INSPIRED BY THE GATEWAY TO HELL
TWO OF AUSTRALIA’S MOST NOTORIOUS CRIMES MAY HAVE BEEN COPIED BY THE KILLERS OF KARLIE PEARCE-STEVENSON AND HER DAUGHTER, WRITES
THEY were inspired by evil – the killings of Karlie PearceStevenson and her daughter Khandalyce have haunting similarities to two of Australia’s most notorious crimes.
Karlie’s broken bones were found in Belanglo State Forest, scene of serial killer Ivan Milat’s horrific murders.
After Karlie’s death her money continued to be withdrawn from the same Centrelink office in South Australia that was used by the Snowtown serial killers to draw their victims’ payments.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Julian Parmegiani says: “There may very well be an inspiration from the Snowtown murders. Whether you are opening up a shop or committing a crime, you look around to see what works, has worked before and how things are done.”
Daniel Holdom, 41, was this week charged with 20-year-old Karlie’s murder. Her body had injuries consistent with being brutally stomped on. Police will argue Holdom’s mobile phone records show he was in Belanglo State Forest on December 14 and 15 2008 when they allege Karlie was killed.
“I think you can be fairly confident the body was put in Belanglo deliberately to confuse investigators and make them start to question Ivan Milat,” Parmegiani says.
Milat took seven young backpackers to the remote forest to torture and kill them between 1989 and 1993.
Holdom had begun a love affair with Karlie in the months before her death – while his partner Hazel Passmore was recovering in hospital from a car crash that left her in a wheelchair.
It was Holdom behind the wheel of the car when it crashed, killing Ms Passmore’s two young children.
At some point soon after Karlie’s death her blonde, blue-eyed toddler was also brutally bashed and killed. Her tiny body was shoved into a suitcase before being dumped near the highway at Wynarka in South Australia.
After their deaths in 2008 a woman in a wheelchair went into an Adelaide bank and used Karlie’s identification to access her accounts.
Her bank card was used for more than 1200 transactions, funding trips to McDonald’s, KFC and for petrol.
Later, Karlie was again impersonated by someone at Centrelink in Salisbury in December 2010, the same spot used by the Snowtown killers, to access almost $100,000.
For the detective who led the Snowtown investigation, the stolen identity in the same town revived ghosts from the past. Retired Major Crime chief Paul Schramm says: “When the news broke it did bring back some memories ... many murders have a degree of spontaneity to them but, when it’s followed up by this type of scheming, it takes it to another level of criminality.”
As Karlie’s family reached out for her to call home, text messages were sent saying that she did not want contact. Her dying mother was conned into transferring money into Karlie’s account and withdrew a missing persons report.
Karlie’s mum died thinking her daughter did not want to talk to her.
Karlie’s skeletal remains were discovered by a trail bike rider in the forest in 2010 and she was dubbed “Angel” by officers because of the T-shirt bearing the logo Angelic that was found with her body.
Khandalyce’s body was found in July in a suitcase five years later and 1200km away in South Australia.
They were not linked at first and their identities were unknown. “It was the case in Snowtown where a lot of the victims hadn’t been reported ... this would have made this particular investigation even more difficult, when you don’t even have a missing-person report,” Schramm says.
Schramm, 67, led the squad that caught serial killers John Bunting and Robert Wagner after they claimed 12 victims. They were called the Snowtown murders after eight bodies were found in barrels of acid in a disused bank.
The killers forced their victims to record messages to their families to convince them they were alive and had run away. They used their victims’ identities to collect social security after they were dead.
Schramm says that case changed the approach police took to missing persons.
“Historically the view was if the social security was still being paid it was highly likely that the person was still alive,” he says. “Snowtown turned that on its head.”
The problem was police did not even know Karlie was missing or that it was her bones found in Belanglo.
This year they had sent her DNA to 36 countries in case she came from overseas.
Meanwhile officers in SA were trying to track down the identity of the child’s body.
Then, on October 8, a call to Crime Stoppers – the 1267th call to investigators – suggested the body could be Khandalyce.
It was followed up by another call which produced a picture of the little girl with a quilt that detectives recognised as the one in the suitcase.
Things moved very quickly. They matched Khandalyce’s medical records to the DNA of the bones, but where was the mother? A check of the girl’s DNA led them to a match with the remains of “Angel”.
Wayne Petherick, Associate Professor of Criminology at Bond University, believes the calls to Crime Stoppers could have provided a lot more information than just the identity of the little girl.
“You have nothing for five years then, boom, you have got the whole investigation wrapped up in five days. It would indicate those calls were quite important,” he says.