David and Catherine Birnie: Australias sick serial killers committed first crime 30 years ago

AUSTRALIA’S sickest serial killers believed they could pull off the perfect murders.

They read a book and used the plot as a blueprint for the killings they would later commit, making their dark, sick and sadistic sexual fantasies come true.

WARNING: What you are about to read is disturbing.

David and Catherine Birnie met when they were children, growing up in a small rural town on Perth’s outskirts.

Catherine’s mother was dead while David’s was an alcoholic, they found a connection in their sad existence.

It's now been 30 years since they claimed their first victim, which marked the beginning of their twisted “Moorhouse murders”.

THE FIRST VICTIM

Mary Neilson was a university student, studying psychology, and working part-time at a delicatessen in Perth.

She was living in a wealthy suburb in the WA capital when she met David and Catherine.

They offered her cheap tyres for her car and she gave the killer couple her phone number.

According to Paul Kidd, author of Australia’s Serial Killers, Mary went to a spare-parts yard where David worked and he told her she should come by his house.

Mary turned up at the killer couple’s home in Moorhouse Street in Willagee, in Perth’s southwest.

She was pulled into the house and held at knifepoint before being bound and gagged.

It was October 6, 1986 and earlier that day she had left her job and had a university lecture that afternoon.

She stopped at the Birnie home on the way to university.

But that was the last time she was ever seen.

Mary was the first person David and Catherine had ever killed but they had it all figured out, there was nothing random about this attack.

She was thrown on the bed and suffocated by David’s scrawny, bony body while he raped her.

Catherine watched and according to Kidd, Catherine would touch David during the sexual assault, arousing him even more.

They loved to see the 22-year-old woman struggle and they tortured her before finally ending her misery.

To get away with the “perfect murder”, David drove Mary’s car and parked it opposite police headquarters, thinking it wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

THE GRAVEYARD

Mary was thrown in the car and driven to Gleneagles National Park where she was raped again.

A nylon rope was then tightened around her neck and she was stabbed in the heart.

David took a shovel from his boot and dug a shallow grave and she was callously thrown into it, with the couple believing at the time she’d be there forever.

This was also the start of a tradition for the killer couple, who planned to replicate the crime time and time again, creating their own graveyard at the national park filled with their unsuspecting victims.

Ruth Wykes, author of Women Who Kill, told a Nine News program in 2010 Catherine had spoken to her about her brutal slayings.

“According the Catherine, they spent weeks and weeks and weeks doing research on the best way to commit murder and get away with it,” she said.

“There’s nothing random about what they did.”

MOORHOUSE MURDERS

Once the sun set, the killer couple would go hunting for victims.

They would scope out the streets and any woman who was alone would be carefully chosen as prey.

The women would be taken back to the couple’s house on Moorhouse Street, also known as their murder chamber.

Kidd said the house was a dishevelled white-brick bungalow, hidden behind an overgrowing garden of weeds.

“It was by far the worst house in the street and its only advantage was that it made the other housing commission homes around it look like palaces,” he wrote in his book.

The next woman lured into the couple’s trap was Susannah Candy, just two weeks after Mary.

The Birnies believed they had successfully pulled off the perfect murder once and were ready to hunt.

This time, they’d add a new twist to their already sick plot.

They would get their victims to make phone calls and write letters to friends so foul play wouldn’t be suspected.

Sussanah was just 15 when she was hitchhiking along the Stirling Highway in Claremont, a suburb in Perth.

WA Police Detective Sergeant Chris Cassidy told a Nine News program Catherine was in charge of their victims.

“Catherine calls the shots if she (the victim) fitted the bill,” he said.

The couple had a code word, so when Sussanah was in the back seat of the car, she was unaware of the sick plot.

If Catherine thought the girl would make a textbook victim, one whose murder they could cover up and a woman they would enjoy torturing, she would mention to David she had the munchies.

If he agreed, the twisted plan was put into action and Sussanah was taken to the Moorhouse torture chamber.

Her killing mirrored Mary’s and she was buried close by.

The Birnies needed more to satisfy their sick, sexual fantasies and when they went hunting again on November 1, 1986, they found Noelene Patterson.

She was alone on a highway in East Fremantle and her car had just run out of fuel.

Noelene, 31, was described as a woman of elegance and class and David quickly became attached to her.

The Birnies pulled up next to Noelene and she got in the car with the seemingly friendly couple.

According to Kidd, a knife was shoved to her throat and she was driven to the Moorhouse home of horrors.

Noelene wasn’t satisfying Catherine’s thirst to kill because she hated her and was in a jealous rage when she saw how much her lover enjoyed his time with Noelene.

Kidd also said Noelene was everything Catherine wanted to be.

The victim was smart, and she tried to go along with David’s wants so he wouldn’t kill her.

When he asked her to phone her friends to pick up her car she did so, and told them she was staying with other friends.

David was softening towards Noelene but Catherine threatened him and said she would stab herself if he didn’t follow through on Noelene’s murder.

After three days in the Moorhouse torture chamber, Noelene was taken to the couple’s graveyard and was buried in her underpants.

The last act of violence towards Noelene was when Catherine threw dirt into the dead woman’s face.

Just four days later, Australia’s worst serial killer couple hunted their next victim and found Denise Brown, 21, who was waiting for a bus.

She was a trusting woman but soon discovered the Birnies were sadistic, although it was too late, she was chained to the bed in the Moorhouse Street home.

She was too taken to the forest and raped again and Catherine stabbed her in the neck while David was abusing her.

She was fighting for her life and did not die and as sand was being thrown over her body, she sat up in her shallow grave.

The woman was then hit in the skull with an axe but she sat up again.

David then cracked Denise’s head open with the axe.

“The brutal murder of Denise Brown had a bad effect on Catherine Birnie,” Kidd wrote in his book.

“She liked the sex they had with their victims. And she didn’t mind the women being strangled and stabbed to death.

“But after the last murder, she decided that she couldn’t go through it again. That is possibly why she left their next victim untied and alone in the bedroom.”

THE ESCAPE

Kate Moir was the only lucky one to escape from the Moorhouse Street home on November 10.

She was the second teen the couple had abducted and at just 17, she wasn’t ready for the Birnies to decide her fate.

After being thrown into the couple’s bedroom, Kate managed to escape through an open window and she frantically ran into a supermarket.

This was when the perfect murders started to unravel.

The police already knew there was a serial killer on the loose, with a number of young women disappearing around Perth just weeks apart.

All the victims had something in common, they made calm phone calls to friends but were never heard from again.

Police arrested Catherine and David and the bodies of their helpless victims were uncovered.

Both were sentenced to life in prison.

David later killed himself in 2005 in a West Australian prison cell and Catherine claims she is “cured of the madness” and believes she can walk free.

Catherine is up for parole every three years and it’s Kate’s mission to fight it and keep her housed behind the cold prison bars.

Kate believes the crimes should see Catherine locked up forever.

According to Kidd, in January 2000, acting West Australian Attorney General Kevin Prince said while the Birnies were considered for parole, they wouldn’t be released unless they “became too frail or senile”.

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