REVEALED: Tasmania’s heinous murder crimes
Drug-fuelled, barbaric, execution-style killings and the grisly dismemberment of bodies. Our special investigation looks at some of the most shocking Tasmanian murders and what drove the offenders to kill.
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BARBARIC, execution-style killings and the grisly dismemberment of bodies have been some of the shocking circumstances of Tasmanian murders in recent years.
Today, the Mercury exposes details of the worst Tasmanian murders of the past five years.
JACK HARRISON VINCENT SADLER
Murder:August 2018
Found guilty: May 2021 (to be sentenced)
Sadler was found guilty of murdering Jake Anderson-Brettner in the Launceston suburb of Riverside in August 2018.
During his Supreme Court trial this month, the court was told Sadler shot his victim three times, before dismembering and then disposing of the body.
Sadler threw Mr Anderson-Brettner’s torso off an area known as the Sideling on the Tasman Hwy, disposing of other body parts in rubbish bins around the city.
After the verdict, the victim’s mother spoke of her devastation of losing her beloved son, saying he was a larger-than-life character.
“My son wasn’t rubbish, he was precious and he was priceless,’’ Claudette Brettner said outside the court.
She also warned of the dangers of the drugs world that she described as cruel and evil.
Sadler is expected to be sentenced later this month.
SHANNON JAMES DUFFY
Murder: April 2019
Sentenced: November 2020
Gagebrook father-of-two Jarrod Leigh Turner had no idea it was coming.
Duffy pulled out a gun on his unsuspecting friend, who was urinating by a roadside after the pair had spent a night drinking together.
He shot Mr Turner in the head at close range, with a court hearing the act of retribution was carried out after a female friend alleged to Duffy that Mr Turner had sexually assaulted her.
The 22-year-old’s body was found by a member of the public on the side of Colebrook Rd.
“This was a cold blooded and callous killing carried out in the style of an execution,’’ Justice Michael Brett said in sentencing in November last year.
Duffy was jailed for the term of his natural life after pleading guilty to murder.
The 32-year-old will be eligible for parole after he has served 18 years.
WILLIAM ADAIR ROTHWELL and JACOB MICHAEL BRENNAN
Murder:August 2019
Sentenced: February 2020
Launceston teenagers Rothwell and Brennan were just 17 when they subjected Billy Ray Waters, 18, to “tremendous cruelty” over some stolen cannabis.
Brennan shot Mr Waters in the leg before stabbing him 18 times while Rothwell attacked the victim with a wooden baton.
Mr Waters died after he was shot in the head, with both assailants accusing each other of pulling the trigger.
Normally, as minors aged under 18, Rothwell and Brennan would have had their names prohibited from being published.
But Supreme Court Judge Robert Pearce deemed that releasing their names was appropriate given the severity of the crime.
The youths, who both pleaded guilty to murder, are serving 26-year jail terms.
They will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years.
After the sentencing, Mr Waters’ grandmother Denise Waters said drugs were largely to blame for her much-loved grandson’s murder and she felt some sympathy for his killers.
“Justice has been done … but it’s two young fellas and, when all is said and done, it’s the dope that’s a big part of the problem,’’ she said.
“Shock … I just didn’t know that the boys would lose so much of their life … I hadn’t even thought of that before.”
BRADLEY SCOTT PURKISS and MARGARET ANNE OTTO
Murder: May 2017
Sentenced: October 2019
Risdon Vale tattoo artist Dwayne “Doc” Davies was murdered by his wife and his best mate because of grievances about his behaviour and his wife’s desire to be free of him, a court heard.
Purkiss, of Elderslie and Otto, of Risdon Vale, were sentenced to 24 years and 15 years’ jail respectively for murdering Mr Davies on May 26, 2017.
They had been found guilty by jury of the crime.
In sentencing, Chief Justice Alan Blow said Purkiss and Otto planned the murder together and that Purkiss shot Mr Davies and dumped his body on a remote property.
“It is clear that Ms Otto had a very difficult relationship with her husband … It seems she reasoned that if he was killed, she would be free of him, and he would never trouble her again,’’ Chief Justice Blow said.
The Supreme Court heard that the killing was planned for at least about eight hours before the firing of the fatal shot, and that Mr Davies’ family had been devastated.
“Nothing is going to bring our boy back to us,” Mr Davies’ father Glen Davies said.
“I’m a little upset on hers [Otto’s sentence], I thought hers would have been a little longer but there you go, what it is what it is.”
Otto has appealed her conviction, with her defence arguing she may have wished Mr Davies was dead, but she never incited the man who killed him to pull the trigger.
Lawyer Greg Melick SC made the comments during in the Court of Criminal Appeal in September.
Otto has argued the jury verdict was unsafe and unsatisfactory, and that the trial judge erred by failing to find she had no case to answer.
During the appeal hearing, Mr Melick argued that during 11 hours of a police interview, Otto “steadfastly maintained” she played no part in planning her husband’s murder.
He said during the interview, Otto became a “broken woman” who made a number of confessions showing she was an accessory after the fact.
However, Mr Melick said there was no “hard evidence” — and that Otto had not confessed — to any murder plans or agreements.
The Court of Criminal Appeal is yet to deliver its judgment on the appeal.
DARREN WARD GALE
Murder: July 2016
Sentenced: August 2019
A court found Gale decapitated a pensioner, flung his head from a bridge and buried his headless body in a shallow bush grave in Tasmania’s northwest.
Gale had confessed to beheading Ulverstone man Noel Joseph Ingham, who he lived with, and burying him in the bush at Dulverton.
But he said he did so only after the 58-year-old had already died by hitting his head on a fish tank.
In sentencing Justice Helen Wood said Gale “became attached” to living at Mr Ingham’s unit, which she said was more comfortable than the life Gale was used to living.
The judge said Gale wanted to exploit the situation and wanted to become a carer for Mr Ingham, who was frail, so he could receive a carer’s allowance.
Mr Ingham’s head has never been found which meant a specific cause of death could not be determined.
But Gale launched an appeal against his conviction and sentence.
In his initial, handwritten notice of appeal, Gale claimed he was inadequately defended at trial, the prosecutor led witnesses, and a jury member spoke to police.
In May last year, he hired local lawyers Fabiano Cangelosi and Dinesh Loganathan to take on the task of his bid for a state-funded challenge to his murder conviction.
In April this year, Mr Cangelosi applied for a court order directing that Legal Aid be provided, noting Gale met the requisite financial test.
Legal Aid barrister Alan Hensley previously said Gale had applied for funding — and was refused — “solely on the basis of merit”.
He agreed Gale met the financial requirements, but Legal Aid was provided only if the case was “in the interests of justice” and had a “genuine prospect of success”.
But Justice Gregory Geason ordered this month that Legal Aid fund Gale’s appeal by paying Mr Cangelosi and Mr Loganathan.
Mr Loganathan said the appeal team would seek to have Gale, who is serving a 23-year sentence of imprisonment, resentenced in line with a manslaughter charge.
MARK RODNEY JONES
Murder: January 2017
Sentenced: July 2019
Murder victim Bradley Breward was assaulted, waterboarded and suffocated leading up to his death on New Year’s Day in 2017.
Jones had admitted to the acts before dumping his body in Lake Eugenana, near Devonport, but pleaded not guilty to murder arguing he didn’t intend to kill Mr Breward.
But a jury took just over two hours to find Jones, of West Launceston, guilty of murder.
The Supreme Court in Launceston had heard Jones had spent three weeks “obsessively” tracking down Mr Breward, believing the 22-year-old had stolen his ute from a roadside at Prospect.
He found where Mr Breward was staying, started to assault him and demanded to know where his ute was, before torturing him.
Jones was sentenced to 22 years’ imprisonment for the crime, with a non-parole period of 13 years.
Jones, a former bodybuilder, had previously been jailed for five years in the late 1990s for the rape and strangulation of a 17-year-old girl.
KLAUS DIETER NEUBERT
Murder: May 2015
Sentenced: May 2017
Neubert was jailed for 25 years for the public execution-style murder of his estranged wife Olga Neubert on a New Town street.
The crimes of the former Lymington man were described by a judge as “selfish and brutal”.
A court heard that although Neubert had crossed paths with his wife in Moonah in the moments immediately before the shootings, the man had been searching for Mrs Neubert for some time.
He tailed his wife’s car into New Town and along Risdon Rd, cutting her off in traffic by positioning his vehicle in front of hers.
Neubert then got out of his vehicle and retrieved a fully loaded firearm from the back of his vehicle before firing at least three shots into his wife’s car.
At least one of these shots struck Mrs Neubert’s shoulder, with the bullet deflecting to cause a non-fatal wound to her brain.
Justice Michael Brett said Neubert then placed the muzzle of the weapon against his wife’s head and pulled the trigger.
The court heard the man’s actions were motivated by his inability to accept the end of his marriage and that he had regarded his wife as his possession.
“It was family violence of the most serious kind,’’ the judge said.
Neubert will be eligible for parole in November 2031, when he will be aged 90.
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