Australian pleads guilty to rape and murder of Jill

A man has pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of an Irish woman he attacked as she walked home from a bar in Australia’s second largest city.

The death of Jill Meagher shocked Melbourne. A week after she died last September, 30,000 people rallied against violence near the lane where she was strangled.

The 29-year-old had been drinking with colleagues and was walking home when she was attacked. She was born in Drogheda, and held an administrative job at Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Adrian Ernest Bayley pleaded guilty to rape and murder in a Victoria state court. The 41-year-old potentially faces life in prison.

None of Ms Meagher’s relatives were in court.

Bayley lived near inner-suburban Brunswick where he randomly abducted Ms Meagher only a few hundred metres from the apartment she shared with her husband.

Haunting CCTV images released by courts show her attempt to make the five-minute, 500m walk home before her chance meeting with Bayley outside a dress shop.

It was at 1.38am, just eight minutes after she left Brunswick bar Etiquette, that Ms Meagher was raped and killed.

Her body was found five days later in a shallow grave in a rural area about 50km from the city.

Last month, harrowing details of the murder were outlined to a court.

It heard Bayley accosted Ms Meagher and dragged her into a lane where he raped her and then strangled her.

He left the body in the lane and returned home, where he collected a shovel.

He then put Ms Meagher’s body in the boot of his car and drove her out of the city where he buried her.

Justice Geoffrey Nettle remanded Bayley in custody to reappear for plea and sentence on Jun 11.

Last month, Bayley indicated he would plead guilty to one count of raping Jill Meagher, but would deny her murder and two further counts of rape. However, at the Supreme Court in Victoria yesterday morning, Bayley, a 41-year-old pipeline layer, agreed to plead guilty to single counts of rape and murder.

Chief Crown prosecutor Gavin Silbert told the committal hearing that Bayley came across Ms Meagher about 1.38am.

At 1.37am, Ms Meagher’s husband, Tom, had sent her a text message from home asking: “Are you okay?”

At 1.47am, an extremely worried Mr Meagher sent his wife another text.

“Answer me, I’m really worried,” it read.

He sent another at 2.07am: “Please pick up.”

He then searched Brunswick streets in vain.

“I kept trying to ring her but there was no answer,” he said in his tendered police statement.

After working the crime scene and gathering evidence, including CCTV footage along with Bayley’s and Ms Meagher’s simultaneous phone records, homicide squad detectives arrested Bayley on Sept 27. He made admissions and took police to recover Ms Meagher’s body.