Bruce Allan Burrell was born on January 25, 1953, in Australia. He lived most of his adult life in New South Wales and worked in advertising and marketing. At various points, he was known to associate with wealthy individuals and maintained friendships with people of high social and financial standing. He was married and had business connections that linked him to both of his future victims.

One such connection was to Dorothy Davis, a wealthy 74-year-old widow from Lurline Bay. Davis knew Burrell and trusted him enough to visit his home, indicating a relationship built over time. Another was Kerry Whelan, a 39-year-old mother of three and the wife of a prominent Sydney businessman. Burrell had previously worked for the Whelan family and maintained a friendly and familiar rapport with them.

On May 30, 1995, Dorothy Davis disappeared after she left her home to visit the wife of Bruce Burrell. She was never seen again. The case drew media attention due to Davis’s age, her affluence, and the total lack of physical evidence, no body, no weapon, no crime scene. Over time, suspicion fell on Burrell, and though he was not charged immediately, investigators continued building a circumstantial case against him.

Nearly two years later, on May 6, 1997, Kerry Whelan, a 39-year-old wife and mother of three, vanished after being seen getting into Burrell’s Mitsubishi Pajero outside the Parkroyal Hotel in Parramatta. Her husband, Bernie Whelan, received a $1 million ransom demand the following day, solidifying the case as a kidnapping for financial extortion. Whelan’s body was never found either.

Burrell was charged in 1999 with Whelan’s murder but the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence. However, after a formal inquest in 2002, charges were reinstated, and Burrell was put on trial. The first trial in 2005 resulted in a hung jury. In 2006, during a second trial, Burrell was convicted of Kerry Whelan’s murder and kidnapping, receiving a sentence of life imprisonment plus 16 years.

That same year, Burrell was also charged and convicted of Dorothy Davis’s murder. Prosecutors asserted that the motive, in both cases, was financial, with Burrell leveraging trust to lure victims into isolated situations. Again, Davis’s body was never found, yet the jury was convinced by the weight of circumstantial evidence. He was sentenced to an additional 28 years, with a non-parole period of 21 years. Burrell appealed both convictions, first to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, and later attempted to escalate to the High Court of Australia. His appeals were unsuccessful; the High Court refused leave to appeal in 2010, leaving all convictions and sentences intact.

Until his death, Burrell maintained his innocence and never revealed the location of the bodies, leaving both families without closure. His refusal to cooperate added a chilling layer of cold calculation to an already deeply disturbing case. On August 4, 2016, Burrell died in custody at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick, after a battle with lung and liver cancer. He was 63 years old.