PAUL Cole spends seven days a week, driving his taxi around Launceston.
Many a drunk reveller, frail pensioner and unlicensed passenger would have been ferried across town by Mr Cole in the past seven years, unaware that he helped lock up one of Australia's most notorious serial rapists.
Terry John Williamson terrorised a small New South Wales community during a 10-month rampage starting in 1989, raping 11 victims in total, including a five-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy.
He committed his crimes while aged 20, armed with a nine-centimetre knife and wearing a balaclava to hide his bright red hair.
Mr Cole said Williamson often bound and gagged his young victims with strips of their own clothing. Most attacks were committed in the victim's bed.
Now 43 years old, Williamson will front a New South Wales parole hearing this week in a bid for his freedom after more than 21 years in jail.
Mr Cole believes Williamson could attack again if released.
''If he is not supervised very strictly, there is no doubt that he will commit further offences,'' he said.
Mr Cole was serving as detective sergeant at Wollongong Police Station when Williamson's first victim, a 13-year-old girl, was raped at Bulli High School in August, 1989.
Mr Cole was immediately transferred to Corrimal to lead detectives at its police station, which had jurisdiction over Bulli.
Williamson struck again a month after his first attack and dragged a 15-year-old girl from her home at knife point and raped her.
It was his third attack in November - where an 11-year-old boy was abducted from his bed while his parents slept, placed in the boot of a stolen car, raped in a park then dumped - that Mr Cole realised he was dealing with a serial rapist.
Still, he had to watch Williamson's depravity unfold with two rape attacks in a fortnight two months later - one on a 24-year-old woman in her home, the other on a five-year-old girl.
''That one was particularly disturbing,'' Mr Cole said.
''He had been watching a house that used to belong to his grandmother for a while.
''He broke in and tied up the woman that lived there but realised she was seven or eight months pregnant when he started to undress her.
''She was still tied to the bed when he took her five-year-old daughter to the room and sexually assaulted her.''
This act led to a special taskforce being set up to catch Williamson.
Mr Cole said the job proved difficult as they didn't have much of a description of the perpetrator from victims.
DNA technology was still in its early stages and Williamson was able to remain a step ahead of police by listening to radio calls over a scanner.
It was an attack in May, 1990, where a 16-year-old at Balgownie fought off Williamson that police were able to find and arrest their suspect.
''At that stage, we had 20-odd plain-clothes police staked out in backyards, watching the streets with night binoculars,'' Mr Cole said.
Williamson admitted to attempted kidnap and assault charges and was bailed under conditions he did not leave his parents' home.
He broke bail within a week to commit what was his final rape, that of a 20-year-old Wollongong woman.
''Even though his sexual drive was really high, he told us that he used to get off on the chase,'' Mr Cole said.
''When I first met him, he was very soft-spoken, polite, but no sign of remorse over what he had done. To look at him, he looked like any other kid next door.
''The only trouble he had ever been in was when he tried to steal some petrol a few years before.''
Mr Cole said the Bulli rapist case was the most intense and prolonged investigation he had been involved with in 34 years with the police force.
''I've been involved in some pretty horrific murders but this one placed so much pressure on us, from the public, from the media,'' he said.
''I'd say (Williamson) would be either the worst or second-worst serial rapist. I know there is a history of very violent attacks but this ranks so high because of the number of assaults.
''And they are the ones that we know of.''
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