In May 2021, almost three decades after Victorian serial killer Paul Denyer terrorised the bayside city of Frankston, MP David Limbrick assembled a press conference. As he spoke to the gathered media, he stood shoulder to shoulder with friends and family of one of Denyer’s victims: 17-year-old Natalie Russell.
With Denyer’s first parole date looming, David urgently appealed to the state government to keep the sadistic criminal "locked up, forever".
Until that day, few knew that the MP’s investment in this cause was a personal one.
His voice catching, he spoke about Natalie. "She was my girlfriend."
"Nat and I had plans." Remembering Natalie Russell.
David Limbrick met Natalie Russell at a party. She was in her final year of high school; he was in his first year at university.
He remembers her as bright and cheeky, with a sarcastic sense of humour. She was, he told Mamamia’s No Filter podcast, "a young woman with everything to look forward to in life".
"Nat and I had plans," he said. "I know she wanted to travel, and she was interested in journalism.
"She was very conscientious at school. She was focusing on doing her work because she wanted to get good marks in the VCE [Victorian Certificate of Education]."
Watch: David Limbrick on Paul Denyer being eligible for parole. Post continues after video.
Still, Natalie loved getting together with friends when she could. In fact, David said they were planning to attend a gathering the Friday night she vanished — July 30, 1993.
By then, he said, the Frankston region was "gripped by fear". Two young women had been murdered within two months.
Elizabeth Ann-Marie Stevens, 18, was killed on June 11 when walking home from a bus stop in Langwarrin. And on July 8, 22-year-old mother Deborah Anne Fream was abducted and killed on her way home from a local shop. She’d ducked out quickly to get milk, leaving her 12-day-old baby at home with a friend.
As speculation about a serial killer mounted, a dark mood settled over the Frankston area. David said many women were avoiding taking public transport or walking anywhere alone. And many stopped going out at night altogether. Police launched Operation Reassurance, which saw a swell in patrols of the area.
"Because the community was in such a state of terror, the police were trying their best to have a show of force on the streets and say, 'We're on top of this, we're going to catch this person, we're going to stop them committing any further crimes,'" he said. "Unfortunately, that wasn't the case."
The evening of July 30, David received a call from Natalie’s family asking if she was with him.
She wasn’t.
"I became very concerned when I got that phone call because I knew it was very out of character for Nat. She was always careful to tell her parents where she was so that they wouldn't worry about her," David said.
At around 8pm, her parents called the police to report her missing. Concerned friends and family gathered together, waiting for news.
"As the night went on, it became increasingly clear that something very bad had happened," David said.
The phone call from the police came in the middle of the night. Natalie’s body had been found concealed in scrub alongside the track she took on her walk home from school.
David was in shock.
"It was really just confirming what we had already suspected. But it was a terrible, terrible feeling," he said.
David said everything "fell apart" for him after that. He dropped out of university and became unemployed, among a host of other “bad things” (he didn’t elaborate). But he managed to turn it all around eventually.
He went on to study computing and enjoyed a successful career in IT and finance, before entering politics with the Liberal Democrats. He was elected to the Victorian Parliament’s Upper House in 2018, where he now serves as the Member for South Eastern Metropolitan Region.
"I just made the decision that I wasn't going to let it define the course of my life. You're either going to go into a ditch and stay there, or you're going to pick yourself up and try and get things back on track," he said.
That determination is with him in this new fight.
"How much longer are we going to have to fight this?"
Paul Denyer was caught the day after Natalie Russell’s murder.
A vigilant postie had reported a man acting suspiciously near where her body was discovered. Registration details for the man’s vehicle led police to Denyer.
The 21-year-old initially denied any involvement but confessed when confronted with DNA evidence. He pleaded guilty to murdering the three women and abducting another (41-year-old Rosza Toth had managed to flee his grasp).
At Denyer’s sentencing hearing on December 20, 1993, Melbourne Supreme Court Justice Frank Vincent noted the conclusion of psychiatrists and psychologists that Denyer lives with "sadistic personality disorder" — a condition characterised by taking pleasure from inflicting cruel, demeaning and aggressive behaviours as a means of control.
"I have been told that you obtain immense gratification from the humiliation, mutilation and killing of other human beings," Justice Vincent said.
He continued that, "Importantly, there is no known way of dealing with the problem, which may well last for life."
He sentenced Denyer to life in prison with no parole.
For David Limbrick and many more of Denyer’s victims' loved ones, the sentence was welcome.
"We felt that [Justice Vincent] got it right," David said. "We felt some sort of closure. We were reassured, at the time, that [Denyer] wasn't going to hurt another girl again."
Six months later, the Court of Appeal found that Justice Vincent had "abrogated" his duty to pass a sentence. It overturned his decision and imposed a minimum prison term of 30 years.
"At first, I didn't really understand the reasons why that happened," David said. "We were just shocked that he could ever have a chance of getting out. And so it set off this 30-year wait for us."
In recent years, as that wait approached its unsettling end, David knew he couldn’t sit idle. With the support of other grieving loved ones, he’s been working to petition the government to keep Denyer in prison.
There is precedent. Shortly before mass murderer Julian Knight was due for parole in 2014, the Victorian Parliament passed special legislation that meant the parole board could not approve his release "unless satisfied, amongst other things, that Mr Knight is in imminent danger of dying or is seriously incapacitated and that, as a result, he no longer has the physical ability to do harm to any person".
But David said there are numerous avenues the Government could take, and he’s discussed many of them with key MPs.
The goal is to end that torturous waiting period. Because while Denyer’s first parole application was denied in April 2023, it’s likely others will follow.
"Everything seems to indicate to me that he hasn't tried to reform himself, he hasn't tried to make himself a better person. He's probably spent 30 years fantasising about getting out. And he clearly thought that he had a chance of freedom here, which is why he applied at the first available opportunity," David said.
"How much longer are we going to have to fight this? Every parole attempt?... And are the families and friends going to have to be re-traumatised every time this happens? I just don't think that the status quo is acceptable, which is why I'm hoping that the Government will do something to help."
To hear more of David Limbrick's conversation with Mia Freedman, listen to No Filter below or subscribe via your favourite podcast app.
Feature image: Stan/Instagram/@davidlimbrickmp
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