Douglas Crabbe: Uluru killer approved for parole after 40 years in jail over 1983 deaths

One of Australia’s most notorious mass murderers is a step closer to walking free from jail, after Western Australia’s parole board formally recommended his release. Douglas Crabbe has been serving five life sentences at Acacia Prison for driving his 25-tonne Mack truck into a crowded Uluru pub in 1983, killing five people. But now, Crabbe, who was approved for and completed a resocialisation program last year, has been recommended for release by the Prisoners Review Board. That recommendation will need to be approved by Attorney-General John Quigley. The move has sparked anger among survivors from the 1983 incident in which Adrian Durnin, 21, David Seng, 24, Helen Fuller, 22, Patricia Slinn, 45, and Leslie McKay-Ramsay, 35, were killed. Then 36, Crabbe had been kicked out of the Uluru Hotel in August 1983, before crashing his road train through the front of the venue. Originally sentenced to “life means life” imprisonment in the Northern Territory, the repeal of laws there converted his sentence to a 30-year minimum term. After transferring to prison in Perth in 2005 to be closer to his family, Crabbe first became eligible for parole in 2016, but that was rejected by Mr Quigley’s predecessor Michael Mischin. Last year, on the recommendation of the prisoner review board, Mr Quigley approved Crabbe to relocate to a minimum-security prison to participate in a resocialisation program. “I note that in sentencing Crabbe, the court clearly contemplated parole, making him eligible for parole after 30 years. Crabbe has been behind bars for nearly 40 years,” Mr Quigley told The West Australian last year. “It is not a decision I made lightly. “There have been prisoners who have completed an RSP whose release to parole was not approved.” Bernadette Schiller, who survived Crabbe’s murderous rampage, told The West she had been advised by the Prisoner Review Board of their recommendation to release him. “It works out to be eight years per murder, which is totally unacceptable to me,” she said. “He was sentenced in the Northern Territory to five life sentences and I do not understand how in Western Australia they can possibly think that’s serving his term. “I just hope that the Attorney-General seriously considers the impact that’s going to have on myself and other survivors.” Crabbe’s parole will be one of several high-profile decisions Mr Quigley needs to make in the coming months. Ahead of his looming retirement from State Parliament at the next election, he will also decide the fate of three of WA’s worst mass murderers and whether they can be considered for parole again. Under laws introduced by Mr Quigley in his first term as Attorney-General, infamous killers Peter John Maloney, Catherine Birnie and William Patrick Mitchell were all blocked from parole review by the board for six years. The ban for all three will need to be extended by Mr Quigley when the six-year period expires in December, in what is likely to be one of his last decisions as Attorney-General. Upon coming to Government in 2017, Mr Quigley repeatedly ruled out letting Birnie out. “I won’t be giving her parole. I know that I won’t be considering Catherine Birnie for parole,” he said at the time. “I can’t imagine the circumstances that I would grant Catherine Birnie parole.” Along with husband David, Birnie was jailed for abducting, torturing, raping and murdering four women in Perth in 1986 before a survivor, who was just 17, escaped and led police to their door. Birnie, Maloney and Mitchell were the first group added to the parole ban after the laws passed Parliament. Mitchell, who murdered Karen McKenzie and her three children in Greenough in 1993, was jailed for a minimum of 20 years in 1995. He was rejected for parole in 2013 and 2016 before the new laws came into effect. Maloney, who killed 16-year-old Caroline Fountain with a carjack in December 1978 before bashing pensioner Catherine Burden in an Esperance motel room 11 months later, had a death penalty commuted to minimum life sentence of 20 years. The West can also reveal Mr Quigley’s successor after the March election will be required to make a call on a fourth prisoner on the banned list — David Troy Masters, whose parole ban expires in May next year. Masters killed a British backpacker in Darwin in 1991 and then admitted to the murder and rape of a 30-year-old woman in her Perth home four years earlier. The final member of the infamous list, Stephen Bernard English, is banned from parole until November 2027.