Adrian Bayley hunted vulnerable women

Sex workers and tipsy women leaving pubs were the vulnerable targets of serial rapist Adrian Ernest Bayley.

Adrian Ernest Bayley prowled the streets of St Kilda looking for vulnerable women.

Sex workers and tipsy women leaving pubs were his prime targets as he drove back and forth through the beachside suburb.

When he found one, he would lure her into his car and drive to a secluded laneway where he parked with the passenger door pressed against a fence.

There he would rape his victims in brutal episodes that typically involved beatings, taunts and humiliation.

Two sex workers, aged 18 and 25, and a Dutch backpacker are the latest additions to a list of 10 women Bayley has raped.

(Two of these women were attacked just months before Bayley raped and strangled Jill Meagher in a Brunswick laneway in 2012).

The 18-year-old sex worker had the misfortune of climbing into Bayley's car on just her third day working St Kilda's streets in November 2000.

As they drove she read aloud from a pamphlet warning of the dangerous men sex workers should try to avoid.

"I can't believe how many bad men there are out there," she said.

"Don't you know I'm one of those bad guys," Bayley replied, as he leapt on her.

Her ordeal didn't end until she managed to escape.

The next time she saw Bayley he was staring back at her from the TV screen in a news bulletin on Ms Meagher's murder, some 12 years later.

"I always thought I'd find him one day and that's him 100 per cent," she told the jury in her rape trial.

Bayley used his partner's trip abroad in April 2012 to claim another victim.

He spent one night of his new-found freedom at a South Melbourne strip club, where he spent several hours and $400, before heading to St Kilda.

He picked up the 25-year-old sex worker and kept her as a prisoner for more than two hours as he raped her in his car.

In a move that would prove Bayley's undoing at trial, she cracked the windscreen as she fought in vain against her attacker.

She later told police of the crack. Evidence showing Bayley had his windscreen repaired just days after the attack helped seal his fate.

"How could she have known about a cracked windscreen ... unless she cracked it?" prosecutor Peter Rose SC asked at one of Bayley's Victorian County Court trials.

She escaped when she convinced Bayley to drive her to the toilets at a nearby pub.

Three months later and following a drunken night at the football, Bayley's girlfriend ended a fight by kicking him out of bed.

He was prowling St Kilda within hours of the row.

He spotted the backpacker "wobbling along the street" alone after leaving a pub.

An ominous piece of CCTV footage played in court showed a car similar to Bayley's idling just outside the pub.

He pulled up beside her in a quiet street and spooked her by telling her she was being followed.

"Catastrophically for her, she accepts a lift home," Mr Rose told the jury.

But the woman managed to outwit him.

When he attacked her, she invited Bayley back to her nearby home where they would be more comfortable.

They walked hand-in-hand to her front door and he draped his arms around her waist as she fiddled with the key in the lock.

She broke screaming from his grasp the moment the door was open.

The July 2012 attack on the backpacker came just two months before he murdered Ms Meagher as she walked home from a night out in Brunswick's popular nightlife strip.

Her death and the sufferings of the backpacker and 25-year-old could have been avoided, if not for a flaw in Victoria's justice system which allowed Bayley to remain free despite re-offending while on parole.

Bayley was released from prison on parole in 2010, but that parole should have been cancelled after he was convicted of punching a man in February 2012.

Instead he appealed the assault charge and was released on bail.

The three separate Victorian County Court juries who found Bayley guilty of raping the sex workers and the backpacker were told of his attack on Ms Meagher.

His barrister, Saul Holt SC, implored them to ignore his murderous past and treat the case before them on its merits.

"That might be an unpalatable proposition," Mr Holt said.

"No one will want to go to a dinner party in two or three year's times and accept that's what they've done."

Mr Holt argued identity was at issue in each case, with the three women falsely identifying Bayley as their attacker.

Both the sex workers went to police after identifying Bayley from the pictures in the media following his arrest for murdering Ms Meagher.

The backpacker picked Bayley from a police photo board seven months after the attack.

Mr Holt said the traumatised 18-year-old mistakenly identified Bayley, but argued the 25-year-old picked over the "unprecedented" amount of personal details of Bayley published in the media in a deliberate attempt to blame him.

"It's the product of the mind of a deeply troubled and fragile young woman," Mr Holt said of the 25-year-old's claim.

He argued discrepancies between their descriptions of Bayley and his car were a "roadblock" in convicting him.

"They cannot just be glossed over," Mr Holt said.

But Mr Rose said that the trials did not simply boil down to a memory test for each woman.

He said Bayley largely matched the descriptions of each of the women's attackers, with only "very slight" differences.

Mr Rose said the 25-year-old victim described her attacker as having "cold blue eyes, acne scars and muscle with low body fat".

"Is this a reasonable description of Adrian Bayley?" Mr Rose asked the jury.

Each jury agreed and Bayley now faces the prospect of dying in prison.

He is serving a life sentence with a 35-year-minimum for the rape and murder of Ms Meagher.

Judge Sue Pullen will determine at a later date how many years will be added to that sentence.


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Source: AAP


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