Shootings, rape, decapitation: NSW’s most notorious prisoners revealed
They’ve been convicted of the state’s most high profile crimes and are now locked safely away across the state with many unable to set foot outside a prison wall ever again.
Police & Courts
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They’ve been convicted of the state’s most high profile crimes and now these prisoners are leading new lives behind bars.
Some have chosen to reform their ways, like Katherine Knight, Australia’s first woman sentenced to life without parole, who’s known as ‘The Nana’ at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre.
Others, like notorious crime boss Bassam Hamzy, have continued to offend, even forming a ruthless new gang behind bars.
From those marked ‘never to be released’ to those who will be in their twilight years when they finally taste freedom again, these are the state’s most notorious criminals serving out lengthy sentences in NSW prisons.
Bassam Hamzy
Gangland crime boss Bassam Hamzy, 43, is serving a 40-year sentence for a string of serious crimes including the shooting murder of teenager Kris Toumazis outside a Sydney nightclub in 1998.
He founded the Brothers 4 Life gang while behind bars and has become one of the country’s most notorious prisoners.
While locked up at Goulburn Supermax he was deemed an “extreme high risk” prisoner with restricted access and associations.
Hamzy continued to offend while behind bars, and was convicted of trying to operate a drug ring from his cell.
A court heard he used a smuggled mobile phone to make up to 450 calls a day, even arranging two kidnappings and a drive-by shooting from jail.
Hamzy was also involved in a brawl with fellow inmate and convicted terrorist Talal Alameddine in 2018.
The Brothers 4 Life gang has been involved in a long-running and bloody war with the Alameddine family on the outside, with Hamzy’s relatives Mejid Hamzy, Bilal Hamze, Salim Hamze and Toufik Hamze all shot dead in the past two years.
Hamzy was recently moved from Goulburn Supermax to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre at Silverwater while he faces trial for unrelated charges.
He will be eligible for parole in 2035.
Bilal Skaf, 40, was sentenced to 55 years behind bars for his role as ringleader of a gang of serial rapists who attacked women and girls as young as 14 throughout Sydney in 2000.
His sentence has been changed several times on appeal, with Skaf now serving a maximum of 31 years at Goulburn Supermax.
Skaf and his gang raped six girls in four instances between August and September that year, with some of the ordeals lasting several hours and involving more than a dozen men.
Two years later nine of the men, including Skaf, were sentenced to a total of 240 years behind bars.
Skaf, who will be eligible for parole in February 2033, has been involved in a number of incidents behind bars.
Early in his sentence he was moved from Long Bay Jail after plans by other inmates to inject him with HIV-infected blood were discovered.
In 2015 he was attacked by inmates at Goulburn Supermax and sustained serious facial injuries.
Skaf’s original 55-year sentence was at the time the longest non-life sentence ever delivered, with District Court Judge Michael Finnane QC describing him as “a menace to civilised society”.
Skaf’s brother, Mohammed Skaf, was sentenced to 32 years behind bars for his role in the rapes, but that was reduced to 19 years with a non-parole period of 11 years on appeal.
He was granted strict parole in October last year and now lives in Sydney where his movements are monitored electronically by parole authorities.
Sef Gonzales
Sef Gonzales, 41, is serving three life sentences for the murder of his family at their North Ryde home when he was just 20.
Gonzales, who maintains his innocence, has exhausted almost all his legal options including a number of requests for inquiries into his conviction.
He fatally stabbed his father Teodoro, 46, mother Mary, 43, and sister Clodine, 18, on July 10, 2001.
He then spray painted the words “F**k off Asians KKK” inside the home, in an attempt to fool police into thinking the murders were a hate crime.
Gonzales showered, changed and visited a friend after the killings, later returning home at which point he claimed to have discovered the bodies.
He raised red flags in the days after the murders, enquiring about his inheritance and putting a deposit on an expensive Lexus.
The breakthrough in the case came when police discovered Gonzales had purchased poison he’d attempted to use on his family before their deaths.
The court later heard Gonzales killed his family because they disapproved of his life choices and were “in the way”.
“This was a slaughter by an angry amateur who wanted to make absolutely sure they were dead but had no idea how many times he would need to stab them in order to cause death,” Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC said during the trial.
He remains behind bars at Lithgow Correctional Centre.
Matthew Milat
Matthew Milat, 29, was following in the footsteps of his great uncle, backpacker serial killer Ivan Milat, when he murdered a childhood friend in the Belanglo State Forest in 2010.
Milat killed David Auchterlonie with a double bladed axe on November 20, the victim’s 17th birthday, at the same killing field used by his great uncle two decades earlier.
Friend Cohen Klein, then 18, filmed on his phone as Milat, then 17, carried out the attack.
Both later pleaded guilty to murder.
The court heard Milat gloated about the killing, saying “You know me, you know my family. You know the last name Milat, I did what they do”.
Milat was sentenced to 43 years behind bars for the brutal slaying, and will be eligible for parole in 2040. In 2014 he lost an appeal to reduce the severity of his sentence.
“It is almost impossible to imagine the terror that the deceased was subjected to,” Justice Jane Mathews said during sentencing. “It was a thoroughly senseless and brutal murder.”
Klein, who the court heard was “strongly influenced” by Milat, will spend at least 20 years behind bars.
Ivan Milat was serving life without parole in Long Bay Jail for the murders of seven people when died of cancer in 2019, aged 74.
Katherine Knight
Katherine Knight, 66, was the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life behind bars without parole.
She shocked the country with the horrific murder of her partner John Price, in which she stabbed and skinned him before cooking his head and hanging his skin from a meat hook.
The abattoir worker had a turbulent relationship with Mr Price, 44, before he ultimately left her.
It was then on February 29, 2000 that Knight stabbed him 37 times, decapitated him and cooked parts of his body.
Police conducting a welfare check on Mr Price at his Aberdeen home found a particularly gruesome scene including portions of his flesh served up with baked vegetables at a table set for his children.
Knight was located in bed, comatose from taking a large number of pills.
Knight, then 45, initially offered to plead guilty to manslaughter but that was rejected by the prosecution. Partway through her murder trial she changed her plea to guilty and the jury was dismissed.
Her papers were marked ‘never to be released’ but in 2006 she appealed the life sentence, claiming it was too severe.
Justice Peter McClellan disagreed, labelling the crime “beyond contemplation in a civilised society”.
Knight remains locked up at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre where she’s known as ‘The Nana’ and a leader of the other women.
John Travers
John Travers, 55, will die behind bars after leading the brutal pack murder of nurse Anita Cobby in western Sydney in 1986.
Ms Cobby, 26, was walking home from Blacktown train station late on February 2 that year when she was kidnapped by Travers and four other men who pulled up alongside her in a stolen Holden Kingswood.
Travers, Michael Murdoch and brothers Les, Gary and Michael Murphy repeatedly raped and beat Ms Cobby in the car and at a farm at Prospect where her body was later discovered.
It was Travers who convinced the others Ms Cobby would be able to identify them and then slit her throat as they spurred him on.
A tip-off about the stolen vehicle led police to the group of men but it was Travers’ aunt, dubbed ‘Miss X’, who sealed the case by working with investigators to obtain recorded confessions from her nephew and Murdoch.
Travers pleaded guilty to sexual assault and murder at the beginning of his trial in 1987, while the other four men were found guilty of the same charges after a trial spanning almost two months.
Each was later sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, with Justice Alan Maxwell describing the crime as “calculated killing done in cold blood”.
Michael Murphy died of cancer while in custody in 2019. The remaining four continue to serve their sentences, including Travers who is incarcerated at Wellington Correctional Centre.
Malcolm Naden
Malcolm Naden, 48, was one of Australia’s most wanted men before his high profile arrest in 2012.
He was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 40 years, for a string of charges including the murders of two young women and the indecent assault of a teen girl.
Naden went on the run after the murder of Kristy Scholes at his grandparents’ house in June 2005.
He was already a person of interest in the disappearance of his cousin Lateesha Nolan in January that year.
Naden was almost caught several times in the following years, with police offering up a bounty of $250,000 for his capture.
In 2011 he shot a police officer during an unsuccessful attempt to capture him near Nowdendoc, over which he was later charged with shooting with intent to murder.
On March 22, 2012 he was taken in by heavily armed police during a night-time operation at Gloucester that was later televised.
Naden pleaded guilty to all 32 charges against him and was sentenced in 2013, at age 39.
Later that year he was bashed inside Goulburn Supermax by second cousin Dean Nolan in a retribution attack of the murder of Lateesha.
Leslie Camilleri
Leslie Camilleri, 52, was sentenced to life in prison, never to be released, for the Bega schoolgirl murders.
Lauren Margaret Barry, 14, and Nichole Emma Collins, 16, were abducted, raped and killed by Camilleri and fellow career criminal Lindsay Beckett, 48.
The teens were walking near their campsite at White Rock when they were abducted by the men about 9pm on October 5, 1997.
Camilleri and Beckett, both from Yass, tortured and raped the girls repeatedly over a twelve hour period, driving them several hundred kilometres across regional NSW and Victoria.
The ordeal came to an end when Beckett, at the direction of Camilleri, stabbed both the girls after a failed attempt to drown them.
A police investigation sparked when the girls were reported missing ultimately led police to the duo, with Beckett making a full confession and guiding investigators to Lauren and Nichole’s bodies just south of the Victorian border.
Beckett, who was 24 when he pleaded guilty to the murders, was sentenced to life behind bars, with a non-parole period of 35 years.
Camilleri, then 29, pleaded not guilty but was found guilty at trial, and later sentenced to life imprisonment.
“Through your own actions, you have forfeited your right ever to walk among us again,” the Supreme Court Justice Frank Vincent said at the time.
While behind bars, Camilleri pleaded guilty to the 1992 murder of Prue Bird, 13, in Melbourne, and was sentenced to an additional 28 years in jail.
He remains incarcerated in Goulburn Supermax.
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