The Brutal Melbourne Killer Who Never Went To Prison

In May 2019, 25-year-old Courtney Herron was murdered after a night out in Melbourne’s CBD. What happened next would ignite national outrage and raise disturbing questions about justice in Australia. In this episode, Courtney’s father, John Herron, speaks about the daughter he loved deeply, her generosity, humour, and instinctive kindness, and the night she crossed paths with the man who killed her. He lays bare the failures he witnessed inside the justice and mental health systems, and explains why, as both a grieving father and a lawyer, he believes Courtney was denied justice. You can read more from John Herron in his writing for Mamamia, including his powerful open letter about Courtney’s death, here https://www.mamamia.com.au/courtney-herron-father-update/. CREDITS Guest: John Herron https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0533976/Host: Gemma Bath https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemmabath/?originalSubdomain=au Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahli-blackman-205a891b7/?originalSubdomain=au Group Executive Producer: Ilaria Brophy Audio Engineer: Jacob Round GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  People deal with grief differently. Grief has stages, I'll say that. If I had a moment to reflect, I don't know whether I could survive.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  It's a Friday night in Melbourne CBD in May 2019, and Courtney Herron is out in the city with her boyfriend and a friend. A young homeless man approaches them asking for a cigarette. He seems harmless, friendly, so she hands one over. She invites the man, whose name is Henry, back to her friend's place where they smoke some ice before heading out for some dinner. Her shout. CCTV catches them chatting, bantering as they head back to the apartment. All is well. Back in the lounge room, they smoke some more, and then Courtney and Henry leave together at about 4.30am, walking through Royal Park in the city's inner north. It's here where things take a turn.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Henry is walking in front. He picks up a fallen tree branch. 'Are you going to kill me?' Courtney asks him. They are the 25-year-old's last words.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Details have emerged about the Royal Park murder, with 25-year-old Courtney Herron revealed as the victim.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. Courtney Herron was so badly injured, she was only identifiable via her fingerprints. I'm going to describe what happened to Courtney because it's important to understand the brutality of the crime in light of what subsequently happened in court. But consider this your warning. Henry Richard Hammond beat Courtney with a tree branch for up to 50 minutes across her face and body, causing fatal injuries. Then he tied her legs and dragged her body into a more concealed area, where he covered her with foliage and placed a large piece of concrete on her face.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  He took off with her wallet and phone. She was discovered the next morning by dog walkers. 27-year-old Henry Hammond was arrested and charged shortly after.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Courtney's murder sparked anger across Australia with vigils and marches held in her honour. It fuelled public debate on male violence against women, homelessness, mental health services and failures in our country's support systems. Today, we're speaking to Courtney's father, John Herron, who, as a lawyer himself, is appalled at the lack of justice he's seen his daughter receive in our court systems. He joins us now. John, thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations today. I'd like to start by sharing with the listeners a bit more about your daughter, Courtney Herron. Can you tell us about your fondest memory that comes to mind when you think of her?

• 2:58Speaker 00

  I'd say like all parents and fathers, probably the moment she was born and then raising as a toddler. All the little things around that, when a brother was born, these types of events. And probably the last time she hugged me.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  What kind of child was she like? What was she into?

• 3:19Speaker 00

  She was a very creative, effervescent child. She loved to explore, look and learn new things. She spoke two languages when she was two and three years old. So she spoke Greek, she spent a bit of time in Greece. But yeah, really sensitive little girl because she was the first born. So first born girls, there's a lot of stats on how they react or mirror the father, whatever it may be. But you just remember as your first born.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  You mentioned a brother. Does she have other siblings?

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. She's got a 27-year-old, 28, sorry, 21 and 14-year-old.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. So they would have been quite little.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just want to share a few more stories about her. What do you miss about Courtney?

• 4:11Speaker 00

  The dry sense of humour and stirring me up. There was a lot of that with Courtney. Look, the time that she went to FoodTech and made this huge strawberry-type sundae for me and me being lactose intolerant had to run and throw up.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  You still ate it, though.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  That's why. As a dad, you're compelled to eat it. So it didn't go down that well. And like, she laughed for about twenty minutes of that.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  That's a beautiful memory. Did Courtney have dreams? What kind of career was she kind of hoping for when she was younger?

• 4:53Speaker 00

  She was really leaning towards social work and had been for several years. And so she was gearing her school subjects earlier. And then she had a stint with, um, as it was called at the time, DHS, Child Protection. And, and that really stimulated her. So that was her early, early career path that she wanted to go into.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Tell me about when Courtney kind of started to get involved in drugs and alcohol. How did that come about?

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Um, I think as a young child with, with divorce, she was affected by that. And, and so being torn between schools and parents and that type of thing does leave children much more vulnerable. And that happened in, in the late teens, probably around fifteen, sixteen.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  And it got quite serious addiction wise, didn't it?

• 5:42Speaker 00

  When, when she went to her twenties, there was more episodes, um, of when she was in her late teens and then at eighteen, for example. There's a few episodes with methamphetamines. Um, so, yeah, they were on and off. And it's not as if it was as, as a, like, like addiction in people's minds might be that. Someone's, um, for want of a better term, incapacitated. But there was a lot of incidents in her mid twenties around that. Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  What was it like as her dad watching her go down that kind of path?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Well, obvious answer is it's really hard, but there's, in many ways, there's often not a lot you can do about it. You can try as much when they're, you've got much more control as a teenager as I did, because she lived with me almost all the time when she was a mid to late teenager. So I had lots of incidents at school with that, that issue. Trying to work with counsellors at school and the like. So I changed schools a few times for her on that, on that basis. So she ended up at Fitzroy High, which she really slotted into quite well. Um, and then she'd have a purple patch. She had a really good purple patch around that time when she, um, when she worked. So that that gave us some uh impotence to to sort of go on the straight and narrow.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  You say that you had a lot more control when she was obviously under eighteen.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  When she was an adult, what was your relationship like with her? Did you see her much?

• 7:08Speaker 00

  No, I didn't see her that much beyond when she was like nineteen into the twenties. And again, there's no, there's not a lot you can do when when you have a child, when they're an adult, you can't. And that is a wider problem that you can't really call on help unless they accept it.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Tell us about what twenty nineteen looked like for her, obviously before everything happened, but what kind of place was she in in twenty nineteen?

• 7:34Speaker 00

  She had some, in the early twenty nineteen, she had some drug issues around February. And she seemed to sort of pull out of it by the time it ran the time of death, yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Is that when she ended up going to a psychiatric ward?

• 7:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Tell me about that ward because as well as everything else we're going to talk about. You know, a psychiatric ward is supposed to help you, but it ended up kind of causing a lot of harm for your daughter as well.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  Um, possibly, yeah, like it wasn't voluntarily, so then, but she discharged herself voluntarily, so. Um, if it, it's hard to say does do harm, but again, like trying to search for for young adults to. Some type of rehabilitation rather than psychiatric ward is very difficult unless they're they're gonna um cooperate with you.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  So she discharged herself from there?

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, mm hmm.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I've heard that that's quite common as well. You have to kind of.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  That's right, yeah, there's there's, again, there's not a lot you can do, there's a finite time.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Do you remember your last interaction with Courtney?

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, mm hmm.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Can you tell me about it?

• 8:39Speaker 00

  I bumped into her on a tram.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Really?

• 8:41Speaker 00

  I was going to work, yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  In Melbourne?

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, in Melbourne, just before, yeah, so I had a bit of a chat there.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Was it a good interaction? Do you have fond memories?

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was good, yeah, yeah, of course, always.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  John, how did you find out that Courtney had been killed?

• 8:59Speaker 00

  That was a knock on the door on a Sunday morning from the homicide squad. Would have been about nine thirty in the morning. It's knock on the door and they said who they were. Sometimes I assumed it had something to do with my work.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  As a lawyer, so that was my first thought.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  How did they share that with you? How much detail did they give you?

• 9:25Speaker 00

  The only thing that was very specific was that, and this was a line that came out with the police later, they just used the term. She died of a horrendous bashing. Okay, so that's all they said as far as the specifics go. The killer had been caught at that stage. So homicide come to tell you, but they're also, the same detectives were on the hunt for the killer that afternoon when they did pick him up.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  And they informed you once they had someone in custody?

• 9:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, they were really good. Yeah, they caught me straight away that they'd taken someone in custody and they suspected it was him and he'd made admissions. So that was a Sunday and then we're in the remand court at magistrate's court the next morning at nine thirty.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  You're a lawyer, so a courtroom is not unfamiliar to you, but I can only imagine that Monday morning must have felt very different.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, look, the whole period around that, you're in a bit of a daze in any case. And the other thing that you keep thinking, and I talked to a lot of other people about this, is you just wish it just wasn't happening. And you just hope that it was a nightmare that you could wake up from.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  On the Monday morning, you're in there to kind of see this man go through the, you know, the first steps of the court process. Did you know that name? Was he familiar to you? Had they told you anything?

• 10:49Speaker 00

  No, not at that time. We didn't know who he was. We didn't go into the courtroom. The police kept us out there because there's a lot of media. So the police in general are trying to keep us away from the media. And at that stage, they were everywhere, so to speak.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  There was, there was intense media coverage, particularly that week.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  I know that you said when you first saw Henry's name, you didn't know who he was, but it turns out you actually did have a connection to that family.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  That's right. His father was a friend of mine back in the, sorry, nineteen eighties, and he actually attended our wedding in Melbourne.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Have you had any contact with his family since everything that happened?

• 11:32Speaker 00

  No, no, not at all, not at all.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  How does it feel for you knowing that you had this person's parents at your wedding?

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Look, I, I know his father and family and, and they're a good, good bunch of people. And from what I could see, you know, Hammond was very difficult. When he became an adult, this is where I referred back to, there's not a lot necessarily that you could do. So they're not, I'm not going to say they're responsible at all.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  To have known them, to, to know the family, to have them at your wedding, you have to be pretty close to be at someone's wedding.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Yes, I haven't seen him since Hammond's father, since the wedding. But yeah, he, that now, I didn't put two and two together. To a mutual friend of ours, I bumped into a mutual friend from university up in Sydney. Couple of years ago and he, he just casually mentioned the Hammond family. And then it triggered, I went, is that X's? You're talking about a son? And he went, yeah. And that's when I, that's the only time it triggered, that's the first time that it triggered who it actually was.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  So it was only a mutual friend of mine mentioning that, and that was probably three or four years ago.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  As a victim's family, what kind of support were you given as you entered the court system and watched it all unfold?

• 12:59Speaker 00

  That was a long journey. So the police were good the first few days and then a few phone calls, but then they literally vanished. So we didn't really hear from them. As far as that's concerned, down the track, I met up with the, uh, the Office of Public Prosecutions, for, for the audience, I call them the DPP, um, very quickly and they were sort of giving me a little bit of background.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Probably in the first few months now, and then that's through information as far as the case goes. But from victim's support, I'd actually done a lot of processing victims of crime locally in the Masseter Rangers, so I contacted them as myself directly as a victim. And so they came over to see me, the same person that I'd briefed many times on helping others. I initially supervised and set up some counselling services and the like. Then probably two or three months into it, that particular liaison officer, she worked for Anglicare because victims of crimes outsource that sort of support.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  So we were searching for some counselling support, grief support for all of us. But she went on leave and it just fell off a cliff. So at the time, I was also working for the Department of Justice and they managed victims of crime. So I noted in my workplace that they'd had their own counselling sessions, et cetera, which weren't necessarily available to me. So I said, could I go and see someone to get some support? And I saw the executive director who said, oh, look, we can't really do that much for you, but if you're in trouble, why don't you call the men's helpline?

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Okay. So I was a bit shocked myself when I heard that. So we were in a bit of limbo with that until I wrote a few letters to the right people. And then I contacted another victims of crime lawyer who organised a local person for us. And so that, but it was a rocky road, as it is for all people in my situation.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  And I guess you're in a situation where you know the right places to write the letters and who to contact. Most families would have no idea, they've never had any.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  No, they don't. I talked to a lot of them and it ranges from zero to actually hostility to them. And it's very sparse on the ground.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  There's been some, some activity in reform. I actually sit on the Law Institute's um Victims of Crime Advisory Group. And, and there's been a lot of strides in the last five, six years, but it was rooted, quite rudimentary in Victoria at the time. Um, and definitely there was no guide for people. And, and prior to that, working as a lawyer, I knew that there was pamphlets available at the police stations and that was it. So someone to get, I had a client when I was on legal aid, got stabbed and he came to me with a pamphlet the police giving him. He was a refugee, this is what I do at this, so I sort of talked him through it. Um, but yeah, it's, it's quite bewildering and, and the, the thing that people want most is some type of, as I said, grief counselling.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  And support, and that's really, that's very, very um sporadic at best.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Is it true as well that, and I've heard this from a number of families, that you don't find out the details of what happened to your loved one until you're sitting in court?

• 16:42Speaker 00

  That's true, yeah. So I'd heard a lot about that in the final hearing, but a, a little bit further, the, the DPP was, was quite misleading in what they told us. Um, for example, I said, oh, did, did the, did the killer have a lot of priors? And they dismissed it. I said, oh, no. Um, that they said drugs were involved. I said, did you do a pharmacology test on him? They said, no, but we did one on Courtney, which, which I was pissed, frankly.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Um, but that's, that's the sort of attitude you get. But basically, they're just trying to process you out with as little resistance as possible. And then I had some Zoom meetings throughout the year with the, the, um, because at that stage he'd plead, he was pleading not guilting, mental impairment. They've got a special unit for that, the, the DPP and a special individual. So they, they sort of slot you in the corner, have a couple of Zoom meetings, um, and, and half the people, if they turn up, they turn up. As I said, the police didn't turn up at all. Um, and I didn't really, I, I also had a, a one-on-one with the DPP herself.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  And uh and I'd sort of was was trying to get some traction of what's going on and she hung up on me, but that was that was uh not unusual from what I hear. And I I believe after that, she didn't bother talking to victims anymore because it was just too um triggering. But as far as the details go, we didn't know anything. A friend of mine, Donna Stoltenberg, if you've come across her, she runs a National Harms Collective. And I'd known her for a while. She did a GoFundMe um thing for the Courtney's funeral. Then uh I became close friends with her and I sort of act help her out legally.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  But anyway, she she has a staff member who um Hammond, the killer, um had um resided next door in a restaurant in Smith Street in Northgood. So she unpacked the the entire sort of sequence of what was going on with him. Then when he got locked and after and then none of that, I I was told whatsoever, in fact, sort of like brushed away. And then after I called the current affair, then the reporter there, Sam Cucciari, showed more, alluded to all of the killer's priors and all his activities and such like that. So that was like denied to us, yeah.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Can we talk about some of those priors for people who are unaware? Because Hammond had been in prison like seven weeks before the murder.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah, yeah. So it it that only came, well, basically I had the priors. This is an interesting thing too, because I asked the Supreme, I wrote to the Supreme Court Judge that he was released on what you call a community corrections order and it has all these conditions and he was released to no fixed address. So I, as now, the media had copies of that corrections order. Right now, um, I tried to get it off the judge and he denied me. So as a lawyer, you can't really do that. So I had other, other lawyers write to them and they obviously knew what's going on. So they denied giving it to them as well. Okay, so I had to write to the head of the county court, kid, Justice Kid, and say, look, you know, you have an obligation, blah, blah, to give it to me.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  And, and he did eventually, but that's, that's the lengths I had to go to find the corrections order. Okay. Now, the corrections interview, the media tried to get out of corrections themselves and they wouldn't give it. Like the reasons why he was released, that's what I'm talking about, right? Now, that's, that's never, never, well, to, to a small degree, that's been released, but, but the circumstances, I had to dig around and find out myself about what he was doing. Now, after I appeared on a current affair, the police then called and said, I will come see you. Cause I had then wrote to the attorney general and the commissioner to say, look, we're not told, we're not being told anything.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  And then a senior detective came, saw me in my office, opened up his prior listing and I saw into that. So he had a lot of offences in New South Wales against women, some fraud offences and a lot of offences in Victoria against women. But the main one was the description of how he landed up in jail and attacked the woman and almost killed her. But that was, that was the, after that offence, he was released early. And then given that, community corrections order, just for the viewers, information, community corrections order is like you're doing jail, but you're in the community.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  So it's not expected that you're going to commit crimes.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  And as you said, it was a violent assault. He did 10 months and then he was back on the street.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  Uh, a bit less than that, yeah. He was released a couple of months early, I believe.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  What was it like for you though, when you found out the circumstances and that this man had all these priors, had been released?

• 21:45Speaker 00

  It, it drives you at that stage, you'd be grieved to a bit of a, um, a lot of space of anger. So you, my reaction was to like go on media, fight the regime, help people out where I could. Cause I, I felt if I don't do it, who else is going to do it?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Gemma Bath. I'm speaking with Courtney Herron's dad, John Herron, about the murder of his daughter. Up next, I asked John about the night before Courtney was killed, when she met Hammond, a homeless man, and showed him an act of kindness.

• 22:27Speaker 03

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• 23:03Speaker 01

  Reading about Courtney's movements the night before her death, I was really struck by her kindness towards Hammond, because she barely knew this man. She invited him back to her friend's house. She bought him dinner. He was homeless at the time. It says a lot about her character.

• 23:24Speaker 00

  Oh, totally, yeah. That doesn't surprise me. She'd give the last $5 to someone if somebody needed it. That was always how she was growing up. And then, and her kindness always shone through. Maybe it was just, you can't put a finger on it and say that's why she was killed. But she lived a life that way, and that was, that was the blessing of her, her being around us. Look, I did see those videos of that. The police only released those until I'd been on television and wrote to the Attorney General.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Videos of her and Hammond?

• 23:56Speaker 00

  I saw the videos of her, that some friend had taken a mobile phone recording of him back at their place. And also the video of the vegetarian restaurant in Fitzroy, that she took him to.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Hammond eventually kind of said that he did it because...

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Some Courtney had wronged him in a past life and killed his wife and he was getting revenge. You know, a very strange story. What was your take on that?

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Well, I'll refer back to when he was picked up. He's very, very clued in. So he'd had her possessions on him.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  He was lining up at the Salvation Army, getting some food in Burke Street in Melbourne. So knew what he was doing. He got nabbed by the police. He then thought about it, denied it. Then he admitted it and then he asked for a lawyer, an expensive lawyer that he'd used the last time to get released early. So he knew what was going on and then apparently then he asked them, uh, what are, what are the defences to murder? Okay. So if you ask me, like, he knew what was going on. And I'll refer back to the transcripts of his trial when he was released of his previous attack. Um, and the same sort of thing happens. He sort of like knows where he was at. And then all of a sudden, um, Odin appears down from the trees and commands he does these types of things.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Because he did end up using mental impairment successfully as a defence. So you're saying you believe he was faking that?

• 25:31Speaker 00

  It's, it's hard. Look, he, he doesn't, the definition of mental impairment is that you don't know what you're doing. Or you don't know what you're doing is wrong. Okay? So that is the definition that he's using in the legislation. So I'd ask anyone listening from what I just said, if you can, would conclude that that fits that slot. But then a- all you need to do is to convict someone in, in Victoria or, or plead that. Is just get a psych report very quickly that says that. In Victoria, there tends to be a go to psychiatrist that does those reports.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  And they tend to seem to get like a hundred percent result that that person would be not guilty mental impairment. So it's just rushed through. Once, once the it's raised, normally the D P P will just agree to it straight away.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Really? I thought it was hard to use it as a defence.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  It is, it is hard to use what's called Verdon's Rules if you want a diminished sentence.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Down the track, okay? But if you're gonna plead not guilty mental impairment, the statistics are that it'll go through. Now, I'll give you, an identical case is Gargosoulis, you know, the Berg Street Mall.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  What? No different from Courtney's killer. It was on ice, uh, mental health, et cetera, et cetera. Just ask yourself simply, why did the state throw the, the book at him? Including the head of forensic care rocked up and said he was fine to sit trial. And it all, Courtney's case and then dozens of others since then, it's just brushed away in five minutes. Her trial lasted fifteen minutes.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Courtney's trial?

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Less than what it took to kill her.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  What do you mean? So they, they just rushed through the court proceedings? Why would they do that?

• 27:21Speaker 00

  Just to get it out of the way, frankly. I'm just being honest today to say that, look, there's palpable nervousness in the court when I was watching it. That I just wanted to get it out. And I want less media attention as possible, so.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Well, we've got to remember that a, a woman dies at the hands of someone she knows or a stranger every week in Australia.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's not, it's not slowing down. And in fact, it's increasing.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  So there's a simple, there's a simple explanation. There's many explanations, but the, the main one is that perpetrators that kill women like this are far more frequent to be on the streets than, than be either treated or locked up. It's just that simple. So the state doesn't want to put a light that that that there's they have two sides of of of the story here. One is that, yeah, they're tough on crime or or against violence against women, but there's another political echelon of the government that wants to get these people out in the street as quick as possible.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  So that is the hospital that Hammond was

• 28:28Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  sent to. So he wasn't sent to prison, he was sent to a psychiatric facility.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Until until there was a bed available at Tom Assembling.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Can you tell us about what that sentence was? Because it's not like you get, you know, 20 years and then you've got a parole and you've got it. It kind of works differently when you have this mental impairment sentence.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  That's right. So in the in the legislation, it has nominal 25. Okay. So what that means to the listener nominal means like it's not fixed. So even if you go to Friends Care's website, they'll say that the average time in there is about five years. So they've got about 140 clients, as they call them, or patients, and probably about five of them have done the 25 years and they don't want to be released anyway because the conditions are quite good in there. So they have supervised, unsupervised time out in the community. They go for coffee in the mornings. Some of them have jobs locally. Some of them are given mobile phones. I've talked to one, the Canhars family, where their nephew that had killed

• 29:26Speaker 00

  their parents had a mobile phone, was ringing the mobile phone supplier by Tom Assembling to harass them, and then had asked them on the phone to meet meet him outside Tom Assembling because that was part of his therapy to have him released early. Then then he was on coke and he attacked a person with a machete and was out and released.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  All of those freedoms that you mentioned, does Hammond have any of those?

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was out released. He my understanding here that he'd been attacked in jail. So that they watch him carefully for one reason because he draws a lot of media attention. So if you don't draw media attention, then they're not too worried and I'll let you go. So he he got photographed at a restaurant that Courtney and I used to go to in Northkirk by Courtney's friends, and that made the media, so they got a bit coy with that and like didn't let him out for a while on that basis. Now, fast forward to November last year, they tried to get a suppression order on Hammond. So what that means, suppression order is the first step to release them, because when there's a suppression order,

• 30:35Speaker 00

  um, it means that you can't report. So if he gets released, then there's there's no record on it, let alone the fact that when they're released from there after killing people, they don't even have a criminal record. So you could hire them in your studio and you wouldn't know.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  So the idea is to let them kind of slip into society and have a new chance at life.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  I don't think anyone I've spoken to is against, that that's been in my situation, against recidivism and genuine um remorse. Now, on a, he, for example, if you want to talk about Hammond, he's absolutely uh ropeable that he's in there now for so long. I mean, probably blames me and and others for doing that.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  So there's no, there's no, forget remorse or anything like that, but what is rehabilitation? Okay, so that's addressing drug problems, alcohol and that type of thing. And that does happen to Tom Assembling. Um although, because years ago I worked for the department for forensic health for the state government, so I know the systems that were set up. Example, for drug and alcohol counselling is voluntary.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  So it has a less than fifty percent attendance rate in the courses they run. So if you don't want to go, you don't go.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  That's the way it operates. We could be here all day talking about that. But the whole game is for this, from the the state government, the regime, is just to keep all this quiet. Uh to the case where forensic hairs engage lawyers, extra lawyers to bat off bad publicity.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  That suppression order you mentioned, you stopped that from happening, didn't you? So basically, he wasn't approved to be able to not have it reported on, and he is still in there. He hasn't been released.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Yes, right. So my understanding is that they're lying low at the moment. The thing will be to let it pass, but that, like, the actual hearing was a schmuzzle. He turned up with, well, he didn't turn up, but they had a very senior um silk. Legal aid representing him. But there's, I had to appear myself and I got totally abused by the judge at the time.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Why?

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Because of who I am. So he didn't want any, oh, he was, he was going on about the publicity that the, that the hearing had attracted. And he was waving a, um, piece of paper around that some journalists had written saying, saying some, some things he didn't like about the hearing. So if you want to know what he, what he did do is that as a lawyer, I'm allowed to appear in the court. So straight away, his associate came up and said, who are you? Why, you know, why are you here? So I flashed my law institute card. Cause I knew he'd do that. So that was all right. So later on, after he shot through the, the solicitor for the media, then he said to me, there's another person hit the bar. Who is that? Meaning me. Okay.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  So then he got stuck into me for a few, like, unrelated issues. Until I, I realised I wasn't going to go anywhere. So I said, yes, you're on. I'm sorry, I'm going to get fucking.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  After the break, John opens up about the justice system's shortcomings and the devastating consequences for women who are left without help.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  You, and I understand why, have a lot of anger and kind of criticism towards the law system. Prior to this happening to your daughter, could you see all of these holes? Or is it only once you were in the system as a loved one, a victim's family, that you kind of really saw how it can work against you?

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Probably more the latter.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  I was certainly in that mental impairment space, but I, like, I, I dealt with victims of crime and, um, intervention orders and family violence well before for this situation. Like, I knew the system well and I'd worked within it. So I knew which way to go. So over time, look, I've realised my best use of my time is to help people out pro bono that are going through the same thing, which I've helped many families do. Because they're bewildered in the, when obviously these events and their children are murdered.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  That they don't know where to go and they've got a system that's shunting them away. And that way is a path of least resistance. And the thing that when you've got a regime that you've got a Victoria, one thing it doesn't like is support of public opinion. So how the system may operate, that's all well and good. But a program like this and others that tell people this is how it does happen. And that it could happen to them. That that's what the government doesn't like and people operating within the system. It's not any type of tin hat conspiracy type thing. It's really what I explain to people that that doesn't exist. This is a whole lot of people appointed to their jobs.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  And it's an Australia-wide thing about this epidemic of risk management. So all they're doing is covering their own jobs, well-paid jobs, and hoping it just goes away. They just go for the motions, let's say. But then as far as making impact or helping people out, that's just absolutely zero.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  So that's kind of what you've dedicated your career to now, am I right?

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Um, I won't say, well, it's a large part of my life.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  Okay, I think up until a few years ago, I was everywhere as I could. But I was getting calls from all around Australia and I just couldn't handle it. There was just so much grief out there. And so I'm really at this stage limited to people that call me and need help directly. So I'll do that. And then my general law practice with family violence is very busy. So I often pick up the slack that the police have dropped for women that are going through this. And a lot of your listeners will know as women, like how they've dropped by the authorities and the police when they're in these situations.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  And there's no one there to help them or combat for them, push their case.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Given what happened to your daughter, is it hard to swim in this soup every day?

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Sometimes, yeah. Look, to be frank, sometimes I can just handle it professionally and other times it's really distraught. Particularly when I help the Hamka family. Miriam Hamka, who had been killed and the suspects now was found guilty. But what the authorities did to that family was just reprehensible. Including putting intervention orders out on the family on behalf of the killer's family.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  And that's recent, isn't it?

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had to go to court and I made a threat from the police. Threatened me for defending them. And then when I said, I spoke to, a head of Missing Persons rang me and warned me off as well. So I said, that's fine, but I'm going to have to get your people in the witness box about why you're harassing this family. And it's the only time I've seen them drop an order.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Have you seen any improvement in the way the Victorian system treats victims' families since Courtney's murder? It has been, you know, nearly seven years now. Have you seen improvements?

• 37:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's been good improvements, particularly the last two years, on victims of crime and getting a grip on that. So I can definitely say that. I'm going to say overall that there's been a good societal shift against violence against women across the board, where it's just not tolerated, that's detectable. It's not fair in a lot of people in working in the Victorian system if I say that it's not working, because there's a lot of great people, the court liaison officers with the police, with the police, the family violence operators and the lower level police, they're very, very good. But they're slipping through the cracks all the time, because in my own practice, I have

• 38:40Speaker 00

  to pick up and protect women and put orders out for them, but the police won't do it. And then there's the coroner's court, well, that's a disaster what's happened there the last few years. So that's not going anywhere. So it's a very, there are patches that have improved, but statistically, women are getting killed more frequently. So it can't be working.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  I want you to put your father hat on here. Not being able to make a victim impact statement, seeing Hammond sent to a, I guess, a cushier kind of sentencing place to live.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  How did that impact you, kind of seeing how he was treated?

• 39:26Speaker 00

  I speak on behalf of a lot of victims. It's, we don't really wanna see the perpetrator like burnt at the stake type situation. Genuinely, everybody wants reform and that the person could reform and become a useful member of society, and I feel the same way.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Okay, so a- again, it's not Hammond. Hammond's playing, not playing the system because he's probably not smart enough, but the system's playing him. He's his part, he's just a cog going through, uh, uh, the, someone using the system. So it, it's not him that a whole, what, what he's like, as you described, he's in the, the like quasi holiday camp. He gets the releases and this and that, gets the attention, but that's not him doing that.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the system.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  That's what I always say about the justice system. The justice system works fine. It's the people running it now is the problem. Okay, it worked fine as it was for fifty years, literally. There were less violent attacks on women. And, and then it still needed reform, but we've gone the other way where the only, only meaningful reform done since Jamar's murder is that these people are released earlier and more frequent. That's it. That's the only thing that's happened, right? You can put your finger on, okay?

• 40:45Speaker 01

  So do you think Courtney's voice was lost in all of this, in the process?

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Not at all. No, I think, look, the first mission was to sort of get to, to put, cause now she's a, shall we say, she's in the ether, so to speak, and, and online. So my view is to sort of generate the impression of what she was really like, the kind, gentle person that she was. That's one part of it. The second part is that, that, that she, as you just said, her message was not, not in vain. So certainly, um, and I was in, visiting a politician a couple of weeks ago. So they're well aware of what her situation is. So the media attention has been crucial and using her as a shining example

• 41:31Speaker 00

  of how the system failed people and shouldn't do so. So it, it is sitting there like a beacon, okay?

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Once the regime passes, and it will, then I think her example will be used again, like others, like other families in my situation and other women. Um, as I said, Joma and Celeste Manor and all these people. And the advocacy that their families have done will be realised for what it is. And what it is when someone is killed in this manner, that what our duty as society is to try and reduce that. Security and safety is a state issue. So the state has to step up and actually carry out what it says. And at the moment, it is not carrying out what it says.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  John, you've written a few articles for us here at Mamma Mia about men's violence against women, about your daughter. There aren't many men's voices in this space that are loud. There are a lot of women. We know what's happening. We're talking about it a lot. I write an article about this every week. How important is it that we get more people, more men, talking? How do we do that?

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Look, it's really crucial to have men's voice because men's voice carries and resonates with women certainly. Because one thing I've realised straight away when I was down a path of advocacy is that what we talk about, recidivism, et cetera, women are really, really scared of a violent offender at the top. And they'll walk around the city at night. They're scared of that one really violent offender that can do some harm. I call them apex type offenders predators, okay? So they want that done. Men's voice wider to other men, I think, tends to, well, it should resonate more with violence against women

• 43:27Speaker 00

  from that aspect, so that they think twice when they're in a situation of doing something to a woman, that they think about consequences and they think about their own behaviour. And that's shifting, so that's good. So there's more men there. But certainly, women do need to hear men speak up about these violent offenders.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  It's been, you know, nearly seven years, I think we mentioned, since you lost Courtney. How are you doing? Twenty twenty six, new year rolling around. How are you?

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Look, grief is, people deal with grief differently. Grief has stages, I'll say that. So, you know, a civilian can be in shock for a few years and you're barely coping. So, look, I've got a young son, that's 14, so that keeps me focused on going and protecting him, getting him through life. So that's how I'd say I'd deal with it, being busy, advocacy. If I had a moment to reflect on it, I don't know whether I could survive.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Thank you to John for helping us to tell this story. You can find some of the articles John has written for Mamma Mia in our show notes. If you want to see clips related to this story, head over to our Instagram page at True Crime Conversations. And for in-depth case explainers, follow us on TikTok under the same name. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me, Gemma Bath. Our senior producer is Thali Blackman. Our group executive producer is Alaria Brophy. And there's been audio design by Jacob Round. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on.