Droudis Trial, Part 8: My Eight Complaints

The Ayatollah (L), striking a pose

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

I doubt very much if Amirah Droudis committed the crime. My guess is that a professional killer did it. For an amateur to have done it, it would surely have been courting immediate arrest.

I feel really bad about criticizing this judge. Either I gauged him wrongly (I definitely thought he was OK), or someone was holding a gun to his nog when he wrote the judgment – most likely the latter.

I am quoting the ABC, as I admittedly have not clapped eyes on the ruling. “Aunty” tells us the following:

“Justice Peter Johnson said he was satisfied that Monis planned the murder and Droudis carried it out. Justice Johnson rejected suggestions Monis may have paid someone else to kill his ex-wife, saying he did not have the financial means and that it was a ‘hot-blooded’ murder likely to have been carried out by an amateur killer.”

My First Complaint:  “Amateur”

Let’s stop right there.  As I said, it is NOT AT ALL likely to have been the work of an amateur. Ms Droudis was not even charged with that April 21, 2013 murder until November 15, 2013. It must have been a cleverly done crime if the cops couldn’t nab anyone for over 6 months!

Moreover, Magistrate William Pierce then let her (and her accessory-man, Monis) out on bail as “it was a weak case.”

Let’s look at another part of ABC’s report on the judge’s ruling. Justice Johnson “rejected suggestions Monis may have paid someone else to kill his ex-wife, saying he did not have the financial means.”

What? Like that’s the only alternative to Amirah being the killer? – that hubby wanted to have got the bikies to do it, but lacked funds? I don’t think the judge should have reasoned in that strained manner.

By the way, an odd thing was mentioned by homicide detective Melanie Staples. She said the bikies in Perth appropriated Monis’ Harley Davidson, during his lifetime and he did not seek restitution. I don’t get it. And I say again, the bikie witnesses were not put on the rack.

My Second Complaint — Peephole

“Judge Johnson said “The killing involved a frenzied knife attack with multiple stab wounds being inflicted to the body of the victim, followed by the gratuitous use of fire.” – ABC

OK the deal with the knife attack is this. A neighbor named Wayne Morris said he saw the stabbing – the knife was moving up and down. Did he mention that the stabber would have had to be leaning way down near her victim on the floor? She would have, right?

So from what vantage point did Morris watch? He says he watched through the peephole. Have you looked through your peephole lately?  You can see the face of a person at peep-hole height. You can see movement. You cannot see the details of the person’s body, as the round lens in the peephole distorts.

My Third Complaint – Fire

Then, says the judge, there was the “gratuitous use of fire.” I think he means gratuitous in that the victim had already died.

Let’s discuss the fire. Since I first read about the murder, in mass media, I thought it took place on an outdoor stair area. Did you think that too? Well, wrong. It was in a closed-in building. And it was immediately outside Unit 43, not “in a stairwell.” Imagine starting a fire in such a small space.

The killer, whether it be Amirah or another person, was garbed in a long dress with long sleeves. No person in their right mind would light a match and throw it onto a petrol-soaked body, close up. The risk of one’s own clothes catching fire would be too much.

Oops, I am starting to think the incident did not take place. This is a surprise; I had not previously doubted that an immolation occurred. Even 15 minutes ago when I wrote that it must have been a hit-man job, given the cops’ tardiness in pinning it on anyone, I thought it all happened as described.

Now I quote an article by Candace Sutton at news.com.au, dated November 3, 2016:

“Mr [Wayne] Morris said the [petrol] liquid was in a 600ml Coca Cola-style bottle with no label, and his fears about the building being set alight made him leave his flat to confront her.”

Excuse me, he could see through the peephole that the bottle lacked a label???   Wait a minute. “His fears about the building being set alight” is what made him open his door? If it were me I’d have scooted out my back door faster than a speeding bullet.

But this story – I am now thinking it’s a “story” — has Wayne Morris somehow recognizing that a lady – a Muslim lady – with a Coke-shape bottle was going to start a fire? I don’t think so. Such a thing never happened before in his life. How could he anticipate the next move?

My Fourth Complaint — Anger

“I just said ‘don’t’ and she screamed back at me ‘No! You go back in there’,” [Wayne] told the court. “The rage in her voice. She was angry at me. She was very angry. She made me feel like I’d done something wrong. “It was a really scary moment.”

Ah, maybe he is a faker who has been told to plant the idea of anger, cos otherwise you can’t really accept Amirah being angry enough to kill her partner’s former wife (who was now re-partnered and bringing up two nice kids).

Mr Morris said after he refused to return back to his flat, he saw the woman throw something on the body of the victim which “just lit up straight away”. Go visit someone you know in an apartment building and see how much room there is on each floor. Not much. If she threw something and it lit up, he would have been very close to getting burned.

Per news.com.au: “He said flames engulfed the body and the wall of the landing, which was also covered in blood. “There was blood everywhere, all over the body, all over the wall.”

By the way, Wayne said he saw, during the stabbing, “a person on the ground [EXwife] with her hand up trying to defend herself”. Oh really? She was face up? But Detective Melanie Staples told us about the redhead match, the DNA ridden match, being found on the victim’s upper back.

My Fifth Complaint – Eyelocking

This is from News.com.au dated August 24, 2106:

Another neighbour at the Werrington flats described the aftermath of the murder and the woman he briefly saw before she ran through flames to escape the apartment building.

Jonathon Truupold, who came across the blaze engulfing the floor where [Noleen] was murdered, saw Droudis’s “wild eyes” through the flames.

He said that he had smelt a kerosene-type chemical fire and rushed from his flat with a bag of cooking flour to extinguish the blaze. [Totally unbelievable. Totally.]

“As I was tossing flour out of the packet I looked into the flames and I was confronted with a face,” Mr Truupold said. [No one in Australia whitepages with his surname.]

“Looking up through the flames … there was obviously someone standing looking down at me. “The person seemed startled … a wild look in the eyes and obviously startled. [“The person?” not “the woman”? Trying to keep our options open,  are we?]

“They ran through the flames and I got a glimpse and we made eye contact for a millisecond or two.” [Possibly it was Tamerlan? The date was six days after the Boston bombing.]

[Tuupold] then saw the woman ‘fleeing the stairwell’ before he returned to his flat and prepared to evacuate the building because of the fire. [But first waiting till the footy was over?]

Justice Johnson ruled: “This was a hot-bloodied and frenzied murder by an enraged female attacker.”

My Sixth Complaint – Alibis

You may recall my coverage of the court’s discussion about alibis. I now must think that all of that was claptrap. The Prosecutor made a lot of the fact that Monis’ alibis were so excellent that they had to have indicated planning.

Malice aforethought. I agree. I think the whole to-ing and fro-in re alibis was scripted. Monis neatly hit a police van with his Cherokkee jeep – conveniently at a location that had a surveillance camera — and he ostentatiously photographed a tower clock at “3.52pm.”

Pardon me if I get the exact time wrong. I do not have any transcript of the case, and the msm never reported even a fraction of what I reported, which wasn’t much.

(Remember, this is the crime connected to the moment that “changed Australia forever.” You’d think Channel 7 or someone would be interested. But no.)

My Seventh Complaint – Forensics and Insurance

Another thing had to do with Amirah needing to hide any blood she might have left outside the apartment. This caused the couple to have a conversation that was taped by police. The way the media wrote it up gave the impression that Monis was advising her how to “cover” a forensic issue by saying she had once fallen and got a cut.

She said “No it never bled, but they might have my skin.”  This is the kind of thing I’d discuss with my husband if I were worried that I could be “set up” for a crime. But most likely Monis held that conversation with her so that it could be taped, and bandied about in court and newspaper.

Aren’t you getting sick of this?

There was also talk about Monis taking out insurance policies. If our judge is truly innocent of the chicanery of this case, maybe he would place some probative value on “insurance.”

After all if you die soon after someone has taken out insurance on your life, you’d hope someone would notice and consider you may have been “dispatched” right? (In this case, though, it was property insurance at the flat.)

I do want to add something about a conversation between the couple. In a police station, the officer left the room for a few minutes (Probably so they would speak confidentially to each other and be recorded.) “Mr Crown” said their voice changed as they did this, as they did not know they were being eavesdropped.  I noticed no change in tone whatsoever.

My Eighth Complaint – Circular Reasoning

In his opening address, in mid-August 2016, Mark Tedeschi, QC,  said:

“Amirah demonstrated by the method [the super-violent murder] that she held extremely strong hatred and passion against (Monis’s first wife).”

Hello? Which is it, chicken or egg. Did her hatred of EXwife cause the violence?  Or does the violence prove hatred?

We all have heard of some case of a woman being so jealous of her husband’s mistress that she might do her in. But the jealous wife is more likely to cold-calculate the deed, not act in anger. It’s the male who will go to town on his wife’s paramour if he catches them in flagrante delicto.

Anyway there was no jealousy here. I assume the business about “passion” had to be floating around in the public mind so no one would notice that this lady, Amirah Droudis, really had no motive to kill anyone.

There is also circular reasoning in this case about Islam. At times the religion of the Prophet is said to motivate Monis and also to cause Amirah to be devout, having been brainwashed – the judge actually said brainwashed — for his religion.

Yet the prosecutor says that Monis is merely using her to plan some other thing (I don’t know what).  Well, you can’t have it both ways. Either Monis is the dedicated pacifist that he claims to be, or he is something else.

In which case, what? Why is he using a partner by converting her to divine matters – what good will it do?

Was he really setting up his lover of several years, Amirah, simply to get her to perform meaningless crime – one that would wreck his offspring?  Please be critical of the logic, O Citizens.

Conclusion – the Usual Suspects

With great regret I must label this “A Dishonest Case.” Gahd, not another one.  Are there any honest cases these days?

The Droudis trial has sharpened my belief that the Lindt Café siege was a staged performance. To put it roughly, I now think the bits and pieces about Monis, Amirah, and the ex-wife were scripted specifically to provide a background piece so no one would dare challenge the siege.

It is extremely disheartening that the legal profession goes along with this nonsense.

I shall be sending a petition for a Writ of Error Coram Nobis to advise Justice Peter Johnson that I believe he has been duped, and that there is, luckily, a remedy in common law whenever there has been a “fraud upon the court.”

— Mary W Maxwell is author of Fraud Upon the Court (TrineDay Press, 2016)