Killers of Hervey Bay, Bundaberg, Gympie and how their crimes haunt region
From the killing of an eight-year-old girl snatched from her bed, to the stabbing of a sex worker, one of the region’s top cops has reflected on the terrible impact serious violent crimes have had on the Wide Bay. Take an inside look:
Fraser Coast
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If anyone has witnessed the impact serious violent crimes have on a community, it’s Fraser Coast-based Police Inspector Paul Algie.
In Inspector Algie’s experience, the shock of a death by violence echoes through the passage of time, especially in rural and regional communities where people are closely connected.
“In smaller areas, we obviously all know each other,” Inspector Algie said. “We’re all connected in a closer way in regional communities.
“It’s like that six degrees of separation; you only have to speak to your friend down the road and they know someone who knows someone that’s been impacted.”
He is all too aware of the pain inflicted on the families that have lost loved ones, but also notes the stigma and heartache of the offenders’ families.
“It’s not only the victim’s family that is traumatised by this, but quite often the perpetrator's family, particularly in regional areas, like I said, where people know each other.
“It is a really traumatic thing and it takes communities a long time to get over that.”
Across the Wide Bay, he notes, violent deaths are rare and people should not be needlessly concerned.
But it is the very rarity of serious offences such as murder and manslaughter that makes them all the more shocking when they do happen.
Inspector Algie said while violent crimes were shocking, people should be reassured that by and large, their communities were safe places to live.
Having been in the police service for more than 20 years, he also knows the traumatic impact witnessing violence has on police officers.
“We’re never far from the sharp edge of things in terms of crime,” he said.
During his career, he has worked on many violent cases, but one in particular stands out.
The murder of Kat Daley, 21, in Gladstone, 14 years ago has stuck with Inspector Algie.
In January 2011, Grant Westley Meredith pleaded guilty at Rockhampton Supreme Court to the rape and murder of the popular young woman.
A the time, crown prosecutor Brendan Campbell said Meredith bound her hands, raped her and slit her throat.
Ms Daley and her friends went to the Players International Nightclub on February 16, 2008, for a night of fun.
She was going to meet her friends at the Mobil 24 hour service station but she never arrived.
Her parents Sue and Tony Daley reported their daughter missing on February 17.
Queensland Rail workers found her body in bushland off Meegan Road, Callemondah, about 1pm the following day.
Justice Duncan McMeekin sentenced Meredith to 12 years imprisonment for Kat’s rape and life for her murder.
Insp Algie was involved in covert activities investigating Meredith in the aftermath of the crime.
“A regional community not unlike the Fraser Coast where people know each other,” Insp Algie said.
He said Ms Daley’s death had stuck with him because of its horrific nature and because of the way it had impacted on the community.
“I’ve found when this sort of thing happens, particularly young people, they grieve and they grieve quite visibly and for a long period of time.”
The judicial process also impacted on communities, he said.
“When these people go to court, perpetrators, if the outcome from the court process doesn’t meet what the community expectation is, you can often see a lot of angst,” he said.
“It’s a really sensitive issue and something that doesn’t go away quickly.
“It starts with the actual act, whether it be an assault, a murder, whatever criminal act we’re talking about, and then it’s through the process of the police doing the investigation, then it’s the arrest and the publication and the media around it, then it’s the court process and finally from that it’s the result of the court process.
“So the community follows that very closely.
“Really, for people to get closure, for those victims of crime, it’s really important that they go through and follow that process very closely.
“That obviously does play out in the public eye.”
In the North Coast police district, which the Wide Bay-Burnett is part of, five murders have been reported so far this year.
That is compared to six in 2021 and 14 in 2020.
In 2019, the number of reported murders was six.
In 2022, two horrific murders committed in Maryborough were heard in court.
MURDER
Matthew Bradley Tench
In May 2022, Matthew Bradley James Tench, 26, pleaded guilty in Maryborough Supreme Court to the murder of Linda Lovett.
Ms Lovett, a sex worker, was stabbed to death in a Maryborough hotel room by Tench on November 3, 2018.
Tench, who had secretly brought a knife with him, arrived and showered before the two engaged in sexual activities.
After he had gotten what he wanted, he approached Ms Lovett and stabbed her multiple times to her head, neck and upper body.
Tench was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Jake Scott Ashman
In May, Jake Scott Ashman, 25, faced court charged with the murder of his Granville neighbour, Darren Ints.
He pleaded not guilty in a judge-only trial, but was ultimately found guilty.
During the trial, the court heard Ashman stabbed Darren Ints 34 times in the Granville unit complex where they lived, with four of the punctures penetrating the victim’s heart.
Justice Peter Davis handed down his decision on May 27, in the Brisbane Supreme Court after a four-day trial in the Supreme Court in Rockhampton from May 9 to May 12.
During the trial, the court heard two different versions from Ashman about the events of February 17, 2009 – the first when he spoke to police on the day of the murder and the second when he took the stand to give evidence in the trial.
In the 62-page decision published on May 30, 2022, Justice Davis described the first version, where Ashman claimed he went into Mr Ints’ unit to see if he was OK after hearing noises, as “incredible”.
“Not only did Ashman lie and say that he did not kill Mr Ints, he sought to then explain some of his actions by inventing a story about a note having been left in unit three,” Justice Davis wrote in the decision.
On the day the decision was handed down, Ashman also pleaded guilty to three counts of enter a dwelling and commit an indictable offence, two of attempted fraud – dishonest application of a bank card, and one count of wilful damage.
Justice Davis sentenced Ashman to life in prison and declared 1195 days presentence custody as time served.
In both cases, forensic police and detectives were called upon to investigate the gruesome killings.
Alex Robert Smart
Another case heard earlier in 2022, was that of Gympie’s Alex Robert Smart, 29, who pleaded not guilty to murdering Tylor Bell.
His lawyers argued he had acted in self-defence when he stabbed the 31-year-old in the chest and leg with a flick-knife at an intersection on the Bruce Highway.
During a sentencing hearing, the Supreme Court heard the attack was sparked by an earlier altercation between Smart and Mr Bell‘s father, Gregory Bell, at Gympie’s Central Shopping Centre.
The court was told the pair had a brief “violent episode”.
Soon after, Mr Bell and his father left the shopping centre car park and Smart followed them in his partner‘s car.
When Smart caught up to Mr Bell‘s ute, the two became involved in a heated exchange, before he stabbed Mr Bell through the driver’s side open window, the court heard.
Mr Bell was treated for his injuries at a nearby hospital before being flown to Brisbane, where he died several days later.
After a five-day trial in Brisbane, it took a jury more than two days to come to a unanimous guilty verdict.
Smart was sentenced to life in prison.
Lindy Yvonne Williams
In 2013, a horrifying murder shocked Gympie.
Lindy Yvonne Williams was found guilty of dumping her de facto partner’s headless torso on the side of a road at Cedar Pocket and setting it alight after a 2018 trial.
Williams, 60, had denied murdering George Gerbic on the Sunshine Coast in September 2013, but admitted dumping and setting fire to his torso at Cedar Pocket, near Gympie.
She claimed she caused his death in self defence during a fight at their home.
This was rejected by a Brisbane Supreme Court jury.
The court heard Williams dismembered Mr Gerbic’s body with a saw, before trying to cover up her actions by telling friends and family he was overseas.
Williams was sentenced to life in prison, as jurors reached their guilty verdict after a two-week trial.
Jason Errol Gerhardt
Also that year, a former Hervey Bay man was sentenced to life in jail for murdering his ex-partner‘s boyfriend.
At the start of his 2018, Bundaberg Supreme Court trial, Jason Errol Gerhardt, 45, pleaded not guilty to murdering father-of-three Craig Marshall, 44, on August 1, 2015, at Coonarr near Childers.
He changed his plea three days later.
Mr Marshall was the new boyfriend of Kristen Eastley, who split up with Mr Gerhardt in 2012.
He was stabbed by Gerhardt after he caught Mr Marshall and Ms Eastley kissing at her home.
Mr Marshall died from two stab wounds that punctured both his lungs, causing haemorrhaging in one and instantly collapsing the other.
Justice Roslyn Atkinson jailed Gerhardt for life for the murder.
Allyn John Slater
One case that still haunts Bundaberg was the murder of eight-year-old schoolgirl Trinity Bates.
Allyn John Slater, who took the young girl from her room in the dead of night, before choking her and drowning her in a drain culvert, was given a life sentence in 2012.
Slater was charged with the child‘s murder after the little girl’s body was found in a drain 100m from her Walker St home in 2010.
Slater entered a plea of guilty during a pre-trial hearing in the Brisbane Supreme Court.
A fingerprint on her bedroom window and on a plastic garden chair nearby led to Slater’s identification.
The court heard Slater, who was 19 at the time, “made full admissions in relation to abducting and strangling the deceased” during a police interview in the days following her death.
Craig Andrew Holzberger
In March, 2011, when 24-year-old Tenille Hass‘s lifeless body was discovered in the shower of an Avoca home, her boyfriend of 10 years, Craig Andrew Holzberger, spent hours trying to convince detectives she had died of a drug overdose.
But the stab wounds on her pregnant body, the trails of blood at the scene, the knife in the kitchen and the bottles of drugs and alcohol strewn throughout the house told a different story.
The trial in March ran for six days, with 26 witnesses called, including police investigators, paramedics, health experts, Tenille‘s father Darryl, and eyewitness Mr Green.
He was convicted of murder by a jury.
It took the jury less than half an hour to return a verdict and seal Holzberger‘s fate as a long-term inmate at the Maryborough Correctional Centre.
Frederick Ronald Sinfield
In 2019, Frederick Ronald Sinfield, 64, was sentenced to life in jail on Friday for the vicious rape and murder of Norma Ludlam, 75, at her Hervey Bay home.
Sinfield stared blankly ahead as Crown Prosecutor Todd Fuller read a statement from Ms Ludlam’s son Steven Ludlam in the Brisbane Supreme Court.
The court heard how Sinfield had “ingratiated” himself into Ms Ludlam‘s life and had wanted to become her registered carer.
Sinfield then entered her Eli Waters home on July 2, 2015, while she was heavily medicated on sleeping pills and raped her, recording it on his camera.
He returned the next day offering to give her a leg massage, before ferociously striking her twice in the head causing a “50 cent hole in her skull”.
She died two days later.
He pleaded not guilty to murder, but it took a jury five hours convict him at Maryborough Supreme Court on September 6.
Once they returned their verdict, Sinfield pleaded guilty to murder and the additional charges of rape and filming.
Sinfield will be 81 years old when he becomes eligible for parole on July 29, 2036.
Richard Giardina
For nearly three years, Richard Giardina maintained he was innocent of murdering his estranged wife and dumping her body in bushland.
But just minutes before he was to stand trial in the Maryborough Supreme Court in March, 2011, Giardina made a shock admission that left his lawyers in disbelief: he was guilty.
Giardina was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Hervey Bay businesswoman Lisa Maree Keem after the details surrounding the murder on Saturday, June 14, 2008, were revealed to the court.
Crown prosecutor Michael Copley said on the afternoon of the murder Giardina arrived unannounced at Ms Keem’s Point Vernon home.
At some point Giardina “overpowered and strangled” Ms Keem, with whom he had been separated for several months, in her home office.
He then put Ms Keem’s body on the back seat of his car, which he had bought under a false name, and travelled more than 10 hours south to a state forest outside Kempsey in New South Wales.
Mr Copley said Giardina removed the body from his car, doused it in petrol and set it alight. A man collecting firewood made the grisly discovery of the body later that day.
“The disposal of the body was a very determined attempt to ensure authorities could not find out who it was,” Mr Copley said.
The court heard once he arrived home in Sydney, Giardina destroyed the vehicle he used to transport Ms Keem’s body by setting fire to it. He then had his hair cut, packed his bags and caught the next flight to Italy.
Giardina would return to Australia just weeks later, however, to hand himself in to police, who were alerted to Ms Keem’s disappearance by her concerned friends.
Giardina was given 25 years, minus 982 days of pre-sentence custody declared as time served.
MANSLAUGHTER
Isaac William Powell
At the end of 2021 in Bundaberg, a Hervey Bay man was sentenced to nine years in prison over the violent death of another man.
Disturbing details of the events of September 5, 2019 were read out in Bundaberg Supreme Court where Isaac William Powell, 34, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 45-year-old Paul Herdman.
The court heard there was talk on the day Mr Herdman had “made a pass” at the homeowner as well as Powell’s partner Jodie Bailey on a previous occasion while Powell was serving time in jail.
Despite being told not to worry about it, Powell’s jealousy got the best of him and once outside, an altercation broke out.
Herdman was knocked to the ground, with witnesses seeing blood coming from his mouth.
Powell panicked and was slapping Herdman in the face to try and get him to wake up.
He and his partner were asked to call 000, but they were reluctant as they were both wanted for questioning by police, crown prosecutor Caroline Marco told the court.
It was agreed those present would say Powell and his victim had been sparring and a pair of pink boxing gloves were placed near him to support that story.
Herdman’s partner, who was in the car out the front, was alerted and told to “come quick” because Herdman was either “unconscious, out cold or dead”.
She ran into the yard and saw Herdman lying against the wall, where he had a swollen right eye and blood coming from his nose and was not wearing any protective boxing attire.
He was told to leave before Herdman’s partner began first aid after calling paramedics, and a manhunt for Powell began.
Powell was finally caught on September 11, 2019 after being seen at an electrical store by an off-duty police officer.
Days after Powell was caught, Herdman succumbed to his injuries which had placed him in ICU at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.
Powell was sentenced to nine year imprisonment and will be eligible for parole in September 2023 after serving a period of four years.
Nathan Greenfield
In 2018, a father was sentenced for a killing that devastated the small town of Pacific Haven.
Clenching her throat and pinching her nose, Nathan Greenfield repeatedly said ‘I love you’ as he choked the life from the mother of his two children.
Not satisfied with her absent pulse, he lent down and sucked the remaining air from her lungs – an act he would later describe as “trying to swallow her soul”.
He then dragged her to the ensuite bathtub, where she would later be discovered by her distraught father, covered her in towels, and he began planning his escape.
These chilling details were revealed in the Maryborough Supreme Court, where Greenfield was sentenced to 10 years in jail for the killing of 32-year-old June Wallis at Pacific Haven.
Greenfield also pleaded guilty to several other offences, including dangerous operation of a vehicle, going armed to cause fear and assault police, which stemmed from his actions the morning after June‘s death in March, 2015.
An autopsy report revealed June had suffered broken ribs, a fractured thyroid, head and face injuries. It was unclear if the cause of death was strangulation or drowning.
Greenfield’s state of mind prompted a mental health court finding of diminished responsibility which led to the charge of murder being downgraded to manslaughter.
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