Chilling: 12 Mackay forgotten convicted killers named
12 KILLERS: From a 16 year old’s execution-style murder and a deadly trio with a samurai sword to a man who unleashed a frenzied horror attack with a carving knife. Read where they are now.
Police & Courts
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There are killers who now walk among us having served their time, while others sit and wait in jail.
Teen son with murder on his mind
On a quiet night, in a quiet Eimeo street, a teenager crept to his father’s bedside, pointed a .22 rifle at the sleeping figure and fired point-blank range at his head.
This execution-style killing at the hands of a 16 year old sent shockwaves throughout the town.
He had removed the rifle from a wardrobe and ammunition from a chest of drawers in his father’s room before he left to load the weapon in the hallway.
Then he silently re-entered the bedroom and placed the rifle against his father’s forehead about 3am on May 3, 2006 and pulled the trigger.
At the time of the murder he and his boyfriend had been living with and working for his father.
The night before the murder, the teen’s then-boyfriend withdrew $900 using the victim’s bankcard while he was present.
The pair later tried to hide the crime by breaking up the rifle and throwing the pieces around different parts of the Northern Beaches.
Clothing and the rifle stock was burned at Shoal Point, the bolt was thrown in mangroves at Dolphin Heads and another part was tossed into waters at Blacks Beach.
They faked a forced entry to the home and set off party poppers to hide the gunshot residue on his hands – an idea they got from a television show.
About 6.43am, the teen went to a neighbour’s home and said his father had been shot.
According to a psychiatric report the “only identifiable motive” was that another man had threatened his father and might come to the home to harm him, and subsequently the teen and his then-boyfriend.
“The (teen) concluded that it would be safer for him if he killed his father first,” a court judgment stated.
The teen later confessed to murdering his dad but told police and a jury that his boyfriend had urged him to do it.
At his sentencing hearing in February 2007, the murder was labelled “particularly heinous”, with the Supreme Court Justice considering “the gratuitous nature of the crime, the cold blooded and premeditated way in which it was carried out”.
He was jailed for 12 years for the patricide and required to serve 70 per cent – 8.4 years – before he was eligible for parole.
The following day he gave evidence against his former boyfriend, who had pleaded not guilty to murder.
The former boyfriend was acquitted of murder but had pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and was jailed for five years.
Lawyers for the teen later tried to have the sentence reduced on appeal so he would be released after serving between 50 per cent and 70 per cent, but it was dismissed.
He would have been eligible for parole in late 2014, with his full-time release date in May 2018.
Jealous rage leads to bloodshed in the street
A terrified woman desperately ran for her life along a suburban Andergrove street as an enraged man gripping large knives pursued with deadly intent.
He chased her through Dapplewood Cl. When she hid behind a family member or neighbour, he would just stab around the other person in his crazed fixation.
Antony Daniel Morseu had been in a jealous rage and fuelled by drugs and alcohol the morning he stabbed his former girlfriend Amanda Kay Sauney, 25, to death in a frenzy on December 18, 2010.
The night before he killed her Morseu told several people, including members of her family, that he was “going to kill her” and he didn’t care if he went to prison, Mackay Supreme Court heard.
Until a few weeks before her death Ms Sauney and Morseu had been in a relationship – when it ended, she began a new relationship with his nephew.
The attack began about 5am after he followed her into her home. When she ran, he chased her, all the time stabbing her with the knives.
He was heard telling a neighbour, “I don’t want to stab you, I just want to stab that (expletive)” as he stabbed around people to get at her, the court heard.
Morseu stabbed his former girlfriend six times, at least one of which was a fatal wound to the neck.
Afterwards, he slit his own throat.
Ms Sauney was found lying on a mattress in a neighbour’s home and was rushed to Mackay Base Hospital, but died on arrival – he was found face down in Elm Dr and told officers “let me die”.
Morseu’s suicide attempt left him with a scar that his barrister described as “a constant reminder of that (day) and the terrible thing he has done”.
His blood alcohol reading on the day was between 0.106 and 0.216 per cent.
In April 2013 Morseu pleaded guilty to murder and was jailed for life. In a statement read out during his sentencing hearing, he said he hoped his penalty would allow Ms Sauney’s family and friends to move on with their lives.
Two of her relatives held a photo of the young woman high in the court as the harrowing details of her death were read aloud.
Morseu was jailed for life and under Queensland law must serve at least 20 years before he is eligible for parole.
December 2020 was the halfway mark of that sentence. He is jailed at the Borallon Training and Correctional Centre.
Shocking death with a samurai sword over bungled robbery
Meth, marijuana and alcohol ran hot in the bloodstreams of a trio of soon-to-be killers.
They wanted cash and hatched a plot to steal from an alleged drug peddler, who they believed would have money.
But their efforts turned deadly and now all three – Mala Owen Geissler, Joshua Don Francis Wales and Jeremy Kenneth Abell – have blood on their hands after a man was fatally stabbed with a samurai sword during the bungled and violent home invasion.
They had gone to the unit of Tyrone ‘Tubby’ Baynton, 29 – Geissler armed himself with a samurai sword, while Wales had a shortened pool cue.
All three were high on drugs when they climbed into Wales’ car and drove to the Arcturus St unit block.
They used shirts as makeshift balaclavas to disguise their faces, but in their drug-addled state forgot to conceal the licence plate number of the car they were in.
It was still daylight when the trio arrived at Mr Baynton’s home about 6pm on October 11, 2015.
Wales knocked on the door as Abell held the sword’s scabbard. Another man who was inside the unit, briefly opened the door before immediately slamming it shut upon spotting the three wannabe robbers, an appeal court judgment stated.
As both Wales and Abell kicked the door, the locking mechanism failed before Mr Baynton quickly swung it open and stuck Wales on the head with a baseball bat.
Seconds later everything changed.
Geissler, angry, yelled “hey c---” and thrust the sword through the closed door at neck height unaware Mr Baynton was leaning against it from the inside to hold it shut.
The weapon pierced through the door and into Mr Baynton’s neck, slashing the carotid artery, windpipe and 17cm into his lung before Geissler pulled it back out.
As Mr Baynton stumbled to the rear of his unit, Geissler and Wales, who was still armed with the pool cue, went inside to continue the robbery – but all they got for their efforts was a small amount of marijuana. Abell stayed outside and acted as lookout.
After the three fled, Geissler dumped the sword in an Andergrove creek.
In March 2018, Geissler had pleaded not guilty to murder. A jury acquitted him of the more serious charge after a six day trial but found him guilty of manslaughter after determining Mr Baynton’s death was, by law, an accident.
During the trial, a bloodstained door and rusty samurai sword were shown to the jury as exhibits.
Geissler was jailed for 12 years and a serious violent offender declaration was automatically enacted, meaning he had to serve at least 9.5 years of the sentence before he could apply for parole.
Geissler tried to appeal the lengthy term arguing it was “manifestly excessive”, but his attempt was denied in the Queensland Court of Appeal.
He remains in custody at Capricornia Correctional Centre.
Two months after Geissler’s trial, Wales pleaded guilty in May 2018 to manslaughter over his role in the fatal home invasion. He was jailed for nine years and declared a serious violent offender meaning he would have to serve 80 per cent of the sentence.
But the SVO was overturned on appeal and Wales has since been released on parole.
Abell had pleaded guilty in 2016 to manslaughter and was jailed for five years and later released on parole. His parole term for this offence ended in 2021.
Woman savagely beaten to death at Mackay beach
A drug-dependant killer savagely bashed his girlfriend to death because he believed “she was Satan and that he was making the world a better place”.
But Andrew Christopher McGregor did not have to serve any time in jail for the deadly beating of Joanna Scriha because he was found to be insane at the time.
The pair had been living in a tent on Illawong Beach when the killing occurred on December 27, 2005 after they were evicted from the boarding house where they previously lived.
Just two days before, on Christmas Day, Ms Scriha, 26, had told her mother: “I love you mum. I’ll be all right,” as reported in the Daily Mercury.
About 1.30am McGregor had four cones of marijuana from a bong – a nearby camper, Stephen Van der Kaay, said McGregor, then 25, did not seem any different after the cones but he was staring into space and saying unusual things like he had “cracked the code to prayers”, a Mental Health Court judgment stated.
Mr Van der Kaay, who lent McGregor a torch, saw Ms Scriha alive and well about 2.20am. Just 10 minutes later, Mr Van der Kaay heard a number of dull thuds and heard Ms Scriha say, “Just get out. That’s it.”
There were muffled voices and more thuds before Mr Van der Kaay heard Ms Scriha’s voice ring out calling for help.
He called the police, who found her dead with trauma and bleeding to her head.
McGregor had gone to the police station where he lied saying a stranger assaulted him, but he soon confessed the chilling truth.
“He said he punched her in the head with a closed fist and tried to strangle her with his hands,” the court judgment said.
“He told police that he did this because he believed that ‘she was Satan and that he was making the world a better place’.
“He said that voices were telling him to do it and that he had hallucinations.”
McGregor told police he had voices in his head for the past two years.
A probe into his mental health revealed he had been admitted to Mackay Base Hospital’s mental health unit more than 20 times between 1999 and 2005.
And he has a long history of speed and marijuana use dating back to his teens and had also abused prescription antidepressants.
McGregor’s parents, over a period of time, had voiced their fear over his mental health, saying their son had believed “he was God for a long time now” and heard voices “telling him to kill women and children”, the court judgment said.
His parents were concerned he had only been detailed in the hospital’s mental health unit for short periods of time.
Four months after the killing McGregor was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia and multiple drug dependency and that his psychosis was of “a persistent, severe and treatment resistant nature”.
It was determined at the time of the killing McGregor was “grossly deluded and was driven by his delusions so as to be depraved of the capacity to know that he ought not to do the act”.
In April 2007 he was found to be of unsound mind and he was detained as a forensic patient at The Park High Security Program Authorised Mental Health Service. It is unknown if he is still there now.
Fatal push lead to tragic death
It was a killing that stemmed from anger.
A young man became involved in an argument with an older neighbour at South Mackay, and ultimately became the cause of her death.
Jeremy Aaron Brown and Shirley Page lived at the Morley St unit complex when the tragedy occurred on October 23, 2017.
The pair had been involved in a spat when the 22 year old pushed the 72 year old at her home.
As a result she struck her head, suffered major trauma and never regained consciousness after her fall – she was declared dead at Mackay Base Hospital 11 days after the incident.
Brown was initially charged with causing grievous bodily harm that was upgraded to manslaughter following a post-mortem neurological report on Ms Page.
In November 2018 he was jailed for seven years for manslaughter with parole eligibility in October 2019. Brown has since been released from custody.
Shot twice in the head
A low-level drug dealer and debt collector travelled from Maryborough to Mackay to put two bullets in a man’s head.
It took eight days for Michael John Rutherford to die after he was shot twice on September 2, 1997.
His killer Tony Boyd Carmichael - was was initially charged with murder, but a jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
In May 1998 he was jailed for 11 years. He is no longer in custody.
Stabbed 56 times with a carving knife
Police were confronted by a horrific scene when they stepped inside a Slade Point home in late 2008.
Darlene Saltner’s body was facedown in a pool of blood after she was stabbed or slashed more than 50 times.
Her killer Kenneth Michael Martin, who was sitting covered in blood in an armchair next to the slain mother told officers: “It’s about time you (expletives) got here. You’re too late. She’s dead.”
The couple had argued before Ms Saltner’s de facto partner had armed himself with a large carving knife with a 225mm blade and unleashed a frenzied attack.
On the night of her death, Martin made a Triple-0 call to emergency services, and four police officers arrived at their Pheasant St home just before midnight on December 20.
Earlier reports stated the paramedic who found the 39 year old’s body asked Martin how long she had been like that, to which he replied: “Since nine o’clock.”
The Yeppoon mum had left Martin and returned to her home town for about four days in the week before her death “as a wake-up call for him”, the Daily Mercury reported.
The couple were having issues over Martin’s drinking as well as financial worries.
While she was away, Martin phoned one of Ms Saltner’s relatives and told him: “I’ll kill her when she gets back.”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this … But I’m going to kill her,” Martin had told him, it was reported.
Ms Saltner returned to Mackay on December 17, and was dead three days later. She suffered at least 56 wounds, including numerous defensive wounds to her arms and hands and six stab wounds that caused her death.
Between 9pm and 10pm, a neighbour heard a woman yell from that home in a desperate, urgent way, and then nothing more.
When police arrived at the home, officers saw Martin sitting in a chair beside her body “the front half of his body was covered in blood” – there were empty beer bottles in the lounge and an opened bottle of rum in the kitchen.
A knife was nearby Ms Saltner’s body.
He initially told police they had argued and he went for a walk and when he came home “Darlene was down and there was f---en blood man,” he said, as stated in a court judgment.
He told police Ms Saltner had been bleeding on the floor when he found her about 9pm and did not know how she came to be stabbed.
Martin initially denied killing his partner, that he came home to “this f---ing pig sty, f---ing blood everywhere”.
The morning after, at 9.30am, Martin had a blood alcohol reading of 0.169 per cent, which as part of the police investigation had been back calculated to between 0.264 and 0.454 per cent at the time he murdered his partner.
Martin tried to plead guilty to manslaughter, but the Crown did not accept the plea and the case went to the supreme court on a murder charge.
In August 2010 after a four-day trial, a jury found Martin guilty of murder and he was jailed for life.
In November 2011 he unsuccessfully tried to appeal the conviction, with his lawyers arguing his intoxication level meant he could not have formed the necessary intent to kill.
In February 2015 he again tried to appeal against the conviction and his application was rejected.
Martin remains a prisoner in Capricornia Correctional Centre.
A life taken by senseless violence
It was a senseless act of violence and a cowardly attack that sent shockwaves across Mackay and left the community asking why after it claimed the life of a beloved family man and hard worker.
Then 18-year-old Dan Wellington Eric Pearson was drunk and had run away from hospital when he picked up a rock and threw it at an oncoming vehicle.
Hans Peter Hansen, 72, was at the wheel – his windscreen shattered, a moment, one of the last moments of his life, which was captured on his dashcam.
It was just after 4am on December 13, 2014 when Mr Hansen pulled over on Glenella Connection Rd.
Pearson left the scene but returned shortly after and violently assaulted Mr Hansen, who later died from head injuries.
And in what Justice David North described as an insult to Mr Hansen’s family, Pearson went inside the vehicle and moved some property.
It was also described in court that blood trails suggested Pearson had moved Mr Hansen’s body.
Pearson had been drinking heavily at his brother’s birthday the night before and, by 2am on the day of the attack, was highly agitated and threatening to take his own life.
He was taken to hospital and at 3am his blood alcohol reading was 0.215 per cent.
Pearson later told police he had blacked out and did not know what happened. But the court heard family members had taunted him about his sexuality.
He was initially charged with murder that was dropped to manslaughter, to which Pearson pleaded guilty in November 2016 – as well as endangering the safety of a person in a car by throwing a rock and entering Mr Hansen’s car with intent.
He was jailed for nine years and was eligible for parole in December 2018.
Teen took things too far
A Mackay teenager stabbed a man to death after she claimed he had broken into her home.
Kathryn Leigh Wallace, 17, and James William Duncan, 26 had been arguing in the kitchen of her Macalister St home when he suffered stabbed wounds to the neck and chest on August 8, 2003.
A supreme court jury heard she stabbed him three times after he broke into her unit and became aggressive.
Wallace had pleaded not guilty to and was acquitted of a murder charge, but after 8.5 hours of deliberation a jury returned a guilty verdict for manslaughter.
Justice Kerry Cullinane, who presided over the case, accepted there was some physical abuse but said Wallace had used disproportionate force in her deadly attack.
Then 19, Wallace was jailed for five years. The sentence has since expired.
Chilling end to an island adventure
It was the first time in Australia a killer was convicted of murder using DNA profiling after a woman’s bashed and bloodied body was found on a popular holiday island.
Calia Natasha Douty had been living and working on Brampton Island when she went nude sunbathing at remote Dinghy Bay on the morning of September 1, 1983 and never returned.
The next day her body was found behind the tree line above the beach – it looked like her head had been bashed in with a rock, which was never found, and she was covered with her own red towel that was stained with blood and semen.
Blood stains at the scene suggested her body had been moved after she was killed.
Her clothing and some of her personal possessions were also removed.
Wayne Edward Butler had been a day tripper to the island the day Ms Douty was murdered.
And in fact had left his wife alone for about five hours telling her he wanted to jog or walk around the island, an appeal court judgment states.
When he returned, he acted normal and there was no blood on him.
He was initially arrested and charged with murder in 1988 but the charge never proceeded because of a lack of evidence.
Butler continued to be a person of interest to police even after an inconclusive inquest into the death in 1989 and 1990.
Then, in 1997, revolutionary new DNA testing methods became available in Australia – and the semen found on Ms Douty’s towel matched old blood samples taken from Butler.
The Sydney financial adviser pleaded not guilty to murder, but a jury only took two hours to convict him in 2001.
When Justice John Helman asked whether he had anything to say, Butler replied with: “I maintain my innocence in this matter, your honour.”
In 2009 Butler tried to have the conviction overturned on appeal but his attempt was rejected.
Checks confirmed Butler is no longer a prisoner in any Queensland correctional centre.
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