Paul Denyer

My parents had moved to Seaford in 1974. Seaford is located on the Nepean Highway close to Frankston in Victoria, Auutralia. It is a quiet backwater, not a prosperous suburb but possessed of a magnificent bay side beach. It was an easy walk to the foreshore from their little home – along Railway Parade, past Seaford Station, into Station Street and over Nepean Highway to the beach. You could walk along the pier, drop in a fishing line or just sit and absorb the view. On a clear day you could see the sweeping curves of the Westgate Bridge to the north, and Arthur’s Seat to the south. During summer holidays and weekends the beach was crowded with Melburnians relaxing on the sand or swimming in the crystal clear water. Wind surfers and yachts flashed past in ribbons of colour.

For those who dared, the biting winds and fierce winter storms were not to be missed. The beachscape was different then, and often deserted. But by winter 1993 a chilling unease had spread through the bay side suburbs around Frankston. In June, a young woman had been brutally murdered in Langwarrin, and a shocked community waited anxiously for the crime to be solved. In this context, walking on deserted beaches or along dimly lit streets at night was not advisable.

The Denyer family migrated from England in 1965 and Paul was born in April 1972. Paul had four brothers and a sister. The family moved frequently, living in Adelaide, then Randwick and Campbelltown near Sydney before moving south to Victoria in 1981. They lived at several addresses in Mulgrave before the parents split. The children finally settled with their mother in Long Street, Langwarrin.

Neighbours recalled the Denyer boys as being uncontrollable. Paul was taller and heavier than his peers at school, a lonely teenager who found it hard to make friends. He was bland, quiet and undistinguished. At home he spent some of his time making weapons – knives, spears, ninja stars and glove guns. There were signs of deviant behaviour. His sister’s teddy bears were mutilated with a knife. He broke a broom over her head when she suggested that the house needed cleaning. A kitten with its throat cut was found hanging from a tree. Paul denied involvement but there was blood and fur on his knife. He left school at the age of 15 and had a series of jobs usually ending in dismissal for laziness or dishonesty. While working at Safeway he met his girlfriend Sharon and they leased a flat together in September 1992.

Within months there were disturbing incidents in the neighbourhood. A woman returned home to find her clothes and engagement pictures slashed. There were some peeping Tom reports. Early in February 1993 Donna Vanes returned home to find a horrifying scene.

“The cat, Buffy, lay in the kitchen, a picture of a bikini clad woman draped over its disembowelled body. Its entrails were spread through the kitchen, blood was smeared along the walls, along with the legend smeared in blood ‘Donna and Robyn – you’re Dead’. Girlie pin-ups which Donna’s fiancé had taped around the flat had been torn down and slashed. In the bath…were the bodies of three kittens, their throats cut.” (1)

So the killing frenzy began. It was Friday 11th June 1993. Elizabeth Stevens was 18 years old when she stepped of a bus in Cranbourne Road, Langwarrin. There she was accosted by Denyer. He led her to nearby Lloyd Park where he choked her and stabbed her repeatedly in the neck. He slashed her body and covered her in tree branches. He then walked to the home of Sharon’s mother, washed his clothes and melted the soles of his shoes to destroy any forensic evidence.

Palpable disquiet enveloped the community. On Thursday July 8th Roszsa Troth was returning home from work. She got off the train at Seaford and began walking along Railway Parade. Denyer leapt out of the bushes and placed his hand over her mouth. But she bit his hand, broke free and ran to the middle of the road where a passing motorist stopped to help. Denyer ran off to a nearby reserve and soon returned to the Seaford Railway Station where he caught a train to Kananook, one station down the line. All this took place within a few hundred metres of our family home, in the streets once considered safe.

The proximity of the family home to these events galvanised the family, and we were alert to the mood of the community. The most frightening aspect was fear ..... fear of the unknown.

Much later, after Denyer was arrrested, specific reports emerged from the Courts and the conclusion was inescapable. Denyer was a fit to the serial killer profile. He was a monster, and had lived in our community.

Denyer was arrested. After his arrest, Ian Joblin was the forensic psychologist who spent months trying to find out what drove a seemingly normal man to stalk and murder.

He diagnosed Denyer as “a rare breed of serial killer, murdering his victims at random without apparent motive…perhaps the most dangerous criminal this community has ever known…able to describe his crimes without a flicker of emotion…not legally insane but extremely emotionally disturbed…able to lead a camouflaged life in middle class suburbia and present a veneer of normality to even his closest friends and family. His de facto partner Sharon Johnson never suspected him…having a sadistic personality disorder, demonstrated by a steady pattern of cruel demeaning and aggressive behaviour since early adulthood. He appears amused by the psychological and physical suffering he has inflicted on his victims.”

Joblin told the Supreme Court that the condition was entrenched and he doubted if it could be shifted. He told Denyer’s mother that “…the precise cause of personality disorders is unknown, beyond a complex, unpredictable cocktail of personal characteristics, early childhood experiences and possible instances of minor brain damage.”

This was all so close to home. Frightening beyond belief.

I wil tell you more about Paul Denyer in my next post.

Forensic Psychology

Forensic psychology has become a passionate interest for me. It is the branch of psychology concerned with the collection, examination and presentation of psychological evidence in the context of criminal investigations and court proceedings. It aims to expose and clarify the thought processes of the criminal mind, and provide an insight as to what motivates a criminal to act in seemingly inexplicable ways.

Take the example of the serial killer. Forensic psychologists have established a list of criteria which may apply to a serial killer. He may be sadistic, and choose his victims at random. Those who suffer at his hands are predominately strangers. He may be involved in the pursuit and fulfilment of a fantasy of domination He is more likely to prey on those least able to defend themselves – such as vagrants, hitch hikers, runaways, children, women and the elderly. All such people are vulnerable, easily overpowered and the theme of power and control is easily reinforced. His acts are apparently without motive, but he may enjoy the thrill, dominance and sometimes achieve sexual gratification. It is usually a compulsive act. There need not be any direct connections between the murders. He may choose to kill close to home, feeling comfortable in areas he knows well. In Australia, offenders are overwhelmingly male, between the ages of eighteen and thirty, and from blue collar backgrounds. He may be an unpopular person devoid of meaningful friendships. Childhood factors may have an impact. He may grow up in a dysfunctional family, and have suffered various forms of abuse – physical, psychological or sexual. He could have been a victim of poverty and hardship, and have a preoccupation with fantasy and murder. He may have established a psychological link between violence and pleasure. He may have exhibited cruelty to animals and young children.

Paul Denyer is a serial killer. The whole concept intrigued and sickened me. During the investigation the expertise of Claude Minisini had been employed. Minisini had been a member of the Victorian Police Rape Squad where it was a daily task to investigate frightening crimes of an interpersonal nature. He began to study the relatively new science of criminal profiling, and was selected to complete a year long fellowship at the Behavioural Science Unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The course explored human behaviour and linked the clues that behaviour could provide to the identification of an offender. After he left the police he set up FBIS International Issues Management. He was able to construct a profile of Denyer.

“Each serial killer acts out for his own personal motivation that’s unique to him because the activities that we see as the end product, the killing, has developed through a personal fantasy…serial killers are defined as those who had killed two or more people, with an emotional cooling off period in between…serial killers are highly egotistical…it is all about power and assertion. It’s the ultimate power of all – controlling the destiny of someone’s life. It is a psychological need. What is difficult for the community to accept is that there are some individuals amongst us who enjoy killing. What we have seen in their backgrounds is their family life has been somewhat dysfunctional…They do have a very active fantasy life…employment has been spasmodic or irregular. They lack commitment to any purposeful activity. They have little regard to behaviour outside their killing.”

I will write more about Denyer in my next post.