THE killer of Rodney Willis at The Rock last April will spend a minimum 20 years behind bars for what the sentencing judge described as a savage and sustained attack to ensure the theft of $30,000 from Mr Willis’s bank account.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The 24-year-old murderer, who by court order an only be referred to as AX, was sentenced in Griffith on Friday by Supreme Court judge Justice Peter Johnson.
In his sentencing remarks, Justice Johnson said 76-year-old Mr Willis discovered the money missing from his bank account on the morning of April 16.
AX, who was living with his wife, two children and Mr Willis’s nephew Edwin Owen in a house at the front of the granny flat in which Mr Willis was living in Scott Street, had made out a fraudulent cheque to himself the day before. Justice Johnson said when AX’s wife learned Mr Willis had discovered the theft she told her husband. AX went into the granny flat and bashed Mr Willis over the head with a tyre iron.
He then went outside to get a heavy metal pipe, turned up the volume on the television in the main house to cover the noise of a second assault, dragged Mr Willis into his bedroom and repeatedly smashed him over the head with the pipe. Leaving Mr Willis for dead, AX went into the house, smoked cannabis and had a shower .He caught a train to Melbourne about three hours later but returned to The Rock on April 20. He admitted killing Mr Willis during a police interview on April 30.
“This offence involved sustained violence with a weapon directed to an elderly man in his own home by a young assailant,” Justice Johnson said. “The victim had done nothing wrong to the offender to bring about this attack. All Mr Willis had done was to detect that someone had defrauded him of almost all of the funds in his bank account.
“When it became clear to the offender that Mr Willis was taking action to stop the fraud being finalised, the offender proceeded to viciously attack Mr Willis.”
Justice Johnson described Mr Willis as a highly-respected member of The Rock community and said his loss had affected many members of that community.
AX was given a head sentence of 26 years and seven months with a non-parole period of 19 years and 11 months backdated to May 19 last year. Justice Johnson said at one stage AX told police if only Mr Willis had not found out about the theft until the next day, the cheque would have cleared and he would have already left for Melbourne.