“I said of course he was a model prisoner, he’s in protective custody because he doesn’t want the other inmates to find out what he did. He told her he was sorry and tried to convince her he was a changed man, a model prisoner.
I said, ‘I want to thank you for agreeing to see me.” He was breathing heavily, as if he was nervous, and his eyes were lowered. The day they met she watched him walk into the room. “I didn’t care and wouldn’t believe anything he said anyway.” She was fighting to build a good life for herself and her kids.” “I wanted to tell him how much I loved my sister. She met him in jail in 2010 because she wanted to tell him - face-to-face - of the pain he’d caused. She’s angry there is hope for him, when he removed all hope for four of her loved ones. “He killed a quarter of my family, that’s what he took away.”įor her, life in jail means just that. It puts a lot of pressure on and you need a lot of family support,” she told this weekend.Įven with that support, the constant thought Mitchell could be released hung over her.
#PROBLEM CHILD 1990 AXE FREE#
For Mrs Clow, the thought he could one day walk free is almost too much. Mitchell is due to face a second parole appeal in September this year, after being denied release in 2013. A glimmer of hope for the young man that he would one day be free again. Mitchell fought that ruling, however, and the new sentence was eventually reduced to the former one, a life term with a 20-year minimum. The public were outraged - some believed the case was proof the death penalty needed to be reintroduced - and the Crown won an appeal to have him locked away with no chance of parole. In 1995, he was convicted of four counts of murder and of sexual assault and jailed for life with a 20-year minimum non-parole period. He denied involvement at first, then confessed to four counts of murder and sexual assault. They eventually caught Mitchell through DNA he left at the scene and a partial palm print. Residents locked their doors and police worked tirelessly to find the killer.
The thought of a madman creeping around with an axe killing people was the stuff of nightmares, not sleepy Greenough. All still remember.Īmara, seven, and Katrina, five, were killed in their beds.Ī massive manhunt was launched as a wave of fear swept across the state. The murder scenes were so horrific that many years later, experienced homicide detectives struggled with the memories of what they saw that day. Upstairs asleep in different bedrooms were the two youngest children, Amara, seven, and Katrina, five. He sexually assaulted her and then struck her with the axe too, killing her before he molested her again. Mitchell wielded the axe and cut Daniel down before carrying on inside and finding Ms MacKenzie sleeping on a mattress in the lounge. Mitchell was high on a cocktail of cannabis, alcohol and amphetamines - and he had an axe.
He had been alerted by the sound of a car pulling up. The teenager went outside the home that night and met Mitchell, then 22, in the yard. He was the only one who saw the horror coming. Mitchell relied on the element of surprise when he launched his fatal attack, with only 16-year-old Daniel awake at the time. The details that can be published shed some light on the horror of what went on that night at the family’s modest home in Greenough, Western Australia. That secrecy order continues to today - shielding the public from knowing just how depraved the actions of William Patrick Mitchell were on February 21, 1993. To protect them, he issued a rare suppression order banning the exact circumstances from being reported. The Greenough Murders, as they are known, were so grisly a judge believed the details were too traumatic for the public to know everything that happened. Her sister, Karen MacKenzie, died 23 years ago today, along with her three children, in an act of murder so brutal it still ranks as one of Australia’s worst. EVALYN Clow feels as if her life ended the day four family members were slaughtered by a psychopath with an axe.
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