Society Murders
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The Society Murders was the name given to the April 4, 2002 murders of husband and wife millionaire socialites Margaret Mary Wales-King, 69, and husband, Paul Aloysius King, 75 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, by their son, Matthew Wales.
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[edit] Missing persons
On April 4, 2002 at approximately 7 p.m., the victims, Margaret Wales-King and Paul King arrived at the home of their son, Matthew Wales and his wife, Maritza Wales for a family dinner engagement. A Mercedes-Benz vehicle registered to the missing persons was located abandoned in Middle Park on April 10, 2002.
On April 29, 2002, park rangers Alan Caddy and John Gwilt discovered the burial site in bushland at Marysville. Items found with the bodies were a child's wading pool, bricks, chains, ropes and shackles, a crowbar and doona covers and sheets.
[edit] Matthew Wales
Matthew Robert Wales, born July 18, 1968, is the youngest son of victims Margaret Wales-King and Paul King. Wales described Paul King as his "second father".
On May 10, 2002, Matthew Wales confessed to police, stating "I couldn't live with myself any more".
[edit] Frontyard attack
During the course of the evening, Matthew Wales added a combination of Panadeine Forte and Tenormin to vegetable soup he was preparing. He had learned earlier the drugs were likely to cause drowsiness.
As his parents were leaving at approximately 9pm, Matthew Wales followed them outstide and struck them both across the head with a piece of wood, rendering them both unconscious. Matthew Wales later told police during an interview, "My head was just going bananas and I just kept on hitting. I just kept on hitting".
Wales then covered the bodies using his child's wading pool, then drove their car to Middle Park.
[edit] Disposal of bodies
Wales purchased supplies such as tarpaulins and ropes and hired a trailer from a nearby garage. He then loaded his parents' bodies into the trailer and covered them with household garbage and drove them on a three hour journey to bushland in Marysville where he buried them in a shallow earth grave after a locked gate prevented a water grave in a near by body of water.
[edit] Guilty plea and sentencing
Matthew Wales pleaded guilty and was convicted of the murders of Margaret Wales-King and Paul King. On April 11, 2003 Matthew Wales was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 24 years.
[edit] Maritza Wales
The wife of Matthew Wales, Maritza Wales, was born in Santiago, Chile. Her family migrated to Australia in 1976 when she was aged 13. She attended Aquinas College, in Ringwood. Matitza met Wales in 1998 and married in May 1999. Maritza Wales had no prior criminal convictions.
In a statement to police, Maritza admitted to making a false statement to assist with concealing the crimes of her husband.
- Q. "What did you hope that you would achieve by providing a false statement?"
- A. "Scared. Scared of losing Matt. Scared of losing Dominic. Just - I feel like I am pulled from left, right and centre. I didn't know what to do."
- Q. "Did you have any discussion with Matthew prior to making the statement?"
- A. "This is the Monday when mum was missing and he said everybody's gonna get a police report. We all have to fill in a police report ... and Matthew told me just to say that ... we waved to them to say goodbye."
- Q. "Did ... you and Matthew discuss what should be ... put in that statement?"
- A. "No. The only thing he said to me, 'Just tell them everything else,' he said, 'everything. Just ... don't lie. Just tell them exactly what we had for dinner, what happened, what kind of conversation.' He said, 'But just make sure you tell them that we waved goodbye to them', so I did."
Maritza Wales pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice and was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence.
At her sentencing, the judge remarked "...the Crown do not allege that you had any role in the planned killing of Mrs Wales-King and Paul King and I am quite satisfied that you did not. Apart from the factors to which I have already referred, it is inconceivable that you would have been a party to the killing of your parents-in-law in the front yard of your family home and without any plan for the disposal of their bodies. As I have already endeavoured to make quite clear, I am quite satisfied that your husband acted alone in perpetrating these crimes."
[edit] Film
A film based on the Society Murders, starring Georgie Parker, Alex Dimitriades, Matthew Le Nevez, Terry Norris, Julia Blake and Joshua Kippie (in his first movie as Dominic Wales) was aired on Australia's Channel 10 on June 18, 2006. A DVD has since been released.
[edit] External links
- Killer son's plea: 'Don't dob me in', The Age, December 20 2002
- Killer 'wanted to eliminate mother from his life', Sydney Morning Herald
- Murder in the family, The Age, April 11, 2003
- Wales in court on parental murder charges, Sydney Morning Herald, May 14, 2002
- Victims 'could have lived', Sydney Morning Herald, December 6, 2002
- R v Wales 2003 VSC 115 (11 April 2003), Supreme Court of Victoria sentencing
- Case closed - but not for an angry family, The Age, April 12, 2003
- Killer fights for family cash for son, The Age, April 1, 2005
- TV treatment for society murders, , The Age, July 22, 2005
- Society murders come to life, Herald Sun, October 4, 2005
- Suspicious Mindsets, Sydney Morning Herald, June 18, 2006
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