The moment killer Damian Sebo confessed to teenage ex fiance’s death
THIS is the photo the city has waited nearly 10 years to see. Killer Damian Sebo cowers at the spot on the side of the M1 at Coomera where he brutally bashed his teenage ex fiance to death.
Crime and Court
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TARYN Hunt was an innocent 14-year-old schoolgirl when her family moved from Brisbane to the Gold Coast.
With her long, blonde hair and perfect figure, the Year 9 student dreamt of becoming a model.
Then, in the Christmas school holidays of 2003, her life changed when she met the man she believed was the love of her life – Damian Sebo.
At 26 years old, he was older and seemed more mature than the teenage boys she knew at school. He had his own car and money.
While her friends went to the movies, Sebo snuck the teenager into bars and clubs and within weeks, Taryn begged her mother, Jennifer Tierney, to let him move into the family home.
Ms Tierney wasn’t convinced – later telling police she thought Sebo was too old for her beautiful daughter – but Taryn threatened to leave home if they could not be together.
In the end, Ms Tierny agreed to let Sebo in, believing it was better to keep an eye on her headstrong daughter and the boyfriend who was 12 years her senior within her own walls.
At first, the young couple were happy. They lived in Taryn’s tiny bedroom, Sebo treated her like a princess and people said the pair were very much in love.
Friends described Sebo as immature and obsessed with Taryn and he worried constantly about losing control of the beautiful teenager who was rapidly growing tired of her possessive lover.
In April, 2005, Taryn fell pregnant and Sebo was thrilled. For him, their baby was the perfect way to anchor her to him forever. But Taryn wasn’t so sure.
Even as Sebo begged her to keep the child and talked baby names and weddings, Taryn terminated the pregnancy in May. It would be the beginning of the end.
By August, Taryn ended the relationship and Sebo moved out of her room and into the family garage, where he remained obsessed and determined to win her back.
When Taryn started a new relationship, Sebo seethed with jealousy. There were threats, fights, tears and phone calls as Taryn spent time with both men.
Two days before her death, Sebo was home on a Saturday night while Taryn partied with her new man.
Angry and jealous, he made a chilling prediction to Taryn’s mother: “The problem with her behaviour is if she doesn’t stop behaving the way she does soon, somebody’s either going to murder her or rape her.”
Two days later, the 16-year-old decided to leave school and agreed to celebrate with her ex-boyfriend, for old times’ sake.
After a night at the Prince Albert with friends, Sebo and Taryn were heading home when she asked him to drop her off at her boyfriend’s home.
Sebo told police they argued and Taryn taunted him that she had cheated on him. He flew into a jealous rage.
The furious lover grabbed the steering wheel lock he carried in his car and clubbed the teenager in the head while on the side of the M1 at Coomera.
Taryn tried to defend herself and the first blow shattered her wrist.
The second and third into the back of her scalp were delivered with such force, they shattered the back of her skull and split her optic nerves.
Then Sebo waited and watched vital minutes tick by as she was lying face down on the ground with her skull fractured in several places, blood soaking her blonde hair.
At 1.36am, he made a frantic emergency call, claiming to have found the teenager by the side of the road and during the nine-minute drive to hospital, he was desperately planning his defence.
After moving his blood-soaked car from the emergency entrance, he disposed of the murder weapon in a wheelie bin in a nearby street before returning to hospital where he told police Taryn must have been bashed by a stranger after he’d dropped her off on a deserted stretch of road.
Worried when she didn’t come home, he claimed to have found her unconscious in the bush near exit 54.
Police treated Sebo as a suspect from the start and after hours of interrogation, he cracked and claimed it was all her fault. That with her prickly teenage taunts and schoolgirl manipulation, Taryn made him do it.
When police took him to the scene of the crime, Sebo collapsed, blaming Taryn for bringing it on herself: “She goes, ‘well I cheated on you, so go on, use it; it’s not gonna stop it or something’,” Sebo said in his interview.
“That’s when I think I have come across with it. I just got blood on my hands and on my shirt and then that’s when I thought ‘oh my God, it’s totally wrong’.”
No one knows what she said, because two days later on September 9, 2005, Taryn’s family was told she was brain dead. Her life support machines were switched off.
Damian Sebo was charged with murder but pleaded provocation. The jury agreed and found him guilty of manslaughter only.
He was sentenced to a minimum of eight years’ jail and was released in September last year.
In March, 2011, the State Government passed legislation to close a legal loophole preventing the provocation defence on the basis of a victim’s alleged infidelity, insults or threats to leave a relationship.
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