The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (7 page)

Leonard Fraser was found guilty of the abduction and murder of Keyra Steinhardt. ‘Lone females in a public place, as is present in this case, were compelled by force and threats to go to a place where the risk of disturbance was less,’ Justice Mackenzie said. ‘The offence involved severe, indeed extreme, violence on a child. Fraser’s story is that of a sexual predator of the worst kind.’ Justice Mackenzie went on to say that he could see no reason to suppose that Fraser had any prospect of rehabilitation and sentenced him to an indefinite life sentence. Under new Queensland legislation enacted in 1997, an indefinite life sentence means that, unlike a life sentence where the prisoner could automatically apply for parole after 15 years, he must not only apply to the Parole Board but also to a Supreme Court judge before he can ever be released. Both would have to be satisfied that Fraser no longer posed a threat to the community before the indefinite order could be lifted. This sentence left Fraser in no doubt that he would spend the rest of his natural life in prison.

Police still believed that Fraser was responsible for other murders. A young schoolgirl and three other women had all gone missing without trace between September 1998 and April 1999. Natasha Ryan, 14, had disappeared on 2 September 1998, while on her way to school in the same area where Keyra Steinhardt was killed. Julie Dawn Turner, 39, had worked with Fraser for a
couple of months in 1998 at a local abattoir. On 28 December 1998, Julie left a nightclub in the early hours of the morning, heavily under the influence of alcohol. She was last seen walking home alone. Beverly Leggo, 36, also had a connection with Fraser. They met at a local hostel where he was staying in 1997. She was last seen on 1 March 1999. Sylvia Maria Benedetti, 19, disappeared on 17 April 1999. Six days later while police were searching for the body of Keyra Steinhardt, who had disappeared the day before, they received a call to go to a derelict hotel that was in the process of being demolished. The demolition workers had made a grisly discovery. In one of the rooms, the carpet was soaked with blood and there was blood splattered all over the ceiling and walls. They also found bone fragments in the carpet. In a downstairs freezer, police found a pair of women’s shoes submerged in filthy water. A forensic examination revealed that the blood was human and, given the spate of missing women in recent months, police had good reason to believe the blood to be that of one of the missing women. They soon matched the blood found in the room to that found in the boot of Fraser’s car and to the missing woman, Sylvia Benedetti. Experts suggested that the attack had been so ferocious and savage that the victim had lost about four litres of blood, which was about as much as a woman the size of Sylvia Benedetti would have in her entire body. Police believed that Sylvia Benedetti was known to Fraser and was seen with him on the night before she disappeared.

Police now suspected that all four missing women had been murdered by Fraser, but knew that without their bodies or a confession they would not be able to charge him. Then they got lucky. Fraser started talking to his cell-mate, Alan Quinn, and confessed to the murders. Fraser said he killed Natasha Ryan by knifing her because she was pregnant by him. He then buried her body in a shallow grave. Fraser also said that he murdered Sylvia Benedetti and ‘bled her like an animal’ in a disused hotel and made a bloodied hand mark on the wall before smearing over it. Fraser also alleged that he had met Julie Turner in a shopping
mall and was giving her a lift home. He then ‘flogged into her’ (attacked her) after she had slapped him when he put his hand on her leg. When confronted by detectives about the confessions, he confessed and volunteered to take them to where the bodies of Beverly Leggo and Julie Turner were hidden. A short time previously, skeletal remains had already been discovered in bush land. These were later identified as those of Sylvia Benedetti. Fraser was unable to lead police to where the rest of the remains were. Fraser was charged with those murders and brought back for trial.

During the trial, there was a sensational revelation when one of the alleged victims, 18-year-old Natasha Ryan, was discovered by police hiding in a cupboard at the home of her boyfriend, 26-year-old Scott Black. Having charged Fraser with her murder, the court directed the jury to find him not guilty. Natasha Ryan appeared in court as a defence witness and stated that she had never seen Leonard Fraser before. She said that on the day she was reported missing, her mother had dropped her off at school. She decided that she had had enough of school, had decided to run away and stay with Scott Black, and had been with him ever since.

The defence lawyers suggested that there was now a major doubt about some of the evidence provided by Alan Quinn, as he had stated that Fraser had confessed to Ryan’s murder and given specific details as to how he carried out the crime. There was also doubt as to whether Fraser’s subsequently recorded confessions were genuine or whether he had made them up. However, the prosecution soon negated these suggestions. One admission had been that Beverly Leggo was strangled with her black knickers and a bra. Fraser made this admission three days before forensic scientists revealed that that was indeed how she had died. Fraser also said that where Julie Turner had been murdered he had abandoned a pair of her sandals. A subsequent search found a sandal and Julie Turner’s bra.

On 9 May 2003, Fraser was found guilty of the murders of
Sylvia Benedetti and Beverly Doreen Leggo and the manslaughter of Julie Dawn Turner. The verdict of manslaughter meant that the jury believed that Fraser did not intend to kill Julie Turner. Fraser stood silent and red-faced in the dock and then yawned and stretched his hands behind his head as the verdicts were handed down. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On 31 December 2006, Leonard John Fraser died in his sleep aged 55 in the secure unit at Princess Alexandra Hospital. He had been in the hospital since Boxing Day 2006, when he had suffered a cardiac arrest.

John Wayne Glover (b. 1932) was in his late fifties when he became one of the most despised and despicable murderers in the annals of Australian crime history. His warm and friendly personality disguised a monster lurking within. Glover was a petty thief with a gambling habit and a number of minor convictions for sexual offences against women. In 1989, in the North Shore suburb of Sydney, he started to prey on poor, frail, defenceless old ladies, initially robbing them. With his later victims, he brutally murdered them and then stole their money.

His first non-fatal attack on an elderly woman was on 11 January 1989, when an 84-year-old woman was walking along a quiet road. On seeing her, he parked his car and approached her, punched his unsuspecting victim in the face and stole her handbag and its contents. On 1 March 1989, he found his second victim, Gwendoline Mitchelhill, who was walking along with a stick. Glover went back to his car and armed himself with a hammer. Then he slowly followed the old lady back to her accommodation and, as she entered, he came up behind her and repeatedly hit her over the head and body with the hammer. After stealing her purse, he made off. She died from her injuries a short time later.

Two months then passed before another old lady fell victim to Glover. On 9 May, Glover was out on his own when he saw Lady
Winifreda Ashton walking slowly towards him in a red raincoat with the aid of a walking stick. Glover followed her into the foyer of her apartment building where he attacked her, again using his hammer. Later evidence revealed that the frail Lady Ashton put up an incredible fight for her life. After rendering her unconscious, Glover removed her tights and strangled her with them. He did not sexually assault her. Then, as if in respect for the dead woman, Glover laid her walking stick and shoes at her feet before stealing her handbag. The police now knew that they were dealing with a homicidal maniac and not just an ordinary mugger.

By now, Glover had gained confidence but also became complacent and more brazen. Police received complaints of old ladies confined to their beds in nursing homes being sexually assaulted. These crimes would turn out to have been committed by Glover, who worked as a pie salesman delivering to many nursing homes. On one occasion, Glover visited one such home. He made his way upstairs and into a bedroom where he lifted the dress of an elderly woman and fondled her private parts. He then went to another old lady’s room where he put his hand down the front of her nightdress and stroked her breasts. The terrified woman cried out. Staff spoke to Glover but he was not detained. The staff did report the incident to the police who, at this time, failed to make any connection between these incidents and the murders. And so Glover continued to commit other non-fatal attacks on old ladies.

On 8 August 1989, Glover attacked elderly Effie Carnie in a quiet street and stole her groceries. On 6 October, again in a nursing home, he passed himself off as a doctor and put his hand up the dress of an elderly female patient. The old lady called for help but Glover escaped. At no time while committing these nonfatal assaults was he ever identified. By the time the police did make a connection, Glover had gone on to commit several more murders of old ladies.

On 18 October 1989, Glover came upon 86-year-old Doris Cox slowly making her way home. He walked with her into the
secluded stairwell of her accommodation, attacking her from behind by smashing her face into a brick wall. She collapsed at his feet. After finding nothing worth stealing, he left her for dead and went home. However, she survived. When spoken to by the police, she was not able to give an accurate description of her attacker, but nevertheless the police prepared an identikit picture. Unfortunately, it turned out to be nothing like Glover and for a time this impeded the police enquiry. Their worst fears were realised on 2 November with the murder of another old lady, 85-year-old Margaret Pahud. She was killed in identical fashion to the previous victims by being hit over the head with a blunt instrument as she walked home. Her handbag was also missing. Within hours of the murder of Margaret Pahud, they had the report of a second victim. Glover had called at a nursing home in the early afternoon in his capacity as pie salesman. On his way through the garden, he struck up a conversation with 81-year-old Olive Cleveland, who was sitting on a bench reading. When she got up and walked towards the main building, Glover grabbed her from behind and forced her into a secluded area, dragging her to the ground. He repeatedly slammed her head onto the concrete before he removed her tights and knotted them tightly around her neck. Glover then made off with money from her handbag. Unbelievably, no one connected this murder with the attack on an elderly lady at the same nursing home only six months earlier. There were no clues; the murderer vanished into the afternoon.

The police now knew they were dealing with a dangerous serial killer who had to be caught. As a result, a $20,000 reward was offered for information on him. After cross-checking statements, one distinct description kept appearing in relation to several of the murders. The police finally realised that they had been looking for the wrong type of man based on the identikit and previous description given. But still Glover continued his killing spree.

On 23 November 1989, Glover spotted 92-year-old Muriel
Falconer struggling down the street with her shopping. He returned to his car, collected his hammer and gloves and followed her to her front door. As Falconer was partially deaf and blind, she did not notice Glover slip through the door behind her with his gloves on and his hammer raised. He silenced her by holding his hand over her mouth as he hit her repeatedly about the head and neck. As she fell to the floor, he started to remove her tights but she regained consciousness and cried out. Glover struck her again and again with the hammer and only when he was satisfied that she was unconscious did he remove her undergarments and strangle her with them. He searched her purse and the rest of the house before he left, taking with him cash and his hammer and gloves in a carrier bag. A neighbour discovered Falconer’s body the following afternoon. Forensic experts found a perfect footprint in blood on the carpet, their first solid clue since the investigation had started, but they still needed a suspect for comparison purposes.

The major break came when Glover again became careless. On 11 January 1990, he called at the Greenwich Hospital for an appointment with the administrator. Afterwards, Glover dressed in his blue-and-white salesman’s jacket and, carrying a clipboard, walked into one of the wards, where four very old and very sick women lay in their beds. He approached Daisy Roberts, who was suffering from advanced cancer, asking if she was losing any body heat, then pulled up her nightgown and began to indecently assault her. Mrs Roberts became alarmed and rang the buzzer beside her bed. A sister at the hospital answered the call and found Glover in the ward; she called out and Glover ran from the ward. She chased him and took down the registration of his car as he sped off. She notified the police. Staff at the hospital was able to identify and name Glover from previous visits on his pie round. But it would be a further three weeks before the incident reached the investigating officers involved in the murders. Now armed with the information, detectives confirmed Glover’s name with his employers. They rang him at home and asked him to
come to the police station at 5pm the following day. When he hadn’t turned up by 6pm, police called his home where his wife told them that he had attempted suicide and was in hospital. Police went to the hospital but Glover was too sick to be interviewed. Staff at the hospital handed police a suicide note that included the words ‘no more grannies’. The police still had not made the connection between the nursing home assaults and the murders. Eventually though, the connection was made and Glover suddenly became the prime suspect in all the murders. Due to the lack of direct evidence, they decided not to arrest him but instead kept him under 24-hour surveillance. During this time, his conduct was exemplary.

On 19 March 1990, at 10am, police saw him call at the home of a lady-friend, Joan Sinclair; they saw him spruce himself up in the rearview mirror. He went to the door and was let in. The watching police had no reason to believe that it was anything other than a social visit. At 1pm, there was no sign of Glover nor any sign of life from the house. The police became concerned. At 5pm, all was still quiet, and at 6pm, deciding that all was not well, the police decided to enter the house. As they entered, they noticed pools of blood. With guns drawn, they silently moved from room to room. They saw a hammer lying in a pool of drying blood on the mat. As they peered further around the doorway, they saw a pair of women’s knickers and a man’s shirt covered in blood. Then a woman’s body came into view. Joan Sinclair’s blood-splattered head was wrapped in a bundle of blood-soaked towels. She was naked from the waist down and her tights were tied around her neck. Her genitals had been mutilated. But where was her attacker? They continued searching and found Glover unconscious and naked, lying in the bath. One wrist was slashed and there was a strong smell of alcohol. They found he was still alive. He was taken to hospital and, after recovering, told the police of the final chapter in the Granny Murders.