Paul B. Kidd - Till Death Us Do Part. Marriages That Ended in Murder

Till Death Us Do Part

True Crime Stories of Australian Marriages That Ended In Murder

Paul B. Kidd

Introduction

It is a sad fact of life that while many marriages end in the divorce courts, some also wind up before the criminal courts as murder trials. The most common of these cases are the murders of husbands by battered wives who have had enough, and can see no other way out. The murders of the wife-bashers and rapists who had it coming anyway. But you wont find any of those cases here.

Till Death Us Do Part is about the more sensational and unusual of wedlock homicides. Its about people who allegedly once loved each other, and yet one of them or in one case, both ended up deceased by heinous means. This book is about the callous, unusual, barbaric and bizarre side of murder in marriage.

All but one of the couples in the stories were actually married. The odd one out was a defacto couple who had been together long enough to qualify as married anyway by todays standards. Maybe if they had have been married they wouldnt have wound up here. When her old man repeatedly refused to marry her, The Black Widow took to him with a boning knife, stabbed him to death, skinned his corpse, cut his head off, cooked it in a pot with some fresh garden veggies and served it up to the kids for dinner. Not for the squeamish or faint-hearted, that one.

All of the stories but one are Australian. Who Killed the Crewes ? is from New Zealand (with Australian involvement) and is arguably the most unusual matrimonial mystery murder case in history. In 1970 a couple disappeared from their blood-splattered farmhouse leaving their infant child in a cot. Their bodies were found months later, and a man was charged with their murders and sent to prison for life. It should have been the end of it, but it was just the beginning

This book is unique in that it covers wayward wedded cases from all walks of life from colonial times to as recently as 2004, when the last two of the murderous trio from The Sex Goddess were sentenced to lengthy jail terms for the barbaric murder of an innocent housewife.

Downtrodden Elizabeth Scott may have participated in the murder of her drunken, abusive husband in a bush shanty in colonial Victoria in 1863 to become the subject of The Last of Lusty Lizzie . A beautiful young English girl who was married at the age of 14, her story can perhaps elicit some sympathy. Not so the cold-blooded case of a multi-millionaire businessman, in another century and another culture, in Unholy Matrimony . He had his wife murdered by a hitman while she was asleep in bed and while he himself was lying alongside her!

The only thing that stopped police from arresting the businessman sooner for the contract killing of his wife was that the investigators found it hard to believe that anyone could be that callous.

Tasmanias contribution is The Mad Scientist . This is the story of one of Australias most eminent academics, Dr Rory Jack Thompson, who, in 1983, after a long custody dispute over their two children, completely lost the plot and cut most of his wifes body into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

But of all Australias wife killers, the title of the most evil would undoubtedly go to serial killer Frederick Deeming, the subject of The Baron of Death , who killed in England and Australia and didnt hesitate to murder his own children rather than leaving a living witness.

So ghastly were Deemings crimes that they made headlines throughout the world. And at one stage it was even seriously considered that he could have been that most evil serial killer of them all the Whitechapel Killer, Jack the Ripper. The Whitechapel murders had occurred only a few years earlier and Deeming was reputed to have been in London at the time.

Lovers of Australian true crime that is stranger than fiction will find it hard to go past The Bizarre Case of Ziggy Pohl . Although it is unique in Australian law and often referred to as a warning to novice lawyers remember the Ziggy Pohl case this is the first time that this story has ever been published in its entirety.

While on the road freelance carpentering, kindly German immigrant Ziggy Pohl called into his Queanbeyan home for lunch to find his wife dead strangled on the bedroom floor. Ziggy rang the police and, faced with a mountain of circumstantial evidence, was charged with her murder and ended up in jail for life. Then a miracle happened.

I feel sure that lovers of Australian true crime will enjoy these stories and the many others in Till Death Us Do Part for their uniqueness and wealth of new information. But be warned. If youve been playing up, the next time your partner gives you a good once-over, check out what they are reading. If its this book you could be in a bit of trouble.

Paul B. Kidd

The Sex Goddess

Romeo and Juliet they were not. He was a fat, bald, bespectacled sales manager of a suburban Adelaide tyre centre. She was a feral, overweight, frumpish housewife and mother of two. A member of the South Australian media described her as having a head like a dropped pie. Yet, for all her physical shortcomings, to her lovers 28-year-old Michelle Elizabeth Burgess was a sex goddess. It was rumoured in local parlance that she was exceptionally hot in the cot and that one of her main attributes was that she could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Her exotic sexual talents ensured that the men in her life followed her about like lovesick schoolboys, willing to do whatever she desired, even if it meant committing murder at a minutes notice.

Given these circumstances, the sex goddess had little trouble in manipulating two of her horny admirers into setting up and then brutally killing an innocent housewife the wife of one of the murderers she wanted out of the way.

Until late 2000, Michelle Burgess had lived a mundane existence with her husband Darren and their two young children at their ordinary suburban home at Evanston Gardens, a suburb of Gawler, 40 kilometres north of Adelaide and adjacent to the Barossa Valley. During their eight-year marriage Michelle had cheated on her husband twice. But it was the extramarital affair with her husbands boss, 39-year-old Kevin William Matthews, that would change two families lives forever.

Kevin Matthews and Michelle Burgess had previously met at a Beaurepaires Tyre Christmas function. Matthews was sales manager of the Port Adelaide store while Darren Burgess worked at the Elizabeth branch. Michelle Burgess obviously wasnt impressed at that first meeting and later described Kevin Matthews to her husband as a pig dog and his wife of seventeen years, Carolyn, who was 37, as feral.

Darren Burgesss thirtieth birthday party was held at the Burgess home in September 2000. Michelle strangely insisted that Kevin and Carolyn be invited; party-goers could have been mistaken into thinking that Michelle and Kevin were an item, if it wasnt for the attendance of their respective spouses. The couple spent most of the afternoon arm in arm and chatting secretly.

At Kevin Matthewss fortieth birthday party, also in September 2000, and held at the Matthewss home, again the couple spent most of the time draped in each others arms with the progressively drunker Matthews announcing to everyone that Michelle was his new best friend.

Over the following months their relationship developed into a serious affair and they could be found openly kissing and cuddling at bars and local parks during extended lunch hours. Mr Matthews and a woman answering to Michelle Burgesss description regularly drank eight glasses of scotch a day at the Hampstead Hotel and embarrassed other patrons with their passionate embraces.