Australian Serial Killers - The rage for revenge (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr Read Free Book Online Page B

years after his siblings and his parents were more like his grandparents than his parents in terms of their age. He grew up, consequently, like an only child and, as a result, was spoiled and made to feel inadequate by an overprotective mother and a father who was something of a perfectionist. While he was still young, the family moved to Melbourne.
    His time at school was difficult. He was overweight and was teased a great deal about it, being nicknamed ‘Pugsley’ after a character in the television show, The Addams Family . He was also a poor learner and frequently bottom of his class.
    On 28 October, home from school and still wearing his school uniform, Dupas knocked at the door of his twenty-seven-year-old neighbour who at the time was nursing her five-week-old baby. He asked her if he could borrow a sharp knife as he was helping his mother to peel potatoes for that evening’s dinner. She handed him the knife, remarking on how good he was to help his mother in this way. Dupas suddenly lunged at her with the knife, stabbing her in the stomach. He threw her to the floor and straddled her, still stabbing away at her with the knife, striking her hands with which she was trying to fight him off. She was being cut on the hands, face and neck. As she grabbed the implement, trying to break it, he gasped between breaths, ‘It’s too late, I can’t stop now, they’ll lock me up’. He put his hand across her mouth to stop her screaming and began to bash her head on the floor. Suddenly, almost as quickly as he had begun, he stopped.
    Dupas was taken to a psychiatric hospital to be assessed, and it was concluded that he was ‘caught in an emotional conflict between the need to conform to the expectations of his parents and the unconscious urges to express his aggression and his developing masculinity’. He was put on probation for eighteen months and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.
    He left school and became an apprentice fitter and turner at the General Electric Company in Melbourne’s Notting Hill suburb, but he was in trouble with the law again on 10 March 1972, when he was caught spying on a woman taking a shower. In November 1973, he was questioned by police after driving his car alongside another and leering continuously at the driver’s twelve-year-old daughter. A few weeks later, he was arrested for rape.
    On 5 November, he had knocked on the door of a house at Nunawading, claiming to the woman who answered that his car had broken down. She went off to search for a screwdriver and he entered the house where he threatened her and her eighteen-month-old baby at knifepoint. He had then raped her. It was not the first time he had tried this trick. On one occasion, he had stole some money and left, while on another, his terrified victim told him that her husband would be home at any minute and he fled.
    The police knew he was dangerous and that his crimes were gradually escalating. One described him as ‘an evil, cold, baby-faced liar’ who he thought would eventually kill if he was not stopped.
    He was not wrong.
    They discovered that he was very meticulous in the planning of his attacks. He selected his victims carefully and was cold and calculating in his preparation. Dupas was released on bail but remanded to a psychiatric hospital, Mont Park. He was allowed to visit home occasionally and was arrested again for a number of incidents at the nearby Rosebud Beach during these visits. He entered women’s toilets where he watched girls showering. A witness tipped off the police and he was caught in the act. Again, he was admitted to Mont Park as a voluntary patient, remaining there until 22 February 1974.
    Mont Park psychiatrists could find no serious psychiatric disorders but they intimated that he could suffer from personality problems in future. He got off lightly, being fined $140.
    He was not treated so leniently when he was tried for the rape of the woman in Nunawading. Describing it as one of the