Occupation Tradesman Criminal status Incarcerated | Name Samuel Boyd | |
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Criminal charge Murder x 4, wounding with intent to murder x 1 Criminal penalty 5 x life imprisonment without parole | ||
Samuel Leonard Boyd is an Australian multiple murderer from New South Wales, currently serving four consecutive sentences of life imprisonment plus 25 years without the possibility of parole for the murder of four people and the malicious wounding of a fifth between September 1982 and April 1983.
Contents
Boyd emigrated from Scotland with his family at age 11.
First Murder: September 1982
Boyd stabbed Rhonda Celea, a young married woman with two children, to death while he was working as a pest controller at her house at Busby.
Glenfield Massacre: 22 April 1983
In the early hours of the morning, Boyd beat his flatmate and drinking partner, Gregory Wiles, to death with a hammer before dumping the body on a roadside. Later that day, Boyd drove to a school for handicapped children in Glenfield, and forced the three woman supervisors, Helen Hartup, Patricia Volcic and Olive Short, to undress at knifepoint, and then proceeded to threaten them and made them sexually abuse each other before stabbing Hartup and Volcic to death. Boyd never sexually assaulted the women himself.
Arrest, Trial and Sentencing
Boyd was arrested by special operations police on 22 April 1983, the day of the Glenfield massacre.
In January 1985, Boyd was convicted on four counts of murder and one of malicious wounding by a jury, and was sentenced to 5 consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole by Chief Justice O'Brien. Boyd unsuccessfully appealed against his convictions.
In 1994 Boyd applied to have a minimum term determined, however Justice Carruthers refused to fix a minimum term, calling Boyd's crimes "the worst category of murder", and the life sentence for the malicious wounding was redetermined under new laws to the new maximum of 25 years.
An appeal against this decision was dismissed on 3 November 1995. As the malicious wounding sentence expired in 2008, Boyd is serving the four consecutive life sentences.
In 2016, Boyd made a final attempt to have a minimum term set, offering to undergo chemical castration in exchange for parole. If this application is rejected, then (subject to appeals) Boyd will die in custody.