INSIDE ‘MURDERTOWN’
The brutal murder of Jacqueline Leyden and John Ski in February 1999 capped a 10-day stretch of crimes on the Coast that left seven people dead
DINERS at some of the Gold Coast’s most glamorous restaurants looked on in horror as a man with a knife wound to his neck ran down Tedder Ave.
It was about 10pm on Wednesday, February 3, 1999 when the shock sight of the bloodied man occurred.
He was chased by another man also covered in blood with cuts to his arms and legs screaming “You killed a guy. Stop! You’ve killed a guy”.
The man with the neck wound was Neil Morrison, who had stabbed himself after committing a crime which shocked the Gold Coast.
The Glitter Strip was on edge in early 1999 when a horror spate of crimes left seven people dead in 10 days.
This late summer crime wave culminated on the night of February 3 when Jacqueline Leyden, a high-society brothel madam, and drug dealer John Ski were murdered by Morrison, an SP bookie, in a Woodroffe Ave unit.
Ski, whose real name was John Adadzynski was with Leyden and his girlfriend, Nicola Horton, at the Main Beach apartment of Brendan Washington, a friend of the group whose wife Kathy had just given birth to a son, Mike.
A court was later told that Washington and Horton left the unit for a short walk and returned to find the bloody scene.
Ski was found dead on the floor of the kitchen with his throat cut while Leyden was found slumped in a dining room chair but still alive, also with a neck wound.
Morrison was seen lying on the driveway with his own neck wound.
Inside the unit was Washington’s teenage son Angus who was home at the time and heard swearing and a loud thud.
The then-19-year-old ran downstairs and was confronted with the scene.
Initially confusing Ski for his own father, Angus performed CPR on the man and attempted to keep him alive.
The court was told the elder Washington went back outside the unit to find Morrison had climbed to his feet and had walked on to Tedder Ave.
Washington followed and attempted to stop Morrison but was stabbed in the arm.
Washington was hailed as a hero by his family for his quick thinking in stopping the murderer.
Leyden died while being transported to hospital.
The Gold Coast’s top cops moved quickly to hose down the Coast’s new moniker of “murdertown” and declared the city was not the country’s “murder capital”.
Assistant Commissioner Allan Roberts said he was not fazed by the violence in “slain beach” and urged the community to remain calm.
On the morning after the Main Beach slayings, Chief Superintendent Ken Morrison said he hoped the murder spree was over.
“The murders are not associated with any organisation or group of people. They quite frankly could occur anywhere else in Australia,” he said.
Morrison was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences in 2000 and ordered to serve at least 20 years behind bars, the first person the law applied to.
But Leyden’s family admitted in a 2016 interview they were not convinced Morrison was the killer.
“I’ve heard so many things to say he didn’t do it,’’ Leyden’s mother Dawn said at the time.
“Jacq was mixed up with some dangerous people and I don’t know what she was up to. She was broke and could have been involved in things (drugs) to get money.
“After she died, I went to a medium and through him, she told me ‘Mum, Neil didn’t do it’. I have nothing against Neil and couldn’t care less if he gets out of jail.’’