Monstrous
The Darker Side => The Blood Track => Topic started by: Desdemone on July 23, 2003, 03:01:26 PM
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PROSTITUTE and self-professed vampire Shane Chartres-Abbott was murdered to protect the identity of a rapist, his mother has claimed.
Nancy Bowen has made a plea for public help to catch her son's killers.
"How would you feel if it was your child? Wouldn't you want the same thing?" Ms Bowen said, speaking for the first time about her son's execution-style murder last month.
"I want them bastards caught."
Chartres-Abbott was murdered in front of his pregnant girlfriend, Kathleen Price, 21, as he left their Howard St, Reservoir, home on June 4.
He was on his way to court for the fifth day of a trial in which he was accused of raping and attacking a client. The woman, 30, was found unconscious in the shower of South Yarra's Hotel Saville, with teeth marks in her right thigh and part of her tongue ripped out.
Ms Bowen believes her son was killed to suppress the truth.
The County Court heard sensational tales of Melbourne's underworld. Chartres-Abbott's lawyer likened the prosecution case to "a story worthy of Bram Stoker and a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie", the County Court heard in May.
Lawyer Alan Hands told the court Chartres-Abbott had alleged the rape victim was grooming him for a "snuff" movie.
She told the jury he had claimed to be a vampire older than Melbourne and drank blood to live.
But his mother says the story does not reflect Chartres-Abbott's real nature.
"I want people to know him for the person he really was -- a sweet, caring, loving person," she said, adding that Chartres-Abbott's son, 7, was suffering.
Ms Bowen believes her son's murder was linked to the trial.
"I know he was innocent of those crimes and I believe that's why he was gunned down, because I reckon they knew the truth was coming out, the truth about the whole thing, who really did this thing," she said.
"I believe myself that the truth was that whoever shot down Shane were the ones that attacked this girl -- the girl that was raped and had her tongue half cut out.
"I believe that if he had been guilty, there's no way in the world he would have been killed, because they would have let him take the rap."
Ms Bowen said she did not believe her son knew who the rapist was.
She said Chartres-Abbott's former wife, Nadine, had told him to flee Melbourne.
"He said 'No, I'm not going to take off, I'm innocent. If I take off they're going to think I'm guilty,' " Ms Bowen said.
Ms Bowen learned about her son's secret life only months before he was killed.
"I said to him before all this happened 'evil attracts evil', because I look at that sort of work as evil and it got him into trouble, and he agreed with me."
Ms Bowen had urged her son to get a "normal" job.
"He said, 'Yes, I am mum. I have thought a lot of what I'm going to do when this is over'. A few days before (the murder) he said that he was going to go to TAFE."
Ms Bowen urged anyone with information about her son's murder to contact police.
"They have already done it to my son and they could do it to someone else's son or daughter," she said.
If anybody has information call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.