South Australia’s most notorious female criminals – and the victims whose lives they ruined

South Australia has had more than its fair share of notorious female criminals. These women ruined the lives of innocent victims through greed, lust, abuse and cowardice. The old saying “the female of the species is deadlier than the male” is something of a cliche – although it’s arguably true when it comes to South Australian criminals. Over the past decade, the state has had more than its fair share of macabre maidens and lethal ladies whose crimes are even more chilling than male offenders. A 2018 study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found the number of female criminals in SA had increased by 46 per cent over 10 years – more than double the national increase of 20 per cent. Female criminals also offended for longer than their male counterparts, with a rising number committing crimes into their mid-60s. In this special feature, The Advertiser dives into the histories of the state’s most notorious women and the innocent people whose lives they ruined through greed, abuse and cowardice. MICHELLE BURGESS Before Netflix, Stan and Apple TV, the coolest thing you could do as a kid was convince your dad to take you to the video store so you could grab the latest movies. But when Kevin Matthews promised his three sons a school holiday treat it was actually nothing more than part of a callous murder plot that arose from a twisted love triangle. Matthews ensured his wife Carolyn would be home alone to provide a window of opportunity for his lover Michelle Burgess and hitman David Key to ruthlessly murder a devoted mother. He staged his return to the family’s West Lakes Shore home and allowed his sons – then aged 12, 13 and 16 – to find their mum’s bloodied body on the kitchen floor. Only an hour earlier – in a meeting between Matthews, Burgess and Key at the Port Adelaide Beaurepaires outlet Matthews managed – was the final decision made to kill Mrs Matthews. It was a merciless crime spawned from Matthews and Burgess’s desperation to continue their affair and cash in on Mrs Matthews’ $100,000 life insurance policy. They both wanted their spouses out of the way and someone to make it happen. That man was Key, who was blinded by both money and what he thought was love. Key, who did not know Matthews was having an affair with Burgess, demanded $50,000 to kill Mrs Matthews and Burgess’s husband Darren. The second murder did not eventuate. Matthews, unaware Burgess was sleeping with Key, thought he was hiring a hitman for whom Burgess had drawn up the two contracts to have the murders “look like car accident (both)”. Burgess – dubbed the “black widow” – used sex to manipulate Matthews and Key, whom she coerced into stabbing to death Mrs Matthews on July 12, 2001. The contract to kill Mr Burgess was found in Key’s wallet when he was arrested. He claimed to have put the contract to kill Mrs Matthews in a sandwich prepared by Burgess and eaten it. Upon finally realising Burgess’s betrayal, Key pleaded guilty to murder in return for sentencing discounts and outlined the entire sordid plot. He was jailed for a minimum of 20 years. During the Supreme Court trial of Matthews and Burgess, Key told the jury how Burgess had pressured him to proceed with the murder when they confronted Mrs Matthews. “Key said you handed him a knife but he said he did not want to do it … you said to him ‘Be a man, kill her, show me that you love me’,’’ sentencing judge Justice Margaret Nyland said. Key’s version was supported by a covertly recorded conversation in which Burgess said: “It looked good and I pushed Dave. That’s why Dave done it himself with some help.’’ Justice Nyland said the pair’s determination to continue their affair at any cost provided the motive for the contract killing, which she described as “premeditated, heartless and brutal”. “This was a crime which, in my opinion, was committed out of lust and greed. In my view, that places it in the most serious category of crimes of murder,” Justice Nyland said. “Although Key … actually killed Mrs Matthews, I’m satisfied that he was only the instrument for the execution of plans made by the two of you to get rid of Mrs Matthews.” The duo was jailed for life with a non-parole period of 30 years – but that did not stop Burgess and her predatory instincts. An Adelaide Women’s Prison officer was forced to quit after becoming involved in a sexual relationship with Burgess. The father of three was banned from visiting for six months. DONNA LEE CASAGRANDE AND NICOLE MCGUINNESS In November 2001, the attention of South Australians was focused on one thing: What happened to Japanese schoolgirl Megumi Suzuki? Megumi’s disappearance had gripped the public for years and, as the mercury soared, hundreds of police and volunteers were combing a dump at Wingfield for her body. They would eventually find it – helping secure the conviction of her rapist and killer, Mark Errin Rust – but not before making an equally gruesome, but totally unrelated, discovery. In a metal bin on the wide and stomach-turning property, one unfortunate volunteer found a severed and partially burned human head. It belonged to Joanne Lillecrapp – a woman who, like Megumi, had vanished without a trace but, unlike Megumi, had not garnered statewide attention. Ms Lillecrapp’s death was one of isolation, cut off from her family by the manipulations of her killers and the extreme lengths they went to hide their crime. The former truck driver and professional wrestler had not merely been decapitated, but also dismembered and defleshed. Parts of her body had been spread across five different SA locations – one of which was the prized strawberry patch in her own backyard. Ms Lillecrapp’s killers – Donna Lee Casagrande and Nicole Therese Courcier McGuinness – had also scattered to the winds. On Remembrance Day 2001, however, Casagrande walked into the Redfern Police Station in NSW and gave officers a full confession. She was not motivated by penitence, sadly – she had somehow convinced herself the officers would give her methadone if she admitted to her crime. McGuinness was swiftly tracked down and, upon her arrest, the full story emerged. The women, who were lovers, had met Ms Lillecrapp while they were working as prostitutes to feed their drug habits. Convinced she could improve their lives, Ms Lillecrapp invited the couple to live with her and took control of their finances to ensure they turned themselves around. The kind-hearted woman had failed to reckon with a junkie’s hunger, however, and when she refused to hand over their money, Casagrande and McGuinness pounced. They drugged her, beat her, humiliated and abused her, stabbed her repeatedly in the temples and finally killed her with a single blow to the heart. McGuinness, who perpetrated most of the violence, then turned to her beloved and said: “I can’t believe that money can mean more to someone than their own life.” Casagrande and McGuinness committed the crime together, and they went down for it together. They clung to one another in the dock of the Supreme Court – Casagrande weeping, McGuinness glowering – as Ms Lillecrapp’s family read their victim impact statements. So hysterical was Casagrande that the judge had her ejected from the court – which only fuelled McGuinness’ anger, and she openly challenged the Lillecrapps to kill her. In the end, Casagrande was convicted of manslaughter and McGuinness of murder, receiving life sentences with 10-year and 18-year minimum terms respectively. Upon her release, Casagrande quickly lapsed back into crime – getting caught red-handed stealing mail – going in and out of prison for several years before moving interstate. McGuinness applied for release on parole in February 2020, prompting condemnation from Ms Lillecrapp’s brother, Ron. “The life sentence she was given is not the same as the life sentence I have,” he told The Advertiser. “Hers has a legal end date, mine will last for the rest of my life.” TANIA STAKER Within the four walls of a three-bedroom northern suburbs home lived five adults and 21 children. It was quite the squeeze. But they were not alone. The Parafield Gardens house was swarming with cockroaches, flies and maggots, while rotting rubbish and faeces covered the floors. It was anything but a safe family home. It was the “House of Horrors” and to this date remains one of South Australia’s worst cases of child neglect. The children’s treatment – uncovered when a boy, 5, collapsed and had to be taken to hospital with severe hypothermia – was described as “beyond comprehension” by the presiding judge. Its mastermind, Tania Staker, felt so threatened by five of the children because they were the progeny of her then-partner Luke Armistead and another woman who also lived with them. The mother of 14 subjected the children, then aged between four and seven, to a jealousy-fuelled regime between February and June 2008 that left them severely emaciated. They were beaten, starved, choked and fed only dog food or the scraps left over after the other 16 children in the house had eaten a share of hot chips or noodles. The children were ordered to stand facing a wall from when they woke to when they slept. At times, their hands and feet were bound with sticky tape to stop them stealing food at night. The depravation caused the children to suffer from starvation, malnutrition, emaciation, muscle wastage and scabies. Staker was jailed for 10 years, while Luke Armistead and two other men who lived in the house – her brother Michael Quinlivan and Robert Armistead – were jailed for nine. “Each of you, along with other adults who were occupants of the house, embarked on a common purpose of treating the children in a particularly cruel way, by subjecting them to a daily routine of punishment,’’ sentencing judge then-Justice Kevin Duggan said. “There is not the slightest doubt that the effect of depriving the children of adequate food would have been apparent to anyone living in this household.’’ Justice Duggan said Staker’s neglect of the children appeared to have arisen from jealousy. “In your own statement to (a psychologist) you said that you came to hate and resent (the children’s mother) and her children while they were living with you,” he said. The children’s mother, whose identity was not disclosed to protect her children, was jailed for six years. “For some reason she was prepared to inflict suffering on her own children, a fact which she has plainly admitted,” Justice Duggan said. “The adults were vigilant to ensure that they were prevented from eating more.” Staker’s sister, Trudy Quinlivan, was ordered to serve nine years of mental health supervision in the community after she was found mentally unfit to stand trial. The Supreme Court heard a doctor considered Quinlivan’s intellectual capacity to be in the bottom 2.2 per cent of the population. Another said she was “strikingly childlike’’. ANGELIKA GAVARE As the weather turned warmer in December 2008, a young southern suburbs mother took her two daughters on a daily walk. The happy-looking trio would leave their Christies Downs home – the youngest child in a stroller, the older holding her mother’s hand – and head for a local creek. Only the most eagle-eyed observer would have noted that, on the way to the creek each day, the child in the stroller was accompanied by a plastic-wrapped bundle. And only a truly interested party would realise that, when the family returned to their house, each day’s bundle had gone. Horrifyingly, the innocent creek trips were no mere daily outing – they were a cover for the gruesome aftermath of one of South Australia’s bloodiest murders. The young mother, Angelika Gavare, had killed and dismembered local pensioner Vonne McGlynn, then used her children to disguise the dumping of the body parts. Of course, the general public had no knowledge of this macabre detail when Ms McGlynn, 82, went missing. As such, there was widespread surprise – bordering on shock – when the attractive, articulate Gavare was arrested and first brought before the Adelaide Magistrates Court. Time, investigation and prosecution would slowly strip away those surface layers of normalcy, revealing Gavare as the cruel and greedy person she truly was. Her criminal career had started with simple grifting – keeping the PINs of elderly customers of the newsagency at which she worked, then skimming off their accounts. She soon progressed to mail fraud by befriending vulnerable people, offering to do jobs for them and swiping their welfare checks before they even saw the envelopes. Ms McGlynn, who was a beloved member of her local neighbourhood, was Gavare’s biggest and in some ways most outlandish target. Her avarice demanded control of Ms McGlynn’s beautiful home, which she wanted to renovate and “flip” on the real estate market for a big profit. For weeks, the fiercely independent, active and freely mobile pensioner wisely refused Gavare’s insistent offers of “help” and eventually refused to even answer the door. Subtlety having failed, Gavare turned to brute force – literally. She broke into Ms McGlynn’s home through the roof, hefted one of the pensioner’s prized statues and struck her with it, likely from behind. Gavare moved swiftly – she sifted Ms McGlynn’s personal papers and headed for the bank, taking control of and draining her accounts. She called the local council, delivery services, anyone who could be expected to contact her victim and claimed she was caring for the house while Ms McGlynn took a holiday. And she used her own house’s tool shed to dismember an innocent woman, then her innocent children to shield her disposal of the evidence. That evidence led to her downfall, however – Ms McGlynn’s replacement hip had a serial number etched into it, leaving no doubt as to the body’s identity. Caught red-handed with Ms McGlynn’s hall table and toaster oven in her home, Gavare nonetheless insisted she was not guilty. She tried to blame her boyfriend, her ex-husband, anyone she could think of for her crime. Her own mother gave evidence against her at trial, which may have further loosened Gavare’s grip on events. When the court was played her video record of interview with police, and the Gavare on screen made a joke, the real Gavare – watching from the dock – laughed at her humour. In November 2011, Gavare was jailed for life with a 32-year non-parole period. Supreme Court Justice Trish Kelly said the crime’s sole motivation was Gavare’s “sheer greed”, noting her selfishness meant one mystery would never be solved. “There is no evidence of contrition or remorse, and you’ve not even had the decency to reveal how you disposed of the head and hands of this most unfortunate woman,” she said. “Your actions reveal a profound disregard and disrespect for human life.” BRITTNEY DWYER As a child, she would chase her older brother around the house with a knife, before becoming obsessed with graveyards and “other dark things” in her teenage years. By the age of 20, Brittney Dwyer’s morbid curiosity escalated into murder – and the victim was her very own grandfather, in a crime inspired by greed and a TV show called American Horror Story. In August 2016, she stabbed Robert Whitwell three times before calmly washing the dishes just feet away from where he slowly bled to death. Her own lawyer said the killing was partly motivated by American Horror Story – an anthology series based on dark and twisted crimes. The story of this savage murder, which has been described as an “almost sociopathic killing”, starts in the outer suburbs of Brisbane a few months earlier. Dwyer and girlfriend Shelby Holmes drove almost 2000km from Redbank Plains to Adelaide, with intentions to rob 81-year-old Mr Whitwell of about $110,000, stashed somewhere inside his Craigmore home. After checking in at a nearby motel, Holmes went to scope out Mr Whitwell’s house as she sent text messages back to his granddaughter, Dwyer. “He said hey to me omg he’s lovely,” one message said. Dwyer replied: “He is very lovely. Don’t get attached to him. He might have to die.” The next day, the young women returned to break in – but were spooked by noises coming from inside, so they aborted the plan and drove back home to Brisbane. The pair’s relationship ended upon their return and, soon after, Dwyer moved in with Bernadette Burns, who would later become a willing accomplice in the vile murder. In early August, Dwyer again made the long-haul drive to Adelaide – but this time with Burns and an overdrawn bank account. They pulled up outside Mr Whitwell’s home and Burns stayed in the car applying makeup, while Dwyer knocked on the front door. Her innocent grandfather let her in for what he thought was a loving visit. During their time together, Mr Whitwell showed Dwyer old photos from her childhood – a touching moment that almost forced her to back out of her murderous and greedy plan. But, it was not the time for cold feet, Burns thought, as she texted Dwyer from the car to “harden up” and kill him. As Mr Whitwell started to walk Dwyer towards the front door when the visit was over, she stabbed him in the neck – causing him to turn around and place his hands on her shoulders. He asked why she attacked him – but there was no reply as she stabbed him in the chest and again in the neck. Bizarrely, she helped her grandfather apply a bandaid before washing the dishes as he bled out and died. His body was found on August 8, while Dwyer and Burns were arrested in Brisbane on August 26, following a Crime Stoppers tip-off. Supreme Court Justice Kevin Nicholson was scathing in his remarks as he sentenced Dwyer and Burns to life imprisonment, with non-parole periods of 20 ½ and 13 ½ years respectively. “The very same people who have been very badly damaged by the sudden and violent end of Mr Whitwell, who was greatly loved and respected, are simply shattered by the fact it was such a close member of the family who so callously and brutally murdered him,” he said. “This murder was brutal, callous, cold-blooded.” SAMANTHA FARRER A well-respected nurse was training for a triathlon when she was hit and killed by a meth-addled driver, who told a passenger she had run over a fruit stall and kept driving. Samantha Magdaleine Farrer, the former girlfriend of Adelaide siege gunman Rodney Clavell, left Kathleen Heraghty to die on the side of a road near Victor Harbor two days after Christmas in 2013. The incident left Ms Heraghty’s family “drenched in pain” and their lives “forever tainted” by the heart-shattering loss. Driving her friend’s dark-coloured Holden Commodore, Farrer was on her way to visit her father in Victor Harbor after attending a Boxing Day party in the Adelaide suburb of Collinswood. Farrer was high on methamphetamine and hadn’t slept in 24 hours when she hit Ms Heraghty, 48, who was cycling with her husband on an almost-straight stretch of Inman Valley Road at 10.30am. Ms Heraghty, a well-known midwife, was training for a local triathlon with her husband, leading obstetrician Brian Peat. Instead of stopping to check on the respected couple, Farrer kept driving, telling her passenger sleeping in the front seat that she had hit a roadside fruit stall. Ms Heraghty died at the scene. Judge Gordon Barrett found Farrer guilty of aggravated causing death by dangerous driving and leaving the scene of an accident, saying it “must have been perfectly plain … almost immediately after the collision” that she had hit a person. “Unless she was delusional, she cannot have concluded that she hit a post,” he said. Police images show the damage to both Ms Heraghty’s blue race bike and the Commodore Farrer was driving. In October 2016, Judge Barrett imposed a five-year jail sentence, despite Farrer pleading for leniency so she could look after her then 15-month-old son. During the trial, Ms Heraghty’s Scottish-based family told of the lifelong effects the crash had caused, while criticising Farrer for not “taking responsibility”. The court played a voice recording from the victim’s chronically ill mother, who said: “Now she is in a cold, cold grave and I am not able to visit to see her. Why, why, why – I have asked, is this happening?” Farrer’s lawyer Gilbert Aitken said his client was “sorry” and maintained the events were an accident. She is the former girlfriend of fugitive Rodney Clavell, who shot himself during a dramatic 13-hour siege at a King William Street massage parlour in 2014.