What molester will eat for last Xmas jail meal, Supermax’s first Xmas without serial killer Ivan Milat
What child molester Robert Hughes will eat for his last Christmas dinner in jail, while Supermax has its first Christmas without serial killer Ivan Milat.
Child molester Robert Hughes has one more Christmas in prison, baby killer Keli Lane has four to go, axe attacker Evie Amati has an extra six and Supermax will hold its first Christmas without Ivan Milat.
Christmas in jail 2019 is looking up for some and very down for others among the 13,600 inmates in NSW, Australia’s largest prison system of 39 correctional facilities.
Former Hey Dad actor Hughes, who has five more months of his minimum six-year sentence for child sex crimes against fellow cast members and others, hasn’t had it easy in prison.
Now 71, his TV fame incited inmates to pelt him with faeces and urine-filled milk cartons, prompting Corrections NSW to erect a wire barrier at Goulburn jail.
FAECES, URINE THROWN AT STAR
Dubbed by fellow prisoners the “Hey Dad wall”, it protected Hughes from being “covered head to toe in human waste” in transit between yards with other child sex offenders.
But Hughes' High Court appeal failed, and the disgraced star’s more than 10-year maximum sentence stood, allowing him to apply to the parole board in 2020.
Hughes’ final prison Christmas Day lunch will be a roast turkey roll with cranberry gravy and vegetables served in an aluminium tray, plus a fruit mince pie.
Like every other inmate in NSW jails, Hughes’ Christmas dinner served around 3.30pm on December 25 will be a choice of a devil wing salad or a vegetarian sweet potato falafel, both served with coleslaw, corn and tomato and a Christmas muffin.
It must be another grim Christmas for Amirah Droudis ahead of at least 27 more reflecting on what she did in the name of love for an egotistical maniac.
In 2014, the besotted girlfriend of Man Monis was conned by the future Lindt cafe terrorist into murdering his ex-wife, landing her a 44 year sentence.
Dressed in a burqa, Droudis stabbed the woman 18 times and set her alight after Monis had set up his own alibi and lured his ex-wife in April, 2013 to visit her sons, aged five and nine.
The mother of a teenage woman, Droudis’ earliest release date (ERD) is just before Christmas 2047 when she will 68 years old.
Another killer who murdered his girlfriend and has less time behind bars to go, but the entire 2020 decade imprisoned, is Simon Gittany
For throwing Canadian-born ballerina Lisa Harnum off his apartment balcony, the now 46-year-old Gittany copped a 26-year maximum.
The shoe importer was living the high life in a luxury flat before murdering Ms Harnum because she planned to leave the obsessive Gittany.
Jailed in 2013, his earliest possible release is not until 2031.
Another obsessive controller, the father who starved daughter “Ebony” to death, hoped to walk free this Christmas but faces another year behind bars after losing his parole bid.
BW received a 16-year maximum for the manslaughter of Ebony, 7, whose 9kg body – a “skin-covered skeleton” – was found imprisoned in her putrid “toilet” bedroom in 2007.
Ebony’s mother SW was not believed when she argued BW was physically violent and completely dominating and was given 40 years for her daughter’s murder.
The father can try to get out on parole again next year, but SW’s earliest possible release date is November 2037.
RELATED: Intimidating, violent, obsessive: the men who ‘control’ women
RELATED: Father who killed ‘mummified’ daughter, 7, launches bid to walk from jail
Another child killer hoping to see the back of the prison system was Kathleen Folbigg, who was found guilty in 2003 of killing her four children
Considered Australia’s worst female serial killer, Folbigg was sentenced to 30 years for killing Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura between 1989 and 1999 and is not due for parole until 2028.
But she forced a $2.4 million inquiry by NSW District Court Chief Judge Reg Blanch, QC, to consider “fresh evidence” that he found only “reinforced her guilt”.
Then in September, Folbigg’s hopes were dashed when NSW Governor Margaret Beazley accepted the inquiry findings.
In October, Folbigg announced a NSW Supreme Court challenge to Judge Blanch’s findings.
Folbigg has spent most of her incarceration in maximum security at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre where she became something of a “den mother” to fellow female crims.
But the 52-year-old was moved to Cessnock jail two years ago after thumping another woman inmate in a stoush over a toaster.
In court for the prison bashing, Folbigg’s character referees included another convicted child murder and a woman facing life for filming herself sexually assaulting her three children.
RELATED: Prison builds ‘Hey Dad’ wall to protect TV star from faeces, urine attacks
RELATED: Terrifying murder at suburban flat by Man Monis’ lover
Despite her repeated claims of innocence, convicted baby killer Keli Lane is still serving an 18-year minimum sentence for killing her infant daughter.
The one-time Olympic water polo hopeful and elite schoolgirl coach is eligible for release on parole in another five Christmases, in 2024.
She was convicted in 2010 of the 1996 murder of two-day-old Tegan and failed in appeals to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal and the High Court.
Lane’s most recent TV bid to have her story of innocence believed was the ABC series Exposed.
RELATED: Australia’s worst female serial killer’s guilt ‘reinforced’
RELATED: The 13 questions baby killer Keli Lane should answer
Former NSW director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery posed questions about Lane in his book Frank & Fearless, saying she had given “eight different versions of what happened to Tegan … which version is correct?”
Another inmate frustrated about the length of her sentence is axe attacker Evie Amati, who, to her chagrin, had her “manifestly inadequate” sentence lengthened on appeal by prosecutors.
Amati, 27, attacked two customers buying milk and a pie in a suburban 7-Eleven with an axe in January 2017 after a failed Tinder date and a perceived slight at her transgender status.
High on drugs, Amati sauntered into the shop and split Ben Rimmer’s face with the axe, attacked the base of Sharon Hacker’s skull, then barely missed her with a second, likely fatal blow.
Amati received a maximum nine-year sentence for intent to murder, with a minimum of half that, but on appeal it was increased to 14 years.
As exclusively revealed by news.com.au, Amati has begun “de-transitioning” from female back to male.
This sparked a fight at her women’s prison with an inmate who said she should be in a male jail.
Amati’s ERD is in January 2025.
Her victims suffer lifelong mental and physical scars, Mr Rimmer having metal plates under the skin of his face, and Ms Hacker ongoing nerve damage.
Before transitioning to female, the trauma of which Amati’s lawyer claimed caused her to attack, Amati was a brilliant student and the high-achieving son of respected union executives.
RELATED: 7-Eleven axe attacker Evie Amati ‘detransitions’ after jail fight
RELATED: Ivan Milat’s secret life in Supermax
Two child rapists are cooling their heels in prison to find out at their February 2020 sentence hearings just how many more Christmases they have behind bars.
Mustafa Kayirici is serving at least 28 years for a series of rapes on Sydney sex workers.
But he will face a District Court judge next year for sentence on 30 depraved crimes he committed against a 13-year-old girl in a four-hour ordeal of rape at knifepoint in 2016.
Around the same time, dance hall rapist Anthony Peter Sampieri will be sentenced for what he did to a seven-year-old girl at scalpel point in Kogarah in November last year while high on ice.
GOOD RIDDANCE IVAN
This year, Ivan Milat got out of spending another Christmas in Goulburn’s Supermax jail.
He did so by dying of cancer, leaving Australia’s toughest prison a backpacker serial killer free zone for the first time.
Milat, inmate 240140, had occupied his cell in Unit Nine at Supermax since September 2001. He was among the first inmates moved into the newly opened high-risk inmate facility.
Milat’s endless escape plans, including the 2009 plot when he sawed off his own finger to get to hospital and potentially flee, ensured he stayed there virtually until his death.
RELATED: Child rapist finally unmasked as ‘reign of terror’ attacker
But otherwise good behaviour meant he was given a prison rating with maximum privileges – a TV, radio, jug, sandwich maker, inmate association, plus visitor and telephone rights.
Milat loved his toaster maker, which he lost briefly after an outcry over a killer’s “perks” and made countless mugs of black coffee with lots of sugars.
His four-by-three-metre home lay just an hour’s drive down the Hume Highway from the Belanglo Forest where he tortured, murdered and buried seven young backpackers.
Milat once told news.com.au that his cell was not unlike an apartment, where he could watch breakfast TV, eat his special biscuits and write hundreds of letters.
The High Risk Management Correctional Centre has no shortage of serious and repeat offenders serving a collective total of hundreds of years for unspeakable crimes.
But Milat was the strangest little psycho of them all.
It is unclear whether any other inmate claimed his precious jug and toaster maker or prison authorities just threw them in the bin.
CFMEU official’s car allegedly firebombed
A boat and a Ford utility were found well alight out the front of a union official’s home in the early hours of Monday morning.
Major crackdown on neo-Nazi network
Australians could be imprisoned for a decade if they violate sanctions targeting white supremacist groups.
Mum’s heartache as tragic milestone looms
The mother of Samantha Murphy says she still holds hope her daughter will be found as the one-year anniversary of her disappearance nears.