White witch killer Raquel Hutchison made voodoo doll then slayed husband
A bikini model and her lover made a voodoo doll of her husband, blinded him with Exit Mould, tortured him and dumped his body in bushland.
It was early morning on October 21, 2014, a Tuesday, when a motorist driving on Wisemans Ferry Road through Greengrove turned up a side road and something caught their eye.
It was something large and still, lying on Mangrove Creek Road and the motorist stopped to investigate.
Amid the leaves on the shoulder of a road fringed by eucalypts and a thick understorey of bushes was the body of a man.
The spot where he lay was about 100km northwest of Sydney, in the Dharug National Park, west of the Central Coast.
Police from Gosford, 40km away along windy roads through the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment, arrived at the scene around 7.30am in cars and rescue trucks.
The deceased man was lying on his right side with his legs bent and blood pooled around his head.
He appeared to have been brutally assaulted.
Officers searching near the body found an 8.4m long red cable with spring-loaded lobster clasps at each end, which had been discarded in the scrub.
The metal clips were stained with what looked like blood.
Detectives from the NSW State Crime Command’s Homicide Squad were called in.
They identified the body as that of a 41-year-old disability worker who lived at St Marys, about 90km from where his body was found.
By Tuesday evening, Homicide Squad detectives had charged two people, a 36-year-old woman and a man, 35, with murder.
The white witch
The pair, Raquel Gaelle Hutchison and Paul Andrew Wilkinson, appeared in Toronto Local Court the next day and were both refused bail and remanded in custody until early in the new year.
Wilkinson was Hutchison’s lover and she was the former wife of the man who had been killed.
The nightmare was only beginning for the family of the dead man, who can only be identified by his court-appointed pseudonym, Brett Walker, but it would emerge he was a kind soul and a devoted father.
Hutchison, a former Miss Hawaiian Tropic hopeful and bikini model, would come to be known as the “White Witch”.
This was because she called herself one, and practised as a Pagan, composing “spells” and making potions.
Voodoo doll
It would later emerge that she had made a voodoo doll of her ex-husband, and concocted a hocus-pocus conspiracy about why he should be tortured and killed.
When police searched properties at St Marys, Mt Druitt and Minto, they seized a white dressing gown, white T-shirt and hooded vest all stained with blood, as well as bloodied paper towels.
They executed warrants on several vehicles, and found black carpet in the boot of a car soaked with blood, and blood stains on a car seat cover and a street directory.
In late October, the Homicide Squad arrested a third person, a 42-year-old man from Kilaben Bay, and charged him with accessory after the fact of murder.
He was eventually discharged on the indictment and police sought information about a white Ford Mondeo sedan seen on the day of the killing, October 20.
At her next appearance, in Penrith Local Court on January 16, 2015, now a prison inmate on remand, Hutchison clutched at blue rosary beads around her neck.
The hearing heard the pair had ambushed Brett Walker at his home, then beat and detained him over a 12 hour ordeal.
Mr Walker, the court heard, had been driven to three locations against his will while bound with a ligature around his neck in the boot of a car before finally his body was dumped in Central Coast bushland.
Neither of the accused applied for bail.
It would come out at the couple’s murder trial what the couple had subjected Mr Walker to after hoodwinking him into leaving work on his last day alive.
Who was Brett Walker?
Brett Walker worked as a carer for people with disabilities and as a voluntary worker for charity.
During their marriage, Mr Walker had tried to help Hutchison with the trauma she suffered from being sexually assaulted and whipped as a child.
Brett had an esoteric interest in paranormal activity, and Hutchison seemed to share his interest in the alternate, being a proponent of “white magic”.
They had two children, a girl, 12, and a nine-year-old boy, who have been given the court-appointed pseudonyms of April and Toby.
Hutchison had briefly tried to earn a career as a bikini model and at the age of 22 became Miss Hawaiian Tropic runner-up in 2000.
She was a “featured extra” on TV shows, as well as a model for men’s sports magazines.
The marriage foundered in 2007, with Mr Walker primarily looking after the children from then on.
Both Hutchison and Mr Walker moved on romantically, Brett with a de facto partner Maryam, who he had met at work.
Hutchison plotted to take back the children, creating false scenarios in which their father was abusing them.
Mr Walker had books on flying saucers and a holy water sprinkler among other items, but Hutchison claimed he was “an exorcist, demonologist and ghost hunter”, her lawyer Belinda Rigg SC later said at trial.
More than a year before she killed Brett, Hutchison wrote in text messages about taking “a swift drill to the kneecaps … to incapacitate the c**t for life”.
In November 2013, she texted: “the kids have no hope unless I kill Brett so maybe I should make (man’s name) do it”.
Violent or self-pitying texts continued up until the killing.
One read: “You can tell Brett once I’m gone and tell him his low-life ex wife was a filthy crackwhore and killed herself coz she was a crazy drugf**ked unit”.
During the murder trial which would not take place until late 2018, the court heard Hutchison was “full of hate” in October 2014.
Hutchison had begun a romance with Wilkinson twelve to 18 months beforehand.
They were engaged and although they both smoked methamphetamine, the fitter and machinist had given Hutchison an ultimatum to get off drugs.
Messages between her and Wilkinson in the lead-up to the day in question included “Exit Mould works like Mace?” and “S*** c***s always win except when someone stops them”.
At 12.46pm on October 20, 2014, Hutchison texted Wilkinson, “Game on, we man up” with a fist emoji.
At Mr Walker’s townhouse, Hutchison was lying in wait inside, while outside Wilkinson acted as a lookout.
When Mr Walker entered the home, Hutchison punched her ex-husband down the stairs and sprayed Exit Mould into his eyes.
Armed with a flick knife, she crouched beside him and screamed: “Confess or I’ll kill you.”
Blinded, Mr Walker was struck and punched repeatedly, suffering severe blunt force trauma to his head and cuts to his face inflicted by Hutchison’s metal rings.
She put a white electrical cord around Mr Walker’s neck and used the long red cable to restrain him.
She had broken Mr Walker’s nose, which – along with the throat ligature – compromised his ability to breathe.
An electrical prod or Taser was applied to his abdomen and legs and he was placed in the boot of a car, unconscious but at this stage probably still alive.
They drove to a location at Minto and asked for assistance in discarding Mr Walker’s body, smoked some ice and then returned to Mr Walker’s premises.
They then drove to the Central Coast, with Mr Walker’s body gagged and bound with duct tape in the boot of the car.
With the help of a third person, Mr Walker’s body was driven to Mangrove Creek Road and dumped from the car.
Forensic examiners would conclude Brett Walker had died from craniofacial trauma and asphyxia, with multiple abrasions, ligature strangulation and stun gun assault.
In August 2018, when she was brought up from the cells to Darlinghurst Supreme Court to face Justice Peter Hamill for the judge-only trial, Hutchison looked overweight and grim.
She had been in maximum security at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre for almost four years since her arrest.
The court heard that soon after Hutchison’s arrest, prison authorities had investigated her for an alleged escape plot with other inmates to bust out of jail and take hostages.
The trial would last several weeks. At no point during or after trial did she apologise or express any shame or responsibility.
Hutchison and Wilkinson had pleaded not guilty to Mr Walker’s murder, with Hutchison’s plea by way of mental illness.
She claimed she had acted to get her ex-husband to confess he was a child abuser.
On November 16, 2018, Judge Hamill found the pair not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, concluding Hutchison didn’t intend to kill Mr Walker, but had “lost control”.
At Hutchison’s sentencing hearing, Mr Walker’s family described Hutchison’s “lack of remorse” and slammed attempts to portray the victim as a child abuser to defend her actions.
Ian, the father of Brett Walker, reminded Hutchison how his caring son had helped her get over the trauma of being raped.
He said Hutchison had killed Brett out of jealousy.
“To lose a son for what is in my opinion based on jealousy from a loving relationship between Brett and (his new partner) Maryam,” Ian told Hutchison.
“To accuse Brett of cruelty to children is so untrue.”
One relative told the court the family feared for their lives if Hutchison was ever released from jail.
In victim impact statements, one witness testified at the trial that when they hear police sirens or helicopters “I get anxious … I get scared (Hutchison) will escape from jail.
“It’s a horror movie and I’m stuck in the middle of it. I get flashbacks I feel really sad, betrayed and scared.”
Justice Hamill sentenced Hutchison to nine years in prison with a non-parole period of five-and-a-half years meaning, with time served, her earliest release date was April last year.
Wilkinson received a shorter sentence and was eligible for release in July 2019.
In his sentencing judgment, Justice Hamill expressed sympathy for Mr Walker’s family, in particular for his two children.
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