The Truro Murders (Part 8): How They Captured a Murderer

Christopher Robin Worrell died in a car accident near Millicent. This ended the killing spree known as the “The Truro Murders”. The murders had stopped, but the women killed were still considered missing persons, and to their families and the police, could still be very much alive.

James Miller, while at the funeral of his lover and best friend, Worrell, made a surprising remark to Worrell’s grieving girlfriend Amelia. Miller told Amelia that Worrell had a blood clot on his brain. This opened up a conversation with Amelia, where Miller confessed to his part in the murders and his suspicion that Worrell’s murderous killing spree was in part, because of the blood clot.

Two years later, the police had their first report of skeletal remains outside Truro, and it wasn’t long until more remains were found. A reward was offered to the public for information on the murders leading to an arrest, the reward totalled $40, 000 and was offered by The Advertiser newspaper and the State Government.

Amelia came forward under the name “Angela” and offered information. Her call would eventually solve the murderous spree, that otherwise may have remained unresolved.
In her official police statement, Amelia accused Miller of saying that the victims “were only rags and weren’t worth much”, which Miller, during the ensuing court case, strenuously denied.

Police began to watch Miller, even though they had no real evidence of him being involved in the murders and only the hear-say of a witness. It wasn’t long until they picked him up for questioning. Miller would make no admission to the murders and gave vague misleading answers. Eventually, he succumbed to the pressure applied when shown a photo of himself and Amelia together, a person he claimed her had never met. After six long hours of questioning and pressure from the police, Miller finally said:
“If I can clear this up will everyone else be left out of it? I suppose I’ve got nothing else to look forward to whatever way it goes. I guess I’m the one who got mixed up in all of this. Where do you want me to start?”
“I drove around with Chris and we picked up girls around the city. Chris would talk to the girls and get them into the car and we would take them for a drive and take them to Truro and Chris would rape them and kill them. But you’ve got to believe that I had nothing to do with the actual killings of those girls.”

Miller then confessed to knowing where the bodies of three more young women lay.

 

The same evening, at about 10pm, the police drove Miller from Adelaide to Truro to show them where the bodies are buried. Someone leaked the journey to the media, and two reporters were waiting in Truro for the police convoy to arrive.


Their next stop was Port Gawler, where Miller pointed out the burial place of Deborah Lamb. Police extracted her body and took it away for forensic examination.

The last body Miller took the police to was that of Tania Kenny who was buried near Gillman. It took police quite some time to find Tania’s body in the area Miller had described, but eventually, her remains were uncovered and identified.
Miller was charged with four counts of murder, and after further examination, three more counts were added to his charges.

The trial lasted 6 weeks, and on March 12th 1980, Miller was found guilty of six charges of murder, but acquitted for the murder of Veronica Knight. Despite this, Miller claimed he was innocent of murder.

“I was there at the time and for that, I am guilty of an unforgivable felony, I fully deserve the life sentences I am currently serving. I am serving out a life sentence for Chris. But I never killed any of those girls. That’s the truth.”

“They can give me life for knowing about the murders and not reporting them. But they charged me with murder as a payback for not informing on Worrell. It’s a load of bullshit. At least one of the jurists at my trials knows the truth. In 1987 he paid a couple of hundred dollars out of his own pocket to help hire a lawyer to petition the Attorney-General for a retrial. If a jurist does this, he must have a fair idea of what really happened.”


“Nobody turns into a cold-blooded murderer overnight or helps commit murder. I’m just an ordinary thief, no killer. I have never been a violent man.”


Miller eventually died in custody.

Follow on us Facebook:

www.facebook.com/TheHauntsofAdelaide

Or buy the book by Haunting: Australia’s Allen Tiller – The Haunts of Adelaide: History, Mystery and the Paranormal – available in traditional book format or on Amazon Kindle at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Haunts-Adelaide-Allen-Tiller/dp/0994177895

The Truro Murders (Part 5): The Victims: Deborah L and Deborah S

The Truro Murders (Part 5): The Victims: Deborah L and Deborah S.

Two men, driving in a non-descript car on a murderous spree of young ladies in Adelaide. In early 1977, their killing spree suddenly turned up a notch with four killings in a week…

Deborah Lamb – Aged 20

In one week, three young women had lost their lives, it was now February 12th 1977, and The Truro Murderers were about to add another to their ever-growing list.

Whilst cruising around the city in their car, the two men noticed a young hitchhiker near the pinball arcades on Hindley Street. They offered her a ride as far north as Port Gawler.
They drove out to the beach, and the driver, as usual, got out and went for a walk on his own.
Upon his return, he found his younger friend pushing sand and shell grit into a shallow hole he had dug, and no sign of the young woman they had just given come out herewith.

It wasn’t until much later during a forensic search of the site that it was discovered the young woman had a pair of pantyhose wrapped around her head and jaw seven times, and that it was most likely she was alive when she was buried. Her death would have come from asphyxiation from choking on the sand.

Deborah Skuse

 February 19th, 1977. Debbie Skuse has recently left her boyfriend, a criminal who had spent time in Adelaide’s Gaols and had become friends with the future “Truro Murderers”.
Debbie was unlucky, the two men came to her house looking for her ex-boyfriend, and found her alone. They offered to take her away for the weekend to Mount Gambier.
While down south, the good looking guy became very angry, what the driver would later describe as one of his “black moods”, and decided the three of them should return to Adelaide.
After sinking a few beers, the three began the drive back to Adelaide, with the younger man driving the car at high speed recklessly through blind corners near Millicent.

An argument broke out between the three of them over the way he was driving, which turned into a screaming match. What stopped the argument was a blowout in one of the tires.
While trying to avoid the oncoming traffic, the young man pulled the valiant off the road at high speed, causing it to drift, and then roll over many times. The three passengers, not wearing seatbelts, spilled out of the car onto the grass.

Witnesses to the accident rushed to help, but it was too late for the younger man and for Debbie, both were dead upon impact, but the other man survived with a broken shoulder – he was taken to hospital in shock.

Deborah Skuse had met her end in the car of The Truro Murderers but had been saved from the horrific fate of the other young women who had been killed in the old Valiant’s backseat; which could have possibly been her fate if the accident had not happened.

The good looking young man, Christopher Worrell was buried at Centennial Park Cemetery in Adelaide’s south. At his funeral, “The Driver” – James Miller, spoke to Worrell’s girlfriend, Amelia, and confessed the duo’s sins…this would later lead to his arrest.


Next Week: The Truro Murders (Part 6): Christopher Worell

Researched and written by Allen  Tiller © 2015

Follow on us Facebook:
www.facebook.com/TheHauntsofAdelaide


Or buy the book by Haunting: Australia’s Allen Tiller – The Haunts of Adelaide: History, Mystery and the Paranormal – available in traditional book format or on Amazon Kindle at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Haunts-Adelaide-Allen-Tiller/dp/0994177895