Three murdered…
He wiped out his family with no explanation
Curtains twitched as neighbours heard a high-pitched sound reverberating in their usually quiet street in Albion Park Rail, Wollongong, Australia.
‘Help!’ Matthew De Gruchy, then 18, screamed.
He was covered in blood – his family’s blood.
Neighbour Mr Bailey opened his front door and approached the young man.
‘There’s something wrong with Mum and Sarah,’ Matthew wailed.
Confused and nervous, Mr Bailey followed the teenager into the house.
What he discovered would haunt him forever.
Matthew’s mother Jennifer, 41, and sister Sarah, 13, were the first disfigured corpses he found.
Both in their bedrooms, they lay dead on bloodstained sheets, each with horrific head injuries.
Calling the police, Mr Bailey then discovered Matthew’s brother Adrian, 15.
Dead too, he lay in a pool of blood in the garage.
His teeth were scattered across the floor. He had 21 wounds to his face and neck and was doused in petrol.
When officers arrived, they too were horrified at what they saw – one so much so that he refused to work for the police again.
Homicide investigator Belinda Neil talked afterwards about seeing Adrian.
‘There was blood all over the floor as well as teeth and the smell of petrol,’ she said.
‘I felt numb and kept telling myself just concentrate on the scene, concentrate on looking for clues to try and divorce myself from the absolute horror about the fact that this had occurred to a human being.’
An apparently distressed Matthew reportedly repeated things to paramedics.
‘What’s happened, who’s done this?’ he cried.
He was taken to hospital to be checked over.
In the early days of the inquiry, the hunt for a suspect was wide open.
Matthew’s dad Wayne was in Sydney the night of the murders.
He was quickly ruled out.
But, gradually, all of the evidence began to point to Matthew De Gruchy.
Three months later, he was arrested and charged with three counts of murder, allegations he strongly denied.
Matthew told investigators he’d spent the night at his
One police officer left the force – they were so disturbed by the scene
girlfriend’s before arriving back home to discover the massacre.
And only a trial could uncover the truth. In 1998, a jury was sworn in. Matthew’s father, his uncle and girlfriend all described his character.
‘Gentle-natured’ was the term used repeatedly.
His defence built up a case in a bid to protect him from conviction.
They said the murders were the work of a third party, that Matthew had nothing to do with them. Their evidence? Hairs found on Adrian’s body and a claim from Matthew that he’d received a prank phone call predicting the death of three family members on the night of the murder.
Pathologists gave evidence, revealing the bodies were so disfigured it looked like they were ‘victims of a plane crash’.
Matthew’s mother and siblings were thought to have been clubbed on the head with a weapon similar to a car jack, an item that was never found.
Horrendous.
Despite Matthew’s defence, he’d left a trail of evidence leading prosecutors right to him.
Two months after the brutal murders, Matthew’s sports bag was found dumped at a disused brickworks, along with a number of items from the family home.
Inside was a checklist he’d written of how to murder his family.
Also inside the bag was carpet from Jennifer and Wayne’s bedroom, a video recorder, two of his own T-shirts and a bottle of sambuca missing from the house.
The chilling checklist read, Cut somewhere with knife, hit arm with pole, have shower, Sarah, Mum, Adrian, throw bottle down the back.
Matthew admitted it was his handwriting, but claimed he couldn’t remember why he’d written it.
He suggested the checklist could have related to his 18th birthday party.
Prosecutor Paul Conlon told the jury there was ‘not a shred of truth in that’.
Matthew’s bloody palmprint was found in the bathroom, and a wheel wrench was missing from his mum’s car. A car he regularly used. Everything pointed to Matthew’s guilt – and that he’d tried to cover up his sickening crimes.
Now, the jury had the evidence they needed.
On 14 October 1998, they convicted Matthew De Gruchy of three counts of murder.
He continued to maintain his innocence. But it was too late.
He was sentenced to 28 years behind bars at Goulburn Correctional Centre in New South Wales.
No motive was ever known or given.
But the crime shook the sleepy neighbourhood – a few families even sold their homes and moved away.
In March 2000, Matthew De Gruchy appealed his sentence – but this was dismissed.
And more recently, in April 2017, De Gruchy, by then 38, applied for parole. Again, he was turned down. Bizarrely, he even sent a letter to relatives, in which he said things were about to change for his family. But even they rejected him. One told an Australian news site, ‘He can’t be rehabilitated, I don’t think he can ever change after something like murder.’
He’d left a trail of evidence leading prosecutors right to him