Depraved Launceston rapist Colin John Sparkes could be released from lifelong jail term
One of Tasmania’s most sadistic rapists could be released from his lifelong prison sentence, with an order he remain in jail until he dies currently under review.
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One of Tasmania’s most sadistic and depraved rapists could soon be released from his lifelong prison sentence, with the state of Tasmania reviewing an order intended to keep him behind bars until his death.
Only a handful of Tasmanian criminals remain permanently incarcerated under the state’s Dangerous Criminals and High Risk Offenders legislation.
One of those men is Colin John Sparkes, now aged about 65, who dragged a 17-year-old girl off a Launceston street in 1983, after he’d watched her argue with her boyfriend outside a disco.
Sparkes knocked the girl to the footpath, dragged her into the Launceston Matriculation College grounds, and subjected her to a terrifying 90 minutes in which he blindfolded her, stripped her naked, tied her up, whipped and bashed her, and repeatedly raped her.
He drew all over the girl’s body with lipstick and eyeliner before he “scraped the depths of depravity” with degrading acts not suitable for publication, leaving her blindfolded, naked and bound in the college grounds.
Four years earlier, he had entered a girls’ boarding school and cut up their underwear.
Then in 1985, he broke into the home of a Queensland woman who was eight months pregnant, and raped her.
While he was jailed for that crime in Queensland for nine years, he subsequently returned to Tasmania and struck again.
In 1995, he broke into a Launceston home with a knife, with plans to rape the young girl that lived there.
The girl woke when he turned on the light, and Sparkes fled when she screamed for her mother – but he was found hiding behind a hedge by police soon after.
Sparkes got away with Launceston rape for a decade until DNA from the crime scene was ultimately matched to a sample later taken of his blood.
In 1996, Justice Peter Underwood jailed Sparkes for 10 years over his “repulsive and violent” crime committed 13 years earlier.
In 1997, Justice Pierre Slicer sentenced him over the 1995 crime and declared him a dangerous criminal, noting there was no evidence Sparkes had a “mental affliction”, but instead displayed recidivism and “propensity for violence and the exercise of power over women”.
On Monday, Sparkes appeared in the Supreme Court of Tasmania via video link from the Ron Barwick minimum security prison.
Crown prosecutor Deanne Earley said the state had filed an application to review Sparkes’ Dangerous Criminal Declaration.
Justice Stephen Estcourt ordered a pre-release risk assessment report.
The case will return to court on June 14.
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