Police probe whether Perth murder suspect was serial killer in UK

The prime suspect in one of Perth's most notorious murders is also suspected of being a serial killer in the UK.

In 1994, Pamela Lawrence was killed at her Mosman Park jewellery shop, and local man Andrew Mallard was wrongfully convicted of her murder in one of Australia's worst miscarriages of justice.

Sentenced to 20 years, he spent 12 years in jail before being exonerated and freed in 2006, thanks to a painstaking campaign spearheaded by investigative journalist Colleen Egan.

A subsequent cold case review identified Simon Rochford as the likely culprit in Ms Lawrence's murder.

Rochford died by suicide in 2006, the night after he was named as a person of interest in an ABC television news story. 

At the time he was serving a 15-year jail sentence for murdering his girlfriend Brigitta Dickens, who was killed seven weeks after Ms Lawrence in similar circumstances. 

Mr Mallard died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles in 2019.

But new details have been uncovered in the documentary Mark of a Murderer, hosted by Ms Egan, who is now a state Labor MP and who has followed the case for 28 years.

They include recently unearthed information that Rochford was in close physical proximity to at least three suspicious deaths in the UK in the years before he moved to Australia.

Egan travelled to the UK for the documentary, tracking Rochford's movements in his hometown of Shroud, Gloucestershire, where he spent his early adulthood.

"We knew so little about him and so little about his life back in the UK," she said.

Unsolved deaths

In the UK, Egan worked with a forensics expert and criminologist to uncover the circumstances behind a number of unsolved crimes, prompting local police to investigate.

"We found him in proximity to three suspicious deaths that have not been solved since 1989, 1992 and 1993 when they occurred," Egan said.

She spoke with Rochford's former friends, an employer and others who had suspicions he had committed crimes while in Stroud.

In one case, they discovered he had lived on the same street as a university student who suspiciously died in a house fire. 

They also found a journal kept by someone who had been investigating that death at the time, which had asked questions of a man named 'Simon'.

According to the journal, 'Simon' was also said to be linked to another death in 1993.

"A lot of what we collected was information that was very new to the Gloucestershire police," Ms Egan said.

"As soon as they [police] saw our dossier, they thought that Simon Rochford was clearly somebody who was of interest to them, who they didn't even realise existed."

"From what the police told us, in the UK it was almost unheard of to receive a dossier such as ours and use that to reopen cold cases from decades ago."

Beyond the police review, the documentary examines how wrongful convictions and system failures can be minimised.

Push for independent body

More than 70 wrongful convictions have been documented in Australia between 1922 to 2015.

"The effect on families, not only the person who has been imprisoned, but also the victim's families — to go through this long ordeal, is heartbreaking," Egan said.

The documentary is part of a campaign to create a Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in Australia, similar to those established in the UK, New Zealand and Canada.

Egan believes an independent commission makes sense.

That view is backed in the documentary by former High Court justice Michael Kirby.

"The jury is a wonderful system, but it can make mistakes," he said.

"Institutions need to be strengthened, those mistakes need to be minimised and there have been too many of them in recent times."

Egan acknowledged the failings of the UK's CCRC, which has been criticised for overlooking cases and lengthy delays, but said it was still a model worth emulating.

"It really has resulted in hundreds of people in the UK having their cases referred back to the court and being exonerated," she said.

Mark of a Murderer will premiere on Monday 16 November at 8:30pm on ABC TV, with all episodes available to stream on ABC iview.