Logan toolbox killings: Tepuna Tupuna Mariri jailed for manslaughter, torture
One of seven people accused of killing a man and woman who were stuffed inside a large metal toolbox and submerged in a dam has been sentenced after pleading guilty to manslaughter and torture.
Crime in Focus
Don't miss out on the headlines from Crime in Focus. Followed categories will be added to My News.
One of the seven people accused of torturing and killing a man and woman who were stuffed inside a large metal toolbox and submerged in a dam has been sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment.
Tepuna Tupuna Mariri, 29, today pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter and two of torture over the 2016 deaths of Cory Breton and Iuliana Triscaru.
Man found guilty of toolbox double murder
Toolbox murder trial: Five minutes to sink into waterway, police told
In January 2016, Mr Breton and Ms Triscaru were lured to a home at Kingston in Logan where they were bound, tortured, beaten and cut with knives before being forced into a toolbox and thrown into Scrubby Creek.
The pair screamed for their lives as the toolbox slowly sank below the water.
Brisbane Supreme Court today heard Mariri’s involvement in the deaths was significant.
The court heard Mariri had encouraged the pair to come to his unit, helped in detaining and torturing them and helped push Ms Triscaru back into the toolbox when she tried to escape.
Mariri also helped load the toolbox on to a ute and also ordered the windows and doors of the home be closed so the victims’ screams could not be heard.
In a tragic victim impact statement tendered to the court, Ms Triscaru’s mother spoke of her heartache at the way her daughter, a mother of seven, had died.
“Words cannot express how much I miss her and how much I struggle every day to live my life without her,” she wrote.
“What kind of mind is capable of thinking it is OK to do something like this to another human being.
“By doing what you did to my beautiful girl you opened my eyes to evil of the worst kind.”
Mr Breton’s partner said she was “haunted” by his death and had to explain to their young child why her father was not around.
“She is constantly asking questions of how you died, why you died and why you are not here anymore to be her daddy,” she wrote.
“How do you tell a three-year-old that she will never be able to see her father again.”
Justice David Boddice said the torture of the victims was “sustained and brutal”.
“Your conduct has caused indescribable grief to the loved ones of those victims,” Justice Boddice said.
“They will never recover from that loss.”
He sentenced Mariri to 13 years imprisonment, declaring the 1619 days already spent in custody since his arrest in February 2016 as time already served.
“Your conduct is properly to be described as cold, continuous and callous,” he said.
“You showed no respect for either victim as human beings.”