Original subtitles

(phone vibrates)

(tense music)

- [Narrator] 91 million of us worldwide

search for love online.

- She was looking for love.

- She wanted someone that would give her the freedom

to be herself.

- He looked like a normal, nice guy.

- [Narrator] But internet dating can be a dangerous game.

- [Reporter] The mother of two small boys

reported missing early Sunday morning.

- [Narrator] In the UK alone, crime linked

to online dating has risen 450% over five years.

- This is a predator's paradise.

- There's a dark side of the web

that people don't realize exists.

- [Narrator] These are the real life love stories

that ended in tragedy.

- Each day she was living in fear.

- I knew that he was no angel,

but he really had me tricked.

- [Narrator] So how well do you really know

the person you're dating?

- She didn't stand a chance against that monster of a man.

(dramatic music)

(tense music)

- Ballarat is a town known for the discovery of gold

in the 1850s, it may have a population of 100,000 people

but it is a fairly tight-knit community.

- [Narrator] An hour outside Melbourne

in southeast Australia lies the city of Ballarat.

- I know a lot of people here.

They're friendly, they say hi.

In a sense as much as we can we look after each other.

- I like Ballarat.

We've got amazing friends, we've really got everything here.

- Good evening, homicide detectives are on the hunt

for a killer.

- Whoever caused these injuries is tonight

still on the loose and police want to hear from anyone

who might be able to help them piece together

exactly what happened.

- [Woman] The murder absolutely rocked the community.

Was this a one-off, was it a serial killer?

The town was really fearful.

(gentle music)

- One, two, three!

- Not yet! - Not yet, what's not yet?

(babbling)

- [Narrator] 29 year old Sharon Siermans

was a devoted mother to son Aron.

- Sharon was just a born mother.

Absolute born mother.

She just shone, didn't she?

- Just changed.

- He was the world to her, wasn't he?

- Absolutely. - Oh, unbelievable.

- [John] Yeah she was just caring.

- Yeah, she was, really caring.

- Very caring for everybody else.

And that's why when Aron came, oh,

all that caring just spilled out onto Aron.

- Cheese!

- She just lived for the little man, absolutely.

Changed her life completely.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Sharon was the youngest

of Denise and John's four children.

- It was just unbelievable when she was born

because I had a cesarean with Sharon

so I was put to sleep and when I woke up

and they told me that it was a little girl,

oh, I was thrilled to bits.

They're taking me down in the lift

and everybody hopped into the lift

must have had too much of something,

"I've just had a daughter, I've just had a daughter,

"I've just had a daughter!"

(laughs)

I was so thrilled.

- Sharon was very much a daddy's girl.

I mean I have three boys and all that

but she was my, well she was the youngest, she was my baby.

- Certainly brings back a lot of memories.

How cute she was and how much Aron looks like her.

(chuckles)

She'd be off with her brothers down by the creek

chopping trees down and getting into lots of mischief.

These ones here are absolutely beautiful of Sharon

when she was at kinder.

I'm gonna cry.

Sorry.

(crying)

- [Narrator] At 23, Sharon met Aron's father.

They were together for four years,

but split up when Aron was three.

- They had quite a good relationship

until Aron arrived, didn't it,

and just seemed to crumple then.

Because I feel the attention Sharon was paying on Aron.

Oh!

(laughing)

- [Narrator] Now a single mum, Sharon moved with Aron

to a rented house on a quiet street

near the center of Ballarat.

- She was quiet, she kept to herself.

Very much kept to herself.

I seen Sharon over the road there, go in and out of

her house, I go oh that's cute, she's got, you know,

little child and that.

I'm actually dating a single mother

and I know what it's like, it can just be incredibly lonely.

Even though you've got a family to look after and that,

what you really want for your family is love.

That's what you really want.

And that's obviously what she was looking for.

- I would say about 12 months she'd been single for.

And someone suggested the online dating

and she just thought that she'd have a go.

And I mean she had met quite a few people.

She got quite friendly with one of the people

but I don't think he wanted any commitment

or anything like that so that's why she sort of

kept searching because she was looking for love.

- I definitely think being a single mum

made Sharon more vulnerable.

She has less time to date in the real world

so she may have invested more heavily

in the online dating world

and ultimately we believe what we're told sometimes,

we believe the story about a person

who may even be fictional or not real,

and unfortunately that leaves her extremely vulnerable

to being taken advantage of.

- [Narrator] In January 2013, Sharon met a man

called Jason Godfrey on a dating website.

- I think that she was talking to him for a while

before she did meet him because she used to show me

things that he'd sent, you know, on the phone

like bunches of flowers and things like that.

I can't even remember her showing me his picture.

- Very, very secretive she was with her phone.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Very secretive.

- [Narrator] Jason and Sharon began texting each other.

He told her that he'd been single for seven years.

- He said, you know, he'd lost his fiancee seven years ago

and oh you know and really buttered her up.

I suppose she felt sorry for him.

(suspenseful music)

- [Narrator] Dr. Danny Sullivan is a forensic psychiatrist

who has consulted on complex criminal cases

involving online crime.

- Meeting a person online means that you're responding

to the image that they've chosen to present of themselves.

The internet has really transformed dating

because people can meet with a veil of anonymity,

they can conceal their identity, they can manufacture

an identity, and they can recreate themselves

as whoever they want to be.

Human interactions are very complex,

so a person will develop a script or a story

for themselves which explains them

in a way that they hope gains positive feedback

and acceptance from the other person.

That might involve sympathy, that might involve passion,

some of which will take root in the fertile soil

of the partner that they've chosen.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] But in late 2012,

Sharon wasn't the only one looking for love online.

Finding herself single for the first time in 10 years,

local mum Sonji was also trying internet dating.

- I actually went onto an online dating service

hoping to find someone that I could possibly

spend the rest of my life with.

End of the day, kids in bed, everything sorted out,

I'd sort of sit down after tea and go through

all the pictures and the different people that

and just have a chat.

- [Narrator] Around the time that Sharon met

Jason Godfrey online, he also contacted Sonji.

- My girlfriend and I were just sitting at the table

having a bit of a look on the dating site

and his face popped up and oddly enough

I sort of looked and then I had a second look

and I thought to myself, "Oh, this guy looks a little bit

"rough around the edges," I suppose you could say.

And I then I thought to myself,

"No, don't be so rude, he's took the time to message me."

So I thought, "No, don't judge a book by its cover."

I'm no fashion queen.

Just say g'day and see how you go.

I honestly can't remember what his first message was now,

just I think hi, you know, how are you

or something quite simple that that probably would have been

why I kept chatting with him, yeah.

But he came across as quite a genuine and nice person.

(suspenseful music)

- Online dating gives us a great platform

to meet people that we might not ordinarily meet

in a day to day basis, but unfortunately

because sometimes we share intimate stories

about our lives, our histories,

and the other person does the same,

it leaves us more vulnerable to believing those

and taking on board what the other person says

as being the truth when it might not be.

- Very first time that we met, we met at a coffee shop,

out in the open, all the right things

that they say that you should do.

We sat and we chatted, we had a coffee.

We got along really well and I actually invited him

back to my place for another cuppa and to stay

and just sort of chat and get to know each other.

And it was really good, there was no problem.

He went home later that night, I think.

When we first met we weren't dating straight away

or anything like that, both of us were still chatting

to people on the dating site.

For the first probably two or three weeks.

And I now find out that he was talking to Sharon

through the dating site for the first few weeks

that we were together.

(suspenseful music)

- When Sharon first signed up to online dating,

I didn't bat an eyelid.

You know, people meeting other people

and I've heard of people meeting their partners online.

But I always did say to her,

never ever tell them where you live.

- [Narrator] In mid-January, Sharon and Jason arranged

their first date.

- The first thing I thought when she said,

"Oh, I've got a meeting with this bloke from Beaufort,"

I thought oh, yeah, a little country boy, you know.

That'll be good, you know, that sort of thing.

- [Narrator] Jason told Sharon he lived in Beaufort.

A 30 minute train journey from Ballarat.

Kim Quinlan covered the case for the local news.

- So it was here at the Ballarat railway station

where Jason and Sharon Siermans first met

in January of 2013.

She instantly had an uneasy feeling about him.

His profile picture didn't match up

with what he looked like in real life,

he had missing teeth, his hair was a mess,

his clothes were mess.

And she was really embarrassed

to be seen with him in public.

- She said to me when he got off the train

she said oh, he looked terrible.

She said he was dirty, his clothes and everything.

And she said, "I nearly turned around and went back

"into the car but I felt that sorry for him

"because he said he'd lost his fiancee seven years ago."

She said, "I just should've turned around and walked away."

- [Narrator] Sharon was so embarrassed to be seen with Jason

that she made a catastrophic decision.

She took him home.

(suspenseful music)

Colin Sutton is one of the UK's most respected

murder detectives.

He's studied this case.

- For Sharon to take Jason home on that first date

was an incredibly dangerous thing for her to do.

Because you're exposing so much.

People using internet dating sites

are almost by definition trusting.

They're there looking for relationships.

They want to form a relationship,

they want to trust what they're being told.

And this clouds their judgment.

- [Narrator] After spending time with Jason Godfrey,

Sharon still didn't warm to him.

- Halfway through the date realized

that there was something not quite right about this man

so went into another room, phoned a friend,

and asked this friend to give her a fake phone call

to say that her son was sick

and she had to go and pick him up.

So she took him back to the train station

here in Ballarat and she was probably hoping

that that would be the last time that she ever saw him.

- [Narrator] Later, Sharon told her mum and dad

about her disastrous date.

- She walked in the door and she just put her hands

in the air and she said, "Oh my goodness,

"that's all that I can get," she said.

"Oh, you should have seen what I've met today."

We all sat there and had a laugh about it.

We thought it was, and then she just said,

"Oh, tomorrow I'm just gonna say, you know,

"I'm not interested."

After that we never heard another thing.

Nothing, nothing.

- [Narrator] But in retelling the story,

Sharon left out one crucial detail.

- She never told me that she took Jason home.

She told me that they went and had lunch

down in Main Road at the Chinese cafe.

And I never found out until after she died

that she had taken him home.

- Sharon might of taken Jason home

because she felt that she trusted him.

She might have believed the things that he'd said online

and felt that she knew him when in reality

this was a stranger to her.

And we talk about stranger danger but sometimes

because of the online element of getting to know somebody,

those red flags are missed.

- [Narrator] As Sharon forgot about her disastrous date

and moved on, Sonji and Jason began a relationship.

- My mum, my children, everybody got along with him well.

He treated me like a princess, to be honest.

We did a lot of fun things.

I used to go out and watch him play cricket.

We'd kick back on the bed watching chick flicks

and he would cry before I would.

And I thought to myself, "Oh gosh,

"he's really got a sensitive heart," and stuff like that.

I really had no reason to think anything bad of him, really.

I suppose you could say it was almost too perfect, perhaps.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] As their relationship developed,

Jason admitted to Sonji that he had a troubled past.

- I knew that he was no angel, he had been in jail before.

But in my mind everybody deserves a second chance.

I thought sort of that he'd been in the trouble with the law

for a bit of petty theft and drugs, marijuana

or something like that.

It's funny how good at deception he was

because I used to pride myself very much on judging people

quite well and it really sort of threw me for a six

that I could have it so wrong,

so very, very wrong.

Yeah, so.

- [Narrator] Jason Godfrey wasn't the man he claimed to be.

In fact, Jason Godfrey didn't exist.

His real name was Jason Dinsley,

and he was a man spinning a web of lies

to hide his violent criminal past.

- Anyone who dated Dinsley online

would have known him by the last name of Godfrey

which was actually his mother's maiden name.

Jason Dinsley was a master at hiding his criminality.

- [Narrator] Aged just 14, a young Jason Dinsley

was already addicted to heroin and living on the streets.

- Jason Dinsley had a rap sheet as long as your arm.

He started off as a 14 year old doing petty crimes,

he was kicked out of school, he'd developed a drug habit

at a very young age.

- Very few criminals start off with murder.

Criminologists would tell us that there's often

an escalation from petty crime as a juvenile

and then there's an escalation through life.

- [Narrator] In fact, Dinsley was only released from prison

in August 2012, just months before he met

both Sonji and Sharon.

- I knew he was on parole, I actually used to drop him

to the parole office for him to report.

But in my mind, anyone who deals with that

when they're younger that gets themselves out of it

and tries to make something of their life

I have a lot of respect for.

- When people come out of prison,

they're often quite estranged from the community.

They might move to a place that's distant

from where they grew up or from where they have links.

It's natural therefore that they would seek

to build links with the community

by perhaps using an online presence to meet other people.

When a person has had an offending history,

they can manufacture an identity and they can recreate

themselves as whoever they want to be.

- As the internet is the place where we're

increasingly living our lives and we're doing

our shopping there, we're doing our banking there.

We're conversing with our friends and family there.

It's natural that that's where dating now takes place.

And of course if that's where we're living our life,

then that's where crime is going to go, it's going to

migrate there because crime will be

wherever we're living our lives.

- [Narrator] By March 2013,

Dinsley was falling back into his old ways.

- He broke his parole by drinking heavily,

taking cannabis, not the most serious breaches

of that parole order, although they were breaches,

but I think the best one in the world

you can never be certain that a parolee will not reoffend.

(gentle music)

- [Narrator] Friday the 5th of April

was a typical day for Sharon

as she spent time with her family.

- She'd done some shopping with Aron's other nanny,

she'd even bought Aron a lovely little dress up,

it was a little tiger suit, and she brought it over for him.

- [Narrator] Sharon arranged for Aron's other grandma

to come over the next morning to do some gardening.

That evening, Sharon and Aron had dinner with her parents.

- She had her evening meal and they went home

at about 8:00 and I can still remember them

out the front, we were out the front and she was waving

with the window down in the car.

- Toot the horn.

- And that tooting the horn, that was the last time

we seen here and that was the last time.

And that's our last memory of her.

And Aron in the back. - Yep.

- So I was staying at my partner's place.

The dog had just, the American bulldog Roxy,

she had just given birth to like a litter of 10 pups.

So they were quite noisy and restless

and it was all of us in the house who were feeling

the effects of sleep deprivation.

And I came back here on that particular night.

Because it's very quite out the back here

so I know if I come back here

I can get a good night's sleep.

So that's what I did.

I drove back early in the morning, parked the car,

looked up and down the street, came inside.

Just like every other time that I've done it.

She'd been murdered across the road

and I was sleeping here, right across the road.

(tense music)

- I was coming home from golf at Beaufort.

And as I drove past Beaufort or past into town,

I actually only 100 yards away from Sharon's

and I happened to say to the father in law,

"Oh look at that, there's a policeman there.

"Looks like some bloke's in trouble."

And then as you drove a bit further you seen

more police, blue and white tape, I happened to mention

to the father, "Gee, that's very, very close

"to Sharon's place, something serious has happened there."

- Looking over the road you could see the police van,

police tape around the house.

I went outside and from the front door I took a photo

of what was going on.

- And then probably within a minute, minute and a half,

I get a phone call from my neighbor to say

that there's a detective here wanting to see me.

Stomach just dropped, I just twigged

because of those police up near Sharon's place

that something was seriously wrong

and I just lost all sense of thinking

and god knows and I got here and I got told,

the world just stopped.

- The young woman's body was discovered this morning.

Now police won't reveal exactly how she died

or what sorts of injuries she sustained,

only to say they were violent injuries.

- Aron's nanny, her partner, he was the one

that found Sharon.

They came in and they noticed the back door was open.

And then they walked into the kitchen

and there was blood on the floor

and then Aron came towards them and said,

"Mummy won't wake up to get me any breakfast."

So the nanny took Aron and went outside

and her partner went in and found Sharon's body.

- [Narrator] Sharon was murdered sometime

in the early hours of the morning.

Around the time that Mark Kelava was returning home.

- What if I was 10 minutes earlier

or 10 minutes later?

What if I'd have showed up and he was like standing

right at the front?

I wish that it was different.

Imagine how afraid she felt.

(tense music)

- You don't close your mind to anything in the first

few hours of an investigation, but you'd be looking

at the scene, you'd be looking at is there sign

of forced entry.

When somebody's murdered in her home,

unless the front door is hanging off

or there's a broken window,

gonna be someone she knew, probably.

- We're treating the death as a suspicious death.

- There appears to be no sign of forced entry.

And it's possible the woman knew the man

who was in the house.

- [Narrator] Sharon's son Aron was the only witness

to his mother's murder.

- Aron had told police that a man had broken

into his mummy's house and bashed her with a bat

and actually stole Mummy's phone.

- Aron had seen the man walking down the path,

he said he'd even seen the man hit Mummy on the leg

with a cricket bat.

- Yeah and Mum screamed like an eagle.

Just like an eagle all the time, Grandma.

Yeah, and there the things that we've had to

try and deal with, him telling you those sorts of things.

Trying to assure him that he did do the right thing

by staying in his room, that he couldn't help Mummy,

you know?

- You've got a young single mum,

one of the first things you're gonna look at

is okay, did she have any boyfriends, partners,

relationships, and very quickly these days

that means let's have a look at her computer,

let's have a look at her emails,

let's have a look at her phone

and let's see if she was using internet dating at all.

It's one of the first places you'd look, really,

in a case like this.

- The police knew that Sharon was using online dating

services and that was a possible avenue of looking

for a suspect.

Jason wasn't even on the radar.

There were other men that Sharon had dated more recently

that were suspects.

- When I carried out the postmortem examination,

I noted a number of injuries to the head,

many, many bruises over the arms and legs.

It was clearly quite a ferocious attack.

Type of injury you might see in a murder causing.

Some of the bruises on her body were like held

over the back of her shoulder on the left side

and they were what we refer to as tramline bruises

so there's two linear areas of bruising.

The type of implement that would cause

those type of injuries would be something

like a cricket bat or a baseball bat.

By examining the brain we can assess whether there's been

a period of survival beyond 30 minutes

and in her case there wasn't.

So she would have died fairly quickly

from the injuries she sustained.

- This person has suffered a prolonged and sustained attack.

It's quite rare in some ways, you know.

You generally find, particularly with killers

that aren't setting out to kill,

that one or two blows is enough

and they're then more intent on self-preservation,

escaping, and maybe trying to cover their tracks.

But to carry on beating and beating and beating

so you end up with injuries of this severity,

that shows somebody who's lost it, really.

- [Narrator] Across town, life was carrying on

as usual for Sonji.

She and Dinsley were now in a relationship

and spending a lot of time at her home in South Ballarat.

- Everything was just normal as far as I knew.

His demeanor hadn't changed in any way, shape, or form.

He was just the normal old Jason that he had been

for as long as I'd known him.

The story of Sharon Siermans being murdered in Ballarat

had been all over the news and the subject

sort of came up of how sad and how terrible it was

and how we all sort of felt for her parents

and her little child that had been left.

And everyone was just sitting around chatting

about the situation and he was chatting with them

with no change to his demeanor in any way, shape, or form.

He was just chatting like everybody else was

about something that was very horrible and sad

that had happened in our town.

- The first 24 hours after you've got a murder investigation

is make or break, and the reason for that is

is that most murders aren't planned.

Most murders happen because someone's got angry,

because someone's overreacted.

So they haven't planned for things like forensics,

fingerprints, DNA, mobile phone data, CCTV footage.

The police knew from Aron, Sharon's son,

that the intruder, the killer, had taken her phone.

The first thing the police would do

would be to contact the service provider

and say where is this phone.

If the answer you get is the phone's switched off

and has been for some days, it's possible to put

a marker against that phone on their computer system.

So that when that phone is switched on,

it will flag up to an operator there

who will record the details and those details will be

crucially whereabouts is the mast, the cell site,

and that can be a pretty accurate location,

you know, that can tie you down to a matter of meters

rather than miles, certainly.

(suspenseful music)

- Jason had a really old-fashioned phone

and we were all playing games, we all had iPhones.

And he said to me, "I really wish I could have a phone

"that I can play these games with you guys and stuff

"but I can't afford it."

He said to me on the Saturday that he'd rung up a mate

who he used to know and he said that his mate had one

and he could have it for $50

and he asked me would I take him to go and get the phone.

I drove to a house and I was just sitting in the car

and he said, "Oh, he's not home at the moment,

"I'll just run in and grab it

"and leave the money there for him."

He hopped back in the car with this iPhone

but it had a big sparkly purple girly-type cover on it.

And I said to him well, we had a bit of a laugh,

I said well obviously I don't think a guy

would put that kind of cover on it.

I had a red case on my phone and he said,

"How about you have the purple one?"

And I later found out that that phone

was Sharon Siermans's phone

and that he'd given me her phone case to use.

- [Narrator] On Monday the 8th of April,

two days after Sharon's murder,

Dinsley made a mistake that would lead police

straight to him.

- Jason Dinsley stupidly turned on that phone

a couple of days later, the phone pinged,

and the police raced to his address

and busted in and caught him.

(suspenseful music)

- There was just this almighty bang crash on the door,

the door got flung open,

and people just came from everywhere.

Six to eight policemen, constables, and detectives.

He stood up, expecting it.

I was sort of saying, "Why are you taking him away,

"why are all these police here?"

And she just shoved the piece of paper in my face

and pointed to the word murder.

And she said to me, "That's why we're here."

And I just fell to the ground to be honest.

I was just sat down on the ground crying

and thinking murder, how?

- I had the biggest rush in my stomach.

I mean I know it's never gonna bring Sharon back

but just to know that he was caught.

- [John] Euphoria was probably 10 minutes, 15 minutes,

the euphoria, and then it died down and the realization.

All right, we've got him, we still don't have Sharon.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] The police had caught Dinsley,

and he was hiding far more than some drug charges

and petty crime.

- He'd actually told Sharon that he hadn't had a girlfriend

for seven years because his fiancee

had been killed in a car crash,

when in actual fact he'd been behind bars the whole time.

- [Narrator] In fact, Dinsley had more than 140 convictions

and seven years before Sharon's murder

he had been convicted of a brutal crime.

- At the time of meeting up with Sharon Siermans,

Jason Dinsley was on parole for a vicious rape

of a 52 year old woman in a (mumbles) hotel.

He'd served only six or seven years

of a nine year sentence before he was paroled.

- Once you've committed and been convicted of a crime

of the seriousness of rape, then I guess you've kind of

gone past a boundary, past a point of no return.

You're fully kind of made into a proper serious criminal

in some ways and sadly the statistics say

that they are much more likely to reoffend again in future.

- [Narrator] As Dinsley confessed,

the bizarre, twisted events of that night

finally came to light.

- So on the night of April 6th, 2013,

Dinsley woke up, decided to go for a walk,

and he eventually ended up walking past

Sharon Siermans's house.

He instantly became enraged remembering the rejection

by Sharon only months earlier after their one and only date.

He became so enraged that he walked the 2.7 kilometers

home to his house where he went on a hunt for a weapon.

- [Narrator] Dinsley told police that he found

his cricket bat at Sonji's house.

He took the bat and his pocket knife

and walked back to Sharon's.

- It was 40 minutes between him first realizing

that he was outside Sharon's house.

For most rational people that would be enough time

for them to calm down, but Dinsley's personality,

he was a very, very violent man

and he became even more enraged

the closer he got to Sharon's house.

- [Narrator] Dinsley told police

that he used his pocket knife to remove some panes of glass

and he climbed into Sharon's house through a window.

- I think it's reasonable to assume

that Sharon must have heard him when he broke in

because she was up and confronted him straight away.

- [Narrator] Dinsley said that he threatened Sharon

and then began to hit her repeatedly

with the cricket bat.

Sharon's screams woke her young son.

- Just to think a four year old witnessing

his mum being brutally and savagely murdered.

That is one of the most heartbreaking

and heartwrenching parts for me as a mum

to try and comprehend

what that little boy must have been going through

at the time.

- [Narrator] Dinsley allowed Sharon to go into Aron's room

before attempting to rape her in her bedroom.

- It's interesting that he said

that he did try to rape her but couldn't get an erection.

And was this the thing that finally flipped him?

That there was so much anger and bitterness around that

that he's just carried on hitting and hitting and hitting.

Certainly in my experience of people who are frustrated

in that sort of situation has been

that it can turn them to violence,

although never before violence of the degree

that we see in this case.

- The nature of Jason's violence

suggests somebody who couldn't put that memory aside.

Somebody who ruminated and ruminated

until eventually their emotions were so high

that they had to take out their violence

on the person who, in their view,

had rejected or shamed them.

The level of violence used may not have been

intended to kill her, but it did

and that shows somebody who couldn't stop themselves

once they'd started.

(tense music)

- You just can't imagine anybody doing

what they did to Sharon.

Oh it's just oh, how could anybody do that?

That's what eats at me all the time,

how anybody could do that to another person.

We never got to say goodbye to her

because they said her injuries were so horrific

that we're best to remember her...

- Way she was.

- As she drove off that night.

(crying)

- After talking to the detectives I realized that

when I was sick he did such a good job

looking after me that a girlfriend of mine

had taken him down to the shops and bought him

a new cricket bat.

That bat that she had bought for him

to say thank you for looking after me

was the bat that he used to brutally kill Sharon Siermans.

He really had me tricked.

Yeah.

(crying)

Can we stop for a minute?

(murmuring)

- Good evening.

The man who murdered Ballarat mother Sharon Siermans

was sentenced to at least 32 years in jail.

Convicted rapist Jason Dinsley was on parole

when he bashed his victim with a cricket bat

after they met through a dating website.

- The bottom line is Dinsley, a convicted rapist

out on parole, was able to have access

to an online dating service.

He had carte blanche to possibly thousands and thousands

of potential victims.

(gentle music)

- One, two, three!

- Not yet!

- Not yet, what's not yet?

(babbling)

- If it wasn't for internet dating,

I don't think they ever would have met.

I don't feel that Sharon would have even

looked at Jason Dinsley if he was in a bar

or out anywhere, no way.

Sharon was just unfortunate that she picked a person

that wasn't who he said he was.

Because she was such a caring person

she took him at face value and this is the result of it,

this is what happened.

- I think to protect yourself online with online dating

get to know the person, not just the profile.

Maybe be a bit of a detective

and look more broadly than the profile,

see what else you can find out about the person.

Make sure you go to meet them in a safe place,

tell a friend, have a back out plan.

And ultimately sometimes we're afraid

of offending somebody, if it's not going well

or if you think something's wrong, do something about it.

Offending somebody is far better than being a victim.

- [Denise] Get up those steps, eh.

Oh they're steep, aren't they?

- Hi Mum.

Happy Mother's Day, Mum.

I love you and don't you forget it.

- We bring Aron here when he wants to come here.

Whenever he says he wants to visit Mum

we just stop what we're doing and bring him up.

We try to make it a nice, happy place

for him to visit Sharon.

- Always on my mind forever in my heart.

- [Denise] That's right.

(gentle music)

- She's had her life taken away from her

just looking for love.

That doesn't make any sense.

Just doesn't.

(sighs)

- I think the only reason that we've been able

to go forward is that we've got Aron to look after.

We just have to get on.

We'll never, ever get over losing Sharon, never, ever.

- [John] He is a great kid.

God he's a good kid.

He's Sharon to a T, absolutely Sharon to a T.

She started it all and we've gotta finish it all.

We've gotta finish it.

(dramatic music)