Australian serial killer Peter Dupas was 47 years old when he received his first life sentence for the brutal murders of three women between 1997 and 1999. However, he had been violently attacking and raping women since his teen years, and he is also suspected of further killings.
Dupas’ violent tendencies began to manifest during adolescence. In October 1968, 15-year-old Peter visited a female neighbour and asked to borrow a vegetable knife, but when she handed it over to him he proceeded to viciously stab her in the face, neck and hands. Fortunately, she lived through the ordeal, and Dupas spent just 2 weeks in a psychiatric hospital. He is also suspected of breaking into the morgue at Melbourne’s Austin Hospital just one year later and mutilating the bodies of two deceased females, as certain wounds inflicted matched the injuries found on his later victims.
From 1974 to 1994 - and now in adulthood - Dupas went on to victimise at least 7 other known women. During this time, he was intermittently sentenced to years in prison at a time for a string of violent offences - primarily rape at knifepoint - but he rarely served the full terms. Upon his release from prison in September 1996 for yet another attack, Dupas’ heinous behaviour had still not been deterred, and instead he began to murder:
Margaret Josephine Maher (left): In the early hours of 4th October 1997, 40-year-old Margaret was last seen leaving a supermarket alone. Later that same day, her body was discovered under a pile of cardboard boxes by a passing family. Margaret had sustained a stab wound to the wrist, bruising to her neck, blunt force trauma above her eyebrow and also wounds to her right arm. Her left breast had also been cut off and put into her mouth.
Mersina Halvagis (centre): Just one month later in November 1997, Dupas targeted 25-year-old Mersina while she visited her grandmother’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery in Melbourne. As she knelt to pay her respects, Dupas approached from behind with a knife. When Mersina did not return home later that day, her fiancé and father searched the cemetery, where they found her body. She had been stabbed over 50 times in the neck, chest and torso, and her body had been thrown into an empty grave plot a short distance away from her grandmother’s. She also had extensive defensive wounds to her hands and arms, showing that she had attempted to fight off her attacker.
Nicole Patterson (right): As a young psychotherapist who often worked from home, 28-year-old Nicole put out an advertisement in a local newspaper in the hopes of building her client base. Tragically, this attracted the attention of Peter Dupas, and on 19th April 1999 Nicole’s severely mutilated body was discovered by a friend in her living room. She had sustained 27 stab wounds to her chest and back, and had also been left naked below the waist. Similarly to Margaret’s murder, Nicole’s breasts had been removed but were missing from the scene.
Authorities searched Nicole’s home and discovered her work diary, which showed that she had an appointment at home during the morning of her death with a client named ‘Malcolm’. Further investigation showed that Malcolm’s contact details were linked to Peter Dupas, who had secured a private appointment using a pseudonym. Police arrested Dupas, who had recent scratches on his hands consistent with a violent struggle, and when questioned about the injuries Dupas changed his story numerous times. A search of his home also turned up blood stained clothing, tape similar to that found at the scene of Nicole’s murder, and newspaper clippings about Patterson’s murder as well as her professional advertisement.
In August 2000, Dupas was found guilty of Nicole Patterson’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Now imprisoned, police looked into the possibility that Dupas was also responsible for the earlier murder of Margaret Maher, which shared striking similarities. It turned out that traces of Dupas’ DNA were found on a glove discarded at the scene of Margaret’s murder, and as a result he was convicted and sentenced to a second term of life imprisonment in August 2004. Dupas was sentenced to his third life imprisonment term in August 2007 for the murder of Mersina Halvagis, as nine witnesses had seen him at the cemetery on the day of her death. A lawyer who had met with Dupas frequently also confirmed that he had confessed to killing Mersina during a prison visit in 2002.
Although he was ultimately convicted for only three murders, Peter Dupas is suspected to have been responsible for more deaths - including Helen McMahon (47) in 1985, Renita Brunton (31) in 1993 and Kathleen Downes (95) in 1997. While imprisoned, he has attempted suicide on a number of occasions, and has previously been described by staff as a “model prisoner”.
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