David and Catherine Birnie were an Australian couple. Couple used to live in Perth, Western Australia. In 1986, they brutally murdered young couples.
Four women at their home in 1986, and attempted to murder a fifth. These crimes were referred to in the press as the Moorhouse murders, after the Birnies’ address at 3 Moorhouse Street in Willagee, a suburb of Perth. David and Catherine Birnie Murder Stories: Murders, Crimes.
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David and Catherine Birnie Murders
The Birnies abducted five women, aged between 15 and 31, Over a period of five weeks. All of the victims, except for one, were raped and murdered. The sole exception was their final victim, who escaped the day after her abduction and led police to the Birnie house, thus ending their crime spree.
David offered to sell her cheap tyres for her car and gave her his phone number. On 6 October 1986, she went to the Birnies’ house. She was gagged, chained to the bed and raped by David while Catherine observed. She was taken to Gleneagle, near Albany Highway in Bedfordale where she was raped again and strangled with a nylon cord.
He then stabbed her, thinking that it would speed up decomposition as he had “read that in a book somewhere.” They buried her in a shallow grave. She was set to receive her degree in psychology from the university one year after her murder.
The fugitive couple kidnapped 16-year-old Susannah Candy while she was hitchhiking along Stirling Highway in Claremont, Australia, two weeks after Mary Neilson’s death. She was a straight A student at Hollywood Senior High School and lived at home with her parents and siblings in Nedlands, Australia.
On November 1st, they encountered 31-year-old Noelene Patterson as she was stopped beside her car on the Canning Highway, having run out of fuel while on her way home from work as a bar manager at the Nedlands Golf Club. She had a knife to her throat and was bound when she got inside the vehicle. She was told not to move if she wanted to live.
Catherine quickly became jealous and made an ultimatum: David would have to kill Patterson or Catherine would kill herself. He immediately forced an overdose of sleeping pills down Patterson’s throat and strangled her while she slept. They took her body to the forest but buried it away from the others. Catherine reportedly got great pleasure from throwing sand on Patterson’s face.
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Where Are David and Catherine Birnie Now?
David Birnie pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and one count each of abduction and rape.
David Birnie Death
David Birnie was found dead in his cell at Casuarina Prison on 7 October 2005 at 4:30am (WST). He was 54 years old.
Where Is Catherine Birnie Now?
Catherine Birnie is incarcerated at Bandyup Women’s Prison in Western Australia. She has performed in a prison production of Nunsense while imprisoned and worked as a prison librarian since her conviction. Her parole application was denied in 2007, with then Attorney-General Jim McGinty stating that her release was unlikely while he stayed in office.
Her case was to be reviewed again in January 2010, but on 14 March 2009, new Western Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter decided she would stay in jail for life after requests from the victims’ families.
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