Rodney Kenyon to spend life in jail over murder of Fabian Brock
RODNEY Kenyon was chasing after shadows when he armed himself with a sawn-off shotgun on an otherwise unremarkable Friday night in June 2015
Northern Territory
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RODNEY Kenyon was chasing after shadows when he armed himself with a sawn-off shotgun on an otherwise unremarkable Friday night in June 2015.
By morning, Kenyon had killed a much-loved, innocent family man, Fabian Brock and was himself being hunted by other armed thugs.
Kenyon, now just 25, will emerge from jail an old man – if ever – having been sentenced on Friday to life in jail with a non-parole period of 25 years.
Like most murderers in the Territory, he chose to chance his luck at a trial.
As he sat slouched in the dock, Kenyon’s immediate freedom was not at stake – months earlier he had been sentenced to 11½ years jail for a string of offences including a machete-armed rape on a woman.
An acquittal for murder could have seen him out of jail with some semblance of a life left to live, but in the days before the trial started, the murder case against him went from wafer-thin to an almost sure bet – his mate and former co-accused Lindsay Bobridge had turned snitch.
Enticed by a sweet plea deal, Bobridge would become a rollover witness and, arguably, the key to the Crown’s case.
“The charge of murder may well hinge on my client’s evidence,” Bobridge’s barrister Jon Tippett QC said at his guilty plea.
Mr Tippett’s comments and the sentencing remarks of Justice Stephen Southwood – who also presided over Kenyon’s trial – were suppressed until late Friday and released to the Sunday Territorian.
Bobridge, a career crim with a 27-page rap sheet from his home state of South Australia, pleaded guilty to a string of six charges.
Prosecutors and the court accepted that Bobridge had heard the fatal shot ring out, but did not know Fabian Brock was dead.
It meant Bobridge could plead guilty to being an accessory to the charge of recklessly endangering serious harm, rather than murder.
Lawyers and police close to the case have raised doubts with the Sunday Territorian about how likely some of the agreed facts are, but all say that without the plea deal, the case against Kenyon may never have made it past the high standard of proof required in criminal trials.
Among his string of charges, Bobridge also admitted to stealing the grey Toyota HiLux that he, Kenyon and a third man, Jacob Noble-Webster, were in on the night that Kenyon murdered Fabian Brock.
Bobridge, sources say, was seen as the village idiot of Palmerston’s criminal underbelly.
Barely literate and easily confused, his most distinct physical feature is his wing nut ears. Both of these things earnt him the nickname “Dumbo” among fellow crims in Palmerston.
Justice Southwood’s sentencing remarks for Bobridge reveal that by snitching on Kenyon – who is regarded among Holtze Prison’s most dangerous inmates – Bobridge “has put himself in a dangerous position”.
“While he has been on remand, he has been placed in protection and it is likely that he will need to remain in protection for the balance of any period of imprisonment that is imposed on him,” Justice Southwood said.
“He has (agreed to give evidence) in circumstances where he has now put himself in considerable danger.”
For his crimes, Bobridge was sentenced to two years’ jail, and became eligible for parole on New Year’s Day this year. It was a 50 per cent discount on what he otherwise would have been sentenced to.
Bobridge’s testimony, combined with Noble-Webster’s, painted a compelling and terrifying portrait of Kenyon that night.
Shortly after forcing Noble-Webster into the HiLux at gunpoint, Kenyon demanded Noble-Webster hand over a gold Rolex, which, by all accounts didn’t exist.
As they drove, Kenyon told Noble-Webster there was a price on his head.
“I’m here to do a job and the job is you. There’s a hundred grand on your head. How would you like to die; shot, stabbed or bashed?” he said.
They were the crazed – and perhaps psychotic – ramblings of a man who had been a heavy user of ice since shortly after he was expelled from high school a decade ago. Some things don’t change, and throughout his trial Kenyon sat in the dock, still with the demeanour of disinterested schoolboy.
When Bobridge took the stand, the tension between the two was palpable. Security guards moved between them and powerfully-built plain clothes police sat on the edge of their seats, ready to act if things came to blows.
Kenyon saved his dirtiest glare for fellow notorious Palmerston crook Shane Mulhall, who appeared as a witness on charges – which the jury dismissed – that Kenyon had fired upon Mulhall in the hours before he shot Mr Brock.
As Mulhall walked across the courtroom to the witness box – with the swagger of a prize-fighter – he and Kenyon locked eyes.
“The f**k are you looking at?” Mulhall said.
It was a standoff between two killers. Mulhall himself had been convicted of manslaughter for shooting and killing a man, Troy Butcher, at Wearyan River near Borroloola in 2001. Mulhall’s mother, Janelle Ford, told the NT News at the time that her son, then 20, and his accomplice David Vincent Parker, were “heroes” for what they had done.
Mulhall, like Kenyon, had a long history of meth use and has been in and out of prison ever since he and Parker killed Mr Butcher.
What the jury didn’t know was that Mulhall and his mate Alfred Walker had been given jail time for their roles in a shotgun-armed interrogation in the hours after Mr Brock was killed.
Mulhall had spent all day driving around Darwin and Palmerston looking for the “f**king dog” Kenyon, wanting to exact revenge for being shot at.
The search culminated in he and Walker storming an apartment on Lorna Lim Tce, Driver, looking for a man named Marley Maxwell, who they thought could lead them to Kenyon.
In the movies, gangsters carry guns around in a briefcase. But that day, Walker was carrying his sawn-off shotgun and some ammo in a Coles shopping bag.
“The gun’s loaded, let me in, this is no joke,” Walker yelled at Mr Maxwell. “Where’s Rodney?”
It was a case of mistaken identity – Maxwell had never met and didn’t know Kenyon, and Mulhall talked Walker into leaving. In sentencing Mulhall, Justice Jenny Blokland said: “The thuggish interrogation of innocent people ... by threatening violence, has no place in our community”.
The common thread between Kenyon, Mulhall, Bobridge and Walker was that their crimes were fuelled by lifelong drug habits. When guns come into the mix, it seemed inevitable eventually someone would be killed.
And so it was that Kenyon – erratic and perhaps psychotic – on that otherwise unremarkable Friday night in June, 2015, ordered his mate Bobridge to speed after Fabian Brock’s gold Toyota Camry.
When Kenyon pointed his sawn-off, single barrel shotgun at Mr Brock, his last, desperate words – “Cus, cus, it’s me, Fabian. Stop” – went ignored.
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