This case is pretty convoluted, so while this post will probably be long, it's really a bare bones overview. I recommend reading the links at the bottom of the post for more details.
In 1993, Stephen and Helen Gilham lived in an affluent Sydney suburb with their two adult sons, Jeffrey 23, and Christopher, 25. They were financially well-off, with their estate valued at close to a million dollars, and while Helen (who like Stephen was notoriously tight with money) still worked as school nurse, Stephen was spending his retirement enjoying golf and boating on the nearby river.
While their lives seem idyllic, the Gilhams were not without problems. Christopher, said by all to be something of an introverted geek, was the polar opposite of Jeffrey, a socially charming, popular athlete. To outsiders it seemed that Jeff was Stephen's favoured son. However, a tape recorded report Jeff gave in his final year of high school suggested all was not really well between he and his parents.
On it, he complained that Chris was actually the favoured one, and got preferential treatment, stating "My older brother was the favourite child"
Then he recorded himself singing The Who song, Behind Blue Eyes which is all about hidden pain. Certainly, Jeff was feeling pretty hard done by in 1988.
Chris had finished his chemistry degree but was having trouble finding work. This led to tension in the family over money, which is alleged (by Jeffrey) to have came to push and shove between Chris and his father on at least one occasion. For several weeks, Jeffrey had been telling his friends about how bad things had gotten with his brother -- Chris fighting with their parents, depressed after breaking up his girlfriend and losing a teaching job his parents had made him get, and more. But no-one could believe that meek and mild Chris would ever get into a physical altercation with his dad.
The Murders
Around 3.57am on August 18th, neighbour Ted Warner heard two voices shouting as if in the midst of a heated argument from the direction of the Gilham house. He went back to sleep but at 4.30am Ted and his wife Jan - both science teachers - were woken by someone beating on their door. It was Jeffrey Gilham dressed only in a pair of shorts. Jeffrey told the Warners that he'd just killed his brother Christopher, and that Chris had murdered their parents.
According to Jeffrey -- whose room was a converted boat-shed beside the main house -- he'd been woken up by his mother's voice on the intercom, screaming for help.
Jeffrey said he'd bolted from the boat-shed to the house and run upstairs, where he found both of his parents stabbed to death and Christopher leaning over Helen's body with a lit match. He said there was a sharp, 15cm fish filleting knife lying at his brother's feet.
Later, police would find that Helen was stabbed 17 times and also had her throat cut. Stephen Gilham had 38 stab wounds. Both bodies had been doused in kerosene. The majority of their wounds were focussed on the chest, in the region of the heart.
Stephen was found face down in the couple's bedroom. Helen was found lying on her back in the hallway outside the bedroom, close to shelves over which the intercom was located.
Jeffrey told the Warners that Christopher had said "I've killed Mum and Dad" and proceeded to set Helen's body on fire. The flames quickly spread to the bedroom, engulfing Stephen's body as well. It was at this point, Jeffrey said, that he picked up the knife and chased his older sibling through the house. He "couldn't remember" stabbing Christopher to death, but his brother died with 17 stab wounds. Most of them in the region of his heart. Christopher's blood was found on the stairs leading down to the floor where his body found, suggesting that at least some of the stab wounds occurred on the stairs, and that he survived those and tried to flee again before being killed.
While Jeff's story was very disturbing, the Warners were observant, level-headed people. The first thing they noticed was that, despite Jeffrey claiming to have just run through a bloodbath and frenziedly stabbed Christopher to death, he did not seem flushed or out of breath but rather "cool and dry" - Ted even likened Jeff to a chicken just removed from a refrigerator. Jeff also had very little visible blood on him, and the Warners noted that his hair seemed oddly neat, and gleamed as if still damp from being recently washed and combed.
After Ted called the police at 4.34am, he and his wife examined Jeffrey's hands. They found no blood at all except a few traces in the rim of his fingernails. There were just two drops on the rest of his body - one spot looked like it had been washed or wiped away, the other was on one of his toes. Police would later find just one more drop, of Helen's blood on the arch of Jeffrey's left foot. Ted said he could smell smoke and something like kerosene on Jeffrey's breath.
After emergency services had come and gone, and Jeffrey was taken to the police station for questioning, Jan Warner told her husband "I don't believe him".
The investigating police would find several strange things about the crime scene -- for a start, there were no fingerprints on the knife. Nor any blood; the knife was found on top Christopher's body - to the naked eye, perfectly clean.
Strange Evidence
Police were also incredulous about the lack of blood on Jeffrey. Some other things stuck out to them as strange:
-- Christopher was wearing nothing but a shaving-coat when he died, and his glasses (without which he couldn't see very well) were found on a shelf in the bathroom along with a balled-up towel bearing his monogram, suggesting he'd been in the middle of washing up when the crime occurred.
---a syringe was discovered, inexplicably loaded with paracetamol paste.
--- on the intercom allegedly used to summon Jeffrey from his shed, there was a bloody fingerprint which had been badly smeared with what looked like the mark of a gloved finger.
-- a clock which suffered damage in the fire stopped at 4.29, just 2 or 3 minutes after Christopher's alleged time of death, and one minute before Jeff knocked on the Warner's door. But according to fire experts, the blaze would have taken much longer to produce sufficient heat to melt the clock.
--they also found a jerry-can containing 1 litre (just over 1 US quart) of petrol in the Gilham's driveway with a cut-down piece of garden hose sticking out of it. Jeff explained that at about 10.30pm the night before the murders, he and his father had tried to siphon petrol from the car to fill the tank of Stephen's boat the next morning. This seemed strange for a couple reasons: 1/ Stephen was a frugal, meticulous man who is unlikely to resort to siphoning his car for fuel, let alone cutting up his garden hose to do so. And 2/ the boat (which Stephen had owned for many years) had a 2-stroke engine, so the question remained as to why he was trying to put straight car fuel into it.
-- Jeffrey told police he'd fled from the house in a panic, leaving the sliding glass door open behind him. Fire fighters found it shut.
(there's more but I'll stop there for brevity's sake - see: http://ift.tt/1mxV3gW)
Jeffrey was promptly arrested for the murder of his brother. On 1995, he pled guilty with a plea of provocation and was released on a good behaviour bond.
The Trials
The media was all over the case like white on rice, and the relatives of the victims and the community alike were deeply divided about whether Jeffrey was telling the truth about his brother, or was lying and had in fact killed all three members of his family in the hope of a hefty inheritance.
Tony Gilham, Stephen's brother, was for several years a staunch supporter of Jeff's innocence, but as more information came to light via the inquest he changed his mind, and ended up very vociferously promoting Jeff as a psychopathic killer, and did so to his dying day.
The 2000 inquest concluded with recommendation for the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute Jeffrey, but it wasn't until 2006 that he'd finally be charged with his parent's murders. What followed was a veritable circus of trials and mistrials and appeals, but in 2008 Jeffrey was convicted of two counts of murder and in 2009 (with some scathing words from the judge) sentenced to life in prison.
However, in 2010 an appeal was launched on the basis of doubt over some expert testimony concerning the amount of C02 present in Christopher's lungs at time of death. In 2011, Jeffrey's conviction was overturned, and in 2012 the Supreme Court acquitted him of both charges, voting 2-1 against a retrial.
A retrial would likely have been a bust anyway, as most of the case evidence had mysteriously disappeared by then.
So Jeffrey walked free, and collected his inheritance after all.....there was a pile of drama over that as well, but it's TL;DR as it is, and that's the essence of the case.
Here's some of my prevailing questions:
---Did Jeff kill his family? Or was it Christopher?
---If Jeff is telling the truth, how could he stab his brother 17 times, engage in a bloody struggle on the stairs, after running through a bloodbath, stab Dhris some more - and get no blood on him (except three drops).
-- What the heck was that syringe for?
---Should Jeff have been acquitted, over doubt concerning a single element of evidence, or should he have been given a third trial by jury?
---If Jeff really did pour kero on his parents, what was the petrol meant to be for? Why would he not use that, and opt for kero instead?
---Would Stephen Gilham really have been running around the garden late at night, slicing up his hose to get the wrong fuel to put in his beloved boat the next day? Wouldn't it have just been easier (and less damaging to the boat) to have popped out for a tin of 2-stroke?
Links: http://ift.tt/1Qd9chu
Submitted February 13, 2016 at 09:57AM by lily-mae http://ift.tt/1mxV5FA UnresolvedMysteries
No comments:
Post a Comment