Paul Denyer: The Frankston Serial Killer

Confession: Debbie Fream

Debbie Fream

After the near miss with Mrs. Toth, Denyer went to the nearby railway station and casually boarded the Frankston-bound train. He got off at Kananook, the next station along, and crossed over the rail overpass bridge in search of another victim. Here he sighted Debbie Fream getting out of her grey Pulsar and go into the milk bar on the corner.

Denyer said that while Debbie Fream was in the milk bar, he opened the rear door of her car, let himself into the back, and closed the door behind him. He crouched in the back seat and listened as her footsteps came back to the car, and she got in and drove away. "I waited for her to start up the car so no one would hear her scream or anything, "Denyer said in his confession. "And she put it into gear and she went to do a U-turn. I startled her just as she was doing that turn and she kept going into the wall of the milk bar, which caused a dent in the bonnet. I told her to, you know, shut up or I'd blow her head off and all that shit."

Denyer said that he held the fake gun in her side. The detectives asked Denyer if he had noticed anything in the back and he said that he had seen a baby capsule beside him in the back seat. Denyer must have known that he was about to kill a young mother. Obviously, it made the least scrap of difference to him.

Denyer told Debbie Fream in which direction to drive. It was to an area that he knew well and knew he wouldn't be seen as he murdered her. 'I told her when we got there that if she gave any signals to anyone, I'd blow her head off, I'd decorate the car with her brains,' Denyer told the police.

Denyer told her to stop the car near some trees and get out, and he pulled a length of cord from his pocket. "I popped it over her eyes real quickly, so she didn't see it . . .'cause I was gonna strangle her. But I didn't want her to see the cord first. I lifted the cord up and I said: "Can you see this?" And she just put her hand up to grab it to feel it and when she did that I just yanked on it real quickly around her neck. And then I was struggling with her for about five minutes." Denyer said that he strangled Debbie Fream until she started to pass out. He then drew the knife from his sock and repeatedly stabbed her about the neck and chest. When she fell limp at his feet he set upon her with the knife, stabbing her many times in the neck and once in the stomach.

"She started breathing out of her neck, just like Elizabeth Stevens," he told the detectives. "I could just hear bubbling noises." When asked if Debbie Fream put up any resistance, Denyer replied: "Yeah, she put up quite a fight. And her white jumper was pulled off during that time as well. I just felt the same way I did when I killed Elizabeth Stevens."

The detectives then asked Denyer what happened after he had stabbed her round the chest and throat area. "I lifted up her top and then ploughed the knife into her gut. I wanted to see how big her boobs were." He said that when he saw Debbie's bare stomach he '"just lunged at it with the knife."

Satisfied that Debbie Fream was dead, Denyer dragged her body into a clump of trees and covered it over with a couple of branches he broke from the nearest tree. He then spent about five minutes looking for the murder weapon which he had dropped after the killing, found it and put it in his pocket. He drove off in Debbie Fream's car, dumped it close to where he lived, and walked home in time to ring Sharon at work and pick her up at the Kananook railway station.

The following morning, he brazenly returned to Debbie Fream's car and collected her purse and the two cartons of milk, eggs, chocolate and a packet of cigarettes she had purchased from the milk bar the previous evening, and took them home with him. The only thing of value he found in the purse was a $20 note.

He emptied the milk down the sink, threw out the eggs and burned the carton, as he considered this to be evidence that could be used against him. He then buried the dead woman's purse in the nearby golf course and near the bike track where he would later kill Natalie Russell. Denyer then dismantled his homemade knife and hid the parts in the air vent in the laundry of his apartment.

"Why did you kill her?" the detectives asked him.

"Same reason why I killed Elizabeth Stevens. I just wanted to," he replied.

As the sun rose on that Sunday morning, 12 hours after they had started questioning Paul Denyer at Frankston police station, the weary detectives began questioning him about the murder of Natalie Russell.