98 The Australian Women’s Weekly | JUNE 2018
THIS PAGE: NEWSPIX. FAIRFAX MEDIA. BABY JAKE PHOTO SUPPLIED AND USED WITH PERMISSION. OPPOSITE PAGE: PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES GEER.
astonishing turnaround and admitted
to all three murders after being
warned DNA evidence would identify
Natalie Russell’s killer.
Why did he do it, the detectives
asked.“I wanted to know what it felt
like,” replied Denyer casually. “I hate
women.”
In December 1993, at the Victorian
Supreme Court, Denyer was jailed for
life after Justice Frank Vincent heard
there was no treatment for a killer
with a sadistic personality disorder
who murdered for pleasure. He later
appealed against the sentence and was
granted a minimum non-parole term
of 30 years.
Now, with Denyer’s non-parole
term just ive years away, the young
man who made headlines as a baby
has stepped back into the spotlight to
tell The Weekly his mother’s killer
should never be released.
Today, Jake’s name is virtually
unknown beyond a few remaining
relatives and a handful of friends who
live in Mount Gambier, the South
Australian town that Jake Blair has
called home for the past nine years.
This solitary young man cuts a
vulnerable igure as he sits alone in the
autumn sunshine, staring out across
the town’s famous Blue Lake and
relecting on a life unlived.
“This is what I lost – the life I was
born into,” he says, producing an
album of faded photographs and
pointing to a snapshot of his parents,
Debbie Fream and Garry Blair, 24,
taken on June 26, 1993, while his
mother was in labour. Other snapshots
follow, capturing the happiness of two
young parents proudly cradling their
irst-born child and embracing a new
chapter in their lives.
It is what Vikki Petraitis, author of
The Frankston Murders, describes
as the loss of limitless potential and
ininite possibilities. “There is a tragedy
about motherless children,” she says in
her book, which is being re-released to
coincide with the 25th anniversary of
Denyer’s crimes. “That indescribable
thing a mother brings – unconditional
love and understanding based on
primal connection – is forever lost
with the death of a mother.”
Jake was asleep in his cradle on the
night of July 8 when his mother
nipped out to the local shops for some
milk and never came back. At irst, the
police speculated that the missing
mother might have been suffering
from postnatal depression and had
sought refuge with a friend. It was a
theory they dismissed the following
day when Debbie’s abandoned car
was discovered in a nearby street with
blood stains on the front seat.
Jake’s father, Garry, had last seen
Debbie when he’d left for work at
1pm the previous day. She had been
standing on the front porch with their
baby in her arms, reminding him, as
they kissed goodbye, that she had
invited a workmate around for dinner
to show off their beautiful son.
Garry never saw her again. Shortly
before 7pm, Debbie realised she had
no milk for the omelette she was
cooking and asked her friend to watch
the baby while she popped out for a
few minutes to the shop. At 7pm she
parked her grey Nissan Pulsar outside
her local milk bar and raced inside,
unaware she was being watched.
One hour earlier, Paul Denyer had
made a bungled attempt to snatch
another woman near Seaford Station.
He was on the prowl again when he
noticed Debbie dash into the shop,
leaving her car unlocked. She was
immediately in his sights. Denyer,
who once slit the throat of the family’s
cat and hung it from a tree, had been
stalking women in the area for at
least three years. In February 1993,
he had broken into a neighbour’s
home, slaughtered her kittens and
scrawled death threats on her walls
in blood. He had been fantasising
about killing women since he was 14,
and his fantasies became horrifying
reality with the murder of Elizabeth
Stevens on June 11. He had slashed
the teenager’s throat and carved a
sinister criss-cross pattern into her
chest with a knife.
Now he slid unnoticed into the
back of Debbie’s car and, when she
Above: Paul Denyer is taken into custody.
Below right: Debbie giving baby Jake a bath.
“This is what I lost - the life I was born into,”
says Jake. Top right: his father, Garry Blair.