Inside North QLD’s worst family murder and manslaughter cases
From parents accused of cruelly killing their babies, to children who tried covering up the cold-blooded murder of their parents, these haunting cases are among Queensland’s worst cases of family violence. DISTRESSING CONTENT
Mackay
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Family rage has fuelled shocking crimes in North Queensland but some of the most disturbing cases date back decades.
Imagine the horror when a 14-year-old mum drowned her own son in the Whitsundays in 1905. He was just eight months old.
A medical expert ruled she was ‘morally insane but mentally sound’.
In Cannon Valley, a 16-year-old who was abused as a ‘useless mongrel’ by his alcoholic father, shot his dad in the back of the head with a shotgun and then tried to make it look like suicide.
Near Prosperine, a 16-year-old was sentenced to death for murdering her father in 1917.
She shot him with a rifle in a canefield, then covered his body with trash before going out dancing.
But Home Secretary Minister J Huxham organised for her release on a good behaviour bond after two years of hard labour.
He wrote Miss Baker “had been a regular little slave to her father, who was unkind to her”.
The chilling accounts are among 14 historic cases from North Queensland.
Shot at close range after refusing divorce
Farmer Albert Watson was sentenced to life in jail for shooting dead his wife Ada Doris in Alligator Creek, 30km south of Mackay, on March 8, 1942.
Ada had been visiting the Griffins, about 14km away from their home, when Albert drove up “in front”.
“A few seconds later his wife came out. Neither of them spoke and he took the rifle from his truck and shot her,” the Daily Mercury reported.
Witnesses reported seeing Albert then walk over to his wife before shooting her again at close range.
The court heard the couple were happily married but after discovering they could not have children, Ada knocked back Albert’s suggestion to adopt.
He had tried to divorce her but she objected.
‘Pieces of brain’ found next to the pineapples
Isabella M’Lean, 55, was found dead in her garden on July 30, 1893, after being brutally murdered with an axe about three days earlier.
Neighbours came across the grisly discovery when they visited the address, about 1.5km from the back of the Leap Hotel, just north of Mackay.
“The deceased must have been apparently chased down the garden and she stopped at the beginning of the pineapples, where the blow on the head was given … (and) pieces of brain were found,” The Telegraph reported on August 18.
Her husband John, who claimed he was away at Habana at the time, was charged with her murder.
A jury determined there was not enough evidence to find the 79 year old guilty.
A gruesome find on the tracks
A newborn child was either thrown from a train or forcefully pushed through a three-and-a-half inch downpipe inside the train and onto the tracks below.
It was a gruesome discovery when the infant was found beneath the railway bridge at Alligator Creek on March 22, 1915.
‘Morally insane’ mum drowns baby
Fourteen-year-old Ruby Vickery drowned her son John William Brook at Doutty’s Creek in Bowen in the Whitsundays on February 23, 1905.
He was eight months old.
Dr Humphrey told a Townsville court Vickery “was one of those people who knew when they were doing wrong but did not care, and was not deterred by fear of punishment,” the Warwick Examiner and Times reported on May 24.
He said she was “morally insane but mentally sound”.
A jury found her not guilty of murder on the grounds of insanity and she was committed to the Reception House.
An accidental poisoning
Twenty-eight-year-old William Royal Stanfield Sampson’s strychnine-laced headache powder sent his uncle to his deathbed on June 4, 1939.
Sampson was like a son to William Alfred Weiske, 56, regularly visiting him on weekends at his Byron St home.
But Mr Weiske had a niece named Isabel Margaret Heath who Sampson developed feelings for.
When Miss Heath said she only liked Sampson as a friend, jealousy drove him to despair and he concocted the poisonous headache powder and put it in her handbag.
She then gave it to her Uncle Weiske when he complained of a headache.
Sampson learned of his fatal error the next day and was later sentenced to life in jail.
Teen kills dad execution-style
On a quiet night, in a quiet Eimeo street, a teenager crept to his father’s bedside, pointed a .22 rifle at the sleeping figure and fired point-blank range at his head.
The execution-style killing at the hands of a 16 year old in the early hours on May 3, 2006 sent shockwaves throughout Mackay.
The teenager was jailed for 12 years for patricide.
His former boyfriend was acquitted of murder but had pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and was jailed for five years.
Dad’s ‘useless mongrel’ sledge pushes son over the edge
Thomas Alfred Heywood was found guilty of manslaughter over the death of his father Arthur Heywood, 71, in Cannon Valley.
A Bowen court heard Thomas, 16, “had been confined to the farm and had little association with the outside world” and that Arthur was an alcoholic.
“(Thomas) alleged that his father had abused him and called him a useless mongrel, which aggravated him to shoot his father in the back of a head with a shotgun,” the Daily Mercury reported on April 30, 1947.
“He said he then tried to arrange the gun to make it look like suicide.”
Drunken husband beats wife to death
Marjorie Doreen Scorbie was murdered in Collinsville on January 20, 1951.
Thirty-one-year-old miner Robert Menzies had accused his 28-year-old de facto wife of stealing from him while he slept off a drinking session at the Central Hotel.
A Bowen court heard he tore Mrs Scorbie’s dress off and then beat her with a stick until she was unconscious.
He then threw dishwater on her face to revive her before beating her to death.
The year before, Menzies was jailed for striking at Ms Scorbie’s back with a sharp instrument while she was bent over a tub washing a baby.
In April 1951, he was sentenced for life imprisonment for her murder, the Townsville Daily Bulletin reported.
Love lost between brothers
William Tynan was hacked to death with a cane knife at Dumbleton on November 27, 1909.
Tynan had wounds to his head – which exposed his brain, as well as to his ear, left side of his body, right shoulder and left wrist, the Daily Mercury reported on December 8, 1910.
And three fingers on his left hand were “almost cut off”.
William’s brother Peter and his co-accused John Farrington were sentenced to death for the murder.
Farrington, who also went by the aliases of John Moore, John Reid, John Brady and John Brown, ended up serving 10 years in jail before returning to a life of crime upon his release.
Read more about Farrington here.
Husband blames burnt evidence on lamp fire
Eton farmer Charles Henry Horton Gordon was sentenced to five years hard labour for killing his wife Margaret on April 20, 1928.
Police found the mother of 12 lying face down in a pool of blood.
“The head was shockingly battered and there was evidence of the clothes having been on fire,” the Daily Mercury reported on April 22, 1929.
Gordon, 65, told police he had struck his wife with a brick multiple times, and that her blouse caught on fire after a lamp was knocked over.
The court heard Margaret had accused of him of being lazy and sleeping around.
Accused murderer dies before conviction
Kuttabul farmer Francis Albert Leslie Brooks, 39, was charged with shooting dead his wife Alice Leila, 29, while she slept at their farmhouse on December 17, 1941.
He was found dead in his cell before he was ever convicted, the Daily Mercury reported on January 20, 1942.
An early release after killing grandmother
Martin Harrod stabbed his 89-year-old grandmother to death after she caught him breaking into her North Mackay home on Good Friday, 1988.
Harrod, then aged 28 and recently arrived from Sydney, broke into Gretchen Christobel Smith’s flat in Daniel St.
He stabbed her twice in the chest plus in the neck, with a 15cm knife found in a rubbish bin believed to have been his murder weapon.
He was sentenced to life behind bars but was released in 2011.
Read more about the shocking murder here.
Teen goes dancing after slaying father
Agnes Dorothy Baker, 16, was sentenced to death for murdering her father at Preston near Proserpine on September 27, 1917.
She shot him with a rifle in a canefield, then covered his body with trash before going out dancing.
But Home Secretary Minister J Huxham organised for her release on a good behaviour bond after two years of hard labour.
He wrote Miss Baker “had been a regular little slave to her father, who was unkind to her”.
“I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but there is no doubt that she lived in terror of her father, whose words … were crueller than blows,” Mr Huxham said, according to The Telegraph’s article on December 18, 1917.
Wife cuts own head with tomahawk, husband claims
Pacific Islander Billy Boslem, a one time resident of Mackay, was found guilty of murdering his Aboriginal wife at Strathdickie near Proserpine on September 7, 1910.
Boslem initially said Molly had cut her own head with a tomahawk at their home. There were five wounds on her head.
He was sentenced to death but this was later changed to life in jail with hard labour.
Originally published as Inside North QLD’s worst family murder and manslaughter cases
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