Kevin Frederick Combes: Tears in court as horrendous cold case rapes detailed, offender labelled ‘filth’

A man who committed two horrific rapes in Perth and the Goldfields in the early 1990s and was recently caught after a cold case DNA breakthrough has been jailed for 13 years and six months. Detectives used genetic genealogy — the same technological advancement behind the capture of the infamous Golden State Killer in the US — to track down Kevin Frederick Combes 35 years later. The District Court of WA was told on Thursday that Combes was regularly injecting amphetamines and abusing alcohol, aged 20 and 21, when he randomlytargeted the 19 and 17-year-olds in 1990 and 1991. The first victim had just finished a shift working in a CBD bar and was walking to her car parked in the alleyway behind when a large hand emerged from the dark and clamped over her mouth. “If you scream, I’ll kill you,” Combes told her, holding a knife to her throat. Combes walked her upstairs into a large, empty room and raped her after she tried to offer him money in a bid to stop it happening. The second victim was driving away from a pub in Kalgoorlie after a night out with her boyfriend when Combes approached and convinced her to give him a lift to Boulder. After driving about aimlessly while he pretended to look for a familiar landmark, Combes pulled out a knife and told the girl he would kill her before dragging her out of the car. She tried to run away and screamed but he caught her, threw her to the ground then put her in the boot of her car and drove her to a more isolated location, where he raped her. Combes, now 56, hurled her into scrub after she picked up the knife and threw it away. “He left her tied up naked, in the bushes, outside of Kalgoorlie,” prosecutor Hannah Milligan said. She flagged down a truck, too scared to seek help from a car in case it was hers, with Combes behind the wheel. Both teens suffered “profound psychological terror” and thought they were going to die, Ms Milligan said. “They’ve had to live with the impact of this offending hanging over them for decades,” she said. Both said they suffered nightmares. The first victim said the joy in her life had been replaced with anxiety and fear that she would encounter Combes again but not know it, given he took a sarong from her car and wrapped it around his head before attacking. The second said he had exploited her kindness, inflicting pain, terror and humiliation “like something out of a horror movie”. As people in the public gallery wept, Judge Wendy Hughes told Combes how both women had been suicidal. “You stole her very being - you stole her soul,” Judge Hughes said of one of them, describing her as a “completely broken” person who literally cried in her sleep. The judge said technological advances with forensic investigations meant offenders like Combes would not get away with it. Outside court, Detective Senior Constable Raquel Rae sent the same warning. “If you think 30 or 35 years means you have gotten away with serious crime, think again, because with these advances in technology, we will be knocking on your door,” she said. The sister of one of the victims said no sentence could ever undo the damage Combes had wreaked, but the outcome brought some measure of relief. “We urge everyone to work together to end sexual violence and all forms of violence against women,” she told. Combes claimed he could not recall the crimes, describing himself as being “on another planet” at the time. But he accepted responsibility “entirely”, defence counsel Mark Hager said. Married with seven children - four of them daughters around the age the victims had been - he was now living “a life of faith” as a Christian, the lawyer said. Combes will be eligible for parole after serving 11 years and six months. One woman shouted out “filth” before the hearing got underway. Sexual Assault Resource Centre 1800 199 888 Sexual Assault Counselling Australia 1800 211 028 Lifeline 13 11 14