‘Meth always wins’: Hot-car killer mum Kerri-Ann Conley weeps at sentencing
A Brisbane mother who left her two little girls in a hot car to die must serve five years of a nine-year sentence for her ‘inexcusable and criminal negligence’ that led to their horrific deaths.
Police & Courts
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A Brisbane mother who left her two little girls in a hot car to die has been sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment.
Kerri-Ann Conley will be required to serve five years of that sentence behind bars before she becomes eligible for parole.
The 30-year-old wept as Justice Peter Applegarth on Thursday described how her inexcusable and criminal negligence had led to the horrific deaths of her daughters.
Toddlers Darcey Conley, aged two-and-a-half, and her little sister 18-month-old Chloe-Ann were left strapped inside their car seats for nine hours between 4am and 1pm on November 23, 2019 in temperatures as high as 61.5C.
Conley retrieved their lifeless bodies and disposed of drug bags before calling paramedics.
“When their dead bodies were discovered, their skin was badly blistered,” Justice Applegarth said in the Brisbane Supreme Court.
“They had suffered dehydration.
“One can only hope that these little girls slowly succumbed to the growing heat of the day much earlier that morning and faded into a deep sleep from which they never returned.
“The alternative of them being awake, distressed, and trapped in their seats is too much to bear thinking about for too long.”
Conley, of Waterford West in Logan, was a regular user of the drug crystal methamphetamine, commonly known as ice, and claimed it helped her to maintain routines and keep up with the demands of single parenting.
“After you were arrested, you told a covert police operative that you smoked methylamphetamine daily but that your children ‘always came first’ and that smoking methylamphetamine never affected your relationship with your children,” Justice Applegarth said.
“That astounding statement is one that only a drug addict could make.
“If a parent smokes methylamphetamine, even in a tiny quantity, their children can never come first. Meth always wins that race. Their children, at best, come a very distant second.”
Conley, who pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charges on Tuesday, has already served 1179 days in custody and will not be eligible for parole until November 2024.
Darcey’s father Peter Jackson, who regularly looked after both girls, walked out of the courtroom as the sentence was delivered.
“I’m obviously not happy about the outcome but I can’t argue with the judge, it’s his decision I have to accept that,” he said.
“They were my world. I obviously only had the two years, two and a half years with Darcey and 12 months with Chloe but you can’t help what the other parent does unfortunately and you can’t always be around to monitor everything.”
Asked what people loved most about the little girls, Mr Jackson said: “Their laugh and their giggles”.
“You know just everything, they’re toddlers, kids, what’s not to love about them,” he said.
“They’re sadly missed and are every day.”
Justice Applegarth said Conley’s decision to leave her small children strapped in the car after returning home from visiting a friend at 4am was made more serious by prior similar conduct.
“You had a history of leaving your two children in your car for lengthy periods, especially during the night or early morning,” he said.
“The excuse for this abysmal course of behaviour was that the children were already asleep, and you did not want to wake them because, once they were awake, they were difficult to settle.
“However, that begs the question as to why you would be coming home with two infants in the early hours of the morning. In any event, this was not a one-off, isolated episode.”
The court heard the decision to first charge Conley with murder before the charges were later downgraded to manslaughter meant that she was a target in prison and had been kept in protective custody.
Justice Applegarth acknowledged Conley’s time in prison had been particularly difficult, taking into account the acute grief and depressive disorder brought on by the deaths, withdrawals from ice and tobacco, and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions on prisoners.
“I accept that you are remorseful for your offending, and that not a day goes by when you do not think of your daughters and the effect that their deaths have had on others,” he said.
“You told a consultant psychiatrist in the Prison Mental Health Service that you have nightmares and replay the scene of finding your two daughters unconscious in the car.
“You have lost many of your best friends and are estranged from your mother.”
Conley reportedly told the psychiatrist “every day I eat myself alive because of what I’ve done”.
In making submissions about the appropriate penalty for Conley, prosecution and defence barristers referred Justice Applegarth to the sentences given to other high profile child killers including Annemarree Lee and Shane Arthur Simpson.
Lee failed to seek medical attention for her son Mason who died in 2016, days after being punched in the stomach by his stepfather, causing Mason to die an agonising and slow death.
She was sentenced to nine years imprisonment with parole eligibility after serving about three years and the court of appeal upheld that decision.
Lee was released on parole in June 2021 after serving almost five years of her nine-year sentence for manslaughter.
Simpson was also convicted of manslaughter after leaving his 22-month old son, Baden Bond, alone to die on a park bench near the Logan River in May, 2007. His body has never been found.
Simpson was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment which attracted an automatic serious violent offence declaration, requiring he serve 80 per cent – or 9.6 years – of that behind bars before being eligible for parole.
Lawyers submitted that Conley should be sentenced to a term of more than Lee but less than Simpson, taking into account the mitigating and aggravating features of the case.
After delivering his sentence, Justice Applegarth noted that Ms Conley’s supporters may think his sentence “too harsh” and that others, like Mr Jackson, may believe it to be “too lenient”.
“To Mr Jackson and other victims, I doubt if sentences that were double what I have imposed would have done much more to ease your grief, and no sentence will bring back those beautiful girls,” he said.
“A Judge has to sentence according to law, not according to what number will make one popular with a victim, a defendant or anyone else, or with any group of individuals, or with the general public.”
He said it would be inaccurate to claim Conley would “walk free” in two years or to assume her prison conditions were not extremely difficult.
“Ms Conley has parole eligibility, not parole release, in about two years after serving five years in very harsh circumstances,” he said.
“None of us can say if or when she will be released on parole. She has been sentenced to nine years imprisonment. If she is released on parole, she will serve the balance of her sentence in the community. She will not be free. She will be supervised and told where she can live.”
It has been documented that prisoners in protective custody, like Conley, and those who have served time throughout the pandemic have been subject to more difficult conditions.
“If anyone thinks the last three years in custody, or the years that are ahead of Ms Conley in custody are other than harsh, then read the evidence about her time in detention, and read about the conditions in our prisons,” Justice Applegarth said.
“None of us who were confined to our homes for days during the Covid lockdowns found it easy. Imagine being locked in a cell for the last 1181 days, with a very long time in custody to come.
“She has to endure the permanent burden of her guilt and remorse, as well as the punishment I have imposed.”
Justice Applegarth’s full sentencing remarks are available here.
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