Bad, mad and bloodcurdling, anthology of crimes that shocked Australia: Part 3, H-K
A chilling serial killer opens his mind, the woman who skinned and served her lover for dinner, an acid bin killer who went to hell, and a cook’s burning desire that left 15 dead. The Daily Telegraph continues its alphabetical compilation of crimes that horrified, intrigued and scandalised a nation. Part 3 of a 6-part series.
Some were the stuff of nightmares, others turned into TV hits and bestsellers but all still capable of sending a chill down your spine.
In this alphabetical compilation of crimes that scandalised Australia, we highlight some the most notorious, brutal and outright bizarre from the last century to the current day.
H IS FOR...
RUTHLESS serial killer Paul Steven Haigh once likened himself to a butterfly.
A monster convicted of murdering three men, three women and a young child, his bizarre ramblings revealed a cold heart and self-centred mentality with a predisposition to deception and fantasy.
In chilling notes penned in his cell, Haigh mocked the relatives of his victims while trying to shift the blame for his shocking crimes.
In July 1979, Haigh, then aged 21, shot dead Sheryle Gardner at close range in her car in front of her 10-year-old son Danny because she knew too much about his dark past.
Chillingly, Haigh then consoled the sobbing boy before shooting him three times in the back of the head.
He later said: “Danny being present complicated matters greatly … Poor young Danny seen me shoot his mother.
“I said, ‘It’s going to be all right Danny’, or words near to this and then with his back towards me I shot him three times in the back of the head with the second gun that I had.”
During his murderous spree, the man who would become Victoria’s worst mass murderer forced his then girlfriend, Lisa Brearley, to have sex with another man before stabbing her 157 times.
Haigh figured the DNA his accomplice left behind would guarantee the rapist’s silence about the murder.
According to Haigh, he tricked Ms Brearley to travel into the forest with him and his friends by telling her they were going to a party.
Haigh said Ms Brearley was “devalued as a person and a female” during her ordeal.
He held a knife to Ms Brearley’s throat while his friend raped her.
“When the fellow who wanted sex with her had finished using her body to that end, I attacked her with the blade,” Haigh wrote.
He had a specific number of stab wounds in mind.
But he kept losing count and had to start again, he said.
When Ms Brearley’s front was covered in wounds he turned her over and stabbed her back.
“When I was satisfied of no chance of a miraculous recovery, I stopped,’’ he said.
“The intensity of her fight fazed me — it wasn’t like in the movies. It was the only one I have ever had a nightmare about.’’
In separate hold-ups the previous year, Haigh had shot dead Tattslotto agency worker Evelyn Abrahams, 58, and pizza shop owner Bruno Cingolani, 45.
Haigh shot Ms Abrahams for what he called her “disobedience’’ by walking towards a door in panic rather than complying with his demands for cash. He said he shot Mr Cingolani because he, like Evelyn Abrahams, did not hand over money.
Haigh also shot dead an associate, Wayne Smith, in a St Kilda Rd flat in 1979 so he “wouldn’t look weak’.
In prison in November 1991, Haigh killed fellow prisoner Donald Hatherley, who was hanged in his cell.
He is serving life without parole despite having told an appeals hearing in 2012 of having made “an amazing transformation”, like a grub to chrysalis to butterfly.
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I IS FOR...
IRANIAN-born Sydney mechanic Tony Kellisar went to extraordinary lengths to distance himself from the crime of murder.
Kellisar, a former soldier turned political refugee, was relatively new in Australia when he met USSR-born Svetlana Podgoyetsky, a freethinking, fun-loving young divorced mother who worked as a travel agent.
After their marriage in 1996, the couple who came from very different backgrounds began to bicker and fight.
According to one of Kellisar’s friends, Svetlana would often threaten to sleep with other men when they argued.
In November 1997, Svetlana travelled to Melbourne for a three-day work conference at Crown Towers.
A jealous Kellisar rang her several times to check up on her.
With murder on his mind, Kellisar hired a car and — while popping amphetamine-based pills to keep him awake — drove from Sydney to Melbourne where he strangled Svetlana in the car.
Recounting the events he said: “She was gone. She was sitting with her anger, her eyes wide open. She was looking at me, telling me, ‘You idiot. You killed me.’
With Svetlana at times propped up in the front passenger seat, Kellisar sped back to New South Wales.
He said he held her dead hand while talking to her all the way.
A road cop pulled Kellisar over near Yass, and booked him for speeding more than 30km/h over the 110km/h speed limit.
Kellisar walked to the policeman, who did not see a woman in the offending vehicle.
He drove to his radiator repair shop in Wentworthville and contorted Svetlana’s body into a wheelie bin and partially drowned it in the acid.
Kellisar confessed, claiming he killed his wife accidentally.
“I’m going to hell,” Kellisar yelled in court.
Kellisar was sentenced to 22 years’ jail with a non-parole period of 18 years.
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J IS FOR...
Eighteen years ago Katherine Knight, an abattoir worker from the NSW Hunter Valley, murdered her de facto partner. She skinned the corpse of John Price and hung his skin from meat hooks.
Her motive was revenge but Knight also derived a sick and sadistic pleasure from Price’s death. She planned it days in advance, tortured her victim until his final moments and, with forensic detail and great care, and took his head as a souvenir.
It was March 1, 2000, when police found the victim’s body in the home the couple shared. Slices of his buttocks had been prepared for dinner for Price’s children; the meat to be served with vegetables and gravy.
Police intervened before the children got home from school. They observed that the victim’s head was boiling in a pot on the stove top and that he had attempted to escape. There were bloodstains on the floor of the house.
During sentencing, Justice Barry O’Keefe said Price would have suffered immeasurably.
“The last minutes of his life must have been a time of abject terror for him, as they were a time of utter enjoyment for her,” Mr O’Keefe said.
Knight was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
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K IS FOR...
IN the Kings Cross of 1975, the Savoy Private Hotel was a low-price but tidy establishment flanked by the Pink Panther strip joint and the brothel above it on Darlinghurst Road.
Inside room 33 was homosexual cook Reginald John Little. On this Christmas Eve 1975, he had been let down by a friend who had broken his promise to spend the night with Reg at the Savoy and then have Christmas Day together.
Little hit the streets of the Cross, returning to the Savoy about 5am, and letting himself in through the back door with a residents’ key.
A petty thief who was not above stealing from a church, he was also an arsonist fascinated with two things — fire and making it into the news.
In the rear foyer was a stack of newspapers. Frustrated and angry, the 24-year-old loser set the papers alight, then walked up the stairs and got into bed.
Within minutes the flames had roared up four floors, funnelled by the old-fashioned staircase. Guests smashed windows to escape. One man threw his baby son out of a window to rescuers, a woman climbed naked down a drainpipe.
Prostitutes from the Kingsdore helped guests as they leapt from the Savoy roof.
Little tripped while escaping, knocking himself unconscious.
Out of the 60 guests, 15 died and 25 were seriously injured in what was then Australia’s worst fire tragedy.
Within days, Little was helping gather signatures for a petition for stricter fire precautions in older hotels. He drove newsrooms mad as he repeatedly called offering himself for interviews.
He finally made the front page he had craved for when he was charged with arson and 15 murders. Jailed for life, he was later given a 28-year non-parole period and freed on parole in 2015.
Originally published as Bad, mad and bloodcurdling, anthology of crimes that shocked Australia: Part 3, H-K
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