Peter Dupas is serving a life sentence without parole for multiple murders.
MANY of Australia’s most infamous prisoners live in hope they will one day again walk free.
But for ‘lifers’ refused non-parole periods, a release date won’t ever exist.
Life imprisonment without parole is the most severe punishment under the nation’s criminal law since the abolition of the death penalty in 1973.
The judgment is reserved for the worst of the worst criminals who have committed heinous crimes and remain a serious danger to society.
But news.com.au understands there are less than 15 of the approximate 1019 prisoners currently serving life sentences in Australia who have had the penalty imposed on them.
The ABS and the Australian Institute of Criminology do not keep records relating to the number of prisoners currently serving life without the possibility of parole.
In some states and territories, life imprisonment is mandatory for murder convictions, but the length of time a life sentence constitutes varies across jurisdictions.
It can come with a non-parole period of 10 years imprisonment to the remainder of an offender’s life.
Most often a non-parole period is fixed, with the more severe non-parole periods reaching a minimum 35 years. Those with non-parole periods are eligible to apply for parole when the periods expires — if they live to see the day.
Among the notorious killers currently serving life sentences with non-parole periods, is Melbourne ABC worker Jill Meagher’s killer Adrian Bayley.
Bayley was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 35 years over the 2012 murder and rape of Meagher.
He will be eligible for parole in 2058, when he is 86 years of age.
While the possibility of one day again tasting freedom may offer a glimmer of hope to some of the country's most depraved criminals, the ‘lifers’ without non-parole periods have nothing to look forward to.
Convicted bank robber John Killick, who has spent time in prison with notorious serial killers and rapists, said the possibility of release was an important element in giving the prisoners a reason to behave behind bars.
“You don’t have to let them out but you have to give them hope,” Mr Killick said.
“It’s those who have got nothing to lose that become the most dangerous.”
PRISONERS SERVING LIFE IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE IN AUSTRALIA:
Convicted serial killer Peter Dupas has no chance of parole and will die in jail.
PETER DUPAS — Serial killer, Victoria
Peter Dupas is serving concurrent life sentences without parole for the murders of Mersina Halvagis, Nicole Patterson and Margaret Maher, and is suspected of more killings.
Dupas attacked then killed Ms Halvagis as she prayed at her grandmother’s grave at Fawkner Cemetery in Victoria on November 1, 1997.
He is also serving two life sentences with no parole for the murders of Ms Maher in 1997 and Ms Patterson in 1999.
“You seem to be motivated by a deeply entrenched, perverted and sadistic hatred of women, and a complete contempt for them and their right to live,” Justice Hollingworth said when sentencing the 57-year-old to his third life term without parole.
MARK VALERA, ‘The butcher of Wollongong’, New South Wales
Mark Valera — who was known as Mark van Krevel — bashed shopkeeper David O’Hearn, 59, to death in a random attack at the victim’s Albion Park home in June 1998. He mutilated and dismembered the body and wrote the word Satan on a mirror with the victim’s blood. Two weeks later he bashed and strangled alleged paedophile and former Wollongong mayor Frank Arkell, 68. He was sentenced to two life sentences without parole in December 2000, aged 21.
Former nurse Roger Dean was convicted of murdering 11 nursing home residents in a fire at Quakers Hill in 2011.
ROGER DEAN — Nursing home murders, New South Wales
Former nurse Roger Dean was convicted of murdering 11 nursing home residents by lighting a fire at Quakers Hill, in Sydney’s northwest in 2011, and was jailed for life without parole.
Judge Megan Latham of the NSW Supreme Court said Dean’s crimes were in the worst category.
“The pain and terror suffered by all of the victims must have been horrific. A worse fate is difficult to imagine,” she said.
Some of his victims died in the fire but others died agonising deaths over following days in hospital.
When he was interviewed by police, Dean said he loved the residents but he had been “corrupted with evil thoughts” and claimed “Satan” was talking to him.
Snowtown killer murderer John Bunting in his former home in Salisbury North.
JOHN BUNTING AND ROBERT WAGNER — The ‘bodies in the barrels’ Snowtown murders, South Australia
Robert Wagner and his accomplice John Bunting are among a small group of the worst Australian murderers with no chance of parole.
Bunting and Wagner were charged with 12 murders between 1992 and 1999 — with Wagner eventually convicted of 10 and Bunting 11 murders following South Australia’s longest criminal trial.
The vile serial killing spree culminated in Wagner and Bunting cooking and eating the flesh of their final victim, David Johnson, who was murdered inside the Snowtown bank vault where police discovered the remains of eight victims inside six barrels in May 1999.
SEF GONZALES — ‘Family killer’, New South Wales
Sef Gonzales was just 20-years-old when he wiped out his family in their North Ryde home in July, 2001.
The Sydney student brutally stabbed, bashed and strangled his father Teddy Gonzales, 46, mother Mary-Loiva Josephine, 43, and sister Clodine, 18. He spray painted the words “F--- off Asians KKK” on a wall in the house in a failed attempt to make it appear to be a racially motivated attack.
Ten days before he had attempted to murder his mother by poisoning, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Gonzales was found guilty of the three murders in May 2004 and is now serving three concurrent life sentences without parole. In November 2007 his appeal against conviction and sentence was dismissed. Gonzales maintains his innocence.
An undated photo of abattoir worker Katherine Knight who was convicted of murdering her husband John Price in Aberdeen.
KATHERINE KNIGHT — Sadistic husband killer and cannibal, New South Wales
One of the few women prisoners to ever be classified “never to be released”, Katherine Knight is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the brutal and sadistic murder of her husband, in Aberdeen NSW.
Knight had sex with John Price then stabbed and skinned him before cooking his flesh in February 2000.
Knight was dubbed Australia’s “Hannibal Lecter” after she hung his skinned remains from a meat hook in the living room.
She also cut off his head, boiled it in a pot and baked pieces of his buttocks to serve with vegetables and gravy to his adult children.
She is serving her time at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre.
Port Arthur gunman Martin Bryant pictured in Risdon Prison, Hobart.
MARTIN BRYANT — Port Arthur gunman, Tasmania
Martin Bryant was sentenced to prison for the term of his natural life, serving 35 life sentences with no possibility of parole for killing 35 people, including children, and injuring 23 others in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
Bryant has spent time in solitary confinement and been housed in various secure wings of prison with select other prisoners for almost 19 years. For the main part he is shunned by his fellow inmates, but he has also been known to pay other men with family blocks of chocolate in order to let him perform sexual services for them, according to the Daily Telegraph.
ANDREW PETER GARFORTH, New South Wales
Andrew Garforth was convicted of the abduction, sexual assault and murder of Ebony Simpson, 9, at Bargo in August 1992. The court deemed the crime to fall into the worst category of murder and sentenced Garforth to life imprisonment without parole aged 29 in July 1993. He unsuccessfully appealed his sentence to the High Court in 1994. His prisoner status was downgraded from A2 to B last July, a decision immediately reversed by Corrective Services Minister, David Elliott.
CRESPIN ADANGUIDI, New South Wales
Crespin Adanguidi, 27, murdered the wife and children of his Chinese gay lover Raymond Shen at Rockdale, on February 1, 2003. He pleaded not guilty on the grounds of mental illness, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. But a jury convicted him of bludgeoning Shiquin Zhu, 55, and shooting Pin Shen, 27, and Christy Bo Shen, 23. The previous night he attacked Shen, tied him up and held him hostage at his Maroubra unit, demanding $200,000, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. In 2005 aged 27 he was sentenced to three life sentences without the possibility of parole. An appeal in 2006 was dismissed.
Convicted backpacker murderer Ivan Milat was found guilty of at least seven murders and began his life sentence in 1996.Source:News Corp Australia
IVAN MILAT — Backpacker serial killer, New South Wales
Ivan Milat was convicted over the murders of seven young backpackers in the Belanglo State Forrest in the 1990s.
Milat was given a life sentence on each count, with all sentences running consecutively and without the possibility of parole.
He was also convicted of the attempted murder, false imprisonment and robbery of Paul Onions and was sentenced to an additional six years’ jail for each.