WHEN Andrew Breen spoke at the coronial inquest about his friend Glenn Sanders, it was as if he was talking about two different people – “old Glenn” and the one who wired his property and himself to explode.
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Mr Sanders was best man at Mr Breen’s wedding, and when that marriage disintegrated, it was Mr Sanders who extended a hand and a home to Mr Breen as he picked up the pieces.
But that was the old Glenn. Mr Breen told the inquest that in the wake of Mr Sanders’ second wife Shirley dying of cancer, “Glenn started using drugs and drinking alcohol heavily” and was exceedingly paranoid about people coming to get him or his property or the wealth he had inherited from Shirley’s passing.
“He would smoke a white crystal drug through a pipe and drink a bottle of wild turkey every day,” Mr Breen said in his police statement.
The inquest heard Mr Sanders smoked the drug ice in order to stay up all night to ensure no one came on to the property to come and get him. He set up CCTV cameras.
His paranoia also manifested in the improvised explosive device he wore made from a woman’s bra. All four witnesses at the inquest’s first day described seeing it.
Mr Breen said Mr Sanders was not a violent person.
“He told me ‘I never want to hurt anybody but I pity the poor bugger that comes to get me because they won’t take me alive,” Mr Breen told the inquest.
Mr Breen and another of Mr Sanders’ friends Greg Suter spoke about the “dilemma” of not wanting to betray Mr Sanders’ trust, but wanting to alert police. Mr Suter said he thought Mr Sanders showed him the explosive bra as a test to see if he could trust him.
