I Always Wanted to Kill

It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely place for serial murder. The seaside town of Frankston, a 40-minute drive from Melbourne on Port Phillip Bay, south eastern Victoria, renowned for its population of fairy penguins, is the ideal place for a holiday. It was the site chosen for the filming of the classic On the Beach, starring Gregory Peck, one of the world’s most loved, talented and enduring actors, a star from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Yet onto this peaceful, relaxed stage 47 years after the making of this classic film, uninvited and unannounced, walked one of Australia’s worst and most feared serial murderers, The Frankston Killer. He was Paul Charles Denyer, who is now serving three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 30 years at Her Majesty’s Prison at Barwon. He’s doing time for the murders of Elizabeth Stevens, 18, Debbie Fream, 22, and Natalie Russell, 17, in 1993.