Scott Murdoch, killer of Pakenham mum Kylie Blackwood, found dead in Melbourne jail
A man who murdered a mum and slashed the throat of a grandmother has died in his cell, with the family of one of his victims describing his death as a relief.
Police & Courts
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A high-profile murderer has been found dead inside a maximum-security prison in Melbourne.
Scott Murdoch, 43, was found dead inside his cell at Melbourne Assessment Prison on Monday morning.
The prison was plunged into emergency lockdown as staff responded to his shock death.
Inside sources told the Herald Sun Murdoch’s lifeless body was found after 6am and that he made no call for help before dying.
His cause of death is at this stage unknown and will be investigated by homicide squad detectives and the coroner.
A Department of Justice and Community Service spokeswoman said: “A 43-year-old prisoner died at Melbourne Assessment Prison overnight.”
“As with all deaths in custody, the matter has been referred to the Coroner, who will formally determine the cause of death.”
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said it was standard for homicide detectives to investigate deaths in custody.
“The exact circumstances relating to the death have yet to be determined,” the spokeswoman added.
Murdoch was convicted to life in prison last year over the brutal murder of Pakenham mother-of-three Kylie Blackwood and a savage attack on a defenceless grandmother.
Ms Blackwood, 42, was killed in her McCaffery Rise home on August 1, 2013 in a suspected burglary gone wrong.
Tragically her body was discovered by her two 11-year-old twins when they arrived home from school.
Murdoch was on parole over a brutal stabbing and bludgeoning of another woman when he killed Ms Blackwood.
He had a long history of violent offending against women.
In 2006 Murdoch brutally attacked a woman he met on a chat line after she refused to have sex with him in her Berwick home.
Karen Cheeseman, a mother of two, spent six weeks in hospital after Murdoch stabbed and bashed her with a paperweight.
Murdoch was jailed and later released on parole, where he was free to murder Ms Blackwood and slit a grandmother’s throat in the space of just three months.
He barged into the Endeavour Hills home of 79-year-old grandmother Ilona Prohaska on May 21, 2013 and slit her throat and hammered a knife into her neck.
Murdoch fled the scene, leaving her in a pool of her own blood, before attending a parole meeting.
He remained a free man for more than two years after Ms Blackwood’s murder.
Ms Cheeseman’s mother, Lyn Flewin, 78, told the Herald Sun she was “glad he is dead”.
“I was just saying today how unfair it was that he was in there being fed and that for Karen she needs to have her food cut up,” Ms Flewin said.
“I am glad he is dead. It’s a relief he is gone.”
Ms Cheeseman, now aged 53, was partially paralysed on her left side after being savaged by Murdoch.
She relies on a walking aid and leg brace to move and has scars to remind her of the night her life changed forever.
Ms Flewin said: “She wants to be independent but that’s slowly been taken away from her.”
“He has taken a big part of our lives away. I’ve lost myself, Karen lost herself and her children lost their mother.”
The killer was arrested in April 2016 after an extensive investigation by the homicide squad.
CCTV footage of a suspect car were key to his eventual arrest and conviction.
Murdoch was sentenced to a minimum of 36 years behind bars in 2020.
He would have been aged in his mid-70s before he was eligible for release.
Murdoch spent the past few years at Melbourne Assessment Prison, where he was kept in protective custody in unit 10.
The unit is reserved for high-profile and dangerous criminals.
Opposition corrections spokesman David Southwick said prisons should be “safe places” so criminals serve their sentences in full.
“Even for the worst-of-the-worst, a life sentence mustn’t be a death sentence and Victorians rightfully expect offenders to be serving their sentence in full,” he said.
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