Morgan Huxley’s killer Daniel Jack Kelsall loses appeal
The apprentice chef who stalked and murdered Neutral Bay businessman Morgan Huxley has lost his appeal to reduce his minimum 30-year jail sentence.
NSW
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THE apprentice chef who stalked and murdered Neutral Bay businessman Morgan Huxley has lost his appeal to reduce his minimum 30-year jail sentence.
Today the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal found there was no basis for Daniel Jack Kelsall’s sentence to be cut for the 2013 murder which rocked Sydney’s lower north shore.
Kelsall, 24, now faces a maximum of 40 years and three months jail.
The decision comes four years after Kelsall murdered Mr Huxley in what the sentencing judge described as “the most chilling case of murder”.
In March 2015, a jury found Kelsall guilty of stabbing Mr Huxley 20 times and indecently assaulting him inside the bedroom of his Watson Street unit in the early hours of September 8, 2013.
He has been languishing in maximum security at Goulburn jail ever since.
During an appeal hearing in August this year Kelsall’s barrister Braddon Hughes SC told the court he believed the sentencing judge had not properly assessed the prospects of rehabilitation.
But Crown prosecutor Sally Dowling SC argued there was no evidence to show Kelsall had a mental condition which could be treated.
At the time he was sentenced Justice Robert Allan Hulme described the science fiction fanatic and computer games nerd as “disturbed”.
“This is a most chilling case of murder, whether the offender killed for the thrill of it or as a result of a fantasy or obsession, I’m unable to say,” Justice Hulme said.
“It was utterly senseless and needless. It must have been the doing of a very disturbed individual,” he said.
During the trial the jury heard Mr Huxley was enjoying a beer at The Oaks Hotel in Neutral Bay following a friend’s engagement party in the early hours of September 8, 2013.
Kelsall, had just finished washing the dishes after an 18th birthday party at the Sydney Cooking School nearby and was standing on Ben Boyd Road when he noticed Mr Huxley — a handsome, popular marine engineer loved by many.
With sunnies perched on his head and barefoot, Mr Huxley left the pub and walked up Military Road headed towards his unit block which was only a few hundred metres away.
Security footage from the pub shows Mr Huxley walking up the street and then a figure wearing chef pants runs up from behind him.
They both disappeared from view.
Kelsall, who was the only defence witness to take the stand in the trial, told the jury he and Mr Huxley struck up a conversation and he was invited back to his unit nearby.
He told the court the pair had engaged in sexual activity when an intruder hit him with something “hard” over the head.
“It looked like this other person and Mr Huxley were fighting. I then got out of there — I stood up and ran out,” he told the NSW Supreme Court.
But the jury completely rejected his version of events.
During the trial the court heard how after the murder Kelsall ran back to his parent’s unit — just down the road on Spruson Street.
Kelsall was arrested on October 4, 2013 about a month after the murder which produced a series of frenzied and sometimes false headlines about Mr Huxley.
Homicide detectives were initially investigating whether one of Mr Huxley’s ex-lovers had been involved but soon turned their attention to Kelsall after one of his colleagues at the Sydney Cooking School recognised him in a still image of the CCTV that detectives had been showing to all the local businesses.