Paul Denyer: The Frankston Serial Killer

Confession: Natalie Russell

If the detectives were showing any signs of weariness, what they were about to hear would shock them back to attentiveness with a jolt. Denyer's almost unbelievable confession to the murder of Natalie Russell would put him among the most despicable monsters this country has ever known. Denyer had planned his next murder in advance. His intention was to abduct a young woman, any young woman, as she walked along the bike track that runs alongside the Flora and Fauna Reserve in nearby Langwarrin, drag his victim into the reserve and murder her.

He had gone to his planned abduction spot earlier in the day and, with a pair of pliers, had cut three holes a few metres apart in the cyclone wire fence that ran between the bike track and the reserve. Each hole was cut big enough to fit him and his victim through into the cover of tree-lined reserve.

Hole in the fence on Skye Road

At about 2:30 that afternoon, he drove back to the start of the bike track in Skye Road and waited for a victim to enter on foot. His plan was to follow his victim and, as they approached a hole in the fence, he would grab her and take her through it and into the reserve. He was armed with a razor-sharp homemade knife and a leather strap which he intended to use to strangle his victim. After a wait of about 20 minutes, he saw a girl in a blue school uniform come out of the road where John Paul College was and enter the bike track. He followed.

Natalie Russell

"I stuck about 10 yards behind her until I got to the second hole," Denyer told the detectives. "And just when I got to that hole, I quickly walked up behind her and stuck my left hand around her mouth and held the knife to her throat...and that's where that cut happened." Denyer then indicated the cut on his thumb from which the piece of skin was missing. "I cut that on my own blade."

Denyer said that Natalie was struggling at first when he grabbed her but stopped when he told her that if she didn't he would cut her throat. The terrified girl then offered Denyer sex, which disgusted him as he clearly failed to see that Natalie must have realized that she was in the hands of the Frankston Serial Killer and would have done anything, even if it meant having sex with him, to save her life.

"She said, 'You can have all my money, have sex with me,' and things — just said disgusting things like that, really," Denyer told the detectives as he shook his head in revulsion at what he obviously interpreted as the schoolgirl's loose morals. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Upset, Denyer forced Natalie to kneel in front of him and held the point of the knife very closely over her eye. Then he forced her to lie on the ground and he knelt over her, holding her by the throat and still holding the point of the knife over her eye. When she struggled he cut her across the face. She somehow managed to stand up and started to scream.

"And I just said, 'Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.' And, 'If you don't shut up, I'll kill you. If you don't do this, I'll kill you, if you don't do that,'" Denyer told the detectives. "And she said, 'What do you want from me?' I said, 'All I want you to do is shut up.' And so when she was kneeling on the ground, I put the strap around her neck to strangle her and it broke in half. And then she started violently struggling for about a minute until I pushed got her onto her back again - and pushed her head back like this and cut her throat.'"

Denyer then demonstrated how he held Natalie Russell's head back. "I cut a small cut at first and then she was bleeding. And then I stuck my fingers into her throat ... and grabbed her cords and I twisted them."

The detectives could hardly believe what they were hearing, but somehow managed to contain their abhorrence so that they could prompt him to continue with his confession of horror.

"Why'd you do that?"

"My whole fingers — like, that much of my hand was inside her throat," Denyer said as he held up his hand, indicating exactly how much of it he had forced into the wound in the schoolgirl's throat.

"Do you know why you did that?" the detective asked again.

"Stop her from breathing ... And then she slowly stopped. She sort of started to faint and then when she was weak, a bit weaker, I grabbed the opportunity of throwing her head back and one big large cut which sort of cut almost her whole head off. And then she slowly died."

"Why did you kill her?" the shocked detectives asked, just managing to hold themselves back from being physically ill.

"Just same reason as before, just everything came back through my mind again. I kicked her before I left."