COLLAR BOMB HOAX: SYDNEY SCHOOLGIRL’S TEN HOURS OF TERROR!
IT’S BEEN A DECADE SINCE MADELEINE PULVER WAS THE TARGET OF A CHILLING RANSOM PLOT
Sydney bomb hoax offender Paul Douglas Peters is expected to walk free from prison this month, a decade after he terrorised a local schoolgirl with a fake collar bomb he strapped to her.
Madeleine Pulver, then 18, was studying for her HSC in her luxury family home in Mosman, NSW, when the masked intruder broke in, armed with a baseball bat.
“Sit down and no-one needs to get hurt,” Peters, then 50, told the scared teen.
Madeleine was shaking
with fear as he fastened the collar bomb to her throat with a bike chain, along with a USB stick and a two-page ransom letter warning her parents there would be an explosion if they didn’t send him money.
The monstrous father of three then instructed Madeleine to count to 200, saying: “If you move, I can see you,” before fleeing the home.
In a fight-or-flight moment, Madeleine used her mobile phone to call her dad, former rugby union boss, Bill Pulver. He alerted police before rushing back to the $15 million home with his wife, Belinda, on August 3, 2011.
Police described Madeleine as “distraught” when they found her, saying she was “convinced she was going to die”. Hero senior constable Karen Lowden, who has since been described as “Maddie’s angel”, sat by the teenager’s side for three long hours trying to distract her, neither of them sure whether the device strapped to her neck would explode at any moment.
“I never felt at any point that backing out of the room was an option,” Karen said. “There was just no way I was going to leave Maddie there.”
After a chilling 10-hour ordeal involving the bomb disposal unit, counter terrorism command and police negotiators, it was determined it was all an elaborate hoax and the bomb was fake.
With Madeleine safe, a two-week international manhunt ensued before police tracked Peters down via the email address he’d used on the ransom note.
The disgruntled investment banker was hiding out in his ex-wife’s home in Kentucky, USA, where he’d fled a few days after the incident.
He was extradited back to Australia where Peters, who had absolutely no connection to the Pulver family, pleaded guilty to aggravated break and enter, and detaining for advantage in court, saying he “had difficulty coming to terms with what he did”. Peters claimed that he was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of the incident that was brought on by severe bipolar disorder and alcoholism.
But Judge Peter Zahra rejected his defence, saying Peters was seeking financial gain through a carefully planned extortion attempt and he was aware of the terror he was inflicting.
Madeleine’s parents comforted her as an expressionless Peters was sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison, with a non-parole period of 10 years.
‘The offender placed the victim in fear that she was going to die to extort money from her family,” Judge Zahra said.
With the court case behind her, Madeleine went on to study at The University of Sydney, which included a stint abroad in Denmark.
She then pursued
‘PETERS INSTRUCTED MADELEINE TO COUNT TO 200, SAYING: “IF YOU MOVE, I CAN SEE YOU”’
interior design in Sydney and shuns the spotlight, saying she “tries not to think” about what happened to her.
Peters appealed his sentence in the high court in 2013, claiming his punishment was “too severe”, but his plea was rejected. He has already taken the initial steps to freedom, being granted work release from Cooma Correctional Centre a few days a week, in the lead-up to his parole date.