Shelden Vaughan: Ex UTS lecturer loses appeal after stabbing wife

He stabbed his wife in the forehead, drove into her lifeless body twice and then stabbed her co-worker in the head in a horrifying ordeal. But his legal team have been back in court, appealing his conviction.

Shelden Vaughan, pictured, will remain behind bars after his appeal was knocked back last week. Picture: Supplied/ Facebook

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The former University of Technology Sydney lecturer who committed a horrific domestic attack on his estranged wife, stabbing her in the forehead and then her co-worker in the head, has had his appeal knocked back.

Shelden Patrick Vaughan, 45, will serve out the rest of his 25-year sentence that was handed down in 2018 after attacking both women during a shocking ordeal which played out in broad daylight.

Vaughan, the Supreme Court found last week, has left it too late to appeal his attempted murder convictions.

The disgraced academic was convicted after pleading guilty to the frenzied stabbings which took place outside his wife Milena Quintero Naranjo’s workplace at a torture victim’s support centre in Carramar in August 2015.

Police investigating the scene in Carramar in 2015.

The pair had endured a turbulent relationship after purchasing an apartment together in Wentworth Point in 2013.

On that day, Vaughan had noticed his estranged wife sitting in her car when he approached clutching something at the side of his jumper.

The day before, he had searched the terms “STARTTS Carramar” – where Ms Naranjo worked – and “carotid artery neck”.

“I miss you,” he told her as he got on his knees beside her car.

The car was left crumpled after Vaughan drove into his wife, twice.

A colleague in former University of Sydney academic Martha Knox-Haly had noticed something was wrong as she passed the pair in the carpark.

“She’s fine I’m her husband,” Vaughan yelled back.

Ms Naranjo had signalled for Ms Knox-Haly to stay but she had misread the message and moved on, thinking she wanted privacy.

From there Vaughan stood up, pulled the knife out of his pocket and lunged at Ms Naranjo, stabbing her in the forehead, chest and arm.

Ms Knox-Haly had heard the screams and saw Vaughan dragging his wife from the car before he then stabbed her in the head when she tried to intervene.

The horror attack played out in broad daylight, outside the woman’s workplace.

The blow was so brutal it penetrated into her skull and fractured the surrounding bone, causing her to collapse in a pool of blood by her car.

Vaughan then ran back to his vehicle, and noticing his wife slumped against another car, reversed before ploughing his car into her.

He reversed again and accelerated into Ms Naranjo for a second time, crushing her between two cars.

The abuse had begun two months prior to the stabbing in Carramar.

Vaughan’s manipulation and abuse had begun two months before the attack when he emailed his wife’s family in Colombia.

“We are very disappointed with Milena”, he wrote, adding that she had “obtained a visa fraudulently” and “I hope she were to die in a car accident and that she has to fly home the body”.

Vaughan’s lawyers were attempting to appeal the convictions on the basis that there was an error in the process in which his sentences were accumulated.

However, Vaughan had waited until almost a year after he was convicted to lodge the appeal, with the Supreme Court ordering that he will not get an extension to appeal.

He will be eligible for parole in August 2029.

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