Harriet Wran trial: ‘My shame at how ice led me to murder'
HARRIET Wran has laid bare her descent into hell to a packed courtroom, revealing how her “cravings” for ice fuelled her fall from high society daughter to a drug addict caught up in murder.
NSW
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HARRIET Wran laid her descent into hell bare to a packed courtroom on Thursday, revealing how her “cravings” for ice fuelled her fall from high society daughter to a drug addict caught up in murder.
“I had done other things, ecstasy and cocaine, but I never felt anything like what ice did,” the daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran said, speaking for the first time publicly since her 2014 arrest over the stabbing murder and robbery of Redfern drug dealer Daniel McNulty. “I felt so confident. I hated using it but the cravings kept bringing me (to drug dealers).
“I have cried all the way to a dealer’s house and still done it. You can’t control it once the cravings hit.”
The 28 year old told the NSW Supreme Court she was “ashamed” to be caught up in the murder of McNulty. “I can’t believe someone died,” she said.
“No one should lose their life in those circumstances. But it happened and I have to come to terms with that it did.”
Wran also told the court she tried to call triple-0 but was stopped.
She knocked on the door of McNulty’s housing commission apartment and within minutes heard the sounds of him dying after a fight with Michael Lee, her “companion” of two weeks, and another man, Lloyd Haines.
Last week she pleaded guilty to charges of accessory after the fact and robbery in company, with prosecutors dropping a charge of murder.
It has been accepted that Wran did not know the two men she had been taking ice with had brought a weapon to the drug den.
But prosecutors have pointed to the fact that she did not report Lee to the police after the murder as culpability in the crime.
“It just sounded like someone was trying to breathe and they couldn’t and they were trying to scream,” she said.
“I called triple-0. They asked what I wanted. He (Michael Lee) just said what are you doing, hang up. I tried to call an ambulance again and I saw Michael and he was angry and he told me to hang up the f****** phone.”
Wran spent three hours in the witness box during her sentencing hearing. She described how she had battled with bulimia her whole life. She started abusing methamphetamine during a stint in a South Pacific rehab clinic in August 2011, where she was being treated for cocaine and ecstasy use.
“I was never going to do ice, it was in another league of drugs”
“I was never going to do ice, it was in another league of drugs,” Wran said. “When you see the billboards of people whose faces are rotting away from using it, that’s how I felt about using it.”
Wran revealed how her mother once tried to stop her from leaving the house and draining her bank account to buy drugs but then had to watch in despair as she left anyway.
“She knew a locked door wouldn’t have stopped me,” she said.
The former Foxtel producer believed she would stay clean for good prior to the death of her father in April 2014 after a long battle with dementia.
“I was glad I was there when he passed, it was so painful, he was in so much pain,” she said, adding that her grief was compounded by the knowledge that a legal battle would be launched over the Wran estate.
The court heard Wran, her thoughts “clear” after almost two years in custody, dreams of working in animal welfare and wants to be involved in efforts to free the streets of ice. She said prison had ironically saved her life by forcing her clean. “After someone died, there was no option to ever go back to drugs,” she said.
“If that wasn’t a wakeup call, I don’t know what is.”
Crown prosecutor Peter McGrath SC suggested a head sentence of between four and five years, and Mr Boulten urged “she has no expectation of going home (yesterday) but in my submission it should not be too far forward.”
No victim impact statement was tendered on behalf of Mr McNulty.
Justice Ian Harrison will sentence Wran on July 26.
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