Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Shoulf a convicted serial killer ever be released from prison? it’s a vexing question most people would say no .
But even still it’s one victorian authorities have to adress and it’s all because of paul denyer. he is an awful man ,evil bruonf measure
in 1993 he randomly murdered three young women . when he was caught he happily admitted his crimes taking glee in the act of of killing
but now 30 years on he´s eligible got parole. Denyer already applied for his freedom once and been rejected ,but there’s nothing to stop him trying again ,unless the law is changed.
30 years ago ,the street of frankston were under siege.
People describe it as almost lockdown it as almost a lockdown.
exept it was like a lockdown for women.the whole town was terrified
Under the cloak of darkness this seaside melbourn suburb was being stalked by a serial killer. murders happen every day,but serial murders…it´s phenomenon.
over period of seven short weeks three young women were picked up at random and murdered without mercy . he hated women and that’s one of the reasons he killed them.He’d been fantasizing about killing women since he was 14 years of age.
The killer was Paul denyer an unemployed frankston local,who reveal himself to police as the embodiment of pure evil.
But perhaps even more confronting than the horror of his crimes ,was the blase way, he described them,without the slightest flicker of emotion.
he boasted of threatening his victims with a makeshift gun .
and slitting their throats with homemade knives.
It´s inconceivable to the families of denyer’s victims that 30 years on the man who terrified frankston could have any possiblility of freedom .but the fact is paul denyer is now eligible for parole.
outrage has galvanized the fight to keep him behind bars ,led by victorian MP david limbrick.
The fear is given the chance this monster will strike again
what he was diagnosed with, what happens back then what led him to kill.
those elements are still presnt today .
forensic psychologist Carla Ferrari poured over the letters denyer has written from the confines of his cell to help assess the mindset of this killer after three decades in jail .
is it an explanation for the savage murders he commited ? absolutely not.sdhe sees no evidence of remorse or reform.
what he has been diagnosed with there,is no treatment for even with intensive treatment. treatmen gains vould probably be modest at best.
paul denyer’s killings spree began on friday the 11th of june 1993 on the evening 18 year old elisabeth stevens would become his first victim. going missing after getting of the bus to make the short walk home .
veteran detective charlie bezzina led the investigation into her murder.
what do we know? what happened to elisabeth that night?
he sees elisabeth get off the bus it was a horrible night , it was raining ,he then comes up from behind,holds a makeshift pistol that he made from alittle barrel and a piece of wood holds that to her and tells do not scream out or i’ll kill you.
and she didn’t scream.
In the darkand the rain driven by an urge to kill denyer forces the 18 year old to walk to a nearby park and to her death.
denyer continued to stabbing of elisabeth long after she died was a telling clue to his sadistic nature
postmortem once she was dead,is when he inflicted a number of stab wounds to the upper body and then inflicted marks on the torso like a bit Tic- tac- toe noughts and crosses.
he saw her as a piece of meat and that’s what’s so chilling about this killer .
As with his other victims there was no evidence of sexual assult .denyer´s deadly impulse was driven by an inexplicable loathing of women.
so after he killed elisabeth , denyer drags her down here and leaves her in this water.
At this point the investigator investigate a single murder.
initially this is a single murder and the police treat it as such nothing to indicate anything more sinister than that .
as horrific as the scene was,
the homicide detectives” this was just anouther routine investigation”
as they were to discover, they couldn´t have been more wrong.
They would soon be on the hunt for a serial kiler.
here we had one in our midst in our neighborhood.
Darren Russel knows firsthand , the savagery Paul Denyer inflicted on those he murdered and is convinced he should never be allowed out of jail.
a 30 year old doctor at the time , he identified the body one of denyer’s three victims.
unimaginably it was that of his own 17 year old sister natalie
In public’s mind ,he was an extremely callous , dangerous, evil person.
and the public got no reason to believe that´s changed.
Back in the winter of 1993, paul denyer was only just getting started.he had the taste for blood and compulsion to kill
four weeks after his first murder he tried to grab a women walking home from work.
she managed to escape.
homicide detective charlie bezzina says paul denyer was intent on killing someone anyone that night.because the urge was that strong.”i need to kill and today’s the day i’m going to kill another women ” and he did .
if it was any doubt,his next murder would show how cold-blooded and evil he’s truly is .
new mom debbie freame had left her 12 -day old baby at home with a friend while she popped to the shops ,driving to the milk bar just 650 meters from her home. in that moment denyer sees his chance and takes it .
In the one minute she weas in the shop denyer who had spotted her as she crossed the road sneaked into the back of her unlocked car
As the young mom jumped in to make the shorty drive home, she had no idea of the monster so close, the monster just lying in wait.
Threating her with his homemade gun denyer forces her to driver right past her home and out into the back roads on the outskirts of frankston.
she wasn’t just confronted with the torture of her own potential demise ,but she was so close to home she was so close to her little baby son.
the torment that led up to her death, meant nothing to him .
Debbie´s mutilated body was found by a farmer ,four days later.marking a frightening realization for police and the people of frankston.
investigators knew they had a serial killer amoungst them and that put really the pressure on the the police ,because serial killers just don’t stop.
Darren russel could never have imagined that his 17 year old sister natalie would be denyer’s next victim. and final victim.
On friday the 30 th of july 1993, three weeks after the murder of debbie natalie took the track she used as a regular shortcut home.
here we have a 17 year old girl that went to school ,who never made it home
and this is the first one that denyer planned and it’s in the middle of the afternoon as he told and showed police denyer thought he’d calculated everything.
he’d pre-cut holes in the fence to drag his victim away fgrom prying eyed , only to return later
parking at the head of the track to lie in wait for a female, any female to walk into his trap.
but what denyer didn’t know is he’d been spotted. a postal worker happens to see a motor car with an individual sit in the driver’s seat slouched down. that was suspected enough, she then went to a house and made a call to the police.
unaware police are now on their way,denyer sees natalie russel take the track as she heads home.
he follows and quickly overtakes her and puts his despicable plan into action .
detective charlie bezzina wont go into details but the savage of it was so significant that he must been in frenzy
then he goes out , walks back to the track to his motorcar but his hands are covered in blood and then walking back he tells investigators he sees two police officers at his motorcar. he put’s his blood soaked hands in his pockets and walked past the police till they left, they lefy ,he came back to the car and he drove home
within a few hours of reporting natalie missing her family´s worst fears were realized.
at 10.30 lat night , searchers found a young woman’s body in bushland just off a bike path. short distance from her home .
The discovery of denyer car at the location of natalies murder
finally delivered police a suspect.
Detectives swooped on denyer’s home.
and hauled him in for questioning,the serial killer had been caught.
but 30 years on frankston is again Riven by fear that paul denyer could walk free and kill again.
just 32 hours after he killed 17 year old natalie russel ,paul denyer was being grilled by detectives. they were convinced they´d caught the serial killer who terrorized the community of frankston for seven weeks.
He still has blood under his fingernails, it’d have to be the case bevause he was absolutely soaked in it , in killinh natalie
homicide detective charlie bezzina is still in disbelief. about what unfolded. during a break more than two hours into questioning and away from the police camera denyer suddenly confesses.
And just out the blue , he´s words were ” i did the three of them.all those three women you’ve been asking me about .i´ll kill’d them.
Given the gravity of his crimes , it seems unbelievable that paul denyer has a shot at freedom in 1993 he pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to life with no minimum.
a sentence that was was overturned on a technicality allowing him to apply for parole afte 30 years and and that’s what denyer did this year as soon he was eligible, he was refused but under the current laws he can in theory apply again and again.
The victorian goverment has previously made so -called one- man laws to ban parole
mass shooter julian knight
and the russell street bomber craig minogue
but much to the disappointment ofhis victims families it ruled out doing the same for paul denyer.
like all prisoners paul denyer is banned from writing to his victims families ,
but earlier this year, he cruelly exploited a loophole to send a letter to the MP .david limbrick.
prisoners are allowed to write to laywers and members of parlament.
Denyer pleaded for for his freedom.
” i’m not a danger to society”
insisting he has rehabilitated
” i will never go back to the frankston lang warren area”
and making the ludicrous suggestion that david might want to take up his cause .
He had this idea that david might become an advocate for him.
david dont believe that he denyer could be reformed.
The letter i among one of many that forensic psychologist carla ferrari has assessed she believes it reveals much about denyer’s prospect for rehabilitation.
” there was no real evidence of change and normally you would expect to see someone explaining’ i’ve had all this time to reflect. i have spent 30 years delving into myself, what was going on at that time for me’ there were was non of that”
With other words.’ his still dangerous
in 2003, 10 years into his sentence the unremorsful killer of women declared he wanted to be one.
a series of letters penned from prsion detailed how denyer identified as a trangender women called paula.
he explains that it was something he’d suppressed for for long ang then he goes on to say that ” commiting these crimes,was to try and destroy those feelings that he had ”
which doesn’t really make sense becuse they never came up in the psychological evaluation in in the psychatric evaluation in the police interview
but even if he had suppressed it for all those years never mentioned it to anyone is it an explanation for the savage murders?
The answer is simple :absolutely not!
Whether denyer truly felt trapped in the wrong body no one will ever know for sure
but it’s clear one of his goals was to be moved to a women’s prison .
It was a strategy that ultimately failed and so in 2014 paula reverted back to paul .
well he signed off the letters to david as paul ,paula doesn’t exist.
17 year old Natalie and older brother Darren
Darren russel older brother to denyer’s last victim , natalie finds that baffling he’s a doctor who just happens to be a leading expert in transgender health
” He’s changed back , um , and that is not a common thing for a transgender person to do . it’s very unusual, so again, he said that he hated women and that’s one of the reasons he killed them , he’d been fantasizing about killing women since he was 14 years of age ,he’d brrn actively stalking women for some years. he’s a man who detested women and now he’s was becoming a women , i couldn’t understand that .
as a sight of his sister’s murder this is a place Darren has understandably chosen to avoid but today to mark 30 anniversary of her death ,his return to Nat’s track . the path that was named in his sisters honor.
she would have been 47 this year, and might have a family on her own.
For all the families of paul denyer’s victims their loss can never be replaced,
foremost in their minds now is that this serial killer be denied the possibility of ever again inflicting the pain they’ve suffered.
Debbie Fream , Elisabeth Stevens, Natalie Russell
paul ( paula) Denyer was diagnosed with a sadistic personality disorder, he has sown himself today take the light in other people’s suffering in hurting other people in tormenting other people and torturing people , that’s how he got his kicks we’vegot no reason to believe that’s changed.
Daniel still remains a risk , history tells us that these indiviuals generally don’t redeem themselves and it’s only when the´re physically no longer capable of harm that we should be thinking of releasing them from custy .
More details
Bid for parole
In 2023, Denyer became eligible and applied for release on parole, but had his application denied by the Adult Parole Board of Victoria. The Parole Board notified the families of the victims, including Natalie Russell’s father Brian, and Deborah Fream’s son Jake.
early life
Denyer was born as Paul Charles Denyer on 14 April 1972 to British immigrant parents, Anthony and Maureen Denyer in Campbelltown, New South Wales, an outer suburb of Sydney. Denyer’s parents met and married in London in the early 1960s before migrating to Australia in 1965.The family moved to Victoria in 1981 due to his father’s new employment. Denyer then reportedly had difficulty fitting in amongst his peers in his new town, which led to problems with study and self-confidence that were worsened by significant weight gain during his teen years.
At age 11, he slashed the throat of his sister’s teddy bear, and cut the throat of the family cat before hanging it in a tree. At age 13, he was arrested and cautioned for stealing a car. At age 15, he was arrested for assaulting a fellow student. After school, he had problems holding down jobs, was fired seven times, and failed a physical when trying to enter Victoria Police.
In February 1993, Denyer started working at a boat-building firm in Seaford named Pro Marine. A short time after he began work, colleagues observed him making knives at work. Denyer’s employment was terminated after several months due to his failure to complete assigned tasks.