Peter Norris Dupas: The Ordinary Monster

A Just Sentence

Supreme Court of Victoria

At his trial held at the Supreme Court of Victoria before Justice Frank Vincent in August 2000, Dupas, who described his occupation as a part-time furniture maker, told the court that all of the evidence must have been planted by police because he had never been to Nicole Patterson's Northcote home. He said that if Patterson's blood was on his jacket, then it must have been planted there by police. He said that he did not have anything to do with Patterson after April 12, 1999, when he cancelled an appointment to see her about his gambling problem.

Justice Frank Vincent

Dupas said he did not contact Patterson on April 19, the day she was murdered, or go anywhere near her house. He said that he only left his Pascoe Vale home on that day to by milk and petrol, to do some shopping and to pick up his de-facto wife. Dupas said that while he was at home, he was washing clothes and other gear in readiness for a camping trip and working on a cocktail cabinet in his shed.

David Brustman, acting for Dupas, told the court that there were issues about how his client's jacket came to have blood on it and whether the jacket proved anything. But there was no issue, he said, that 13 of the stains had Patterson's blood and that the 14^th a combination of her blood and that of Dupas.

"On the face of it, game, set and match," Brustman told the jury, adding that the issue was not whether Dupas or someone else had done it. He said that the issue was: Did he make an appointment and not keep it, or keep it in the most horrible way?

In cross-examining Dupas, prosecutor Geoff Horgan pointed out that it must have been an amazing coincidence that out of all of the jackets Dupas had in his home, the police sprinkled the deceased's blood on the one he was wearing the day she was killed. Horgan suggested that if this were the case, then the police must have carried around a vial of Nicole Patterson's uncongealed blood for two days in order to sprinkle it on the jacket on the day that he was arrested.

The Halvagis family

On August 17, 2000, after two and a half hours of deliberations, the jury returned a guilty verdict. At Dupas' sentencing hearing on August 23, 2000, Justice Vincent told him, "I note that you have an appalling criminal history involving repeated acts of sexual violence and which extends over approximately 30 years. You have admitted 16 prior convictions involving six court appearances between March 27, 1972, and November 11, 1994

"All of the offences were sexually related or motivated. A number of them involved physical violence and the use of a knife. On three separate occasions you were sentenced to terms of imprisonment for the commission of rape, aggravated assault or assault with intent to rape.

Peter Norris Dupas

"On the second and third of these occasions, you committed your offenses within a very short time of your release from custody. It appears that the only periods during which you were at large in the community without committing offenses were two periods of approximately 12 months each, during which you were subject to strict parole conditions following your release from prison in 1992 and 1996.

"However, it was not long after that form of control was lifted by the expiration of the sentence to which it was related that you reverted to your usual type of criminal behavior."

"You regarded Nicole Patterson as nothing more than prey to be entrapped and killed. Her life, youth and personal qualities assumed importance in your mind only by reason of the sense of satisfaction and power you experienced in taking them from her."

"At a fundamental level, as human beings, you present for us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question — how did you come to be as you are?"

Justice Frank Vincent sentenced Peter Norris Dupas to be imprisoned for the rest of his natural life without the opportunity for release on parole.

Mersina Halvagis

Peter Dupas has since been questioned about the unsolved murders of Margaret Maher, Mersina Halvagis, Helen McMahon and Kathleen Downes. He has denied any involvement.