Man, 60, found guilty of Salt Creek backpacker attacks

A 60-year-old man has been found guilty of attacks on two female backpackers, after a jury deliberated for more than 12 hours before coming to a verdict.

The man, who cannot be named, 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.

The man 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 man 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, the man 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 accused did not testify on his own behalf, nor were defence witnesses called, but his lawyer had argued that the women had overstated the incident, saying that even if the man may be considered “creepy, sleazy”, that did not mean he was guilty of the accusations.

“You might seriously disapprove of quite a few things about him [but] that doesn’t mean he’s going to try to kill somebody,” the defence lawyer said, according to Adelaide Now.

The group of fisherman who found the Brazilian woman and the police officer who tended to the German woman, however, testified as to their distressed and bloodied states. The jury was also shown pictures of the man’s heavily blood-stained vehicle.

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.

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