Victorian killer's bloody history

KILLER'S TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION

Peter Norris Dupas will spend the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of murdering three women and there's suspicion he was involved in other killings.

VICTIMS

* Mersina Halvagis, 25, was stabbed to death in 1997 while she tended her grandmother's grave at Fawkner Cemetery in Melbourne's north. Sentence (2010): life without parole

* Prostitute Margaret Maher, 40, was strangled in October 1997, her mutilated body - with one severed breast - found dumped with rubbish on a back road at Somerton in Melbourne's north. Sentence (2004): life without parole

* In 2002, he was convicted of the mutilation murder in April 1999 of 28-year-old psychotherapist Nicole Amanda Patterson, 28, was found dead in her Northcote home with both her breasts cut off. Sentence (2000): life without parole

* Dupas has also been convicted of rape on three separate occasions, including in 1974, 1980, and the March 1985 attack of a 21-year-old woman who was sunbaking at Rye beach. Other crimes include false imprisonment.

* When 15-years-old Dupas repeatedly stabbed a neighbour, who survived, after asking to borrow a knife

SUSPECTED VICTIMS

* Kathleen Downes, 95, was found in a pool of blood beside her bed at Melbourne's Brunswick Lodge Nursing Home on December 31, 1997. Dupas charged with murder but trial scrapped (2019) due to poor health of key witness

* Helen McMahon was bashed to death with a rock at Rye beach in 1985

* Renita Brunton, 31, was stabbed 106 times in 1993 when attacked in the kitchen at the rear of her Sunbury second-hand clothing store

* Two female corpses were mutilated at the Austin Hospital in January 1969