Gold Coast killer streets in the suburbs over the years
In 2014 the Gold Coast Bulletin published a photo the city had waited nearly 10 years to see. READ THE FULL REPORT
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THEY have seen more mayhem and tragedy than any neighbour would want to see over their back fence. Here is a list of the Gold Coast’s killer streets of the past 40 years.
PART 1: Revealing the Coast’s most notorious murder homes
PART 3: Online Wednesday – Manslaughter in the suburbs
FOXWELL ROAD, COOMERA
IT is 4 o’clock in the morning and Mark “Zeb” Spencer has a choice to make.
He can continue his ice bender by striking the lighter poised below his glass pipe or embrace the brunette standing in front of him.
His former lover Peta Lorang-Goubran has turned up to his Coomera house after Mr Spencer answered an online ad offering sex.
The real motive in setting up the fake Craiglist account was to get into the homes of “customers” and rob them.
For Lorang-Goubran and Mr Spencer, the chance meeting in the early hours of October 1, 2014 was a trip down memory lane.
Mr Spencer decided to lean forward and give the prostitute a hug. “I went to the lounge with Zeb ... he went to light his ice pipe but he stopped and asked for a hug,” Lorang-Goubran told the Southport Magistrates Court in 2017 at a two-day committal hearing for Mark Vincent Dayney. Dayney would be found guilty of murdering Mr Spencer in May 2018.
That’s when Lorang-Goubran said she felt Mr Spencer’s body jolt. She told the court she stood to see Dayney with a black T-shirt wrapped around his head like a balaclava.
“When I jumped up I believe Mark (Dayney) hit him again,” said Lorang-Goubran, who in August 2016 pleaded guilty to unlawfully killing Spencer, among other offences. She was sentenced to seven years jail.
“I was in shock. I was looking at both of them. I didn’t notice any injuries. I jumped up and panicked and ran out of the room.”
Police allege Dayney grabbed a baseball bat and felled Mr Spencer with a blow to the left cheek, shattering his facial bones and knocking him unconscious.
Mr Spencer’s housemate told the court at the committal hearing what he saw. “I saw someone in a mask hit Zeb once with some sort of pole,” the housemate said. “I yelled something out and we both froze.
“Then he went out of sight around the house. I saw him get in the car. I realised there was no numberplate on the car and they took off. He got into the passenger side and drove off. There was a woman behind the steering wheel.”
The housemate said he reached out to check Mr Spencer’s pulse but he could not find one.
THAT PHOTO
IN 2014 the Gold Coast Bulletin published a photo the city had waited nearly 10 years to see.
It showed Damian Sebo cowering in admission to the killing of his former fiancée, teenager Taryn Hunt, on September 7, 2005.
After a night out, Sebo and Taryn were heading home when she asked him to drop her off at
her new boyfriend’s house.
Sebo told police they argued and Taryn taunted him that she had cheated on him. He flew into a jealous rage, grabbed a steering lock he carried in the car and rained blows to the teenager in the head.
He was found guilty of manslaughter, arguing provocation, and released in September 2013.
MUM MYSTERY AND BURN-OUT CAR
KERRY Anne Lane, 30, took her own life in Beenleigh before being tried for the murder of her three children.
Mason Coxsedge, 8, Kerrod Coxsedge, 7, and nine-month-old Jacqueline Duggan died in October 2001.
The bodies of Kerrod and Jacqueline were found inside Lane’s burnt-out car on a dirt road near Dreamworld, while Mason, who sustained severe burns but managed to get out of the car, died in hospital three weeks later.
Lane, a service station attendant from Calamvale near Brisbane, suffered burns to a third of her body, including her face, arms and hands.
PACIFIC MOTORWAY
A DECISION to save money for partying proved fatal for Gabriele Ingrid Jahnke and her best friend, Michelle Anne Riley, who, on October 5 1973, decided to hitchhike from Brisbane to check-out the night life in Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta.
While the pair had known each other for only two months, they’d become inseparable and were often seen together in pubs in the Brisbane area.
Ms Jahnke and Ms Riley were last seen alive at Michelle’s home in Emperor Street, Annerley, about 5pm on October 5.
Eight days later, two children made the gruesome discovery of 19-year-old Gabriele’s decomposed body on the side of the Pacific Highway at Ormeau.
Her body lay at the bottom of an embankment and it looked as if she had been thrown.
Her dress had been pulled up, suggesting she may have been raped.
Eleven days after the discovery of Gabriele, her best friend’s body — 16-year-old Michelle Riley — was found in bushland off the Camp Cale Road at Loganholme.
She too had massive head injuries and her clothes were pulled up.
Their killer has never been found.
A $250,000 reward was offered for information to help bring justice. Anyone who has any information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
ROAD RAGE DEATH
A NEW Zealand man was jailed for six-and-a-half years for a road rage attack which led to a man falling backwards and being fatally hit by a 13.7-tonne garbage truck.
Tamate Henry Heke was convicted of unlawful striking causing death in February 2018 after punching Shane Merrigan in the head on the Gateway Motorway in December 2015.
Heke was the first person in Queensland to be convicted of unlawful striking causing death shortly after the State Government’s one-punch laws were introduced.
Heke was driving home from a 12-hour shift when he was tailgated Mr Merrigan at Eight Mile Plains and forced him to pull over.
He told police Mr ¬Merrigan became involved in an altercation, punching him, before he retaliated.
BACK STREET, BIGGERA WATERS
A FEW droplets of blood, a trail of phone records and a dead body were all detectives had to solve the murder of “eccentric” drug dealer Daniel Dwyer.
The 46-year-old known drug dealer was found dead in his Back Street unit, bloodied and beaten with his hands and feet hogtied behind him in August 2008.
Malakai Lui and Dustin Johnston were charged with murder. They were found guilty in the Queensland Supreme Court and sentenced to life with a non-parole period of 15 years.
Lui and Johnston went to Mr Dwyer’s home to rob him, and tied him up when he resisted. During the trial the court was told the men covered his face with a black mat and gaffer tape, restrained his hands with zip ties and looped an elastic octopus strap around his neck and pulled it down his back to attach to his ankles.
Days later police received a tip off and found his body face down in his lounge room.
Lui and Johnston claimed Mr Dwyer was alive when they left and they never intended for the 46-year-old to die.
A specialist forensic pathologist found Mr Dwyer had died from asphyxiation.
CHILD KILLER
TROY Alan Self’s vicious treatment of the three-year-old led to a disturbing court hearing, a High Court appeal, several investigations and, finally, a review of the conduct of several State Government departments.
The case began on July 25, 1999, when an ambulance was called to a unit at Back Street, Biggera Waters, about 2am.
Ambulance officers found the bruised and battered body of a toddler who had been dead for at least two hours.
A post-mortem examination revealed Brooke had died from internal injuries consistent with being stomped on and kicked, and had extensive bruising on her chest and stomach, and three rib fractures.
Brooke was cared for by Self while her mother worked late at a Surfers Paradise nightclub.
Self was not the child’s natural father.
Self stood trial for the toddler’s murder in March 2001.
He was found guilty by a Brisbane Supreme Court jury, which was told how he jumped on or kicked the little girl.
The court was told Self had a history of violence towards Brooke’s mother.
In the days before the child’s death, she had a bruise the size of a tennis ball on her stomach and was vomiting.
On July 23, Self took Brooke to the local service station about midnight and claimed she had been kicked by a drunken passerby.
The next night he took her to a video store and was seen by a passing motorist to boot Brooke into the air. When the child returned home she was vomiting blood.
Witnesses and neighbours gave horrifying accounts of Brooke’s treatment at the hands of Self.
A man who cared for Brooke, who would not be named, said she was once fed her own vomit and forced to roll over like a dog as she lay crying on the back lawn.
A jury took less than a day to deliver its verdict and Self was sentenced to life in jail.
MANSLAUGHTER IN THE SUBURBS
STABBINGS, clubbings, bashings and shootings. Leafy Gold Coast suburbs have been home to a number of manslaughters in the past 30 years. Here are some of them:
Part 2: Killer streets of the Coast
CENTRAL STREET, LABRADOR
When: January 20, 2012.
Victim: Esad Penava.
Killer: Nebjosa Slomovic.
A MAN tortured in a camp during the Yugoslav War was jailed for nine years over the bashing death of another migrant at a Gold Coast home.
The Supreme Court in Brisbane heard an intoxicated Nebjosa Slomovic “snapped” in the early hours of January 20, 2012, hitting Esad Penava in a beating that lasted up to 15 minutes.
Serbian-born Slomovic, who had immigrated from Bosnia, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Mr Penava, who, he told police, had punched and taunted him.
Paramedics tried to resuscitate him but he died at the scene.
The court heard the men, who knew each other, had been socialising with other Bosnian men when Slomovic invited Mr Penava home to continue drinking about midnight.
Justice Ann Lyons said for some “unexplained reason” Mr Penava started hitting Slomovic during the car ride and calling him names.
Neighbours reported hearing raised voices emanating from the property when the pair arrived and an “upset” and “agitated” Mr Penava again struck Slomovic.
“You tried to calm him down and took him in and poured him two glasses of cognac,” Ms Lyons said.
“You told police he hit you again and punched you in the face and called you names”.
At that point, the court heard, Slomovic snapped – hitting the other man “over and over” while he grabbed back. Slomovic continued to strike him for up to 15 minutes.
When he realised he was unconscious on the ground, Slomovic called friends for help. When no-one answered, he dragged Mr Penava to his car to take him to hospital himself.
The court heard it was only then Slomovic saw the man’s battered body, and realised the severity of the injuries. He called triple-0.
Neighbours said they did not know either of the men but heard a heated argument in a foreign language coming from the back yard about midnight.
A man, who refused to be named, said the accused had not lived in the street long.
“He has only been here a few months,’’ he said.
“I didn’t know him at all, but I did hear an argument in the back yard last night. It was in another language.”
HERMITAGE CLOSE, ASHMORE
When: June 17, 2001.
Victim: Beverly Florence Goodfellow.
Killer: Eric Terrence Goodfellow.
A GOLD Coast man clubbed his wife of 35 years to death with a pick-axe handle because he was tired of her constant insults and stinginess, a court was told.
A Supreme Court jury in Brisbane was told Eric Terrence Goodfellow killed his wife Beverly, 59, as she sat in a lounge chair at their Ashmore home on June 17, 2001.
The jury was told Goodfellow told police his wife constantly called him “useless’’, told him she hated him more than anyone else and that of all the men she could have had, she was stuck with him.
Goodfellow, 61, pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter but not guilty to murder, on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
He was jailed for seven years and six months.
The jury was played a covertly recorded police audiotape in which Goodfellow confided to a young female officer, whom he commented was about his daughter’s age, that he ``just snapped’’.
“I am sick and tired of being called useless,’’ Goodfellow told the officer.
“I don’t even have control of my own money. I don’t have my own bank account.
“The only money I have is in my pocket.
“If I go out, I get given a $20 note.
“(Playing) 10 keno, that’s my life (and) this is where it ends, the Surfers Paradise police station.’’
Goodfellow can also be heard counselling the female officer against getting married because, in his experience, there was never any give and take.
``All I ever wanted was a bit of give and take,’’ Goodfellow said.
The jury was told acrimony between the couple peaked when Goodfellow tried to talk his wife out of a contract they had signed to buy a property in Tasmania.
Mr Hamlyn-Harris, for Goodfellow, said the couple owned their Ashmore home and his client believed they had over-extended themselves financially to purchase the Tasmanian property.
A teary Goodfellow, who took a stress payout from Victoria Police in 1981, told the jury of five women and seven men he was called a “dog”, “not a man” and “useless” by his wife.
He said he was unwelcome in their bed and slept alone downstairs.
He also claimed she repeatedly threatened to kill him and told him to “go live with the deros in the park” after kicking him out earlier in the year.
He said he worshipped his wife, but was ready to explode on the day of the killing when she refused to back down over her wish to live in Tasmania.
The couple had a deposit on an old hotel in the town of Tunbridge, but Goodfellow was worried it would send them broke and eat up his half-million dollar police pension.
MERMAID BEACH
When: January 7-10, 1991.
Victim: Celia Marjorie Nixon, 54.
Killer: John Nixon, 60.
A Gold Coast pensioner bashed his wife to death with a mattock handle and cut up her corpse with a hand saw because she continually nagged him.
John Nixon, 60, would plead guilty to manslaughter and be sentenced to five years jail for the January 1991 death of his wife, Celia Marjorie Nixon, 54.
“I wanted to get her out of my life,’’ Nixon told detectives in a taped interview played to the Queensland Supreme Court.
“She was nagging and nagging and nagging and I just couldn’t take any more.’’
Police alleged the retired landscape gardener put sleeping tablets in his wife’s coffee and waited until she fell asleep in the bedroom of their Mermaid Beach unit, before bashing her to death with a mattock handle.
“I didn’t want her to feel anything so I thought it was the only way I could do it,’’ said Nixon, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
“I took her to the bathroom and cut her body up into pieces.’’
He had stored the body in plastic garbage bags which he had later dumped in industrial bins at Surfers Paradise over a three-day period.
He said he had scrubbed his bathroom floor with towels to remove bloodstains from the tiles and had given his wife’s clothes to charity.
Police said Nixon had decided to kill his wife of 35 years before Christmas Day last year.
“I changed my mind because she was all right over Christmas so I just didn’t . . . then she started (nagging) again . . . so I decided to go ahead with it,’’ he said.
Police said the killing had taken place between January 7 and January 10.
Nixon, who had told friends that his wife had gone to London, was charged with her death on April 5.
Statements from scientific police tendered to the court said blood had been found in the Nixons’ bedroom on a wall, bedside cupboard, lamp shade and telephone.
A blood-stained tarpaulin which police say Nixon used to keep blood from getting on the carpet was also found.
In other documents tendered to the court, police said it would be too dangerous to try to find Mrs Nixon’s remains.
They said the large amount of rubbish and methane gas at the tip would make the task almost impossible.
LAVELLE ST, NERANG
When: July 17, 1998.
Victim: Michelle Patricia Baggott.
Killer: Kevin John Baggott.
THE estranged husband of a Gold Coast woman who disappeared after dropping her daughter at school wept as he confessed to killing her in the back of a police car, a court was told.
Surfers Paradise detectives told a committal hearing in Southport Magistrates Court that Kevin John Baggott had his head bowed and was misty-eyed as he muttered the words “`I did it’’.
The Nerang truck driver, 43 at the time, pleaded not guilty to murdering Michelle Patricia Baggott on July 17, 1998, but a Supreme Court jury in Brisbane found him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter after he claimed the death was an accident.
Baggott said his wife died after he punched her and she fell, striking her head on concrete
Police alleged that Baggott showed them where he killed Michelle, 30, under his Lavelle Street home -- just 50m away from the local police station.
Police claimed he then wrapped her body in a rug, put it in the back of his truck, drove to a nearby boat ramp and disposed of it in the Nerang River where it “floated for a while until it sank”.
Her body has not been found.
The couple married in April 1996 and separated two years later. They were going through an acrimonious divorce, including a custody battle over Michelle’s daughter, who was from a former relationship.
Baggott later confessed to police he asked Michelle to his house so he could swap cars, giving her the better one. However, they argued and he punched her in the head, killing her.
Mrs Baggott was last seen alive when she dropped her daughter at school on July 17.
She was due to appear in court on the day of her disappearance to fight her husband’s attempt to lodge a domestic violence order.
That day, police interviewed Baggott who initially denied any knowledge of his estranged wife’s whereabouts. But when police interviewed him on July 26 he suddenly said: ``I did it.’’
QUANDONG COURT AND BLOODWOOD CRESCENT, MOLENDINAR
When: January 23, 1999.
Victim: Mark James Sorrell.
Killer: Ashley Brendan Cole.
A GOLD Coast man was jailed for eight years after a judge found he “overreacted’’ when he shot dead a neighbour who challenged him to a fight.
A Supreme Court jury in Brisbane took three hours to find Ashley Brendan Cole, 38, not guilty of murdering Mark James Sorrell, 34, on January 23, 1999. However, it returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter.
The trial heard of a long-running battle between Cole and Sorrell, who were neighbours in the usually peaceful suburb of Molendinar.
The final confrontation was sparked after Sorrell chased and rammed Cole’s car when he thought Cole had deliberately tried to run down Sorrell’s toddler son.
The trial heard Cole made a complaint to police but when he returned home there were heated words with Sorrell in the backyard.
Sorrell went to the front of Cole’s home and challenged him to a fight but Cole got a .303 rifle and shot Sorrell through the left eye.
Justice Debra Mullins sentenced Cole to eight years’ jail and declared he had served 653 days on remand.
The trial heard evidence of a running battle between Cole’s family and Sorrell’s family, which escalated from minor irritations to all-out war.
The Coles lived in Quandong Court and their house backed on to Sorrell’s de facto wife’s house in Bloodwood Crescent.
In evidence, Cole claimed he had received hundreds of death threats from Sorrell and other people in the street.
Psychiatric evidence was called to show Cole had a stress disorder at the time he shot Sorrell.
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