The 60-year-old was found guilty of the attacks, after a jury deliberated for more than 12 hours before coming to a verdict.
Heinze was found guilty of kidnapping, indecent assault, endangering life, assault and other charges over the attack committed in February last year, the ABC reported. He was found not guilty of attempted murder.
He attacked the two women – one German and one Brazilian, both reportedly aged 24 – after meeting them on Gumtree, where the Brazilian woman had advertised for a companion to drive her along the Great Ocean Road from Adelaide to Melbourne.
The women were the 13th and 14th women he had targeted through Gumtree.
Heinze reportedly convinced the two women to camp at Salt Creek in South Australia’s Coorong National Park during the drive. Once at the camp site, he sexually assaulted the Brazilian and, when the German ran to her aid, hit her head repeatedly with a hammer and drove over her with his car. At one stage in the attack, the woman jumped onto the bonnet of the car to escape being mown down, then clung on as the car careened over the sand dunes.
The Brazilian woman told the court that the experience had been like a “horror movie”.
“When you see a movie with a victim, with someone running away, you think ‘that girl, she must do this, she must run away like this’,” she said, according to reports. “I was feeling I was in the horror movies … I needed a strategy to get away … I was trying to plan a strategy and thought that, if I stayed there, I was going to die.”
After the verdict was announced, News Corp publications revealed prosecution evidence that was not presented to the jury, including that the man had previously approached 12 other female backpackers through Gumtree with the offer of similar drives, including stops at the Coorong park.
It emerged after the court case that Heinze had sexually assaulted another backpacker in September 2014, according to The Advertiser. The three women are due to give victim impact statements before sentencing.
Heinze will be sentenced next Wednesday.
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