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Sentenced to life in prison for the brutal deaths of three women, you’d think that serial murderer Bradley Edwards would be living an uncomfortable existence behind bars. But shockingly, according to new reports, the man best known as ‘The Claremont Killer’ is doing just fine.
Edwards, who is now in his mid-fifties, is incarcerated at Casuarina Prison, 30 kilometres south of Perth, WA.
Local Perth newspaper editor, Bret Christian, says Edwards’ day-to-day life seems easy, in comparison to the suffering he has caused his victims and their families.
In 2020, Edwards was convicted of the murders of Jane Rimmer, 23, and Ciara Glennon, 27. While there wasn’t enough evidence to also convict him of the murder of 18-year-old Sarah Spiers, a judge ruled Edwards was her likely killer too.
“From what I’ve been told, he’s having a lovely time,” Bret recently told Daily Mail Australia. “He’s very much enjoying himself and is quite content playing video games all day.”
“He’s got protection and three good meals a day. He’s definitely not in danger of being bashed or anything. He thinks of himself as a celebrity, so he’s quite happy.”
Bret, who wrote the 2021 book Stalking Claremont: Inside the Hunt for a Serial Killer, says Edwards hasn’t always been as content behind bars. He showed signs of strain before his trial began.
“He drove a pencil into his ear in a bid to kill himself, but he didn’t succeed,” Bret said.
The murders of the three women, who disappeared between January 1996 and March 1997, rocked the small community of Claremont, a suburb in Perth’s west. Jane’s body was found in August 1996 in bushland, while Ciara’s remains were discovered in April 1997. Sarah has never been found.
As managing editor of the Post Newspapers, Bret has followed the Claremont murders from the very beginning. He was also the first to publicly link the case with the violent 1995 rape of a teenage girl in Karrakatta Cemetery.
It would take another two decades for police to finally catch their killer. Edwards – a former Telstra technician – had been hiding in plain sight.
In 2008, a tiny piece of DNA, discovered under one of Ciara’s fingernails, was found to match the DNA found on the Karrakatta victim.
“Ciara really fought for her life. Edwards took her life, but she took something from him that would eventually take his,” Bret says.
However, police would not release these findings for another seven years.
“I found out about this in 2015 and published it on the front page of our paper,” Bret says.
“I hadn’t anticipated the storm it caused. The victims’ families and the public turned to police and said, ‘What have you been doing all this time? Why haven’t you solved this?’
“As a result, the police immediately created two new squads to reinvestigate the case properly. And a year after our story ran, they finally identified Edwards.”
In late 2020, a prison source told WAtoday that Edwards would have likely been moved into a special protection unit to see out the remainder of his sentence.
Edwards will be 92 years old before he can apply for parole. He will likely die behind bars.
