R v Wilson [2011] VSC 123

2 The circumstances of the offending are as follows. You and the deceased, Carol Neeve, had been in a personal relationship, you had previously ceased that relationship but had, at a later stage, reconciled. It was described as an argumentative type of relationship but there was no evidence before me or this jury that it was a violent relationship, the description being that you argued a lot over money.

3 During a period when you and Carol Neeve were no longer together, she had formed a relationship with a man by the name of Alan McKean which had ceased prior to you and she resuming your relationship. It had ended by mutual agreement and they had actually remained good friends with Mr McKean keeping in contact with Ms Neeve.

4 Carol Neeve lived with her daughter and an old friend by the name of Bill Symons who was a 77 year old pension. Ms Neeve was in fact his registered carer as a result of an operation he had received on his hip some five years earlier. You were living in a caravan near your employment on the Westgate Bridge. You stayed over most weekends, and some nights, at the home of Ms Neeve.

5 On Sunday 28 June 2009, Carol Neeve, together with Bill Symons, travelled down to Dromana to drop her daughter Melanie at her grandmothers for the school holidays. returning to the premises at about 5.30. Mr Symons went to bed relatively early as a result of his hip being sore and read until about 9 o'clock. He got up about 10.00 to go to the toilet and at no time did he hear you arguing and you were both still sitting watching television when he went back to bed. Mr Symons was quite hard of hearing but there was no evidence from any neighbours to indicate anything untoward was occurring that night.

6 The next thing that was known, apart from the evidence given from you, was that at sometime towards 11.30 - 12.00 on 29 June the body of Carol Neeve was discovered in her bed, a bed shared by you. She appeared to have some form, according to a neighbour, of bruising around her neck. Despite that being apparent to the neighbour, the death was treated initially as a potential drug overdose, although there appeared to be no material to support or even give rise to that theory.

7 You were arrested by the police on 29 June on a charge, initially, of hindering police then subsequently it was discovered that you had an outstanding matter for which a warrant had been issued.

8 Dr Malcolm Dodd was due to perform an autopsy the next day - 30 June - and when he viewed the body of the deceased on the 30th, he indicated immediately to the police it was most likely to be a case of strangulation, rather than an overdose or accidental drug death. He performed the autopsy, which confirmed that this was indeed a case of manual strangulation.

9 You had arisen relatively early that morning, and were heard by the neighbours walking up and down outside the house, singing country and western songs and behaving in a slightly jolly and strange manner. When Bill Symons awoke, at approximately 8.00 am, he was surprised that Carol Neeve was not up, as she was normally up at 7.30 and he had never known her to sleep in. He first saw you between 9.00 and 9.30am, when you came into the dining room where he was sitting at the table, and he described you as appearing a bit funny. You told him that Carol was having a sleep in and he thought that perhaps you'd been drinking. He went back to his room and continued to read his book.

10 In the interim you performed quite unusual activities in respect of your neighbours. Kevin Hitch, who lived on one side of the deceased's premises, heard you singing country and western music at around 7.00am and observed you coming in and out of the house. At around 9.30 he opened the door after you'd knocked and he said that you then introduced yourself to him and started telling him "we gotta go, we gotta go". When he asked where, you said "don't know where, but I gotta go". He said that, that went on for a few minutes and then he closed the door. He couldn't smell any alcohol and that you were in close proximity, such that he would have smelt it. He said that you were moving around on your feet, either nervous-like or unsteady.

11 Equally, Jim Reidy the neighbour on the other side also heard you singing, he thought around 9 o'clock. It was a fifties-type of tune that went on for a minute or two. He saw you when he was standing at the sink in the kitchen and you then paced up and down outside the house, looking towards him. He said he went out and spoke to you and said "how are you", to which you didn't reply, but picked up the dog and said "you might as well have the dog" or "here you take the dog" and, with that, you lifted the dog over the fence and pushed it onto his side. He said at that time you were neat and tidy, you were clean shaven and your hair was combed. That was your behaviour, as observed, before the discovery of the body of Carol Neeve.

12 Equally, however, it should be noted that during the same time-frame, you rang and had a conversation with an old friend of yours by the name of Daryl Bryan who resided in New Zealand. During that conversation, which was in the morning prior to the discovery of the body of Carol Neeve, when Daryl Brian asked you where you were, you told him that you were in jail for murder. When he asked who you'd murdered, you said your girlfriend and then said to him "Why do they do it" to which he responded "Why do they do what" and your answer "Why do they play around on you". You told him, he was the first person that you'd told about it. And when he asked "How did you do it" you said to him "I strangled her". And when he asked what with, you said a silk scarf.

13 He described you as not being hysterical, somewhat emotional, but not as emotional as he would have expected. Further, you sent a text to your sister Airdrie Pukeroa in which you stated, "Sorry sis have done bad things have super for boys". A reference to, your superannuation being provided to your three sons, in the event of anything happening to you.

14 You also rang and conversed with an old friend by the name of Michael Dalzeil from Aireys Inlet. You had resided in that area and had known him about 12 years. This call was at 9.27 in the morning. During that call, you told him that you wouldn't be down his way for a while and that he should collect your cricket gear and give it to his son. He said the conversation was a bit rambling, but most parts of it were sensible or made sense to him. He had trouble in hearing a lot of it and that made some of the conversation incapable of being made sense of. He said the conversation went for some 13 minutes and you were the one doing most of the talking.

15 After the body was discovered, an ambulance and the police were called. Your behaviour during that time could again be described as bizarre. When Bill Symons discovered Carol Neeve dead, he went next door and got Brenda Reidy to accompany him back to the house, that was a little after midday. She called triple 0 and they responded saying they would send an ambulance. She also called Carol Neeve's other daughter and left a message, and got the assistance of Kevin Hitch. When she was in the bedroom with the deceased, you got back under the covers of the bed and made comments such as "she's just not well" stroking the deceased Carol Neeve on the forehead. You equally behaved in a strange manner with the ambulance officers and the police.

16 You gave evidence on oath as to what occurred in the bedroom on that night. You said that after you went to bed you and Carol Neeve were arguing, that she was arguing with you about her belief that you had stolen her phone and that she was complaining about having to look after Bill Symons, who had a hip operation coming up. You said you turned your back, tried to go to sleep, she kept talking but you ignored her and you vaguely remembered going to sleep and waking later. You said when you awoke Carol also woke up and started arguing with you again, the same as before. You said you told her to shut up, go back to sleep, she didn't and that you have grabbed her around the neck from behind. You demonstrated to the jury and that was a demonstration that involved the use of both arms around her neck area. You indicated that your hands could have been around her neck, but you were not sure, and you said she stopped talking immediately that you grabbed her and that you held her like that for some minutes you thought. You said you kept your arms and hands in that position because you were really trying to cuddle her as well. You said when you let her go, you did not realise she had died and you just went back to sleep.

17 You believed you woke up some time between 4.00 or 5.00 in the morning and, when you looked at her, you realised something was not right and, by that you meant, you said, that you realised she was dead. You lay there for a couple of hours and then you took a number of measures to attempt to commit suicide. One of those related to a tie that was found in the bin in the kitchen, and a part found under the bed in the bedroom. You described as trying to put the tie around your neck. You gave no more detail than that. You said you cut it off, unsure about what you used, that there were marks on your wrist, which were seen in photos taken by the police. You said you believed those marks were a result of you trying to kill yourself. You thought you may have had a knife or scissors, you didn't remember.

18 You also claimed a third way that you attempted to end your life, that you went to the shed, got some brake fluid, brought that back to the house, mixed it with some whiskey, about half a wine glass full of brake fluid and half a wine glass full of whiskey and that you drank the whole lot. You said it did not make you feel sicker as you already did not feel too good.

19 You described it as not doing anything, no burning sensation, no problems with your throat. You claimed to have left the brake fluid in the glass in the kitchen. You thought it may have been the neck tie you tried first, or the cutting of the wrists and that the brake fluid was last. You claimed to have no memory of singing the following morning, no memory of throwing the dog over the fence, no memory of your conversations with your friend in New Zealand or down at Aireys Inlet, no memory of the police or conversations with them. You said the first memory again is being in the custody centre in the evening of the 29th.

20 I heard your evidence and do not accept it as being truthful. I do not believe that there was any real or serious attempt at self harm after you killed Carol Neeve. I do not accept that your behaviour on the morning, in the presence of the neighbours or the police or ambulance officers, was genuine. It is inconsistent with the calls that you made to your friends and your text to your sister. There was no psychiatric evidence called to explain any sort of state in which you were supposed to be at that time. There was only the faintest smell of alcohol and upon your own evidence the only drug ingested was cannabis, the night before, in quantities that were not unfamiliar to you.

21 This murder is bizarre. It is hard to see why jealousy would suddenly occur, why without argument, of any substance, you would kill Carole Neeve. It is a pointless, unprovoked, dreadful murder of a woman who was doing no more than enjoying her life.

22 The law requires that your personal circumstances also be taken into account. You are now aged 52, having been born in February of 1959. You were aged 50 at the time of the commission of the offence. You were born in New Zealand, the eldest of 11 children. Your early years were spent on a farm but with the family moving into a small town when you were aged around 5. Your mother Cecily Wilson is now aged 70. She is of Irish descent and your father, who died in the mid 1980s, was of Maori descent. Your father worked in the meat works.

23 As indicated you were born in 1959 and your parents separated when you were in your mid teens, your father dying in the mid 1980s. So it is clear your mother spent quite some time as a single mother with a large number of children. You attended Manawatu High School and completed the equivalent of Year 10. Although you and your family lived in a small town, your grandparents on your mother's side had a farm, and you spent quite a bit of time with them, where you learned the skills involved for farming. When you left school that was the work that you initially started, milking cows, shearing sheep. Your father, as I indicated, worked in the meat works and ultimately you spent quite a deal of your working life in meat works as a boner or slaughterman. The third area in which you spent employment was in relation to builders and that you did a large amount of fencing and concreting.

24 You were an active sportsman for quite a long time. You particularly played cricket and rugby. However, you equally drank quite a significant amount of alcohol from a relatively early age. It was described as not being a significant problem by your family when you were young, but I note the evidence given by your friend Darryl Bryan, whom you met when you were working at the meat works in New Zealand when you were young. He indicated that you lost your employment at the meat works through your problems with alcohol.

25 You formed a relationship with a woman by the name of Janine Phillips in New Zealand when you were aged around 21 and the two of you travelled through Asia working and travelling. You ended up in Perth in 1984 where you worked as a bricklayer and then at the meat works. Ms Phillips obtained work in a bank and it was whilst in Perth in 1987 that your first child Gerald was born. You then had twin sons Billy and Tim in 1989 and you moved back to Invercargill in New Zealand just prior to their birth, so that Ms Phillips could be closer to her family, for the sort of support that would be required. That relationship failed and, initially, the children lived with your mother for a period of approximately six months, before returning to live with their mother.

26 You formed another relationship and spent time in New Zealand, returning to Australia in 2000. You had been travelling back and forth to Australia for work between the late 1980s and 2000 and ultimately in 2000 you moved full time to Australia, settling in Aireys Inlet and working at the meat works there. Once again, alcohol became a problem. You had a relationship with a woman in Aireys Inlet. Alcohol consumption once again contributed to the breakdown of that relationship. You developed a relationship with Ms Neeve in approximately 2008. That relationship ceased in early 2009 and resumed some weeks prior to her death. You had ceased the consumption of alcohol, some weeks prior to this murder occurring and it was never suggested that the ingestion of alcohol or drugs had any part to play in the commission of the offence.

27 You have been on remand since that time and you remained at the Melbourne Assessment Prison until a couple of weeks prior to the trial and you had the occupation there of being a billet. You were transferred not long ago to the Metropolitan Remand Centre. You have little in the way of family in this country, with one niece living here in the Dandenong area, so you have limited physical contact, but she does occasionally come to visit. You have friends who visit on an irregular basis, but you maintain regular contact with your family via telephone and mail.

28 This is a sad and senseless crime. Carol Neeve was the mother of two girls, one of whom was quite young. The result is that the older child now has to take on the role of mother for her younger sister, whilst coming to grips with her own grief at the loss of her much loved mother. You have destroyed many lives through your inexplicable actions. It is not possible for this court to replace the girls' mother, or the daughter that her mother has lost, or the sister or the friend, or all the irreplaceable roles that Carol Neeve had in her life. Your actions will cause you also to lose in many ways the enjoyment of many years of your life, all for no obvious reason.

29 Nothing that this court does can take away the pain that you have inflicted upon the lives of Carol Neeve's daughters, her mother, her relatives and friends. The sentence imposed on you is not a reflection of the worth of their mother, daughter or friend, it is a mixture of matters dictated by law that must be taken into account when imposing sentence. Carol Neeve's worth, like all persons in our community, is immeasurable. The court hopes that at some time in the future, when time has helped to heal, that when they think of Carol Neeve, those who do so will remember her with a smile and joy for the life that she lived, rather than the pain of how she died.

30 In relation to your prior convictions, I take into account that they are of some age, and have but a minor relevance to the issue of sentencing. I do also take into account the need for both general and specific deterrence, which have application in this case.

31 In terms of your future rehabilitation, your prospects could be considered reasonably good, in that you are going to be an elderly man before you are likely to be released, and you intend to return to your family in New Zealand upon your release.

32 I take into account that your time in prison will have a degree of loneliness attached to it, but not of such a degree that it will make your time in prison much more burdensome.

33 Taking into account all of the matters to which I have referred both personal and general and the need to impose a just and appropriate punishment, I direct that you are to be sentenced on the one charge of murder to a term of 22 years imprisonment. I direct that you are to serve a term of 18 years imprisonment before becoming eligible for parole.

34 Declare that subject to Section 18(4), 646 (six hundred and forty six) days have been served in pre-sentence detention in relation to this term and such is to be noted in the records of the court.

35 Application for retention of forensic sample under section 464ZFB(1) is granted.