But one victim did go to the police. In mid-1985, Travers and his gang bashed and raped a girl at Toongabbie, a few kilometers from Mount Druitt, and the victim gave police a full description of the man with the tattoo of a teardrop beneath his left eye. When Travers heard that the police wanted to have a chat with him, he and three of the gang fled to Western Australia until things cooled down.
They settled in the seaside holiday town of Mandurah, about 60 kilometers south of Perth. It didn't take the local police long to notice the dirty looking bunch of scruffs, led by the facially tattooed Travers, as they drove around the town in their car with the New South Wales number plates.
Travers started having an affair with a local 17-year-old homosexual and got one of his gang to take Polaroid photos of them having sex together. One night when he was full of alcohol and drugs, Travers took the gang to his lover's house and raped and bashed the young man at knifepoint in front of them. Covered in his own blood from knife wounds and almost unable to walk from his injuries, the youth made it to the police station where he reported what had happened. Police rounded up two of the men but Travers and the other gang member had fled.
Back in Sydney, Travers proudly told a close family associate (who became known as Miss X) of the savage rape. He wrongly thought that Miss X admired him. Many times in the past he had confided in her, and she always made out that she was fascinated with his stories. But Miss X had never breathed a word to anyone. She was terrified that John Travers would kill her if he found out.
Travers went into great detail about the rape of the youth and produced the photos that the gang member had taken. He told Miss X that he wanted to slit the young man's throat at the moment of orgasm. Just like he did to the sheep. He told Miss X how he had kicked and beaten the youth after he had raped him.
Miss X was mortified. It was not a story that could be easily forgotten and eight months later, when she heard the stories of how Anita Cobby was murdered, she would remember what John Travers had told her about the rape in Western Australia.
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