NSW judge screamed for wife after deadly bomb blast
A panicked and bleeding Family Court judge emerged from a deadly bomb blast at his Sydney home screaming “Where’s Pearl? Where’s my wife?”, a murder trial heard.
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Panicked and bleeding, Family Court judge Ray Watson emerged from a deadly bomb blast at his Sydney home with only one thing on his mind.
“Where’s Pearl? Where’s my wife?” the judge was heard screaming 35 years ago, according to an eyewitness.
A police statement from Justice Watson’s neighbour was tendered to the Supreme Court trial of Leonard Warwick, who’s accused of launching a murderous campaign in the 1980s targeting judges and courts as he fought for custody of his only child.
In March 1984 the judge empowered police to take the former firefighter’s daughter from him, “if necessary by force”, if Warwick failed to comply with access arrangements, the Crown alleges.
Four months later his wife Pearl Watson opened the door of their Greenwich unit and was killed by a bomb.
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Hours after the blast, their 21-year-old neighbour told police he heard an explosion and saw glass flying before smoke began rising up from the unit directly below his.
Geoffrey Read said he and his mother leapt up from the breakfast table around 8.10am on July 4 to find help.
“I climbed down what was left of the stairs and noticed that the front of the judge’s unit was extensively damaged,” Mr Read wrote.
The young man said he passed another neighbour who was bleeding from her head when he noticed the judge standing among the debris just inside the front door of the units.
“His clothes were in tatters and I noticed that there was a large wound on one of his legs,” Mr Read wrote.
He said the panic-stricken judge repeatedly cried: “Where’s Pearl? Where’s my wife? Somebody find my wife!”
Justice Watson was the third judge to preside over Warwick’s acrimonious stoush and only took over the case on March 6 after Justice Richard Gee was maimed in an explosion at his home that day, the Crown alleges.
Justice Gee was due to rule on the proposed orders but about 2am that morning a bomb ripped through his Belrose home, leaving him with serious injuries, the court has heard.
His 12-year-old daughter Alison told police she woke to a loud bang in the middle of the night.
“My bedroom window smashed, the fly screen fell into my room and my bedroom wardrobe fell down,” Ms Gee said in a statement.
The girl screamed out to her brother Stephen and he helped her escape through his bedroom window, she said.
Once outside Ms Gee said they finally found their father and “I could see that he had blood over him.”
In a 2015 statement, Ms Gee said a week or two before the bombing “dad said to us that he was getting unusual calls” where nobody would speak when he answered.
Justice Gee, who had already further restricted Warwick’s access to his daughter, was given the case when his colleague Justice David Opas was gunned down outside his Woollahra home in June 1980 after making adverse orders against Warwick, the Crown alleges.
Warwick has pleaded not guilty to 24 charges, denying he bombed the Parramatta Family Court and a Jehovah’s Witness congregation, or gunned down his brother-in-law Stephen Blanchard.
The trial before Justice Peter Garling continues.