Updated
A 25-year-old Perth man who murdered five members of his family, including his three young daughters, has become the first person in WA to be jailed for life with an order he never be released from prison.
Key points:
- Anthony Harvey killed his family in a Perth home with knives and blunt instruments
- He stayed in the house with the bodies for five days after the attacks
- He then turned himself in at a remote police station in WA's Pilbara
Anthony Robert Harvey admitted responsibility for what is one of WA's worst mass killings — the murders of his 41-year-old wife Mara, their daughters Charlotte, three, and two-year-old twins Alice and Beatrix, and their grandmother Beverley Quinn, 73.
They were all killed at the family's Bedford home in September last year, with the Supreme Court told Harvey had planned the crimes for days and written in a journal about eliminating his family.
Justice Stephen Hall today sentenced Harvey to life, saying "there is no other case that is truly comparable".
WARNING: This story contains graphic content that some readers may find upsetting
Harvey stayed in house with bodies
Mara Harvey was the first to die — she was hit with a piece of pipe when she returned home from her night fill job at a local Coles supermarket and was then stabbed.
Harvey then targeted his daughters, who were stabbed while they were sleeping, with one suffering 38 wounds.
The next morning, when Ms Quinn turned up as usual to help look after the family, she was hit with the pipe and then stabbed.
Harvey stayed in the house for five days with the bodies, which he photographed after covering them with blankets and bunches of flowers.
Ms Harvey's body had been moved to the children's bedroom, where he said he had arranged the bodies to appear as though she was cuddling the girls, whose favourite toys he placed around them.
He wrote letters to the victims, saying he loved them, he was sorry and that he had lost his mind.
Harvey then sold some of his belongings as well as some women's jewellery and he withdrew money from his wife's bank account before driving to the Pilbara town of Pannawonica, where his parents lived.
Once there he confessed his crimes to his father.
"I've done something really wrong Dad … I hurt them all of them," he said.
Harvey's father immediately called the police.
At his sentencing hearing last month, prosecutors argued the murders were so serious Harvey had forfeited any right to a life outside jail.
But his lawyers said their client's young age, his pleas of guilty and his prospects for rehabilitation meant he should receive a life jail sentence, with a fixed minimum term.
The harshest sentence ever handed down
No other person in WA has ever received a "never to be released" sentence — a provision that was introduced under changes to the state's homicide laws in 2008 by the then Labor government.
Before that, the only person who faced the possibility of never being released was William Patrick Mitchell, who murdered four members of one family with an axe in the Mid West town of Greenough in 1993.
At one point there was an order that he should never be granted parole, but it was overturned on appeal.
He was then given a life term with a 20-year minimum, which expired in 2013. He applied for release on parole but was refused.
Under the legislation, offenders are eligible to be considered for parole every three years after they have completed their term.
Mitchell's applications have always been refused.
He is next due for parole consideration in September this year.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, murder-and-manslaughter, courts-and-trials, perth-6000, wa, bedford-6052
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