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On 17 September 2009, Dupas' appeal against the conviction was upheld in Victoria's Court of Appeal by a two-to-one majority. The Court ruled that the directions of the judge in the original trial were inadequate. On 14 October 2009, lawyers for Dupas argued that the proceedings against him should be stayed permanently based on the publicity surrounding the case. Victorian Supreme Court Justice Paul Coghlan disagreed and set the trial date for 7 April 2010. On 26 October 2010, a new trial for the murder of Mersina Halvagis commenced in the Victorian Supreme Court. On 19 November 2010, Dupas was again convicted of the murder of Mersina Halvagis after three-and-a-half days of deliberations by the jury. On 26 November 2010, Dupas was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole.

As of 2007, Dupas has been convicted of three murders and is a prime suspect in at least three other murders committed in the vicinity of the Melbourne area during the 1980s and 1990s.

The trial for the murder of Mersina Halvagis ran for 22 days. On 9 July 2007, the jury selected for the trial was discharged on a "legal technicality" when prosecutor Colin Hillman SC advised Justice Philip Cummins that a failure to comply with the Jury Act had occurred when potential jurors were not advised of the possible duration of the trial.

Dupas was found guilty of the murder of Mersina Halvagis on 9 August 2007 and appeared for a pre-sentencing hearing eight days later. Dupas was sentenced to his third life sentence with no minimum term. The sentencing judge allowed permission for one television camera to record the sentencing of Dupas, the only televised sentencing in Australia since the 1995 sentencing of child killer Nathan John Avent. Upon sentencing Dupas, the judge said "life means life".

On 10 September 2007, lawyers for Dupas submitted an appeal on the basis that the verdict of guilty for the murder of Halvagis was unsafe and unsatisfactory.

On 1 August 2006, the inquest was adjourned indefinitely following charges laid by police on Dupas for the murder of Halvagis.

After obtaining a court order granting permission to interview Dupas in relation to Halvagis's murder, police collected Dupas from HM Prison Barwon on 2 September 2006, taking him to the St Kilda Road Police Headquarters in Melbourne for questioning. On 11 September 2006, police charged Dupas with the murder of Mersina Halvagis, after disgraced Melbourne lawyer, Andrew Fraser, revealed Dupas confessed to the killing of Halvagis while gardening weeds in Port Phillip Prison during 2002.

After agreeing to give evidence against Dupas, Fraser was released from Fulham Correctional Centre in Sale on 11 September 2006, two months short of his five-year sentence for drug trafficking. The Victorian government stated that Fraser was eligible to apply for a share of the $1 million reward offered for information leading to an arrest on Halvagis's murder.

The Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew the charge of murder in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court and requested the case against Dupas be sent directly to trial, bypassing the committal hearing process. On 26 September 2006, Dupas appeared via video link in the Supreme Court of Victoria, charged with Halvagis's murder, entering a plea of not guilty. Dupas's barrister David Drake told the Supreme Court his client was being unfairly dealt with by skipping the usual process of a committal hearing in the Magistrates' Court. The Supreme Court of Victoria ruled on whether Dupas would face a committal hearing in November 2006. On 14 November 2006, Dupas appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria before Justice John Coldrey, where he requested an opportunity to be able to cross-examine witness Andrew Fraser before a criminal trial takes place.

On 12 December 2006, the Supreme Court of Victoria ordered Dupas be presented directly to trial for the murder of Mersina Halvagis, bypassing the usual committal hearing process.

As of 2006, Dupas is serving his sentences between the maximum security protection unit of Port Phillip Correctional Centre, at Laverton and HM Prison Barwon in Lara, a northern suburb of Geelong. He has attempted suicide several times while imprisoned. Prison staff describe him as a model prisoner while in custody and "a monster" whenever released.

On 25 July 2005 Dupas appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal to appeal his conviction for the murder of Maher. His appeal was dismissed.

On 16 August 2004, Dupas was convicted of the 4 October 1997, murder of Maher and sentenced to a second term of life imprisonment. During sentencing, Kaye remarked he would have sentenced Dupas for a life term for Maher's murder even if he had not killed Patterson, and also remarked he would have sentenced Dupas for a life term for his next crime, even if had not have killed anyone, because of Dupas being a very serious violent habitual offender with no signs of rehabilitation, saying:

Dupas appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria Court of Appeal in August 2001 to appeal his conviction for the murder of Patterson. His appeal was dismissed.

Due to a court injunction in 20019, Channel Seven was prevented from screening the episode of Beyond the Darklands featuring Dupas.

After retiring for less than three hours, the jury returned to deliver a guilty verdict. On 22 August 2000, while sentencing Dupas to life imprisonment without the opportunity for release on parole, Judge Frank Vincent remarked "...the prospects of your eventual rehabilitation must be regarded as so close to hopeless that they can be effectively discounted. There is no indication whatsoever that you have experienced any sense of remorse for what you have done, and I doubt that you are capable of any such human response. At a fundamental level, as human beings, you present for us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question: How did you come to be as you are?"

On 19 April 1999, Patterson’s body was discovered by a friend in the front room of her Harper Street, Northcote residence. Patterson's friend had visited to attend a dinner engagement. Upon hearing music from a radio and discovering the front door unlocked, she entered the house and found the body of Patterson severely mutilated.

Police investigations of the crime scene revealed Patterson had a 9am appointment with a new client by the name of "Malcolm", as noted in her personal diary, alongside a mobile telephone number. The number was traced to an Indian student studying at La Trobe University named "Harry". Police learned Dupas had approached Harry with an offer of labouring work. On 22 April 1999, police arrested Dupas at midday at the Excelsior Hotel in Thomastown and charged him with the murder of Patterson later the same day.

Margaret Josephine Maher, 40, was a sex worker working in the Melbourne area who was last seen alive at the Safeway supermarket at 12:20 a.m. in Broadmeadows on 4 October 1997.

Her body was discovered under a cardboard box containing computer parts at 1:45 p.m. on 4 October 1997 by Ronald Frank McDonald, who made the discovery while he was collecting aluminium cans beside Cliffords Road, Somerton with his wife, Eva and their children. A black woollen glove was found near Maher's body which police later confirmed contained DNA matching that of Dupas.

Dupas was already serving a life sentence without parole for the murder of Nicole Patterson at the time of his arrest for the murder of Margaret Maher. With Dupas in custody, police were able to obtain a DNA sample, linking him to the 1997 murder of Maher.

Mersina Halvagis was a 25-year-old Melbourne woman murdered in an attack on 1 November 1997, while visiting her grandmother's grave in the Greek Orthodox section of Fawkner Cemetery in Fawkner, a northern suburb of Melbourne. The alarm was raised by Halvagis's fiancé when she failed to meet with him later that day as the couple had planned.

Halvagis's body was discovered at 4:35 a.m. on 5 November 1997, by Halvagis's fiancé in an empty plot, three graves from where her grandmother was buried. Mersina herself would later be laid to rest in the Cheltenham Memorial Park, Melbourne where her grieving parents regularly attend her grave. Police believe Halvagis was attacked from behind while kneeling to attend to a flower arrangement, and that she died from massive injuries, including 87 stab wounds about her knees, neck, with most wounds concentrated around her breasts. Her upper clothing had been pulled over her head towards her chest.

Dupas's home in Coane Street, Pascoe Vale was near the cemetery. Halvagis's murder had remained unsolved since 1997, with the Victorian state government, together with police offering an A$ 1 million reward for information leading to an arrest. The large reward was the fourth such million dollars reward in Victoria's history.

Dupas is a suspect in the murder of 95-year-old Downes at the Brunswick Lodge nursing home in Brunswick. Downes was stabbed to death at 6:30 a.m. on 31 December 1997, a month after Halvagis' murder. Police investigations revealed Dupas had telephoned the nursing home some time before the murder. Dupas was charged with Downes' murder in February 2018.

Less than two years after his release from prison, Dupas was arrested on charges of false imprisonment over an incident at Lake Eppalock in January 1994. Wearing a hood and armed with a knife, insulation tape, and handcuffs, Dupas followed a woman who was picnicking and held her at knifepoint in a toilet block but was chased off by her friends. As he was leaving the scene he crashed his car and was apprehended. On 18 August 1994, after entering a guilty plea to one count of false imprisonment in the County Court in Bendigo, Dupas was sentenced to three years and nine months' imprisonment, with a minimum period of two years and nine months. In September 1996, Dupas was again released from prison and moved into a house in the Melbourne suburb of Pascoe Vale.

Dupas is a suspect in the murder of 31-year-old Brunton in the kitchen of her second-hand clothing store at a mall in Sunbury, Victoria on 5 November 1993. Investigators found that Brunton had been stabbed 106 times.

His new wife found him to be self-obsessed, lazy, needy, and a snob, and they divorced during the mid-1990s.

While imprisoned at Melbourne's Pentridge Prison, Dupas formed a relationship with mental health nurse Grace McConnell, who was 16 years his senior. The pair married in 1987 inside Castlemaine Gaol.

Dupas was again released from prison in February 1985. Approximately one month later, he raped a 21-year-old woman on a beach at Blairgowrie. After alighting from his car, Dupas followed the woman and attacked her, holding her to the ground at knifepoint before raping her. He later told police: "I'm sorry for what happened. Everyone was telling me I'm OK now. I never thought it was going to happen again. I only wanted to live a normal life."

On 28 June 1985, Dupas was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment for the Blairgowrie rape, and released in 1992 after serving seven years of his sentence.

McMahon was a 47-year-old woman found beaten to death on a Rye beach on 13 February 1985. She was sunbathing topless on the beach when she was attacked. Her body was discovered naked and covered by her beach towel. The location of the murder was nearby to the location where Dupas had earlier raped a 21-year-old woman at a beach in Blairgowrie, for which he was convicted and served a term of imprisonment. It was originally thought Dupas was in prison at the time of McMahon's murder and was not released until two weeks later; however, investigators learned that Dupas was on pre-release leave from prison and living in the Rye area when McMahon was killed. Police believe McMahon may have been Dupas' first murder victim, although her murder officially remains unsolved.

In 1979, approximately two months after his release from prison, Dupas again molested women in four separate attacks over a ten-day period. On 28 February 1980, Dupas received a five-year minimum prison sentence for three charges of assault with intent to rape, malicious wounding, assault with intent to rob, and indecent assault. A 1980 report on Dupas stated "There is little that can be said in Dupas's favour. He remains an extremely disturbed, immature, and dangerous man. His release on parole was a mistake."

Frank Cole, an elderly resident of Pascoe Vale, claims he saw Dupas leaving the Fawkner Cemetery on the day of the murder. Cole had earlier claimed he shot a dingo he suspected had killed two-month-old Azaria Chamberlain who went missing at an Uluru camping ground on 17 August 1980. An anonymous female who was visiting her parents' grave on the day of the murder had also seen Dupas wearing sunglasses casually jogging throughout the cemetery.

After Dupas received a term of nine years' imprisonment for rape in 1974, prison psychiatrist Dr. Allen Bartholomew noted Dupas was in constant denial of his criminal activity, noting at the time: "I am reasonably certain that this youth has a serious psychosexual problem, that he is using the technique of denial as a coping device and that he is to be seen as potentially dangerous. The denial technique makes for huge difficulty in treatment."

On 25 July 1974, Dupas was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment with a minimum period of five years for an attack on a married woman in her own home. Dupas broke into the victim's house and threatened her with a knife before tying her up with cord and raping her. He threatened to harm her baby when she resisted his attack. The sentencing judge described the offence as "one of the worst rapes that could be imagined".

Senior Detective Ian Armstrong, who interviewed Dupas on 30 November 1973, at the Nunawading Police Station, described Dupas as "weak and compliant" when confronted by authority.

Before his first conviction for murder, Dupas had 16 prior convictions involving acts of sexual violence from six court appearances between 27 March 1972 and 11 November 1994.

In October 1969, a mortuary located at the Austin Hospital was broken into. The bodies of two elderly women were mutilated using a pathologist's knife. One body contained a strange wound inflicted with a knife to the area of the thigh. Police believe Dupas was involved in the break-in as the wounds inflicted matched that of a later murder victim, Nicole Patterson.

On 3 October 1968, at the age of 15, Dupas, while still attending school in Waverley High School in the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Mount Waverley, visited his next-door neighbour, requesting to borrow a knife for the purpose of peeling vegetables. Dupas was apprehended after he stabbed the woman in the face, neck, and hand as she attempted to fight off his attack. He later told police he could not help himself and did not know why he began to attack the woman. He was placed on 18 months' probation and admitted to the Larundel Psychiatric Hospital for evaluation; he was released after two weeks and treated as an outpatient.

Peter Norris Dupas (born 6 July 1953) is an Australian serial killer, currently serving three life sentences without parole for murder and primarily for being a serious habitual offender. He has a very significant criminal history involving serious sexual and violent offences, with his violent criminal history spanning more than three decades, and with every release from prison has been known to commit further crimes against women with increasing levels of violence. His criminal signature is to remove the breasts of his female victims.