A former police officer has shared his memory of being the first person through the door on the day the Claremont serial killer was raided and arrested in 2016.
Todd Bowler, who was the team leader of the Tactical Response Group, led numerous high-risk operations after joining WA Police between the disappearances of Jane Rimmer (1996) and Ciara Glennon (1997).
A sketch of Mr Edwards handcuffed and sitting against a wall in his Kewdale home as Detective Marrapodi places a search warrant into his lap.
“For 23 years, much like everyone else in Perth, I was still wondering how does this guy get away with it? Who is he, where is he?” he told Mix94.5’s Pete & Kymba for Breakfast.
On the day of the raid, Bowler said, police were in the area around 5am. Surveillance teams and snipers watched the house until he emerged.
Then a plainclothes officer knocked on his door and told Edwards he’d seen some kids mucking around with his Telstra car parked in front of his house.
Edwards answered the door and thanked him and went to check the car, then went back inside.
“We knew we were good to go,” Bowler said.
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Bowler rammed the door, which splintered after “a couple of rounds” and eventually broke.
Edwards, coming to investigate, had reached the front hall by the time they gained entry.
“In our mind, if it takes more than one hit to open the door, it feels like an eternity. But the reality is it’s about one and a half seconds to get in,” he said.
“He went down quite calmly, went straight down to the ground, face down, tied up, hands behind his back – and he was just looking at the carpet … at one stage, he just stuck his head up, had a look at one of my teammates and said ‘So, what’s this all about then?’ – just so casual.
“If I was to say what relief looked like, it looked like a bit of relief.”
Bowler said Edwards was a “hoarder”, with boxes waist-high through the hallway and rooms full of boxes to the extent that the house was hard to walk through.
Edwards was convicted in 2020 after a lengthy trial.
