Latest episode of Life and Crimes with Andrew Rule
Story of “Donna”, who along with her friend were gang-raped multiple times on Melbourne Cup Day 1976.
They’d travelled from home in the outer eastern suburbs to attend a rock concert at Festival Hall. They were both 14yo.
The met up with an older boy (he was driving so at least 18yo) that they’d met a few times before. His name was Wayne, an Anglo-Saxon, and he drove a beige station wagon. It had tools in the back, he said he was an apprentice carpenter. He was from the western suburbs.
Wayne was the bait, sent by the gang to capture the victims. Upon telling them he was going to take them to a party, the two girls were instead bundled into another car with a group of men they did not know.
The car was a red V8 Torana with a large TORANA sticker across the top of the windscreen.
The girls were driven to multiple locations in the northern and western suburbs throughout the day and gang raped by groups of men - up to 15 men in total.
The men were Greek or Italian in appearance and spoke in those languages at times.
They were eventually dumped at the North Melbourne railway station and never saw any of the attackers again.
The two girls never reported the incident to police, following the advice of their parents not to do so.
In 1992 Donna finally went to the police and gave a ten-hour statement.
She later went to Rule for help and he was able to track down Wayne and some others. The police were not in a position to make arrests due to a lack of evidence.
The case file with Donna’s original interview has also been lost multiple times in the intervening years.
Rule is hoping to find anybody who may be able to give evidence about what happened. Of particular interest is one man who was with the group but did not take part in the assaults, and encouraged the leaders of the group to let the girls go.
The men would be around 70yo now, so some are doubtlessly no longer with us.
The suspects would certainly be known to somebody - a very distinctive group, with a very distinctive car that people will remember. Melbourne was a much smaller place then and they were from the northern or western suburbs. It’s just a case of whether anybody has any information.
Story of “Donna”, who along with her friend were gang-raped multiple times on Melbourne Cup Day 1976.
They’d travelled from home in the outer eastern suburbs to attend a rock concert at Festival Hall. They were both 14yo.
The met up with an older boy (he was driving so at least 18yo) that they’d met a few times before. His name was Wayne, an Anglo-Saxon, and he drove a beige station wagon. It had tools in the back, he said he was an apprentice carpenter. He was from the western suburbs.
Wayne was the bait, sent by the gang to capture the victims. Upon telling them he was going to take them to a party, the two girls were instead bundled into another car with a group of men they did not know.
The car was a red V8 Torana with a large TORANA sticker across the top of the windscreen.
The girls were driven to multiple locations in the northern and western suburbs throughout the day and gang raped by groups of men - up to 15 men in total.
The men were Greek or Italian in appearance and spoke in those languages at times.
They were eventually dumped at the North Melbourne railway station and never saw any of the attackers again.
The two girls never reported the incident to police, following the advice of their parents not to do so.
In 1992 Donna finally went to the police and gave a ten-hour statement.
She later went to Rule for help and he was able to track down Wayne and some others. The police were not in a position to make arrests due to a lack of evidence.
The case file with Donna’s original interview has also been lost multiple times in the intervening years.
Rule is hoping to find anybody who may be able to give evidence about what happened. Of particular interest is one man who was with the group but did not take part in the assaults, and encouraged the leaders of the group to let the girls go.
The men would be around 70yo now, so some are doubtlessly no longer with us.
The suspects would certainly be known to somebody - a very distinctive group, with a very distinctive car that people will remember. Melbourne was a much smaller place then and they were from the northern or western suburbs. It’s just a case of whether anybody has any information.
