Police under fire after murderer let loose for 20 years
Tom Wark |
A man who stabbed his romantic rival to death genuinely believed he got away with murder for two decades after police inaction, a judge has found.
Gofal Baziad was sentenced to a maximum of 24 years in prison on Monday after being found guilty by a jury in May of the 2004 murder of Jason Palmer, his former friend and the ex-husband of his love interest.
Jealousy stemming from Mr Palmer’s ex-wife Renny choosing her former husband over his eventual killer spurred the violence, NSW Supreme Court Justice Phillip Boulten said.
However, despite being a significant person of interest in Mr Palmer’s murder from the time his body was discovered, Baziad was allowed to flee to Indonesia months after the killing.
Ms Palmer joined him overseas a few months later.
Justice Boulten said a police travel alert on Baziad failed to stop him returning to Australia on a visa in his own name in 2010 and he lived his life untroubled until his arrest in 2024.
“The police investigation left much to be desired,” Justice Boulten said.
“Until he was arrested in 2024, the offender genuinely believed he had gotten away with murder.”
Not even a 2007 inquest into Mr Palmer’s death prompted an increase in police efforts, the judge said.
Mr Palmer told his ex-wife Renny to decide between him and Baziad in September 2003, the trial heard.
She chose her former husband.
Five months later, Mr Palmer was bludgeoned over the head with a patterned glass object and stabbed multiple times in the torso, side and back in Baziad’s Sydney apartment.
The killer ripped up several sections of carpet in his apartment in the days after the murder, the court heard.
Forensic investigators gave evidence Mr Palmer’s blood was found on the skirting boards in Baziad’s apartment.
Mr Palmer’s body was found about three weeks later concealed in a sleeping bag and weighed down with sandstone rocks in the Nepean River at Menangle, in Sydney’s southwest.
The judge found Baziad used materials from Ms Palmer’s shed to wrap up the body and transported it in the back of her car to the river, with an accomplice almost certainly helping with the clean up.
“(Baziad’s) disposal of the deceased’s body in the Nepean River was a plainly callous act,” the judge said.
The 54-year-old had a tendency to violent obsession with his love interest, the judge found.
After the murder, Baziad continued to demonstrate intense jealousy whenever he believed Ms Palmer was the subject of another man’s affections, Justice Boulten said.
After their relationship broke down in 2018, Baziad and a friend violently attacked Ms Palmer and her new partner in a car in Queensland using a hammer and a baseball bat, the judge said.
Justice Boulten said Baziad continued to deny the killing and had not shown any remorse.
“He left Australia, stayed away in Indonesia and declined to talk to the police … because he knew he was the person who killed the deceased and he wished to avoid detection,” Justice Boulten said.
Ms Palmer gave tearful testimony during the trial about her efforts to find her ex-husband after he went missing.
The victim was last seen in February 2004, when he walked out of his partner’s home with Baziad.
Ms Palmer said she made numerous attempts to find him, even calling his drug dealer.
Baziad will be eligible for parole in June 2042.
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AAP