Police watch new Claremont suspect
18th August 2008, 6:00 WST
Amid the growing controversy, The West Australian can reveal detectives have interrogated an information technology expert after he was seen trying to lure a young woman into his car in Mosman Park in the early hours of a Sunday morning last year.
The IT expert is not the mystery man in the footage. Detectives have been unable to rule him out of the inquiry because he cannot account for his whereabouts when Sarah Spiers, Ms Rimmer and Ciara Glennon were abducted on January 27, 1996, June 9, 1996, and March 14, 1997, respectively.
The IT expert came to the attention of police when a concerned father reported seeing him as he tried to lure a young woman into his car on Stirling Highway at 2am. The IT expert became spooked when the father, an accountant who was on his way to pick up his daughter from a party, stopped alongside him.
The father was unable to take a registration number because the man drove away, but special crime squad detectives tracked him by sifting through more than 300 vehicles that matched the description of his car and using security camera footage from a nearby service station.
Detectives have raided the IT expert’s home and questioned him. He was charged with possessing obscene material but the charge was dropped.
A source described the man as a chameleon, saying he was fastidiously neat outwardly. He maintained his car in an immaculate condition and his personal presentation and demeanour were of an unusually high standard. But his home was described by the source as “abject squalor” and he is understood to engage in group sex and sexual fetishes.
During a police interview, the man denied involvement in the killings, but detectives have been unable to rule him out of the inquiry and continue to watch him closely.
