NSW: Uncle's battle for justice for three slain family members
By Margaret Scheikowski28 Nov 2008 2:36 PM
SYDNEY, Nov 28, AAP - For years, Tony Gilham battled relentlessly to have his nephew Jeffrey charged over the frenzied 1993 slaughter of his family in a quiet Sydney suburb.
At one stage he sought a private prosecution and, when authorities refused to take action, he even posted a $200,000 reward for information about the murders.
Now, 15 years after the gruesome stabbings, a NSW Supreme Court jury has found Jeffrey Gilham guilty of murdering his parents Steven, 58, and Helen, 55, on August 28, 1993.
Another jury was discharged last April, after failing to agree on a verdict.
The latest jury has concluded the now 38-year-old married civil engineer was responsible for wiping out his entire family in a bloodbath on a winter's night.
The crown had submitted Gilham was a "cold, calculating silent assassin who didn't really love his mother, his father or his brother".
In 1995, he had admitted the manslaughter of his older brother Christopher, 25, who also was viciously stabbed to death in the family's Woronora home, in Sydney's south.
Gilham, a 23-year-old university student at the time, claimed he was provoked into stabbing his sibling after Christopher told him he had killed their parents and then set their mother on fire.
In sentencing him in April 1995 to a five-year good behaviour bond for the manslaughter, Justice Alan Abadee said the case was an "unbelievable tragedy".
He described the circumstances as "unique, and to my knowledge, without precedent", adding Gilham would be "indelibly scarred" by the murders.
"He will have to live with what occurred for ever and a day," Justice Abadee said in the NSW Supreme Court.
"He will have to live with the fact that he killed his brother".
But Steven Gilham's brother, Tony, believed the "unbelievable tragedy" involved a triple killer, and continued to raise his suspicions about his nephew's version of what happened.
The second of two coronial inquests into the deaths effectively found Gilham should stand trial for murdering his parents.
In 2001, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) took over, then terminated, a private prosecution launched against Gilham by his uncle.
The DPP had received legal advice a conviction was unlikely.
Valuable police evidence, including the knife and clothing worn by the victims, was destroyed or lost after the 1995 court case.
But Tony Gilham continued his crusade to have his nephew face a jury and, finally, after a reinvestigation into the case, Gilham was charged with the murders.
At his retrial in October, crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen SC maintained there was only one killer in the house on the night.
"It defies logic that, on that early morning, there were two brothers who independently got into a homicidal rage and independently stabbed a member or members of their family using the same knife the same morning," she said.
She said Gilham killed all three family members, stabbing them a total of 63 times in a "ferocious" attack, but then blamed his brother for the deaths of their parents.
At his first trial the crown suggested Gilham's wanted to acquire his parents' wealth, but Ms Cunneen told the latest jury the crown could not put forward a motive.
"The crown can't get into his head," she said.
But Gilham's barrister, Phillip Boulten SC, stressed he had no reasons to kill his parents, adding "everything was going positively" for him at that time.
"No witness came along here to say that Jeffrey hated his father or his mother or that he harboured a grudge or that he resented something or that they denied him something or refused him anything," he said.
"If he was the type of person, who, without any reason whatsoever, would kill his parents, you would think perhaps there'd be some sign of this in his personality before this incident occurred.
"You would think there would be some pointer towards his instability".
Ms Cunneen said in the lead-up to the killings, Gilham "manufactured" false evidence - telling friends his brother had been acting "psycho" and pushing their father - so his story would be more acceptable.
But Mr Boulten said the jury would reject claims there were no such disputes between Christopher and his father.
The crown emphasised the "significant similarity" in the way the three Gilhams met their deaths.
Ms Cunneen cited the sheer number of stab wounds, the fact that many were grouped near the heart of the victims and were similar in depth and angle.
And, she submitted, there was "a lot of hate" in all three stabbings.
"There was overkill, if I can suggest that to you ... so many more wounds needed than was necessary to kill any of them, and that is an extraordinary similarity," she said.
But Mr Boulten reminded the jury the same fish filleting knife was used in all three killings - Gilham said he stabbed his brother with the weapon Christopher had already used on their parents.
He said the brothers were roughly the same age, both were fit and healthy, and both were strong enough to carry out multiple stabbings.
"There is only a limited number of ways that people can be killed when they are stabbed, and they are usually stabbed in the places where these three people were stabbed," he said.
And he noted there were "significant" differences in the pattern of wounds.
Ms Cunneen - who contended Gilham set the house alight to destroy evidence - asked why he did not check his parents were dead before killing his brother, or try to put out the fire after his sibling supposedly set the parents alight.
But the defence said it was impossible for anyone to know how they would react in such a horrifying situation.
"Jeffrey Gilham is just an ordinary person, but he's been through extraordinary events," Mr Boulten said.
The jury's verdicts indicate Gilham was not an ordinary person, but someone who has wiped out his whole family for a reason only known to himself.
