Paul Denyer: The Frankston Serial Killer

Idle Hands

Paul Denyer, age 19

In 1992 he entered into a relationship with Sharon Johnson, a girl he had met while working at Safeway's Supermarket, a job that came to an end when he allegedly deliberately knocked down a woman and a child with a convoy of empty shopping trolleys.

Denyer then applied to join the Victorian Police Force but was rejected on the grounds that he was unfit due to his massive bulk. Denyer's last place of employment was a marine workshop where he was ultimately fired because he spent more time making crude knives and daggers than he did doing his work.

By 1993, Denyer was a social outcast. He was unable to hold down a job through a mixture of laziness and incompetence. Now nicknamed John Candy after the rotund film star because of his bulk and physical appearance, Denyer developed a fixation for death, the macabre and horrific murder movies such as The Stepfather, which he watched repeatedly.

In 1992 Denyer moved into a flat in Dandenong Road, Frankston, with Sharon Johnson. With Denyer unemployed, Sharon held down two jobs by selling over the phone. With plenty of idle time on Paul Denyer's hands it wasn't long before some unusual things started to happen around the block of flats.

One tenant arrived home to find her flat broken into and her clothes and engagement pictures slashed. Another caught the glimpse of someone peeping at her through a window. But the most disturbing of all was what happened to the sister of Tricia, a girl who lived in the same block of flats as Paul Denyer and Sharon Johnson.

Denyer and Johnson had become quite friendly with their neighbor Tricia and her sister Donna, who lived with her fiancé Les and Donna's tiny baby in a block of flats nearby.

One night in February 1993, Les and Donna arrived home at about 11 p.m. with the baby in a bassinette after working Les's late night pizza delivery run, to be confronted with the most horrific scene. On the lounge room wall next to the television set and written in blood were the words "Dead Don." Lying on the floor in the middle of the kitchen was the remains of Donna's cat Buffy, with a picture of a bikini-clad woman strewn over its disemboweled body.

The cat's entrails had been dragged through the kitchen and scattered about the walls and the cat's blood was sprayed everywhere. Written in blood in the middle of it all were the words "Donna — You're Dead." One of Buffy's eyes was bulging from its socket. The other eye was missing, apparently ripped out of the unfortunate cat's head and discarded.

In the bathroom they found Buffy's two kittens with their throats cut lying in a baby's bath of bloodied water. In the laundry there was blood everywhere, sprayed all up the walls and all over a plastic laundry basket full of baby clothes.

In the main bedroom the intruder had ransacked every drawer and clothes were ripped and strewn everywhere. Les' collection of centerfold pin-ups had been slashed and stabbed with a sharp instrument. Cupboard doors had been kicked and beaten, leaving splintered gouges in them. The baby's clothing had been slashed and a stabbed photo of a semi-clad model was draped across the baby's crib. The words "Donna and Robyn" had been sprayed in white shaving foam on the dressing table mirror.

"Donna You're Dead" writing on the wall

Donna didn't have the faintest idea who the mysterious Robyn was and she never spent another night at the flat, instead staying temporarily with her sister Tricia until she found alternative accommodations.

Tricia's neighbor, Paul Denyer, who knew Donna quite well through Tricia, told Donna that she would be safe now and that if the police ever caught the person responsible he would personally take care of him for her.