Teen boy jailed for stabbing Kaitlin Jones on Mackay’s Blacks Beach

Chilling new insight into the mind of a teen who tried to stab a popular hairdresser to death as she sunbathed on a Queensland beach can be revealed.

Fed by on an online diet of beheadings and “hardcore porn”, a twisted teenager would lurk in a public toilet block, watching and waiting for his perfect victim.

Eventually though it was on an isolated stretch of beach where he found someone he could attempt to kill with the highest probability of fleeing undetected.

What he didn’t count on was the terrified screams Mackay hairdresser Kaitlin Jones would unleash from the moment she saw him approaching with a knife and throughout the bloody attack.

Ms Jones had been sunbathing alone on Blacks Beach on September 13, 2021, when a teenage boy approached her before later stabbing her multiple times in the head, neck and body.

Kaitlin Jones, then 23, was stabbed by a stranger multiple times in a horrific attack while she was sunbathing on Blacks Beach.

That boy, who was aged 16 at the time, is being sentenced in the Supreme Court in Rockhampton on Wednesday after pleading guilty to one count of attempted murder.

Crown prosecutor Tiffany Lawrence said the “deeply troubling case” involved the defendant telling authorities immediately after the attack that he had attempted this on prior occasions.

She said he reported hunting potential victims at Gooseponds in North Mackay, following one female with the intent of stabbing her and waiting in toilet stalls for random people to enter so he could stab them.

She said he thought stabbing someone would kill them and expressed he wanted a secluded or isolated environment to avoid being detected or stopped.

Kaitlin Jones was screaming for help the whole time.

Ms Lawrence said Ms Jones recalled screaming for help the whole time and trying to get up off the ground as soon as she saw him approach with a knife.

She said Ms Jones told police the defendant was “in the middle of stabbing” her when he turned and walked away.

He was later spotted on CCTV running away after he left the beach.

Blacks Beach (Mackay), 13 Sep 21, Stabbing on the beach at Blacks Beach. Blacks Beach. Photo: Daryl Wright

Ms Lawrence said the teen admitted being sexually attracted to the victim and had not felt the “relief” from this incident that he had felt during a separate altercation with his aunt’s husband months earlier.

She said the teen also told authorities he sometimes became sexually aroused when thinking about killing someone.

The court heard the teen, who had been abandoned by all of his caregivers, had been using illicit drugs, accessing pornography through various platforms and had watched live video of people being killed and a woman being beheaded.

Blacks Beach where the stabbing occurred. Photo : Daryl Wright

He also reported being sexually abused by his stepmother.

Since his incarceration, the defendant has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and borderline intellectual functioning.

Justice Graeme Crow said reports before the court outlined the trauma the defendant had suffered, and disadvantage childhood, in the lead up to this attack, with the defendant telling one author he liked infamous serial killer Ted Bundy and thought Ted was smart.

The defendant had spent 764 days in presentence custody, mostly in solitary confinement with nine of those days only getting out of his cell for one minute due to staff shortages.

Justice Crow sentenced the defendant, now 18, to seven years prison to serve 50 per cent.

A conviction was recorded.