Melbourne mother killed by son in delusional plot to kill communists

A Melbourne mother was brutally murdered by her own teenage son because he feared she could “thwart” his efforts to topple the government, a court has been told.

The 41-year-old woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was bashed over the head with a cricket bat and stabbed dozens of times just hours after the family sat down for a spaghetti dinner.

The court was told her son, then 15, had spent months with a friend obsessively planning to raise an anti-communist army with the goal of restoring “Christian values” to Australia.

The teenager appeared in the Victorian Supreme Court this week for a pre-sentence hearing after pleading guilty to his mother’s murder in the evening of April 5, 2023.

Crown prosecutor Daniel Porceddu told the court the two boys had formulated a plot to steal a car and travel to the Grampians where they would blow up a bridge and launch an insurrection.

The plan for “politically inspired violence”, dubbed Operation Continuity, also included possibly attacking police stations, travelling overseas to enlist soldiers and killing communists.

The court was told the operation was set in motion after the final day of the school term, with the boy killing his mother so he could take her car without the alarm being raised.

“The prosecution case is that the murder of (the woman) was to ensure that the start of Operation Continuity was not thwarted,” Mr Porceddu said.

“Had she remained alive, she could have thwarted the plan.”

The prosecutor said the boy’s younger brother heard his mother yelling out “what are you doing, stop, stop” and “you’re killing me” about 10.30pm.

He rushed into her bedroom, seeing the woman on the bed and covered in blood, before fleeing to a nearby police station.

Police entered the home a short time later to find the woman critically injured with 98 knife wounds. She died in hospital later that night.

The boy and his friend were found by police walking along a road more than 100km away near Ballarat the following afternoon wearing camouflage clothing.

Psychiatrist David Thomas told the court the pair had been experiencing an intense shared delusional belief system, believing they were following a “divine mandate”.

“Everything in pursuit of the prophecy, in pursuit of the operation, was good, was justified … because it was God’s work,” he said.

The boy has since been diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorder and an induced delusional disorder.

Dr Thomas said the boy’s symptoms were almost “textbook” for his disorder, suggesting the chance of something similar happening again was rare.

“I think it’s in everyone’s interest – including his – that he’s supported to build good, healthy, pro-social relationships,” he said.

The 17-year-old’s barrister Amy Brennan told the court that her client had expressed remorse for his actions and had been engaging well with support structures and schooling while in custody.

She urged Justice James Elliot to take into account his youth, neurodivergence and mental disorder to consider allowing the boy to remain in youth detention for as long as possible.

“It’s apt to remind this court that here we are talking about, despite that serious offence, a very young person … a very young person who is impaired by two additional conditions,” she said.

More than a dozen of the mother’s family and friends were present for the two-day hearing, with Justice Elliot acknowledging it would have been difficult to endure.

He said he would hand down a sentence at a later date.

The boy did not meet the gaze of any of his family members as they left court.