R v Townley
[2010] VSC 347
•6 September 2010
| IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA | Not Restricted |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
No. 1409 of 2009
| THE QUEEN |
| v |
| TROY JOSHUA TOWNLEY |
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JUDGE: | KING J | |
WHERE HELD: | Melbourne | |
DATES OF HEARING: | Trial 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 19, 30, 31 March, 1April 2010 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 6 September 2010 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | R v Townley | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2010] VSC 347 | |
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Murder - drug related - sentence 24 years with a minimum of 19.
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr P D’Arcy | Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Mr W Toohey | C Marshall & Associates |
HER HONOUR:
Troy Joshua Townley on 1 April 2010, you were convicted of the murder of Chabel Boulos. At the request of your counsel a plea hearing was deferred until 19 July 2010.
The deceased in this case Chabel Boulos was aged 24 at the time he was killed. He was commonly referred to by all as Charlie. He was one of five children of Tannous and Mahassein Boulos.
At the time of his death he was living in Essendon, having lived at a number of different addresses shortly prior to that. He had no prior convictions, apart from driving matters, although he had been charged in respect of some drug related offences – none of those were finalised at the time of his death.
The circumstances of the offending in this case are that you were in a relationship with a woman by the name of Karen Hanna who lived at 38 Stradbroke Drive, St Albans with her then three year old son. That relationship had been in existence for approximately 12 months. You were living at 7 Barkeley Crescent in Derrimut, unemployed and had been unemployed for approximately 12 months.
On Sunday, 22 June 2008, Charlie Boulos was seen by a number of persons and later in the early hours of the morning of the 23rd he contacted Karen Hanna and asked her to pick him up in her car, which she did. She drove him to Keilor East where he purchased a gram of the drug ice, for approximately $400, and then returned to Karen Hanna’s house in St Albans. After arriving back at the house, Karen Hanna, Charlie Boulos and Karen’s brother, Michael Hanna all used a crack pipe to smoke ice. Ms Hanna, during her evidence, stated that she had at different stages gone in to check on her sleeping son, and on one of those occasions she noticed a car similar to yours driving past the house. She said, at that stage, she started to exchange text messages with you.
Meantime, Charlie Boulos was using his phone and arranging drug deals with a number of people. He left on foot at one stage, met up with Luke Demestichis and swapped a car stereo for some ice. At some time around or after 5.30am, Charlie Boulos requested Michael Hanna to deliver some ice to another customer for him which he agreed to do. That delivery was made to Eddie Yacoub, whilst Charlie Boulos made another delivery himself. They had been smoking cigarettes and ice in the house in St Albans, but at a stage after they return to the house Charlie Boulos and Michael Hanna went to the garage at the back of the premises, which was set up as a lounge room with carpet, lounge chairs and a table.
Whilst they were in the garage you came in and had in your hand a hammer. Charlie Boulos had his back to you and you hit him to the back and side of the head, a number of times. Michael Hanna said, that he ran out of the garage as you started doing that. A number of blows were inflicted by the hammer, to the head of the deceased man, a knife was then used by you, to stab Charlie Boulos a number of times in the chest and in the neck, and he was left lying on the carpet in the garage. A sheet was placed over the body of Charlie Boulos by Karen Hanna. You, not long after that, drove Michael Hanna to trade school telling him to keep his mouth shut about what had happened.
At a later stage that day, you returned to Karen Hanna’s address in your Magna. You were towing a trailer that had a mattress on it. There were discussions about what to do with the body and eventually you and Michael Hanna carried the deceased out to the trailer and put the mattress on top of him, that mattress was then tied down. You and Karen Hanna left the house, towing the trailer and drove to your house in Derrimut.
The trailer, with the deceased’s body on it, was placed inside the garage. You both stayed a short time and then later returned to Karen Hanna’s house and stayed there. Michael and Karen Hanna disposed of some of the items of a personal nature which belonged to the deceased. The body remained at your premises in the garage for a couple of days.
You wished to be rid of the body and ultimately you went by yourself in the Magna, towing the trailer, to the Lawrie Emmins Reserve in Laverton North. This was an open reserve with a motor bike track, and you placed the body on the mattress and set it alight. The burnt remains of a person on a mattress, were found there on Monday, 30 June 2008 at about 7.20am by a person walking their dogs. This reserve was an area known to you.
You had removed from Charlie Boulos’ body a silver necklace which he was wearing at the time of his death, and sold that necklace to a man by the name of Kinglsey Hopwood, a friend of yours, for the sum of approximately $100 in around August 2008. You told Hopwood that you had killed Charlie Boulos with a hammer and that you had later burnt the body. You told him you had burnt some of his personal belongings. You showed Hopwood where you had burnt some of the deceased’s items near a bridge over the Kororoit Creek, in Deer Park. The police were able to locate the areas in which the burnt items had been placed and they were also able to retrieve the silver necklace. You also told another friend by the name of Marley Rifat that you had killed Charlie Boulos. Both of those young men gave evidence in the trial.
The cause of death of Charlie Boulos was, blunt force trauma to the head, consisting of at least six blows to the skull, excluding the blows to the facial area. These blows to the facial area indicated there had been separately, a number of forceful blows consistent with a hammer to the face. There were 10 stab wounds to the chest inflicted with a severe degree of force; one to the neck and rib fractures, all of which, in the opinion of the pathologist, were inflicted at around the time of death.
You contested the trial and it was put by your counsel, upon your instructions, that it was Karen Hanna and Michael Hanna who inflicted the injuries upon the deceased man, not you. Clearly the jury rejected that. You had indicated, during your record of interview with the police, that you had hit Charlie Boulos on the head with the hammer on a number of occasions, but all of that was at the urging of Karen Hanna.
The jury convicted you of the murder of Charlie Boulos and I intend to sentence you upon the basis of those facts as I have outlined them.
I have in this case received five victim impact statements being a statement by Charlie Boulos’ father Tannous, his mother Mahassein, and his sisters Sadika Cavar, Marilyn Abdo, and Rose Boulos. They are exceedingly distressing and distressed statements. They talk about the impact that the loss of their son and brother has had upon their lives, both in the past, currently and how that loss will continue for ever into the future. There is no doubt that the loss of a loved one in circumstances as tragic as this will have an impact upon their lives forever. Nothing the court does will return their son or brother to them. No sentence a court passes will return their son or brother to them. No sentence will ever make up for their sense of loss and grief. Although Charlie may have lost his way at the time, he had a life that was yet to be led and one that may well have become all that his parents and sisters hoped for.
The sentence imposed by this court never reflects the worth of a human being because every human being’s worth is immeasurable. It can only be hoped that one day his family will be able to look back and think about Charlie and smile with pleasure at their memories of him, rather than look back with pain at the circumstances of his loss.
It is not possible for me to say what your motivation was with respect to your actions. Two matters were put forward; one relating to the drugs that Charlie Boulos had purchased and was carrying, together with other money that he may have had, from his drug dealings. The second, relating to your jealousy in respect of Karen Hanna. She gave evidence that you had, particularly over the last six months, expressed a great deal of jealousy towards any male who spoke to her or paid her any attention.
I am unable to determine what the motive was, but whatever the motive may have been, the behaviour that you indulged in on this night, that took the life of Charlie Boulos was horrific; the level of violence inflicted, shattering as it did his skull and his facial bones in so many places, is truly terrifying to a court and to the public. How much of this was the influence of the drug ice, or alcohol, or a combination of all of those matters, is something that I nor any one else knows and have no real way of assessing. What is clear is, that all of you were living your lives in a way that was wasteful, dangerous and obviously deadly.
You, Troy Townley, have no criminal history. You are currently 27 years of age, having been born on 28 July 1983 and you come from a family in which, neither of your parents, your sister or half-sisters, have been in trouble. Your father is 62, he is a process worker. Your mother is 58 and works in the family home. You have a sister, as I indicated, who is 32 years of age – she had birth complications and suffers from cerebral palsy. Your parents care for her at home. You have no contact with your half-sisters, who are from a previous relationship of your mother.
You grew up in Deer Park attending Deer Park Primary School without any difficulty and then on to Deer Park Secondary College. Your counsel informed me that at Deer Park Secondary College you fell in with a group of friends who were experimenting with alcohol and drugs. The drug of choice being cannabis and there was regular usage of cannabis on weekends and sometimes during the week. This was during your school Years 7, 8 and 9. How you were able to finance this with your friends is unknown to me.
As a result you commenced wagging school and started to fail subjects. You consequently failed Year 9. You were then enrolled at Brimbank College, but on assessment they decided that you were not up to that level and you were asked to repeat Year 8. You left school at that stage and enrolled at Footscray TAFE to do a six month course in mechanical engineering. You left well before completion of this course. You were about 16 at that time.
You obtained a position at Australian Vinyl and ended up a machine operator. You were there for some three-and-a-half years, that was a company at which your father had been employed also and he had clearly assisted you to obtain that position. That company was closed down and you, along with the rest of the workers, were retrenched. By the age of 20, almost 21, you had moved out of your parent’s home and into a house that you had purchased. This is the house in which you were living in Derrimut at the time that you committed this murder.
You had, on the instructions given to your counsel, saved between $70,000 and $80,000 from your employment and the retrenchment moneys that you received and with that you had made arrangements to purchase the house in Derrimut with a mortgage that you were paying off. You left your parent’s home and moved into the house. You went to work at another company called Paramount Plastics as a machine operator. You were unhappy with that position and you obtained one at a place called Patrick Logistics in Laverton North. You started on a casual full-time basis preparing containers. You were there for approximately a year but there was not sufficient constant work to enable you to pay the mortgage and all other necessities, so you went to work next door at a firm called Patrick Autocare and you worked there for some three to three-and-a-half years fitting parts on cars. You left in 2006 and there is no explanation as to your ceasing to work. You were approximately 25½ when you ceased working and in the 12 month period leading up to the death of Mr Boulos you were not involved in any full-time work. You occasionally did some work as a brickie’s labourer for the brother-in-law of Karen Hanna on a cash basis but that was occasional. During that 12 month period your parents had taken over the payment of your mortgage while still maintaining their house in Deer Park.
After you were arrested, your parents sold their house in Deer Park as they could not afford to maintain both properties and they moved in to the Derrimut property.
You were engaged at the age of 16 almost 17 to a young woman by the name of Sharon Farrugia. You had met in secondary school. You were in a relationship with her for a period of seven-and-a-half years which ceased in 2006. You were trying to have a family with Ms Farrugia and as a result there was some problems and she became pregnant to someone else. You are described as going downhill emotionally after the relationship break up and attempted suicide – trying to hang yourself with a choker chain. Ms Farrugia however raised the alarm and you ended up in Sunshine Hospital for some days. Once released from hospital you sought no counselling or assistance. It was in 2007 that you met Karen Hanna and started your new relationship. Both you and Ms Hanna were significant consumers of drugs. In fact, it appeared to be the epicentre of your relationship – drug usage and drug trafficking.
In relation to your history of alcohol and drugs, it is a history that is so familiar to the courts; one that causes despair. You commenced using cannabis at about 14, alcohol at about 13, amphetamine at around 16.
In a report dated 15 May 2010, prepared by Mr Patrick Newton, psychologist, at page 3 of that report he states,
At age 16 Mr Townley graduated to the use of amphetamines. Again he was introduced to these drugs by his friends and again his use rapidly escalated to extreme levels. Mr Townley said that he found methylamphetamine to elevate his mood and boost his social confidence and these factors reportedly were primary motivations in his initial use. He used mainly methylamphetamine (ice) but he would also use other stimulants, designer drugs (such as MDMA, ecstasy) and various other drugs depending on availability and opportunity. Mr Townley described clear symptoms of tolerance to amphetamines and whenever he made attempts to cut down on his intake he suffered rebound depression and lethargy which reportedly led him to return to drug use within a matter of days. Moreover he continued to abuse cannabis and alcohol in concert with these drugs which magnified their detrimental effects.
Whilst that is the material you put forward to Mr Newton and instructed your counsel, it is difficult to see how that reconciles with you working full-time as a machine operator for that three-and-a-half year period, whilst living at home and saving between $70,000 and $80,000. Illegal drugs cost substantial sums of money. It is inconsistent that you could have been involved in such extreme and heavy usage whilst still able to save that amount of money on a machine operators’ salary. Accordingly, I will act upon the basis that you had some involvement in drugs but not to the extreme level that you talk about at that time.
You indicated to Mr Newton during his session with you that at the time of your relationship with Ms Karen Hanna, particularly at around the time of this offending, you were both heavily involved in drug usage and that your drug usage whilst you were with her was particularly heavy. You stated to Mr Newton,
We were using about $5,000 of ice a week as well as drinking and smoking, it was full on.
I have no idea how you were able to support such a heavy addiction – either of you – and whilst I am not satisfied entirely as to the amount expended, I am satisfied that you were both heavily involved in usage of ice at the time of this offending.
You informed Mr Newton that you had been sexually abused by the boyfriend of one of your half-sisters at the age of six which consisted of the fondling of your genitals. That, you indicated, had persisted for approximately six to 12 months. You did not tell anyone about this and you have never received any professional assistance in respect of that matter. You indicated that you had told your previous girlfriend at one point but she was the only other person you had told apart from Mr Newton.
In his report on your mental status and assessment, Mr Newton found you had a severe poly-substance dependence relating to a physical addiction to methylamphetamine, cannabis, alcohol and a range of other substances since your teens. He said that you struggle and have struggled to develop insight into the severity of your drug and alcohol problems. He said that you now recognise, as a result of your time on remand, that abstinence is the only way in which to manage the drug and alcohol issues that you face. He said that you had mild symptoms of both depression and anxiety which were strong when you first went into remand and had heightened again around the time of the trial, which he conceded was what could be described as reactive depression and what should be expected by someone in your situation. He found that you had poor self-esteem and that you remain immature. He found that you tended to affiliate mainly with other disaffected and drug using people, which, once again, I find unsurprising.
The result is that you become more alienated from mainstream society which reinforces your behavioural problems. You however do not suffer from a personality disorder. You have no thought disorder or psychosis. He found that there were no mental states or disorders or cognitive disabilities that led you to commit the crime, that there were no psychological issues that may explain your commission of the crime, apart from the fact that the drugs you were consuming may have had a disinhibiting factor.
In relation to the issue of what risks may exist of your re-offending, Mr Newton indicated,
The main risk factors identified in Mr Townley’s case relate to the chronic instability in his life. His longstanding drug addiction, his maladaptive personality traits and his lack of insight into his offending – including his lack of remorse regarding his role in these events. The extent to which these factors continue to act as criminogenic factors when he is ultimately released depends upon his capacity to participate in and benefit from treatment to address the issues that have been identified.
You have, since you have been on remand, been providing urine screens and sampling. They are random and each one of those has been negative for illegal drugs. You have been employed in the kitchen at the MRC at Deer Park and you work from 7am in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, six days a week. You have availed yourself of a number of programs within the prison such as the Coping With Change program, obtaining certificates in respect of workplace safety, workplace hygiene programs, matters that allow you to work within the prison kitchen and a Stimulants and Me program, all of that whilst limited in some degree at least indicates some attempt to look at your situation and do something positive.
I have a reference from your aunt and uncle – Fran and David Zapazza - which I have read and your counsel tended a letter that you had written to your parents thanking them for their love, support and strength that they had given you, which your counsel relied upon as indicating your desire to rehabilitate yourself from your drug-addled past. Your parents are still supporting you, your sister was present with your parents in court during the plea. You are fortunate to have that support and to a degree your family are fortunate to have you to be able to support unlike the situation with Mr Boulos. Your actions have caused his loss for ever.
This was undoubtedly on any view a brutal and vicious murder. It is certainly towards the higher level of the type of murders committed in our community. Whilst I am unable to say whether it related to seeking to take drugs and money from Mr Boulos or whether it related to jealousy, the one thing that can be said is that there must have been a degree of rage attached to the infliction of the injuries on Charlie Boulos. There were many blows of the hammer. There were many stabbings with the knife. It is clear in my view that the jury have convicted you on the basis that you were the killer of Charlie Boulos and you will be sentenced accordingly.
There have been expressions of remorse in respect of this killing, and having contested the trial will not receive any discount pursuant to s6AAA. That does not mean that your sentence will be increased, it does mean that your sentence will not be reduced for a plea of guilty or as a result of any remorse that has been demonstrated or indicated on your part.
You are not a young offender, but you have no prior criminal history which gives me some measure of optimism that may have some prospects in the future of being rehabilitated. I accept that whilst in prison you have done your best to remain drug free and have obtained as much work as possible. I would hope that you will redress your education deficiencies which will give you much better prospects upon your release. You have the support of your family which will be of assistance to you in the long term, and encourages me to have hopes of a degree of rehabilitation.
I have to impose a just and appropriate punishment, taking into account both general and specific deterrence. Whilst I accept that you have some prospect of rehabilitation, unless you are able to avoid the heavy drug usage in which you were involved when this offence occurred you will not be successful in resuming a useful life upon your release from prison.
In determining an appropriate sentence I have taken into account and attempted to balance all of the relevant matters to which I have earlier referred. You are convicted and sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of 24 years. I direct that you are to serve a minimum of 19 years before becoming eligible for parole.
Declare that there have been 683 (six hundred and eighty three) days pre sentence detention served in relation to this matter and such is to be noted in the records of the court.
Application for disposal order granted.
Application for retention of forensic sample 464ZFB(1) is granted.
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CERTIFICATE
I certify that this and the 10 preceding pages are a true copy of the reasons for Sentence of King J of the Supreme Court of Victoria delivered on 6th of September 2010.
DATED this 6th day of September 2010.
Associate to
The Honourable Justice King
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