John Walsh pleads guilty to murder with Breville sandwich press
An elderly man has pleaded guilty to bashing his cellmate to death with prison-issued Breville sandwich press while serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife and two young grandchildren.
NSW
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JAILED mass murderer John Walsh stuffed a sandwich press into a pillowcase to create a makeshift weapon he then swung repeatedly at the head of his Long Bay jail cellmate.
Walsh, 79, today pleaded guilty to the bashing murder of cellmate Frank Townsend, 71, with the Breville sandwich maker in January last year.
At the time Walsh was in Long Bay jail’s Kevin Waller unit serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife and two young grandchildren and the attempted murder of his daughter in Cowra, in the state’s central west.
He pleaded guilty to those crimes in July 2009.
Today Walsh appeared via video link in the NSW Supreme Court and pleaded guilty to his cellmate’s murder.
When Justice Peter Johnson told him he would face a sentencing hearing in August, Walsh raised his voice.
“Why’s it being drawn out for so long? I am guilty,” he said, adjusting the headset he was wearing.
The close knit country town of Cowra was rocked after Walsh’s bloody rampage in which he murdered his wife Jean and his grandson, 7, and granddaughter, 5 in June, 2008.
Walsh’s daughter Shelly — a serving NSW police officer at the time — made the horrific discovery of her murdered family when she returned home to her parent’s Cowra home.
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She had left her parents to care for her two children while she working an overnight shift at Parkes police station.
At the time of the discovery, Walsh tried to attack his daughter with an axe and said, “I am doing this because I love you. When I am done with you lot I am going to Newcastle to kill your ex-husband. We are all better off this way. This is the way it has to be.”
Walsh later confessed to police that he killed his wife by hitting her on the head about three times with a hammer shaft he called “Fred” before stabbing her with a knife and hitting her on the back of the head with a lump hammer.
He also told detectives he drowned his granddaughter in the bath, before putting her back in bed.
Next he woke up his grandson and hit him on the back of a head with a hammer shaft before assaulting him with a lump hammer.
To make sure he was dead he placed him under the water in the bath before putting him back in the bottom bunk bed.
His last sickening act was drowning the family dog in the bath, wrapping it in plastic before positioning it under the children’s bed.
When handing Walsh a life sentence in 2009 Justice Lucy McCallum said a “disturbing feature” of the case was that Walsh had never offered an explanation for the murders.
At the time Justice McCallum said the murders of his grandchildren fell within the worst case category and said “his acts were wicked in the extreme”.
“The offender killed his young grandchildren when they had been entrusted to his care. He intended to kill them and planned their murders with grim attention,” she said.
“He knew their mother was many miles away, trusting that her children were in safe hands. He abused the children’s trust in him by coaxing them out of their beds.”
She said the children suffered “a level of terror no child should know”.
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At the time of Mr Townsend’s death NSW Correctives Services issued a statement which said, “There were no association issues between the two inmates and nothing to indicate that such an incident would occur.”
It is standard practice to have two inmates in a cell at the Kevin Waller Unit where Walsh and Townsend resided — a place for frail and elderly offenders and the home of convicted killer and former police officer Roger Rogerson.
Prisoners are allowed to purchase and keep sandwich makers in their cells to make toasted sandwiches and warm up their food.
The item is considered a luxury and can only be purchased by inmates if their friends or family put money into their account.
Walsh will face a sentencing hearing on August 11.