Four deaths in four years: A look inside Maryborough jail
Following the latest death in custody at a Queensland jail, we look back at others who have died there in just a few years and the 20-year history of the grey cellblocks known for housing some of the state’s most high-profile prisoners.
The death of a prisoner in Maryborough Correctional Centre this week marks the fourth death in custody at the same prison in as many years.
It also comes just weeks out from a coronial inquest into the death of notorious McCulkin killer rapist Garry Dubois who was found in his blood-soaked cell at the jail in 2021.
On Tuesday, a 73-year-old man called for help during what’s understood to be a medical emergency and while he received treatment, could not be saved.
A report is being prepared for the coroner.
Before that, the most recent death in custody at the jail was in 2023, Lui Matalio Dylan Tiaaleaiga, a 30-year-old inmate who was discovered in a single-occupancy cell and rushed to hospital where he later died.
The former Newcastle Knights player is understood to have turned to crime in his mid 20s and previously escaped custody at Rockhampton.
It’s understood he died of natural causes lined to underlying health conditions.
Two prisoners died at the jail in 2021.
This included Dubois, 74, who took his own life in his single-occupant cell at Maryborough Correctional Centre in June of that year.
It followed the 2016 court case where Dubois was sentenced to life in jail for raping and murdering Leanne McCulkin, 11, and her sister Vicki, 13 in 1974.
He was also found guilty of the manslaughter of their mother Barbara McCulkin, 34.
A pre-inquest conference into Dubois’ death scheduled for March 12, 2025, at Brisbane and will be overseen by Deputy State Coroner Stephanie Gallagher.
The inquest will look at whether the supervision of Dubois was adequate and appropriate in the three months leading up to his death; whether the medical care afforded to Dubois by the Maryborough Correctional Centre was adequate and appropriate in the three months leading up to his death; whether the mental health care afforded to Dubois by the Maryborough Correctional Centre was adequate and appropriate in the three months leading up to his death; and whether the provision of razors to Dubois in the three months leading up to his death was appropriate.
Prior to being imprisoned, Dubois had lived with his wife Jan at Torbanlea.
She has always maintained his innocence.
In November 2021, Gympie’s Glen Reginald Francis died at the prison.
Mr Francis was serving time at the prison for attempted murder after he shattered a man’s head with a hammer in Monkland in 2014.
He was jailed for 15 years in 2017 over the attack on the man, whose brain tissue was left exposed during the violent incident.
MURDER IN CUSTODY TO MURDERERS STILL LIVING THERE
The jail was also the setting for a Carl Williams execution style murder on October 9, 2012.
Bundaberg man Leonard Raymond Gordon, 22, was murdered by fellow inmate Gregory George Glebow, who was 39, with a metal bar from a piece of gym equipment, in an unprovoked attack.
When the prison turned 20 in 2023, the Chronicle looked back at some of the most notorious prisoners who have been behind bars at the centre.
That included Matthew Bradley James Tench, who was 22 when he murdered Linda Lovett, a 58-year-old Thai sex worker, at Maryborough City Motel in 2018.
Champion boxer, underworld figure and convicted murderer Lee Owen Henderson was the country’s most notorious prison informer, used by police as a shortcut to convictions, despite admitting in one court that he was a compulsive “10 out of 10 liar”.
A master manipulator, he even had his own prison letterhead which promoted his services as: “Info gathering, strategic planning, criminal ID analysis, tracking, covert surveillance, interrogations, protection specialists and negotiators” before he was exposed as a total fraud who – it was said – would “shop his own mother to buy his freedom”.
He was part of a prison riot in 1986 after he was revealed to be leaking information to corrective services officers.
A former bikie who savagely beat his girlfriend to death has also served time at the jail.
Lionel Patea, a former Bandidos bikie gang enforcer, is serving two life sentences: one for the brutal murder of the mother of his child, Tara Brown, 24, who he ran off the road and bashed to death with a metal fire hydrant cover as she lay trapped in her car in September 2015; and one for the bashing murder of father-of-two Greg Dufty, 37, who was killed in the Gold Coast Hinterland in July 2015.
Dufty’s body has never been found.
WHAT LIFE’S LIKE INSIDE THE JAIL
In 2023, this publication was invited behind the razor wire to look inside the jail while the department also released a virtual tour.
About 700 prisoners are housed at the Maryborough jail at any given time and while rigorous monitoring is in place, drug drops and smuggling are relentlessly tested.
Last year, a cell search at the jail led to the discovery of restricted drugs worth about $400,000 inside the prison.
The contraband was discovered after Queensland Corrective Services intelligence officers identified the plan and worked with Tactical Response Officers and the QCS Dog Squad who searched the cells, recovering a package containing more than 400 strips of Buprenorphine.
The centre on Steindl Rd near the Bruce Highway is surrounded by bushland.
It has secure units, space for prisoners in protective custody and residential units where low-risk prisoners get housed.
Each block has a control room which monitors day-to-day movements.
It operations all cell doors going in and out.
Each control room is monitored by one officer.
For the prisoners, life at the jail is about pitching in and many have to work in various jobs including in the kitchen, where 2000 meals are made every day.
The kitchen employs about 50 prisoners, with 25 allocated to each shift.
Every year 730,000 meals are prepared, ranging from spaghetti bolognaise to sweet and sour pork and fish and chips.
About 400 dishes are washed each day.
In the education block, 3000 hours of course programs are provided each year.
Prisoners can complete pre-course assessments on literacy and numerously, writing and reading.
There is a sew room and between 50 to 60 items can be made per day.
About 100 prisoners work across the industries area making products like farm gates, panels for cattle crushes where between 10-15 tonnes of steel are used.
For First Nation prisoners, the cultural team comes together to plan for events like NAIDOC Week and there are also art programs available.
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Originally published as Four deaths in four years: A look inside Maryborough jail
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