Baffling murder nets life sentence
BABY-FACED killer Matthew White’s jailing for life has left unexplained questions about his odd plan of extortion and murder on Cape York.
“How?” and “Why?” asked Cairns Supreme Court judge Jim Henry as he sentenced the 27-year-old convicted murderer to life behind bars.
How did he think he was going to extort money from some shady “ice” drug ring in Cooktown by taking a random victim hostage?
And why did he not expect mother-of-two Donna Steele, 42, would fight for her life as he slowly strangled her to death?
White, a former club AFL footy player, confessed everything in two bombshell “tellall” interviews the moment detectives knocked on his door in Cairns seven months after the August 2, 2017 murder.
Almost one out of every four adult Cooktown locals voluntarily provided DNA swabs as a team of 100 police rotated through the town going door-to-door in the isolated Cape York district, 330km north of Cairns.
DNA evidence – found on a piece of red twine used in the strangulation and dumped in bushland – provided the vital breakthrough after White’s mum and sister, who both live in Cooktown, voluntarily did the mouth swab test.
Ms Steele’s grieving brothers Jason and Brendan told White in court, staring him in the eyes, he’d brought “shame and accusation to the town and good people of Cooktown” in a crime that was “cruel, callous and self-serving”.
“You don’t deserve to be free,’’ eldest brother Jason said, as he read out the family’s victim impact statement.
Known as “Daisy”, his sister had a beautiful soul, lively personality and was “dependable, caring, compassionate and generous”, he said.
She was always there for her boys, Brayden and Flynn, aged 10 and 8 at the time of her murder, and her devoted husband Tony, a mechanic at Wujal Wujal.
He said they were all baffled by the “senseless” crime and devastated by the “sickening emptiness” of her loss.
In a dramatic move, White, after 537 days in custody and on day two of his trial, changed his plea to guilty on Wednesday.
Justice Henry, in sentencing yesterday, questioned how White thought “in some unexplained way” he might hold Ms Steele hostage and lure unnamed drug dealers to pay $20,000 ransom money for her safe return.
Ms Steele’s body was found wrapped in a doona weighted down with rocks in a known crocodile spot in the Endeavour River, 16km from the murder scene at her isolated farmhouse on August 6, 2017.
White will serve a minimum 20 years in prison under a life sentence for murder and eight years for burglary with violence.