Jill Meagher Was Attacked 400 Metres From Home [re-release]

On Friday September 21, 2012, Jill Meagher went out for celebratory drinks with her colleagues at ABC Melbourne. That night she didn't make it home. What happened to Jill continues to haunt the women of Australia, as they do something as simple, as walking home alone. In this episode, Gemma Bath is joined by journalist and author Megan Norris to discuss the investigation that brought Jill's killer to justice. THE END BITS We want to hear from you! Take our quick 3-minute survey for your chance to win a $1,000 gift card. https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/8954679/HF-BUS-2026 Subscribe to Mamamia https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe/?utm_source=shownotes&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=tcc CREDITShttps://go.skimresources.com?id=53410X1291869&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booktopia.com.au%2Fthe-good-girls-sonia-faleiro%2Fbook%2F9781408876732.html Guest: Megan Norris https://www.newscoop.com.au/https://go.skimresources.com?id=53410X1291869&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.booktopia.com.au%2Fmillen-chris-nyst%2Fbook%2F9781922697677.html You can find out more about her new book Out Of The Ashes here https://www.booktopia.com.au/out-of-the-ashes-megan-norris/book/9781922765741.html. Host: Gemma Bath https://www.instagram.com/gembath/?hl=en Executive Producer: Gia Moylan https://www.instagram.com/gia_94/?hl=en Audio Producer: Rhiannon Mooney GET IN TOUCH: Feedback? We’re listening! Call the pod phone on 02 8999 9386 or email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Join our closed Facebook community to discuss this episode. Just search True Crime Conversations on Facebook or follow this link https://bit.ly/tcc-group https://bit.ly/tcc-group If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline https://www.lifeline.org.au/ on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ on 1300 22 4636 Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we have recorded this podcast. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Gemma Bath?

  Hi there. We're dropping this episode back into your feeds because last week marked 14 years since the murder of Jill Maher, a name most Australians will remember. The nature of Jill's death, attacked by a stranger while walking home from a pub, shocked the entire country. And her story continues to live in our collective memory as one of those cases we can't forget. Unfortunately, there have been many more women who have been killed in stranger murders in the years since 2012, like Erida C. Dixon, Toya Cordingley, Aya Masawi, Courtney Heron, Samantha Murphy. We're also still dealing with the same issues, perpetrators killing while on parole. It's jarring listening back because

• 0:44Gemma Bath?

  not much has changed. We recorded this episode back in 2022. It remains an important and poignant listen.

• 0:59Gemma Bath?

  It's 5pm on Friday, September 21, 2012. And Jill Maher and her colleagues at ABC Melbourne Radio have just finished up another big week. "Come on, let's go," she says, peering over the computer screen of one of her work friends, Sky. She's keen to clock off and head for a drink. It's only her first week back at work as a unit coordinator at the station, after a three-week break back home in Ireland. Jill leads the way along South Bank Boulevard to a nearby bar, where the women each order a cider and settle in for a chat. Cheers. At 7.40pm, she heads into the city to join the birthday celebrations of a friend.

• 1:40Gemma Bath?

  At 9.30, she and some friends catch a taxi into Brunswick, where they bar hop until about 1.30am. As they call it a night, a friend offers to walk her home. But Jill brushes him off. She literally lives around the corner. She'll be home in a warm bed with her husband, Tom, in 10 minutes. But the next day, he wakes up alone.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Police are looking into bank records today to see if there's any activity and anything. So hopefully they get a location of that, if the bank card has been used. Because that was the only thing that was with her, a bank card and a phone. She left her purse at home. So hopefully.

• 2:17Gemma Bath?

  What happens to Jill in the early hours of September 22 is a crime so brazen, so shocking, it sends thousands marching into the streets, united in grief and anger.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  She should be remembered for making a difference for women all over the world.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  It shouldn't be happening in a different country like us.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  That's for Jill. That's for today and for Jill's memory. And for the future, to try and keep these sorts of rapists off our streets.

• 2:46Gemma Bath?

  A crime that continues a decade later to haunt the women of Australia as they do something as simple as walking home alone.

• 3:07Gemma Bath?

  I'm Gemma Buff and this is True Crime Conversations, a Mamma Mia podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. In today's episode, I'm speaking with journalist and author Megan Norris about the murder of Melbourne journalist Jill Maher. And just quickly, before we get into the conversation, this episode does deal with descriptions of murder and sexual assault.

• 3:37Gemma Bath?

  Megan, I want to start with Jill as a person. Who was Jill Maher to those who loved her?

• 3:42Speaker 05

  Well, to those who loved her, she was a vibrant, dynamic, engaging young woman with the whole world at her feet, really. She'd married her husband, Tom, in Ireland, I think in 2008 or 09. She'd already been living in Australia. I think the family came out some time before when she was much younger. And they'd lived in Perth. But she had gone back and gone to Dublin University and pursued a degree in the arts and got a job with the Irish National Radio Network over there. And then had come over here to Melbourne, where she got a job with the ABC in South Bank in Melbourne. And her family were still in Perth. I think her parents were still in Perth. And she was very dynamic and very interested in things. You know, she was building a career. They were living

• 4:27Speaker 05

  in a flat in Brunswick. And she was planning to, you know, have a family. They had lots of plans. So it was very sad when this happened.

• 4:35Gemma Bath?

  Yeah. So on the evening of Friday, September 21, 2012, Jill had finished, you know, a normal week of work. It was a Friday afternoon. She did what most of us do on a Friday afternoon. She went out for a drink.

• 4:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:49Gemma Bath?

  What do we know about her movements that afternoon?

• 4:52Speaker 05

  She was caught on CCTV footage leaving the ABC's headquarters in South Bank just after five o'clock on Friday afternoon with her friend. They were going to a gallery to celebrate a colleague's birthday, I understand. They had gone to the Brunswick Green Hotel on Sydney Road after the gallery. A group of them, I think three or four of ABC people had gone together, which on a Friday at around 7.30 would have been really busy. It's a really thriving social hub down there. It would have been teeming with people and traffic. So she was picked up on footage going into the Brunswick Green Hotel. At 1am, they left the Brunswick Green Hotel because it was preparing to close. They were

• 5:35Speaker 05

  closing the doors. They were basically booting people out and stopping any new people coming in. And Jill and a friend decided to go over the road to another bar and have another drink before they went home. So they walked up the road to a nearby bar called The Etiquette, which is no longer. But at that time, that was quite a vibrant bar. So they decided to go over there and have another drink, which they did.

• 5:58Gemma Bath?

  For those unaware of the area, you've just told us Brunswick is, you know, a busy place. There's lots of people out and about. Her route home from there, she lives not far, was it busy too? Was it kind of lined with pubs and clubs? Were there being people around or?

• 6:14Speaker 05

  Partially it was. So Sydney Road in Brunswick is the main thoroughfare through Brunswick. And at that time, on a Friday night, would have been full of people. It's very cosmopolitan. It's very foreign, you know, migrant area. There's a lot of eclectic cafes and bars and there's a lot going on, you know. They went to an Irish bar, but there were lots of other kinds of pubs and nightclubs along there and things. As you come down Sydney Road and turn off, Jill, I understand, lived around 10 minutes' walk away from where they were at that hotel. So her walk home took her down Sydney Road. And then she would branch off and turn down a side street called Hope Street. And that

• 6:56Speaker 05

  would take her to where she lived in Lux Way. It was short enough distance to walk in under 10 minutes, not far enough to warrant a taxi. And I'm guessing it's a walk she would have done frequently with her husband, Tom, who she shared an apartment with in Lux Way. So it was only around the corner, really. I think it was a walk of around 700 metres, not that far. But as you get off the main drag, it is still quite busy. When I looked at the CCTV footage to remind myself, it wasn't like she was passing empty shops or it wasn't a darkened street. She was passing a well-lit bridal boutique. She was passing a well-lit evening gown place. She passed a bakery. She passed a big pharmacy. She

• 7:37Speaker 05

  passed a kebab shop that would have been open, no doubt, at that time of night. So there was a lot going on. But then it suddenly tapers off toward the end of Hope Street. It tapers off and it's quieter. There's a church down there, Brunswick Church. It would have been quieter. There was an empty block of land on her walk that she'd have had to walk past. A boarded up old chemist, an old Greek pharmacy that was no longer in use that had been boarded up. So it was starting to sort of be a bit run down and a bit dingy down there. And then she would turn off on the corner of Brunswick Street. She would cross the road and turn off into Lux Way where she lived, which she would have been safe in that street. That would have been very well lit. It was just that little pocket where you reach the end of Hope Street that was not so great.

• 8:20Gemma Bath?

  So she left that last pub after 1.30am and was expected home. Her husband would have been waiting for her. When was the alarm raised that she hadn't made it home?

• 8:32Speaker 05

  The following day. Her husband woke up at some stage in the early morning, had woken up and noticed that she was not there. And had panicked, you know, she wasn't in bed. Where was she? Had a look around the house, tried to ring her phone. She didn't pick up.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  You'd imagine that he'd have rung other people as well to see if anyone knew where she was. But I'm not clear about that, but I'd imagine he would have done that. So by lunchtime the following day, it was lunchtime on Saturday. He reported her missing to the police and it became a missing persons investigation. Now, you know, you'd probably know that with missing people, the police don't always do much. Will rarely do anything within the first 24 hours because, you know, usually people have an explanation and will rock up by the time they've put the resources on to it. That person's turned up, but in Jill's case, it was unexplained. And interestingly, when the police went to the house, it was Tom Mar they were looking at.

• 9:27Gemma Bath?

  But that's not unusual, is it? Because in a crime, when a woman is missing or, you know, anyone is missing, they often look at the people closest first.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Yes. Did you have an argument, you know, when did you last see her? What time did you get home? You know, so all those questions. And so the focus was on him and the house was searched twice and they took a number of things away. And they took the car, they took his car away to look at his car. But at that stage, they were looking at Jill, I believe they were looking at a missing person and hopefully going to find her turned up somewhere alive. I don't think they thought it was a homicide investigation at that stage.

• 10:03Gemma Bath?

  Was Tom eliminated from any wrongdoing pretty quickly in that investigation?

• 10:08Speaker 05

  Yes, he was because what happened was on the Saturday, Tom reports her missing. And ABC colleagues responded immediately because they panicked. This was not like her. So they immediately started on Twitter and they set up a Facebook page. Help us find Jill Mar because they thought there was foul play. I think there was no doubt in their minds, this was out of character. She had a loving husband, a good relationship, where could she possibly be? They thought there was foul play. So as a result of that, it became a missing persons investigation. I think the Facebook page was set up on the 23rd, which would have been the Monday. But by then the police had already taken the car, Tom's car, and had taken items from the apartment that might give them some idea about her whereabouts.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  So what happened on the 24th of September, the police were then seizing all the CCTV footage from the entire route home. At that time, a member of the public found Jill's handbag in a side lane.

• 11:07Gemma Bath?

  Yes.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  The police found an ABC pencil in the street, I think in Hope Street, but somewhere around that area in that lane way. A member of the public discovered her handbag with her ABC ID card in it. And that really caused concern. So the focus immediately started to shift from Tom to foul play because, you know, her handbag was there and she wasn't. So that's when the police started to become concerned. Things were not looking good and it then became a homicide investigation. So then they started to scour the CCTV footage. And the bridal boutique, I think they were called the Duchess Boutique, offered, they went in and offered, they volunteered their own CCTV footage from inside the shop, looking out at the street.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  And when the police looked at that footage, that was very telling because it showed Jill being stopped by a man in a blue hoodie, jeans and white runners. And that man was obviously saying something to Jill because she was brandishing her phone at him. And I think it later transpired that she was threatening to call the police if he didn't go away. Then she takes off with him in pursuit. So the last footage, it's so chilling to watch that footage, where you see her disappearing with this unknown character in pursuit. So the police were looking, not at Tom Mar anymore, he was immediately ruled out. And I know he made a very magnanimous press appearance where he spoke to the media saying,

• 12:35Speaker 05

  he understood why the police had looked at him and that he thanked them for doing the job that he knew they had to do and they felt terrible. And I think one of the detectives gave a very impassioned public apology to Tom Mar for what they'd put him through and they were beating themselves up saying, oh God, this poor guy, you know, we really put him through the wringer and all the time something terrible has happened and his wife is missing. You know, and we're suspecting foul play.

• 12:59Gemma Bath?

  But I guess that's the job of a homicide detective, isn't it? Like you kind of have to rule someone out and to do that, you kind of have to go hard.

• 13:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, you do. And they didn't know that she hadn't gone home at that stage. There was, you know, Tom was saying she hadn't come home, but they didn't know that. So obviously, you know, he understood and his wife's a journalist. So I guess he understood a bit better than most that they had a job to do and he was very generous about that and they were still looking for her.

• 13:26Gemma Bath?

  So the man in the blue hoodie that you mentioned that they see in this boutique, and I've watched that footage. I'm sure many listeners have because it was on every media publication in Australia and probably even the world at that point. And you can see, like, even though you can't see Jill's head, you can see her body language, you can see this fear, like it's very familiar, if you're a woman especially.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  And she quickens her pace. And you see her quicken her pace and leave that scene and he quickens his, which was chilling. You know, you watch that footage, it's absolutely chilling all these years later to watch, I think. Because you're literally watching someone's final moments and, you know, you can only imagine how frightening that must have been for her.

• 14:10Gemma Bath?

  How do you reflect on kind of the media storm that happened during that time? Obviously, we mentioned that the ABC Melbourne office was going hard because this was their person, but it very quickly in that investigation became, you know, front page story everywhere. And you were a part of that, weren't you?

• 14:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wrote stories for the magazines at the time. So I was writing different stories and following it behind the scenes. You know, I was watching it behind the scenes to see how it would unfold and I was interested in it because I'd covered several other cases where young women had been raped and murdered in horrible circumstances. So there'd been a spate of concerns about public safety for women in the streets at that time. So it was really, this happening really brought that to the fore because, you know, and it's a sad fact, but it brought it to the fore because she was considered to be a respectable victim. You know, I find it quite upsetting where media portray people as more acceptable victims than other women, like sex workers,

• 15:08Speaker 05

  which Tom Mar later commented on at great length because he was really indignant about that, that nobody deserves to be raped and murdered, whatever they do for a living, nobody. And that all women, all female victims needed to be viewed in the same light and treated with the same respect. So I was watching it on many levels. One, the way the response was because of who she was and because of her media profile. And two, because it came hot on the heels of a number of other cases and the streets were not safe.

• 15:40Gemma Bath?

  You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Gemma Buff. I'm speaking with journalist Megan Norris about the murder of Jill Mar.

• 15:54Speaker 06

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• 16:30Gemma Bath?

  Let's get back to the man in the blue hoodie. How did police go about tracking him down?

• 16:36Speaker 05

  Well, they'd got the footage, so they knew that she'd encountered someone, but they couldn't be sure that that was the someone that had made her disappear. They couldn't know that. What they did was on the 25th of September, which is what, three days after Jill had gone missing, they decided to look at the movements of her mobile phone. And that mobile phone was in the Brunswick area until 4.20 odd, maybe 4.30 in the morning. Then it disappeared and they tracked that phone north. So it was going through Citylink, onto the freeway, onto the Calder Highway or the Calder Freeway. It was then heading north towards a place called Sunbury, towards Ballarat, that way. They tracked it to a place called Gisborne where it stopped.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  It was quite intense, high-tech investigation, really. I think it was a bit like CSI stuff. But it's very smart, but they then called on Citylink, you know, that's the toll that everyone goes through when they're going to the airport.

• 17:32Gemma Bath?

  So it's like in the tunnel, isn't it, those cameras?

• 17:35Speaker 05

  Yes. And you've got to pass through Citylink to go out those suburbs towards the airport or on the freeway where you pay a toll. So they tracked all other traffic because they didn't know, was she driving a car with someone or was someone driving her somewhere against her will? They didn't know. They were suspecting foul play because the handbag was left behind. But they then looked at all cars passing through the Citylink toll at that time. So they had an exact time that her car was passing through the Citylink toll. And they looked to see what other motorists were passing through the Citylink toll at that exact time. And they came up with half a dozen motorists and narrowed the search to Adrian Bailey. He became of interest because his phone movements, they then got a warrant for his phone movements.

• 18:21Speaker 05

  His phone movements mirrored Jill Mar's. So he was also in Brunswick at the time she was in Brunswick. He left Brunswick at 4.30 in the morning. He went through the Citylink at the same time. He headed north towards Sunbury on the Calder Freeway. He went to Gisborne, but only his phone returned from Gisborne to his home in Coburg. Hers didn't. So he was in the frame immediately by the 25th. They were looking at him. So I think what they did then was they obtained search warrants for his home. And they found pieces of a broken mobile phone, which turned out to belong to Jill Mar. And his de facto partner found at the bottom of her washing machine for no particular reason.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  When she got the washing out, she found a SIM card, which turned out to be registered to the ABC and South Bank, registered to Jill Mar.

• 19:10Gemma Bath?

  Yeah, wow.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  So they knew they had the right person. So they brought him in for questioning. Very cocky, very confident, not in the least bit phased by the fact that he was being interrogated by homicide detectives. Until they turned that information on to him. How do you explain the SIM card? He couldn't. How do you explain your phone movements? He couldn't. Then at some stage he told them, okay, well, he raped Jill Mar, but he didn't intend to murder her and he hadn't murdered her. That was his case. And he was charged with murder. He was arrested, charged with murder and went up before a sort of temporary magistrate and remanded in custody.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  So once they got on to that, the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place very quickly.

• 19:58Gemma Bath?

  Do we know how Bailey's evening unfolded? We have the timeline for Jill and we know how she spent most of the night, but what do we know about his night?

• 20:07Speaker 05

  Ironically, at about half an hour before they were picked up on footage going into that hotel, Adrian Bailey was picked up on CCTV footage with his girlfriend at a pub four kilometres away, going for a drink. Their paths had not crossed, they were unknown to each other, but he was picked up going into a bar in a neighbouring suburb with a girlfriend where an argument had broken out. And so I think the girlfriend got a bit upset with his possessiveness and jealous streak and had skipped to the toilet but caught a cab back home without telling him. So that was all happening at around the time that Jill was making her way into Brunswick, which I think it's interesting when you look at parallel, you know, it's like sliding doors,

• 20:51Speaker 05

  isn't it, and people's lives crossed.

• 20:53Gemma Bath?

  So how did he end up crossing paths with Jill?

• 20:56Speaker 05

  He was captured on CCTV footage also by a camera behind the bar at the bar where they were drinking. They went from a pub called The Quiet Irish Man or something, they went from that bar to another place, to another more low-key bar, where he was filmed from a camera behind the bar, very agitated and angry, walking up and down with a mobile phone to his head. Now, the police figured out that was where he'd noticed his girlfriend hadn't really gone to the toilet, she'd gone, she'd left because he was being angry and possessive. And she'd literally left and caught a cab home. When she didn't come back from the toilet, he was very irate. So he was ringing, demanding to know where she was, but she wasn't taking that call, she didn't answer the phone. So he then went home

• 21:38Speaker 05

  to Coburg, I presume by cab, and he returned to Brunswick, to Sydney Road, the area where Jill Ma was. He returned there at about one in the morning, 12, after 12, he returned back to Sydney Road. Basically, he was looking for young women. He's a predator. He was looking for young women and there would be lots of young women coming out of those bars and pubs at that time of night. That's why he came. So he came by unknown means. They don't know if he drove, they don't know how he got there, but his phone tells them that that's where he was at one o'clock in the morning.

• 22:12Gemma Bath?

  Tell us about who this man was at this point in time, because he had quite the rap sheet, didn't he?

• 22:18Speaker 05

  He had a huge rap sheet. So he was out on parole for 16 other rapes of other young women.

• 22:26Gemma Bath?

  16?

• 22:27Speaker 05

  In 2001, Bailey had been arrested and charged with 16 counts of rape involving five different women. So he's a prolific predator. He served 11 years in prison with a minimum sentence of eight years non-parole. So he was sentenced to 11 years, but he actually only did eight years of that and he came out early.

• 22:50Gemma Bath?

  How? How is someone like that able to be out?

• 22:53Speaker 05

  Well, that was the question that everyone was asking. So he was let out in 2010 on early release. That's two years before Jill Ma was murdered. So he's released and he breaks that order. So he's on parole, he bridges his parole in 2011 in a punch-up where he was charged with seriously assaulting someone. It's not clear who he's seriously assaulting, whether it's male or female, but it was a serious assault causing serious bodily harm. So he was then arrested but bailed, which I couldn't get my head around. So he breaks his parole, really he should have gone straight back inside. It was a serious charge and he was on parole for serious offences, but it

• 23:34Speaker 05

  wasn't, I don't believe, a sexual offence. So he was granted bail and was actually on bail when he killed Jill Ma.

• 23:42Gemma Bath?

  Do we know if that was the only incident between him getting out of jail and murdering Jill? That assault, was there other incidents?

• 23:51Speaker 05

  After he was charged with Jill Ma's rape and murder, other offences came to light that he had committed. Three other rapes, one of a Dutch backpacker and two sex workers. But they had been committed before he attacked Jill Ma.

• 24:08Gemma Bath?

  It's so confusing listening to all of this back because he should have been in jail.

• 24:13Speaker 05

  He wasn't arrested for those crimes though.

• 24:16Gemma Bath?

  Why?

• 24:16Speaker 05

  Well, sex workers are often victims of crimes like that and they don't always report because they feel they're not going to be believed. And the Dutch backpacker case, which I believe was reported, but they didn't have a suspect. So he was, he was getting away with it, wasn't he?

• 24:32Gemma Bath?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  He was getting away with it. So he was out at large and cocky. And, you know, I think that's the fear, isn't it?

• 24:40Gemma Bath?

  It's funny you say cocky because I was watching before our chat as well, some footage of him in those police interviews and the confidence, he's so relaxed, he's lying blatantly to police. And especially the way he like, when he eventually confesses, he doesn't kind of confess to, I did this, I did something wrong. It's kind of like, he plays a bit of the victim, like he never sees himself as the bad guy.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  No, because he was getting away with it. Look, if you think about it, he'd got early parole, he'd been deemed to be a high-risk offender in jail before he was paroled. He was deemed to be a high-risk, reports said he was a high risk of re-offending. But they, for some reason, relied on a different report, which had been made a bit earlier, which said he was only a moderate risk. And it was based on that report that he got this early parole, when in actual fact, the later reports said he was at a high risk of re-offending. So he should never have been let out in the first place.

• 25:37Gemma Bath?

  So after he attacked Jill, what did he do?

• 25:42Speaker 05

  He then went home, he got a shovel, he got his car, and he drove back at around 4:30 in the morning, where he lifted Jill's body into the boot of his car and drove out through the toll, you know, through the Citylink, north to South Gisborne, where he dug a shallow grave at the side of the road and buried her. And then he got back in the car and drove home. So I think the following day, on the Monday, he took his car to some brake repair place and said he needed work doing on his car. But he'd cleaned it inside and out and he'd got a different boot mat in the back of his boot that he claimed he'd got from a wrecker's yard. He didn't give any reason for

• 26:27Speaker 05

  that. And he had a very bad bruise, a sort of bruise cut on his nose, on the bridge of his nose, that when one of the mechanics asked about it, he said something like, oh, you know, I've been in a brawl over the weekend. But you're imagining that would have been Jill fighting back. He also had all his tyres changed, which I think shows a degree of premeditation and deviousness. He was, he was really covering himself. He had the car cleaned inside and out, he took it to have different tyres. So if there'd have been tyre tread out at Gisborne, it wouldn't match the tyres he was having put on his car. He explained away the injury and then he tried to change the name, the registration of the car. He asked for a roadworthy because he wanted to change the

• 27:12Speaker 05

  registration of his car into his de facto partner's name.

• 27:16Gemma Bath?

  So how did police find Jill's body?

• 27:19Speaker 05

  Well, after he admitted, finally admitted that he was responsible, he took them out to the scene of the crime, I think in the middle of the night. I think it was six days after that they finally arrested him and he admitted to it. And he directed them to where her body was. And two of the crime scene guys were so traumatised by that finding that they eventually left the police force altogether. It was such a horrific case.

• 27:47Gemma Bath?

  Well, they weren't the only ones to have that kind of visceral reaction because Australians took to the streets, they marched.

• 27:54Speaker 05

  They did, they did.

• 27:56Gemma Bath?

  Can you tell us about that? Because that was a movement of just pure, yes, grief, but anger.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  It was anger because I think poor Ron Idles, who was the head of homicide at the time, made a statement basically warning women not to go out alone, to be careful on the streets. I think the women's movement thought, and I certainly thought at the time too, very much it was like, that's right, tell us, it's up to us to protect ourselves. You know, stay home, then you'll be safe. Why should we stay home? There needs to be something done about this, you know, what needs to be done? There needs to be more lighting, we need to be safe on our streets. So what needs to be done? So, and that was really drawing to the fore, that march was a big march, thousands of people took part in that, all the way through the route that Jill took to draw attention to the fact that women are not safe on the streets and what are they going to do about it?

• 28:45Gemma Bath?

  And the other element of this case is that parole stuff that we mentioned earlier. And I know that that became a focus of the Victorian government and they were under a lot of pressure. Did they actually change anything or do anything immediately in the aftermath?

• 29:02Speaker 05

  The parole stuff wasn't really the issue at that time because no one was allowed to report his background.

• 29:07Gemma Bath?

  Right.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  There were suppression orders, so you couldn't report any of that information with a trial pending. You couldn't say that he'd been released from jail on early parole. No one could report that. In fact, Darren Hinch did at some stage and did time in jail for it. So that was not really well-known then, that couldn't be known. That became something that was known and canvassed later on.

• 29:30Gemma Bath?

  The public might not have known about all of that parole stuff, but they did have a face, they had a man, they knew who had been charged.

• 29:38Speaker 05

  They did.

• 29:38Gemma Bath?

  And in this day and age, you know, when we do have a face and a name, it becomes a bit of like, yes, they go to a trial by a judge, but it is trial by media and public as well.

• 29:49Speaker 05

  And social media these days, big time.

• 29:51Gemma Bath?

  And social media.

• 29:52Speaker 05

  Which in Jill's case was huge because there were 600 Facebook messages on the Help Us Find Jill Ma Facebook page on the day that her body was found. In that single day alone, 600 Facebook postings. A candlelight vigil after his arrest, after Bailey's arrest, he was taken to the Metropolitan Remand Centre, where the prisoners themselves, the inmates in there, held a candlelight vigil for her. You know, they held a vigil for her, a requiem mass. You know, they didn't want him there.

• 30:24Gemma Bath?

  So how does someone like that ever get a fair trial?

• 30:27Speaker 05

  Well, that's what the argument was, wasn't it? You know, the argument at the time was that something needed to be done with all these postings on social media. It went crazy. And I think in the two days after Jill Ma was found, there were 30,000 people in that rally on Sydney Road. They were very outraged and indignant, so word had got out anyway. And there was a candlelight vigil at the local church, the Brunswick Baptist Church, which was on that route home. She would have passed that church. So, you know, public feelings were running really high. And there was certainly the Attorney General at the time, or the Premier at the time, was very concerned about the use of social media where people were sharing snippets of information that could be prejudicial when selecting a jury pool.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  You know, how would he have a fair trial if all this stuff was out there in the ether? Which it was getting there, you know, it was getting there. So rules had to be brought in afterwards that related to social media and they're hard to police.

• 31:23Gemma Bath?

  You detailed what sounded like a fairly quick or straightforward investigation just before. But there was some criticism of the police. Why was that?

• 31:32Speaker 05

  There was criticism of the police because it was unclear why Bailey's DNA, which had been, you know, his DNA, if you're a sexual offender like that, a serial sexual offender, they take your DNA and you go on a database of sex offenders. And they wanted to know why it wasn't on the Victorian database. So there were all these failings for Jill Maher. If that DNA had been on the database, you know, the Victorian sex offenders database, they would have been able to identify the other rapes that he was at large for, you know?

• 32:02Gemma Bath?

  Did he plead guilty to the charges?

• 32:04Speaker 05

  He did in the end. He didn't commit all, he pleaded guilty to the rape of Jill Maher, but not the murder. But at trial, he eventually, he did plead guilty, yes.

• 32:14Gemma Bath?

  So that would have saved her family and the public from having to go through a trial.

• 32:19Speaker 05

  Oh, it would. It would have been a hideous trial. You know, it would have been awful. Yes, he pleaded guilty. I think his defence put forward the case that he was, he had a borderline personality disorder. You know, it becomes about the perpetrator. And I know that's, you know, the surviving families who've lost people to a violent crime like this often say that the focus is on the perpetrator, never the victim. You know, and it became all about, he had a bad childhood, his father had been violent to him. He'd been sexually abused by an older female relative. You know, all sorts of things were said to generate sympathy at the trial. But in the end, you know, the Justice Geoffrey Nettles ruled that it was a depraved and hideous assault.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  It was a really dreadful way for Jill Maher to die, for anyone to die. And so he got a life sentence with a 35 year minimum before he could apply for parole.

• 33:12Gemma Bath?

  So he's well and truly still in there and will be there for a long time.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, what happened was the publicity surrounding the Jill Maher case brought these other women forward. So the Dutch backpacker case was linked to him, you know, the rape of the Dutch backpacker. And the rape of the two sex workers, they came forward. And so he then went to trial, three separate trials. After being jailed for the murder and rape and murder of Jill Maher, he had three separate trials. They separated them. Obviously, they don't want him to look like a serial rapist when he is. So they'll separate the cases and he was found guilty of them. But later, one of the sex worker cases was overturned. So that conviction for rape against one of those sex workers was later overturned on appeal. Because I think it was determined that she had been shown his photograph

• 33:58Speaker 05

  or she had seen his photograph after he'd been jailed for the Jill Maher attack. So, you know, it was questionable as to whether she had actually identified him as the man who raped her or whether she just recognised him from the photos in the news.

• 34:13Gemma Bath?

  That would be so hard for her as a victim because he's in jail for things, but not your thing.

• 34:18Speaker 05

  It must be. And, you know, and that's when, credit to Tom Maher. He had begun working for the white ribbon organisation, you know, Violence Against Women as a sort of figurehead. And he wrote some very interesting articles at that time. And one of them, which I thought was really, really heartening to read was that he felt all women were victims. Why was his wife more of a victim than anybody else? Because of her occupation? You know, and he's right. He's absolutely right. It was a credit to him. He sort of really shed that light on that issue that a lot of people have felt strongly about for a long time. But as a result of those later rapes, being convicted of the other two rapes at least, those charges stuck. He's in jail till he's 83, before he's entitled to parole, if he should ever get it.

• 35:02Gemma Bath?

  Have we heard from him since? Has he shown any remorse, an apology, anything?

• 35:07Speaker 05

  No, no, he hasn't. And I think it's his personality. It's that borderline narcissistic personality. They're very rarely sorry. They're sorry for themselves and they're sorry they've got caught. But his own mother, his own mother had gone to the authorities saying, you know, that he shouldn't be on parole, his own mother.

• 35:24Gemma Bath?

  Well, if he hadn't have been caught, what would have been next, you know?

• 35:28Speaker 05

  Oh, he would have done it again. And in fact, I think that was the observation of one of the judges, you know, he would very likely do it again. If he were to have parole, he'd very likely do it again. Very high risk, recidivist offender, you know, he's not going to change. Which you sort of would expect. Look at his record. His first rape was when he was, or his first sexual assault, he was only 20. They found out later, whilst he was convicted for those 16 rapes, you know, the ones where he was released from prison and was on parole for when he attacked and killed Jill Maher. They discovered there were more than that when they went back in his past. It went back to when he was 20 years old. He'd been attacking women and a danger to women his whole life.

• 36:08Gemma Bath?

  So we were talking before about parole conditions and the parole authority. Did that actually change once all of that information was able to come out after he was convicted?

• 36:18Speaker 05

  Yes. Yes. In August 2013, former High Court Justice Ian Callanan recommended 23 changes to the Victorian parole system. Which was to prevent this thing from happening again because Adrian Bailey was one of several offenders that I covered at that time. Who'd all been out, let out early on parole and were really always going to offend. They all had dreadful records and were always going to do it. In fact, one of them said something like, well, if I get caught doing it again, I'll just say it's your fault for letting me out early. So that was it. And that was always going to be his defence if he got caught, which he did. And then he used it as his defence. Well, that's your fault. You shouldn't have let me out. I'm dangerous.

• 37:00Speaker 05

  So Justice Callanan recommended a number of changes, 23, and they were all as a result of the Maher case. Parole laws were tightened. So if parole was breached, penalties of up to three months in jail or a $4,200 fine would be imposed. But it's a bit late if you've already killed someone, isn't it? That's not very reassuring, I don't think. And the other was that the police could take action immediately, immediate action if parole was breached. And violent offenders could automatically go back to jail if it was a serious breach, which I think was much more realistic.

• 37:36Gemma Bath?

  That sounds great, but you know, that anger that we were talking about, Australians standing up and saying violence against women, it's got to stop. We're still doing that today. And in the years after that happened, you know, we had other shocking examples, the two names that come to my mind are Eurydice Dixon, who was murdered walking home in Melbourne. And Aya Masawi, also murdered while walking home in Melbourne. What does it tell us about violence against women a decade later even?

• 38:08Speaker 05

  Well, it's an epidemic, isn't it? You know, it is growing. It's not abating. I think random stranger murders of women isn't as common as you think. They're certainly rising, those numbers are rising. But it's not anywhere near as common as, most women are murdered by people they know. Most women are murdered by partners in the context of domestic violence or when they've left a violent relationship. So, you know, I wonder with stranger murders, how much more we can do because I think we just have to be really careful about who we let out onto the streets if they've got a dangerous record. But women do tend to be the victims of homicide from intimate partner relationships. That's the most common. So when you see the death toll rising this year, and I'm, I always look, I look every day.

• 38:52Speaker 05

  And when you look at them every day, it's nearly always a someone that they know who's killed them.

• 38:57Gemma Bath?

  Obviously, we can put more in place to help, you know, the women who are killed by people they know. But in terms of that stranger danger thing, do you think we will be having this same conversation in 10 years? That's just kind of a realm of crime that is always going to happen, unfortunately?

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Well, hopefully not. You know, you think that they are certainly tightening things up. And, you know, giving the police the power that if they can take immediate action if parole is breached. And if it's a violent breach, straight inside. I think that's the way to go. Likewise, I think with domestic violence, how many times do men have to breach intervention orders against their former partners before they're locked up? You know, often it's multiple breaches before anything is done. And I think it should be immediate incarceration. If anyone breaches an intervention order, the first time they breach it, it shows they have no regard for the law and they should be locked up immediately. And I think that should apply, you know, with the breaches of parole as well, straight back in jail. And another charge added to them, you know, another sentence added to their rap sheet.

• 39:56Speaker 05

  They've also got other things now in place, like an electronic database has replaced the former paper filing system, you know, where things got lost. So it's electronically monitored, which I think is better. And also they've set up a full-time parole board to replace the one that, at the time that Jill Maher was killed, met part-time. Well, that's not very helpful.

• 40:16Gemma Bath?

  Lastly, I just want to end with Jill because Jill Maher, that's a name that many Australians, I would say, most Australians who were around in 2012 in this country know that name. And it's important to remember that name and to remember the names of victims and keep talking about them.

• 40:34Speaker 05

  It's really important. Now, I do that for a living. I write the survivor stories. And one of the things that became a bugbear and, you know, women took it up as a campaign, which I was really glad to see, was the gag that was put on women who were victims of crimes like this. People who were raped couldn't tell you that they'd been raped because there was an order suppressing that. A gag order, so they couldn't tell their stories. They'd have to apply to the court to get an order lifted so they could tell their stories. You know, you think, who's this protecting? It's not protecting the victim, is it? You know, these women wanted to share their stories as a warning to other women to be careful, you know, to be aware.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  And also to highlight glaring flaws in the law which hadn't protected them.

• 41:25Gemma Bath?

  Thanks to Megan for assisting us to tell this story. You can find a link to Megan's latest book, Out of the Ashes, which details the inspirational story of an Australian mother's journey back home after the 2002 Bali bombings in our show notes. True Crime Conversations is a Mamma Mia podcast hosted by me, Gemma Bath, with audio design by Rhiannon Mooney. The executive producer is Gia Moylan. If you have a case you think we should cover next, get in touch with us. Send an email to [email protected].

• 42:08Gemma Bath?

  True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on.