‘MICHAEL Schneider's outback road trip took a wrong turn when one of his travelling companions emerged from the scrub covered in blood and brandishing a machete.
At first, the 54-year-old thought his friends, Michael Francis Mooney and John "Cookie"
Grey, had hacked up road kill as part of some macabre prank. "That's sort of what I was hoping," he told an
Alice Springs Supreme Court jury. But it was no joke. "(Mooney) came back and I said, 'Where's John?"'
Mooney, who was this week sentenced to life in prison for the murder of
Grey during the drunken road trip in central Australia in October last year, replied: "I f...ing killed him ... you should have seen the blood spurt out."
Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC told the jury
Grey, a 58-year-old chef from Queensland, had been slashed 14 times across the head, shoulders and hands.
Several days earlier, the three flatmates had set off from Maitland in NSW on an outback road trip bound for
Darwin. Mr Schneider and
Grey had planned to work in
Darwin before opening a restaurant in
Broome.
Mooney, who had been on a disability pension for 14 years after breaking his back twice in motorbike accidents, had come along for the ride. As the trip wore on, the trio drank copiously and tensions began to simmer. Mr Schneider taunted
Grey, who was known as "Auntie Cookie" for his "effeminate and fussy" nature, about a "sexual crime of some sort" he was said to have committed.
Boiling point was reached when
Grey allegedly touched Mooney's genitals. "I thought it was disgusting because my father used to molest me as a child," Mooney, 50, later told police.
Later that night, on October 19, the men pulled over for a
toilet stop about 112km south of
Alice Springs.
Grey went into the bush and Mooney followed, while Mr Schneider stayed by the car, too drunk to walk. Mr Schneider then heard the two men swearing and minutes later Mooney returned: "Where's the f...ing machete?" he asked.
In the car were two machetes Mr Schneider had brought as gifts for friends. "I want to put the wind up Cookie," Mooney told Mr Schneider, before grabbing a machete.
Soon after, Mr Schneider heard rustling in the bush and
Grey's voice calling his name.
Mooney then re-emerged alone. "He was all covered in blood, hair and muck,"
Mr Schneider said. "I thought maybe the game was to play a joke on me."
Mooney told Mr Schneider he had hit
Grey once in self-defence. As they got back in the car, Mooney warned Mr Schneider: "You better not say anything about this or you're next."
Mooney pulled over and buried the machete in the bush and they later camped on the Stuart Highway, with Mooney sleeping in
Grey's swag.
The next morning, a tour guide discovered
Grey's body on the road.
Mooney surrendered himself to
Alice Springs police the next day, telling a duty constable:
"I think I may have murdered someone last night. I cracked him a couple of times with a machete."
In a later police interview, Mooney refused to say why he had killed his friend of 20 years, saying he had been on medication for a long time.
Mooney's lawyer, Jon Tippet QC, had argued that childhood violence and persistent substance abuse had left his client damaged and that he should be found guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.
But the jury took just over four hours to reject a defence of mental impairment to find Mooney guilty of murder.
The heavily tattooed father-of-three shook slightly as Chief Justice Brian Martin sentenced him to life in prison with a non-parole period of 20 years’
Once again this is a sad tale where blokes get out of control, and give the Outback a bad name. I'm starting to understand why people are becoming reluctant to
camp in the bush.
I've only had two minor problems in over fifty years of campimg in the bush, so I hope these main stream articles don't diminish the value of our
recreation, nor the percieved safety of
bush camping.
Regards
Kim