Tahmoor’s ‘most-hated’ man killed in drug-induced rage

Everyone was a suspect in the 2013 murder of Tahmoor’s ‘most-hated’ man, notorious for setting his dogs on his neighbours. His killer has told the court how the dogs triggered the deadly bashing.

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The 2013 murder of Tahmoor’s ‘most-hated’ man, Scott Hammond, was ultimately triggered by his notorious dogs with the 48-year-old bludgeoned to death in his own home by a long-time friend.

Former cellmate and father-of-three Kenneth Christopher Washbrook, 48, was charged in May last year by Strike Force Hewitt, five years after the deadly bashing.

He pleaded guilty to the murder in April.

Kenneth Washbrook killed the Tahmoor man in a drug-induced rage.

The murder mystified the small village on Sydney’s southwest outskirts, which had a tick over 4000 residents, with Hammond infamous for repeatedly setting his pitbulls onto neighbours.

The NSW Supreme Court heard in a sentence hearing today that Washbrook unleashed on Hammond in a drug-induced frenzy, violently striking with a piece of wood when he saw his friend bash one of his dogs.

Tahmoor man Scott Hammond was notorious for setting his dogs on neighbours.

The 48-year-old, who had been smoking weed all night and on the morning of the bashing, said when he saw the dog bashing he got into an argument with the Tahmoor man and lost his temper.

He told the court Hammond called him “useless” and a “loser” before and during the violent frenzy. When asked by crown prosecutor Michael Barr when did he stopped striking Hammond, Washbrook said “when I stopped hearing his voice”.

The Heckenberg man, who has a 20-year criminal record littered with violence, described Hammond as “like a brother” and told the court he had been sporadically living at the home at the time of the murder.

Washbrook was arrested and charged with the murder last year. Picture: NSW Police Media

The court heard Hammond was left sprawled on his lounge room floor with serious face fractures while Washbrook grabbed his personal belongings, let the dogs and 40 chickens inside the home, and left.

When Mr Barr put to Washbrook that he let the chickens inside the house, which roamed for two days until the body was discovered, he said he didn’t remember.

Hammond (pictured) met Washbrook in jail 25 years ago.

Washbrook said he was “disgusted” by his crime.

“I have thought about him every day,” he said. “It is just eating me up inside.

“If I could change places I would do it in a heartbeat.”

At the time of the killing, locals told how Hammond, who had pleaded guilty to several charges relating to dog attacks, would set his dogs on people. One 16-year-old boy was mauled on the buttock in 2011.

“I’ll never forget the day he ordered his dogs to attack me,” shop owner Danny Forrest­ had said. “I told him to keep his dogs away from some children … when I came out of the shop he just said to the dogs ‘Get him’.”

The matter will return to the NSW Supreme Court on September 2.