‘I SURVIVED THE CLAREMONT SERIAL KILLER
BRAVE WENDY IS SHARING HER HARROWING TALE IN A MEMOIR
Wendy Davis will never forget the terrifying day, some 32 years ago, when Bradley Robert Edwards, now known as the Claremont Serial Killer, brutally attacked her.
Then aged 40, Wendy was convinced she was going to die at the hands of the man trying to smother her with a cloth.
Thankfully, she escaped the clutches of the serial killer, who is currently behind bars for rape and murder. Now, Wendy is bravely sharing her journey in the powerful memoir, Don’t Make A Fuss, It’s Only The Claremont Serial Killer.
“This book is my story, but also the story of how all too often women are made to keep quiet, to not make a fuss,” Wendy, now 72, tells New Idea. “This has to change. I’m sure when Bradley Edwards attacked me, his aim was to rape, and perhaps kill me.”
Back in 1990, the mother of three was a social worker,
based at Perth’s Hollywood Repatriation Hospital. Edwards was a technician in his early 20s, working for Telecom, now Telstra.
Wendy was working at her desk when a dark-haired workman approached, asking to use the toilet nearby. She nodded, focused on a report.
Moments later, the man was behind her. Jerking her head back, he stuffed a cloth into her mouth and tried to drag her to the bathroom.
“I was petrified, sure there were chemicals in the cloth to make me unconscious, that he would kill me,” she recalls.
“I was fighting for my life as he tried to stuff the cloth further into my mouth.”
Her attacker lost his grip, and Wendy broke free screaming for help. Edwards visibly began to crumple, she recalls.
“His eyes looked strange; like dark liquid, and he seemed to be crying as he mumbled he was sorry.”
A security guard held Edwards, who also had cable ties on him, until police arrived. Officers asked Wendy, in shock and with a badly bruised neck, to make a statement, and her
‘WOMEN ARE MADE TO KEEP QUIET AND NOT MAKE A FUSS’
husband, Dave, was called to come and collect her.
In the ensuing weeks Wendy says: “nobody seemed to take me, or this attack, seriously. The police never phoned again for more information. Edwards was only charged with common assault and never went to jail. I felt very alone and unsupported.”
A Telecom representative later assured her Edwards was “a good person”, Wendy frowns.
“He said ‘young Bradley’ had been having relationship problems, that this was a one-off incident. I was stunned. Telecom, displaying little regard for my welfare, was all about promoting my attacker.”
Wendy was so traumatised by the attack, she quit the job she loved, and her marriage later broke up. She eventually moved to Tasmania and lost her sense of trust in others.
Gradually she moved on, marrying an old friend from her university days, Tim, and the two enjoyed their new life together in Hobart.
“But for decades I always felt a knot of anxiety, due to that attack,” she recalls.
Later, in 1996 and 1997, three Perth women, Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon were murdered, but nobody suspected Edwards.
In December 2016, Wendy got a phone call from a WA police officer who explained the man thought to be the Claremont serial killer had been arrested. It was the same man who attacked her in 1990.
Edwards was charged with murdering the three women, as new technology meant tiny pieces of DNA
found under Ciara’s fingernails matched his. “Prosecutors asked if I would face Edwards in court,” says Wendy, who agreed.
“I’d tried to put this attack out of my mind for decades, now I had to relive it all.”
In December 2019, Wendy recalled her ordeal in WA’S Supreme Court.
“I looked at the man who’d ruined so much of my life. He looked just the same, just a bit older. And I saw the sad families of the young women he’d killed. I felt very nervous, but I told the court just what the accused had done to me.”
In 2020, Edwards was convicted of murdering Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon. There was insufficient evidence to convict him of murdering Sarah Spiers, whose body has not been found.
“If police and Telecom had only listened to me all those years ago, looked into Edwards’ past more, and supported me, perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to go on to rape and kill.”