Phone boast got Australia’s youngest murderer re-arrested

A boast by Australia’s youngest convicted murderer that police would never find what was on his phone led to his rearrest for downloading sexually violent images and child abuse material.

The man, known as SLD for legal reasons, spent almost two-thirds of his life in prison after the then 13-year-old kidnapped and fatally stabbed his three-year-old neighbor Courtney Morley-Clarke on the NSW Central Coast in 2001.

Upon his release in 2023, he was subjected to a slew of strict conditions imposed by community corrections officers charged with overseeing the institutionalized human being and protecting the community.

On March 20 last year he told supervising officers that he had breached these conditions.

“Good luck finding anything I’m doing on the phone,” he said during a guided visit to an Optus store.

About a week later, he twice bragged about deleting his internet activity, using the dark web and accessing dating sites so he could lose his virginity.

These details come from court documents seen by AAP yesterday after the now 39-year-old pleaded guilty to five charges of breaching his supervision orders and two charges relating to child abuse material.

While he was free in the community, he was not allowed to use social networking services or dating sites without prior permission.

He was also only allowed to view sexually explicit material on one pornographic website, but was told not to view anything involving sexual violence or cruelty towards women or children.

During a subsequent check of his phone, NSW Police discovered he had breached these conditions.

He was then arrested last April.

While examining his phone, officers found an image of a five-year-old girl, naked from the waist down.

They also found 43 images downloaded to his device showing women in sexually violent situations, including being tied up, looking scared or in pain, and with hands over their mouths.

One image was titled “the raped virgin,” court documents show.

The killer also searched online for sexually violent material, including watching a video claiming to be of a drugged woman being raped in a hotel.

He tried to find child abuse material by searching explicit websites for terms like “real child rape.”

He further violated his terms of supervision by using a false name to create a Facebook profile and chat with the public.

The 39-year-old will be sentenced at Campbelltown District Court next month.

He has already been convicted of a separate breach of his conditions when he approached a mother and her partially undressed child on a beach in Wollongong in October 2023.

He was given an 18-month prison sentence and released last March, weeks before his latest arrest.

The killer has sought to have his conviction in that matter overturned in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, with a verdict due today.

He only recently suggested a motive for Courtney’s murder: revenge for alleged bullying by her brother.

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