Herman Rockefeller was a rich church-going family man with a deadly ‘swinging’ sex addiction
RICH church-going family man Herman Rockefeller, featured on this week’s Murder Calls, had a secret craving for sordid sex with swingers. It ended badly.
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MILLIONAIRE businessman Herman Charles Rockefeller had a dark addiction — he craved sex with feisty women on the salacious “swingers’” scene.
Seven years on, we examine what led to his gruesome demise.
In the eyes of most who knew him, Mr Rockefeller was a respected commercial investor, an avid churchgoer and solid family man.
But behind a figurative black curtain he hawked himself on an underground sex circuit where those with whom he met and played knew him as “Andy Kingston”.
As the kinky Kingston character, Mr Rockefeller sought to live out his sordid fantasies with couples found in sex trade magazines.
His reasons for engaging with common swingers remain unknown, and can only be imagined.
“(He) was a married man with two children, who ran a successful commercial investment business,’’ according to police documents tendered in court.
“(He) was highly intelligent and was strongly involved with his family and the local church.”
His wife, Vicky, told police their marriage was “good and solid”.
She had no idea about his secret sex life, and was certainly no part of it.
“He’s not even the kind of person who would go for a drink on the way home,” Ms Rockefeller told police.
Sadly for all involved, it was Mr Rockefeller’s dirty desires that led to his gruesome demise.
It was a death that made newspaper headlines and led TV news bulletins.
The three tragic players in this sorry, sordid tale of debauchery, death and dismemberment were, according to prominent defence barrister Phil Dunn, QC, “star-crossed by coincidence”.
Had Mario Schembri, a scrap metal hauler, and Bernadette Denny, an alcoholic pensioner, not met and bonded over a stray pooch in the outer Melbourne suburb of Hadfield, then Mr Rockefeller might still be alive.
The story reads like a gutter-level version of the Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors.
Schembri and his nephew found the lost dog in March 2009, which captivated Denny and her two adult daughters (who lived in the street).
Not long after that, Schembri and Denny started a relationship.
“Romance blossomed in South Street, Hadfield,” Mr Dunn told the Supreme Court.
“When (Schembri) moved into (Denny’s) house in April of 2009, nobody — Andy Kingston, Bernadette Denny or Mario Schembri — had any idea that their paths were going to intersect.’’
In court it was suggested the two men’s predilection for salacious sex with strangers, and Denny’s dependence on Schembri and her desire to please him, led to Mr Rockefeller’s death.
After Schembri moved into Denny’s home, and her two daughters moved out, the new couple began to explore the sexual landscape.
In July 2009, Schembri and Denny engaged the services of a female prostitute for a threesome.
Three months later Denny saw an ad placed by “Andy Kingston’’ in a sex magazine.
It read:
Attractive fun-loving couple who enjoy an active uninhibited but safe sex life. Swing together and independently. We are both in our 30s. Daytimes fine for meetings as we are discrete ... No single men.
(Over a period of nine years, Mr Rockefeller had placed 34 of these types of ads in sex magazines).
Denny contacted “Andy Kingston” and she and Mr Rockefeller began to talk.
“We spoke about likes and you know ... kinky stuff,’’ Denny told police during her later record of interview.
“He was saying how they swing — him and his partner — that she’s more into the threesomes but she’s willing to try the foursome.
“(He) just spoke about sick stuff, you know, that they were into. He sounded like he’d done it all before.’’
Mr Rockefeller eventually spoke to Schembri.
“(Mr Rockefeller) wanted to have a three-way with me and my partner and him, and then do the swap around,” Denny told homicide squad detectives.
Schembri, aged in his mid 50s, watched on as Mr Rockefeller, 51, first had sex with Denny, aged in her early 40s, in the loungeroom of their Hadfield home in early January 2010.
On January 21, Mr Rockefeller returned to Melbourne from an interstate business trip but had told his wife his flight was delayed.
Having bought himself some time, he visited Denny’s home for a hopeful “quickie”.
Despite having previously promised to bring his (non-existent) swinging sex partner, referred to as Jenny, Mr Rockefeller arrived at the Hadfield home alone and full of lust.
That upset Schembri.
“He come over and he didn’t bring his missus, and there was a bit of confrontation,’’ Schembri later told homicide detectives.
“With his kind of money he could have bought a bloody whorehouse or whatever, and did what he wanted. But yet he chose to come to us.
“He betrayed us, and then he pushed that button.’’
Angry and disappointed, Schembri told Mr Rockefeller: “C’mon, you’ve used my wife. You’re selfish.’’
Schembri stopped Mr Rockefeller from leaving, and the situation spiralled out of control.
In court, Crown prosecutor Chris Beale, SC, explained what happened next.
“Ms Denny told (Mr Rockefeller) she was sick of his lies (about Jenny). He still wanted sex and began touching Denny, placing his hands on her breasts and between her legs.
“Ms Denny slapped him across the face. Schembri told Denny to stop and told (Mr Rockefeller) to `keep his f---ing hands off’.’’
It was then that Mr Rockefeller announced he liked “feisty women”.
Wrestling turned to pushing. Pushing turned to fighting.
Schembri continued to punch Mr Rockefeller, later telling detectives he “lost it”.
“How could you go against Muhammad Ali ... it was like that with him,” Schembri would say.
“He didn’t have the anger that I had in me ... I’ve never hit that hard with anybody.”
According to Mr Beale: “The fighting then moved to the garage and was described by Denny as `full-on involving all of us’.’’
According to the killers, Mr Rockefeller fell and hit his head, and died.
Later that night, Schembri and Denny drove Mr Rockefeller’s body to Heathcote, a semi-rural area, but returned with it to Hadfield and dumped it in the garage.
The following day, the couple loaded Mr Rockefeller’s car on to Schembri’s flat-bed truck and dumped it in a rural area in Ballan.
With Mr Rockefeller’s body still lying in the garage, Schembri and Denny visited the Broadmeadows Bunnings store and bought items including a chainsaw and plastic drop sheets.
In the words of Supreme Court judge Justice Terry Forrest, CCTV footage captured Schembri picking up a chainsaw and “testing (it) for weight and balance, much as a cricketer might sample a bat for pick-up and grip.”
Back in the garage, Schembri cut Mr Rockefeller’s arms, legs and head from his torso as Denny listened from inside her home.
“I didn’t vomit,” Schembri told detectives of the dismemberment, “but I had to be strong, you know.
“I didn’t think I had the balls to cut him up, but I did ... There’s no way I can say one hundred ‘Hail Marys’ and it’ll go away.’’
Schembri took garbage bags filled with the body parts to a friend’s house in Glenroy.
Over the next two days, Schembri burned Mr Rockefeller’s remains in a 44-gallon drum in the back yard and intermittently dumped the charred remains.
When detectives asked how he set the body on fire, Schembri told police: “Got the wood goin’ and then put him in slowly ... It serves me right because of what I’ve done, you know. I didn’t do the right thing, did I?”
Denny would end her police interview with: “I’ve got no more comment. I can’t.’’
As Mr Rockefeller’s whereabouts remained unknown, Vicky Rockefeller broke down at a press conference while pleading for information.
Detectives found Rockefeller’s dumped car and evidence led investigators to Denny’s address.
Schembri and Denny were arrested.
They ended up pleading guilty to manslaughter.
Vicky Rockefeller was left a shattered “victim of horrifying traumas”, according to part of a psychological report read out in court.
“The world as it was known prior to her husband’s death is no longer safe or predictable,” the report stated.
“The traumas that she has experienced and continues to relive have imposed a life sentence. She is isolated, set apart and defined by her husband’s death, horrendous disposal of his body, and the discovery of his secret life.”
Schembri was jailed for nine years, with a non-parole term of seven.
Denny copped seven years with a minimum of five.
Justice Forrest described the killing as a spontaneous assault, and the dismemberment of the body with a chainsaw an appalling defilement.
“Mr Rockefeller made some unorthodox choices in his adult life,” the judge said.
“So too did you Mario Schembri, and you Bernadette Denny. None of those choices was in itself unlawful, nor is it the function of this court to pass judgment on them.
“The upshot of the choices you made, however, is that the scene was set for the totally unnecessary death of a man.
“His parents, wife and children are devastated. The harm that you have caused them is profound.
“They will always carry some legacy of it, and so will you.’’
As the court case played out, a woman told the Herald Sun she had been Mr Rockefeller’s secret lover for more than 20 years.
“I was the love of his life,’’ the woman said.
“We had a bond together no one could break apart.”
The woman, who lived in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, said she was not involved in the sex swinging scene and only suspected Mr Rockefeller may have been living a double life just before his death.
According to reports, Ms Rockefeller won the right to share her husband’s $14.6 million fortune with her children after declaring he had no other genuine domestic partners.
The Supreme Court granted Ms Rockefeller power to divide his multi-million-dollar estate, official court documents revealed.
Mr Rockefeller, who left no will, owned plush interstate properties and was owed millions of dollars in business loans.
His mistress laid claim to some of his fortune, and Ms Rockefeller indicated she would not fight the woman’s case — despite it being filed outside normal time limits.
The mistress, named as Liza Horsfall, claimed Mr Rockefeller had a responsibility to provide for her maintenance and support.
She said they met at a work party, travelled overseas together and he had asked her to marry him.
It was reported Ms Horsfall took a slice of the $14 million fortune after the matter was settled confidentially out of court more than two years after Mr Rockefeller’s death.
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