Eight years jail for killer of rock icon Angry Anderson’s son
Matthew Flame, 22, has been sentenced to a maximum eight years for killing rock icon Angry Anderson’s sons Liam in a vicious assault, but could walk from jail in 2024.
Matthew Flame has been sentenced to a maximum eight years behind bars for the vicious stomping death of rock icon Angry Anderson’s son, Liam Anderson.
Flame will serve at least five-and-a-half years before he is eligible for parole for the killing his best friend after taking up to 13 MDMA tablets and believing Liam was “Satan’s demon”.
However, given the 22-year-old has been in prison since his arrest on the morning he killed Liam Anderson, on November 4, 2018, he could walk from prison as early as on May 3, 2024.
Justice Richard Button said that Liam Anderson’s “final ordeal was extended, gruelling, terrifying and horrifically painful”, but said that Flame “bitterly regretted and was deeply remorseful for his actions”.
He said that he understood the pain suffered by Liam’s family and that “no sentence I … can impose will relieve that pain”.
Liam Anderson’s family, including Rose Tattoo front man Angry Anderson, gave emotional submissions at a sentencing hearing last week about 26-year-old Liam’s life.
Angry Anderson told Flame Liam’s “light” had been snuffed out by the “darkness” which dwelled within Flame.
“On that Sunday morning, Liam’s heart was full of light. A light that came from deep within him, a light that was Liam,” he told Flame’s sentence hearing.
“That light was snuffed out by darkness that came from deep within his assailant. Drugs did not produce that darkness but only set it free. And that darkness is there still.”
Flame was last month found guilty of Liam Anderson’s manslaughter after a jury ruled he was not guilty of murder.
He had pleaded not guilty to murder, claiming he was suffering from a psychosis sparked by an undiagnosed schizophrenia while high on drugs.
The prosecution argued that his state of mind was instead drug-induced psychosis after he had voluntarily consumed the substances during a night of heavy partying with Liam and others.
Crown Prosecutor Gareth Christofi told the trial it was the Crown’s case that at the time Mr Flame “caused the death of Liam Anderson he had a healthy mind and his psychosis was caused by a voluntary consumption of drugs”.
During the trial, witnesses revealed the shocking detail of Flame’s savage beating of his once best friend.
The trial also heard that Flame had thought he was the Archangel Raphael who could speak to the dead, and that Liam was a “demon … of Satan” and had to be killed.
Flame’s psychosis came after he had consumed up to 13 MDMA tablets, 10-15 alcoholic drinks – beer and bourbon – and had smoked several cones of cannabis.
The court heard that after taking his last MDMA tablet for the night, after 5am, Flame had felt himself succumbing to a dark force telling him demons were out of kill him.
He had left a party at Queenscliff, on the northern beaches of Sydney and Liam had followed him outside telling the others, “he’s my best friend, I would never leave my best friend”.
But the kindness offered to Flame by the aspiring rapper, who went by the hip hop name of Ranford Bigbsy, would cost him his life.
The trial heard that Liam “was quite small” in physical size and that Flame in recent years had become a regular gym goer and had grown “bigger”.
A witness, American tourist Trevor Buchert, told the NSW Supreme Court he came upon the two men on a morning walk to check out surf conditions.
It was around 6am on Sunday, November 4, 2018, at Queenscliff on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, when Mr Buchert at first heard grunting.
Then he saw Mr Flame on top of Liam, who was lying partially in a small park called Pavilion Reserve and partially on the concrete footpath.
“I … have seen a male standing up and kicking another male who was lying … face down half of the pathway, half on the grass,” Mr Buchert said in a police statement read out in the court.
“I watched the male continue kicking the motionless male on the floor, impacting with his rib cage in an aggressive manner.
“He … continued attacking, using his feet in a stomping motion … on the head of the helpless male, placing all his weight in the stomp.
“The helpless male … was lying face down, he had his torso on the concrete, but his head on the grass.
“I could hear his head impacting as the male stomped on the head.
“The blows were so severe I thought they would be fatal.”
Mr Buchert decided to call out, saying “what are you doing”, and the attacker looked up, expressionless, with his eyes “wide open” and “showed no emotion” and “said nothing”.
It was at this point that Liam Anderson made his final movement.
“I could see the victim turn his bloodied head towards me and he called out, ‘help me, help me, help me’ in a desperate manner,” Mr Buchert said.
Mr Buchert said Flame gave him “a thousand yard stare” and he had called triple-0 and told the operator, “Hey there’s a guy getting murdered on top of Queenscliff”.
When police arrived they ordered Mr Flame, who was sitting on Liam Anderson’s upper body, off him and put Liam in the recovery position.
They saw serious bleeding from Mr Anderson’s eyes, forehead, mouth, nose and ears, and a constable squeezed his hand – trying to get a squeeze back.
Paramedics arranged for a CareFlight Ambulance helicopter to meet them below on Freshwater Beach, and loaded Liam into an ambulance.
Liam Anderson died not long afterwards, on a stretcher waiting for a helicopter to take him to hospital.
Angry Anderson told the court last week that he, Liam’s three siblings and their mother were forever “bound in grief”.
“Sadness now is our constant companion, such is our life now,” he said.
The 73-year-old said he had been deprived of the everyday moments with his youngest child that all parents took for granted, such as telling him to take out the bins or ask what he wanted for breakfast.
Nor would he be able to see the joy in his son’s eyes at the birth of his first child.
The manner of Liam’s death will “haunt me for the rest of my days”, he said, as will the phone call he received from his eldest son Galen informing him “something terrible has happened”.
“I see the sadness in (my family’s) eyes when we are all together knowing one of us will always be missing,” he said of his remaining children.
“I have a hole in my heart. I’m no longer whole. My youngest and baby boy is gone, and my life will never be as it was.”