Peter Norris Dupas: The Ordinary Monster

A Loaded Time Bomb

Four days after he was released on February 27, 1985, after serving five years and three months, Dupas raped a 21-year-old receptionist as she lay sunbathing at Blairgowrie back beach. Two men the distraught victim had asked for help caught Dupas as he walking along a road away from the beach after he had misplaced his car.

Dupas could offer no explanation for his behavior, only that he was enjoying himself on the beach having an easy day "laying back" when he saw the woman and couldn't help himself. Dupas said that he was sorry for the attack, that everyone had assured him that he was all right now and that all he wanted to do was to live a normal life.

Dupas also couldn't help police with their inquiries into the murder 16 days earlier — while he was on temporary leave from prison — of sunbather and mother of four, Helen McMahon, who was beaten to death in the sand dunes at Rye back beach, 4km away.

Once again in court for rape, Dupas was not to be as fortunate as he had been with the benevolent Judge Leo Lazarus. Instead, he had to again confront Judge John Leckie, the same judge who had verbally caned him before sentencing him to five years jail on the Nunawading rape 11½ years earlier. To add to Dupas' woes, in the interim, Judge Leckie had been critical of the previous lenient sentence handed down by Judge Lazarus, saying it was "inadequate."

Judge Leckie told the court that Judge Lazarus's attempt to rehabilitate Dupas five years earlier had "failed miserably" and showed no compassion to the prisoner as he described Dupas as "walking around with a loaded time bomb in his pocket."

Judge Leckie sentenced Dupas to 12 years in prison with a minimum of 10 years before he could apply for parole.

In prison, Dupas underwent medical treatment to reduce his sex drive. In 1987, while still a prisoner in Castlemaine Jail, Dupas married a nurse 16 years his senior. A Mont Park psychiatrist said later, "He believes all of that (his sex attacks) is behind him since he understands himself better and has become more assertive."

Castlemaine Jail

Released on March 3, 1992, after serving exactly seven years, Dupas lay low for 18 months. On September 23, 1993, he attacked a 15-year-old girl who was horse-riding at Kyneton. Fortunately, the girl had the common sense to put her horse between herself and the attacking Dupas, and she escaped unscathed. Dupas escaped unidentified.

On January 3 at 11:30 a.m., Dupas attacked a 26-year-old bank teller who was spending the weekend with her fiancé and three friends at a holiday house near Lake Eppalock in northwestern Victoria, as she sat on the toilet in a public restroom. Dupas burst into the cubicle wearing a hood with eye-holes and pointing a knife at the woman's face.

Dupas kept yelling for the woman to turn around and face the wall, but she resisted. The woman was cut badly on the hands as she fought to prevent her attacker from dragging her out of the toilet cubicle. Thwarted, Dupas abruptly stopped the attack, let the woman go and calmly walked away to his car.

As Dupas sped off the woman identified him to her fiancé — an off-duty Australian Federal Police officer — who, with friends, chased the station wagon before overpowering Dupas after his car ran off into the bush on a dirt road.

Australian Federal Police Patch

Police found a roll of insulation tape and a pair of metal handcuffs in Dupas' pockets. In his car they found a grisly cache of the tools of trade of a well-prepared traveling rapist: knives, a black balaclava, condoms, a roll of sticking plaster and — chillingly — a sheet of plastic and a shovel.