30 years for axe murder of autistic Scarsdale teenager

The Courier can now reveal Justice Betty King's sentence for Wilson after a jury on Friday found Wilson's co-accused, Joel Henderson, guilty of murdering 14-year-old autistic Scarsdale teenager Timothy O'Brien.

On July 17 Justice King sentenced Wilson to a 30 year and six month jail term with a non-parole period of 26 years after a jury found him guilty of murdering Timmy on January 5, 2013.

A Supreme Court jury also found Wilson guilty of incitement to murder key witnesses Lisa Trezise and Peter Williams and not guilty of two other charges of incitement to murder.

In her delivery, Justice King said to Wilson, 37, " there was very little that your counsel was able to say on your behalf in respect of the offending of which you have been convicted".

Upon sentencing she said she would take into account victim impact statements which recognised how devastating the loss of Timmy had been felt by those closest to him.

"I am sure that they are as aware as I am that nothing that I impose in the way of sentence upon you will ever bring their little boy back into their lives", Justice King said.

Describing Timmy's injuries as "catastrophic", Justice King said she accepted Wilson's intellectual impairment had part to play in his offending, saying " if you were not a person with such a dull intellect you may not be so impulsive".

“There are times I struggle to understand the inhumanity of man towards man and this is one of those times. Your actions in taking an axe to the head of a disabled child, who was already hurt, weeping and lying un-resisting in the grass outside the house, because he had come to the aid of his step-father and stopped an unprovoked attack upon that man by you, does truly beggar belief,” she said.

Wilson, who maintained his innocence throughout the trial and told police it was Henderson’s idea, murdered Timmy by striking him repeatedly to the head with an axe, shortly after Henderson initiated the attack. 

In a recent trial, Henderson's defence counsel claimed Henderson acted independently from Wilson.  

But on Friday, a jury accepted the prosecution case, with crown prosecutor Christopher Dane, QC, telling them it was a “joint criminal enterprise”. 

Henderson will face a plea hearing in the Supreme Court at a date to be fixed.