A woman who was with Sally Ann Jones just hours before the teenager was murdered says she has been scarred for life by the attack and is petrified of returning to Wagga.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Speaking for the first time since the horrific 1987 sex killing, Julie Dolton said she feared she would be next.
The former Wagga woman broke down when she saw the front page of Thursday's The Daily Advertiser, which linked Kenneth Barry Cannon - the man found guilty of Sally's murder - to the knifepoint rape of another teenager.
Cannon pleaded guilty to sexual assault in Wagga Local Court on Wednesday.
The coverage brought back memories that have haunted Ms Dolton since Sally was found dead in the Murrumbidgee River at Wiradjuri Reserve.
Twenty stab wounds had been inflicted on her body.
A DNA profile of blood supplied by Cannon was an exact match to a DNA profile of semen found on her underpants.
"He (Cannon) can rot in hell," Ms Dolton, 46, said.
"He has scarred my life forever; this has brought up all the bad memories that I, as an 18-year-old, went through.
"There's not a day that goes by I don't think about what happened to Sally."
Ms Dolton had joined the 18-year-old for a night out in the city; a night nobody envisaged would end so tragically.
She last saw Sally alive leaving a Baylis Street night spot called Cocos in the early hours of Easter Sunday, April 19, 1987.
Ms Dolton recalled how they had been in the bathroom, tending to an unrelated cut on Sally's hand, and that she later wanted to go home.
While her friends collected their bags to follow, Sally took off out the front door.
"We were 60 seconds after her and she was gone," she said.
Sally's body was found in the river later that morning after Cannon told police he had discovered a pair of black boots and drag marks along the beach toward the river, as well as blood stains on the boots and sand.
Ms Dolton said at the time she thought a taxi driver had killed Sally and, because she was with her at the time, believed she could have been a target.
"I always had it in the back of my head ... I was going to be next," she said.
"It scared me out of my home town and still to this day I hate and detest going back to Wagga."
A life cut short, but a voice that will always be heard.
As the pages of one of the darkest chapters in Wagga's recent history the sex killing of 18-year-old Sally Ann Jones continue to turn, so does the fight to ensure her memory lives on.
Julie Dolton has spoken exclusively to The Daily Advertiser to ensure the brutal April 1987 attack, at the hands of Kenneth Barry Cannon, is never forgotten.
"It's been horrific on mine and (another friend's, whose name has been withheld at their request) life; we were both just 18 years old," Ms Dolton said.
"I hid a lot from the media back then, but I'm happy to talk about it now."
Ms Dolton said there were limited support networks available when Sally was murdered, but took some solace in the fact it was the first use of DNA to bring a case to trial.
"We dealt with it by ourselves ... we never had a chance to talk to anyone about it," she said.
Cannon, a 27-year-old mechanic at the time, told police he made the grim discovery of Sally's body in the Murrumbidgee River while out jogging, but his trial was later told he had never been jogging in his life.
"He (Cannon) is utter filth, he's an oxygen thief (that) doesn't deserve to be breathing," Ms Dolton said.
"He has affected a lot of people's lives; everyone that knew Sally, he's taken something away from them."
Cannon was committed for sentence during the next sittings of Wagga District Court, which start on September 15, after he pleaded guilty to sexual assault last week.
Ms Dolton and the other friend will be in court.
"So he can see us," Ms Dolton said.
"We're going to be the voice and face of Sally because she's not here to defend herself.
"Sally's got a face and we need to be a voice."
A "cold case" review of the rape of a 15-year-old in Bolton Park on November 8, 1986, led to Cannon's arrest in February.
A 21-year jail maximum sentence handed down in August 1991 for Sally's murder expired in 2012 and he is serving a sentence for the rape of a third victim a 16-year-old girl on May 12, 1990.
