You
know that evil stranger that your mum always warned you about? The one who comes to your house in response
to a “flatmate wanted” ad and kills you.
The balaclava clad man, holding a sawn-off shotgun, who starts leading
to you to a darker, more secluded location.
Ashley Mervyn Coulston is that evil being. And in 1992 he terrorised Melbourne.
Ashley Coulston
However, Coulston’s criminal career began long before 1992. On April 29th 1971 he abducted two young school teachers, forcing them to drive to New South Wales, heading for Sydney. He had stalked them for two weeks before the abduction. Coulston’s choice of weapon was a .22 rifle. When they stopped at a Gundagai roadhouse for food, the screams of the women attracted the attention of a truck driver and they were rescued. He was 14 years old. Coulston was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention.
Publicity photo from G'Day 88
Coulston
moved around, living in New South Wales and Queensland. He developed an interest in sailing and in
1988, during Australia’s bicentennial he came to national attention when he
tried to sail the smallest boat from Australia to New Zealand. He spent almost a year designing and building
the G’Day 88 which was about the size
of a spa bath. His first attempt was
thwarted by a cyclone, but he was successful on his second attempt. He was featured in many media stories and dubbed
“Captain Bathtub”.
Sailing
also introduced him to his partner Jan McLeod, a woman more than 15 years older
than him. He lived with Jan on her boat
docked at Hastings, on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula.
On
July 29th 1992, three young people were brutally executed at a house
in Burwood, a quiet middle-class suburb of Melbourne. Someone had hog tied Kerryn Henstridge (22),
Anne Smerdon (22) and Peter Dempsey (27, Anne’s brother-in-law) with cable ties
and shot them all in the head. Kerryn’s
mother discovered the horrifying scene the following morning when she went to
the house. Kerryn had been moving out
that day and had failed to meet her mother as planned.
Anne Smerden
Kerryn
was moving home to Hamilton, a town west of Melbourne. The other tenants had advertised for a new
flatmate, and had been interviewing prospective tenants on the night of the 29th. One man attended the house at 8pm sharp, and
left about 8:10. He was the last person
to see the trio alive. There was another
man scheduled to visit that night, a 40 year old man named Duncan. It is now believed that Duncan was Ashley
Coulston.
Kerryn Henstridge
Police
appeals for information did not turn up any leads.
Peter Dempsey
Five
weeks after the execution of three young people rocked the Melbourne suburbs,
Richard and Anne Shalagin were returning to their car near the National Gallery
of Victoria on St Kilda Road when they were approached by a man in a balaclava,
who silently pointed a gun at them.
Thinking he was there to rob them, they threw a few $50 notes at him,
which he took, but he kept menacing them.
He motioned for them to go to a darker area, under a tree. St Kilda Road is a very busy road near the
Melbourne CBD. He told Anne to lie
facedown, kicking her even though she complied with his demands. The man took out some cable ties to bind
Anne, and while doing so, put his rifle down.
Richard took this opportunity to grab the man in a bear hug, and after a
brief struggle, both the Shalagins managed to run away. Richard’s actions almost certainly saved
their lives.
The
shouts of the Shalagins drew the attention of two security guards who radioed
for police. The approached the man, who
shot one of the security guards in the hip.
Despite this, they managed to grab him and hold him until the police
arrived.
Coulston's gun with a homemade silencer, made from an oil can.
Police
took the man back to the police station.
He was Ashley Mervyn Coulson and he had a murder kit on him that night –
sawn-off shotgun with a homemade silencer, knife, balaclava, high velocity .22
cartridges, handcuffs, thumb cuffs and cable ties.
When
the police did ballistic tests on the shotgun they found a match to two of the
bullets used in the Burwood murders. The
third bullet was too badly damaged to be compared. The homemade silencer had high velocity bloodstains
matching the Burwood crime scene. Police
also found a map book with Coulston’s fingerprint on the page for Burwood. They
had their man.
Coulston
refused to say anything to police during questioning. His partner Jan gave him an alibi, stating he
was visiting her in Frankston Hospital that night, but this was not able to be
verified. He claimed he had lent his gun
to a friend. The person he named stated
he did not know Coulston, and was out of the country at the time of the murder.
Coulston
was charged with the Burwood murders and 11 other offenses. He remained mute throughout his trial. He was found guilty, but successfully
appealed that verdict. He was found
guilty again at his second trial, and his appeal was denied. He was sentenced to life without the
possibility of parole.
Because
of Coulston’s refusal to speak, the motive for the execution of three innocent
young people remains unknown. It is
speculated it was just a thrill killing.
Three lives full of potential were ended just for kicks.
In a
troubling incident, Coulston was able to access the names of 51 nurses working
at Frankston Hospital the night of the murders in Burwood through a Freedom of
Information (FOI) application. This led
to changes in the FOI laws in Victoria preventing names of public servants
being released. He was also able to
access records about a notorious Melbourne child killer call Mr Cruel.
It
is highly unlikely that Coulston did not commit any crimes between 1971 and
1992. He is suspected of being the “Balaclava
Killer” who terrorised the Gold Coast and Tweed Heads, on the border between
New South Wales and Queensland between 1979 and 1980. Coulston lived in the area at the time. He is also a prime suspect for being the “Sutherland
Rapist” who attacked women in Sydney between 1981 and 1984. The rapist wore a balaclava and carried a
sawn-off shotgun. Coulston was living in
Sydney at the time. He was investigated
in related to the disappearance of Sarah McDiarmid from Kananook railway
station in Melbourne in1990. No evidence
was found to link him to her death, and her body has never been found. Coulston was even considered a possible
suspect for the “Mr Cruel” crimes. (I’ll
discuss Mr Cruel in a later post).
Considering
that Coulston refuses to talk about the crimes he is known to have committed,
he is unlikely to ever confess to any further crimes. He remains in prison alongside some of the
most dangerous men to have terrorised the city of Melbourne.
No comments:
Post a Comment