R v Howard
[2009] VSC 9
•9 February 2009
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted | |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No.1670 of 2008
| THE QUEEN |
| V |
| PETER JOHN HOWARD |
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JUDGE: | KING J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 30 July, 6 August 2008 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 9 February 2009 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Howard | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2009] VSC 9 | |
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Murder – plea of guilty – already serving sentence for murder – second murder committed years before current sentence undergoing – elderly accused seeking maximum penalty – desire to not leave prison – murder of very elderly mother.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr P Rose S.C. | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Self represented |
HER HONOUR:
Peter John Howard you have pleaded guilty to the murder of Agnes Wilson Marshall Howard at Boronia on the 9th day of January 1990. The deceased was your mother. You are currently 77 years of age, having been born on 28 September 1931. You have admitted a prior conviction for seven counts of kidnapping and one count of robbery on 1 April 1976 for which you were sentenced to be imprisoned for seven years on each of the counts of kidnapping and five years on the count of robbery. All such sentences were ordered to be served concurrently making an effective sentence of seven years. You were ordered to serve a minimum term of two years before becoming eligible for parole.
There are two other matters which, whilst not prior convictions for the purpose of sentencing, are extremely relevant matters. The first of these was in 1998 when you were dealt with at the Ringwood Magistrates’ Court for making false documents to the prejudice of others. You admitted having falsified several bank accounts in your mother’s name and in that of several other relatives. All of this occurred for many years following your mother’s death. You had forged a number of signatures, your purpose being to continue collecting your mother’s aged pension and, according to the information you provided to the police, thus reducing the risk of suspicion by authorities by dividing the money into a number of accounts.
Finally, the matter of the murder of Olive Maas which occurred on 12 June 2002. You were charged with her murder and convicted on 19 November 2003. You were sentenced on 12 March 2004 to a term of imprisonment of 20 years with 15 years minimum. The conviction was overturned on appeal, a retrial followed which resulted again in your conviction for the murder of Olive Maas and on 16 October 2006 you were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with 15 years non-parole and your earliest release date is currently 20 June 2017.
I will deal with the circumstances relating to the murder of Olive Maas shortly.
In relation to the circumstances of the murder of your mother, at the time of the murder you were 58 years of age. Your mother was born in September 1901 and at the date of her death was 89 years of age. You and your mother lived together in Boronia. She had married in 1929 and there was only one child of that relationship, which was you. According to the information you provided to the psychiatrist, your father had a gambling problem and your mother believed she had married the wrong man, the relationship was accordingly quite rocky.
In the mid-1940s your mother and yourself moved to Melbourne. You have been described as the two of you living a most reclusive lifestyle, having little contact with the community in general. When you left school you obtained employment at what could be described as low-level clerking positions. You would not last normally much more than two years at any position becoming either bored or detached from the position in which you were working or the people with whom you were working. You clearly found it difficult to socialise and you generally mistrusted people.
As indicated, in April 1976 you were convicted for the offence of kidnapping and robbery and sentenced to seven years imprisonment with a two year minimum. When you were in your mid-40s you were placed on a disability pension as you were considered to be suffering from depression and unable to work and you never worked from that time on. You have had two relationships, both of quite short duration, in your life. In July of 1982 you and your mother moved into the rented premises in Catherine Street in Boronia. Your mother was receiving an aged pension and you were on the disability pension. You and your mother clearly maintained a close relationship and neither of you mixed with others in the community. As your mother became older you became the recorded nominee with CentreLink in respect of your mother’s pension payments; effectively giving you control over her financial affairs.
The deceased became ill as time went on and in July of 1989 she was admitted to the William Angliss Hospital for an operation. It was major surgery; she had a bowel blockage and her health was poor. She was hospitalised in excess of four weeks. After being released from hospital her health continued to deteriorate and she was attended by her general practitioner who had been her general practitioner for a period in excess of 20 years. The last of the visits by the practitioner was on 5 September 1989 when you informed Dr Pilkington that there was no need for her to return to visit your mother again. Dr Pilkington advised you that your mother would have to see someone because she was old and frail with high blood pressure and was obviously degenerating in her health.
You told the police that, over the four month period after her release from hospital, it was apparent that your mother was battling and getting tired of the situation. You told the police that she said to you “I’ve had enough of this I wish you would shoot me”. You said that you were both very stressed and that you had to make a judgment as her health deteriorated and you made a decision to kill her after she had requested you to do so.
You told the police you determined the most appropriate way to kill your mother was with sleeping tablets, but that you had a backup plan in case that did not work. On the evening of the 8th of January 1990 you crushed up a large number of sleeping tablets, placed the powder into a glass of water, gave it to the deceased who then passed out. You said you placed your mother in her bed and you checked her early in the morning and found her to be unconscious but still breathing. You then took a sawn off .22 semi-automatic rifle and placed a round into the gun. You put a small pad of material on the forehead of your mother shooting her through the centre of her forehead and that she died instantly.
You told the police also that you placed a number of sheets of plastic over the bedroom floor and then covered the sheets with newspaper. You obtained a hacksaw, a knife, a number of buckets and plastic garbage bags. You took your mother from the bed, placed her face down on the floor and used a hacksaw to cut off her head at the shoulders. You drained the blood from the head, placed it in a plastic bag. You cut off both her arms just under the shoulders, both lower limbs at the knees, then through the centre of the torso and continued to dismember her in this way. You then placed all of the body parts in a number of garbage bags which you taped up. You then wrapped those garbage bags in newspaper. That night you placed the packages of body parts in both your garbage bin and that of your neighbour. You put both bins out for collection which occurred the next day. You then spent a considerable time cleaning up. You disposed of the firearm in the industrial bin in the Boronia central business district.
How this material came to light was as a result of you contacting the police on 23 May 2007 requesting to be reinterviewed in relation to the death of your mother. You were interviewed then on 30 May 2007 and 14 November 2007. The reason for your volunteering to speak to the police was to ensure that you stayed in prison. A matter I will deal with shortly.
Following the actual murder of your mother, you continued to collect your mother’s pension until 1998. As a result of an investigation by a Westpac Bank investigator who questioned you about your mother and her location, you then ceased claiming the fraudulent payments when the authorities launched an investigation into the pension payments and you thereafter gave an untrue account, including a false cause and date of your mother’s death.
In May of 1998 you contacted CentreLink by telephone and informed them of the death of your mother. No death certificate was provided. It was subsequent to this that you were dealt with at the Ringwood Magistrates’ Court for making false documents.
Nothing further occurred in respect to your mother at that stage but some years later on 12 June 2002, the body of Olive Maas who lived opposite you at 18B Catherine Street, Boronia was found. She had been murdered. An investigation into the murder of Olive Maas was commenced and you were identified relatively quickly as a suspect. During that investigation you told the investigators that your mother had died of natural causes in May 1998 but refused to provide any further information. The investigators made enquiries of many organisations and records and were unable to find any evidence of your mother having been alive at any time from 1989 onwards.
On 12 March 2004 you were convicted of the murder of Olive Maas and subsequent to that on 24 May 2004 you took part in a video interview pertaining to the circumstances of the death of your mother. During the course of that interview you declined to answer any questions and made a no-comment record of interview.
In relation to the murder of Olive Maas which occurred, as I said, in 2002 you were aged 70 at the time that you murdered Ms Maas. She was stabbed to death and there were some 57 stab wounds. There does not appear to be any known motive. The only reference being that she sometimes had visitors who parked outside your premises which annoyed you. You are of course not to be sentenced in respect of that nor is it to be used as a prior conviction but it is relevant to the appropriate penalty that I need to impose upon you.
In relation to this plea, you chose to be unrepresented; despite a number of suggestions from different judges as to the reasons why it would be appropriate for you to have representation. You again indicated to me that you did not wish to be represented, that you considered yourself to be quite capable of explaining exactly what you wished to say, which was basically that you did not wish to put a plea in mitigation. You wished to ensure that you received the maximum penalty as you had no desire to leave prison at any stage before you die.
You explained that you were comfortable, felt secure and safe in prison, which is not something you feel or felt out in the community. You indicated that you were frightened of being released into the community at the age of approximately 86 with nowhere to live, no contacts, and no interest in being part of the community.
I asked you to consider whether you would cooperate in the obtaining of a psychiatric report, as I felt that it would be of great assistance to me in determining the appropriate sentence for this offence. Initially you agreed, you then changed your mind because of the difficulties in arranging such an appointment and then, finally, you did change your mind again and agreed to the assessment. I have received that assessment. It was prepared by Dr Alexandra Wellborn and is dated 12 October 2008. You have, as I understand it, been provided with a copy of that report and it is a document that I have used to assist me in determining the appropriate sentence.
I also have to take into account your personal circumstances and history. The personal history that I have obtained is from the psychiatric report. As I said, you are the only child of your parents. You had quite a solitary upbringing. You described neither of your parents as trusting and referred often to the atmosphere of shame that existed in the family towards your father and his gambling debts and his problems.
By the time you were five you had been take from Tasmania to Melbourne and back to Tasmania when your mother separated from your father. You described yourself as being extremely close to your mother who made you constantly aware that your father was not really “up to scratch” and she was very concerned about you not getting into trouble. She did not want, as it was put, “any inclination to criminality”.
You were an avid reader of history, but you found schoolwork boring. You indicated that you were wary of other children at school and distrusting of them. You recounted to the psychiatrist about one occasion in which a child at school pulled your tie, you knocked that child to the ground, you were only about 10 years old at the time but you described a pleasant feeling of power after knocking the other child down to the ground. You attended school performing reasonably well. At your final year at school at the age of 16 you were disrupted by your mother’s reconciliation with your father and by your return back again to Melbourne. As a result you only just passed that year. Your father remained living with you and your mother, but I have no information as to when or how he died, except that I have gleaned it was a long time before your mother’s death.
After leaving high school you worked in a number of different jobs, including as a market gardener and a clerk for an advertising agency. You worked for some years in the public library as a clerk and some three years as a clerk in the Department of Agriculture. You stated that the reason you moved from job to job was because you got easily bored with the work and lost focus. You said you never felt comfortable being around people and became easily overwhelmed by perceived pressure to perform in your workplace.
In your early 20s and 30s you began investing in shares and managed to sustain a small income from those shares over the next three years. It was later, when your investment accounts collapsed, about the age of 40 that you came under great stress. You were placed on a disability support pension by your general practitioner, with what you described as a non-specific diagnosis of depression, nerves and difficulty of coping with the workplace. As indicated you have been on the disability pension since that time.
You have had two girlfriends in your life. The first was in your late 20s for a period of some weeks. The second was a work acquaintance when you were in your early 30s. That relationship lasted several months but you were never really interested in a long term relationship and you ended it.
Your focus was the family and you never left your mother and never moved out of the family home. In your early 30s you made a decision to cease all contact with persons apart from some acquaintances at work. You explained this to the psychiatrist as a decision to look after your mother. You were not coerced in any way to do this but indicated that the reason you did that was that you felt comfortable spending time with her and on your own. You were starting again to distrust people. In terms of your personality, you described yourself as “anally retentive” being fastidious as to your personal care and your living spaces, punctuality and routine. It is clear that you fit in well to prison life.
You have expressed to Dr Wellborn a fear of society. What you consider a rapid degeneration in the moral fibre of society in general and stating that you had observed and directly experienced many acts of verbal and physical aggression whilst in the public area over the last 40 years or so. You felt that people jostled you intentionally if you were on public transport, that they tried to walk into you if you were walking down the street. You told the doctor that you felt society was lawless and dangerous and that you felt infinitely safer in prison, although you had to be on your guard against assault from others, but in your view the presence of the prison officers made jail a much safer place than being out in the community.
In her opinion, Dr Wellborn stated:
Mr Howard suffers from querulous paranoia. An alternative way of describing his condition is to say that he has a personality disorder characterised by paranoia and a quest for personal justice. He feels he is entitled to various privileges despite not qualifying for these entitlements in a conventional sense. He has a lifelong pervasive suspiciousness and mistrustness of others with a resultant poor social and vocational achievement. He demonstrates no empathy for others. Mr Howard is unable to express regret or remorse over his actions. By contrast, he is proud of the skill which allowed him to conceal his mother’s death.
His upbringing as an only child with a mother preoccupied with the shame of her husband’s gambling progressed to an enmeshed relationship. Mr Howard appeared to have controlled his mother’s finances for many of her final years. Living with her in a frugal situation despite having accumulated a large amount of money in the bank. He continued to draw her pension after her death. I understand that he is being treated with an antidepressant for depression which was diagnosed in the prison setting. I find no evidence of a current depressed mood. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr Howard suffered from a significant depressive episode at the time of the murder of his mother.
Under the heading “Recommendations” Dr Wellborn stated:
Mr Howard’s personality structure is not amenable to significant change at his age. Were he to be released he may still present a risk of violent offending as his underlying characteristics of suspiciousness, entitlement and quest for personal justice will remain. It is thus difficult not to conclude that indeed prison is the best place for Mr Howard with the attendant routine and the promise of personal safety within the walls.
You are an elderly man now aged 77 years who has admitted to murdering your mother 19 years ago. Subsequent to the murder of your mother and with a gap of approximately 12 years, you murdered an elderly neighbour for no apparent reason, stabbing her some 57 times.
The issue of your sentencing is not without difficulty.
The murder of your mother you have admitted to, I find, was not done for financial gain, although subsequently you did benefit financially by continuing to receive her pension entitlements for some eight to nine years. I do not find however that was the motive for the killing, you already had control of your mother’s finances, and had no need to kill her to acquire her money. I do accept that your killing of your mother was in the main a decision that you made due to a fear that her health was so poor that she was suffering, and also a fear not expressed by you, that she may eventually have been removed from your care. As I said your mother was 89 years of age and in very poor health. I do not consider it a mercy killing as such, but the murder was motivated more by love than any other consideration.
Your inability to be a part of the community was also a contributory factor, in that your reclusive nature as well as that of your mother, made your responses to her situation far from normal. She equally would have no desire to be removed from you, or the home that you shared. Whilst this aspect is most unfortunate, it is equally obvious that this solitariness is deeply embedded in your nature and character at this stage of your life, and there is little that anyone could do to alter the situation.
I am obliged to sentence you for this offence and impose a new minimum term in respect of both this murder and the murder of Olive Maas. Your age is a consideration that I do take into account in determining the appropriate sentence, as well as many other factors personal to you, including the circumstances of the offending, and the report from the psychiatrist. I also have to take into account your plea of guilty, together with the fact that without your volunteered confession the police had no evidence whatsoever on which you could have been charged. Whilst you have not expressed remorse, I have no doubt that you loved your mother very much and if she had remained well would have inflicted no harm upon her.
I cannot accede to your request that I impose the maximum sentence upon you, as I am obliged by law to impose an appropriate sentence for the crime committed whilst giving consideration to matters personal to you, as well as general and personal deterrence, imposing a just punishment and not imposing a crushing sentence.
Accordingly in respect of the count of murder of your mother, Agnes Wilson Marshall Howard, you are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for 16 years. I further direct that 7 years of that sentence is to be served concurrently with the sentence you are currently undergoing, making an overall head sentence of 29 years.
I further direct that in respect of the murders of Olive Maas and Agnes Howard that you are to serve a minimum term of 23 years imprisonment before becoming eligible for parole.
Pursuant to Section 6 AAA, I am obliged to indicate the discount that has been given for your plea of guilty in this case. I am unable to distinguish, in the particular circumstances of this case, between the plea of guilty and the circumstances of coming forward to the police and admitting your responsibility for the murder, in circumstances where you were a suspect, but there was no possibility of obtaining a conviction if you had not volunteered the information. For all of those reasons the sentence I have imposed is five years less than the sentence I would otherwise have imposed.
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