By Jeremy Sollars
BREAKING: Vincent O’Dempsey and Garry Dubois have been sentenced to life in prison for murdering Queensland mother Barbara McCulkin and her two daughters Vicki, 13, and Leanne, 11, in January 1974.
O’Dempsey, 78, was last week convicted by a Brisbane Supreme Court jury of three counts of murder and Dubois, 70, was found guilty in November 2016 of the sisters’ rape and murders and Mrs McCulkin’s manslaughter.
Trial and sentencing judge Justice Peter Applegarth today said he expected both men to die in jail.
O’Dempsey addressed the court this morning, Thursday June 1, prior to his sentencing, declaring that he was innocent of the murders and that three alleged confessions heard at his trial “lacked substance” and were “completely untrue”.
He was referring to evidence from former associate Warren McDonald, former fiancee Kerri Scully and a man he met while in prison, all three of whom told the court O’Dempsey had confessed to them his part in the McCulkins’ deaths.
“I never had the slightest reason to harm the three McCulkins in any way,“ O’Dempsey told the court today.
Justice Peter Applegarth allowed O’Demspey to read out his statement after defence barrister Tony Glynn said his client was not ready to make the comments when he was convicted last week.
O’Dempsey and Dubois are both expected to appeal their convictions.
They were told by Justice Applegarth they would not be given a parole eligibility date because they were sentenced under 1974 laws.
The Brisbane Supreme Court jury in his trial also found O’Dempsey guilty of one charge of deprivation of liberty.
Evidence was heard from more than 60 witnesses during the trial, which began on Tuesday 2 May.
Two charges of rape against O’Dempsey were dropped last December.
The Crown’s case was that a “suspected connection“ between the Torino and Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub fires in 1973, of which Mrs McCulkin was believed to have knowledge, may have provided a motive for Dubois and O’Dempsey to keep her “quiet”.
Evidence was also given by the Crown that people in the Highgate Hill neighbourhood had sighted O’Dempsey and Dubois in the area around the time the McCulkins disappeared and that the two men left Brisbane when Mrs McCulkin’s estranged husband Billy began searching for her and their children.
The Crown alleged that O’Dempsey and Dubois lured the McCulkins into going for a drive and that the two men took them to a bushland location, possibly in the Warwick area, where they met their deaths.
Relatives of the McCulkins have since the O’Dempsey trial called for anyone with information about the location of their bodies to come forward.
