William Parker Skelland abused children at Burwood boys’ home in 1973 and 1974
A former carer at a Victorian boys’ orphanage in the 1970s will spend at least four years in prison for sexually abusing five of the young children.
William Parker Skelland, 81, was living in the UK in 2019 when he was arrested for his crimes and extradited back to Australia to answer for them.
Continue reading...In lawsuit brought by victims, Catholic order disputes extent of its knowledge of Gregory Vincent Coffey prior to his appointment
A Catholic order made the “unthinkable” decision to appoint a known child abuser as the principal of one of its Melbourne schools, allowing him to molest boys in his office unchecked on a “regular basis”, a court has heard.
The Marist Brothers are being sued over the abuse of a series of boys at the Immaculate Heart College in Preston in the 1980s by Gregory Vincent Coffey, the school’s first lay principal and a former Catholic brother.
Continue reading...Tarek Zahed in critical condition after he and his brother Omar were gunned down in the foyer of a gym in Auburn
Comanchero bikie boss Tarek Zahed is in a critical condition and his brother Omar has died after they were riddled with bullets in the foyer of a gym in Sydney’s west.
Emergency services were called to the Body Fit Gym on Parramatta Road, Auburn, after reports of a shooting at about 8pm on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Charges related to incidents in 2015 and 2016 in which Buswell assaulted Melissa Hankinson multiple times
Former West Australian treasurer Troy Buswell has been handed a suspended prison sentence for repeatedly attacking his ex-wife.
Buswell, 56, pleaded guilty in Perth magistrates court to two counts of aggravated assault and one count of aggravated assault causing bodily harm.
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Continue reading...Moriarty, 70, and his dog went missing from Northern Territory town Larrimah, 430km south of Darwin, in 2017 with police suspecting foul play
Secret police recordings in which a man claims to have killed Paddy Moriarty with a hammer have been heard at an inquest into the Northern Territory man’s disappearance.
Moriarty, 70, and his dog went missing from the town of Larrimah, 430km south of Darwin, on 16 December 2017, with police suspecting foul play.
Continue reading...Law reform body says there should be consequences for offenders who make victims fear they will be sexually assaulted
Offenders who grab and drag their victim in a way that makes them fear they will be sexually assaulted could be jailed for up to 10 years under a proposal outlined by Victoria’s peak law reform body.
The Andrews government asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) to review “grab and drag” offences after a 2018 assault in which Jackson Williams grabbed a 39-year-old woman and dragged her into an alleyway.
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Continue reading...Rosa Maria Maione pleaded guilty to manslaughter over the 2020 death of Adelaide woman who had cerebral palsy
The carer who admitted the manslaughter of Adelaide woman Ann Marie Smith, who had cerebral palsy, has been jailed for at least five years and three months for her criminal neglect.
Sentencing Rosa Maria Maione in the Supreme Court, Justice Anne Bampton said the 70-year-old was grossly negligent, with her care for Smith falling well short of the standard expected.
Continue reading...A 45-year-old man has been charged with three counts of murder after the fire in the inner west suburb of Newtown on Tuesday
A man has been charged with three counts of murder following a fire in a boarding house in Newtown in New South Wales on Tuesday.
The 45-year-old man, who police say was a former resident of the boarding house, was also charged with one count of destroying or damaging property by fire or explosive.
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Continue reading...Rolfe, 30, was also cleared of two alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death
Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe has been found not guilty of murder in relation to the shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker.
Rolfe, 30, was also cleared of two alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.
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Continue reading...Judge finds Tony Witmann had PTSD and was ‘genuinely remorseful’ but victim fears she will never recover
A former soldier who tied up a woman at gunpoint while trying to get his cat back from Melbourne’s Lost Dogs Home has been jailed for six years.
Tony Wittman was armed with an assault weapon and dressed in full-military style clothing when he went to the Home in January 2021, causing victim Bailey Scarlett to initially believe he was a legitimate police officer due to his appearance.
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Continue reading...Natasha Beth Darcy, 46, will be jailed until at least 2047 for sedating and gassing Mathew Dunbar in 2017
A New South Wales woman who faked her grazier partner’s suicide, sedating and gassing him to inherit his property, will be jailed until at least 2047.
Natasha Beth Darcy, 46, was on Monday sentenced to a maximum of 40 years in prison for the crime which Justice Julia Lonergan called “stupid, clumsy and ugly”.
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Continue reading...Police allege the 36-year-old used a circular saw to cut off a 66-year-old man’s leg at an Innisfail park
A man has been charged with murder after another man died when his leg was allegedly cut off by a circular saw in a far north Queensland park.
Police allege the men – aged 36 and 66 – drove together to Innisfail’s Fitzgerald park before 4am on Saturday and sat under a tree.
Continue reading...Chair of National Māori Authority says country should adopt John Howard’s playbook or risk sparking local gangland wars between deported criminals
A prominent Māori leader has called for a dramatic response to what he labels Australia’s attempts to turn New Zealand into a “dumping ground” for criminals, suggesting Jacinda Ardern’s government should “turn the planes around”.
The executive chairman of the National Māori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, also raised concerns about a potential increase in gun violence in Auckland, saying the city “could see gangland wars similar to those that occurred in both Sydney and Melbourne in the early 2000s if we are not careful”.
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Continue reading...Disgraced art collector John Wayne Millwood was jailed in 2016 and released on parole in 2019
A man sexually abused as a child by disgraced Tasmanian art collector John Wayne Millwood has been awarded more than $5m in damages.
He was abused by Millwood under the guise of medical examinations in the 1980s when he was aged between 10 and 15.
Continue reading...This interactive tells the stories that have long been kept out of our history books. It shows evidence of mass killings from 1788 until 1927: a sustained and systematic process of conflict and expansion
Continue reading...Officers also sifting through garbage collected from roadside bins near where four-year-old went missing
West Australian police are using drones and aircraft to create a detailed map of the Blowholes campsite as they look for “disturbances in the sand” during the ongoing investigation into the disappearance of four-year-old Cleo Smith.
Police recruits are also sifting through a mountain of rubbish collected from roadside bins stretching more than 600km along Western Australia’s north-west coast in the hope of finding any clue that could lead to Cleo.
Continue reading...The search for the missing four-year-old has captured the world’s attention, but police have yet to make a breakthrough in the baffling case
The days are long for Det Supt Rod Wilde, the man tasked with unravelling what happened to four-year-old Cleo Smith at the Blowholes campsite in Western Australia.
With 40 years of policing under his belt, including 18 with the major crime squad, Wilde is no stranger to missing children cases or working under the glare of media scrutiny.
Continue reading...A man has been arrested at Barkly Square shopping centre and police say they are not looking for anyone else
Two men have been taken to hospital after being stabbed inside a Melbourne shopping centre.
Both suffered non-life-threatening injuries during the attack at Barkly Square in Brunswick just after 8am on Monday, and were taken to hospital in stable condition.
Continue reading...Inspired by hit podcasts and documentaries, ordinary people are trying to track down fugitives and reopen cold cases. But should they be?
Although the story you are about to read involves a fugitive, law enforcement and a six-month chase across Mexico, for Billy Jensen it was just another day on the job. In 2017, Jensen was on the hunt for a pale, ginger, tattooed California killer hiding out in Mexico. Jensen uploaded a photo of the fugitive to Facebook. “¿Has visto a este hombre?” he asked, using Facebook’s targeted ad tools to ensure the post was seen by people living near American bars. Tips came flooding in. One tipster snapped a photo. In just 24 hours, Jensen had his guy.
Unfortunately, the killer was on the move. It took half a year of similar posts for the 49-year-old Jensen to finally get the suspect apprehended by the Mexican police – for Jensen isn’t a police officer himself, or a detective, or an FBI agent. He is a podcaster, author, journalist, and self-described “citizen sleuth”.
Continue reading...Billed as the most secure phone on the planet, An0m became a viral sensation in the underworld. There was just one problem for anyone using it for criminal means: it was run by the police
The rain pattered lightly on the harbour of the Belgian port city of Ghent when, on 21 June 2021, a team of professional divers slipped below the surface into the emerald murk. The Brazilian tanker, heavy with fruit juice bound for Australia, had already crossed the Atlantic Ocean, but its journey wasn’t halfway done as the divers felt their way along the barnacled serration of its hull. They were looking for the sea chest, a metallic inlet below the water line, through which the ship draws seawater to cool its engines. Tucked inside, they found what they were looking for: three long sacks, each wrapped in a thick black plastic bag and trussed with black and white striped nautical rope.
The sacks were heavy. Each one weighed as much as a sheep and, shaped like a body bag, could feasibly have contained one. As the Belgian police opened the first bag, a stack of crimson bricks slid out. Had this cargo reached Australia, where high demand and meagre supply has pushed the price of a kilo of cocaine to eight times its equivalent cost in North America, the haul would have been worth more than A$64m (£34m).
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