100 The Australian Women’s Weekly|JUNE 2018
FAIRFAX MEDIA. NEWSPIX.Real life
elaborated, his gruesome yarn
satisfying the child’s curiosity.
But delving into his own dark
imagination made him wonder
whether perhaps something truly
terrible had happened to his mother.
He began to hyperventilate,
experiencing the irst in a lifetime of
panic attacks that still paralyse him
today. His teacher sent him to the
ofice, where the principal called his
father who came to collect him. The
matter was never discussed again.
“Afterwards I started having
paranoid thoughts, worrying that if
something terrible had happened, it
might happen to me too,” he says. At
the back of the little boy’s mind there
also lurked the crippling fear that his
mother had ‘gone away’ because he
was too unlovable.
In September 2004, a TV crime
series,Forensic Investigatorsaired,
opening with “The Frankston
Murders”. Jake, then 11, was at
Scouts when it screened and recalls
his father arriving late and driving
aimlessly around until the show had
inished. But the next time Jake asked
about his mother, Garry handed him
an old copy ofThe Australian
Women’s Weeklythat featured an
article about the serial killings.
“After all the lies, I was so relieved
to know my mother had not left
because she didn’t love me,” Jake
recalls sadly. “It had never made sense
to me that a mother who loved her
baby would leave him. But I felt so
angry because I’d spent years feeling
afraid and anxious, when the truth
would have been easier to handle.”
In 2012, the boy who had already
lost too much suffered another
crushing blow when his father passed
away. Garry was just 43. Three years
earlier, while out dirt racing with his
son, Garry had been involved in a
freak motorbike accident that left him
paralysed from the neck down. The
months in hospital and rehab made
him dependent on prescription
painkillers. After years of trying to feel
nothing, Garry no longer felt a thing
and ultimately lost all hope. Sitting
beside his dead father, Jake realised
this was the irst time he had ever seen
him free of pain, though his own was
so intense he had to be restrained
when undertakers removed Garry’s
body from the house.
Jake soon began to follow the same
destructive path of self-medication
that had not worked for his father and
would not work for him. “Counselling
never really helped,” says Jake. “But
I learned to create a iling cabinet in
my head and compartmentalise my
emotions so I could function.”
Today, Debbie Fream’s motherless
son still struggles to ind his place
in the world, though he dreams of
following her passion into a career
in IT. Recently, he inally watched the
Forensic Investigatorsshow that his
father had shielded him from. It shed
new light on the details of Denyer’s
horriic crimes, though his chilling
police interview raised other
questions. “What had been goingthrough Denyer’s head when he took
that knife and murdered a new mum
who just wanted to be a good mother
to her baby?” ponders Jake, now older
than his mum was when Denyer killed
her. His fantasies of revenge – of
waiting outside the prison gates –
have faded. What he really wants now
is to look Denyer in the eye and ask
him why. Perhaps, when Denyer
inally applies for parole, Jake will
get his chance, before urging the
authorities to reject the killer’s bid
for freedom.
Denyer has spent Jake
Blair’s entire lifetime behind
bars, while, in the world
outside prison, Jake
continues to serve a life
sentence of his own. He
remains sceptical about the
killer’s reinvention in prison
as a transgender woman
called ‘Paula’ Denyer who
blames her crimes on the
confusion surrounding her
sexual identity.
“The authorities were
right,” he observes scathingly, to
refuse Denyer’s request to legally
change his name, to wear make-up
and women’s clothes
or undergo hormone therapy for the
gender reassignment surgery that
will allow him to transition into the
woman of his dreams. It makes no
sense to Jake that a predator who
spent years fantasising about killing
women now wants to be what he most
reviled. Did Paul Denyer really covet
what he hated and kill because he
coveted it? Jake Blair doubts it.
“Paul or Paula, in the end Paul
Denyer remains a dangerous, sadistic
offender with a terrifying propensity
for violence,” he says. “We have seen
what he is capable of. He is where
he needs to be and he needs to stay
there.”AWWThe Frankston
Murdersby
Vikki Petraitis,
published by
Clan Destine Press,
RRP $29.95, is on
sale from June 1.Clockwise from top: Paul Denyer as
a young criminal; a press report five
years ago of his bid to become a
woman; his third victim, Natalie
Russell; and his first, Elizabeth Stevens.