Did Jill Meagher Have To Die?

We all remember the CCTV footage that showed the moments leading up to Jill Meagher’s rape and murder at the hands of Adrian Bayley.

A woman walks along a street in Brunswick, returning home after a night out with friends.

She is captured on several CCTV cameras as she makes her way home. Behind her, a man follows. The woman is Jill Meagher, and the man is her murderer Adrian Bayley.

A Timeline

With only grainy CCTV footage, minimal witness statements and Bayley’s interview to go by, it was a challenge for police to create a solid timeline around Jill Meagher’s murder. However, as more and more Australians became aware of the case, and particularly more people in Melbourne came forward, they were able to piece together the movements of victim and murderer.

At 1:30am on Saturday September 22nd 2012, Jill left Bar Etiquette in Sydney Road, Brunswick to walk home. A CCTV camera located in the Dutchess Boutique captures Jill walking along the road. Bayley is behind her.

At 1:38am Bayley allegedly grabs Jill and drags her into a laneway off Hope St. Between 1:40am and 1:45am neighbours reportedly hear a woman yelling from the laneway, but it stops after a few minutes. By 2am Jill’s husband Tom starts to call her on her mobile phone, knowing that she should be home by now. At 4am, when she still hasn’t returned, he leaves his house to go and look for her.

Police allege that at 4:22am Bayley, who had left the scene to go home and pick up a shovel, returns to where Jill’s body is. He loads her into the trunk of his car. At 6am, having called his wife and searched for her without success, Tom reports Jill Meagher missing.

The next day the search starts in earnest, with Jill’s workmates at the ABC asking anyone who might have seen her to get in touch with the authorities, who have also put out a public call about her disappearance. On the following Monday, police find her handbag in a laneway off Hope St. that had already been extensively searched, leading them to believe it was planted there. Based on this, and other evidence, the homicide squad takes over the case.

On Tuesday the Meagher home is searched, and the CCTV footage from the Dutchess Boutique is released to the public. By Thursday, police have arrested Adrian Bayley.

He is currently on parole for a number of sex crimes, and matches the description of the man following Jill. After interviewing him, the police travel to an area north of Melbourne, where they find Jill Meagher’s body in a shallow grave. She had been raped and strangled.

Why Was He Free?

One of the biggest shocks to come out of the Meagher murder case was that Adrian Bayley was on parole for other rapes at the time that he committed the murder. In fact, Bayley’s violent sexual crimes span more than two decades.

At just 19 years old he raped two teenagers, one of whom was only 16.

He also tried to rape a 16-year-old hitchhiker. For this he was sentenced to five years in June of 1991, of which he served just 22 months. Bayley later claimed that he faked his way through a sex offender’s program to secure the early release.

By September of 2000 he started a wave of sex crimes in the St Kilda area, targeting sex workers. In just sex months he raped five prostitutes, and during his trial the presiding judge noted that Bayley had a “gross sexual appetite” and that his crimes had caused his victims “horrifying distress”.

When Bayley murdered Jill, he was on parole for those St Kilda crimes. In fact, he had violated that parole just seven months earlier by getting into a fight at a cafe. However, as the crime was not a sexual one, the parole board decided to issue him with a warning instead. After his arrest for Jill Meagher’s murder Bayley said: “How many chances does a person need? They should never have let me out.”

The Result

Jill Meagher will never experience the joys of growing older, of experiencing different stages of her life. She was loved by her friends and family, known for her sharp wit and happy personality. Yet in her last moments, just 550 metres from the safety of her home, she experienced the violence and depravity of a man who should not have been out on parole. She paid for the mistake of the justice system with her life. But there may be a silver lining yet.

In the days after her death and the discovery of her body, an estimated 30,000 Victorians staged a peaceful march down the last street that Jill had walked down while she was alive.

They were protesting violence against women, and drawing attention to the fact that few feel safe on the streets at night. The case went to the heart of many in the state, who felt that the random crime could have happened to anyone.

As the trial of Bayley continued, the Victorian government admitted that existing laws had failed in the case of Jill, and the tougher measures were needed. They went on to make a number of law changes in the months that followed Jill Meagher’s death, eventually making it a criminal offence to breach parole.

Jill’s killer Adrian Bayley was sentenced to life in prison with a 35-year non-parole period. In May of 2015 this non-parole period was extended to 43 years after the courts found him guilty of three other rapes. He’ll never walk free on the street again.