Wearing black sunglasses and a smirk, Domenic Perre seemed to enjoy the infamy that went with being a suspected master criminal.
Perre's initial arrest and court appearance for the bombing of the National Crime Authority (NCA) headquarters were in 1994.
But it would take almost 30 years before he was found guilty of the heinous crime, which claimed the lives of Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Bowen and seriously injured lawyer Peter Wallis.
Decades after his father was killed, Simon Bowen wrote a victim impact statement that was read out to South Australia's Supreme Court.
"You caused so much hurt, irreparable damage and suffering, all for what?" the statement said of Perre — who died in hospital last night — less than a year after he was found guilty of the crime.
"All so you could grow some dope and walk about South Australia like a wannabe gangster in your big, black glasses?"
By then Perre who, sat listening with his eyes closed, was a very different figure from the one that sauntered outside court all those years ago.
"You are a stain on society and a stain on your family," Simon Bowen told Perre, adding that he was a "worthless human being".
Simon's mother, Geoffrey's widow Jane Bowen-Sutton, expressed similar feelings, but in even fewer words.
"You, Domenic Perre, are evil," she told the court.
'Robbed of our innocence'
Domenic Perre's crimes were numerous, and included drug and firearm offences, for which he was sentenced to seven years' jail in 2020.
But the act that inflicted the greatest suffering, and for which Perre achieved infamy, occurred on the morning of March 2, 1994 in Adelaide's CBD.
At 9:15am, on the twelfth floor of the building which housed the National Crime Authority headquarters, Sergeant Bowen opened the parcel that killed him.
"[Perre] committed one of the most horrific forms of crime — a form of crime that today we would describe as 'domestic terrorism', and it took decades to call him to account, that's the thing we must remember here," said former Commissioner for Victims' Rights, Michael O'Connell.
"At the time the bombing happened, among police in particular, there was a sense of unease and bewilderment, and it was a building that was occupied by many other workers so many, many people have been impacted by this crime."
NCA lawyer Peter Wallis, who was not far from Bowen at the time of the explosion, lost an eye and suffered burns to more than a third of his body.
The blast caused glass windows to shatter and the fragments to shower onto Waymouth Street below — but there was also an emotional shock wave.
The explosion was described as an act of domestic terrorism, with Perre targeting the NCA because of its investigation into his family's drug business.
"After the events of the bombing in March 1994, we were terrified, traumatised and robbed of our innocence," Mr Wallis's daughter Genevieve told the Supreme Court last year.
"There is no doubt the man who came home from hospital after the bombing was not the dad we'd known before."
Perre's eventual conviction was a testament to the tireless efforts of police investigators determined to bring him to justice.
The case against him had been dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) as far back as September 1994, months after he was arrested.
"The Bowen family and the Wallis family have lived for years with the unresolved grief, coupled with the hope that he would perhaps one day be called to account," Mr O'Connell said.
"Every birthday, every anniversary, every Christmas, there's an empty seat at the table – and those seats are empty because of the crime Domenic Perre committed."
In 1999, the state's coroner found that Perre, who was by that stage a convicted drug dealer in custody, was most likely to have made and sent the letter bomb, but the case did not make it back to court.
In 2006 the cold case was reviewed, but it wasn't until a decade later, in 2016, that police revealed the creation of Task Force Cornus, which had been set up in secret to continue investigating the NCA bombing.
That yielded dividends — in February 2018, Perre was arrested and charged by South Australia Police with murder and attempted murder.
Four years later, he was found guilty after a lengthy and complex seven-month trial, during which Perre experienced health problems.
Partly because of its horrific human consequences, partly because of the calculated method employed, and partly because it had remained unsolved for so long, the NCA bombing entered the public consciousness as one of South Australia's most notorious crimes.
To an extent, the death of Perre — who had launched an appeal seeking to overturn his conviction — draws a line under that episode in the state's history.
But the tragic impact of his shocking crime will continue to reverberate, not least in the hearts and minds of the families of his victims.
"Our court system often leaves victims feeling … that the system is weighed too heavily in favour of people such as Domenic Perre," Mr O'Connell said.
"But, on the other hand, this does close at least one aspect of the story that has impacted them.
"His death means that the families will not have to go through another trial by ordeal."
