Court hears John Walsh has no mental issues to explain prison murder
A JAILED mass murderer who stuffed a sandwich press into a pillowcase before swinging it repeatedly into the head of his Long Bay jail cellmate is “just bad” a court has heard and there is no psychiatric explanation for his horrific crimes.
NSW
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A JAILED mass murderer who stuffed a sandwich press into a pillowcase before swinging it repeatedly into the head of his Long Bay jail cellmate is “just bad” a court has heard and there is no psychiatric explanation for his horrific crimes.
Last month John Walsh, 79, pleaded guilty to the horrific murder of cellmate Frank Townsend, who was 71, with the Breville sandwich maker in January last year.
At a sentencing hearing at the NSW Supreme Court today, Justice Lucy McCallum — who sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2009 for the brutal murder of his wife and two young grandchildren — asked about his mental state saying that the circumstances of his offences were “disturbing enough to suggest he was not in a normal state of mind”.
The court heard that he had a mild cognitive disorder but there was no “causal connection” to explain why he had done it.
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“Some people are just bad, the offender himself refers to himself as a dangerous person or implies he is a dangerous person,” Crown Prosecutor Sharon Harris said.
Dressed in prison greens and sporting a beard Walsh required a hearing aid during the proceedings.
Townsend’s daughters sat in court for the hearing but declined to comment outside court.
The court heard that he killed Townsend in a “very violent and ferocious attack” that occurred in two parts.
“There was an attack of five or six strikes to the deceased’s head,” Ms Harris said.
“That was interrupted by prison officers who have heard those five or six thuds.”
The prison officers saw that Walsh was seated on his bed and they thought that Townsend was asleep because he was making very loud noises that sounded like snoring.
He was actually unconscious.
The prison officers left and Walsh again struck Townsend a further two times to the head with the metal Breville while he was “defenceless”.
Barrister Janet Manuell SC said that Walsh had been the victim of a serious assault while in custody in Litghow in 2016 and tendered a number of medical documents including CT scans. She confirmed medical experts found no psychiatric explanation for his actions.
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Walsh was in Long Bay’s Kevin Waller unit at the time of Townsend’s murder after pleading guilty in 2009 to murdering his wife Jean and his grandson, 7, and granddaughter, 5, and the attempted murder of his own daughter in Cowra in June 2008.
The close-knit country town of Cowra was rocked after Walsh’s bloody rampage.
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.
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 McCallum said a “disturbing feature” of the case was that Walsh had never offered any explanation for the murders.
He will be sentenced for this latest murder on August 23.