Lindsay Rose, whose surname is also spelled Lindsey in Australian reporting, killed five people in Sydney in three separate events between 1984 and 1994. He pleaded guilty to five murders and in September 1998 was sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He had trained as a paramedic in his youth and was among those who helped at the Granville rail disaster in 1977.
His family learned of the killings only after the fact. His daughter, who was 13 when she was told, has described a father she had known as loving, and in a 2017 ABC program and article she described living since then with the stigma of what he had done.
Rose's date and place of birth are not on record. In his youth he trained as a paramedic, and his daughter wrote in 2017 that he saved many lives at the Granville train disaster in Sydney in 1977. Later accounts describe him as a former ambulance officer and private investigator, and a man who owned a brothel. A writer who knew him as a drinking companion at a pub in Sydney's inner west, Campbell McConachie, recalled that Rose's past included a long list of jobs and that he knew only fragments of it. McConachie later wrote a book about him, The Fatalist.
Rose had a daughter, and the family moved from Sydney to Perth in January 1993. By his daughter's account she saw him only a few times after the move.
Rose killed five people in three separate events over about a decade, as his daughter set out in her 2017 account.
In 1984, when his daughter was four months old, he killed Bill Cavanagh and Carmelita Lee. Both died in the same event. They were his first two victims.
In 1987 he killed Reynette Holford, his third victim, during a theft that went wrong. She was 46.
On February 14, 1994, he killed Kerrie Pang and Fatma Ozonal in Sydney. Kerrie Pang was 40 and the mother of five children; Fatma Ozonal was 25 and the mother of one. They were his fourth and fifth victims, killed in a single event.
A sentencing table compiled by the NSW Public Defenders describes the five murders as taking place over ten years, as killings of revenge, of the kind associated with organized crime, and of opportunity. The same table records that no contrition or remorse was shown and that no reduction in sentence was given for assistance to authorities.
His daughter was told of the killings in 1996, about three years after the family's move to Perth. Rose was not caught until 1997, after roughly twelve months on the run. He was arrested in Adelaide, where he had been working on a dredging project. Police warned the family that threats might be made against his daughter as revenge, which led to her being placed under a witness protection arrangement.
Rose pleaded guilty to five murders and a number of associated offenses. In September 1998 he was sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The sentence was described in 2017 as one under which he was never to be released.
The sentencing tables kept by the NSW Public Defenders list a Court of Criminal Appeal decision of 1999, [1999] NSWCCA 327, under the name Rose: five counts of murder, a plea of guilty, a sentence of life, and the appeal recorded as dismissed. The table notes that defense counsel conceded that each murder, and the offending as a whole, fell into the worst category of case, which was the basis for the life sentences.
Rose has been held at the High-Risk Management Correctional Centre at Goulburn Correctional Centre, a maximum-security prison in New South Wales. His daughter wrote in 2017 that she last saw him in April 2009 and that they have since written to each other. Her account also records that she visited him at Goulburn.
The motive for the 1984 killings is not on record.
The case reached a wider audience in 2017, when ABC's Australian Story broadcast an episode on his daughter's life after the revelation and ABC News published her first-person account. A book by Campbell McConachie, The Fatalist, followed. McConachie told readers that Rose's past was a mixture of jobs and that he had not known the full extent of it until the truth came out.
1977: Granville train disaster in Sydney; Rose, trained as a paramedic, helps.
1984: Bill Cavanagh and Carmelita Lee killed.
1987: Reynette Holford killed.
January 1993: Rose's family moves from Sydney to Perth.
February 14, 1994: Kerrie Pang and Fatma Ozonal killed in Sydney.
1996: His daughter is told of the killings.
1997: Arrested in Adelaide after about twelve months on the run.
1998: Pleads guilty to five murders; in September sentenced to five consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
1999: Court of Criminal Appeal decision [1999] NSWCCA 327 under the name Rose.
April 2009: His daughter last sees him.
October 2017: ABC publishes his daughter's account; he is held at Goulburn.