A serial sex offender who filmed himself raping unconscious women was turned into police after his girlfriend uncovered the disturbing footage and exposed him.
John Xydias pleaded guilty to 25 counts of rape and 61 counts of indecent assault in 2009. He committed on 12 victims between 1991 and 2006 at his parents home in Glen Iris, Melbourne and a holiday home in Dromana.
However it was the bravery of his then girlfriend of 10 years, Josie Francoli, who set off a chain of events which led the arrest of bothe Xydias and his best friend, known as the ‘Hot Chocolate Rapist’.
Josie later found out her own best friend was one of Xydias’ victims, while another victim was left unconscious in his house for three days.
Videos of Xydias’s attacks were only uncovered after Josie found a suspicious DVD, which belonged to her partner, containing footage of what appeared to be a women’s changing room and she handed it to police.
This led authorities to search Xydias’ home where they discovered 13 videos of him sexually assaulting unconscious women, pictures of female genitals, women’s underwear and recording equipment.
The sick rapist dehumanised his victims in a graphic way, moving them into poses and turning the light off or covering them with bedding if they stirred.
‘I felt glad I did it, I saved all those girls, I’ve stopped it all,’ Josie said.
Serial sex offender John Xydias (pictured 2007) who filmed himself raping unconscious woman was turned into police after his girlfriend uncovered the disturbing footage and exposed him
Speaking about her friend on the tapes, she told 7News: ‘She was drink spiked and raped and videotaped, if she’s watching me right now or the family, I’m so sorry.’
Josie revealed they had a wonderful relationship for 10 years, but noticed odd behaviour from time to time.
She said: ‘My lingerie was going missing, bottom parts, panties, I thought he had some type of fetish.’
Xydias also had a fascination with Australian television presenter Naomi Robson, cutting out pictures of her face from magazines and stick it onto lingerie models’ bodies.
‘John really adored her, even her personality, everything, especially her eyes, and the way she spoke, he just adored her.
‘I go “Why have you got her face over on top of another girl’s face with the bra?”
‘He said “Because there’s never been in the magazines any photographs of Naomi Robson in lingerie”.’
However his obsession with the TV host would eventually lead to his downfall after he asked his partner Josie to record Dancing With The Stars because she was going to be on it.
He handed Josie a DVD which he thought was blank but was actually a secret recording of woman undressing in a changing room.
It was the bravery of his then girlfriend of 10 years Josie Francoli (pictured) who set off a chain of events which led to his arrest
‘Some were undressing practically, nearly naked, I felt sick and shocked. I was racking my brains for hours, so worried, cigarette after cigarette.
‘I was so scared and I was very worried about these girls, so I rang up the police in the end.’
Acting on Josie’s information local police went to the restaurant where Xydias was working as a chef and they found a spy hole looking into the women’s changing room.
Police asked Josie to play the role of the loyal girlfriend to give them more time to raid his home and his parents’ beach house without raising suspicions.
However just one week later they knocked on Josie’s door to warn her about what they found during the raid, which revealed just how dangerous her boyfriend actually was.
She said: ‘They said “listen we need to let you know that when we did a search warrant on John’s house regarding that spy camera disc, we took everything with us whatever we grabbed we brought it back to the police station.
‘There’s DVDs and video cassettes. We put it into the player, we have a look and we see the same thing over and over again but with different women.
‘They’re completely unconscious, they’re not moving these girls, their eyes are shut while he’s having sex with them.”‘
‘He was drink spiking them and videotaping them once they became unconscious, now that’s rape. There was one girl who didn’t wake up for three days, he kept her there.’
Police asked Josie to play the role of the loyal girlfriend to give them more time to raid his home and his parents’ beach house without raising suspicions
Police seized more than 200 DVDs and a task force was immediately set up to try and find the women on the tapes.
When each girl was brought into the police station and shown the video of themselves being raped by Xydias, none of them were aware of the assaults.
One victim, who had worked at the restaurant with Xydias, said she felt ‘disgusted’, ‘ashamed’ and ‘invaded’ after watching the video.
She went back to his beach house with a few other work colleagues one evening and she passed out after just one drink, which was handed to her by Xydias.
Speaking about what she saw on the video, she said: ‘He’s got the camera and walked up to me while I’m asleep on the bed and he’s gone and pulled my tracksuit pants down and held them down and zoomed in with the camera like a complete perverted freak.
‘I was the only one out of all the girls that wasn’t raped, maybe because I stirred in my sleep when he tried to videotape me.’
Police found 12 victims on the Xydias tapes but to this day only four of them remain unidentified.
Xydias is serving a maximum 28-year sentence.
Acting on Josie’s information local police went to the restaurant where Xydias was working as a chef and they found a spy hole looking into the women’s changing room (pictured)
Police found 12 victims on the Xydias tapes but to this day four of them remain unidentified, he is serving a maximum 28-year sentence
Crown prosecutor Michele Williams, SC, said Xydias continued to blame his victims, who had lost trust in people after learning of the attacks up to ten years after they occurred.
During a police interview Xydias said some of the women had given him permission to do ‘whatever you want’.
‘They trusted me and they knew I wouldn’t hurt them in any way,’ he told police.
He lied to police and said that he would show the women the video footage and if they liked it he would keep it.
Xydias was prescribed the date-rape drug Rohypnol, which he used to spike the drinks of his victims.
His crimes later led police to another serial sex offender, his best friend Harry Barkas, who worked as the kitchen hand at the same restaurant, and became known as the ‘Hot Chocolate Rapist’.
They trolled for women together but carried out their crimes alone. Barkas also had a part-time job in a doctor’s surgery, which gave him access to the drug Rehypnol which both men used to knock out their victims.
Josie also played a hand in Barkas’s arrest after she saw a facial composite sketch of him on the news and rang the police to identify him as Xydias’s friend.
Barkas befriended women at bars and offered them a lift home, along the way he would stop and buy them a hot chocolate which he would spike and they’d be raped.
When Barkas was finally jailed for a minimum of nine years in 2010, it was for raping three women he knew – who could clearly identify him.
He was suspected of raping many more.
He was 45 years old when he was charged with 24 of the hot chocolate rapes. Six other victims would come forward after reading of his arrest.
He died under mysterious circumstances in 2016.
A source close to the Barkas investigation told Daily Mail Australia at the time Barkas was found dead in a pile of his own vomit with his head down the toilet.
Barkas had worked for 10 years as a receptionist in a doctors’ surgery in Melbourne where he had access to blank prescriptions and various narcotics and anti-depressants, including date-rape drug Rohypnol.
The effects of the drugs used on the Hot Chocolate victims meant they struggled to positively identify their attacker.
In a series of now notorious jailhouse letters to his former lover Josie, Xydias branded his close friend Barkas a ‘predator’.
‘He always hangs out with a few old men who are paedophiles – his case is heaps worse than mine.
‘Everybody says that at least the women accusing me came to see me, I never went to see them,’ he wrote.
Josie said: ‘You live by the sword, you die by the sword, no one much would have shed a tear for him.’
