By Erin Pearson
A grandfather places his hand on the glass dock, muttering “hey” in an attempt to get his killer grandson’s attention. But the 17-year-old stares straight ahead.
It’s one of the few times the pair have seen each other since the teen stabbed his mother to death in her bedroom.
The woman was killed on April 5, 2023.Credit: Joe Armao
The grandfather’s simple gesture in the Supreme Court drove home the agony this family endures. His daughter is dead, and his grandson is alive but facing years behind bars for murder.
No one, the court heard, has been to visit the teen in prison since his arrest two years ago, as the family works to help raise his younger brother.
“I cry when I think of [my daughter’s] drive to support, bring up and care for her little family, to whom she gave her life,” the grandfather told the court.
“Now, at any family gathering without [her], there is something missing. There is everyday sadness.”
The family, which cannot be identified because of the accused’s age, sat shoulder to shoulder in court as details of the 41-year-old’s death were read out for the first time.
The court heard the victim’s son, then aged 15, and his 14-year-old school friend, had formed a paramilitary anti-communist group with a plan to restore Australia’s Christian values and fulfil a prophecy they’d received from God.
They tried to recruit other students, and were in the grips of a shared delusional disorder when they killed their victim in the bedroom of her inner-east home in April 2023.
The victim’s son – who pleaded guilty to murder – believed they needed to kill his mother to take her car and carry out their plan, codenamed Operation Continuity.
Police at the scene of the killing.Credit: Joe Armao
She died from close to 100 stab wounds and after being bludgeoned with a cricket bat.
During a pre-sentence hearing this week, the court heard that on his own the victim’s son was unlikely to be a threat to society.
But when combined with his school friend, the neurodiverse pair were a lethal combination, forming a murderous alliance during more than 1200 messages to each other over months.
The court heard for weeks the pair had wanted to hold a sleepover at a third friend’s house, a boy they believed they’d recruited into their front, where they planned to steal his parents’ car.
But uncomfortable with the idea, their recruit cancelled on them.
“When plans for that sleepover failed, plans changed,” psychiatrist David Thomas said.
Defence barrister Amy Brennan said that all the while, the pair were suffering under a delusional belief system as they grappled with concepts of right-wing Christianity, left-wing politics and global military history.
“We did not know it then, but we were caught in an echo chamber,” the victim’s son later told the authorities.
“It got very distorted. We believed we were Christians. Looking back on it now, we were not Christians. We believed it was God’s will.”
The pair planned to flee to the Grampians.Credit: Daryl Wisely
The court heard the pair spoke about their desire to kill their parents before obtaining military gear and ration packs in preparation for taking over the Grampians, and then the country.
Between October 2022 and April 2023, the pair planned the operation. The victim’s son bought two machetes from an adventure store, but his mother found the weapons and returned them.
On April 5, 2023, the final day of school for the term, the court heard, the two friends went to the victim’s home under the guise of a sleepover.
They ate spaghetti with the victim, and she gave them ice-cream before she went to bed.
Her youngest son woke about 10.30pm to his mother’s screams and ran to a nearby police station to raise the alarm.
Crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu said the killing was a ferocious, premeditated attack against a defenceless woman.
He said the motive of Operation Continuity was to carry out politically inspired violence, and included plans to blow up a bridge, and attack a police station.
In the boy’s mind, Porceddu said, the victim had to be killed or she would stop them.
“They did not just tie her hands up. They did not just lock her in the room. They murdered her,” he said.
“[The victim] was nothing but a devoted parent.”
The victim’s son will be sentenced at a later date.
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