A 69-year-old man from Hoppers Crossing has been charged with two counts of attempted aggravated rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated indecent assault, rape, burglary, and common assault in connection with the alleged double rape of an elderly woman in her Melbourne home nearly 44 years ago.
Police have charged a man over the alleged double rape of an elderly woman in her home in Melbourne’s south-western suburbs two years apart in the 1980s in a major breakthrough in the decades-old cold case investigation.
The arrest comes after a nearly 44-year investigation into the two alleged sexual assaults, which police say occurred at the same residential property on Mason Street, in Newport, between September 1981 and July 1983. It’s alleged he forced Launder into the kitchen, in what police suspect was an attempt to check that no one else was at the house, before taking her back to the lounge room and sexually assaulting her again.
He did not use a weapon in the alleged attack but detectives in 2016 said the man had placed a newspaper over Lauder’s head as he left. “By all accounts, she was a wonderful and exceptionally stoic woman, and I truly hope today’s arrest brings Jessie’s family a sense of relief and some form of closure at last. Our thoughts are with them today,” Burnett said.
Last Tuesday, detectives from the Sexual Crime Squad and Lauder’s grandson, Malcolm Lauder, made a renewed appeal for public information after investigators uncovered evidence to suggest the attacker lived in the same neighbourhood as the grandmother.
COLD CASE RAPE SEXUAL ASSAULT POLICE ARREST VICTIM
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