David and Catherine Birnie offered Denise Brown, 21, a lift while she waited for a bus on Stirling Highway in Perth on 5 November 1986. Instead of taking her home, they drove her to their house in the suburb of Willagee, where she was held captive. Later, the couple drove Denise north to a pine plantation near Wanneroo, where she was stabbed and struck with an axe before being buried in a shallow grave. Her disappearance became part of a series of murders that would leave Perth in fear, until another young woman escaped the Birnies' home and alerted police later that month.
