Mackay’s convicted murderers named
From stabbing strangers under busy Mackay bridges to shooting strangers on the Bruce Highway, there have been some horrifying cases heard in Mackay’s court. Read the full list of the region’s murderers.
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From stabbing strangers under busy Mackay bridges to shooting strangers on the Bruce Highway, some of Mackay’s residents have taken the lives of other people.
They took the lives of innocent mothers, fathers, families and children.
These are some Mackay’s murderers.
David John Jepsen
The vicious murder of a mother of two in a frenzied attack left the community in shock.
Jepsen recalled stabbing Natasha once before he blacked out and when he came to he was covered in blood.
“The eight to the chest and one to the abdomen were the most catastrophic,” crown prosecutor Josh Phillips said.
The court heard Natasha had a single defensive wound on one of her hands.
Jepsen then bundled her lifeless body in a blanket and placed in the boot of a car, which he drove to his former girlfriend’s house in a bid to frighten her into giving him money.
After he showed her Natasha’s body, she convinced him to wait outside and called the police.
He pleaded guilty in September 2013 to murder and interfering with a corpse and was jailed for life.
Through his barrister Jepsen said he was sorry for the devastation he had caused Natasha’s family.
Natasha‘s aunt Barbie Stott said it was sad Jepsen could offer no reason for the attack.
“How can you do that and not have a reason … that makes it worse,” Ms Stott said.
Walter John Anderson, David Thomas Knight, Raymond John Wylie, Maxwell John Harper and Janice Christine Payne
Fears a serial killer was on the rampage along the lonely stretch of highway between Rockhampton and Mackay plagued the wider community.
Before October 1982 this section of the Bruce Highway, which was the main trek between the two cities, took an inland route through rugged and thinly populated land west of the coastal ranges.
In late June 1966, the slain bodies of two men, wrapped in mesh wire, were dragged from Funnel Creek just metres from the highway.
First to be found was Tasmanian Raymond Muir.
The 54 year old had been shot in the head; his body weighed down by a car tyre rim and stones and left to rot in the creek for nine days before three youths on a picnic found him on June 26, 1966.
Three days later police would find a second wire-encased body, that of John Henry Smith, also shot and wedged under a tree stretching over the creek.
Two men Walter John Anderson and David Thomas Knight were convicted of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour.
The Funnel Creek murders, also dubbed the ‘Chicken Coop Murders’ and the ’Crab Pot Murders’, incited terror that a serial killer was claiming victims on the Crystal Highway, as it was then known.
One of the most sensational killings was the cold-blooded double murder of Townsville couple Noel and Sophia Weckert in early 1975 just south of Sarina.
On March 22 the body of 36-year-old Noel Weckert was found slumped over the steering wheel of his Toyota Celica, which had been parked on the side of the highway about 145km south of Mackay.
There were bullet holes in his head.
Five days later, the body of his 27-year-old wife was found near Funnel Creek. Both had been shot dead.
Raymond John Wylie, 22, Maxwell John Harper, 23, and his girlfriend Janice Christine Payne, 17, had been skint and decided to rob the occupants they had spied sleeping in the Celica, which they had driven past earlier.
When Noel refused to hand over any cash, Wylie shot him in the head twice as Sophia ran screaming from the vehicle. She was caught by Harper and then driven north by the murderous trio before Wylie shot her in the back of the neck.
During a Supreme Court trial Wylie took sole responsibility for both murders and was sentenced to life imprisonment. A jury found Harper guilty of murder for Sophia and manslaughter for Noel. Payne was found guilty of manslaughter for both and jailed for 10 and seven years respectively.
Blaze Seaton Pearce
A witness was confronted by “blood everywhere” as she looked into the Holland St townhouse where sugar mill worker Michael ‘Mick’ Gelens lay dead on the floor.
His killer Blaze Seaton Pearce was high on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol when he began the unprovoked, brutal attack on December 18, 2013 while Mick’s housemate was upstairs taking a shower.
Pearce and Mick had been alone sitting on the couch in the lounge room when he attacked.
Afterwards he called up to the housemate Andrew Drabsch “it’s okay, come down”.
As Mr Drabsch walked down the stairs he saw “blood on the floor, then more blood, and then Mr Gelens lying on the floor at the end of the couch”.
“There was blood everywhere,” he told Mackay Supreme Court during a murder trial.
The injuries to Mick were catastrophic.
Pearce knocked the 43 year old unconscious with a frying pan, fracturing both sides of his jaw, before stabbing him multiple times in the neck, severing his carotid artery and jugular vein – as a result he bled to death.
Other injuries included a partially-severed ear, three loose teeth, two black eyes and multiple cuts to his face.
Methylamphetamine and marijuana were found in Pearce‘s blood the following morning.
He had pleaded not guilty to murder arguing self-defence, provocation and intoxication affecting intention.
In November 2014 it took a jury less than 50 minutes to reach a guilty verdict. Pearce was jailed for life. He tried to fight the conviction but it was upheld by the Queensland Court of Appeal in 2016.
George David Silva
The Ching family massacre at Alligator Creek, 25 kilometres south of Mackay, struck terror and fear right to the very core of every person living in region.
The bodies of mother Agnes Ching, 45 and four of her children Maud, 15, Hughie, 5 and Winnie, 1 were found by father and husband Hong Kong born Charlie Ching on Friday, November 16 in 1911.
Anges and the eldest daughter had been shot with a revolver and/or muzzle-loaded rifle, while the two younger children had been battered to death. Two children remained missing.
The rear room was splattered with blood and witnesses said it looked like a slaughter house.
Their bodies had been dragged into the sitting room and piled together. A rug was thrown over them and a Christian Bible placed on top by the murderer, who later admitted to being religious right before he was hung.
By about noon on the Sunday, after an extensive search, the bodies of the two missing siblings Eddie, 9 and Dolly, 7 were found. They were found well away from the farmhouse.
Mr Ching‘s farmhand of six months George David Silva was the main suspect and was arrested for murder five days after the killings.
Investigators took possession of a blood-stained shutter of the girls‘ bedroom as well as a muzzle loader broken into pieces, a flask of gunpowder and a ball shot.
Silva also lead police to the location of a revolver and charred pieces of bloodstained clothing. A watch stolen from Agnes Ching was also in the fire.
The 28 year old was reported to be “a miniature and very depressed looking specimen of humanity who was marched barefoot and securely handcuffed into the Police Court” wearing the same clothes he purchased on the day after the massacre.
It was reported at the time: “He looked undersized to the curious sightseers who crowded every seat and vantage spot in the court and the adjoining veranda.”
He went to trial in March the following year on just one count of murder because any conviction would have brought about the death penalty.
A witness told the court Silva had wanted to marry Maud but her parents had shut down it down.
He denied the allegations, claiming “there was a lot of false evidence against me”.
After a jury found him guilty, he said: “Your Honour, I‘ll ask you to have the greatest recommendation to murder upon my soul. I am innocent”.
Silva was taken by steamer to Brisbane where an appeal failed. He was hanged to death at Boggo Road Jail on June 10, 1912.
Antony Daniel Morseu
Antony Daniel Morseu was in a jealous rage the morning he stabbed his former girlfriend to death.
Armed with a knife in each hand, the then-43 year old followed Amanda Kay Sauney, 25, from house to house in Dapplewood Cl, Andergrove, where she lived, stabbing her multiple times.
When she hid behind a family member or neighbour, Morseu would stab her around the other person.
He was heard telling a neighbour, “I don’t want to stab you, I just want to stab that (expletive).”
Afterwards, he slit his own throat.
Defence barrister Frank Richards said the suicide attempt had left him with a scar, “a constant reminder of that (day) and the terrible thing he has done”.
The night before her murder he told several people, including members of Ms Sauney‘s family, that he was “going to kill her” and he didn’t care if he went to prison, crown prosecutor Nigel Rees said.
More than two years later, Moreau was jailed for life after pleading guilty in the Supreme Court in Mackay to murder on April 7, 2013.
Justice Duncan McMeekin said it was a “senseless attack on a vibrant young woman” that was ”motivated by jealously” and ”fuelled by drugs and alcohol probably”.
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