Prisoner guilty of cellmate’s murder after argument over TV volume

A judge has rejected the story of a man who said he was acting in self-defence when he strangled his jail cellmate to death in June 2019.

A NSW prisoner who claimed his cellmate attacked him after complaining their TV was too loud has been found guilty of his murder.

Richard Reay, 46, appeared in the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday after pleading not guilty during a judge-alone trial to murdering Geoffrey Fardell, 52, in Cell 234 at Kempsey’s Mid North Coast Correctional Centre in June, 2019.

The court was told a cleaner who was delivering milk to inmates at dawn had discovered Mr Fardell lying face down on the floor when Reay said to him: “My celly is dead”.

Investigators later found he had been strangled to death.

Geoffrey John Fardell died on June 11, 2019 after an argument in prison.

Reay, who wanted to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, claimed Mr Fardell had set upon him after complaining about the volume of their cell’s TV before he used an underwear clothesline to strangle his attacker.

“(Reay) said … he woke and found Mr Fardell standing in front of him, Mr Fardell was pointing at the TV and saying in a menacing manner ‘turn the volume down’,” Justice Robert Hulme said when summarising Reay’s version of events.

“(Reay) replied, ‘you’re standing there, you turn it down’.

“Mr Fardell leapt on (Reay) as he lay on his back and started throwing punches, (Reay) said that he had a clothesline running along the top of his bunk … with underwear on it.

“He reached up and ripped it down ‘out of impulse’, he continued, ‘I twisted it around Mr Fardell’s neck and tightened it and he kept on hitting me … as the struggle slowed down he stopped, I rolled him off me onto the floor and laid there getting my bearings, wondering what’s just occurred.“

Reay, who has a history of assaulting people, claimed he then flushed the underwear clothesline down the cell’s toilet, but Justice Hulme questioned if this was possible.

The fight between the two men happened at Mid North Coast Correctional Centre near Kempsey. Picture: Nathan Edwards

“As to what happened to the clothesline used to strangle Mr Fardell, the accused said he ‘threw it into the toilet and flushed it’,“ the judge said.

“I’m curious how a strip of bed sheeting. which must have been about two metres long, could be flushed without apparent difficulty.”

In finding him guilty of murder, Justice Hulme said he did not believe Reay’s account of what happened.

“I do not believe his claim that he was attacked by Mr Fardell,” he said.

“The deceased died from ligature strangulation … the case for the accused is that there is a reasonable doubt about whether he intended to cause death or grievous bodily harm.

“The act of strangling a person to death by itself will usually indicate an intention to bring about one of those outcomes.”

Justice Hulme also said Reay failed to perform CPR on Mr Fardell or call for assistance before he was discovered by authorities.

Reay was jailed almost 20 years ago after hitting a man with a baseball bat.

He will be sentenced at a later date.