Brutal killer who fled NT rape trial has sentence reduced on appeal

A man who killed his partner while facing trial in Alice Springs for a brutal rape has had his sentence reduced.

Danny Ferguson brutally killed his partner in South Australia while facing trial for a vicious rape in the NT in 2015.

A MAN who killed his partner while facing trial in Alice Springs for a brutal rape has had his sentence reduced by the NT Supreme Court.

Danny Ferguson was sentenced to a minimum of 12 years’ jail for manslaughter in South Australia after beating the woman to death in July 2015 while on the run from authorities in the NT.

A month after absconding, Ferguson returned to Oodnadatta from a remote campsite with his partner’s body which bore multiple injuries he had inflicted on her and which an autopsy would later conclude were suffered over a period of time involving multiple beatings and the use of a weapon.

He again went on the run and was found and arrested four days later, 100km north of Oodnadatta.

Ferguson had fled the NT on the third day of his rape trial and was later found guilty in absentia and sentenced to a further 11-year minimum for the vicious sexual assault committed in October 2013.

At the time, sentencing judge Justice Dean Mildren described the attack, in which Ferguson repeatedly raped the woman and brutally beat her, as “at the very high end of the scale of seriousness”.

The court heard Ferguson stomped on the victim’s head and dragged her around by the hair and ankles during the attack, which followed a pattern of repeated violence and intimidation including daily bashings.

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“Even when the victim wanted to take a shower or go to the toilet, the shower and the toilet facilities were external to the shed in which you were living and you used to accompany her and watch after her while she used those facilities,” Justice Mildren said.

“The circumstances of these assaults and of the sexual offending show obsessive and controlling behaviour with no respect for the wishes of your victim.”

But despite Ferguson’s pattern of ruthless violence, the NT court of appeal found his total head sentence of more than 31 years in jail across both jurisdictions was “manifestly excessive”.

“The violence, savagery and ferocity of those assaults on the victim notwithstanding, the sentences of imprisonment for 12 years, 15 years and four years and six months respectively, together with the order for cumulation, resulted in a total effective period of imprisonment which was excessive having regard to the principle of totality and the fact that these offences were all committed as part of what might be described as a single course of conduct,” the appeal judges concluded.

Ferguson will now be eligible for parole in 2034.