Victoria’s worst criminals: Profiles of vile and violent offenders serving life sentences
THE decision to jail brutal, violent and dangerous Sean Christian Price for at least 38 years sees him join a loathsome parade of our worst criminals.
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THE decision to jail brutal, violent and dangerous Sean Christian Price for at least 38 years sees him join a loathsome parade of our worst inmates.
Schoolgirl killer Sean Price (38 years minimum)
SEAN Christian Price has been jailed for life with a non-parole period of 38 years for the murder of schoolgirl Masa Vukotic in a Doncaster park.
In sentencing, Justice Lex Lasry said a 10-year supervision order placed on Price in May 2012 had not had any impact, with the killer committing several serious crimes since.
“You were given the freedom to commit these offences in circumstances where that should never have occurred.
READ MORE: Price jailed for ‘horrendous’ murder of innocent schoolgirl
He joins a list of other prisoners effectively marked “never to be released”.
Lethal sex predator Adrian Bayley (43 years minimum)
ADRIAN Bayley will likely die in prison after being ordered to spend 43 years in jail before becoming eligible for parole.
Bayley was already serving a 35-year minimum “life” prison sentence he received over the murder of Jill Meagher in 2013.
But before that shocking attack, he was already a predator, and Bayley was also sentenced to 18 years in jail for his sadistic rapes on three vulnerable women whom he picked up off the street.
He will be 86 when he first becomes eligible for parole on May 28, 2058.
In sentencing, Judge Pullen described Bayley as a cowardly predator.
Hoddle St mass killer Julian Knight (27 years minimum)
THE man who shot seven people dead and wounded a further 19 during his 1987 gun rampage is held under a life sentence with no prospect of meaningful parole under laws designed to keep him imprisoned until he is either on his deathbed or so decrepit he cannot cause community harm.
Knight was handed a life term with a 27-year minimum, but he is also under a regime that effectively marks him as “never to be released”.
In the words of Justice George Hampel, Knight was responsible for “one of the worst massacres in Australian history”.
Armed with three guns — two rifles and a pump action shotgun — the disaffected army reject and troubled gun nut randomly opened fire on anything that moved along Hoddle Street on the night of August 9, 1987.
It took him 46 minutes to run out of ammunition.
During his spree he killed Tracey Skinner, 23; Robert Mitchell, 27, Gina Papaioannou, 21, Johnny Muscat, 26, Dusan Flajnik, 53, Kenneth Stanton, 21, and Vanessa Markovska, 24.
He wounded 19 others.
“I was trained target up, fire, shoot to kill,” Knight would later say.
“See a target, shoot to kill. Don’t hurt. Shoot to kill.”
Justice Hampel said: “At the time there was, and I think there still is, a sense of bewilderment as to why a highly intelligent, educated young man of nineteen years of age, with no previous criminal history, could have done what you did.”
Sarah’s killer: Steven James Hunter (Life, no parole)
THE aptly named Hunter had a shocking history of violence and drug use before he viciously killed his party friend, 22-year-old Sarah Cafferkey.
That was his second murder.
In April 1986 he stabbed to death his supermarket workmate Jacqueline Mathews after she rejected his advances.
He then burned her body.
In Bacchus Marsh in November 2012, the serial parole violator, aged 47, stabbed and bashed Ms Cafferkey with a hammer.
He later concreted her body in a wheelie bin.
“On your account, which is the only one we have, you ‘snapped’ and brutally murdered Sarah,” Justice Kevin Bell said.
“Both of (your murder) victims were completely defenceless in the face of your vastly superior physical strength.
“You have a propensity for extreme violence from which the community, and especially young women, need protection.”
Victoria’s worst serial killer: Paul Steven Haigh (Life, no parole)
WITH seven murder convictions against his name, Haigh is Victoria’s worst serial killer.
During an unbridled killing spree he murdered six innocent people — including a nine-year-old boy — between 1978 and 1979.
During separate hold-ups in 1978 he shot dead Windsor Tattslotto agency worker Evelyn Abrahams, 58, and Caulfield pizza shop owner and family man Bruno Cingolani, 45.
In June 1979, Haigh shot dead associate Wayne Smith, 27, in his St Kilda Rd flat so he “wouldn’t look weak” in front of accomplices.
The next month in Ripponlea he shot dead Sheryle Gardner, 31, in a car to “shut her loosened, troublemaking mouth”.
He then turned his gun on Ms Gardner’s son Danny and shot the child witness in cold blood.
“I said, ‘It’s going to be all right Danny’,” Haigh would later write.
“And then, with his back towards me, I shot him three times.”
In August 1979, Haigh allowed a colleague to rape his then girlfriend, Lisa Brearley, 19, so the colleague’s DNA would be linked to her murder.
Haigh stabbed Ms Brearley 157 times, later writing: “I only intended to do twenty but I lost count.”
In November 1991, Haigh, aged 35, killed fellow prisoner Donald Hatherley, who was hanged in his cell.
A court heard that, before the Hatherley murder, Haigh was upset that Julian Knight had slain one more person than he had.
Cruel cop killer: Bandali Michael Debs (Life, no parole)
DEBS did not discriminate during his criminal career.
As a rubber-masked bandit he terrorised men and women, young and old.
He shot one man, rendering him a paraplegic.
As a killer he preyed on vulnerable prostitutes, and had the temerity to gun down two unsuspecting police officers who pulled him and a fellow bandit over during a robbery stake-out.
Debs, who hid his evil inner demon behind a common tradesman’s facade, killed all his victims at close range.
He was a sociopath.
He opened his killing account in Sydney in April 1995 when he killed prostitute Donna Anne Hicks.
After having sex with and shooting Ms Hicks, Debs left her — wearing nothing but a dog collar — in a quarry ditch.
“(The circumstances) demonstrate … a complete — I emphasise that word — lack of humanity,” NSW Justice Robert Shallcross Hulme said.
In between his two separate armed robbery sprees Debs, then aged 44, killed his second prostitute — Victorian drifter Kristy Harty, 18.
He had sex with her in scrubland in Upper Beaconsfield and shot her in the back of her head.
On the night of August 15, 1998, Debs and his accomplice, Jason Roberts, shot down Sgt Gary Silk and Sen-Constable Rod Miller in Moorabbin after the officers pulled them over near a restaurant.
“You are of ordinary intelligence at best, but are of highly dangerous predisposition,” Justice Philip Cummins told him.
Mr Stinky: Raymond John Edmunds (Life, no parole)
SOME criminals cop nicknames before they are arrested and sentenced to jail.
Due to his foul body odour, Edmunds was tagged “Mr Stinky”.
A notorious prisoner, Edmunds is a convicted double killer and serial rapist.
In 1966 he murdered Shepparton teenagers Abina Madill, whose skull was crushed, and Gary Heywood, who was shot.
He was also jailed for a series of rapes and attempted sex attacks.
During an unsuccessful attempt at a minimum term in 1994, a barrister told the Supreme Court that 50-year-old Edmunds’ was “no Denyer”.
He was referring to Frankston serial killer Paul Denyer who received a 30-year minimum term.
In refusing Edmunds’ application, Justice Philip Cummins said: “His past history reveals a continuing violation of women.”
Russell St bomber: Stanley Brian Taylor (Life, no parole)
TAYLOR was a charismatic criminal who scouted youth groups and recruited young willing crooks into an armed robbery gang.
During more than a dozen violent hold ups between 1982 and 1986, he and his crew netted more than half a million dollars.
They shot at, bashed, threatened and even sexually assaulted some of their victims.
“They showed no remorse — all of them were a recipe for total disaster,” former armed robbery squad boss Ray Watson once said of the group.
Their last robbery was committed only hours after Taylor and minion Craig Minogue bombed the Russell St police complex.
Constable Angela Taylor died when the car bomb went off, and many victims were injured.
Justice Frank Vincent deemed the 51-year-old was the mastermind behind what amounted to “an act of war”.
Evil triple killer: Leslie Alfred Camilleri (Life, no parole)
TWO of Camilleri’s three known murder victims — Bega schoolgirls Lauren Barry and Nichole Collins — endured sexual torment and torture before they died horrible and undignified deaths.
What his first victim, Glenroy schoolgirl Prue Bird, endured before her death will probably never be known.
Camilleri claimed he acted alone on February 2, 1992 when he randomly abducted Prue, 13, who, he said, died accidentally while lying hogtied in the back of his car.
It was the police contention that he and two other men adducted Prue, who was held captive in a shed and likely sexually assaulted before being murdered and dumped.
Prue’s remains have never been found.
In October 1997, Camilleri, then 28, and junkie mate Lindsay Beckett abducted the Bega schoolgirls and raped them during a 12-hour hell drive across NSW and northeast Victoria.
In scrubland at Fiddler’s Green Creek, the men tied the two girls up.
Beckett killed Lauren, 14, and Nichole, 16, on Camilleri’s orders.
Paeodphile’s evil web: Robert Lowe (Life, no parole)
A SUNDAY school teacher-turned killer paedophile, Lowe has been called a lot of names since he murdered six-year-old Sheree Beasley.
Rockspider is one.
The Devil is another.
Truth be told he is both.
Lowe, a married father and salesman, abducted little Sheree from atop her pink bicycle in Rosebud in June 1991.
He forced her to perform a sex act on him, before stuffing her dead body in a concrete drain.
Justice Philip Cummins said the Karmein Chan abduction encouraged Lowe to commit his horrendous crime.
“What you did was every child’s fear and every parent’s nightmare,” Justice Cummins told the 57-year-old.
“You wove a tangled web around yourself which eventually captured you.”
Random victims: Ashley Mervyn Coulston (Life, no parole)
TRIPLE killer Coulston was a cold-blooded predator.
He stands convicted of a nightmarish triple murder in a Burwood rental house in July 1992.
In calm fashion he executed students Kerryn Henstridge, 22, Anne Smerdon, 22, and Peter Dempsey, 27.
Coulston, 35 at the time, gagged and bound his victims’ hands behind their backs and, after forcing each to lie on a floor in separate rooms, covered their heads with dressing gowns and towels.
He then shot each of them through the head.
“In the annals of crime, the Burwood murders will be remembered as one of the most heinous multiple killings in this state,” Justice Norman O’Bryan said.
“Your motivation is obscure, but the evidence points most obviously to robbery and sexual gratification.”
Cunning predator: Peter Norris Dupas (Life, no parole)
DUPAS is a misogynist and a creepy stone-cold serial killer.
He was jailed for the depraved murders of Nicole Patterson, Margaret Maher and Mersina Halvagis.
Police suspect the predatory sex monster has killed other women.
The mutilated body of his first confirmed victim, prostitute Ms Maher, was found dumped by the side of a road in Somerton in October 1997.
In November 1997 he savagely stabbed to death Ms Halvagis, who was tending her grandmother’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery.
“Just as Ms Halvagis’ presence at the cemetery was typical of her goodness, your presence at the cemetery was typical of your evil: cunning, predatory and homicidal,” Justice Philip Cummins said.
In April 1999, Dupas repeatedly stabbed and mutilated therapist Nicole Patterson, 28, in her Northcote home.
“You are a psychopath driven by a hatred of women,” Justice Cummins told the 54-year-old.
Released to kill again: Leigh Robinson (Life, no parole)
ACCORDING to a forensic psychologist, double killer Leigh Robinson is inflicted with a mental issue known as “intermittent explosive disorder”.
And that about sums Robinson up.
In 1968 he was sentenced to death for the stabbing murder of his then partner, Valerie Dunn.
His death sentence was commuted to a 30-year term with a 20-year minimum.
In the mid-90s he was convicted of rape and indecent assault.
In April 2008 he turned on his then partner Tracey Greenbury.
The two argued in a Frankston street before Robinson stalked and shot her in the head as she cowered on a neighbour’s doorstep.
“You caught her and deliberately shot her in the back of the head at close range,” Justice Simon Whelan told the 62-year-old.
Sadistic monster: John Leslie Coombes (Life, no parole)
IN the words of an experienced Supreme Court judge, triple murderer John Coombes has “a frightening predilection for homicide”.
His sadistic pattern began in February 1984 when he took his first victim, Michael Speirani, out to sea on a boat.
Coombes stabbed Speirani and dumped his body in the ocean.
“There were indications that you had applied the boat’s propeller to his body,” Justice Geoffrey Nettle would say.
Nine months later Coombes stabbed to death a man named Henry Kells.
Again he was granted a minimum term.
Much later, in August 2009, he committed his most horrific killing.
The 54-year-old strangled to death a young woman named Raechel Betts, dismembered her body in a bathtub and threw her remains out to sea.
“The heinousness of that conduct is shocking,” Justice Nettle said.
“It bespeaks (of) … depraved inhumanity.”
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