Australia's most sadistic child killer applies for parole, sparking warning from original cop

Killer Robin Reid indicates to police at the crime scene one of the many things he did to Peter Aston in the 13-year-old's torture murder. Photo / MSW Police

Warning: Graphic content

Australia's most sadistic child killer "will kill again" if freed, warns the detective who helped put the "most perverted evil human I have ever come across" behind bars.

Robin Reid is again up for parole consideration next month in Australia, 39 years after he kidnapped, tortured, shaved and buried alive Peter Aston, 13.

The sadist and his transgender soldier lover then poured sand down the schoolboy's throat to end his life after they found he was still breathing.

Now-retired detective Ian Spiers, who locked up Reid, fears for his own life if the killer is released.

He also believes the 72-year-old murderer could "maim and kill" more boys.

Spiers recalls the spine-shivering moment he found macabre items among Reid's belongings back in 1982, which made him certain Reid might have more victims.

Reid was a 34-year-old army corporal living at Enoggera Barracks in Brisbane with Private Paul Wayne Luckman, 17, when the two of them killed Peter Aston.

They were acting out one of Reid's sexual torture fantasies of capturing and "sacrificing" boys, which he had shared with Luckman and others.

Inside his barracks room, he had books about Satanism, masochism and violence, and a cache of more than 50 knives, swords, handcuffs and other weapons.

But it was Reid's collection of other objects that completely chilled Spiers to the bone.

In plastic bags, individually labelled with male names and an initial for a surname – such as one labelled "Bill W. Pubic" – Reid had kept samples of pubic hairs from 50 different people.

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They were of particularly sinister relevance to the crime Reid had just committed, which included a similar "trophy".

"I am sure they were all trophies. I'm sure he had murdered other boys and done what he did to Peter," Spiers told new.com.au.

"And if he gets out of jail (I believe) he will kill again. He is very cunning, he is very, very intelligent."

Spiers recounted the horror of what Reid did to the two young boys, and has revealed for the first time how the cold-blooded criminal planned to kill him too as they revisited the crime scene.

Peter Aston and his friend Terry Ryan, 12, were two Brisbane schoolboys who had decided to wag class when their paths unfortunately crossed with Reid and Luckman.

They were just being "naughty boys", Spiers said, when they caught a train to Beenleigh and stole about 20 packets of cigarettes and clothes from shops.

They decided to hitchhike to the Gold Coast, with Peter planning to travel on to Melbourne to join his older brother.

It was May 4, 1982, and the two schoolboys had the misfortune to be on the road when Luckman and Reid drove past in their yellow 4WD Daihatsu, pulled over and lifted up the car bonnet.

Reid was best known at Enoggera by the nickname of "Head Job Bob" for his gay sex acts at the northwestern Brisbane military base.

But he had also revealed to another soldier in April 1982, his plan to kidnap two young males and slowly and painfully torture them with knife cuts and cigarette burns, then sacrifice them on a stone altar and bury their bodies in bush graves.

Luckman, half his age, had become Reid's lover and the pair had become inseparable at the barracks.

On May 2, 1982, Reid and Luckman had picked up a young hitchhiker, John Bruce, blindfolded and handcuffed him at gunpoint, and savagely beat him, but then let him go.

Two days later, the evil pair tricked Peter and Terry into getting into the vehicle. Soon afterwards, Luckman produced a rifle from beneath a blanket on the floor and held it at Terry's head.

He warned Peter that if he moved he would put "a bullet in the head or the back", Spiers said, and the boys were threatened with knives and Peter was restrained.

Reid began hitting Peter, a slight and delicate-looking boy who wore glasses, as he drove over the Queensland-NSW border, about 20km to South Kingscliff.

When he stopped, the two men forced the boys at gunpoint out of the car and down a secluded beach track.

Luckman thumb-cuffed Peter's big toes, the rifle to his back and made him run.

Night was falling as the boys were forced towards the beach.

Reid stripped off Peter's clothes and Luckman swung the rifle into Peter's jaw so hard that the rifle butt broke.

The men began stabbing Peter with an assortment of knives.

Reid took a leather hole punch to the Peter's ears, and placed pieces of skin in a tablet bottle.

Peter then managed to get up, but Reid took a shovel from the car and began hitting him over the head.

He ordered Terry to do the same, and then shaved Peter's head and ordered Terry to dig a hole.

Luckman and Reid then slowly asphyxiated Peter by pouring sand down his throat. They buried him in a shallow sand grave, but Reid noticed he was still breathing.

"He made Terry shove more sand down Peter's throat to stop him gurgling," Spiers said.

Terry managed to convince the men to drive him back to Queensland and drop him off. The terrified boy turned up with his mother at Beenleigh Police Station in the middle of the night.

"Reid made two mistakes," Spiers said.

"He involved another person, Luckman, and he let one of the boys they kidnapped go."

Terry told police Reid and Luckman had said they were devil worshippers and they had to kill Peter "for the sacrifice".

Terry was able to give police enough information for them to go to Enoggera, where Reid and Luckman tried to escape and were chased down a highway before eventually being arrested.

Spiers was stationed at Murwillumbah Police Station in northern NSW and went to the barracks where they seized Reid's swords, spears, knives, Satanism books and a photograph album containing the 50 packets of pubic hair.

They also found a notebook with a handwritten story about leading a boy down a bush track and holding him in a headlock with a knife at his throat while undressing him.

Spiers was assigned the task of taking Reid on a walk-through of the crime scene.

"I'd never met anyone like him before," Spiers told news.com.au. "He was evil, deviant, dangerously intelligent".

As "part of his game", Reid pretended he had lost the power of speech and sat behind the detective as they drove around the murder scene and gravesite.

Reid wrote notes about what had happened and where, and demonstrated how he had hole-punched Peter's ears, held a knife to him and then suffocated him with sand.

"I'll never forget how casual he was," Spiers said.

"With a toothpick in his mouth, pointing out where they tortured the boy … Reid was boasting. It was sickening."

Reid was originally given life for Peter's murder, but had his sentence redetermined down to 26 years, which expired in 2006.

Luckman served 17 years in prison, during which he began hormone treatment and changed his name by deed poll to Nicole Louise Pearce.

Released in 1999, he underwent gender reassignment surgery and now lives in country Victoria as a woman.

Reid was denied parole in 2014 and 2016, but did not seek it in 2018 as the NSW State Parole Authority (SPA) declined to consider it.

No court has a hold over him and two independent committees, the SPA and the Serious Offenders Review Council (SORC) decide when he should be released.

SPA will consider him again for release next month.

"I suppose he'll get out eventually," said Spiers, who believes the NSW Government should classify Reid in the same category as Anita Cobby and Janine Balding's killers.

These men have been "cemented in", after sentencing judges deemed they should "never to be released".

Spiers acknowledges those killers' crimes, but believes Reid is an even greater risk to the community.

"Those were terrible murders," Spiers said, "but the killings were opportunistic.

"Robin Reid is a murderer in the truest sense. His chosen occupation is to maim, torture and kill.

"People need to be reminded of what he actually did. I would be afraid for my own safety if he was ever let out."

Sentencing judge, Justice Adrian Roden, described the crime as "one of the most brutal and callous to come before the courts".

"In over 30 years in criminal courts in this state and elsewhere, I have not seen their like".

On Luckman's release in 1999, the surviving victim Terry said he feared for his family's safety, but was most fearful if Reid was ever released.

"He is one person everyone has to be aware of. He is a lethal man as long as he's alive. I don't think the public realises what these creatures did and how savage it was."

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