By Sarah McPhee
A Sydney man took ice during a COVID-19 lockdown “for no reason other than simple boredom” before driving to his parents’ country home and stabbing them to death, a judge has found.
Graeme Leslie Murray faced a judge-alone trial in the NSW Supreme Court for the murder of his mother and father in their Oberon home in the Central Tablelands in August 2021, admitting to the acts but arguing he was suffering from a mental health impairment.
Graeme Leslie Murray has been found not criminally responsible for the murder of his parents Glenn and Susan Murray (pictured).
Susan Murray, 66, was found in her pyjamas in the laundry and had been stabbed eight times with a kitchen knife, while her 68-year-old husband Glenn Murray suffered 14 stab wounds and was found in the kitchen. They died at the scene.
The court heard their now 49-year-old son had at the time lived in Erskine Park, which had been locked down as a coronavirus hotspot, and was not able to work as a labourer.
Crown prosecutor Paul Kerr said Murray had a “longstanding history of illicit drug use, chiefly cannabis and methamphetamine”, or ice, and of drug-induced psychosis and paranoid delusions.
The court heard Murray, on one occasion in 2019, clambered onto the roof of a funeral parlour, fell through it and then gathered items including someone’s ashes before setting them on fire.
While in lockdown, in the days before the killings, Murray messaged multiple people about getting “points” of ice. He wrote to one: “I hardly ever get on it, but there’s f--- all else to do, so f--- it.”
After taking the drug on the night of August 9, 2021, he said he had “f---ed up big time” after 18 months off it and felt “scattered”.
Murray later drove to Oberon and killed his parents on the morning of August 13. He called police and was arrested in Penrith.
Graeme Murray killed his parents in Oberon in 2021.Credit: Facebook
Murray told a psychiatrist he thought someone “evil” was inside his mother and “impostors” had taken over his parents’ identities.
He told police “my mother and father were the two nicest people I’ve ever met in my f---ing life” and had been his best friends, adding, “I don’t know why I’ve f---ing done it.”
The view of two forensic psychiatrists was that he was not intoxicated by the drug at the time.
“The experts are of the view that the accused was either schizophrenic, or that some other inherent mental state of his played its own role, above and beyond that of prohibited drugs,” Justice Richard Button said on Thursday.
The judge delivered two special verdicts of “act proven but not criminally responsible”.
Button said the psychiatrists unanimously opined that Murray was suffering from a mental health impairment at the time, and could not calmly reflect on the “enormous moral wrongfulness of what he was doing” when he killed his parents “with the utmost brutality”.
“In my own opinion … ice undoubtedly played some role here,” the judge said.
He said Murray made a “catastrophic decision to return to the substance in August 2021, for no reason other than simple boredom”.
Reading a victim impact statement through tears, Murray’s sister Shannon Shiel said Thursday marked 1000 days since her “heart was ripped out”.
“I cannot imagine the fear and confusion my poor parents would have experienced,” she said.
“They had so much life left to live together.”
She said her brother turned into a drug addict before the family’s eyes, and “killed the two people that helped him, forgave him for all the stupid things he had done and loved him unconditionally”.
Murray will be indefinitely detained in a psychiatric facility or jail until the Mental Health Review Tribunal is satisfied he is not a risk to the community or himself.
The judge said he had never lost a loved one to violence, but after years overseeing such cases he was aware of the “ripples of pain” following such deaths.
“I conclude these proceedings by conveying to everyone who has suffered, is suffering and will undoubtedly continue to suffer, as a result of this many faceted tragedy, the condolences of the Supreme Court of NSW,” Button said.
If you or anyone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 (and see lifeline.org.au), 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732), the National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service on 1800 211 028 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800.
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