Stalking Claremont

One young woman missing, two found murdered — the gripping true story of Australia’s longest-running homicide investigation

** Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for True Crime 2021**

In the early hours of January 27, 1996, after an evening spent celebrating at Club Bayview in the Perth suburb of Claremont, 18-year-old Sarah Spiers called a taxi to nearby Mosman Park. But when the cab arrived, she’d already gone.

Sarah was never seen again.

Four months later, on June 9, 1996, 23-year-old Jane Rimmer disappeared from the same area, her body later found in bushland south of Perth. When the body of a third young woman, 27-year-old Ciara Glennon, was found north of the city, having vanished from Claremont in August 1997, it was clear a serial killer was on the loose, and an entire city lived in fear he would strike again.

A massive manhunt focused first on taxi drivers, then the outspoken local mayor and a quiet public servant. However, almost 20 years later, Australia’s longest and most expensive investigation had failed to make an arrest, until forensic evidence linked the murders to two previous attacks — and an unlikely suspect.

Stalking Claremont, by local newsman Bret Christian, is a riveting story of promising young lives cut short, a city in panic, an investigation fraught by oversights and red herrings, and a surprising twist that absolutely no one saw coming.

Author Biography

Bret Christian has been a newsman all his working life, beginning his career on the Perth Daily News, and working in Melbourne and Sydney before returning to Perth to write a daily newspaper column. He started his own suburban Post Newspapers group in 1977. His interest in police investigations gone wrong led him to unearthing many extraordinary injustices, some of which he helped put right. His successful book on the subject, Presumed Guilty, was published in 2013.

Bret lives by the sea at Cottesloe with his partner, Jane, where they have raised six children and more pets than they can count. He is still a reporter for his newspapers, and, compelled by his Viking roots, spends his spare time in and on the ocean.