Daughter and son-in-law’s murderer jailed

Gus McCubbing | February 22, 2022

As Lindita Musai caught an Uber home from a Melbourne hotel with her husband after they celebrated their first wedding anniversary the 25-year-old woman’s estranged father lay in wait armed with a handgun. 

Osman Shaptafaj, 57, parked outside the Yarraville home the young couple shared with 29-year-old Veton Musai’s family and cased the area for two hours before they arrived in December 2019. 

After the driver helped them with their bags, Shaptafaj shot them both in the head at the front door with an unregistered Smith & Wesson .38 calibre revolver.

He then rang the doorbell before leaving the couple on the porch and turning the gun on himself at a nearby park. 

Shaptafaj on Tuesday faced the Victorian Supreme Court, where Justice Andrew Tinney sentenced him to at least 35 years in prison.

“What you planned was the cold-hearted, premeditated, vicious and cowardly murder of two defenceless people, one of them your own daughter,” Justice Tinney said. 

“You had, at the least, some hours to seriously contemplate the awful plan you had fixed upon and to come to your senses and desist (but) you chose not to do so.

“By your appalling actions, you have taken two young and promising lives and devastated two extended families. Your crimes would well and truly shock the community.” 

Shaptafaj was arrested and taken to hospital where bullets were extracted from his head and his right eye was removed. He now lives with an acquired brain injury.

Lindita Musai hated her father and had not spoken to him since he physically abused her in 2011 when she was 17, the court was told. 

She took out a family violence intervention order against Shaptafaj that year, as did his ex-wife. 

The 57-year-old then lived a “sad and isolated” life in the years leading up to the double-murder, Justice Tinney said, with his time spent watching TV, playing video games, sleeping and crying. 

He barely left his home in Altona and spent Christmas alone in 2019.

Justice Tinney said he harboured “completely unwarranted” anger and resentment toward Veton and Lindita Musai after he wasn’t invited to their wedding or asked for permission to get married. 

The couple had just spent three nights at a hotel in the CBD to celebrate their first wedding anniversary when Shaptafaj executed them. 

“They were young and still at the beginning of their lives together. They had done you no harm, and yet, you allowed your unjustified feelings of resentment and anger towards them to drive you to commit unspeakable crimes,” Justice Tinney said. 

“You settled upon an evil plan which almost defies belief.”

Shaptafaj later told authorities he thought he was in a glitch in a first-person shooter video game. It remains unknown how he got the revolver or knew his daughter and son-in-law’s whereabouts. 

Drilon Musai earlier said that when his brother Veton and sister-in-law were killed his whole family died.

“Our lives as well as the lives of everyone Veton and Lindita knew will never be the same,” Mr Musai told the court.

“I pray that nobody ever goes through what we have.”

Shaptafaj was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to the double-murder, but he must serve at least 35 years behind bars before being eligible for parole. 

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