Killer rapist Mark Lawrence in fresh parole bid

A NOTORIOUS killer who has been behind bars for more than 30 years is waging a new court battle to be released just weeks after being denied parole.

Mark Richard Lawrence Rapist applying to get out of Jail.

A NOTORIOUS killer and rapist who has been behind bars for more than 30 years is waging a court battle to be released from prison just weeks after being denied parole because of “potentially fatal” harm to the community.

FAILED ATTEMPT: Mark Lawrence takes his freedom bid to High Court

Mark Richard Lawrence, 54, stalked and brutally killed 29-year-old psychiatric patient Julie Ann Muirhead at Wacol on Boxing Day in 1983.

He has made almost 10 parole bids since he was sentenced in 1985 for manslaughter, including a failed High Court challenge last year.

Brisbane Supreme Court Justice Roslyn Atkinson denied parole again in March, saying the risk to the community was “very serious, potentially fatal”.

Lawrence, who also has convictions from the 1970s for assaults on children, has lodged an appeal on the basis that the decision was not supported by evidence from two psychiatrists.

Julie Muirhead, 29, was brutally killed at Wacol in 1983 by Mark Richard Lawrence.

But according to the judgment handed down last month, one of those psychiatrists said Lawrence had told her that since the age of 15, he “had always wanted to kill a girl”. He told the same doctor he “tried to kill his 12-year-old sister one night by putting a tea towel over her mouth after turning off the power in the house”.

The psychiatrist said he was a “very high risk” of reoffending if given “the slightest degree of freedom”.

Lawrence told another doctor that two days after killing Ms Muirhead, he and his accomplice went looking for another victim to rape and kill.

“The second victim was to be the woman they had originally intended to rape and the reason for killing her was ... because he had recurrent fantasies about raping and killing a particular woman and that the assault on the woman he did kill had not completed his fantasy,” Justice Atkinson said in her judgment.

He was due to be released from jail on February 7, 2008, after serving a further seven-year sentence for the rape of a prisoner in 1999. But an order was made to keep him behind bars indefinitely. A date has not been set for the court to hear his appeal.