Jill Meagher

Case background and investigation

Jill Meagher, 29, was born in Drogheda, Ireland, and lived in Melbourne with her husband, Tom Meagher. She worked for 774 ABC Melbourne; the Irish Times described her role as unit manager at the radio station, and ABC News reports refer to her as an ABC employee. She was not a reporter, although earlier versions of this record described her as a journalist.

According to the Irish Times and ABC News, Meagher spent the evening of Friday, September 21, 2012, with work colleagues at bars on Sydney Road in Brunswick, an inner suburb of Melbourne. She left on foot at about 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, September 22, for the short walk home. CCTV from a bridal shop on Sydney Road recorded her at about 1:40 a.m. speaking with a man in a blue hooded top. Her husband searched for her when she did not return and reported her missing in the early hours of that morning.

The Irish Times reported that her handbag was found the following Monday in a laneway near Sydney Road and that the homicide squad took over the investigation. Police released the CCTV footage on Wednesday, September 26, and ABC News reported that police said the footage played a major part in the arrest. Adrian Ernest Bayley, 41, of Coburg, was arrested on the afternoon of Thursday, September 27. Meagher's body was found in the early hours of September 28 in a shallow grave beside a road at Gisborne South, roughly 50 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. Bayley was charged with rape and murder and appeared in Melbourne Magistrates' Court that day.

Bayley pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria on April 5, 2013. On June 19, 2013, Justice Geoffrey Nettle sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder and 15 years for rape, with a non-parole period of 35 years, according to ABC News. The court heard that Bayley was on parole when he attacked Meagher. ABC News and SBS reported that he had previously been jailed for a series of rapes and had been released on parole in 2010, and that his parole was not cancelled after he was convicted of assaulting a man in Geelong.

In 2014 and 2015 Bayley was tried for three further rapes committed in 2000 and 2012 and was found guilty; ABC News reported that his non-parole period was then extended to 43 years. On July 13, 2016, the Victorian Court of Appeal quashed the convictions relating to one of those complainants on the ground that the identification evidence should not have been admitted, and reduced the non-parole period to 40 years. ABC News reported that he becomes eligible for parole in 2055.

The case drew a large public response. According to Wikipedia's summary of contemporary reports, about 30,000 people took part in a march along Sydney Road on September 30, 2012. The circumstances of Bayley's release led the Victorian government to tighten parole laws in 2013 and to commission a review of the parole system by former High Court judge Ian Callinan.