-With AAP.
1. A woman has been charged over the 1995 murder of newborn baby in Western Australia.
A woman has been arrested and charged over the 1995 death of her newborn baby, found dead inside a toilet bowl at a Western Australia trailer park.
Cold case homicide squad detectives charged a 38-year-old woman with one count of wilful murder on Tuesday in Victoria. The woman, who was just 14 at the time, is alleged to have given birth just hours before the boy was found dead.
A cleaner at a caravan park in Kambalda, 600 kilometres east of Perth, made the gruesome discovery and told the caravan park’s proprietor Paul McGeever.
McGeever said the baby’s body was wrapped in toilet paper and there was blood all over the walls and floor of the cubicle, news.com.au reported.
Police believed the boy was born just a few hours before he was found, but there were no sightings of a pregnant women entering the block.
McGeever described the scene to the Kalgoorlie Miner in 1995, saying that many living at the park were reluctant to use the toilet block. He told media he suffered from nightmares after the incident.
The mystery of the mother’s identity gripped the small mining town. A voluntary DNA testing site was set up, with many local women coming forward in order to clear themselves of suspicion.
One woman who was tested spoke anonymously to the ABC.
“Every local went down and was happy to do the DNA tests because we all wanted to know who it was,” she said. “It was such a sad story, so everyone wanted to know who did it.”
The woman, who was 18 at the time, said she didn’t believe the case would be solved and was “devastated” to learn the mother was only 14.
“I feel really sorry for her, really sorry that she had no one that she could to turn to that she could ask for help,” she said.
The boy was named Rijul, meaning ‘innocent’ in Hindi, and was laid to rest in Kalgoorlie Cemetery on August, 1, 1995.
The woman will be extradited from Victoria and will appear in the Perth Children’s Court on Thursday.
Given her age at the time of birth, WA Police have launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the child’s conception.
2. Two teens have been charged over the Sunshine Coast bushfire.
Two teens have been charged for allegedly lighting a bushfire that forced thousands of Sunshine Coast residents to flee their homes to escape the inferno.
Police alleged a group of young people set the blaze in bushland on Monday afternoon before it quickly spread towards Peregian Beach.
A 14-year-old Peregian Springs boy and a 15-year-old Coolum Beach girl have been charged with endangering particular property by fire.
Police are continuing to investigate, and spot fires are still burning.
It comes after residents who sheltered in strangers’ homes during an anxious wait to learn if their own properties had survived were allowed to return.
More than 2500 properties were cleared of 5000 people within 24 hours of the fire the fire starting.
One home was destroyed by the fire and hundreds were threatened.
Throngs of displaced locals cheered when they were told it was safe for them to return to their Peregian Beach, Peregian Breeze, Weyba Downs, Marcus Beach and Castaways Beach homes on Wednesday.
The community is angry at the teens who allegedly caused the blaze.
"I don't think they want them thrown into jail," Mr Wilkie said.
"I think they want them to fully understand the consequences of what they've done, and work alongside and meet the people who have been affected.
"Give them an opportunity to make amends for what they've done ... and so that we don't lose them, if they're thrown into the juvenile justice system."
The region received some brief showers overnight but not enough to extinguish the fire.
Forecasts show cooler temperatures and lighter winds on Thursday, however the danger will spike again on Friday and Saturday when they rise again.
3. Jury to decide whether death of Melbourne teen Laa Chol will be ruled as murder or manslaughter.
A jury has retired to consider whether a 17-year-old boy intended to inflict "really serious injury" on Melbourne teenager Laa Chol when he knifed her at a party.
The boy's state of mind at the time of the fatal stabbing is the key issue for jurors, who must decide whether to convict him of murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Defence lawyer Sam Norton told the Supreme Court trial the attack was a "stupid, senseless act" but it ultimately fell short of the legal threshold for the crime of murder.
"It is tragic, unquestionably, but it is not a murder. It is a manslaughter," Mr Norton said in his closing address to the jury on Wednesday.
He argued the boy's actions were not those of an adult but of a teen who didn't pause to consider the consequences or think he could seriously harm or kill his victim.
Prosecutor Kristie Churchill said the boy didn't need to have premeditated the attack or have a specific motive to still be guilty of murder.
She noted he didn't strike Ms Chol in the leg or arm but stabbed with "at least moderate" force, penetrating her chest cavity and into her heart.
"An intention can be formed instantaneously and acted on spontaneously," Ms Churchill told the jury during her closing address.
"You can decide to do something and then act on it immediately.
"Murder can be entirely spur of the moment."
In the early hours of July 21, 2018, paramedics arrived at a 56th-floor city apartment to find Ms Chol, 19, "pulseless" on the floor and her clothes soaked in blood.
She had fought with a group of gatecrashers and was stabbed during a violent scuffle in the building's lift lobby after she suspected one of them had taken her phone.
Ms Chol stumbled back inside the apartment she had rented with friends for the weekend and collapsed.
The sac surrounding her heart and her right ventricle were pierced during the attack, causing internal and external blood loss.
4. "Absolutely terrifying." A man known as 'Mr Stinky' has pleaded guilty to the 10 charges of assault.
A convicted murderer and rapist known as "Mr Stinky" assaulted a woman while her young daughter listened from a nearby bedroom.
The attack is one of nine across the 1970s and 1980s for which Raymond Edmunds, 75, formally pleaded guilty to 10 charges in the County Court of Victoria on Wednesday.
The admissions come after Edmunds last year turned himself in to police about some of the crimes.
They include the 1971 rape of a woman at Donvale, rapes of two women at Edithvale and Wheelers Hill in 1977, and the rape and indecent assault of a woman at Clayton in 1984.
He also admitted falsely imprisoning a woman at Greensborough in 1973, indecently assaulting two women at Wheelers Hill in 1976 and 1977, and assaulting two women at Donvale in 1972 and Wheelers Hill in 1977.
At a plea hearing on Wednesday, the court was told Edmunds had entered the homes of most of the women at night, threatening some of them with a knife if they didn't do what he wanted.
He at times wore a face mask with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth, and attacked some victims while their children slept nearby.
In one case in 1977, a then 31-year-old woman's young son and daughter were in their rooms when Edmunds invaded the home wearing a stocking over his head, the court was told.
Before raping the woman, Edmunds told her he just wanted to "make love", he had been watching her for two weeks and he knew her children were in their bedrooms.
The daughter heard the attack and later spoke of her fear.
"She told (her mother) she had tried to make herself as flat as she could so the accused couldn't find her," prosecutor Russ Hammill told the court.
The woman said the attack had taken a toll on her daughter, including a fear of being alone.
"Even after she was married she always had to have someone with her and was never alone," the victim wrote in a statement read to court.
Judge Susan Pullen said she was having difficulty finding words to describe how "absolutely terrifying" the attacks must have been for the women and their families.
Edmunds' lawyer Peter Chadwick QC agreed.
"Every one of them would be a terrifying experience for the victims and those who were in the house that were aware of it at the time, and traumatic to their loved ones," he said.
Mr Chadwick said he had asked Edmunds why he waited so long to tell authorities about the crimes but he "doesn't have any reason", although he thought it was time to bring "peace of mind" to himself and his victims.
Edmunds was sentenced to life in prison, "never to be released", in 1986 for the murder of teenagers Abina Madill and Garry Heywood near Shepparton two decades earlier.
He is also serving decades-long sentences for a series of other rapes and attempted rapes between the 1960s and 1980s that led to him being labelled the Donvale Rapist and given the moniker Mr Stinky because of the offensive body odour reported by his victims.
He is due to be sentenced for the latest charges on September 26.
5. "No scintilla of remorse." A Queensland wife-killer jailed for 15 years.
A Gold Coast millionaire who violently and silently killed his estranged wife as their two children slept after he misunderstood a divorce letter has been jailed for 15 years.
John William Chardon, 72, was convicted of Novy Chardon's manslaughter following a three-week trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court.
The mother-of-two, 34, disappeared from their Upper Coomera mansion on the night of February 6, 2013.
Her body has never been found.
On Wednesday, Justice Ann Lyons said Chardon had shown "no scintilla of remorse" and his lack of respect for his wife and his dishonesty "was truly extraordinary".
"We will never know what happened to Novy that night. You do (but) you've never confessed," she said.
"We don't know what happened to her body. You do (but) you've never revealed its location."
Justice Lyons said Chardon had constructed a web of lies to cover up his actions on the night Ms Chardon disappeared, then "dumped" her body.
"Your two young children will have to live their entire lives knowing not only have they been deprived of their mother but that you killed her, discarded her and then deceived them for more than six years," she said.
Justice Lyons said Chardon had denigrated Ms Chardon at every opportunity and led his children to believe their mother had abandoned them.
"The record must be corrected," she said.
The court heard Chardon had become "enraged" by a letter from Ms Chardon's divorce letter that made it clear he had to move out of the family home.
He also mistakenly thought it said Ms Chardon would control his access to the children.
"We don't know how she died ... (but) the available inference is that she died at your hands," Justice Lyons said.
"You would have to overcome her with some force in order to subdue her."
"There were two children in the house at the time the only available inference is that whilst she died violently, she died silently," she said.
Chardon's trial heard a raft of sensational allegations, including that he had attempted to hire a Filipino hit man, had numerous affairs and asked his daughter to hide a mysterious box said to contain gun parts and handcuffs.
Chardon denied it all, saying Ms Chardon told him she was leaving.
The court heard the Indonesian-born beautician had been deeply unhappy during the last years of her marriage and was preparing for life outside her husband's "dark shadow".
She disappeared at the end of the couple's year-long legal separation, during which Chardon stayed in their home to help with the children.
Prosecutor Mark Green had no direct evidence about how Ms Chardon's alleged murder occurred.
Instead, he told the jury it was the "little things" like Chardon hiring a carpet cleaner the morning after Ms Chardon disappeared and his brief journey to his factory the night before that proved he'd murdered his wife.
However, the jury found Chardon guilty of the lesser charge.
In sentencing, Justice Lyons said she had no confidence Chardon would be rehabilitated.
She read his criminal past into the record, which included six child sex offences and rape.
The court heard Chardon was also convicted of indecent treatment of a child under 12 years old for an offence that occurred six weeks after Ms Chardon disappeared.
"Your bad character has been manifest for all to see," Justice Lyons said.
She sentenced him to 15 years in prison. He will have to serve at 80 per cent and may be subject to no body, no parole legislation.