The producers of this podcast recognised the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.

They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.

Please be advised this podcast contains descriptions of graphic violence

and it's not appropriate for children. I was working as a receptionist in a Melbourne brothel in 1999, and our boss was a beautiful lady called Vicky,

who invited all of us to a staff dinner once a month.

She'd often ask a guest speaker to come along

to talk about various safety and self-care issues, particularly pertinent to sex workers,

and one of those speakers was a young woman called Nikki Patterson, who was in the process

of setting up a counselling practice in her own home. Nikki was a big hit at the dinner, which

can't be said for every speaker.

She was softly spoken and gentle and she made the girls feel like they deserved to be listened to

and that nothing they had to say would shock her. She was very good at her job. Everyone took one

of her business cards and a lot of the girls even followed through and called her about

appointments. About a week later, the girls started complaining that she wasn't getting back to

them. It never occurred to any of us that the murdered woman we'd heard about in the news was Nikki,

let alone that she was the latest victim of a vicious predator who'd been attacking women in our community since he was 15 years old.

Peter Dupas is an Australian serial killer who currently resides in the Port Phillip Correctional Centre in the western suburbs of Melbourne.

But we now know that he'd been raping, assaulting and murdering women for 30 years by the time he was finally sent to jail for good.

His last victim, Nikki Patterson, was actually the first murder for which he was convicted.

We spoke recently to former homicide and arson detective Jeff Maher, who investigated Nikki's murder,

and we started by asking him how Nicole Patterson and Peter Dupass crossed paths.

She started her psychotherapy and set a house up as a clinic, the front room as a clinic,

...