Police release footage of Claremont murder victim
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Jane Rimmer is seen talking to the unidentified man outside the Continental Hotel in Claremont.
Western Australian police have released previously unseen video footage of a man seen with one of the victims of the Claremont serial killer just minutes before the victim disappeared.
The closed circuit security vision shows 23-year-old Jane Rimmer standing outside the Continental Hotel in Claremont, Perth, about midnight on June 9, 1996, when a man approaches her.
The pair has a brief interaction before the camera switches angles and the man disappears from the screen.
Police say the man is the only one in the footage they have not been able to identify. They describe him as a person of interest, not a suspect.
They are asking for him to come forward or anyone else who remembers him to contact police.
Waste of time
The West Australian Attorney General, Jim McGinty, believes releasing the footage 12 years after the serial killings is a waste of time.
"It would have been of minimal value given it was a grainy, poor image taken from behind," he said.
"It would have been of minimal value 12 years ago. I think it's of no value today."
Murders history
Police believe 18-year-old Sarah Spiers was the first victim of the killer.
She disappeared on January 26, 1996 after leaving Club Bayview in Claremont. She told her friends she was tired and was going to get a taxi home. She has not been seen since.
Just six months later, Ms Rimmer vanished after drinking at the Continental Hotel in Claremont, as did 27-year-old Ciara Glennon on March 15, 1997.
Ms Rimmer's body was found by a mother and her children picking flowers in bushland at Wellard, south of Perth, and Ms Glennon's body was found in bush at Eglington, north of Perth.
The murders paralysed Perth and sparked one of the biggest murder investigations in the state's history.
Police had identified dozens of suspects in the murder case, but publicly focused their attention on a handful of suspects, including a middle-aged public servant who lived with his parents in Cottesloe.
There have been more than 10 independent reviews of the Claremont investigation by expert crime fighters from the eastern states and from around the world.
