Unsolved Gerard Ross - Abducted Kent st Rockingham WA 1997

[zedx]

what's peoples thoughts on how the body was left? fully clothed, soon after the abduction, money still in the pocket, left on the ground (not buried)?

I'm also thinking along the lines of an accident
1. He was hit by a car.
2. GR went onto a property to look at something, the owners came out and caught him, a struggle ensued whereby GR fell and hit his head or was put in a headlock which caused his death. This would also explain the sighting of the two men struggling with a boy.
3. A pedophile tried to abduct him and accidentally killed him in the process.

IMO 'soon after' could mean anything from a few hours to a few days.

 

[Bradaire]

I think there would be signs if he was hit by a car. could be one of either:
Paedophile ring but accidental murder
violent people getting thrills out of murder
mistaken identity
I wonder if any ppl were on the cops radar around this time for violent offences or attempted kidnapping. for someone to get away with this for so long I feel like they knew what they were doing

 

[zedx]

I'm also thinking along the lines of an accident
1. He was hit by a car.
2. GR went onto a property to look at something, the owners came out and caught him, a struggle ensued whereby GR fell and hit his head or was put in a headlock which caused his death. This would also explain the sighting of the two men struggling with a boy.
3. A pedophile tried to abduct him and accidentally killed him in the process.

IMO 'soon after' could mean anything from a few hours to a few days.

As to why or how, I imagine they just wanted to get rid of the body asap. Again going back to an accident, not premeditated in not having a shovel etc to bury him.

 

[ms finch]

I can't remember if this was raised previously in this thread, but I was looking through the Marsha Johnson (Warnbro) thread and it reminded me that EB (BRE's first wife) had a dog that originally lived with them at Fountain Way and then moved with her once she was settled at a place in Warnbro. This could explain the dog hair on Gerard Ross's body, whether because it was still around the house at Fountain Way or because BRE had come into contact with his first wife shortly before Gerard was killed.

I still like BRE for this one, even though it conflicts with much of the information such as the eyewitness statement and DNA being sent to the UK alongside Ciara Glennon's.

 

[Krusty Crab]

I can't remember if this was raised previously in this thread, but I was looking through the Marsha Johnson (Warnbro) thread and it reminded me that EB (BRE's first wife) had a dog that originally lived with them at Fountain Way and then moved with her once she was settled at a place in Warnbro. This could explain the dog hair on Gerard Ross's body, whether because it was still around the house at Fountain Way or because BRE had come into contact with his first wife shortly before Gerard was killed.

I still like BRE for this one, even though it conflicts with much of the information such as the eyewitness statement and DNA being sent to the UK alongside Ciara Glennon's.

what would be the motive for BRE? going by his Huntingdale offences it would seem he had sexual motivations, and his attacks on the Claremont girls have been suggested as payback for instances in his love life. how would a school age boy fit this pattern?

 

[ms finch]

what would be the motive for BRE? going by his Huntingdale offences it would seem he had sexual motivations, and his attacks on the Claremont girls have been suggested as payback for instances in his love life. how would a school age boy fit this pattern?

The problem is that we don’t know what BRE’s motives were. I know what has been surmised as the main theory but there isn’t anything conclusive, and there’s never been specific medical evidence or insight from people who knew him to shed light. I remember several very lengthy discussions in the Claremont and Bunker threads about this type of thing.

I’ve seen very strong arguments for his behaviour being impulsive, and also strong arguments for things being planned. I presume there is a sexual gratification motive of some sort, but I can’t say what that would be. It’s possible of course that the attack itself and the power is what provides the gratification.

So the way this would have played out to me is the following: BRE has a meeting with his ex wife in Rockingham. She states she met him there a couple or a few times, because that was where she worked. This was around the time she was pregnant or had her child. So he may well have been thinking about children, and resentful of it not being his child. I can see him impulsively targeting Gerard as a result of this.

One thing we do know about BRE is that he was damn good at getting people into his car. He also fooled many many people for many years, coming across as a very decent, genuine and trustworthy guy. His stepdaughter chose to stay with him rather than go with her mother when her mother left. Telstra was a trusted brand as well, something that I think is often overlooked, and he was a tech, which gives an air of legitimacy or at least downplays any dodginess. I can see a kid getting in the car or at least engaging long enough to be grabbed.

I’m probably wrong on this, but I don’t think it’s as far fetched as it appears on the surface.

 

[zedx]

....So he may well have been thinking about children, and resentful of it not being his child. I can see him impulsively targeting Gerard as a result of this......

Never thought of this, if this were the case, may well have been why GR was not sexually assaulted.

 

[ms finch]

Never thought of this, if this were the case, may well have been why GR was not sexually assaulted.

The lack of sexual assault has always stood out to me, and is one of the reasons I think BRE is still a candidate. His sexually deviant behaviour and assaults were towards women. I don't think that rules out him targeting someone else in an impulsive rage, but it would likely not have a direct sexual component, as is the case here. A sexual assault on a child would also scream paedophile, but in the absence of one we can't really assume that (although it could be, of course, and Gerard may have fought back and been killed before that happened).

Gerard was abducted on 14 October 1997. EB (first wife) told BRE she was pregnant around April/May 1996, so the child would very much have been around by October 1997 (presuming nothing went wrong, and I don't recall anything indicating it did). EB said she met BRE after the house sale was finalised in April 1997, probably around May/June 1997. What we don't know, because by that stage the three women who were the subject of the Claremont trial were already dead so they didn't continue asking about encounters further down the track, is whether she met him at any point later.

There has generally been an assumption that once BRE met his second wife and felt settled with her, everything stopped; that this explains why the CSK disappeared after Ciara. I've never been totally sold on that because I don't assume everything was settled for him as soon as he met his second wife. Things could still have been tumultuous for a time afterward. Also, it seems matters to do with his first wife were far more of a trigger for him emotionally than his second wife, by virtue of the fact that even when second wife left him we don't see a spate of attacks on women and also there were apparently none during their whole relationship even though I doubt their relationship was without tension at times. He could easily still have had issues to do with his first wife for several months into his new relationship. I don't tend to think that he was likely to be killing people 5 years later, because by that point I imagine his first wife was well and truly out of his life and he was genuinely settled, but 6 months after starting a relationship with his second wife and finalising some things with his first is still a reasonable period to me.

This is of course the problem with nobody having any substantive insight into why BRE attacked people and never quite being able to establish his triggers.

I do think that the attacks were about power in some way, and that the triggers had to do with feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness. That's quite broad, obviously. But what I mean in stating this is that while I doubt BRE would have attacked an adult man, I can well see him targeting a child in certain circumstances, especially if we take into account the fact that he may have acted impulsively at times.

(A lot of this info was discussed in the Marsha Johnson thread, just in case anybody wants the references: https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/murder-of-marsha-johnson-warnbo-wa.1249490/page-2. I think BRE is the most likely candidate for Marsha, honestly, absent information about an affair or someone else specific.)

 

[Redacted]

I'm also thinking along the lines of an accident
1. He was hit by a car.
2. GR went onto a property to look at something, the owners came out and caught him, a struggle ensued whereby GR fell and hit his head or was put in a headlock which caused his death. This would also explain the sighting of the two men struggling with a boy.
3. A pedophile tried to abduct him and accidentally killed him in the process.

IMO 'soon after' could mean anything from a few hours to a few days.

2. The train set man

 

[FeelingThroaty]

On CH 7 this morning. A truck driver said 2 to 3 years before Gerard when he was a kid, said he was nearly abducted in the same area.

 

[Eaglette01]

Oh dear

This case is still such a mystery and I'm positive there will be arrest. Cold cases are getting investigated and resolved (with new technology)

* * * * *

An attempted kidnapping in Western Australia three decades ago could shed new light on the unsolved 1997 murder of schoolboy Gerard Ross.
The Nightly can reveal that just a few years before 11-year-old Gerard was snatched off the street in Rockingham, another boy was almost abducted in eerily similar circumstances.
In 1994, two men had tried to grab young Ben Robbins

Ben Robbins

Age

47

Ht

181cm

Wt

77kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

14.7

4star

K

6.7

3star

HB

8.0

5star

M

2.2

2star

T

2.7

4star

No current season stats available

D

10.0

3star

K

5.2

2star

HB

4.8

4star

M

2.2

3star

T

0.8

3star

as he walked to a friend’s house, just 35m from his home, on Hillcrest Street at Coogee.

Two boys, two abduction ordeals. Is there a cold case link?

In one case, the victim escaped. The second ended in a schoolboy’s murder and an enduring cold case. Both are unsolved. Could they be connected?

thenightly.com.au

Mr Robbins, now a fuel truck driver, said the incident occurred out the front of his friend’s house, across the road and a couple of doors down.
“I was going up the street and they came up from behind,” he said.

 

[Fifty n Closing]

This case and Claremont still sticks freshly in my mind today as they did those decades ago.

I still recall vividly in early 1998 when four wheel driving in the area one weekend with a mate we pulled up at a random spot on a track and we both got out of our cars to have a pi$$ and a yarn about where to head next to go for a bash around etc, not long after I got out of my car this bright shiny reflective object slightly off the track a little bit and in some very light bush/smaller type trees caught my eye, and so as you do you naturally go and have a look, and so it was the shiny cellophane wrapping around two pretty fresh looking bouquets of flowers, and the were placed in front of a small plaque with Gerard’s name and dates etc.

I do remember thinking at the time as to how eerie the area felt, it was very quiet but the wind blowing through the huge pine plantation trees gave the place an ultra creepy feel about it especially after knowing it was then where poor Gerard had been dumped.

I was only 6 odd years older than Gerard at that time and as mentioned this case and Claremont have never left my memory and still remain current in my mind today, following the Claremont break through I genuinely hope for the Ross family that their sons case can still be solved.

 

[FeelingThroaty]

Yes Fifty crossing, I remember seeing the cross left by the Shoalwater task force in about 1998 to 2001 at the GR site. I was on my 600 cc dirtbike. I went there to see if I could feel if anyone else was there. Stakehill Rd it was. I said this in the blogs a long time ago.