Never to be released

A GROUP of Australian criminals are so dangerous, so evil, they are locked up forever with “never to be released” marked on their files. Here’s why.

THEY are Australia’s deadliest criminals. The worst of the very worst, a group considered so dangerous and beyond help they are locked away. Forever.

These men, and a small number of women, have only one certainty in their lives — they will die in prison.

While other inmates who have been convicted for serious crimes, including even murder, have the harshest sentences imposed, the door remains open that they will eventually be released into the community.

But there are some who have “never to be released” marked on their files and will never get the chance to see the outside of prison walls again.

Some, like serial killer Ivan Milat, have achieved their goal of infamy but there are others who aren’t as well known.

Kevin Crump was jailed in 1973 with co-accused Allan Baker for the murders of James Lamb and Virginia Morse.

Mr Lamb was shot four times in the head and Mrs Morse was abducted, tied up and repeatedly raped before being beaten. Then she was shot in the head and dumped in a river.

The details of her injuries were so severe they are still covered by a suppression order. Their murders, particularly the “atrocities” committed to Mrs Morse, haunted experienced investigators for decades. Crump tried to challenge his “never to be released” status, but in 2012 the High Court ruled he was to remain jailed until he was dead or incapacitated.

At the time of his trial, he was told by the sentencing judge: “I believe that you should spend the rest of your lives in jail and there you should die.”

Kevin Crump was convicted over the deaths of Ian Lamb and Virginia Morse in 1973Source:News Corp Australia

Roger Dean was a nurse who was convicted of murdering 11 nursing home residents in a fire at Quakers Hill, in Sydney’s northwest in 2011, and has been 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 in the days after 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.

Roger Dean lit a fire in a nursing home and killed 11 elderly residents.Source:news.com.au

Walter Marsh stalked his former boss Michelle Beets, 57, and slit her throat as she stood at the doorway of her Chatswood home in Sydney’s north in 2010.

He learned the cutting technique when he was a marine. After he cut her throat, he repeatedly stabbed and left her for dead.

Prosecutors argued his crime fit the worst category of offences because it showed an extraordinary amount of preparation and brutality.

Marsh had “meticulously planned the murder of Ms Beets as he perceived that she was an obstacle to the retention of his 457 visa”, his sentencing hearing was told.

Before he handed down the sentence, Judge Derek Price spoke of the devastating injury Ms Beets suffered.

“The cuts to the neck were inflicted with such ferocity that when Dr Rebecca Irvine, the pathologist, attended at the murder scene, she could see that the neck had been cut through.”

“The last moments of her life must have been horrifying. It was an act of barbarity for the offender to kill Ms Beets in the manner that he did.”

Convicted killer, nurse and former US marine Walter Marsh smiling after being sentenced to life in prison for murdering his former boss, nursing unit manager Michelle Beets.

Martin Bryant needs no introduction after becoming one of the most infamous Australians ever when he killed 35 people at Port Arthur, Tasmania.

The 1996 shooting remains one of the world’s most deadly massacres and led to a major overhaul of Australia's gun laws. He was found guilty at trial of 35 counts of murder and was jailed without possibility of parole.

Gunman Martin Bryant will never be released from jail.Source:News Corp Australia

One of the few women prisoners to ever be classified “never to be released”, Knight is serving her life sentence after an horrific murder.

After having sex with her husband John Price, she stabbed and skinned him in February 2000 before cooking his flesh.

Knight was dubbed Australia’s “Hannibal Lecter” because after she skinned him, she hung his remains from a meat hook in the living room.

She also cut off his head and boiled it in a pot and baked pieces of his buttocks to serve with vegetables and gravy to his adult children.

Katherine Knight has been dubbed Australia’s Hannibal LecterSource:News Limited

Andy Albury was convicted of the gruesome murder of Gloria Pindan in the Northern Territory in November 1983.

He used a broken bottle to disfigure Ms Pindan — and told police in brutal detail of how he killed her.

“I started to kick her, and hit her, then I got one stubbie beer bottle top and started to cut her. After I finished cutting her, I pulled out her eye and left her there,” he said.

When asked how he ripped her eye out, Albury responded: “Put my finger in the socket twisted down with the end of my finger and just give it a jerk.”

“I think I’ll do it again. I get enjoyment out of it, don’t know why,” the NT News reported.

Albury told a psychiatrist his fantasy of arriving in a random town and killing residents.

But the psychiatrist didn’t believe he was seeking notoriety, like many serial killers.

“He simply gets pleasure out of the thought of having that degree of control over people,” the psychiatrist said.

Murderer Andy Albury said he got enjoyment from murder.Source:News Limited

The victims were Bega schoolgirls Lauren Barry and Nichole Collins and Melbourne schoolgirl Prue Bird, whose remains have never been found.

Prue was his first victim in 1992. It’s believed she was held captive in a shed and raped but the exact circumstances of her death — and who else was involved — may never be known.

Five years later, in October 1997, Camilleri, then 28, and his friend Lindsay Beckett, abducted Lauren and Nichole and raped them. They were eventually tied up and Beckett killed them — on Camilleri’s order.

Leslie Camilleri arrives at court to be sentenced for the murder of Prue Bird, in December 2013.Source:News Limited

Now aged in his late 70s, Robert Arthur Selby Lowe will die in jail. But not without trying to do whatever he can to get free.

Lowe has tried to be released from jail in recent years but has been rejected by the courts each time.

In 1991, Lowe abducted, raped and murdered six-year-old Sheree Beasley, who was lured to her death while she was riding her bike.

He is one of only a few Victorian criminals to be classed as too dangerous to be released.

Convicted murderer Robert Arthur Selby Lowe will die in jail after having his freedom bids thwarted.Source:News Corp Australia

Paul Haigh murdered six innocent people in the late 1970s in a series of shootings and stabbings, including a 10-year-old boy.

During separate robberies in 1978, he shot dead Windsor Tattslotto agency worker Evelyn Abrahams, 58, and Caulfield pizza shop owner and family man Bruno Cingolani, 45.

In June 1979, Haigh shot dead in his Melbourne flat his associate Wayne Smith, 27, so he “wouldn’t look weak” in front of accomplices, the Herald Sun reported.

The next month in Ripponlea, he shot dead Sheryle Gardner, 31, in a car to “shut her loosened, troublemaking mouth”.

Haigh murdered his girlfriend Lisa Brearley, 19, — after allowing another man to rape her.

A court heard he stabbed her 157 times, later writing that “I only intended to do 20 but I lost count”.

During a court hearing, psychiatrist Dr Yvonne Skinner said Haigh did not have the capacity to feel empathy on an emotional level and would be a “moderate to high” risk of reoffending if he was ever released.

Like many others sentenced to life in jail, the murderer tried, unsuccessfully, to have a minimum term imposed.

But a prosecutor, Peter Rose, SC, said he’d committed the “worst combination of murders one could get in this state” — murders that were so terrible “life without parole was the appropriate sentence” and urged the court to keep him behind bars.

Serial killer Paul Haigh.Source:News Limited