Prosecutors have applied to have the man accused of Perth's Claremont serial killings face trial before a judge sitting without a jury.
Bradley Robert Edwards pleaded not guilty in July to all charges against him including the murders of 23-year-old Jane Rimmer, 27-year-old Ciara Glennon and Sarah Spiers, 18, in 1996 and 1997.
Bespectacled and wearing prison greens, Edwards appeared in the Supreme Court of WA via video link from Hakea remand jail on Monday.
He only spoke twice to confirm his name and confirm he understood what the next steps would be.
His defence team has until the end of next month to respond to the judge-alone trial application, which was expected considering the huge amount of media coverage about the case over the past 22 years.
Edwards will return to court to be formally arraigned on September 28 and the hearing for the application will be on November 1.
Plans are underway to conduct the trial electronically, rather than using physical documents, given the huge amount of material involved.
The court heard earlier this year that police were preparing a spreadsheet of evidence numbering more than 1.5 million pages.
Edwards, 49, was charged with the murders of Ms Rimmer and Ms Glennon after a raid on his Kewdale home in December 2016.
He has been held at Hakea since then and was charged with Ms Spiers' murder in February.
All three woman disappeared from the Claremont entertainment strip in the city's affluent western suburbs after a night out.
The bodies of Ms Rimmer, a childcare worker, and Ms Glennon, a lawyer, were discovered in bushland weeks after they were killed, but the body of Ms Spiers, a secretary, has never been found.
The fathers of two of the victims, Denis Glennon and Don Spiers, declined to speak with media outside court.
In addition to the murders, Edwards is accused of attacking an 18-year-old woman in her Huntingdale home in February 1988 and raping a 17-year-old girl in Karrakatta in February 1995.
Prosecutors also on Monday discontinued an indecent assault charge that was laid over the Huntingdale incident, saying it was encompassed within a deprivation of liberty charge, which remains.
That reduced the number of charges Edwards faces from nine to eight.
The case, dubbed Operation Macro, has gripped WA for decades and is believed to be Australia's longest-running and most expensive police investigation.
Trial dates, starting May 1, have been set aside.
It will take up to two months to hear pre-trial applications.
Australian Associated Press
