R v Dupas
[2010] VSC 540
•26 November 2010
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1533 of 2006
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| PETER NORRIS DUPAS |
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JUDGE: | HOLLINGWORTH J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 26-29 October, 1, 3-5, 8-11, 15-19 November 2010 (trial), | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 26 November 2010 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Dupas | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2010] VSC 540 | |
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Criminal law – Sentence – Murder – Serious violent offender – Lengthy criminal history – No remorse – No prospects of rehabilitation – Sentenced to imprisonment for life – No minimum term fixed
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Ms M Williams SC Mr T Hoare | Solicitor for Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr G Thomas SC Mr M Regan | Victoria Legal Aid |
HER HONOUR:
Peter Norris Dupas, you have been found guilty by a jury of the murder of Mersina Halvagis on 1 November 1997.
You are already serving two terms of life imprisonment, without parole, the first of which was imposed in August 2000, for the murder of Nicole Patterson in April 1999, and the second in August 2004, for the murder of Margaret Maher in October 1997.
Even though any sentence that I now impose on you will not have any practical effect on your term of imprisonment, the process of sentencing you for the murder of Mersina Halvagis is an important one. The gravity of the sentencing exercise is not diminished by your current sentences; your victim is not to be reduced to a mere cipher because of your earlier convictions. It is important that there is a public denunciation of your terrible crime, and an acknowledgement of the impact it has had on so many people. And in a case such as this, the courts must also make it perfectly clear to others that behaviour such as yours will not be tolerated.
On the afternoon of Saturday, 1 November 1997, Mersina Halvagis went to the Fawkner Cemetery, to tend her grandmother’s grave, as she often did. As she was tidying up the grave and placing flowers there, you attacked her, suddenly and savagely, with a knife. You stabbed her ferociously, more than 30 times, mainly in the chest and abdomen areas. The blood stains at the scene suggest that she tried to get away from you. The injuries to her hands show that she tried, unsuccessfully, to defend herself. But she was slightly built, and had no chance of defending herself against your strength and the ferocity of your attack. It must have been an absolutely terrifying ordeal for her. Ms Halvagis died from her stab wounds, slumped only three gravesites away from her grandmother’s.
When Ms Halvagis’ fiancé, Angelo Gorgievski, had not heard from her and could not contact her that evening, he started to worry that something might have happened. He spent the night driving around Melbourne, and ringing around, trying to find her. Ultimately, in the early hours of Sunday morning, he and his father scaled the cemetery fence and found the car which Ms Halvagis had been driving. They called the police, who arrived and joined in the search. Mr Gorgievski was the person who discovered Ms Halvagis’ body.
Nobody witnessed your actions, although several people had seen a man matching your description behaving strangely at the cemetery that day.
Despite lengthy investigations, it was some years before the police regarded you as a suspect. Extensive media publicity about your involvement in the deaths of Ms Patterson and Ms Maher eventually led to several people positively identifying you as the person they saw at Fawkner Cemetery on the day of Ms Halvagis’ death.
One of those people, Mrs Laima Burman, had already come forward in early November 1997 and given police a description which fitted you. In April 1998, on Mrs Burman’s instructions, a police artist created a computer image, which also bore a strong likeness to you. When shown a folder containing the images of 12 men, in May 1999, Mrs Burman was only able to point to you as one of three men who had features resembling the man at the cemetery; that is not particularly surprising, given that your hair and glasses were quite different, and you were smiling, in that photo. But when Mrs Burman saw a different photo of you, on the front page of a newspaper in August 2000, she immediately recognised you as the man she had seen at the cemetery.
Between January 2002 and March 2003, you were housed in Sirius East, one of the protection units at Port Phillip Prison, at the same time as disgraced former solicitor, Andrew Fraser, who was serving a sentence for serious drug offences. Over time, you befriended him and asked him for advice about the police investigation, and subsequent charge, in relation to the murder of Ms Maher. Mr Fraser gave evidence to the effect that, by your words and actions, you admitted to him your guilt of the murder of Ms Halvagis.
As part of the circumstantial case against you, the prosecution also relied upon certain lies that you had told, as implied admissions of your guilt. You told the police and an old friend, both of whom were asking you about the Halvagis murder, that you had never been to the Fawkner Cemetery and did not know anybody buried there. In fact, your grandfather was buried there, as you well knew. And eyewitnesses placed you at the cemetery on the day of the murder. The jury may well have regarded your lies as a deliberate attempt to distance yourself from the scene of the murder, because you knew full well that you were the murderer.
You killed Mersina Halvagis when she was only 25 years old, just starting to establish her professional career, and looking forward to building a life together with her fiancé.
Mersina was a loving and much-loved member of the Halvagis family, and your actions have profoundly affected them all, particularly her parents, George and Christina Halvagis, her brothers, Nick and Bill, and her sister, Dimitria. In their victim impact statements, the family have spoken in very moving terms about the devastating and ongoing effects of losing Mersina, particularly in such terrible circumstances. Not only did you destroy Mersina’s future, but you also ended her family’s dreams of sharing their lives and growing old together.
To the Halvagis family, I say this: I know there is nothing that any court can say or do that will bring back your beloved Mersina, or make up for her loss. But I hope that the jury’s verdict in this case will bring some degree of closure to your long quest to find the person responsible for Mersina’s death and bring him to justice.
Angelo Gorgievski has also suffered enormously from the loss of his fiancée. At your first trial, he faced the indignity of your then counsel suggesting that he was the murderer, a suggestion which the previous jury rightly rejected. Whilst no such allegation was made this time, Mr Gorgievski nevertheless found himself having to recount in court the deeply distressing circumstances in which he discovered Ms Halvagis’ body.
Mr Gorgievski has been fortunate to have the love and support of family, friends and an understanding employer, to help him through the ordeal of the last 13 years. Although Mr Gorgievski’s victim impact statement speaks of his great pain, it also speaks of the positive impact which Mersina Halvagis had on his life; how her attitude and drive still encourage and inspire him to do and be the best he can.
This is an extremely serious example of the most serious crime known to our legal system and our community. You callously and intentionally took the life of another human being, a complete stranger. In doing so, you not only deprived Mersina Halvagis of her most precious right, her right to life, but you also deprived those who loved her of their daughter, sister, fiancée and friend.
You had been seen around the cemetery that day, behaving in a way that unsettled several people, probably looking for a vulnerable target. Tragically, it seems that Ms Halvagis was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Your actions cannot be explained in any way by reference to mental illness, drugs or alcohol, by childhood or other traumas, or by any triggering event.
You have an appalling criminal history, going back to 1972, the details of which have been set out in previous sentences. As Kaye J noted, in sentencing you for the murder of Margaret Maher: “the hallmark of your previous convictions involves wanton and despicable acts of violence to defenceless women.”[1] I agree with previous judicial observations, to the effect that 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.
[1]R v Dupas [2004] VSC 281 at [10].
In sentencing you for the murder of Nicole Patterson, Vincent J asked the following question: “At a fundamental level, as human beings, you present for us the awful, threatening and unanswerable question – how did you come to be as you are?”[2] The question remains as relevant, and as unanswerable, now, as when it was posed in 2000.
[2]R v Dupas [2000] VSC 356 at [28].
You have demonstrated no remorse for this brutal crime. Nothing has been put forward which might mitigate your sentence in any way. And there is no suggestion that you have any prospect of rehabilitation.
In addition, I declare that you are to be sentenced as a serious offender, for the purposes of the Sentencing Act 1991, a fact that will be entered in the court records under s 6F of the Act. One of the consequences of that, is that the court must regard the protection of the community as the principal purpose for which the sentence is imposed.
For the murder of Mersina Halvagis, I sentence you to life imprisonment, without parole.
You are now aged 57. As a result of your own depraved conduct, in this case and others, you will live out the rest of your days in prison.
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