Brisbane killings: Wolston Park patient slain, body burnt

SOME patients in this psychiatric hospital were there because they wanted to hurt themselves, some because they wanted to hurt others. When the two crossed over, there were tragic consequences. WARNING: Graphic content

Julie Muirhead raped and murdered by Mark Richard Lawrence

WHEN Julie Anne Muirhead wasn’t in her room on Boxing Day 1984, hospital staff made a low-scale search circling out to a distance of 500m from the ward.

Wolston Park Hospital, built on the picture-perfect banks of the Brisbane River, was home to 1000 patients in the early 1980s.

Some were there against their will, detained under the Mental Health Act for the safety of others or themselves. Some were violent, having arrived at the hospital after committing terrible crimes.

Julie Anne was not there voluntarily. She was one of the many patients living out her days on the 250ha hospital site for her own safety. The troubled 29-year-old had been sent to the facility after several attempts to burn herself.

As she was a “regulated patient” — someone there against their will — hospital protocol dictated an “A-grade” search should have been carried out for Julie Anne.

But, according to the hospital employees association, Wolston Park was down at least 100 staff. An A-grade search would have involved coverage of the full 250ha site as well as the nearby railway station.

It would have taken too many staff. Stretched thin already, nurses would have needed to abandon patients to conduct that kind of search. So they didn’t.

Days went by and Julie Anne did not return. Nor did she turn up at the home of a friend or family member.

They didn’t find her until January 4. She was under a tree, down a steep riverside path only 50m from the hospital grounds.

The fire that had burned most of her body had not spread to surrounding bushland.

At first, police thought her death was a suicide. She was badly decomposed, making it impossible to determine a cause of death. And she had tried to hurt herself with fire in the past.

But a closer look told them a different story.

A tea-towel — the same as those used at the hospital — was around her neck. There were injuries to her face that looked as though she’d struggled violently with someone.

Her clothes were gone. She wore only underwear and her underpants were around her ankles.

Julie Anne Muirhead had been murdered. And her killer had had more than a week to make his escape.

The entrance to Wolston Park Hospital at Gailes in the early 2000s.

MARK Richard Lawrence was still a kid himself when he began attacking children.

In May, 1978, at the age of 17, he appeared in court for the first time, charged with the aggravated assault of a young boy.

The judge admonished him for his terrible behaviour and sent him on his way. But six months later he was back, having committed the same offence again on another young boy.

This time he was given two years’ probation.

But his good behaviour lasted only a few short months and he was back in court in February 1979, charged with the aggravated assault of a female under the age of 17.

This time it was three years’ probation and an order to undertake psychiatric treatment — as an inmate of a psychiatric hospital if necessary.

It kept him out of trouble until December, when there was another child, another aggravated assault, and he was fined $75.

By 1981, Lawrence was living as an involuntary patient in Wolston Park Hospital. He was 20, locked away and already had a lengthy criminal history involving multiple assaults on young girls and boys.

On April 11, he and three other patients escaped the hospital. Security was generally tight, but it was not uncommon for patients to go missing.

There was only room for so many in the hospital’s secure wards. Many patients were harmless and did not need to be locked in. Others with criminal records were housed in open wards and could wander freely.

Lawrence and his fellow patients snuck from the hospital grounds and caught a taxi. If they were going to stay on the run, they’d need money. They decided to rob the driver. One of the men took out a knife and held it to the man’s throat.

The driver, however, was not going to easily part with his days’ takings. He refused to hand it over.

The men were caught soon after and this time Lawrence went to prison. He was given a four-month sentence and put on yet another term of probation. This time for another three years.

Back in Wolston, a 22-year-old Lawrence was placed under psychiatric care. He was having fantasies about rape and murder. He was obsessed with it.

He concocted a plan with another inmate, 21-year-old Robin Joseph Sirett, to lure away another patient and carry out the fantasy he’d been playing out in his head.

Mark Richard Lawrence wanted to play out a rape and murder fantasy.

THEY lured her away with the promise of beer, coaxing her over hospital grounds into the thick bush that grew along the river.

Julie Anne hadn’t been his first choice. He’d picked out another woman, but the task of getting to her had proved impossible. Julie Anne was chosen because she was easily accessible.

Lawrence wanted to have sex with her. Later, he’d tell police he couldn’t remember if he had.

Days later, when they’d found her body, they began questioning inmates about their movements.

It didn’t take them long to put the repeat violent offender with the sadistic sexual fantasies in the frame.

Julie Anne had hesitated, Lawrence told the detectives when they’d come calling. They’d lured her away without any trouble but at some point she’d realised something was wrong.

Lawrence and his accomplice grabbed the frightened woman and wound the tea towel around her throat. They shoved her on to the ground.

“The tea towel was still around her neck. I could have pulled on it, I don’t know,” he told the police.

“She started going out to it. I think she was definitely dead before one of us set her alight.”

In reality, Lawrence had slit Julie Anne’s throat with a broken bottle while Sirett held on to her feet. She died a terrible death.

Sirett blamed the killing on Lawrence.

“He just went berserk,” he told them.

It didn’t make any difference in court though. With their confessions to police ruled admissible, the men changed their pleas from not guilty of murder to guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. They were each sentenced to 15 years’ prison.

Julie Anne Muirhead was a ‘regulated’ patient after attempting self-harm in the past.

IT WAS 1991 when Lawrence escaped from custody. It had been six years since a judge handed down his sentence for manslaughter, and authorities had become lax with the serial offender.

A psychologist had told the court Lawrence was at high risk of reoffending, but it did not stop the prison from granting him day leave to attend the tennis.

So Lawrence went to the tennis. He was part of a group of 11 that spent the day at the Holland Park sports complex, accompanied by supervisors from the jail. He’d been before — the trips were part of his rehabilitation.

But on this occasion, he and another prisoner slipped away. It was 20 minutes before the supervisor noticed.

“There is no way that a person like that can be said to be so rehabilitated that he’s allowed out to play tennis,” said Bob Munt, the detective who had arrested Lawrence after Julie Anne’s death.

“It’s absolute bull. I fear someone will be the innocent victim of the (Corrective Services) Commission’s serious failings.”

Three days later they found him. He was given an extra year in prison.

Julie Anne Muirhead (right) with family.

IN 1999, Lawrence was moved into a dormitory at the Moreton Correctional Centre. The dorm had six individual cubicles, each with their own bed.

Lawrence was allocated one. A slightly built man waiting to be sentenced on seven counts of arson had another.

Lawrence made a beeline for the smaller man and introduced himself. He wanted to know whether the arsonist could get him a woman, sneak her inside the prison walls for a visit. It was a bizarre and impossible request. The smaller man tried to stay out of Lawrence’s way.

Before long, Lawrence began targeting the man, touching him inappropriately, kissing him and even attempting to lie on top of him.

The man tried to convince Lawrence to stop, but Lawrence just ignored him.

On October 14, the man woke in his cubicle to find Lawrence on top of him,

“Don’t make a noise, because I’ll kill you,” Lawrence said.

When it was over, he whispered another threat.

“Don’t say anything,” he said.

“I’ll be watching you. And remember, I’m a psychopathic murderer.”

Lawrence got seven years.

As attorney-general, Jarrod Bleijie intervened to keep Lawrence behind bars.

MARK Richard Lawrence is now aged 53 and has spent more than 30 years in prison — most of his life.

His sentence expired in 2008 but this time authorities weren’t taking any chances. They used the Dangerous Prisoner (Sexual Offender) Act to keep him behind bars indefinitely.

Lawrence tried again and again to appeal the decision and last year, the Supreme Court determined he should be freed — provided he complied with a strict supervision order with 31 conditions.

He was to have no contact with children, stay away from shopping centre, live under curfews and be subject to drug and alcohol testing.

They were strict, debilitating conditions but it was the only way Justice Philip McMurdo was prepared to let him out.

But for then attorney-general Jarrod Bleijie, it still was not enough. He launched an immediate appeal to keep Lawrence in prison. He was granted a stay on the release order, and the door closed once again on Mark Lawrence’s freedom.

As of this week, he remained a prisoner at Wolston Correctional Centre, the place where serious sex offenders are kept in secure housing. Nearby, along the same road that takes you past the prison, is the heritage-listed Wolston House.
And past that is the Brisbane River. It was there, more than 30 years ago, that a woman was lured to her death by a man later described as a violent repeat offender who would strike again, given the chance.