Ipswich murderers and victims named - list
WARNING GRAPHIC: They are the brutal killings that rocked the region from violent exes to drug deals that have gone wrong. Now some of Ipswich‘s worst murderers can be named. Full list.
Ipswich
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Any death will send ripples through a close-knit community but when a life is taken in a moment of violence it creates shockwaves.
Shocking cases of murder and unlawful killings are littered throughout Ipswich’s history and some remain in the minds of many even years on.
Thankfully they are few and far between but some notable local cases are enough to send shivers down your spine.
Some of the cases below are just a selection of some of the murders, manslaughters and as yet unprosecuted crimes to rock Ipswich over the years.
Question marks over some cases still remain and it is unlikely we will ever get answers.
Horrific acts of violence remain with a victim’s family for years afterwards, from an Ipswich toddler killed after being snatched from her crib to a young father brutally killed after being ambushed during a supposed drug deal.
Such as the case of Goodna schoolgirl Leanne Holland, there are no definitive answers after the man who spent 15 years behind bars for her killing later acquitted and no new offender tracked down.
SOLVED
DULCIE BIRT
Police partially drained an abandoned mine two months after Ipswich mum of three Dulcie Birt disappeared off the face of the earth.
The search of Green Lakes one kilometre from her Riverview home in December 2009 proved fruitless and her body has never been found more than a decade later.
How the 31-year-old died is not clear either but what we do know is she got into a car with Alwyn John Gwilliams October 21, 2009.
Gwilliams pleaded guilty in Brisbane Supreme Court in 2013 to her manslaughter and later interfering with her body but has never told police where her body is.
He was jailed for 10 years.
“There may have been a minor motor vehicle crash and she may have been injured, but those injuries did not kill her,” Coroner John Lock found in 2014.
“What is most likely is that she suffered some other form of assault by Gwilliams following on from the argument.
“The nature of the assault cannot be ascertained at this stage but it is likely this caused her death.
“The recovery of her body may assist in reaching a conclusion on this issue. It may not.
“It is most likely the body was initially placed in the Riverview bushland. It is a vast and largely inhospitable place. Gwilliams was seen in that area on a number of occasions after 22 October 2009 at night or in the early morning.
“He may have moved the body from where it was initially placed or made further efforts to hide the body.
“I am satisfied Dulcie Isabelle Birt is deceased and has died as a result of the direct actions of Alwyn Gwilliams in some form of undetermined assault.”
LINJIN CIU
Jiagen Pan admitted to cutting his ex-wife into seven pieces and trying to entomb them into a homemade cavity in his home but was found not guilty of her murder.
Linjin Ciu was killed by Pan in her Ipswich home in 2009 in a “sustained and gruesome” attack.
He was found guilty of manslaughter in 2011 after he argued he was provoked into the killing.
The court heard police officers walked in on Pan entombing the body.
Laws to prevent provocation being used a defence in murder cases came into effect in March 2011, after Pan was originally charged.
Pan was sentenced to 12 years in jail.
VICKI HUNTER
Ian Hunter sat alongside son Jason in an impassioned plea to the public to find his wife’s killer.
Vicki Hunter was found bludgeoned to death in the garage of her Raceview home in 2010.
Ian was discovered facedown in the lounge room upstairs with a light pulse and a letter opener sticking out of the back of her hand.
Ian always maintained an intruder with a tribal-style tattoo on his leg assaulted him before stealing money from his home on the night of his wife’s murder.
But that fabrication soon unravelled and the truth emerged; Ian had racked up huge debts due to a gambling problem and stood to gain from his wife’s life insurance policy.
In 2012 a jury found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life behind bars.
Ian tried to appeal his conviction two years later but it was dismissed by Justice Martin Daubney.
MICHAEL DESMOND MANSON AND CARL UPSON
Jamie Rex Teichmann - describe by a judge as “an extremely dangerous man” - will spend the rest of his days in prison after killing two men just a week apart on rural properties north west of Ipswich.
In December 2010, the father brutally bashed family man Michael Desmond Manson to death in Coominya after being out on parole for just a month.
He was initially sentenced to life behind bars but the murder conviction was later overturned and replaced with a manslaughter conviction.
The court heard Teichmann was jailed in 1995 for six years for attempted murder and jailed for 18 months for violence offences in 2008.
A week after the attack on Mr Manson, Teichmann shot Coominya man Carl Upson in the head with a shotgun from close range.
A jury took a day to convict him and he was sentenced to life in prison with a later appeal being denied.
AMANDA QUIRK
The family of Booval woman Amanda Quirk vented their frustration at the justice system after it was revealed her killer had only been released from prison a couple of months prior to killing her.
The 32-year-old’s body was found dumped 230 kilometres away near the small New South Wales country town of Drake in 2010.
Christopher James Swan was twice convicted of her murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The court heard he bashed Ms Quirk to death in “an extremely brutal way” and had spent most of his 30s in jail.
Swan took his case to the Queensland Court of Appeal after the first time he was found guilty and received a retrial.
Rachel Narelle Smith was sentenced to seven years in jail for being an accessory after Ms Quirk’s murder.
She was found guilty of returning to the Dudleigh Street home three days after the murder and taking a garbage bag filled with evidence to burn in bushland.
She had also cleaned up the blood in the house straight after the murder, let Swan drive her car to dump Ms Quirk’s body across the state border and had given a false account of her flatmate’s whereabouts when a concerned friend asked where she was.
The court heard Smith, from Toowoomba, turned to drugs after her two-year-old son was killed running out on a road.
Michelle Anne Mondientz was also sentenced to five years in jail for her role as an accessory after the fact.
KIEREN PYE
Young father Kieren Pye was killed in a horrific attack involving a machete during an ambush in Carole Park in 2015.
The 23-year-old was stabbed multiple times, including in the back, after meeting up with a group of people under the pretence of drug deal in a secluded area.
Mr Pye, his girlfriend Renae Grove and friend Peter Bell were all in the car which was lured to an industrial estate in the early hours of the morning.
Tupu Sauaga, Wayne Lemaga, Paul Benecke and Casandra Lavelle were waiting.
Sauaga pulled Mr Pye from the car and he was stabbed several times and punched and kicked.
Casandra Renee Lavelle later pleaded guilty to manslaughter for her role in the incident, which involved running over Mr Pye‘s body as he lay on the road.
She was jailed for nine years.
Benecke and Tupu Sauaga were also convicted of manslaughter over the incident.
Benecke was jailed and given a parole eligibility date of October, 2018.
Sauaga was sentenced to 13 years’ jail.
Wayne Lemaga was found not guilty of murder and not guilty of manslaughter.
MICHELLE REYNOLDS
“I think you’re looking for me.”
That’s what Wayne Ashley O’Sullivan told police officers when they found him on an Ipswich oval after killing his partner in the early hours of the morning in 2016.
O’Sullivan confessed to stabbing mother of six Michelle Reynolds, 46, to death with a knife from his tackle box in their Rosewood home before fleeing to a relative’s house in Ipswich.
He told someone to call an ambulance to go to the house.
O’Sullivan threw the knife used in the murder out the window of his car as he drove away.
It was later found by police in long grass off Karrabin-Rosewood Road about one kilometre from his house.
O’Sullivan was sentenced to life behind bars and will be eligible for parole in 2036.
QUESTIONS REMAINS
DEIDRE KENNEDY
The horrific murder of 17-month-old Deidre Kennedy made news around Australia in 1973.
The Ipswich toddler was kidnapped from her cot in her parents’ home and her body was later found on the roof of a toilet block in Limestone Park, after she’d been beaten and sexually assaulted.
Raymond John Carroll was twice convicted of the murder but both the convictions were later overturned by the Court of Appeal.
There was further pain for the family 37 years after their daughter’s death when her ashes were stolen from their Laidley home during a break-in.
After Mr Carroll, who always maintained his innocence, walked free a fierce debate over reforming the ‘double jeopardy’ law raged on.
Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said at the time the 800-year-old law was a roadblock to justice but the change would “stop offenders from potentially and literally getting away with murder”.
LEANNE HOLLAND
The boyfriend of Goodna schoolgirl Leanne Holland’s older sister was charged with her murder when her body was found in bushland in 1991.
She was found with extensive head injuries and her skirt was pulled above her waist four days after she went missing.
Graham Stafford was charged with murder and he was convicted the following year.
He spent 15 years behind bars but his conviction was quashed in 2009.
His murder conviction was quashed in 2009 and a retrial was ordered, but the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled in March 2010 that it would not proceed.
Despite the case being reopened and police conducting a forensic examination on the Alice Street house where Leanne, her sister Melissa, father Terry and Mr Stafford lived at the time of her death, no further answers were ever found.
The investigation hit a brick wall in 2012 and the DDP declared the case to be closed and it would not be retrying the matter.
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