NSW Health Pathology’s Forensic and Analytical Science Service provided DNA results which assisted NSW police to track down the man known as the ‘Beast of Bondi’, responsible for a series of sexual assaults across Sydney’s eastern suburbs dating back to the 1980s.

When NSW Police con­firmed they had final­ly iden­ti­fied the ser­i­al sex offend­er known as the ‘Beast of Bon­di’ in Sep­tem­ber 2022, our team of foren­sic DNA experts in Syd­ney knew their work had helped solve a cold case span­ning four decades.

The male offend­er tar­get­ed women aged between 14 and 55, enter­ing their homes or abduct­ing them while they were out jog­ging or walking.

The cas­es were assigned to police Strike Force Doreen and includ­ed 31 attempt­ed and actu­al sex­u­al assault offences between 1985 and 2001.

“Strike Force Doreen has been with us for such a long time,” explains Car­ole Field, the DNA data­base man­ag­er at the Foren­sic and Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS).

“The whole lab gets excit­ed when some­thing like this is solved.

“I always felt we were going to resolve these cas­es, but you just don’t know.”

Ini­tial­ly, attempts were made to match the man’s DNA pro­file across Aus­tralia and inter­na­tion­al­ly, but it wasn’t until advances in DNA tech­nol­o­gy that the foren­sic experts were able to iden­ti­fy a num­ber of men linked to the DNA pro­file of the offender.

The break­through came from a com­bi­na­tion of analysing famil­ial links from DNA sam­ples and tra­di­tion­al police work to trace the offender’s extend­ed fam­i­ly tree.

Foren­sic exam­i­na­tions, includ­ing addi­tion­al Y‑STR test­ing, revealed the DNA was linked to a man who died at the age of 66 ear­li­er this year.

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, it was con­firmed his DNA matched the sus­pect profile.

Over the years, media report­ing on the inci­dents referred to the sus­pect as ‘the Cen­ten­ni­al Park rapist’ (1980s), the Bon­di rapist (1990s), the track­suit rapist (2000) and ‘the Bon­di Beast’ (2016).

Ms Field said the close work­ing rela­tion­ship between the DNA experts at FASS and NSW Police con­tributes to suc­cess­ful outcomes.

“I think the inter­ac­tion between our teams was real­ly use­ful, and that has improved over time,” she said.

“We have a cold case coor­di­na­tor; Dr David Bruce and the police have a ded­i­cat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion team.

“We have a great rela­tion­ship, and we reg­u­lar­ly meet to dis­cuss not just this case, but many aspects of the sci­en­tif­ic DNA analy­sis and capabilities.”

Ms Field said as time goes on, the DNA data­base grows in size and will become an increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful tool to gen­er­ate DNA links and give police the infor­ma­tion they need to solve many oth­er cold cases.

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