Martin Leach Research Paper

Martin Leach (born 11 January 1959 in New Zealand),[1] is a convicted rapist and double murderer, and has been described as one of, if not the Northern Territory's (Australia) worst killer.[2]

Leach is the longest serving prisoner in the Northern Territory, and is currently imprisoned at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre,[1] serving three consecutive life sentences without parole for his crimes.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Rape
3 Double murder
4 Trials and appeals
5 References
Early life[edit]
Leach met his wife when aged sixteen and they married in 1979. In 1978, Leach had been involved in a serious motor vehicle accident near Mataranka which left him seriously injured.[1]

Rape[edit]
In 1979, Leach raped a woman at knifepoint after

He was made redundant in December 1982 and, apart from employment for a period of one week in March 1983, he remained unemployed. His wife was in full-time employment.

Double murder[edit]
On 20 June 1983, an eighteen-year-old local woman, Janice Carnegie, and her fifteen-year-old cousin, Charmaine Aviet, were swimming at a popular recreational waterhole at Berry Springs. Leach watched the girls for some time, before forcing them at knifepoint to accompany him to a nearby gully.

He stabbed Janice in the stomach when she attempted to reach for Leach's knife. Following the stabbing, he then raped her. He stabbed and killed Charmaine, then stabbed Janice in the neck; a pathologist testified it probably took her 5 to 10 minutes to die. Their naked bodies were later found bound and gagged in a shallow grave.[1]

Trials and appeals[edit]
On 10 May 1984, Leach was charged with two counts of murder and one count of rape by Northern Territory Police. Six days later he was convicted by a jury on all three counts, and Justice Muirhead sentenced him to imprisonment for life on each count, to run consecutively with each other and with a three-month sentence for assaulting a prison officer while on