By Erin Pearson
On the day Dinush Kurera hacked his wife to death, he drove to Bunnings to buy an axe.
Dressed in black complete with a black cap, he is captured on CCTV casually scanning the $9.98 fibreglass axe.
He then scans the wrecking bar he would later use to tear palings off the back fence of his estranged wife’s home before lying in wait for her.
Within 14 minutes of entering the Sandhurst home, Nelomie Perera, 43, was dead. Kurera beat and stabbed her to death in front of the pair’s teenage children.
Perera had done everything she could to protect herself, a court heard, even resorting to wearing a personal safety watch, which ultimately recorded her murder.
On Thursday, Kurera, 47, was jailed for 37 years with a minimum of 30 after a judge found his self-pity during his bitter divorce transformed into homicidal rage at Sandhurst, in Melbourne’s south-east, on December 3, 2022.
Dinush Kurera arrives at the Supreme Court in August.Credit: AAP
Justice Amanda Fox found Kurera was motivated by anger and saw everything through the prism of entitlement and ownership when he lay in wait to attack Perera inside a home she had turned into a fortress in a desperate attempt to protect herself and her children.
“Serious violence continues to be committed by men against female partners or former partners. Too often, it’s motivated by anger, jealousy and sense of entitlement,” Fox said.
“The community is rightly sick and tired and angry at the number of men who kill women in circumstances of domestic violence.”
The court heard Kurera returned to Australia from a work trip to Sri Lanka on December 1, 2022, after Perera asked for a divorce, having learnt he was having an affair overseas.
Nelomie Perera.
By that time, Perera had already told police she feared her estranged husband would kill her when he returned, reaching out to specialist family violence support services to create a safety plan and organise protection orders.
“At 7.10pm on November 30, Nelomie sent AFP an email making them aware she had taken out an intervention order as she was ‘terrified of what might happen tomorrow’,” Fox said.
“On the morning of December 1 you arrived into Melbourne Airport, passing immigration and were taken aside by the Australian Federal Police and served with an intervention order,” she said, addressing Kurera.
“You were specifically told not to go to the Sandhurst house. You said words to the effect, ‘That’s my f---ing house. Where am I supposed to go now?’”
On the day of the murder, Fox said, Kurera’s self-pity began changing to anger as he drove to the Fountain Gate Bunnings, where he bought a wrecking bar, an axe and later a jerry can of petrol.
He then drove to a street 550 metres from his estranged wife’s house, parked and walked to the rear of her home dressed in black and wearing gloves, shortly after 10pm.
He then used the weapons to remove palings from a rear fence. Kurera ambushed Perera after she unlocked a back door to light a cigarette. She activated her safety watch at 11.36pm.
The prosecution said that once inside the house, Kurera and Perera began to argue in front of their two children, then aged 16 and 17, before the 47-year-old repeatedly struck Perera to the upper body with the axe and a knife he grabbed from a kitchen drawer.
The axe used to kill Nelomie Perera.Credit: Supreme Court of Victoria
All the while the safety watch Perera had obtained to keep her safe was recording everything.
“The [safety watch] audio went silent at 11.39pm after the watch was destroyed by you in the course of your frenzied attack. Pieces of it were later found on the kitchen floor,” Fox said.
“The recording itself is harrowing. It captures the last moments of Nelomie Perera ... screaming for help.”
The son was injured as he tripped and fell nearby, while the daughter managed to run to a neighbouring home to raise the alarm.
When police arrived, they found the house in darkness, and when they yelled out to see if anyone was inside, Kurera said he was on the toilet.
He was arrested soon after, telling officers: “I killed my wife.”
The Bunnings receipt for the axe purchased by Dinush Kurera.Credit: Supreme Court of Victoria
A jury took less than three hours to deliberate in August before convicting Kurera of murdering Perera, following a month-long Supreme Court trial.
He denied murdering his wife and told the court he had acted in self-defence.
Kurera, now 47, was born in Sri Lanka and migrated to Australia in 1997. He married Perera in 2005, and they moved into the Sandhurst house he helped build. In 2016, he bought Inflatable World in Knox, but the company collapsed in 2018.
An autopsy found Perera suffered at least 35 injuries, largely to the head and neck.
Fox sentenced Kurera to 37 years in jail with a non-parole period of 30 years.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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