David and Catherine Birnie

 VICTIMS: 4

Australia’s own ‘killer couple’. In fact, much like the West case about ten years later, the case was even dubbed the “House of Horrors.” Unimaginative headline writers really give me the shits.

Anyway, to the story of this rather brutal couple.

I guess we should start during the couples teenage years. Sometime very early in life David and Catherine found each other. Both had an insatiable sexual appetite, and also had a problem with stealing stuff from locked houses, so I guess they made the perfect couple. Which makes the next bit seem pretty strange - they broke up and went on to marry other people.

So, for some time they had separate lives. And despite spending more than a few years inside a nuthouse, David seemed fairly harmless. Same goes for Catherine (except without the psychiatric treatment).

But in 1985 the two met again after all their years apart. But did they make up for lost time or what. Within weeks Catherine moved in with David, leaving behind her husband and FIVE kiddies. And I guess it goes without saying that David dumped his wife like a sack of shit.

Well, despite the fact that the sex was probably pretty damn good between the two lovers, something was missing. Something... well something a little different from the practices most of us enjoy. He needed another woman. And Catherine needed excitement.

Mary Neilson paid a visit to the Birnie’s to pick up some tires that David had advertised in a local paper when the urge to try out some new sexual deviance’s came across David. He pulled out a knife and proceeded to rape poor Mary while Catherine sat down and watched the show. Apparently this attack was unplanned, and it was purely David acting on his urges.

Not sure what to do with the now traumatised Mary, it was decided that they would drive her out to the Glen Eagle National Park. Once arriving at their destination, Mary was raped again by David. The couple then decided that it was too much of a risk to let Mary go, so she was strangled (apparently it was a co-operative strangulation, whatever that means) then sexually mutilated before being buried.

And with that I guess the Birnie’s had themselves a new sex game. One that seemed too good to not try out every now and then.

Not long after Neilson, David and Catherine found another victim, a fifteen year old hitch hiker. This time the couple kept their new sex toy for three days before Catherine became jealous of the bond the girl was forming with her new husband and strangled her.

Noelene Patterson, a good friend of the couple, was next to join in the fun and games that was the Birnie’s sex life. She was forced into David’s car at knife point then driven out to the couples house in Willagee. Over the next three days she too was subjected to, well I don’t really think we need details do we? I reckon you can all guess at what went on in that house, in that bedroom, over the three days. Eventually David became tired with this ‘sex toy’ and drugged her with sleeping tablets before strangling her.

On November 4, the couple picked up a new toy to replace Patterson. Her name was Denise Brown. She was forced into two days of degradation before David and Catherine tired of her and stabbed her to death.

But the end was to come just six days later when the couple picked up a fifth intended victim. She was a teenager who they had kept for the maximum three days, but they got sloppy, or cocky, or both, and left her alone in the house just too long. She was able to escape.

The teenage, half naked, made it to a supermarket in Fremantle, not too far from the Birnie’s house, and reported that she had been held captive by two mad people who had repeatedly raped her. The police were straight on to the case, and with the girls help soon had David and Catherine Birnie in custody.

When arrested there was no struggle. No attempts to deny the charges. The Birnie’s accepted their fate. Within a few hours both had confessed to all four murders, and had even led police to the shallow graves of the victims.

On March 3, 1987, the Birnie’s stood trial. Both pleaded guilty and it was all over in just over 30 minutes. Both received life (which is just over 20 years minimum in Australia)
 

MY OPINION

I think this section should have started two paragraphs ago, but anyway, the Birnie's are a pretty much ignored couple down here in Australia. They very rarely get a mention in any Aussie crime books, and only show up in the papers whenever we get a new murderer. That sucks when you think that John Glover, Julian Knight and Ivan Milat always seem to get some mention every few months. I guess the fact that I would mention them alongside these guys means that I rate them pretty highly. Don't know why, but these sexual homiciding couples always appeal to me. It's probably lucky that I'm single, huh?