True Crime Tuesdays: The Claremont Murders
Review Overview
Performances
8Efficiency
7Sentimentality
7Helen Archer | On 20, Aug 2024
For over two decades in Perth, Australia, a serial murderer walked freely amongst residents. The first hint that something was wrong in the upmarket area of Claremont was the 1996 disappearance of 18-year-old Sarah Spiers, after leaving the Bayview nightclub to get a taxi home. That was soon followed by 23-year old Jane Rimmer, whose body was found two months after she went missing, then 27-year-old Ciara Glennon in 1997, found three days after she disappeared. Both women had been drinking at the Continental Hotel before they were murdered, and their bodies were recovered in bushland miles from where they were taken.
This no-frills retelling of the murders and the investigation that followed is done in strict chronological order, starting with a home invasion on Valentine’s Day 1988, and ending with the killer’s trial and sentencing in 2020. Over the course of two 80-minute episodes, the search for answers – a long, drawn-out process of false leads, dead ends and wrongful accusations – is documented in a swift, no-nonsense manner. Though there is much to pack in, writers Justin Monjo and Michaeley O’Brien don’t seem to skip over much, adopting a very procedural approach, while director Peter Andrikidis allows for the occasional personal touches – some of which work better than others.
The duo at the heart of Episode 1, Detectives Gavin Wyatt (Aaron Glenane) and Bobbi McAllister (Laura Gordon) have an underlying, somewhat superfluous sexual tension, which perhaps goes some way to explaining their certainty at suspect number one, Lance Williams (Tom O’Sullivan), after Bobbi, working as a decoy, gets into his car and becomes convinced that he is the murderer. But by the end of the first episode, as the original case comes to a close and the detectives go their separate ways, the identity of the true killer is revealed. Cold case detectives take up the case in Episode 2, and, through their expertise in the more modern elements of law enforcement – DNA and fibre analysis, among other things – the investigation is kickstarted back to life.
There is, too, the inclusion of the media, in the form of Alison Fan (Catherine Van-Davies), the TV reporter who covered the case – a great portrayal of a late 90s newsperson, yet who is, here, not given much to do. But the heart of the show is the parents of Sarah Spiers, played heart-rendingly by Kate Ritchie and Erik Thomson. Their pain and endurance – exacerbated by the fact that their daughter’s remains have never been found – form the moral backbone of the series, informing Detective Wyatt’s increasing obsession with achieving some sort of justice for them.
While The Claremont Murders may seem dry to some, it does make a welcome change from more sensationalised true crime dramatisations – there is no recreation of the murders, just speculation of the way in which they were done. The emotional toll is at the forefront, yet it never descends into sentimentality. It is a rather old-fashioned way to tell the story of a fairly recent crime, recreated without pomp or ceremony, unpretentious and to-the-point. And, while it perhaps won’t appeal to a younger audience, it is a quietly memorable, sensitively rendered piece of television.