Graham Sales: Fresh details of Ronald Penn’s murder revealed
Ronald Penn didn’t know where he was going when he got into Graham Sales’ car. But after being driven to an unknown location, he was made to dig his own grave before he was suffocated and buried in what has been called a callous and depraved killing.
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A sadistic monster made a man dig his own grave before suffocating and burying him, a court has heard.
Grim details of the final moments of Ronald Penn’s life have been revealed as Graham Thomas Sales faced court over the 1995 murder.
Penn’s body has never been found.
In May, Sales sensationally pleaded guilty to killing the 61-year-old at The Entrance and soliciting his brother, Ross Sales, to murder a woman, known as JF, inside a courtroom at Wyong Local Court.
However, at a sentencing hearing at the Supreme Court on Friday, his lawyer Troy Anderson claimed the 56-year-old was remorseful over the killing of Penn and attempted murder of JF.
Mr Anderson went as far as to say his client was well and truly on the way to rehabilitation, highlighted by his confession, after spending what the crown called 20 years in a “depraved and lawless lifestyle”.
Sales is already serving a 36 year sentence from 2018 for 21 offences including raping women with household objects and forcing them to eat their dinner off the floor, and further offences of aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping and common assault.
Those offences included hogtying women and placed them face down in the bath.
The Supreme Court heard on Friday that both the murder of Penn and attempted murder of JF took place a month apart in October and November 1995, in the middle of other violent and merciless offending
At the time, JF was attempting to proceed with an Apprehended Violence Order against Sales who was 30 at the time.
Sales appeared via video link in court, his once thick black hair now gone. His beard has whitened and his large belly poked out above the desk at Lithgow jail.
Sales didn’t flinch as Crown prosecutor Brett Hatfield read out the variety of the crimes, for which he is already serving 36 years in prison.
“Sexual assaults, degrading offences, gratuitous cruelty, arguable torture … sexual assaults against children, quite young girls, 11 and 12 years of age … (one) indecent assault on a child 4 or 5 years of age,” Mr Hatfield said.
The court heard Sales made up a story to lure Mr Penn into a car before they went to a deserted location.
But when Sales discovered the ground was too hard to dig up he kept driving to The Entrance.
He made Mr Penn dig his own grave before holding something over his mouth until he couldn’t breathe. He then buried him.
Mr Hatfield called the murder “callous… in cold blood” and showing “a complete disregard for the sanctity of human life.”
“He disposed of (the body) in such a way it’s never been found, (and) still not found 25 years after the murder,” Mr Hatfield said.
He said this had deprived the family of Mr Penn of the opportunity to properly mourn.
Police believed the alleged motive for the murder was to prevent him from being subpoenaed to give evidence in the JF-Sales AVO proceedings.
The court was also told of the hit on his former partner JF.
The court heard Sales threatened to murder his brother if he did not kill the woman at Wyong Courthouse.
Police found this to be a credible story as Ross Sales was present for the murder of Mr Penn, the court heard.
In killing JF, he would have “eliminated a Crown witness,” the court was told.
The court heard Ross Sales walked behind JF with a shotgun, called her name and fired as she turned around.
Remarkably the bullet hit her left shoulder and she survived.
Justice Peter Garling was asked to consider if Sales informing police that he had committed and solicited the murders respectively had any value in reducing his sentence.
Justice Garling was also asked whether Sales should have some hope of being released from prison.
He will be eligible for release at 81 years of age, in May 2045.
Justice Garling did not set a sentence date, calling the case “one of the harder sentencing matters I’ve ever had to address”.