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AXE Massacre So Horrific, Details Were Held From Public
AXE Massacre So Horrific, Details Were Held From The Public.. Australias' WORST Massacre in HISTORY
Axe murderer & Necrophiliac William Patrick Mitchell ‘wiped out a quarter of my family tree’
This tells the story of a clever investigation and luck that combined to identify the man responsible for the gruesome axe murder of Karen McKenzie and her three small children in a remote farmhouse in Western Australia.
Crime Investigation Australia 20 MAR 2024
Karen MacKenzie knew Mitchell. She had rejected his advances several times, including at a party in the weeks before the killings. Amara, seven, and Katrina, five, were killed in their beds.
WHEN Evalyn Clow met the man who killed four of her family members, she made him a promise: “I will do everything I can to keep you in jail.”
EVALYN Clow feels as if her life ended the day four family members were slaughtered by a psychopath with an axe.
Her sister, Karen MacKenzie, died 23 years ago today, along with her three children, in an act of murder so brutal it still ranks as one of Australia’s worst.
The Greenough Murders, as they are known, were so grisly a judge believed the details were too traumatic for the public to know everything that happened. To protect them, he issued a rare suppression order banning the exact circumstances from being reported.
That secrecy order continues to today — shielding the public from knowing just how depraved the actions of William Patrick Mitchell were on February 21, 1993.
THE GREENOUGH MURDERS
The details that can be published shed some light on the horror of what went on that night at the family’s modest home in Greenough, Western Australia. Mitchell relied on the element of surprise when he launched his fatal attack, with only 16-year-old Daniel awake at the time. He was the only one who saw the horror coming.
The teenager went outside the home that night and met Mitchell, then 22, in the yard. He had been alerted by the sound of a car pulling up. Mitchell was high on a ****tail of cannabis, alcohol and amphetamines — and he had an axe. There was little the teenager could do.
Mitchell wielded the axe and cut Daniel down before carrying on inside and finding Ms MacKenzie sleeping on a mattress in the lounge. He sexually assaulted her and then struck her with the axe too, killing her before he molested her again. Upstairs asleep in different bedrooms were the two youngest children, Amara, seven, and Katrina, five. They too were killed with the axe. Amara was also sexually assaulted.
The murder scenes were so horrific that many years later, experienced homicide detectives struggled with the memories of what they saw that day. Some vomited at the sight. Others left that sort of police work. All still remember.
A massive manhunt was launched as a wave of fear swept across the state. The thought of a madman creeping around with an axe killing people was the stuff of nightmares, not sleepy Greenough.
Residents locked their doors and police worked tirelessly to find the killer. They eventually caught Mitchell through DNA he left at the scene and a partial palm print.
He denied involvement at first, then confessed to four counts of murder and sexual assault. In 1995, he was convicted of four counts of murder and of sexual assault and jailed for life with a 20-year minimum non-parole period. The public were outraged — some believed the case was proof the death penalty needed to be reintroduced — and the Crown won an appeal to have him locked away with no chance of parole.
Mitchell fought that ruling, however, and the new sentence was eventually reduced to the former one, a life term with a 20-year minimum. A glimmer of hope for the young man that he would one day be free again.
Mitchell is due to face a second parole appeal in September, after being denied release in 2013. For Mrs Clow, the thought he could one day walk free is almost too much.
“It takes a lot out of you. It puts a lot of pressure on and you need a lot of family support,” she told news.com.au this weekend.
Even with that support, the constant thought Mitchell could be released hung over her. “He killed a quarter of my family, that’s what he took away.”
For her, life in jail means just that. She’s angry there is hope for him, when he removed all hope for four of her loved ones.
MEETING THE AXE MURDERER
She met him in jail in 2010 because she wanted to tell him — face-to-face — of the pain he’d caused.
“I wanted to tell him how much I loved my sister. She was fighting to build a good life for herself and her kids.”
She didn’t ask him why he did it. “I didn’t care and wouldn’t believe anything he said anyway.”
The day they met she watched him walk into the room. He was breathing heavily, as if he was nervous, and his eyes were lowered.
“I said to him ‘I want to thank you’. And he looked up. I said, ‘I want to thank you for agreeing to see me.”
He told her he was sorry and tried to convince her he was a changed man, a model prisoner. She didn’t care or believe him.
“I said of course he was a model prisoner, he’s in protective custody because he doesn’t want the other inmates to find out what he did. But there’s no guarantee what he would do once he was outside.”
Daniel MacKenzie, 16, was cut down with an axe outside the house.
The extraordinary meeting, where they were just a few feet apart, didn’t end before she was able to make him a promise.
“I asked him if he ever wanted to get out [of jail ] and he said ‘yes, I won’t lie to you’,” that was something he was hoping for one day, because it was his ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.”
It was then she told him she would do whatever it took to stop that from happening “with every breath in my body”.
“I said to him, ‘I want you to know I will do everything I can to keep you in jail.’”
THE DAY THAT CHANGED HER LIFE
She and husband Graeme were living in Queensland when the murders occurred.
Her brother, also living in Queensland, called her, 23 years ago today, to say he’d heard on the radio that a woman and three kids had been killed in Greenough. “He said they were about Karen’s age and asked me to call her.”
She tried calling, but the phone just rang and rang. She kept ringing back and it was sometimes engaged. Something was wrong.
These were the days before mobile phones and online news, so she and Graeme recorded the television news when they went out. She was unsettled, a little fearful, but didn’t want to believe it could be true. They returned and watched a report which gave few details other than there had been four shocking murders.
Sisters Evalyn and Karen when they were young.
“I still remember that as clear as day,” she said. There was nothing in the report that gave her reason to believe it was her family, but somehow she knew it was them.
Mr Clow called police and stood with his back to her as he spoke to them. She walked around so she could see his face and saw him crying.
“That’s when I lost it a bit,” she recalled to news.com.au, tears once again flowing.
Then her local police arrived. “I said to them, ‘yeah, I already know.’” Such a horrific loss was almost unbearable. “Nothing can ever prepare you for that moment”.
PAROLE DENIED
In 2013, Mitchell appeared before the Western Australian Prisoners Review Board, which recommended to Attorney General Michael Mischin he should be refused parole.
Mr Mischin said at the time his decision was based not just on the seriousness of the crime but also a need to protect the community.
He also made it clear he took into account the sentencing judge’s remarks.
Mr Mitchin was reported at the time of referring to “ ... the comments made by Justice Owen during sentencing that the offences were so serious as to defy description and that as far as he was concerned, he will never be released, at least not for many years greater than the 20 years minimum for a sentence of strict life imprisonment.”
But state law requires the case to be reviewed every three years. And any slight chance he could be freed is what keeps Ms Clow up at night.
Ms Clow will never stop fighting to keep killer William Mitchell in jail.
MITCHELL: A LONER, NOT POPULAR
After the shocking murders, those who knew Mitchell remembered him having an unhappy childhood, where he was often teased at school and didn’t have a lot of money.
He lived with his five brothers and sisters and parents in poverty. His old clothes and dirtiness made him a popular target, The West Australian reported.
A former neighbour said the “tragedy of his life” started then, as a child. But no one imagined him going on to become such a monster.
The turning point may have been when his mother died when he was 11. In later years, friends say he fell in with “the wrong crowd” and started to use drugs.
Others remembered him as having few friends. He rarely played with other children and often went straight home after school.
Mitchell is currently incarcerated in Bunbury Regional Prison in Western Australia. Due to a public outcry against the sentence, a Crown appeal ordered the non-parole period to be revoked. There followed a series of Supreme and High Court appeals, including a ruling that Mitchell would never be released. In September 2013, Mitchell was refused parole.
Attorney General Michael Mischin stated that his decision to refuse parole was based upon the gravity of the crime and the safety of the community.[8] He became eligible for parole again in October 2016, and was refused parole again. As required by statute, his next review by the board was due in September 2019. In 2018 due to new McGowan government law which delays parole consideration for mass murderers and serial killers for a period of 6 years
AXE Massacre So Horrific, Details Were Held From Public
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