Western Australia 1996 Cold Case Solved – Arrest Shocks Community

Western Australia 1996 Cold Case Solved – Arrest Shocks Community

In the early hours of a warm Australian morning, three young women vanished from the same wealthy nightlife district. They had never met. They disappeared months apart. Yet each of them walked away from the same stretch of road, believing they were only minutes from home. Only two would ever be found. The third simply disappeared, leaving behind nothing more than a six-minute gap between a desperate call for a taxi and the moment she was gone.

For more than 20 years, the case haunted Western Australia. More than 700 investigators worked on it. Thousands of suspects were examined. Taxi drivers voluntarily surrendered fingerprints and DNA. Millions of dollars were spent. One innocent man spent years under relentless police scrutiny before investigators finally admitted they had been pursuing the wrong suspect.

And all the while, the person responsible remained hidden in plain sight. When detectives finally solved the case, it wasn’t because someone came forward. It wasn’t because of a dramatic confession. And it wasn’t because a forgotten witness suddenly remembered a face. The answer had been sitting inside police evidence for decades.

It took extraordinary advances in forensic science and a handful of microscopic clues that investigators once believed were too small to matter to finally reveal the truth. By then, three families had already been changed forever. And one family was still waiting for the answer they had searched for since a warm January morning in 1996.

Where is Sarah Spiers? Before we begin, if you enjoy carefully researched true crime documentaries that focus on evidence, investigations, and the pursuit of justice, please consider subscribing. It helps these stories reach more people and ensures victims like Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer, and Ciara Glennon are never forgotten.

And while you’re here, let me know where you’re watching from. Now, let’s go back to where this extraordinary investigation began. To understand how one man was able to abduct three women without being stopped, you first have to understand the place where he hunted. In the mid-1990s, Perth was often described as one of the safest cities in Australia.

Isolated from the country’s larger eastern cities by thousands of kilometers of desert, it had earned a reputation as a relaxed, prosperous city where violent crime felt like something that happened somewhere else. Parents worried about drink driving after a night out. They didn’t worry that their daughters might simply disappear.

Just west of Perth city center sat Claremont. Tree-lined streets, expensive homes, boutique shops, outdoor cafes. It was one of Perth’s wealthiest suburbs, a place where people felt comfortable walking the streets after dark. But every Friday and Saturday night, Claremont transformed. As the sun went down, thousands of young people arrived from across Perth.

Music spilled onto the streets as bars and pubs filled with university students, office workers, tourists, and groups celebrating birthdays or simply enjoying the weekend. Three venues sat at the heart of it all. Club Bay View, the Continental Hotel, known simply as the Conti, and the Ocean Beach Hotel or the OBH, a short drive away along the coast.

When the venues closed, hundreds of people poured onto the footpaths looking for a way home. But getting home wasn’t as simple as it is today. There were no smartphones, no ride-sharing apps, no way to share your location with friends or family. If you needed a taxi, you either joined a long queue or walked to a public payphone, inserted coins or a phone card, and called a taxi company.

On busy weekends, the wait could stretch well beyond 20 minutes. As groups gradually disappeared into the night, individuals were often left standing alone beneath the glow of streetlights, waiting for someone watching from a distance. It created the perfect opportunity: a lone woman, late at night, friends already gone, no easy way to call for help if something felt wrong.

Witnesses would later remember seeing unfamiliar cars slowly cruising through Claremont after closing time. At the time, nobody gave them a second thought. Some drivers were looking for passengers. Others were collecting friends. One more car moving slowly through the entertainment district didn’t seem unusual. But one driver wasn’t looking for a fare.

He was looking for an opportunity. And without anyone realizing it, someone had already noticed the pattern. The first person to disappear was the youngest. Sarah Anne Spiers was just 18 years old. She had recently begun building her adult life. A legal secretary living with her older sister in Perth, Sarah was known for her warm personality and was excited about the future.

On the night of Friday, January 26, 1996, Australia Day, she went out with friends to Club Bay View in Claremont. It was one of the busiest weekends of the year. The bars were full, the music was loud, and the taxi queues stretched along the street after closing time. Shortly before 2:00 a.m. on January 27, Sarah left the club alone.

She wasn’t planning to stay out any longer. She just wanted to go home. At 2:06 a.m., she walked to a public payphone on Stirling Highway and called Swan Taxis. The booking operator accepted the request and dispatched a cab immediately. It should have taken only a few minutes. At approximately 2:09 a.m., the taxi arrived. Sarah was gone.

The driver scanned the area, expecting to see a young woman walking toward the cab. Instead, the footpath was empty. After waiting briefly, he drove away. Those missing three minutes would haunt investigators for decades. Three witnesses later gave detectives fragments of Sarah’s final moments. One remembered seeing her standing near the payphone after making the taxi call.

Another saw her speaking calmly with the driver of a light-colored sedan that had stopped nearby. There was no shouting, no sign of panic, nothing to suggest she believed she was in danger. A third witness also recalled seeing Sarah near an unfamiliar vehicle shortly before she disappeared.

None could identify the driver. None noted the registration number, and none realized they may have witnessed the final moments before Sarah vanished. When Sarah failed to return home, her family knew something was terribly wrong. She hadn’t contacted anyone. She hadn’t come back for her belongings. She had simply disappeared. Police searched extensively and appealed publicly for witnesses.

Volunteers joined the search. Detectives followed every lead they could find. They found nothing. No clothing, no handbag, no body. Nearly 30 years later, Sarah Spiers has still never been found. With no crime scene to examine and no physical evidence to follow, detectives had little to work with. At the time, police still believed they might be dealing with an isolated disappearance.

For nearly two months, Sarah Spiers’s disappearance remained a mystery. There were countless theories. Perhaps she had run away. Perhaps she had accepted a lift from someone she knew. Perhaps she had suffered an accident somewhere that searchers hadn’t yet discovered. But one fact became harder to ignore with each passing day.

An 18-year-old woman had vanished from one of Perth’s busiest entertainment districts without leaving behind a single trace. Then it happened again. Jane Helen Rimmer was 23 years old. She worked in childcare and was known for her caring nature and easy smile. On the night of Friday, March 8, 1996, she met friends at the Continental Hotel in Claremont.

The group spent hours talking, drinking, and dancing. As the night drew to a close, Jane became separated from her friends. Believing she had arranged her own way home, they left without her—a decision they would later carry for the rest of their lives. Unlike Sarah, Jane’s final movements were captured on CCTV.

At 12:04 a.m. on March 9, cameras outside the Continental Hotel recorded her walking alone onto Stirling Highway. Dressed in a black top, denim skirt, and black shoes, she disappeared beyond the edge of the camera’s view. It was the last confirmed sighting of her alive. When Jane failed to return home, detectives retraced her movements, interviewed patrons and staff from the Continental Hotel, checked taxi records, and appealed for witnesses.

Once again, nothing. Then 55 days later, on May 3, a passing motorist made a horrifying discovery along Woolcott Road near Wellard, about 40 km south of Claremont. Hidden beneath freshly cut branches and scrub lay the naked body of a young woman. It was Jane Rimmer. The investigation changed instantly. It was no longer a missing person’s case.

It was a murder investigation. Forensic officers carefully documented the scene before removing the body for examination. Every piece of potential evidence was preserved, even though investigators knew weeks of exposure to the elements had already taken a heavy toll. The autopsy revealed that Jane had died from compression of the neck, consistent with strangulation.

She also had bruises and abrasions on her arms and hands, indicating that she had fought her attacker before she died. Whoever killed Jane hadn’t simply murdered her. He had transported her body almost an hour from Claremont, removed her clothing, and concealed her beneath vegetation in an attempt to delay discovery. For investigators, the similarities with Sarah Spiers’s disappearance were becoming difficult to dismiss.

Another young woman. Another night out in Claremont. Another journey home that never happened. For the first time, detectives began to consider the possibility that they weren’t searching for a missing woman. They were hunting a killer. Jane Rimmer’s murder sent shockwaves through Western Australia. But investigators still couldn’t say with certainty that they were hunting a serial killer.

Then, less than two months later, any remaining doubt disappeared. Ciara Mary Glennon was 27 years old. She had recently qualified as a lawyer and was building a promising legal career. Intelligent, confident, and well-liked by those who knew her, Ciara spent the evening of Saturday, March 30, 1996, catching up with friends in Claremont.

Like Jane before her, she ended the night at the Continental Hotel. Just after midnight, the group began leaving the venue. At some point, Ciara became separated from her friends. She was last seen walking alone along Stirling Highway toward the bus stops outside the entertainment district. Several witnesses would later become important to the investigation.

One saw Ciara standing alone near the bus stop, apparently waiting for transport. Another noticed a light-colored sedan pull up nearby. The vehicle lingered for a short time, but nothing appeared out of the ordinary. There were no screams, no obvious struggle. Moments later, it drove away. A third witness also remembered seeing a young woman matching Ciara’s description near a similar light-colored vehicle shortly before she disappeared.

Like Sarah’s case, no one noted the registration number. No one recognized the driver. By the time anyone realized Ciara was missing, the opportunity to identify that vehicle had already passed. When Ciara failed to return home, detectives immediately recognized the disturbing similarities. Another young woman, another night out in Claremont, another disappearance after midnight.

Search teams moved quickly, fearing they were dealing with the same offender. Then on April 3, just four days after Ciara vanished, a member of the public made a horrifying discovery along Pipidinny Road near Eglinton, roughly 45 km north of Claremont. Hidden among low scrub and native vegetation lay the naked body of a young woman. It was Ciara Glennon.

Unlike Jane, whose body had remained exposed to the elements for nearly two months, Ciara was found within days, giving forensic investigators a far greater opportunity to preserve evidence. The area was immediately sealed off. Scenes of crime officers photographed the entire scene before anything was disturbed.

They searched meticulously for tire impressions, footwear marks, hairs, fibers, cigarette butts, fingerprints, and any discarded object that might have been left behind. Following standard homicide procedure, the victim’s body was examined at the scene before being transported for a full forensic autopsy. Biological samples and trace evidence were carefully collected, individually packaged, labeled, and preserved for laboratory examination.

The autopsy revealed chilling similarities to Jane Rimmer’s murder. Ciara had died from compression of the neck. She had bruising across her body consistent with a violent struggle. The pathologist also documented injuries to her hands and forearms—classic defensive wounds that showed she had fought desperately against her attacker.

Like Jane, Ciara’s body had been stripped after death. Like Jane, she had been transported away from Claremont to an isolated bushland location. And like Jane, she had been deliberately concealed beneath vegetation in an apparent attempt to delay discovery. The similarities were no longer coincidence. Within days, police reached the conclusion they had desperately hoped never to make.

For the first time in Western Australia’s history, investigators publicly acknowledged that they believed a serial killer was targeting young women in Claremont. From that moment on, everything changed. Three young women had disappeared from the same entertainment district in just over two months. Sarah Spiers had vanished without a trace.

Jane Rimmer had been found murdered south of Perth. Ciara Glennon had been found murdered north of the city. The similarities were impossible to ignore. The victims were close in age. Each had spent the evening in Claremont. Each disappeared after midnight while trying to get home. Whoever was responsible appeared organized, patient, and exceptionally careful.

Western Australia had never faced anything like it. Police responded by launching what would become the largest homicide investigation in the state’s history. It was called Task Force Macro. At its peak, more than 100 detectives, intelligence officers, forensic scientists, analysts, and support staff worked on the case. They were divided into roughly 10 specialist teams, each focusing on a different aspect of the investigation.

Some re-examined witness statements, others pursued public tips, reviewed unsolved sexual assaults, developed offender profiles, analyzed forensic evidence, or reconstructed the victims’ final movements. The investigation quickly grew beyond anything Western Australia police had previously attempted. A reward of $250,000 Australian dollars was offered for information leading to the killer’s arrest and conviction.

The response was enormous. Thousands of calls poured into the police tip line. Detectives interviewed nightclub patrons, bar staff, security guards, friends of the victims, local residents, known violent offenders, and anyone who had been in Claremont on the nights the women disappeared. One theory quickly dominated the investigation.

Because all three women vanished while trying to get home, detectives wondered whether the killer might be a taxi driver. The theory seemed plausible. Taxi drivers moved constantly through Claremont after closing time. Women willingly approached them, and they could leave the area without attracting suspicion. Police launched an unprecedented screening operation.

Thousands of current and former taxi drivers across Western Australia were identified, interviewed, fingerprinted, and voluntarily submitted DNA samples. Investigators examined their vehicles, checked employment records, and compared work rosters with the nights of the disappearances. One by one, they were eliminated. Detectives cast the net even wider.

Known violent offenders were asked to provide DNA. Fingerprints from unsolved crimes were compared against police databases. Vehicles matching witness descriptions were located and examined. Properties were searched. Bushland was repeatedly combed in the hope of finding Sarah Spiers or any overlooked evidence. Investigators even imported an American polygraph specialist to conduct lie detector examinations on selected suspects and witnesses.

Although the results could not be used in court, detectives hoped the tests might expose inconsistencies or generate new leads; they didn’t. As the investigation dragged on, optimism slowly gave way to frustration. Advances in forensic science prompted old exhibits to be tested again. Fresh detectives revisited witness statements that had already been read countless times.

Behavioral profilers from Australia and overseas studied the offender’s likely habits, personality, and occupation. International forensic experts were invited to review the evidence, searching for anything that might have been missed. Over the years, the investigation underwent 11 major reviews. Each promised a fresh perspective. None identified the killer.

Evidence boxes continued to fill police storage rooms. The suspect list kept growing. Families kept waiting. And despite one of the largest homicide investigations in Australian history, the killer remained free. As pressure mounted, the public demanded answers. The Claremont serial killer had become the biggest story in Western Australia.

Newspapers covered every development. Television news led with the case almost every night. Every new suspect raised hopes that the nightmare was finally coming to an end. Then police became convinced they had found their man. His name was Lance Williams. Williams lived in Perth and soon found himself at the center of one of the most intensive police investigations ever directed at a single individual in Australia.

He wasn’t a convicted criminal. He wasn’t even known as a violent offender. He worked as a public servant for the Western Australian government and lived a quiet, largely unremarkable life. But detectives weren’t looking for someone who looked dangerous. They believed the Claremont killer could be hiding behind an ordinary face.

Their suspicions intensified during an undercover police operation in 1997. Task Force Macro deployed female officers as decoys throughout Claremont’s nightlife district, hoping the killer would approach another lone woman. During the operation, surveillance officers repeatedly observed Williams driving around Claremont late at night.

On one occasion, they watched him circle the entertainment precinct nearly 30 times. Then something happened that immediately caught investigators’ attention. Williams stopped and offered one of the undercover female officers a lift home. To detectives, it closely resembled the method they believed the killer used to approach vulnerable women.

After midnight, the investigation escalated dramatically. Task Force Macro placed Williams under constant surveillance. His daily movements were tracked. His vehicles were monitored. His associates were identified. His workplace was covertly monitored. Friends, relatives, and colleagues were interviewed. His background, finances, employment history, and personal life were scrutinized in extraordinary detail.

Detectives also noted that Williams was middle-aged, unmarried, lived with his parents, and was often described as socially awkward. To investigators, those characteristics appeared consistent with parts of the behavioral profile they had developed. At around the same time, forensic scientists believed that several hairs associated with the investigation, including hairs connected to Ciara Glennon’s case, were consistent with Williams.

Although hair comparison could never uniquely identify a person, it strengthened detectives’ belief that they were closing in on the killer. For years, investigators searched for the one piece of evidence that would prove their theory. It never appeared. No fingerprints connected Williams to the crime scenes. No DNA matched the biological evidence preserved by forensic scientists.

No witness placed him with any of the victims. No physical evidence linked his vehicles, clothing, or home to the murders. Still, detectives kept returning to him, convinced they simply hadn’t uncovered the missing piece. By 2008, that theory had finally collapsed. Modern DNA testing excluded Williams from the murders.

The hair evidence that had once seemed promising was no longer considered reliable enough to identify him. After years of surveillance, undercover operations, forensic testing, and exhaustive investigation, police had found nothing that connected Lance Williams to Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer, or Ciara Glennon. He was officially cleared.

For Williams, the damage had already been done. For Task Force Macro, the cost was equally devastating. While detectives had spent years pursuing an innocent man, the real killer had continued living an ordinary life, completely unaware that police were focused on someone else. Time had been lost, resources had been exhausted, and the investigation had drifted further away from the truth.

Ironically, while police were watching the wrong man, the evidence that would eventually identify the real killer was already sitting inside their own evidence storage. While Task Force Macro was spending years chasing the wrong suspect, another trail of evidence had been sitting quietly inside police archives. The pieces already existed.

No one realized they belonged to the same puzzle. The earliest clue dated back almost eight years before Sarah Spiers disappeared. On the morning of May 22, 1988, a family in the Perth suburb of Huntingdale woke to every parent’s worst nightmare. Sometime during the night, an intruder had climbed through an unlocked window while the family slept.

He moved silently through the house before entering the bedroom of a 17-year-old girl. She awoke to find a stranger standing over her. The attack was interrupted when other members of the household began to stir, forcing the intruder to flee before carrying out whatever he had planned. But in his haste, he made a critical mistake.

He left behind a white silk kimono. Forensic officers photographed the garment before carefully packaging it as evidence. Crime scene examiners dusted parts of the fabric for latent fingerprints and recovered several clear ridge impressions. Each print was photographed, lifted, and preserved for future comparison.

The kimono itself was also retained. At the time, DNA profiling was still in its infancy. Investigators had no way of knowing that microscopic skin cells trapped within the fabric would one day become just as valuable as the fingerprints. The prints were searched against police records. No match. With no suspect to compare them to, the evidence was cataloged and placed into long-term storage.

For years, it sat untouched. Then, on June 12, 1990, another disturbing attack unfolded. Wendy Davis had driven to Hollywood Hospital to visit her husband, who was recovering from surgery. As she stepped out of her car, a man approached politely and asked if she knew where the nearest public toilet was.

It seemed like an ordinary question. The moment Wendy turned to answer, he grabbed her and tried to force her back into her car. Investigators later discovered that he had brought plastic cable ties with him, strongly suggesting the attack had been planned in advance. Wendy fought back fiercely. Her screams and resistance attracted attention, forcing the attacker to flee before he could complete the abduction.

This time, police identified the man responsible. He was arrested and charged with attempting to abduct Wendy Davis. In court, he pleaded guilty despite bringing cable ties and attempting to force a woman into her own vehicle. He received an 18-month suspended prison sentence and was released on probation. No one connected him to the Huntingdale attack.

Five years later, history almost repeated itself. In 1995, a 17-year-old girl accepted a lift from a man she believed was helping her get home. Instead, he drove her to the secluded grounds of Karrakatta Cemetery, where she was sexually assaulted before being abandoned in nearby bushes. She survived. Her courage would later become one of the most important reasons this case was ever solved.

At the hospital, specially trained forensic medical staff carried out a sexual assault examination. Biological swabs were collected. Her clothing was individually packaged to preserve trace evidence, and semen recovered during the examination was submitted for laboratory analysis. Scientists successfully developed a DNA profile of the unknown attacker.

Unlike fingerprints, which require someone to compare them against, this DNA profile was the genetic signature of the offender himself. But there was still no name attached to it. The profile was entered into police databases and carefully preserved. Another unsolved attack, another unknown offender, another case that gradually went cold.

Three separate investigations, three separate evidence files, a white silk kimono carrying fingerprints and unknowingly microscopic skin cells, an attempted abduction that ended with a surprisingly lenient sentence, a survivor whose courage preserved the attacker’s DNA. No one realized they were looking at the same offender.

No one realized these attacks weren’t isolated crimes. They were rehearsals. For more than a decade, every major lead had collapsed. Witnesses had been interviewed. Thousands of DNA samples had been collected. Hundreds of suspects had been eliminated. The Claremont serial killer investigation had become one of Australia’s longest and most expensive unsolved murder cases.

But while detectives searched for new leads, forensic science was quietly catching up with old evidence. Then in 2008, everything changed—not because investigators found something new, but because technology finally unlocked what had been there all along.

Discovery 1: When Ciara Glennon’s body was examined in April 1996, the pathologist documented bruising and injuries across her hands and forearms.

She hadn’t surrendered. She had fought. Following standard forensic procedure, each fingernail was carefully clipped and scraped using sterile instruments. Every sample was sealed and preserved, even though the technology of the day couldn’t fully analyze such tiny amounts of biological material. More than a decade later, scientists tested those samples again using highly sensitive low-copy number DNA techniques.

This time, they succeeded. Hidden beneath Ciara’s fingernails was a complete male DNA profile. Not from blood, not from semen, but from microscopic skin cells left behind when she clawed her attacker. In her final moments, Ciara had unknowingly taken a piece of her killer with her. For the first time, detectives possessed his genetic signature.

They just didn’t know whose it was.

Discovery 2: The DNA profile was immediately searched against evidence from other unsolved investigations. Then came the first breakthrough. It matched the unknown DNA profile recovered from the 1995 sexual assault of the 17-year-old survivor abducted to Karrakatta Cemetery. The statistical probability that the two profiles belonged to different people was astronomically small.

The conclusion was inescapable. The same man had committed both crimes. Suddenly, investigators weren’t looking for an isolated murderer. They were hunting a serial predator whose violence had escalated over time.

Discovery 3: Detectives then reopened one of the oldest exhibits in police storage: the white silk kimono abandoned during the Huntingdale break-in in 1988.

Using modern DNA recovery techniques, forensic scientists lifted microscopic skin cells that had remained trapped within the fabric for nearly 20 years. The laboratory’s result was astonishing. The DNA recovered from the kimono matched the DNA beneath Ciara Glennon’s fingernails. It also matched the profile from the 1995 rape investigation.

Three crime scenes, 20 years apart, one offender. What had once been three separate investigations had become a single timeline.

Discovery 4: Investigators returned to another forgotten piece of evidence: the fingerprints recovered from the Huntingdale bedroom in 1988. Back then, there had been no match, but police databases had grown dramatically over the following two decades.

The old fingerprints were searched again. This time, the computer returned a name: Bradley Robert Edwards. Detectives immediately checked his background. He was the same man who had pleaded guilty after attempting to abduct Wendy Davis outside Hollywood Hospital in 1990. In an instant, everything aligned—the fingerprints, the DNA, the attempted abduction, the timeline.

After years of chasing the wrong suspect, Task Force Macro had finally identified the right one.

Discovery 5: But detectives still needed one final confirmation. Rather than arrest Edwards immediately, they began covert surveillance. For weeks, specialist officers quietly followed his daily routine, waiting for him to discard something that carried his DNA.

Eventually, he finished a bottle of Sprite and threw it away. Once he walked off, surveillance officers moved in. Wearing gloves, they recovered the bottle, sealed it as evidence, and delivered it to the forensic laboratory. Scientists swabbed the mouth of the bottle and extracted a fresh DNA profile from Edwards’s saliva.

Then they compared it with the three critical exhibits: Ciara Glennon’s fingernails, the 1995 rape investigation, and the white silk kimono from Huntingdale. Every profile matched. On the morning of December 22, 2016, nearly 21 years after Sarah Spiers disappeared, detectives arrested Bradley Robert Edwards.

One microscopic skin cell, one forgotten kimono, one discarded soft drink bottle. After more than two decades, the dominoes had finally fallen. By the time Bradley Robert Edwards was arrested, detectives believed they had finally identified the Claremont serial killer. But believing it wasn’t enough. This would become one of the most closely scrutinized murder trials in Australian history.

Every piece of evidence would be challenged. Every scientific conclusion would be questioned. Prosecutors knew they couldn’t rely on a single breakthrough. They had to prove that every independent strand of evidence pointed to the same man. And that is exactly what they built.

DNA: The prosecution’s strongest evidence came from Ciara Glennon’s final moments.

The microscopic skin cells recovered beneath her fingernails were compared with the DNA profile preserved from the 1995 Karrakatta rape investigation, the DNA later recovered from the white silk kimono abandoned during the Huntingdale attack, and the saliva collected from Bradley Edwards’s discarded Sprite bottle during covert surveillance.

Each comparison produced the same result. The DNA belonged to one man. The prosecution argued the explanation was straightforward: as Ciara fought desperately for her life, she scratched her attacker. Without knowing it, she preserved the evidence that would eventually identify him.

Fiber evidence: DNA wasn’t the only invisible link.

Investigators had also recovered unusual blue fibers from both Jane Rimmer and Ciara Glennon. Forensic examination showed the fibers were consistent with Telstra work uniforms issued during the mid-1990s. Bradley Edwards worked for Telstra. Scientists compared the fibers recovered from the victims with Edwards’s issued uniforms, examining their color, microscopic structure, dye composition, and manufacturing characteristics.

According to the prosecution, the fibers were indistinguishable. No single fiber could identify one specific shirt, but finding the same uncommon fibers on two victims added another powerful connection.

Vehicle evidence: Investigators also examined tiny gray polypropylene fibers recovered from the victims.