'Monster' sex offender arrested, ending weeks-long hunt
Convicted sex offender Christopher William Empey has been arrested in a remote national park in New South Wales, bringing to an end a manhunt that lasted more than five weeks.
The 46-year-old was arrested on Wednesday at Tin Hun Mine in the Kosciuszko National Park and Victorian police will apply for his extradition on Thursday morning at the Cooma Local Court.
Empey was convicted in November 2003 of brutally raping and stomping on the head of his then 30-year-old colleague in the stairwell of a Southbank apartment building the previous July.
The woman that he attacked was found covered in blood, with facial fractures, a partly-severed right ear, brain damage and serious genital injuries. She lost two litres of blood.
"You try to put it behind you and move forward but it never leaves you," she told The Age in December.
Empey, whose acts were described by sentencing judge Bernard Teague as those of a monster, was released from prison in 2015 and had finished his parole.
Police had moved to place him on a serious sex offenders order and also list him on the sex offenders register so he could continued to be monitored.
The day the court was going to put the order in place, on November 23, Empey disappeared.
He took $10,000 from his safe and then cut off his GPS tracker.
The arrest comes a day after police caught sex offender Maurice Collie in Karingal, near Frankston, after he spent two weeks on the run.
with Tammy Mills and Melissa Cunningham