Claremont serial killings: Notes from an old-school crime reporter

Cops and crime reporters have many conversations when there’s a killer on the loose.

Most of them are on background, but old-school journalists always keep notes. And the really old school scribblers never throw the notes away.

I have been in this game for 35 years and have a row of filing cabinets in a garage crammed with shabby manila folders to prove it.

Murders, mysteries, corruption. It’s all there and you’d be surprised how often the ragtag collection comes in handy when a slice of history comes out of hibernation.

About a fortnight ago I was asked to pull together a series of scene-setting podcasts about the most compelling criminal case Western Australia has ever experienced.

The podcast begins today.

Finding the old file for that one, which is now more than two decades old, was easy.

It’s marked “Serial Killer”.

Even when added to hundreds of newspaper clippings, hours of archived television news footage and slabs of audio recordings, it was some of the documents in the manila folder that re-ignited the intrigue in that extraordinary hunt for whoever killed Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon in the mid-1990s.

There were, as I suggested, notes of conversations. Notes like this one.

“If you knew what we know about this person it would blow your mind,” the detective said. “We’ve always kept that secret. There are very good reasons why he won’t take us on. If he was to, then he would have to explain why we are paying him attention and he wouldn’t like that. You’re dealing with a very unique individual.”

That individual was Lance Kenneth Williams. Was it any wonder that reporters like me were convinced back in the day that the peculiar public servant in his early 40s was the Claremont serial killer?

Before dying aged 61 of cancer last year, Williams had been in the frame for the series of crimes that terrified and captivated our community.

By April 1998, a year after the serial killer’s third victim went missing from Claremont, crime reporters knew Williams was the prime suspect. Police made sure of it.

Detectives had him under 24/7 surveillance and the media joined in the chase. For more than three years, the police task force — under pressure to catch whoever was snatching women off the street and killing them — had its sights firmly set on Williams and his forlorn face.

Back to those notes.

“Don’t underestimate this guy,” the detective continued. “Most in the media are operating with about 5 per cent of the information.”

And after all those years of putting Williams under the pump, that5 per cent didn’t turn out to be worth a pinch of a dog’s proverbial.

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Williams was guilty of being weird. He had an abnormal interest in the Claremont disappearances and had a habit of driving around the area at night. He said it was to ensure young women were safe.

“I’d seen people walking around on their own in Claremont and, um, that sort of was upsetting me a bit,” Williams told 7NEWS reporter Alison Fan in 2002. “What I saw made me think, well, that’s not behaviour that is correct, you know, for that sort of area, and for what the area had been known for, you know, as far as the killings.”

Some would argue Williams was persecuted. He was certainly never charged and police have never offered an apology to him or his parents.

“The whole family is upset now his name is there and everyone knows who he is,” his mum Norma said in 2002. “But he says he has nothing to hide. They’ve got nothing to charge him with because there’s nothing to charge him for. It’s still not very nice when you’re walking down the street.”

Apart from records of those conversations in the “Serial Killer” folder, there are any number of conspiracy theories and names of people nominated as suspects by people who called me or sent letters.

This one took the cake.

“You should look into (name deleted) in (suburb deleted),” the anonymous person wrote. “He was fired a few years ago from (company name deleted) for sexually harassing women at his work. He is a lying, cheating sexual bully. He could be the killer. Ask him of his activities in the 1990s.”

I didn’t bother. Now the focus is on the latest man to be accused of the Claremont killings together with other horrendous crimes of abduction and rape. Bradley Robert Edwards, 50, has pleaded not guilty to all charges and will face trial in July. There will be intense media scrutiny. Some might argue too much of it.

But so much is at stake in this crucial next chapter of the Claremont case.

The women who survived what Edwards is alleged to have done to them, and the families of those he allegedly murdered deserve answers — and justice — after waiting for so long.