In 2019, the Offender Database reported that Arthur Greer, then 81, died in the United Kingdom following a decades-long criminal history in Australia. Known as one of Western Australia’s most notorious child killers, Greer was deported to his native UK in June 2018 after being granted parole on compassionate grounds due to terminal cancer. He had served 25 years for the 1983 murder of 14-year-old Sharon Lee Mason, a crime that shocked the nation when the victim’s remains were discovered nine years after she vanished.
The court heard that Sharon Mason disappeared in February 1983 from the Perth suburb of Mosman Park. Her body was only found in 1992, dismembered and buried in plastic bags beneath a garden shed at the rear of a dress shop Greer owned on Stirling Highway. Prosecutors argued that Greer had used the cover of a small shed to dig a deep grave and conceal the teenager’s remains. During the investigation, police uncovered Greer’s extensive and violent criminal record, which included two counts of sexual assault and the attempted murder of a former girlfriend and her friends in New South Wales.
Arthur Greer was convicted of murder in 1993, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. However, a 1994 retrial resulted in another guilty verdict and a life sentence with a seven-year minimum. Throughout his quarter-century of incarceration, Greer maintained his innocence, even gaining support from prominent figures like former WA Governor Malcolm McCusker, who believed evidence had been withheld at trial. Despite these claims, the Parole Board repeatedly rejected his release for over a decade, describing him in 2003 as a “sexually predatory psychopath” at an extreme risk of reoffending with extreme violence.
In May 2018, WA Attorney General John Quigley endorsed a recommendation for Greer’s parole, citing his “deteriorating health and limited mobility” as factors that mitigated his risk to the public. Sharon Mason’s family supported the deportation, stating they wanted him “never again to taste freedom in Australia.” Greer was escorted by Border Force officers to Perth Airport and flown to the UK. Shortly before his death, he appeared on A Current Affair to continue his claim of innocence, though one of his own daughters continued to describe him as a paedophile who had molested her when she was seven years old.
Arthur Greer died from cancer in the early hours of Friday morning in early 2019, reportedly with his daughter Christine by his side. His death brought a final close to one of Western Australia’s most contentious and gruesome murder cases. While Greer spent his final months in the UK, he remained a subject of lifelong notification requirements on the Sex Offenders Register. International authorities monitored him until his passing.
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