Notorious killers who left their mark on the Northern Territory
The Northern Territory has a long history of killers who have left their bloody mark on the Top End
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The Northern Territory has a long history of murderers who have left their bloody mark on the Top End.
Their heinous actions shocked a nation and in some cases made international headlines, thrusting the Territory into an unwanted spotlight.
We’ve compiled a list of the NT’s most notorious killers and the crimes that made them infamous.
JOSEF SCHWAB
THE 26-year-old German tourist killed five people during a 10-day shooting spree in 1987 across remote Northern Territory and Western Australia.
It sparked what has been called one of the biggest manhunts in Australian history, and ended with Schwab’s death in a shootout with police.
Schwab’s first victims were a father and son who had been visiting the Northern Territory from Western Australia to go fishing on the Victoria River.
Marcus and Lance Bullen were shot and their bodies were discovered buried in shallow graves near the river.
Their vehicle and clothing had been set alight by Schwab.
Police hoped it was a once off, but a few days later three tourists were killed at Pentecost River Crossing near Wyndham, Western Australia.
Newly-engaged couple Julie Warren and Terry Bolt were holidaying with their friend Phillip Walkemeyer when Schwab shot them to death.
By this point, the whole Top End was on red alert with Territorians arming themselves to protect their families and police setting up roadblocks.
Police responded to reports of a camouflaged vehicle near Fitzroy Crossing.
During their investigation, Schwab appeared and began shooting at police with a high-calibre rifle.
Police returned fire and wounded Schwab, who continued shooting at police until an officer shot him in the chest.
MARTIN LEACH
TWO girls, aged 15 and 18, were abducted and stabbed to death by Leach at Berry Springs nature park in 1983.
Leach stabbed both girls with a fishing knife, and raped one of them.
At the time, Leach told police he had not previously seen 18-year-old Janice Carnegie or her 15-year-old cousin Charmaine Aviet and killed them on the spur of the moment.
But the NT Supreme Court was later told that the girls may have been killed for revenge, because they were related to a prison officer in Darwin jail where Leach had previously been imprisoned.
Leach believed another prison officer had tried to rape his then-wife Jerry when he was previously in prison in 1979.
In a letter to his mother, Leach wrote that he developed a hatred of six prison officers and that when he was later released, he followed four of the officers until he “found a weak link”.
Leach later claimed the letter was full of lies and exagerrations.
He was sentenced to three life sentences for the murders.
DOUGLAS JOHN EDWARD CRABBE
FIVE people were killed and sixteen were serious injured when he drove a 25-tonne Mack truck into the crowded bar at Inland Motel in 1983.
Douglas Crabbe was found guilty on five counts of murder
Crabbe had been drinking at the bar for about an hour when staff refused to serve him because he was so intoxicated.
He then walked to his truck, unhitched one of two trailers and then drove it at speed through a brick wall into the crowded bar at about 1.10am.
The wall had been completely destroyed with only the truck holding up the roof.
Crabbe stepped out of the truck, allegedly smiled down at one of his victims before stepping over multiple bodies and running from the scene.
There were fewer than 50 people in the bar at the time of the crash.
Crabbe was eventually found about 22km away.
He was sentenced to serve five life sentences in jail but has been recommended for parole.
REGINALD KENNETH ARTHURELL
THE partly decomposed body of a young sailor was found with massive head wounds off the Barkly Highway near Tennant Creek in 1981.
Shortly after NT police discovered that the 19-year-old sailor Ross Browning had given Arthurell a lift, Queensland police announced they also wanted to question him over the shooting deaths of two men and a woman near Mt Isa in 1978.
Arthurell was also named as the chief suspect in the murder of 82-year-old Catherine Mary Page who was bashed to death in her Coonamble home at the height of the 1971 floods when the central west NSW town was isolated and full of itinerant visitors stranded by the waters.
When he left Coonamble, Arthurell drifted to the towns of the north of Western Australia, working in a hotel and hospital in Derby, a roadhouse in Fitzroy Crossing and on cattle stations in Derby.
In May 1974, he was in Sydney visiting his mother when he bumped into his ex-stepfather Thomas Thornton. They ended up back at Thornton’s home in Guildford, where the stepfather was later found stabbed to death.
Arthurell drifted north, where he hung around rodeos impersonating American cowboys and took odd jobs on outback stations.
In late 1981, Arthurell was arrested at the Corncob Hotel in Mareeba and pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Browning. He served six and a half years of a 12 year sentence before being released in 1988.
Arthurell was immediately extradited to Sydney where he plead guilty to manslaughter for killing his stepfather, and was jailed for a minimum of four and a half years.
Justice Peter McIerney commented on Arthurell’s “remarkable” transformation” after he had been baptised in the Darwin jail.
Arthurell had befriended a Christian prison visitor Venet Raylee Mulhall, and as a condition of his release, had to live with her.
In 1995, Arthurell bashed Mulhall to death at her home in Coonabarabran because she wouldn’t give him her car.
He was convicted of murder but was not given a life sentence as Justice David Hunt found it was not in the “worst-case” category.
ANDY ALBURY
IT is not known the exact number of people the Victoria-born man killed, but he has admitted to at least 13 murders.
Murderer Andy Albury
Albury first came to police attention in 1983 when he used a broken bottle to mutilate an Aboriginal woman, Gloria Pindan, on Mitchell Street in Darwin.
Drunk at the time, Albury had taken off his bloodied cowboy shirt and threw it in a nearby bin. It would lead police directly to him.
Albury quickly confessed, telling police he kicked her, hit her then used a broken stubbie beer bottle top to cut her. He cut off her nipples and ripped her eye out.
Albury claimed he was 15 when he killed his first victim - a 14-year-old boy who he buried under a boat shed on the Mornington Peninsula, and that he was also involved in “family” killings in South Australia.
A South Australian fisherman was another victim, who Albury claimed to have hacked to death with a machete before he tossed the body into the Port Adelaide River.
He also claimed to have used a bottle of poisoned alcohol to kill three Aboriginal people in the Todd River in Alice Springs in 1981.
And he also claimed to fatally stomping sleeping pensioner Alfred Beales in the same river bed.
Detectives from New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland and Victoria have interviewed Albury about a dozen unsolved murders since 1976 but most claims had been disproved.
One case that Albury admitted to being involved in was the murder of Aboriginal woman Patricia Carlton in Mt Isa in 1983.
Carlton’s husband Kelvin Condren initially received a life sentence for the murder, but was released after Albury confessed to killing an Aboriginal woman at the same time.
It was later proven that Albury had been in town and left the night of the murder.
Supreme Court Justice Martin called Albury an extremely dangerous man with a casual disregard for the act of killing.
“He has a fantasy about terrorising a town by committing casual, motiveless murder for the purpose of making people frightened that they may be the next to be killed,” Martin said.
A prison psychiatrist described Albury as an above-average intelligence, who enjoys the reputation of a ‘monster’.
Being locked away in jail didn’t stop Albury from his reign of terror.
Albury put a garden hoe through the head of child molester John Michael Knox, and after being transferred to Alice Springs prison, he struck another inmate in the head with a cricket bat, cracking his skull.
He also sent death threats written in blood to Northern Territory ministers.
Albury was diagnosed with both psychopathic personality disorder and schizophrenia, which is the reason why he hasn’t been tried for a number of other murders he has confessed to around Australia.
His murders have been attributed to his violent upbringing, as well as a hatred of Aboriginal people.
Despite spending most of his childhood on the Mornington Peninsula, he had attended Nightcliff Primary School for a short time in his youth but was deemed “uncontrollable”.
BENJAMIN WILLIAM MCLEAN AND PHU NGOC TRINH
THE two teenagers were convicted after murdering two Darwin sex workers in 2004.
They bound the two women with cable ties, weighed down their bodies with car batteries and threw them still alive into the croc-infested Adelaide River.
The bodies of 58-year-old Phuangsri Kroksamrong and 27-year-old Somjai Insamnan were discovered by crocodile-spotting tour operators a few days later.
McLean originally claimed they had been forced to kill the women by the Hells Angels to pay off a drug debt, but later agreed that it was a lie.
Trinh then claimed an Asian crime gang was responsible.
Police found clothing and items belonging to the women burnt in a fire on Trinh’s family property, and a receipt for the rope, tape and cable ties used to bind the women in Trinh’s wallet.
BRADLEY JOHN MURDOCH
THE disapperance of Peter Falconio while driving with his girlfriend Joanne Lees on the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek in 2001 made international headlines.
Lees said the couple were flagged down by a man who shot Falconio dead and kidnapped her before she managed to escape.
Truck driver Bradley Murdoch was arrested in 2003 and stood trial for the murder of Falconio and assaulting and attempting to kidnap Lees.
Murdoch pleaded not guilty to the charges but was convicted on December 13, 2005 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Falconio’s body has never been found.
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