Funeral director revealed as serial rapist who terrorised Sydney

Warning: graphic content

A man dubbed the “Moore Park Rapist” has admitted to a two-year sexual assault rampage against seven women and one underage girl, decades on from the spate of crimes which terrorised Sydney.

Glenn Gary Cameron, a funeral director for decades, attacked his eight victims - aged between 17 and 45 - between 1991 and 1993. It sparked widespread panic and a desperate search for the serial predator.

Court documents revealed how police caught him through linking a DNA test with his daughter, finding his details via her birth records and hunting him down at Sydney International Airport, where a covert operation found his DNA on a schooner and fork.

Cameron, who was aged 27 to 29 at the time of the attacks and is now 61, faced the John Maddison Tower Local Court via audiovisual link from prison on Tuesday. With light blond hair and wearing glasses, he rested his chin on his hands and muttered “yes, your honour” when the magistrate asked if he understood he was being committed for sentence in the District Court.

One of Cameron’s victims dialled in to listen to the proceedings.

Cameron’s attacks attracted comprehensive media attention at the time.

On May 26, 1993, a Herald report revealed the hunt for an alleged repeat sex offender, referred to as the “Moore Park Rapist”, “The Night Stalker” and “The City Rapist”. The man was initially accused of attacking at least nine predominantly Asian women in the 14 months prior.

The article alleged that he lured his victims, mostly found near train stations, with fake job offers such as modelling or cleaning work. It said he then convinced them to walk with him towards Moore Park and locations in the inner west before sexually assaulting them at knifepoint, often at night.

Investigators set up a taskforce to find a man they described as “Mediterranean, clean-shaven with a tan [and] athletic build,” who regularly wore overalls during the attacks against the victims.

They said he seemed charming and well-mannered, spoke well in English and knew simple phrases in Cantonese, such as “Hello, how are you?”

Cameron, who was living in Alice Springs at the time of his arrest, was arrested at Sydney Airport in February 2024 after a forensic technology breakthrough and painstaking reinvestigation.

Cameron was initially charged with 33 offences, but nine of those were dropped. At court on Tuesday, he admitted to 24 charges against eight victims, including aggravated sexual assault and indecent assault.

Fourteen of those were Form 1 offences, meaning they will be taken into account when he is sentenced for the other charges to which he formally pleaded guilty.

His first attack was committed in Strathfield in April 1991 against a 25-year-old Japanese national on holiday in Australia, an agreed statement of facts reveals.

The woman had got off a train at Strathfield station around 8pm when she was approached by Cameron, who produced a fake police badge and asked for her ticket.

He told her it was an offence to ride without a ticket and ordered her to walk with him, leading her into a laneway, where he raped her at knifepoint.

Almost a year later, in his first attack at Moore Park, he raped his second victim while wielding a 15-centimetre knife. Six months later, he raped another victim twice at the same spot while threatening her with a butterfly knife.

From there, the attacks escalated.

Two weeks later, armed with a 20 centimetre-long knife, he raped a woman five times within half an hour at Moore Park.

In the four attacks that followed, Cameron raped and attempted to rape his victims at knifepoint, including forcing them to perform degrading acts.

One 24-year-old victim was walking home to Redfern from a Surry Hills pub when Cameron approached her and said: “Hey, I’m an art student, I think you’re really attractive. Would you like to do some modelling?”

The victim started walking away when Cameron grabbed the top of her shorts, held a knife to her back and led her to Moore Park Golf Course, where he raped her.

Cameron’s identity remained hidden for three months due to a suppression order which was quietly revoked in May last year.

Discharged from Army, decades as funeral director

The statement of facts reveals Cameron was raised by his maternal grandmother as his mother died young and he never knew his father. He went to public schools in Merrylands and Parramatta and later joined the Army but was discharged after one year due to drug issues.

He met his first serious partner in 1980, when she was 16, and they had two children before separating.

Throughout the 1990s, Cameron worked as a carer and wardsman at hospitals and aged care homes before getting a job at a Newtown funeral parlour for several years and a sex shop at night.

In 1990, he met his first wife, who’d recently moved to Australia from Taiwan. They had two children before Cameron “left the family home and never returned”.

Cameron told police he remained addicted to drugs until he met his current wife in 2008 - a woman who’d recently moved to Australia from Thailand. He said she “turned his life around”. Four years later, he got a job as a funeral director in Alice Springs, where the couple lived until his arrest.

A schooner and fork become vital clues

In 2022, the sex crimes squad was investigating DNA linked to the historical rapes against eight females around Moore Park and the inner west and determined four of them were “linked by the same unknown male profile,” the fact sheet states.

A familial search on the national criminal investigator DNA database found a positive result for a female - discovered to be Cameron’s daughter.

Hospital records revealed Cameron as her father and police realised he was a person of interest in the investigation.

Investigators spoke to officers in Alice Springs and discovered Cameron and his wife would shortly be travelling to Thailand via Sydney.

During a covert operation, officers saw Cameron eating a meal at Sydney Airport and later seized a schooner glass and fork, which they matched with DNA found in items at a hotel where he’d stayed ahead of his flight.

At 7:30am on February 29, 2024, officers arrested Cameron as he landed in Sydney upon his return from Thailand. Cameron denied the assaults to investigators, saying he’d “never hurt anyone,” as he was charged with dozens of crimes.

Cameron will next face court on October 24.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

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