Life behind bars for champagne bottle murder in hotel
Aaron Bunch |
A man who murdered his lawyer girlfriend with a champagne bottle in a hotel room after she said she wanted to break up will spend at least 19 years behind bars.
Cameron John Pearson, 44, struck Alice McShera, 34, in the head and face with the bottle between five and nine times in a lethal late-night attack at the Crown Towers complex in Perth on October 30, 2023.
Pearson pleaded guilty to murdering Ms McShera and was sentenced on Tuesday in the WA Supreme Court to life in prison.
He will be eligible for parole after serving 19 years.
“Your offending involved a brutal, senseless and unprovoked attack,” Justice Michael Gething said.
“You abused her trust and exploited her vulnerability.
“Ms McShera was an entirely innocent victim.”
The family law specialist, who had previously helped the killer with legal matters, suffered nine injuries, including skull fractures, deep lacerations to her head and face, a brain bleed and traumatic brain injury.
Hotel staff found her body on the bathroom floor the following day with the bloodied bottle beside her.
Pearson was in a bathtub in the same hotel room – number 1227 – in his underwear, holding a broken champagne glass with serious self-inflicted injuries to his wrist.
He later told police the pair had been arguing after Ms McShera told him she was leaving him, and he attacked her while she was putting on makeup and getting ready to go out.
“I lost it and hit her over the head,” he later told investigators during an interview.
“Because she was leaving me.”
The courtroom, packed with members of the Perth legal fraternity, heard the pair had been staying at the hotel in a bid to reconcile their increasingly volatile relationship, which involved recreational methamphetamine abuse.
After Pearson, a fly-in-fly-out boilermaker, killed Ms McShera, he covered her with towels and a robe, and “chilled out” in the hotel room.
He attempted to end his own life after hotel staff tried to enter the room, following a call from Ms McShera’s concerned family.
“Your offending involved the most extreme kind of domestic violence,” Justice Gething said.
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AAP