Henry Hammond, 28, has been found not guilty to the brutal murder of Courtney Herron, 25, in a Melbourne park last year due to mental impairment.
Mr Hammond had been charged with murder a day after Ms Herron’s body was found in between logs by three dog walkers in Royal Park, Parkville, last year.
Ms Herron was raised in a Greek Australian family and her funeral took place at a Greek Orthodox church in June last year.
A year following her death, Justice Phillip Priest accepted that the perpetrator was unfit to stand trial.
“I’m satisfied on the evidence the defence of mental impairment is made out,” he said on Monday, following reports by two forensic psychiatrists who found that Mr Hammond was in the midst of a relapse of his schizophrenic illness at the time of the killing.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Rajan Darjee told the court that he believed that Mr Hammond was not suffering from a drug-induced psychosis but from schizophrenia that he had been suffering from since at least 2017 due to his abnormal beliefs and delusions. Dr Darjee told the court that drug use may have exacerbated the offending, but it wasn’t the cause.
Dr Darjee said that Mr Hammond believed that Ms Herron intended to harm him. “He felt she was interfering with his mind. He felt she had been involved in some way in a past life in which she had harmed him or people close to him,” he said.
“And I think he believed she was actually not who she was but was someone else, perhaps a spirit, that had entered her body and felt it was linked to a wider conspiracy. Because of that he had to destroy her.”
READ MORE: A year on… Courtney Herron’s mother demands justice for her ‘little girl’
The court heard that on 24 May last year, Ms Herron was with her boyfriend and his cousin at the old GPO building on the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth streets in the Melbourne CBD when Mr Hammond approached and asked for a cigarette. Ms Herron invited him to some ice in Fitzroy and he agreed.
Ms Herron and Mr Hammond went to a friends apartment and smoked cannabis and methamphetamine and left together at 8.30pm for dinner at the Vegie Bar on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. CCTV footage from the venue showed them being friendly. Ms Herron paid for Mr Hammond’s meal before they returned to the friend’s apartment.
At the apartment, Mr Hammond behaved strangely and the pair communicated using hand signals and they talked about magic and dragons.
They left at 3.30am before entering the grounds of Royal Park from Elliott Avenue at 4.30am.
Prosecutor Melissa Mahady told the court that Courtney was scared at this point and asked Mr Hammond, who picked up a branch, if he was going to kill her. “Hammond then struck her to the head with the branch. She started screaming and a man sleeping in the park heard screams and a hitting sound. Hammond was repeatedly striking Courtney to the face with the branch,” the prosecutor said.
READ MORE: ‘Devastating’: Accused for Courtney Herron’s murder found mentally unfit to stand trial
The court heard that he bludgeoned her body with the branch for around 50 minutes before tying her feet with black material and dragging her body to a clearing near a tree and some logs. He covered the body with leaves. It is estimated that Mr Hammond left the park at 7.30am with Ms Herron’s phone and wallet before dog walkers found her body at 9.10am.
Mr Hammond was arrested on 26 May at 4.45pm at the Salvation Army Centre on Bourke Street, however he denied knowing Ms Herron.
Later, in a second interview, he told police that he had been walking through Royal Park before recognising “her treachery towards him and her family”. He said he remembered Ms Herron from a past life when he was happily married and said the “trees had dropped sticks for a reason”.
Mr Hammond will front court again on 14 September.
Prior to the trial, Mr John Herron, a practising lawyer himself, told Neos Kosmos described the psychiatric outcome as ‘devastating’ and ‘alarming’.
“First of all, when I found out that the killer had been released early I thought my daughter would still be alive [if he hadn’t been released].
This is devastating. And the fact that he won’t be punished for this is two blows really for a parent.”
