A man who stabbed his partner to death in a Perth hotel had a history of family violence, weapons offences and drug-induced psychosis, the WA Supreme Court heard on Tuesday as he received a life sentence for murder.
Julian Pau, 43, sat with head in hands as state prosecutor Brett Tooker read out details of the events leading up to the moment he stabbed 40-year-old Vitorina Bruce multiple times in a Perth hotel in November 2022.
Vitorina Bruce, 40, was stabbed to death at the Quality Hotel Ambassador Perth.
Pau was working as a chef at a Newman hotel in 2022 when he met Bruce, who came to WA from Fiji just a few months prior, hoping for a better life.
She was working as a cleaner and bar and kitchen hand, sending her wages home to support her children, when she entered a relationship with Pau that July.
On Tuesday, the court heard Bruce had no idea of Pau’s lengthy criminal history, including convictions in Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory for drugs, property violence, weapons offences – and family violence.
He had been the subject of two restraining orders in Queensland, taken out against him by two separate women, and was once arrested after taking a 15-centimetre kitchen knife with him onto a Qantas plane at Perth Airport, after illegally climbing a fence to do so.
The court heard the pair were spending a few days in the city for Pau’s 42nd birthday in November 2022, shopping at Belmont Forum and spending the evening at Crown Casino.
Pau, who began taking illegal drugs when he was just 12 years old and had a lengthy addiction to heroin, purchased and consumed methamphetamine during the trip, despite knowing that the drug regularly induced psychotic episodes in him.
Around 9.30am on Pau’s birthday, after he had consumed a large quantity of the drug, guests at the Adelaide Terrace hotel heard a man yelling and a woman scream.
One guest left her room and witnessed Bruce running down the corridor.
Pau was chasing her, holding a large kitchen knife, and yelling, “No, no, no,” before he pushed her to the ground and stabbed her. He had already stabbed her eight times in the hotel room before she managed to run.
Guests, some of whom left their rooms to see what happened and others who watched through the peepholes of their hotel door, said Pau yelled, “Help, get an ambulance”.
Police body-worn footage later captured him claiming Bruce was his “true love”, and asking, “Why did this have to happen?” as he was being arrested and placed into a police car.
“I should have listened to her, why did I listen to those fucking people,” state prosecutors told the court Pau was heard saying.
“Quick, get an ambulance and get her back to life. I’m so sorry. What did I do it for? Why? They tricked me.”
The court was told a psychiatric evaluation later revealed Pau had a history of schizophrenia and that when he took meth he would often experience “delusions of persecution” in which he became “agitated, scared and anxious and [had] disorganised thinking.”
In recommending Pau for a life sentence with a lengthy non-parole period, Brett Tooker said that “right now, in our society there has never been a greater need to denounce violence towards women”.
He urged Justice McGrath to “send a clear message that violence against women is abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Justice McGrath ordered a life sentence with a non-parole period of 20 years in prison and described Bruce’s death as “senseless”.
“You have caused immense grief to her family,” he said.
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