Family Court bomber Leonard Warwick dies in prison at 78

Leonard Warwick was jailed for life in 2020 over three murders and a string of violent attacks that terrorised Sydney’s legal community in the 1980s.

Family court bomber Leonard John Warwick, left. Among his victims were Graham Wykes, pictured top right with wife Joy, and, below right, Pearl Watson, wife of Justice Ray Watson.

Leonard Warwick, known as the Family Court bomber after embarking on a murderous campaign of shootings and bombings in the 1980s, has died in prison at the age of 78.

The father targeted the Family Court, its judges and a lawyer between 1980 and 1985, in a violent crusade motivated by bitterness and hate for the Family Court amid a custody battle with his ex-wife Andrea Blanchard.

It took more than three decades of police investigations, a string of coronial inquests and a judge-alone trial that stretched over two years, for the former firefighter to be found guilty of three murders and a string of violent attacks that terrorised Sydney’s legal community.

Warwick was sentenced in 2020 to life in prison at the age of 73.

Contacted on Friday, the first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia Elizabeth Evatt, who presided over the court for most of the 1980s, said: “Leonard Warwick’s chapter has closed. But the harm that he did remains in the memory of those who suffer the pain and heartbreak cause by his monstrous crimes.”

Then-principal registrar at the court, Brian Knox, told The Australian: “My thoughts are with the judges and families who went through an incredibly difficult time.”

Police at the Sydney property of Leonard Warwick in 2015.

His “calculated, violent and hateful” rampage, as it was described by the sentencing judge, included the shooting murder of Justice David Opas, who had been handling his family law dispute, outside his home in Woollahra in 1980; the bombing murder of Pearl Watson, wife of Justice Ray Watson, who also handled the case, at their home in Sydney’s northern suburb of Greenwich in 1984; and the bombing of the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall in the Sydney suburb of Casula in 1985, killing father Graham Wykes and seriously injuring 13 others.

Members of the church had helped Mr Warwick’s ex-wife move to northern NSW.

The wife of Justice Opas, Kristin Opas, told the court in 2020, she had “lived in a state of high anxiety and stress” for the past 40 years, adding that she lived half of her life in a “state of torment”.

“Even when the offender was arrested I felt better but I was always worried he’d get out and then I would continue to be in fear.”

Ms Watson’s youngest son Stephen McInnes said he had been “haunted” for almost four decades by the thought his mother could have suffered. “I consider a bomb to be a violent instrument, my beloved mothers body was destroyed by that bomb,” he told a court.

“My mothers body was destroyed? How does anyone begin to comprehend that? Please tell me if you know because I have struggled all my life with the memory of that day, the flashbacks of that day and the days after, I have lived this nightmare for the last 36 years.”

The home of Family Court judge Justice Raymond Watson in Greenwich following the bomb attack in 1984.

Firefighter Warwick pictured in 1982.

Warwick also attempted to murder another judge who took on their case, Justice Richard Gee, by bombing his Belrose home in 1984. The judge was injured in the attack but managed to escape with his two children.

His daughter Alison Helen Gee told a court that on that day, “trauma” replaced the “innocence of childhood” and that she had suffered from PTSD and depression ever since.

In Sydney’s west in 1985, Warwick bombed the Family Court at Parramatta, destroying part of the building.

He also attempted to murder his ex-wife’s lawyer, Garry Watts, now a Family Court judge, in 1985 by planting a car bomb at his former address, which was still listed in the phone book.

Justice David Opas was shot to death in the courtyard of his Woollahra home in 1980.

“Each of these offences involved sophisticated planning, preparation and careful conduct,” Justice Peter Garling said, in handing down his sentence in September 2020.

“They were part of a sustained course of conduct by the offender against anyone whom he concluded may be acting contrary to his interests in maintaining access to his daughter and preserving his own financial position.”

He labelled the crimes an “attack on the foundations of Australian democracy” that left the legal fraternity fearing for their lives.

Warwick was sentenced to a life in prison with no parole.

“Mr Warwick, the effect of these sentences is that you will spend the rest of your life in prison and will not be released,” the judge told him.