Tania Burgess murder: Mum pleads for Central Coast killer to stay locked up
He could be sitting next to you at the bus stop or across from you at a cafe. But, despite being a killer who stabbed 15-year-old Tania Burgess to death you will never know what he looks like or even know his name.
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He could be sitting next to you at a bus stop or at a table across from you at a local cafe.
But, despite being a killer who stabbed a 15-year-old girl 48 times to death — and has never once shown remorse or accepted responsibility — you will not know what he looks like or even know his name thanks to laws designed to protect the identity of adolescent criminals after they grow up and are released from jail.
Now, the mother of a teenage girl killed in a brutal, premeditated attack is pleading for your help to have those laws changed.
“Especially on the Central Coast, those are the people who will be affected,” Mandy Burgess told the Express Advocate this week.
“Eventually he will go back to where he’s from. It’s really quite scary because when a serious offender gets out of jail they’re told not to go into certain areas but (if his identity is suppressed) how would someone know.”
Mrs Burgess is talking about her daughter’s killer, a man who can only be referred to as “DL”.
Her daughter Tania Burgess had got off a bus on the Central Coast Highway on July 19, 2005, like she did every afternoon, and was taking a short cut through the Forresters Beach Resort when DL, who was just 16 at the time, jumped out of bushes and stabbed her 48 times before running off.
Tania tried to fight him off and with her dying breath identified him by his first name and the school he went to, said a witness who rushed to her aid.
It took a Supreme Court jury just 90 minutes to find DL guilty of the terrifying murder but the court was never satisfied as to the motive.
He was sentenced to a maximum of 22 years jail, with a minimum sentence of 17 years but appealed last December and managed to have four years shaved off because of a sentencing technicality.
He is now eligible for release and will face a Parole Board hearing next Tuesday.
Mrs Burgess has launched a petition calling on the NSW Government to keep DL in prison and amend laws that would allow serious offenders to be identified once they turned 18.
Sign the petition here: change.org/p/hon-david-elliott-mp-keep-our-daughters-safe
Teenager taken too soon
Some crimes are so shocking, so depraved or so incomprehensible they defy understanding.
The 1993 murder of two-year-old James Bulger by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from a Portuguese resort in 2007 and the stabbing murder of Tania Burgess at Forresters Beach in 2005.
While her killer ‘DL’ was convicted, his motive remains a mystery 14 years on.
Tania caught the same school bus with him but they went to different schools, were in different years.
The most likely, yet unproven, theory was Tania may have inadvertently rejected the “weird” kid’s advances.
IN OTHER NEWS
But, what her mum Mandy Burgess knows for certain — and what was never revealed to the jury — was if police had more thoroughly investigated a home invasion and assault against her a month earlier her daughter would still be alive.
Ms Burgess was doing the dishes, just about to leave for netball training when she felt a presence.
She turned to find DL standing behind her in full school uniform. Mrs Burgess asked what he was doing and told him to get out but he returned a short time later and viciously assaulted her.
Mrs Burgess said police showed her grainy, blown up photocopies of school year book photos but beyond that did little to investigate. After DL was arrested for Tania’s murder, Mrs Burgess identified him immediately and believes Tania would still be alive had police acted earlier.