart. On Friday the eleventh of June nineteen ninety three,

(06:12):
eighteen year old Elizabeth Stephens caught a bus from Frankston
to the home she shared with her aunt and uncle
in lang Warren. She never made at home. Her body
was discovered the following day in Lloyd Park. On Thursday,
the eighth of July twenty two year old Debbie Frame,
the mother of a baby boy just twelve days old,

(06:35):
was abducted during a trip to her local milk bar
to buy milk. And finally, on Friday, the thirtieth of July,
seventeen year old Natalie Russell didn't make it home from school.
She was taken in broad daylight by an increasingly reckless killer.
Her parents were able to take a small comfort from

(06:56):
the fact that evidence found at her crime scene ensured
the serial killer was taken into custody the following day.
An important note. In the past, the Frankston serial killer
has identified as female. We have it from several sources
that this is no longer the case, so we'll use

(07:16):
the male name and pronoun. We hope that the Frankston
Murders podcast will do its bit to bring public awareness
to the case, especially as the thirty year non parole
part of Dania's sentence ends in twenty twenty three. He
has already applied for parole. In telling this story, we

(07:37):
want to keep a serial killer in jail for life.
He should never be allowed to do to anyone else
what he did to people in this podcast. We are
grateful to the Victoria Police for granting us access to
two serving members, leading Senior Constable Angela Butts and Senior
Sergeant Steve Lewis. Other police members interviewed for this podcast

(08:02):
are no longer employed by Victoria Police. We will hand
it over to Vicky Petradus to tell the story.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
My name is Vicky Petratus, and as a true crime author,
I found myself right in the hut of Frankston doing
ride alongs with the local police when the murders were happening.
The seven week period between June and July nineteen ninety
three was one Frankston locals will never forget. Elizabeth Stephens,

(09:18):
Debbie Frame and Natalie Russell all lost their lives at
the hand of a serial killer, and Rosa Toof came
close but luckily escaped. The trail of damage caused by
Paul Denia casts a wide net. While his victim telling
that we know of is three. The ripple effect of

(09:40):
what he did is never ending. When I wrote the
Frankston Murder's book back in nineteen ninety five, I wanted
it to be about the girls as much as it
was about the killer. To understand the extent of his
crimes we need to know what he took from us,
and make no mistake about it, Paul Dania ruined more

(10:04):
lives than what he took. His trail of destruction is wide.
When he set out to act on the desires to
kill that it had since he turned fourteen, there's no
evidence he gave any thought to the heartbreak he would cause.
It seemed nothing mattered to him more than his bloodlust.

(10:28):
I always knew the case would draw me in to
revisit it again in podcast form, but perhaps the thing
that tipped the scale was a Facebook message I got
from a woman called Gloria Vains. It was her daughter
whose cats were killed by Danya. Four months before the

(10:48):
murders began. Dania broke into Donna Vain's house in Claude
Street in Seaford and killed her cat and its two kittens.
Gloria told me that Donna never got over it. I
put out a call on social media, wondering how many
other victims were out there. It wasn't long before a

(11:09):
disturbing picture of stalking and attacks on property emerged. Some
stories I'd heard before, and others I hadn't. These stories
gave me something else to consider. There are a lot
of women out there who live in fear that Paul
Daniel might one day be released from jail. They're worried

(11:32):
he might come after them again. In adding these stories
to the narrative, the picture that emerges of the warning
signs should serve to educate us all. We don't re
examine this case just to retell the story. We do

(11:53):
it so that we can be reminded of just how
dangerous Dania was back then and main so to this day.
And we tell the story so that around the world
people can join in the bid to keep him in prison.
So many people were affected by the things Paul Danya did.

(12:16):
I wanted to begin with a man called Todd who
grew up in lang Warren. I spoke to Todd at
a cafe that he runs a couple of kilometers north
of the Melbourne CBD back in nineteen ninety two. His
family lived in Moat Street, just around the corner from
the Danya family, who then lived in Long Street, a

(12:38):
couple of houses down from Todd's kindergarten.

Speaker 6 (12:43):
Now kindergarten had a couple of rabbits in a hutch
that was like all the kinderkids looked after. I guess
it was in nineteen ninety two. Earlier in nineteen ninety two,
we all came into the kindergarten in the morning. The
rabbits were well and truly dead, that they'd been cut up,

(13:06):
and some of their insides were sort of next to them,
and it was just sort of left there for all
the kinderkids. And obviously the teachers that came into the
morning had all seen it. The kids that have been
there seen it, and it's spread quite quickly that something
pretty awful had happened.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Even though Todd was only a child, he never forgot
the killing of the pet rabbits. But it wasn't just
the killing of them that was disturbing. It was the
fact that whoever did it left them for all the
children to see.

Speaker 6 (13:38):
If you're doing that sort of thing and leaving it
at kindergarten, you're doing it to cause a reaction. You're
it's not out in the party, I mean, you're out
in the bush where no one's going to see it.
That is prime where everyone's going to see it, and
it's probably going to affect people more so.

Speaker 7 (13:55):
And I think it was for a shock factor. It
was to scare people.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
God doesn't know for sure whether the police were called
to investigate the rabbit killings at the kindergarten. He doesn't
remember any police visiting while the children were in attendance.

Speaker 6 (14:12):
The kind teachers, from what I remember, they took care
of it. And look, whether they came after we'd all
gone for the day, I'm not sure, but from my
knowledge no.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
We were fortunate to get well known forensic psychologist Tim
Watson Munroe to offer insights into Daniel's behavior. While Tim
didn't assess Dania, he has over forty years experience of
assessing tens of thousands of criminals. We will call on
Tim's expertise throughout this podcast.

Speaker 8 (14:47):
Where's the empathy? Where's the remorse? Much the contrary, they're
getting a thrill out of it, maybe even watching it
from a distance to see what the reaction is. And
it's all about power control, create fear.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
And there are few more effective ways to create fear
than killing animals at a kindergarten and leaving them out
for the kids to see. Two other things stand out
in Todd's mind. First, there was an incident one night
in his street with a local woman who lived on

(15:24):
her own. There is no evidence. What Todd is about
to tell us was Paul Daniel. But a woman was
terrorized in her house at night, getting all of the
neighbors out of their homes to come to her aid,
creating fear. His involvement can't be discounted.

Speaker 6 (15:44):
There was a neighbor of ours that had someone banging
on their doors and windows late at night trying to
get in and was making a concerted effort to get in.
So he's banging on doors, windows, making a scene getting
in somewhere will that was certainly to make an impact,
certainly so people would know.

Speaker 7 (16:03):
It was certainly to get something out of it.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
And the other thing that stands out to Todd was
that his parents were quite strict about not letting their
kids leave Mote Street on their bikes pushing at this boundary.
Todd used to ride his bike across the road at
the end of his street and go to the service
station on Long Street. He and his brothers figured it
was safe. The owners were hard working people. It seemed

(16:30):
like a mistake when they employed a young man called
Paul to work there. Unlike the industrious owners, Paul seemed
to stand around and not do much.

Speaker 6 (16:42):
From what I recall, he was a very nondescript person.
There was nothing that stood out about him. If you're
passing them on the street, you wouldn't remember him five
months later. Look, given he didn't seem to hold down
a very long. The guys that owned that service station,

(17:03):
they worked in the seven days a week. Can you
everyone's names? And back then it was driveway services to
fill your car back then, I don't think that someone
that didn't really do much and just sort of stood
around was really going to last very long with these people.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
The day that Todd has never forgotten, his mum pulled
into the service station to get petrol. The owner filled
up her tank, she paid him, and Paul looked at
her car and said she was good to go.

Speaker 6 (17:33):
The guy that owned it had filled the car and
he'd gone into the payment and Mum's in car.

Speaker 8 (17:40):
Yep, we'd go.

Speaker 6 (17:41):
And Paul was actually the one that was like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
good to go. The petrol bowser was still attached, so
he drove out when it's still attached, and I mean, look,
whether it's an honest mistake, I don't know, but mum
was pretty pretty upset, and everyone was at the service station.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Looking back on it. Now you have to wonder if
Paul's actions on the day were deliberate. Did he look
at her car, see the nozzle still attached and tell
her to go? Or is it possible the owner replaced
the nozzle back on the bowser when he finished filling
her car, and then Paul put it back in the

(18:22):
car just to cause mischief or worse. Luckily, no petrol
was spilt and no stray spark turned an embarrassing inconvenience
into chaos. When Paul stopped working at the service station,
he got a job at Safeway Kringle Hub. A story

(18:44):
that I heard back when I was writing the book
was that Paul Daniel had been fired from a supermarket
for ramming a woman with some shopping trolleys. I didn't
know any more details than that. A woman called Kate
got in touch with me. It was her mother Daniel
rammed and she was there and saw it happen. Well,

(19:06):
her mother has since passed away. Kate never forgot the incident.

Speaker 5 (19:12):
I was five at the time, and my brother he
would have been three, and my mum at the time
was pregnant with my second brother, and we used to
always shop at Kringle Hub and on this particular day,
my mom had packed my brother and I in the car.
We had gone shopping and we were getting out of

(19:32):
the car and I could see because I had we
got told to stand at the boot and wait for mom.
There was a guy in the distance collecting trolleys. As
my mom, my brother, and I started to walk towards
the entrance to the supermarket, we could see a guy
hurrying with the trolleys and he collided with my mom.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Kate remembers a slight incline in the car park, but
if the man had have accidentally lost control of the trolleys,
he made no attempt to warn them.

Speaker 5 (20:05):
He didn't say anything. I don't recall him saying it
oither way or excuse me or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
It was just push. There was no one else around,
and the collision was deliberate. Kate remembers her pregnant mother
being pushed roughly forward with the impact.

Speaker 5 (20:21):
The trolleys hit her from behind, so she didn't actually
see anything, but she did actually turn around when the
hit happened. It hit her in the back and so
we did quickly move.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Kate remembers her mum telling off the man with the
trolleys for ramming her. I asked her whether the man
said anything back, It was just a death stare.

Speaker 5 (20:44):
He didn't say anything, but he sort of just looked
in disgust. Really, just a look of disgust and that
icy coal death stair. It was just a look of hatred.
And I haven't really seen that in people ever since then,
But yeah, it's a look I've never forgotten.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
What I'm always interested in is the effect on women
of their encounters with Daniel.

Speaker 5 (21:11):
She was very shaken up, but I remember like she
just was rattled from the whole experience, because I don't
think many of us have had that type of experience,
and if we have, we may have felt a bit
of resolve because the person may be a bit remorseful
and really apologetic. Most people are if they've run into
someone by accident.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
But this was different.

Speaker 5 (21:28):
This was sort of a situation that she'd never encountered before.
I haven't to this day ever encountered something like that since,
and it did rattle her. She changed where we used
to shop. We used to shop Kringle, then she used
to shop elsewhere because of that whole entire experience.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
And in this brief but significant encounter. What does Kate
feel about the violence and the hatred emanating from the
man in the Safeway car park.

Speaker 5 (22:00):
When you're not happy with someone, you might see someone
with a death stare and they don't blink, They just
stare straight through you, as if you were a pane
of glass. And so I do remember the piercing eyes
that were glaring at my brother, my mom and I,
But it was just this look of hatred at my
mum for some reason, and like we never knew this person.

(22:22):
I'd never seen this person in my life.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
And if Kate's story wasn't bad enough, I found out
that Daniel rammed another woman with the supermarket trolleys. Davin
was the assistant manager at the time. Paul had been
a Safeway for around six months and had not even
tried to impress his employers.

Speaker 9 (22:46):
Paul worked under me. I really didn't think much of
him at all. He wasn't a very good worker. He
had a very short temper. He would be constantly having
to go and get a mocking bucket because he was
putting in the drink ale and he'd be breaking stuff
and dropping stuff, and you hear him cursing and swearing,
and he was really short fused. I really I think

(23:08):
he was only there about six months, working there part time.
I really didn't think much of him at all as
an employee.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
This time when Dania rammed another woman, there was a
baby in her trolley.

Speaker 9 (23:21):
On the day that he ran the woman and the
child with the Rayish shopping trials, I was actually standing
there when he did it. I actually saw him do it.
He just look on his face, just went straight in
on and then all of a sudden, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
and started apologizing. I don't know whether he intended to
hit him as hard as he did, but he did
knock the woman over, the trolley over the baby out
of the trolley. So we ended up taking him down

(23:43):
to the doctors across the road medical center.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
The woman and the baby were taken to the hospital
for observation. For the managers and Safeway. It was the
last straw as far as Paul Dania was concerned.

Speaker 9 (23:59):
Manager called me in and we started telling him what
I'd say. He goes right, we're going to second with me.
You're going to beg me yep at all. So we
got him in. He certainly quite calm. We just fining
the situation. This woman's had to be taken to the
doctors and the baby's taking the doctors, and also they
both can end up at hospital for observation. And yeah,

(24:19):
we second like we were happy to get rid of him.
I think because he was such a bad employer.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
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Speaker 10 (24:31):
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Speaker 3 (24:57):
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Speaker 1 (25:11):
It was at the Kringle Hub safeway that Paul met
Sharon Johnson and the two began dating. She was seventeen
at the time, and he was nineteen. Five months later,
Paul moved into Sharon's mother's house. A month later, Paul
and Sharon moved into a unit on the Frankston Dannyong Road.

(25:33):
In the same block of units lived a woman called Julia.
She'd lived there for about a year when Paul Daniel
and his girlfriend Sharon moved into the unit next door
in September nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 11 (25:46):
I moved into the second unit. There were four units
and they numbered one to four from the road backwards,
and I moved in the end of nineteen ninety just
before I went to UNI, and about a year later
Paul and Sharon moved in next door into unit one.
Tricia lived in Unit three and then were out The

(26:09):
people in unit four, but I don't recall their names.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
It wasn't long before Paul began calling into Julia's for coffee.
During these visits, he would pour his heart out. He
was grappling with aspects of his religion when he began
dating Sharon. He started going with her to the Christian
church on the corner of Madden Street and Frankston danny

(26:34):
Long Road. Paul called Julia the church didn't approve of
he and Sharon living together, and that angered him. Julia
listened to his concerns and offered advice where she could.

Speaker 11 (26:48):
Certainly he was a man with issues, and certainly he
was upset and asking some big questions and just trying
to wrestle through I guess a fight with what he
wanted to what he felt other people approved of or
didn't approve of, and feeling unhappy about the interactions that
he'd had with the church that they had been going to.

(27:09):
And I think he was just processing that and trying
to move through it. And certainly I just put that
all down to his bucket of issues.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Because Paul's partner, Sharon was working two jobs, Julia only
really saw her in passing.

Speaker 11 (27:28):
It's just very neighborly, waving hello, maybe a quick chat
on the front door step. I can't recall her ever
coming in for coffee, but she would have been very
welcome to do so. I tended to see her when
she was on her way to work or just coming
back home from work.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
When Paul spoke about attending services at the Christian Center
in Madden Street, which was about a two minute drive
away from their block of units, Julia remembers a family
connection to the church.

Speaker 11 (28:01):
So I believe her uncle was the pastor there, and
they had been going there for a while, and they
had decided to move in together, and I think the
church had said to them, look, you know, that's probably
not the greatest idea. How about you get married or
don't live together. Paul had taken that quite poorly, and
that had resulted in a lot of questioning and some

(28:21):
anger that perhaps he felt like they ought to have
approved and they ought to have been okay with his decision.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
I asked Julia if this caused a division between Paul
and Sharon. I wondered if her uncle was the pastor,
then could the rejection of their living arrangements have been
doubly difficult.

Speaker 11 (28:44):
Didn't seem to come up that that was a dividing
point between him and Sharon. I think they were quite
cohesive in their decision making and wanting to be together
and live next door. And I don't think the church
was coming in between them. But I think perhaps there
was a loss of community for him that he had
been part of, and he felt a bit ousted, which

(29:06):
I think would be painful for many people.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Julia was a person of faith herself, and she was
happy to discuss these things with Paul. He would appear
at her door, she would make coffee, and then they
would talk at length. Sometimes they played the guitar, and
even though it was the time when Paul was stalking
women and making weapons, Julia didn't see that side of him.

(29:34):
I never saw that.

Speaker 11 (29:35):
In the time that we had coffee, he would come over,
we would make coffee, we'd sit down on thet a
couple of sofas. He would grab the guitar and play
the guitar and just kind of mess around with chords
and chat. I felt like he thought it was a
safe space to just kind of talk about where he

(29:55):
was at and what he was feeling.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Given that she was doing coffee with a man who
was months away from becoming a serial killer, did Julia
notice any signs. I think what's.

Speaker 11 (30:08):
Weirdest is that nothing stood out. There wasn't a sense.
I didn't get any spidy sense or my goodness, you're weird.
I think it certainly had a lot of issues, but
I think everybody has their issues, and I think when
we find what we think is a safe space to
talk about those that we do talk about them, but

(30:29):
there wasn't anything where I thought, wow.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
You scare me.

Speaker 11 (30:32):
And certainly, I've met many people over the years, particularly
my role as a nurse, I've met a few scary characters,
and yet I think probably one of the scariest people
I've ever met is someone I didn't notice was scary
at the time. I just thought they were issue filled.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
I've spoken to a lot of people who've known predators
and didn't pick it before they knew. There's often a
sense of why didn't I know? How could I not have?
But the thing is predators are wolves in sheep's clothing.
They are very good at hiding their true nature and
fooling the people around them. During this time, Julia had

(31:14):
a couple of house guests, so hers was a place
where people were coming and going. When she began noticing
things disturbed around her unit, she put it down to
careless HouseGuests.

Speaker 11 (31:28):
I would walk into the house and I would find
that things had been slightly moved, also that I had
a series of like a jug and a number of
mugs on the kitchen window sill, and one of them
had been knocked into the sink and had broken, And
there had been leaves and dirt on the floor, and

(31:51):
given that I never used our back door, there would
not have been any of the leaves and dirt from
the backyard in the unit because we just never used
the door and I've found them there, and because I'd
had people staying with me, I wasn't particularly concerned. I
just figured these things that happened by accident, cleaned them up,
and just put it down to having guests, although I

(32:13):
was a little bit surprised that they didn't say, you know,
we're sorry for breaking that coffee cup or whatever.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
But that's okay.

Speaker 11 (32:19):
That's just the nature of having guests sometimes.

Speaker 7 (32:22):
And.

Speaker 11 (32:24):
So I put it all down to it being visitors
rather than it being an unwelcome visitor.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
But if it had never occurred to Julia that someone
had been coming into her unit when she wasn't there,
her thinking changed dramatically when she arrived home after a
trip to face a disturbing home invasion.

Speaker 11 (32:48):
I'd been away into state and had come home quite
late of an evening, and I had had some people
staying at my unit, so there were about three people
staying at the unit, and when I got back, I
couldn't get inside the unit because they had the chain
across the door. So I ended up going back to

(33:09):
my then fiance's family and staying the night with them,
and coming back the next day. When we entered, I
realized that things had been moved. And when I asked
the people who were there, why are the things moved?

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Or did you move that thing?

Speaker 11 (33:25):
They said, oh, no, it was It was there when
we had been coming in and out, and it was
just different bits and pieces around the unit had just
changed position. And then I started to look at various
photos that I had around the unit, and in all
of the photos there had been a slash in a.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
Cross shape across my neck.

Speaker 11 (33:46):
There was a message carved into my piano, and there
were slash marks across a tall boy. And the more
I looked, the more.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Things I found.

Speaker 11 (33:59):
I found that my do had been shredded, that my
mattress had been stabbed, that the dress that I had
worn to my engagement was slashed through, and even later
going into different drawers in that tall boy, finding passport
photos and things stabbed and shredded. So it just seemed

(34:20):
to be this voyage of discovery. And then I would
find another thing that had been knocked over or smashed
or cut through.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
The more Julia discovered, the more bizarre the breaking seemed.

Speaker 11 (34:34):
It was incredibly bizarre, and just that I would keep
discovering new things and think, oh, well.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
That's another thing.

Speaker 11 (34:42):
And I was fairly young at the time. I would
have been nineteen or twenty, so I was fairly naive,
and there was a sense of unreality about I guess
the viciousness and the anti war and kind of message
that it was sending, the slicing through the neck and

(35:05):
the shredding of the bedding, and I mean, that's all
very personal and it's all very it's really violent. But
I wasn't used to that kind of you know, that
was not a characteristic of anything that I'd had experience
with before. So it was very new and it was
very unsettling. It's deeply unsettling.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Once she had found out how the intruder had gained
access the point of entry only served to make the
break in more frightening. Whoever had entered her unit had
been coming in and out for a while, and.

Speaker 11 (35:43):
It wasn't until later when I discovered that the flywire
in the kitchen had been sliced at the bottom and
along each side so that you could just roll the
fly wire up and come into the kitchen through the window.
That it all started to make sense, and then I
realized that probably he had been coming in and out

(36:04):
of the unit for a while, because when I realized
that the photos had been slashed and all of those
things had occurred, then we started looking more closely at
how might someone have gotten in what was going on,
And because it was only really a three or two
bedrooms and a living area in a kitchen, they were
tiny units, there wasn't much to look at. And then

(36:27):
all of a sudden it occurred to me, well, hang
on a minute, the flywires cut. That's how someone's been
getting in and out. And then that forced me to
look back and say, well, okay, that's where the mud
on the floor came from, and the leaves on the floor,
and how the cup got broken, and why things have
been moving around my house. And I haven't really been
paying enough attention with that front part of your mind

(36:51):
that actually has a good hard look at things instead
of just brushing it aside and attributing it to something else.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Reported the break in to the police.

Speaker 11 (37:03):
They sent out someone some time later to do fingerprints,
but I'm not sure that that netted any great result
for them.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
As Julie continued to sort through her unit to assess
the extent of the damage the intruder had caused, she
found a knife in its box up the top of
her wardrobe. It was one of the engagement gifts she
had set aside for when she got married. Julia realized
this was what the intruder had used to slash her

(37:35):
clothes and her bedding.

Speaker 11 (37:38):
You know the wheelchair stay sharp kind of knives, the
really long ones. We had got one and as an
engagement present, And I realized later that's what he had used.
He'd been up in the wardrobe, pulled out the knife
and then slashed everything. So I went back to the
police station and said, I think here's your weapon of opportunity.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
If you like.

Speaker 11 (38:02):
And the response was well, yeah, okay. So they added
a little bit to the police report and that was that.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Julia told the police she thought it was her naghbor
Paul who had broken in. There were a couple of
really good reasons for this. Her friendship with him had
cooled when he began avoiding her, and because the intruder
had come in through the kitchen window, which was at
the back of the units. It meant that access was

(38:33):
limited to those living in the block of units.

Speaker 11 (38:37):
Just a feeling that it was Paul next door, And
I think part of that was because of the access
through the back courtyard in that he would be able
to gain access. There wasn't a fence between each unit
as such, and I think because he was probably one
of the few people who would have had access to
the rear areas of the units to be able to

(39:00):
come in through the window. I think at the original
report I was a bit concerned that it may have
been Paul, But then when I took the knife into
the police station to get them to add it to
the report, and I said, I really think it's my neighbor,
and this is why. He was just really unusual when
I was leaving, and it seemed to be suspicious his

(39:23):
behavior and very different to the way that he'd behaved
to me before.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Then, despite the violence of what had happened in her unit,
Julia felt that for the police it was just another
break in.

Speaker 11 (39:37):
It just seemed to be another break in report. I
guess at the time I thought, well, yeah, there's probably
a lot of break ins that happened, and this is
probably very run of the mill for police to be
processing this kind of complaint.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
But of course it wasn't run of the mill. When
someone's house is broken into, it's usually for the purpose
of robbery, but nothing had been stolen. This was an attack.
I think now it might be seen in a different light.
We know much more about these kinds of things.

Speaker 11 (40:12):
I guess even now you're just bringing that up. I
never thought of it as anything but a break in.
Isn't that unusual, I suppose, because actually he didn't take anything,
as far as I know, just damaged a lot of
things maliciously and personally, never took a thing, not really
a break in.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
With the damage that was done in her unit, Julia
could tell it was a personal attack against her, but
as a young woman, couldn't imagine how or why anyone
could hold such a grudge that they would do this
to her.

Speaker 11 (40:47):
It was a very personal thing. And then it was
like who hates me? Not that I was not, you know,
not unlovable, because I think horses for courses, there are
people who will love you when there were people who
won't love It wasn't that I was special, but there
was a sense of this very personal thing happening, and
that it was very personally directed at me, and I

(41:10):
couldn't work out why anyone would put themselves out so
much to be so vicious.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Julia made immediate plans to leave the unit after the
break in that was so personal and so inherently violent,
it was impossible to stay.

Speaker 11 (41:29):
And I remember calling the landlady and just saying, look,
this thing's happened, and I need to move out, and
I'm a bit concerned that it may be Paul.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Paul continued to act oddly right up to the day
Julia was packing to leave.

Speaker 11 (41:47):
When I was cleaning out my unit, I had had
my aunt there to give me some assistance, and she'd left,
and so it was just me taking out the last
few boxes and doing a bit of cleaning. And he
arrived home, and normally i'd get a wave and a
hallow and all of those things, but he actually almost

(42:10):
raced inside and shut all of the shutters, the front
blinds and everything so that you couldn't see in or out.
And that was unusual, and that just seemed to be
confirming my thoughts that it was him that had done
those things.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Despite her suspicions. Julia was at a loss as to
why her neighbor would have broken into her house and
taken a knife to her things.

Speaker 11 (42:40):
Hadn't done anything. I'd been only ever, hospitable and welcoming.
It is an odd thing for any person to have done,
to have behaved in that way. I don't think there's
a thing that I did that could have caused it
or have changed it.

Speaker 5 (42:57):
Well.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
The uniform members that Julia reported at the Frankston Police
didn't seem to focus on Dania as a suspect in
her break in. He had certainly come onto the radar
with the local CIB detectives. Veteran detective Cole Clark had
an encounter with Danya he never forgot.

Speaker 12 (43:20):
Maybe twelve months, two years prior to him committing these murders.
I remember I was working the afternoon shift in Frankston
and I was called to lang Warren, the shopping center
and where the uniform blokes had been called by one
of the shopkeepers that someone had been seen bleeding outside
one of the shops and had taken off attend and

(43:44):
we found a blood trail that led from the shops
down a couple of the streets and along the footpaths,
but it then disappeared. I remember that we then got
a phone call while we were investigating this that a
male person had been admitted to Frankston Hospital. I think
it was with a stab wound to his leg up

(44:05):
a leg I think from memory. We went to the hospital,
tried to speak to the person that was involved, and
it turns out that it was Paul down here at
the time had suffered a lead wound and it was
being stitched up in hospital. We tried to speak to him.
He remained mute at the time and wouldn't tell us

(44:28):
how we got the wound, where he got the wound,
or the circumstances and how it happened. In hindsight, years
later when he started killing people, and he admitted that
he was running around cutting the throats of animals around
Lang Warren at the time. I some lays later on
that while he was trying to kill an animal, he'd

(44:49):
actually stabbed himself in the leg. And of course he
wouldn't assist us in any way as to what had happened,
so we couldn't take the matter. He signed a statement
he wanted no further action involving the police in recentation
of this matter. So we made inquiries the next day

(45:10):
around the area if anybody had lost animals or or
had anything killed. Nothing coming forward. And I remember speaking
to one of the brothers that night, trying to get
the brother to find out what had happened from him,
and the brother said he wouldn't even talk to me
about it. So, yeah, you look back in reality on

(45:30):
that and you say, well, he obviously had problems in
those times. And this was early in the peace in
which he admitted to later on that he'd been doing it.
See you sit there and think, well, maybe if we
had a pressed it further or whatever and got into
his mind, we may have stopped these murders, but I
seriously doubt it. But it sort of things run through
your mind.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
These encounters with Paul Daniel certainly left their mark on
police and civilians alike. Once Julia moved out, Paul Dania
took his coffee visits down to the next unit, where
Tricia Vanes lived and her sister Donna occasionally stayed. Sadly,

(46:13):
Donna passed away in twenty eighteen, but her mother, Gloria Vanes,
wanted to tell Donna's story.

Speaker 7 (46:22):
She moved into Frank Stand on RW yes into it
was a big block of units and he was in
the front one with his fiance. Very nice guy, actually,
very nice guy, very neighborly, would do anything for you,
always said hell when he saw me. When I went
to visit Patricia, it had been in Atricia's for a coffee.

(46:42):
I think mainly after Donna moved in there. She went
to stay with her sister for a while, and he
would did go there for coffee.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
I asked Gloria for her impressions of Paul Dania.

Speaker 7 (46:54):
He always said hi to me in the driveway, a
big smile. It just seemed one of the big, chubby, happy,
go lucky block. Never would have picked them otherwise for end,
you know, just a nice neighbor.

Speaker 10 (47:10):
A cast recommends as she get tully t and just
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(47:32):
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Speaker 3 (47:38):
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You're listening to right Now.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
In late January nineteen ninety three, Donna and her partner
Liz rented their own place in Claude Street, not far
from her sister's unit.

Speaker 7 (48:03):
Then she moved into the street behind Trisha it was
roughly behind the next street down or something, into a
unit with her partner Lez.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
At the time, Donna, Lez and their baby daughter had
lived in a unit in Claude Street for just three
weeks when Paul Daniel broke in and changed the course
of Donna's life in what was always regarded from a
distance as a lucky break. On the night Dania broke in,

(48:32):
Donna wasn't home. Les worked during the day at his
regular job, and at night he would supplement the family
income by delivering pizzas. Donna often went out with Lez
on his pizza delivery, but on the night of Friday,
the nineteenth of February. She said she would just stay
home and bath the baby.

Speaker 7 (48:54):
Donna got bored very, very easily. All was born, and
she always went with them. She used to go everywhere,
and he was surprised at that. Now she said not,
and are you sure you'll be bored? She said no,
I can't be bothered. She'll just bath the baby.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Donna bathed the baby and left the water in the tub.
The knight dragged on, and she was pleased when Lez
dropped back home in the middle of his shift.

Speaker 7 (49:21):
Anyway, she must have been thinking, I wish to gone.
He came back. He was on the way to deliver
a pizza, and he called in and they said, do
you borge it? Do you want to come? She said,
oh yes, So she dried the baby, put her in
the car, and off they went. I think it was
a bit eight thirtyish or something, and then I think
when they got back, I think it was eleventh thirty

(49:42):
for summers around then.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
What Donna and Lez found when they returned home was
something so cruel and violent it was beyond belief.

Speaker 7 (49:54):
At first, she didn't go into the unit because she
was getting a baby out the capsule in the car,
and Lez went to open the front door, and he
had called her. I think she said she hadn't say
oh my God or something like that, a bit of
a shock response, and he said to her, Donna, don't
come in.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
The reason Les didn't want Donna to come in was
because he had seen the place had been broken into,
like Julia's break in months earlier, nothing had been taken.
The intruder had just left carnage in their wake. When
Lez opened the front door, there was an overwhelming smell,

(50:32):
and he discovered their cat horribly slaughtered on the floor.
In the kitchen. Someone had written Donna, You're dead and
the name Robin on the wall in what looked like
cat's blood. The names in blood meant it wasn't a
random break in. Donna assumed the reference was to her dad,

(50:53):
who was rob but sometimes called Robin. After calling the police,
Gloria was next to get a call.

Speaker 7 (51:02):
Donna rang and I was shocked, But I'd been more
shocked if I knew the reason our place had been
broken into, because then it was just her place had
been broken into. We didn't know who it was, and
the cats, and I thought, God, who would do that?
So we were a bit so why who would do that?
A lot of somed it knew them because the names
were on the wall, so they knew who lived there

(51:24):
that well, Donna didn't and her dad was Rob Robin whichever.
I said, well, look, do you want to come here
grab some claws and that She said, no, not at long,
the police are here.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
One of the police called to the breaking at Donna's
flat was Chris McCann from the newly formed police Special
Response Squad. The squad was a brand new iteration of
the Major Crime Squad and had been very busy in
their first two months of operation. Chris himself had arrested
nearly fifty people in that time.

Speaker 13 (52:00):
So our squad was the Special Response Squad, which had
been formed as a result of the disbanding of what
was called the Major Crime Squad in those days. Primarily
we were established to investigate aggravated burglary robbers on Holmes.
Any break in where there was any suggestion or evidence

(52:22):
of a weapon being used, we would be called out
to that job. And I think at the time we'd
only been operating for I'm going to say two months.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
In the early hours of the morning of Saturday, the
twentieth of February, Chris McCann arrived at Donna's place in Claude.

Speaker 13 (52:40):
Street, but we were called out early in the morning
and I went there with my crew and we met
up with the Frankston detectives and it was just a
brown brick unit in the middle of Frankston. And when
we went to the scene, I do recall that there
was like a bucket that was underneath the rear window.

(53:02):
When we called the crime scene forensics out and photographs,
there was blood marks or bloodstains from gloves that you
could clearly see on the roll down blinds. And afterwards,
when the forensic guys used their hydrogen and the ultraviolet light,
they picked up one stone boot impressions all across the

(53:24):
kitchen floor in the laundry.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Even though thirty years have gone by since the job
in Claude Street, Chris has never forgotten the sight that
he was met with when he walked into the flat.
One of the Frankston detectives pre warned him before he
went inside, here's what the scene looked like, and be
aware this is distressing.

Speaker 13 (53:49):
After you were told that somebody had been in there
and had gone on a rampage with a knife, he said,
you need to be prepared because it's a mess in there.
He's killed some cats and some kittens, and so as
you walk through the front door, you were immediately hit

(54:11):
with this horrible stench and then really the horrible image
of seeing a female cat that had been completely gutted,
and at that time on the walls as you walk
in through the door there were death threats written on
the wall using the intestines of the cat. And then

(54:34):
in the bathroom there was kittens that had had their
throats cut and that they had been and then thrown
into the bath. And then as you moved through the unit,
I remember seeing a half naked picture of a woman
attached to the cat with stab marks that had gone

(54:56):
through the picture into the cat. And then there was
a bassinet in the main bedroom, and in the bacinet
there were more pictures of half dressed women with stab marks.
Threw the pictures into the basinet, and then behind one
of the covered doors there was there had obviously been
some pictures there, and there had been slash marks from

(55:19):
a knife, obviously where Daniel had slashed through the photographs
and pictures on the back.

Speaker 12 (55:26):
Of the door.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
In the lound room was an orange baby bouncer sitting
in the middle of the floor on a pink and
blue checkered rug. Next to it lay a baby's rattle
and a disposable nappy. On the white wall of the
lound room, next to the television, the intruder had written
what looked like dead don in a red substance that

(55:50):
looked like blood. In the kitchen, written in blood above
the stove were the words Donna, You're dead printed in
block lie. Next to the words was a bloodied outline
to suggest that the cat had either been held or
flung against the wall. Among the wall writings was the

(56:13):
name Robin. In the bathroom were the two kittens floating,
one at each end of a half filled bath. They
had turned the water rust colored with their blood. The
attack on the kittens had occurred in the laundry over
a plastic laundry basket of baby clothes. Blood had splashed everywhere,

(56:36):
spray high up the walls and around a packet of
kitty litter. In the cat's blood on the floor was
a distinct shoe impression. In the main bedroom, the intruder
had ransacked the cupboards and drawers and sprayed a can
of shaving cream all over Donner's mirror, and through the

(56:59):
creamy swirl, the detectives could make out the words Donner
and Robin. One of the cupboard doors had been covered
in pictures of swimsuit models. These had been slashed and
only a few jagged corners of the pictures remained. The
intruder had also slashed the cupboard door, leaving deep gougers

(57:20):
in the wood. Oddly, the door had swells of dirty,
dried water marks, as if the attacker had wanted to
clean the surface for some reason. Had he written another
message on it then changed his mind. Outside, the point
of entry was clear. The intruder had climbed onto a

(57:43):
nappy bucket around the back, forced a window open, and
climbed through. Left behind on the blind was a gloved
hand impression in blood. The detective Chris McCann the scene
was like no thing he'd ever seen before. Police officers

(58:04):
see the worst of the worst, but there was something
about the break in at Domma's house that stood out
for Chris.

Speaker 13 (58:12):
I'd been to numerous homicides, and I'd been to numerous
violent crimes, but this was particularly different because of the
violent nature in which he had just slaughtered the defenseless animals,

(58:32):
And you wouldn't see that normally unless it was a
frenzied attack by a next boyfriend on a girlfriend perhaps,
But when you saw it just seemed it seemed to
be completely out of place with a normal break in
at a house. If I was breaking into steel something,
you would normally then go on a round page and

(58:54):
kill the animals in the house and then write death threats.
So no, I'd never seen like that before.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
Forensic psychologist Tim Watson Munroe offers his insiens.

Speaker 8 (59:07):
The way you describe that crime scene, disemboweling the cat's
naked women. Now, some would say, perhaps this is the
indicators of a person with a psychotic mind, somebody that's
out of touch with reality, because I think probably the
lay person that's crazy behavior. And it is, but it's
not medically defined or legally defined insanity. He clearly knew

(59:33):
what he was doing. His focus was really to not
only act out on that fantasy, but create fear, vicarious power,
vicarious control. And it's all planned and premeditated. It's not
shambolic thinking in the way that you normally get with
psychotic people.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
One of the reasons Chris still remembers the case aside
from the violence, is perhaps because Donna and Liz had
a newborn baby. Gloria Vanes remembers Donna and Les taking
the baby and leaving the scene to the police.

Speaker 7 (01:00:08):
I went to Steer with Less's mum. She lived in
Frankston as well.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Donna needed Gloria's help. Once the crime scene was processed,
the cats needed to be transported for post mortem examination,
and the police apparently didn't do the transportation.

Speaker 7 (01:00:27):
When I got there, it was just a mad host
of police vehicles and lights.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Gloria brought a friend with her. Gloria's friend, Sandy, was
a vet nurse, and on the way, the two had
stopped off at a local vet to try and procure
body bags for the cats, which were essentially black plastic
garbage bags. When Gloria began telling me about collecting the cats,

(01:00:53):
her own cat came into the room and started me outing.
Was a bit haunting, to be honest.

Speaker 7 (01:01:01):
We got to the house and the police. She said,
don't you come in. I said I'm coming in and
stayed in the car. Or there was reporters and god
knows what going on. She went in she came out
with them in the bag, put them in the boot.
She said, they're hopeless, place are hopeless. They had them
in a clear plastic bagaid it was horrible. She said,

(01:01:22):
could have put them in something else. So she put
that into the black bag and we had to go
all the way to Surrey Hills. Apparently that's where the
policeould take it. There that's the veterinary pathologist and they
can tell what the blade size or whatever, the type
of ice that may have been used or whatever. So
we trotted off to Surrey Hills.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Adn't I leaving Donna's flat with the murdered cats in
her boot. Gloria and her friend ran the gauntlet of.

Speaker 7 (01:01:51):
The press when we left with my friend and I
to take the cat's bodies to the pathologists. So we
came out the drive, you know, the up against a
car with the cameras the reporters.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
After Chris McCann and his crew had finished examining the scene,
they went around to Les's mum to interview the young couple.
It's hard to imagine anyone hating a young woman with
a baby so much they would commit such a violent
act on her cat and kittens. The detectives were in

(01:02:27):
no doubt that had Donna and her baby been home
when the intruder broke in, they too would have been murdered.

Speaker 13 (01:02:35):
Because it was so unusual what had happened. We had
asked them because generally with something like this, this is
almost like a crime of hate that you either hate
sexual human or you hate animals, or both, and so
we wanted to get an understanding about who who they

(01:03:00):
thought may have had some sort of endebtor against them.
But these are young kids without any history of criminal involvement,
so it wasn't something They were unable to come up
with names, and they eventually gave us a list of
about ten people in there. I'm not sure if in
that list Paul Denier's name had been mentioned. I remember

(01:03:21):
afterwards she said that there was somebody strange at a
place that she had visited. It was either her sister
or a friend lived in Frankston, and that turned out
to be Paul Dania.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
The problem for Chris in investigating the Claude Street break
in was that while they spent a week on it,
they were inundated with other jobs. There was no opportunity
to focus purely on the crime that targeted Donna Vanes
and her cats.

Speaker 13 (01:03:53):
We investigated it and going to save for a week,
maybe a week and a bit off and on, but
at that time having jobs every single night. So even
on that day when we attended that particular job on
I was meant to be on a rest day. Of
the following day, I was called out at one o'clock
in the morning for a particularly serious and violent home
invasion again, and so we'd basically gone from that job

(01:04:18):
being there all day finished to day o'clock on Saturday night,
but by one o'clock in the morning I was already
called out to another job on Sunday morning. We didn't
have enough resources, so we were really spreading ourselves seeing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
The police did the best they could with the resources
they had, but the investigation went nowhere. During our talk,
Gloria told me something that I hadn't heard before. She
remembers a neighbor seeing the intruder arrive.

Speaker 7 (01:04:51):
I think it was a Lydia. I don't think it
was in the units. I think it was a house
opposite or something that spotted a cart. I don't know
what time he turned up there saying name to and
sort of ly did you maybe have a little who's
that you know? I do it here a lady. I'm
sure they sort across the street had seen the car
pull in, but it was it was a neighbor, and
it went close enough to describe.

Speaker 11 (01:05:13):
What he was wearing.

Speaker 7 (01:05:14):
And it was a big bloke. I don't know how
much she saw, but she definitely said the checkered shirt
and trappy pants and he was quite a lot which
she was, tall and big solid.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
The description very much described Donna's sister, Tricia's neighbor, Paul.
Gloria remembers Tricia seeing something the following day that made
them all suspect that Paul was the intruder. Gloria remembers
that Tricia saw Paul removing bloodstained carpet from his car.

Speaker 7 (01:05:48):
Patricia called saying that she'd seen him in the drive
were written the thing out of his car, and obviously
knew about what happened to Donna and her cats. So
she was sort of putting two and two together, and
she was thinking, I wonder if it was him, and
she said, what should I do. That's when we put
the two and two together. A bloodstained carpet in the car,

(01:06:09):
plus a neighbor report and someone that fits his description,
And Tricia said that to me. She said that report
the lady gave the neighbor fit some exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Donna's home invasion happened thirty years ago, and Gloria is
vague on some of the exact details, but she remembers
the family told the police about the suspicions about pauled In.

Speaker 7 (01:06:34):
The police did get told, but I think it may
have been her dad. I'm not sure it was either
her or her dad, because the message I got back
after that was the police said, all you can't just
go knock on people's door and you know, accusing him
or wanting to search, And I said what I said, Look,
I'm no expert on police things are with evidence, Like

(01:06:56):
if it was just a bloodstained carpet, well fair enough,
could be anything. You could have been hunted on, rabbits
or whatever. I don't know, but the fact that the
bloodstained carpet enough description that is Paul to a tea
is enough to look into. But they wouldn't. Apparently they
were quite abruptly said we can't just go knock on

(01:07:16):
on people's door.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
I asked Chris McCann if he had any idea of
the description of the man that Gloria had told me
about the man in work boots, tracking pants and a
flannel it shirt.

Speaker 13 (01:07:32):
No, I mean the people that I worked with myself,
that we were meticulous with our notes and our follow up.
Had we had a witness that said that they had
seen somebody being dropped off there at those units, it's
something we would have followed up. Having said that, it's
quite possible that if she did give that information, she

(01:07:54):
could have given it to somebody from the Frankston CB
who would have also been heavily involved in investigating that matter.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
And Chris is right, often detectives coming in to do
the detecting and the local uniform or the local detectives
are utilized to do the door knock. If one of
the neighbors did see a tall man wearing boots and
trackie pants and a flannelette shirt, she may have told
it to the local police, not the members of Chris's squad. Nonetheless,

(01:08:26):
Gloria is certain that her family knew at the time
that Paul Dnya fit the description of the man the
neighbor saw.

Speaker 13 (01:08:36):
After that particular job, we were just going from one
job to the next. It's quite possible that the main
contacts for that that would have remained with the Frankston
Police and the Frankston Detectives.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
So for now that remains a bit of a mystery
because the Special Response Squad inundated with jobs and clearly
under resource. They just didn't have time to stick with
any one case when the next one was only hours away.
And of course it was the early days of computer

(01:09:14):
usage and programs that LinkedIn connected information was a while away.

Speaker 13 (01:09:20):
I also have to remember in those days the systems
of connecting evidence between systems. Despite us going to one
system which at that time was going to a system
called Leap, having the information reports all connecting was still
very early days.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
It's a good point we can't judge the information systems
of three decades ago by what we take for granted today.

Speaker 13 (01:09:50):
Not being able to connect information electronically and saying well,
somebody had seen such and such on this night, that's
a similar description of the sort of person that looking for.
We have evidence of blondst and boots, and there's a
description of a person wearing a flannelit shirt, etc. That
type of stuff. There wouldn't have been the ability at

(01:10:10):
that point, just to connect dots like that, it would
have been pieces of information in different locations.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
How was Donna in the aftermath of the break in?

Speaker 7 (01:10:26):
She just totally went downhill, totally went downhill, or she
tried to be at the start or a nonchalant, normal Donna,
but she just kept going on and on. I used
to see where you were lucky at a guardian angel
is in jail, but it says yeah, but when you
get sout, and it just seemed to be all she
focused on.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
When Gloria contacted me. She just wanted people to know
what Donna's life was like after the break in. The
ongoing worry stayed with Donna until she died. Head.

Speaker 7 (01:11:02):
She's had a hard life ever since this all happened.
Her life was consumed with what if? What if? She
kept saying me on and she was just her hope
for years, just worried, worried, worried. When this happened at
her unit, with the animals getting killed in that she
wouldn't even go to the toilet in the house on

(01:11:22):
her own. Lens had to walk through and wait at
the toilet do and come back into the lounge with her.
She was just petrified.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
I wanted you to hear the words strike from Daniel brightly,
call a place and over the cat. I went to
kill her.

Speaker 12 (01:11:42):
He went to closed straight.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
And she was high.

Speaker 9 (01:11:52):
What did you do the kill the cat?

Speaker 13 (01:11:56):
Sorry the cat stead.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
On the next episode of The Frankston Murders, it was
just this lack of understanding. The only thing I noticed
was the trolleyboy.

Speaker 7 (01:12:14):
There was a young man standing in the shrubbery in
the bushes near the hall. He said, I don't want
you said, I won't let anything happen to you.

Speaker 8 (01:12:22):
Often they have a certain type of fermil in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
Straight off, it wasn't This wasn't right.

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):
Thanks for listening. If you'd like to hear the rest
of the Frankston Murders, just search for it wherever you
get your podcasts. It's a case file presence production created
by the same team behind a case file, with the
same high standards you expect from us.

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Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
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