Harriet Wran’s ex-boyfriend Michael Lee says she left him to rot in jail
EXCLUSIVE: Harriet Wran’s boyfriend claims she was so intrigued by the Asian underworld she sports a dragon tattoo and is only free because of her famous name after their botched drugs deal ended in murder.
NSW
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THE jailed ex-boyfriend of Harriet Wran has slammed the justice system for letting the socialite walk free from prison over her role in a botched drugs deal that culminated in murder.
He has also accused her of abandoning him to his fate and failing to contact him, despite having professed she was falling in love with him.
Lifelong criminal Michael Lee, 37, has broken his silence for the first time since he stabbed to death small time drug dealer Daniel McNulty in a seedy Redfern apartment in August 2014.
“There’s one law for the rich and one for the poor,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
Lee said the 28-year-old daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran was a willing decoy in the planned burglary, but while she landed a lenient two-year sentence and is enjoying freedom and a privileged life in Sydney’s up-market eastern suburbs of Woollahra and Double Bay, he languishes in prison.
“I believe if she wasn’t who she was she’d still be serving time,” Lee said. “Any normal girl on the same charges and same evidence would have got a guilty conviction of felony murder, the same as us. She was the daughter of the Labor premier and has family connections.
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“I saved her ass by not testifying. Because I chose not to, it made it easier for her to escape punishment.”
Lee admitted he was the one who stabbed McNulty and deserved to pay for his heinous crime.
“What I did was wrong, I f ... d up and deserve what I got, but no ordinary girl would have been given that deal.
“The system is stacked against people like me.”
Ms Wran was released on parole last September after serving just two years for robbery and an accessory to murder in company. In sentencing her, Justice Ian Harrison was scathing about the “humiliating” media attention Ms Wran had received which he said was “disproportionate to her involvement in the events.
“It is therefore appropriate significantly to mitigate her sentence,” he said.
Numb on ice after a six-day drugs binge with Lee, Ms Wran posed as a woman pretending to be alone to gain entry to McNulty’s unit with Lee and their accomplice Lloyd Edward Haines.
As soon as the door was opened, the trio barged through the door and robbed McNulty of ice for a $650 score before Lee killed him.
Lee was jailed for 13 years and is incarcerated at the South Coast Correctional Centre in Nowra.
Haines, who rained hammer blows on McNulty’s flatmate Brett Fitzgerald, was sentenced to 11 years.
Lee said Ms Wran “loved to play gangster” and carried a sharp kitchen knife on the night of the robbery.
“She knew we were armed, she had a kitchen knife herself, she loved playing gangster, all we cared about was getting on it (drugs),” he said.
“When Daniel (McNulty) went down, there was blood everywhere, she was stunned but didn’t scream.
“She stood there for a bit … then she was on the floor looking for the drugs.
“She said, ‘you’re bad, I thought you were full of shit, but you really are bad.’ ”
Lee has embarked on a drugs rehabilitation program and expresses remorse for killing McNulty, a father and keen fisherman.
He said he and Ms Wran found common ground over a mutual love of drugs and books and swapped tortuous tales on how both their parents suffered from dementia.
Ms Wran’s father died aged 84 in April 2014 after a long battle with the brain disease.
His death sent Ms Wran into free fall in the months before she met Lee.
“She told me several times she was falling in love with me and we were looking to move into a unit in Surry Hills,” he said from behind bars. “But the second we got arrested she abandoned me.
“I wrote to her at Silverwater (jail) to check how she was coping, I cared about her, but she’s left me to rot, not a single letter or visit to check I’m OK.
“I’m seen as the monster who ruined her life, but she’s no angel. She already had a 4g-a-day ice addiction and was messed up when we met.”
He added: “I am sorry for what I did, I took a life and I am rightly paying with my own. But what I can’t accept is Harriet got only two years.”
‘I WAS HER FIRST PROPER CRIMINAL BOYFRIEND’
EX-CON Harriet Wran and convicted killer Michael Lee were falling in love and planned to move in together before their world fell apart with the murder of drug dealer Daniel McNulty, Lee told The Daily Telegraph from behind bars.
Lee admits he didn’t feel an instant attraction for the daughter of former NSW premier Neville Wran, saying “she was skinny and on ice”, but they bonded over their mutual addiction and love of books and planned to move into a unit in Surry Hills.
He said Ms Wran, now 28, was intrigued by the criminal Asian underworld.
“She told me she loved hard Asian men and had a sleeve on her left arm with a massive dragon tattoo,” he said.
“I was her first proper criminal boyfriend, I had done time before and she loved that about me, you could tell.”
Before he was jailed for 13 years for the murder of McNulty in August 2014, Lee had done time for burglary.
He said he had smoked marijuana since he was 12 and abused cocaine as a teenager.
“She (Wran) would take G, the pink liquid drug, and inject or smoke ice, and we’d have pretty wild sex,” Lee said.
“I felt a lot for her, she told me several times she was falling in love and we were looking to get a place together.
“I really hoped it would last but the reality was it was never going to.”
Having dabbled in drugs at university and mixing in high social circles, Wran developed a growing addiction culminating in several unsuccessful stints in rehab.
Her father’s death in April 2014 sent her into a downward spiral, which ultimately led to her being jailed for her role in McNulty’s sordid death.
“She had run away from rehab and was a real mess,” Lee said.
“I thought I was a mad c... for pulling Harriet Wran. I know we were mismatched — I’ve been a crim all my life, and she’s the daughter of the former premier.”
WEARING SAME CLOTHES THREE DAYS AFTER MURDER
SHORTLY after 7pm on August 10, 2014, Harriet Wran, Michael Lee and Lloyd Haines knocked on the door of petty drug dealer Daniel McNulty’s seedy housing commission flat in Redfern.
Ms Wran, an ice addict, was gagging for her next hit as she pretended to be alone to encourage McNulty to open the door.
The three addicts burst through the door as soon as it opened and a violent fight broke out, during which Haines beat another man in the apartment, Brett Fitzgerald, with a hammer and Lee stabbed McNulty several times.
As McNulty lay bleeding to death on the bedroom floor, the trio carved up the drugs between them and fled the decrepit unit.
Lee and Ms Wran flagged a taxi on Elizabeth St, which was captured on the car’s CCTV, and went to the home of a friend.
In the days that followed, Ms Wran bounced between drug houses looking for a hit.
At 5pm on August 12, two days after the murder, Wran and Lee left the house they were staying in and took a train from Redfern to Liverpool.
The following day, police arrested the pair at Liverpool Station. Ms Wran hadn’t slept for three days and was still wearing the clothes she had on at the time of the murder.
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