Category Archives: Crime – Australia

Sentence extended but no jail for NT hit-and-run driver Jake Danby who called victims ‘oxygen thieves’

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Jake Danby’s sentence for hitting two Aboriginal men with his car, killing one, was extended from five months to two years in home detention

The family of an Aboriginal man fatally run down before the driver bragged about his death are angry and heartbroken after their brother’s killer has again avoided jail on appeal.

In June 2024, Jake Danby hit two Aboriginal men with his car on a Darwin street, killing one and injuring the other.

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Victorian man jailed after homemade gun misfires and kills his pregnant partner

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Kiara Ferguson died after Adam Winmar’s daughter, four, found loaded weapon in family’s couch in 2023

Six months’ pregnant with two children at home, a young regional Victorian woman was understandably upset when her four-year-old found a gun inside their couch.

Kiara Ferguson, 27, took the homemade firearm from the girl and marched to the back of the family home, where her partner of 10 years was in the toilet.

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Statistically, there’s a reliable way to predict a domestic violence homicide like Hannah Clarke’s

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Queensland researchers studying intimate-partner killings found one thing common to more than half the cases

When researchers in Queensland catalogued data from seven years of intimate-partner killings, they found one thing common to more than half of those cases – a victim’s own sense of fear about their impending death.

Statistically, the most reliable way to predict a domestic violence homicide is to believe the victim.

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Molly Ticehurst’s ex-boyfriend pleads guilty to 2024 murder that ignited national anti-DV campaign

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Death of 28-year-old childhood educator in Forbes, NSW, intensified a national campaign against domestic and gendered violence

The former boyfriend of Molly Ticehurst has pleaded guilty to her domestic violence murder and made other admissions.

Daniel Billings appeared via audio-video link in Forbes local court, in central western New South Wales, on Friday morning to enter the plea.

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Will Victoria’s new youth crime laws be tough on crime or just a coward punch?

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Jacinta Allan’s Labor government takes a leaf out of the playbook of conservative oppositions: focus on crime and hope voters see them as knights in shining armour

To put it in language those in the Victorian government who are enamoured of tabloid newspapers and talkback radio will understand: are these new laws tough on crime, or merely a coward punch?

A decision by the Victorian government to introduce adult crime, adult time laws has been widely condemned as an easy way out, getting in first with a cheap shot rather than having to duke it out on youth crime with a rabble of a Coalition at next year’s state election. It may work politically, but will it work as policy?

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Illegal tobacco burns $3.3bn hole in Australia’s tax revenue, crime agency says

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ACIC report says total impact of illicit trade on economy amounted to $4bn in a year amid debate over cigarette excise

The illegal tobacco market has left a $3.3bn hole in the federal government’s finances, with Australia’s national criminal intelligence agency warning organised crime’s dominance of the market is continuing to grow.

The Australian Taxation Office believes the illegal trade now accounts for one in five tobacco sales, which has led to reduced tax revenues despite the government’s excise on legal cigarettes reaching almost $30 for a pack of 20 sticks in September. The excise has increased almost eightfold since 2006, when it was $4.65.

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Children under 14 are incapable of evil and should be protected from criminal responsibility, NSW review finds

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Review was led by former supreme court judge turned parole authority chair Geoffrey Bellew SC and former NSW police deputy commissioner Jeffrey Loy

A centuries-old legal presumption that children aged between 10 and 14 are not capable of evil should become law, a New South Wales review led by a former supreme court judge and a former senior NSW police figure has recommended.

In NSW, the criminal age of responsibility is 10 but the common law presumption of doli incapax – Latin for “incapable of evil” – can apply up to 14, offering protection for children being prosecuted on the presumption they don’t understand the difference between right and wrong.

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Erin Patterson: prosecutors to appeal ‘manifestly inadequate’ sentence for triple murderer

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Victoria’s director of public prosecutions seeking longer prison sentence for mushroom murderer

The Victorian director of public prosecutions will appeal against the sentence handed down to triple murderer Erin Patterson, arguing it is manifestly inadequate.

On Monday afternoon – the deadline for an appeal – the DPP confirmed in a statement that the appeal had been lodged, after Patterson was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years.

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How DNA on a glass of beer at airport led to capture of Australian serial rapist, the Night Stalker

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Breakthroughs in forensic technology resulted in Glenn Gary Cameron’s arrest more than three decades after he terrorised women in Sydney

More than three decades ago, New South Wales police announced it had formed a special team to catch a man, later dubbed the “Night Stalker” or the “Moore Park rapist”, who terrorised women across Sydney in the early 1990s.

At that time, a poster with a sketched image of the man, based on one of his victim’s recollections, was released. Below the image it said: “Do you know this person? Serial rapist sought over possible seven attacks.”

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Mushroom murderer Erin Patterson to learn fate at sentence hearing in Victorian supreme court

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Justice Christopher Beale will sentence the triple murderer on Monday, with the hearing to be broadcast live in a state first

Victoria’s supreme court will hand down the triple-murderer Erin Patterson’s sentence on Monday morning, with the hearing to be broadcast live in a historic first for the state.

The state’s supreme court will allow a television camera inside the courtroom to broadcast the sentencing hearing – with a 10 second delay – for the first time.

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Two boys, 12 and 15, killed in Melbourne attacked by eight knife and machete wielding suspects

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Fatal stabbing attack on two boys in Cobblebank had ‘the hallmarks of a youth gang crime’, Victoria police say

A fatal stabbing attack on two boys in Melbourne by eight masked attackers armed with machetes and long edged weapons had “the hallmarks of a youth gang crime”, Victoria police say.

A 12-year-old and 15-year-old Dau Akueng were found fatally stabbed on separate streets in Cobblebank, in the city’s west, on Saturday night.

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Newborn baby found dead in Perth storm water drain placed there in recent days, police say

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WA premier describes ‘horrifying scenario’ after workers found child’s body while cleaning drain on Monday

A newborn baby boy found dead in a suburban storm water drain was placed there in recent days before being discovered, police have said.

The horrifying discovery of the infant’s body was made in Alexander Heights in Perth’s north on Monday afternoon.

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Mushroom trial spores toxic media hot takes after Erin Patterson’s guilty verdict | Weekly Beast

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Coverage ranges from psychedelic gifs to ‘full-on Walking Dead-style zombie stuff’. Plus: is the ABC really listening?

The media were constrained in what they could report during Erin Patterson’s 10-week trial. But after the mushroom trial guilty verdict was handed down on Monday, all bets were off.

The extraordinary photographs of the triple murderer in a prison van in May were published by every media outlet, bought from the wire agency AFP for more than $1,500 each or a discounted rate for the set of six.

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RecipeTin Eats cook upset her beef wellington recipe ‘entangled’ in Erin Patterson murder case

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Convicted murderer told trial she made multiple changes to Nagi Maehashi’s recipe in preparing the fatal lunch two years ago

Nagi Maehashi, the cook behind RecipeTin Eats, says it is “upsetting” to have become “entangled in a tragic situation” after Erin Patterson told her triple murder trial she used the beef wellington recipe for the fateful lunch.

In a post to Instagram on Tuesday, Maehashi requested that journalists of Australia “please stop calling and emailing and texting and DM’ing me about the Erin Patterson case”.

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Cassius Turvey’s murder has ‘torn at the very fabric of our society’, his mother tells court

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Heinous and ‘racially motivated’ attack on Indigenous teenager left mother and community traumatised, court hears

The murder of an Indigenous teenager who was chased into bushland and beaten with a metal pole during a heinous racist attack has shattered lives and left a community living in fear, his heartbroken mother has said.

Cassius Turvey, a Noongar Yamatji boy, died in hospital 10 days after he was deliberately struck on the head in Perth’s eastern suburbs on 13 October 2022.

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Murder charges over shooting of gangland lawyer Joseph Acquaro dropped

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Victoria DPP’s move on charges against Vincenzo Crupi brings end to case that threatened to force police to reveal informer’s identity

The Victorian director of public prosecutions has dropped murder charges relating to the shooting death of gangland lawyer and police informer Joseph “Pino” Acquaro.

The explosive development brings to an end a court case that threatened to force Victoria police to reveal the identity of human sources in order to prosecute Vincenzo Crupi, who they alleged had murdered Acquaro.

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Paramedic denied access to Bondi Junction ‘hot zone’ tells stabbing inquest policies ‘need to change’

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Critical care paramedic Christopher Wilkinson arrived at Westfield 30 minutes after Joel Cauchi attacked 16 people, killing six

A New South Wales ambulance officer who attempted to save the lives of Bondi Junction stabbing victims on 13 April 2024 says he was “frustrated” after not being able to access injured and potentially dying patients.

Six people were stabbed to death by schizophrenic man Joel Cauchi at the Westfield shopping centre.

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Child killer Rick Thorburn, who murdered Tiahleigh Palmer, found dead in Queensland jail cell

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Thorburn was jailed for life after admitting to killing the 12-year-old foster child after his son Trent confessed to sexually assaulting her

Rick Thorburn, the Queensland man who was serving life in jail for the murder of 12-year-old foster child Tiahleigh Palmer, has been found dead in his cell.

Queensland Corrective Services confirmed he had died in his Woodford Correctional Centre cell on Saturday.

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Double murderer fails in bid to overturn Queensland’s no body, no parole laws

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Rodney Cherry was found guilty of killing his wife and stepdaughter but argued no body, no parole became law after he was sentenced

A double murderer has failed in a high court bid to overturn Queensland’s “no body, no parole” laws, in a case which also involved almost every other state and territory government.

Rodney Michael Cherry, 65, was found guilty in 2002 of killing his 35-year-old wife, Annette Cherry, and 18-year-old stepdaughter, Kira Guise, at Roma in central Queensland and sentenced to life in prison.

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Brisbane woman charged with murder after allegedly giving terminally ill partner lethal dose of pain medication

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Police say David Mobbs was in ‘last stages of his life’ with motor neurone disease and had been in and out of hospital before his death

A pensioner has been charged with murder after being accused of administering a lethal dose of prescription medication to her terminally ill partner.

Kylie Ellina Truswell-Mobbs, 50, was arrested more than a year after the death of David Ronald Mobbs, 56, at Alexandra Hills, in Brisbane’s south-east, in December 2023.

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