http://www.news.com.au//story/0,23599,21502796-2,00.html
Men jailed for using teen's head as a bowling ball
April 04, 2007 06:20pm
TWO men have been jailed for life for the brutal slaying of a homeless
teenager who was stabbed 133 times and decapitated before his head was
used as a bowling ball.
After six hours of deliberations, a Brisbane Supreme Court jury this
afternoon found James Patrick Roughan, 27, and Christopher Clark Jones,
23, guilty of the gruesome murder of 17-year-old Morgan Jay Shepherd
(known as Jay) on March 29, 2005.
The pair, both from Sandgate, north of Brisbane, had already pleaded
guilty to interfering with a corpse.
During the trial of almost three weeks, the court was told police found
Jay's headless body buried in a shallow grave in Dayboro, north of
Brisbane, following an anonymous tip-off only days after he died.
The jury heard Jay, who was a resident of a Brisbane youth hostel, had
been drinking with both the accused at Roughan's home before a fight
broke out.
Prosecutor Don McKenzie said a post-mortem examination revealed Jay had
been stabbed 133 times and his head had been cut off by either an axe,
saw or knife.
Police found a tomahawk, knife, handsaw and pruning saw stained with the
victim's blood in Roughan's shed, as well as blood-stained clothing
containing Jones' DNA.
Witnesses testified Jones told friends about the murder and how Roughan
had used Jay's head as a bowling ball and a puppet.
Jones smirked as his guilty verdict was delivered but later read out a
note he had penned to the court apologising for his involvement in the
murder.
"I am truly sorry for what happened to Jay and until the day I die I
will always regret my involvement in this matter," he said.
"As a father, I don't know how I could cope with it."
Worst case ever heard
Justice Roslyn Atkinson deplored the offence, saying it was the worst
case she had ever heard.
"It's hard to describe adequately the horror of the crime that you were
both involved in," she told the men, who sat at opposite ends of the
dock, separated by a security guard.
"Certainly I have had no experience of a murder so horrible.
"It was a murder completely without motive, which visited the most
horrific violence on a 17-year-old boy who obviously had done nothing to
deserve it."
The men have each served 732 days in pre-sentence custody.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
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