Court bomber serial killer guilty of three murders,
The revenge killer known as the Family Court bomber has been found guilty of three murders and a string of bombings sparked by a custody battle.
Warning: Graphic
The revenge serial killer known as the Family Court Bomber has been found guilty of three murders, a string of Sydney bombings and a shooting sparked by a custody battle.
Leonard Warwick, 73, has finally been brought to justice for his reign of terror in the 1980s, waged because his ex-wife sought custody of their daughter in the Family Court of Australia.
The verdicts read out by NSW Supreme Court Justice Peter Garling come after a trial beset by delays due to Warwick’s inability to fund lawyers, and decades of police efforts to bring him to justice.
Justice Garling said he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Warwick had carried out five bombings, two of them fatal, as well as one fatal shooting.
Warwick appeared at the court hearing via video link from prison.
Justice Garling said he was satisfied Warwick had a motive for six of the seven attacks for which he was charged.
He excluded the shooting death of Warwick’s then brother-in-law, Stephen Blanchard, whose body was found with a gunshot wound to the head and weighted down with eleven house bricks in a remote part of the Kuring-gai Chase National Park in February, 1980.
Finding him not guilty of Mr Blanchard’s murder, Justice Garling said “it is more likely at least two people were involved in this murder” and that Warwick was a “loner”.
Warwick, who had army training with firearms and had learned how to make explosives, began his violent campaign of vengeance in the middle of 1980.
The first attack happened just weeks after Family Court judge Justice David Opas had presided over Warwick’s custody matter and had suspended his access to his young daughter.
Warwick used a .22 calibre firearm to shoot Justice David Opas after he answered the front gate bell of his Woollahra home in Sydney on the night of June 23, 1980.
Justice Garling said he was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Warwick had shot dead Justice Opas.
In early March, 1984, Warwick then set off a bomb at the Belrose home of Justice Richard Gee, who had taken over Justice Opas’s cases after his murder.
The bombing occurred in the early hours of the same day in which Justice Gee was due to hear proceedings into Warwick’s family court matter.
In April 1984, he bombed the Family Court building in Parramatta, although no-one was injured.
At 8.11am on July 4, 1984, Pearl Watson, the wife of Family Court judge Ray Watson, opened the front door of the family unit at Greenwich for her husband to see him off to work.
She triggered a massive improvised explosive device Warwick had wired to the door.
Catapulted backwards through an internal wall, the explosion blew off her legs and part of her head.
It also blew out almost every window in the apartment block and knocked Ray Watson unconscious.
When he came to he found his wife’s body and staggered, bleeding and injured, out for help.
In February 1985, Warwick placed a bomb under the bonnet of a car owned by Mr Peter Tall, who lived in a home formerly owned by a Family Law Court solicitor.
Luckily, Mr Tall did not start up his car and then discovered the bomb which was hooked up to the ignition.
In July 1985, Warwick planted a bomb at the Casula Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witness Church in southwestern Sydney.
Andrea Warwick’s sister, Judy, was a member of the congregation and had helped Angela relocate after the acrimonious split from Warwick to northern NSW.
On July 21, 1985, the bomb ripped apart the hall, killing the Minister Graham Wyke and injuring 13 people in the congregation.
The long and disrupted trial of Warwick heard that blood later found on the floor of the hall was 100-billion times more likely than not to be his.
The trial also heard that the same explosive material and detonation source was used in several bombings.
