Death of Robert Whitwell

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Sources

https://www.pressreader.com/australia/thats-life-australia/20181206/283068415374082 - Ryan Dwyer’s personal account of the incident.

• Ryan’s mother called him after police notified her that Robert had been killed:
  • “Poppa died,” she choked out. “He has stab wounds on him.”
  
  
• Police told them it could have been suicide, an accident, or a break and enter.
• They found his laptop open- he’d been looking at photos of his wife, the Queen.
• Ryan claims that since he was a teenager, he knew his grandfather kept a lot of money in his back shed.
• It was hidden inside a secret drawer in the shed.
• He and his sister went for a drive after the tragedy.
  • “‘I don’t think it could’ve been murder,’ I said.
  • Everyone loved him so much,’ Brittney agreed.”
  
  
• Ryan’s birthday was a few days later, so they went to one of Robert’s favorite places to toast him. There are pictures of this.
• Brittney was arrested three weeks after the murder.
• At the funeral, they erased all mentions of Brittney from the eulogy.
• Brittney and Shelby Holmes began scoping out the house on April 30.
• On May 2, while Robert was out, they used a milk crate to climb over the fence, but before they found the money, they got spooked and ran away.
• “He lived for his family, and I’ll spend the rest of my days making him proud.”

https://au.news.yahoo.com/melissa-doyle-how-tonya-dwyer-is-keeping-her-dads-memory-alive-37772821.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMxdZxjOcyCix-k2m5EN1ihlkP6031sDnLWwBDa6dHDqP65rTD_lu2bpsbHCqZuLA0Ou6kuoQNuCFnnuoXeDwzHmsHsUqQgKDbZVWQLW9JqKPTpB6OOlQh1-8V1W4APY0984JPCajpf5YtoHbeTYMwQ8rGWH7R0XMhAEMCC7SPYZ- Tanya Dwyer speaks out about her daughter, Brittney, who murdered Tanya’s 81-year-old father, Robert.

“I lost my dad. And my daughter did it.”

Robert was suspicious of banks and kept all his cash hidden in spaces around his property. This made him a target for Brittney.

Brittney said she was inspired to commit the crime by the show American Horror Story.

Brittney was doing drugs?

Tanya and Brittney’s father have now separated after the ordeal. This crime literally tore a family apart.

Brittney had barred her mother from making contact with her in jail, but her brother Ryan spoke with Brittney via phone. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G61sMjmxqPE - This video has clips from an Australian interview with the family.

Her brother described Brittney as a sweet normal girl growing up.

Her mother described Brittney as an adventurous tom-boy type with a strong will.

Mother was a stay-at-home mom.

In high school, Brittney became a bully who was obsessed with the macabre..

She self-harmed and dabbled in drugs

Brittney said Shelby Lee Holmes was her girlfriend. Shelby denied this in a cable interview and said they were just best friends.

Brittney’s mother said she and her friends would go do “dark things” like touring cemeteries, and blood and knives.

At 18, Brittney moved in with Shelby.

Brittney and Shelby sent over 19,000 text messages in two years. They talked about killing people at rave parties and slitting throats. Shelby said it was just a joke..

Robert told Tanya about the cash in his home while they were in front of Brittney, and she decided to rob him.

Brittney and Shelby drove 2000 km to Robert’s house in April and tried to sneak into his backyard and steal the cash from his shed. The light came on and a dog started barking, so they ran away.

Joyce, Brittney’s grandmother living in a nursing home with dementia, died shortly after the murder.

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/american-horror-story-inspired-australian-woman-to-kill-her-grandfather-201471/

 

https://nypost.com/2017/10/18/american-horror-story-inspired-me-to-murder-my-grandfather/

 

Brittney Dwyer apologises for murdering her ... - Daily Mailhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk › news › article-5059773

 

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/granddaughter-stabs-grandfather-to-death-after-being-shown-family-photos/S3F3LA3YF2X7YUIJICB7X5XSTI/

 

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/mackay/two-ipswich-women-charged-over-adelaide-murder/news-story/1f1f058b94b7fe5b931993313fd3ae69

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-14/woman-accused-of-murdering-adelaide-man-waits-for-evidence/8120340

 

• December 13, 2016- Brittney Dwyer already confessed to murdering, but Bernadette Burns was trying to obtain bail saying she had waited 3 ½ months for critical evidence to justify her imprisonment.
• Prosecutor Amy Fisher argued against it because Burns’s parents lived in Tasmania, and if she went there, Australian officials would have no way to monitor her on house arrest.
• They were waiting on Australian Federal Police to analyze the cell phones of the girls. There may have been deleted messages.
• The judge said no, but allowed her lawyer to reinstate the application at a later date.
• Both Burns and Dwyer remained in jail as of Dec. 2016.

https://www.facebook.com/7NEWSAdelaide/videos/7-news-robert-whitwell-arrest/1264714086892577/

 

https://au.news.yahoo.com/brittney-dwyers-family-speaks-about-murder-of-robert-whitwell-37723984.html

 

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/american-horror-story-motivates-woman-murder-grandfather-article-1.3572102

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-07/brittney-dwyer-sentenced-over-robert-whitwells-murder/9125184

 

• Dwyer was sentenced to 21 years without parole.
• Judge: crime was brutal and dispassionately planned.
• Bernadette Burns waited in the car and put her makeup on.
• One text Burns sent to Dwyer was, “Just harden up and do it.”
• Burns was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 13 ½ years.
• Whitwell’s home was in Craigmore, Adelaide north.
• "It is not possible to adequately summarise the distress and profound anguish," Justice Nicholson said.
• ​​"You failed to see or accept the enormity and abhorrent wrongfulness of what you were planning," Justice Nicholson said.
• Brittney stabbed her grandfather 4 times.
• “She then helped him apply a bandaid to one of the stab wounds in his neck, before busying herself by washing the dishes as he lay dying on a kitchen chair.”
• The judge said 29 years of non-parole imprisonment for Dwyer was a good starting point, but then after taking into account that she cooperated with police and pleaded guilty, he gave her 20 years and six months and added six months for the aggravated serious criminal trespass.
• Burns got 13 and ½ years for her role in the murder
• "You couldn't get a better brother, he was truly a real gentleman — I don't think he ever had an argument with anybody ever in his life, he always helped everybody whenever he could and he always tried to do the right thing," Geoffrey Whitwell, the victim’s brother said.

 

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/brittney-jade-dwyer-19-pleads-guilty-to-murder-of-her-grandfather-robert-whitwell-at-craigmore/news-story/f41a15affa28b480c2499a7e21178302

The girls were from different parts of Australia and had to go through extradition hearings to be brought to trial in Brisbane. Shelby Holmes appeared in court on the charge of aggravated.

 

Holmes and Dwyer drove from Queensland to Craigmore to “observe” Mr. Whitwell on April 30, 2016, several months before the murder took place. Extreme premeditation.

 

Holmes told the court that Dwyer told her not to get attached to her grandfather because he might have to die.

 

They claimed Holmes sent Dwyer a text message saying “he said ‘hi’ to me, he’s lovely” to which Dwyer replied, “don’t get attached to him, he might have to die”.

Prosecutors said those messages were part of 19,000 texts sent between the pair over two years that had been recovered by investigators.

The investigation into Mr Whitwell’s death began after neighbours became concerned when they noticed a newspaper lying uncollected in Mr Whitwell’s driveway.

One told The Advertiser said he had seen Dwyer outside Mr Whitwell’s house about four days after he was found dead. He said Dwyer did not seem distressed.

Mr. Whitwell’s dementia-riddled wife lived in a nursing home nearby, and he visited her every day.

 

 

 

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/law-order/brittney-dwyer-obsessed-with-knives-and-graveyards-before-murdering-her-grandfather-robert-whitwell/news-story/7625a6ac047b12631b4f7bd69670050c

 

Story claims Brittney Dwyer had an obsession with “dark things,” like knives and graveyards.

 

Dwyer’s mother, daughter of Mr Whitwell, Tonya Dwyer, told Channel 7’s Sunday Night that she had watched as her daughter grew from a bubbly child to a sullen teenager who self-harmed and was obsessed with violence and death.

In April 2016, Dwyer and her friend Holmes drove from Brisbane to Adelaide to try to get the $100,000 he kept in his garden shed. They failed, so a few months later, she went back with her friend Bernadette Burns.

Burns was apparently in a “destructive cycle” after losing custody of her daughter.

After the crime, Dwyer and Burns drove back to Brisbane, which is just over 2,000 km away. She was still driving back when her grandfather’s body was found four days later. She drove straight to her mother’s house. Her mother said that when she told her, Brittney burst into hysterical tears.

In the days of mourning that followed, Brittney’s mom told police that the only out-of-character behavior was her chainsmoking.

Someone gave police an anonymous tip that Brittney and Burnadette Burns were involved in the murder.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/brittney-jade-dwyer-looked-at-family-photos-with-adelaide-grandfather-before-fatally-stabbing-him/a31b2f53-88fd-435f-a1f3-cae9d96130af

 

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/law-order/bernadette-burns-pleads-guilty-to-murder-of-adelaide-grandpa-robert-whitwell-in-his-craigmore-unit/news-story/f81f4466c06f08ba595e16ac3c66c297

There was a previous attempt to burglarize Whitwell’s home, and a friend of Dwyer and Burns was sentenced to 17 months, although the sentence was suspended.

 

“Supreme Court Justice Kevin Nicholson heard Dwyer told a psychiatrist that her grandfather may have sexually molested her as a child — but she wasn’t sure if it was real or not.

“It is a most unpleasant assertion. It’s unfounded in any other material,” prosecutor Jim Pearce told the court.

He said “at one minute to midnight” Dwyer was having flashbacks about something her victim may or may not have done, despite never having raised this as a motive at any other point in the investigation.

“In my submission, the court would be entitled to infer, with the absence of evidence from Ms Dwyer about this, that it is just simply an invention designed to give her an explanation for why she acted as she did,” he said.”

 

https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/brittney-jade-dwyer-invented-possible-memories-of-abuse-in-attempt-to-excuse-murder-of-grandfather-robert-whitwell/news-story/3b134c1e38d869cee386669155ade21c

 

Key Facts:

Brittney Dwyer (19) stabbed her grandfather to death in his Adelaide home on August 5, 2016.

Her girlfriend, Bernadette Burns, drove with her from their shared home in Queensland in order to murder Dwyer’s grandfather and steal his life savings.

 

They arrived at Robert Whitwell’s home at 11 am. Brittney went inside and looked at family photos with her grandfather while Burns waited in the car.

 

Dwyer sent a text message to Burns saying she couldn’t go through with it, but Burns replied that she had to because they had “come all this way.”

 

After Dwyer stabbed him in the neck and chest as he was walking her to the door, he asked her why she stabbed him but she didn’t respond. After hobbling to the kitchen to look for a bandaid, Whitwell collapsed and lay there bleeding to death as Brittney did the dishes. Once he was dead, Burns came into the house and the two women ransacked the place looking for the cash life savings he kept in the house. They only came up with $1000, not realizing Whitewell kept another $110,000 in his shed out back.

His body was found 3 days after the murder by neighbors. Sunday mail was left uncollected in the driveway, so neighbors went in.

 

Detectives investigated for several weeks and the evidence led them to Brittney Dwyer.

 

Dwyer was charged in Brisbane.

 

Burns and Dwyer had an accomplice: 19-year-old Shelby Lee Angie Holmes, who had trespassed on Whitwells property in the months leading up to the crime- looking for the cash?

 

News.com.au

 

Holmes was jailed for 17 months with a non-parole period of nine months, suspended on the condition she be of good behaviour for three years.

The court was told Dwyer and Holmes drove from Queensland to Adelaide to rob Mr Whitwell of “thousands of dollars” of the “hundreds of thousands” which they believed was kept in his shed.

But the girls were frightened off by a sensor light, barking dogs and a nearby neighbour.

Last month, Mr Whitwell’s brothers told how they embraced his crying granddaughter in the days after his death — only to discover they had been comforting his killer.

 

“Dwyer pleaded guilty to the murder and in February admitted to a further charge of aggravated serious criminal trespass between April 30 last year and May 2.”

 

Her argument in court was that American Horror Story made her do it.

 

In the moments leading up to her sentencing, Dwyer said her grandfather had abused her.

 

https://radaronline.com/videos/copycat-killers-features-murder-inspired-american-horror-story-video/