Man who called himself ‘the Hand of Death’ planned to be serial killer,jury told

A man who named himself “the Hand of Death” and fatally bludgeoned two homeless men in different states told police he had planned to commit multiple murders in Sydney,and that his arrest stopped him “from becoming Australia’s most prolific serial killer”,a jury has heard.

Kevin James Pettiford is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court charged with the bashing murder of homeless man Andrew Whyte Murray,56,in Tweed Heads in November 2019,and the attempted murder of inmate Nathan Mellows by slashing his throat in Cessnock prison five weeks later. The 38-year-old does not dispute the two acts occurred but claims he was mentally impaired at the time.

The prosecutor has told the jury,in their assessment of Pettiford’s mental state,they would hear evidence he had separately killed homeless man David Collin while he slept in Maroochydore,Queensland in September 2019,and slashed a Goulburn prison officer’s arm in March 2020.

Concluding his opening address on Wednesday,Crown prosecutor Brendan Campbell said Pettiford had been on a bus bound for Sydney when he was arrested in Tweed Heads on November 26,2019.

Before Pettiford boarded the bus in Surfers Paradise,he was captured on CCTV posting a letter addressed to a detective who had spoken on TV about Murray’s killing,the prosecutor said. On the back of the document was “THOD”,which Pettiford later told police meant “the Hand of Death”.

“He said that ‘the Hand of Death’ was his inner monster,” Campbell said.

He said Pettiford told police he always wanted to kill and targeted homeless people because it was “for less dead” and they “won’t be missed”,asking officers,“Would you like me to go and lock two kids in a car on a hot day?”

“I know it makes no sense,but it was the best I could do so I didn’t take it out on some nice girl walking down the street … or some happy family,” Pettiford said,according to the prosecutor. “I could’ve taken out four people the other night … but I couldn’t do it because two were female.”

Between the killing of Murray and the jail attack on Mellows,documents were found in Pettiford’s cell including a letter to another detective,in which he wrote,“You didn’t know at the time when you arrested me,but you stopped me from becoming Australia’s most prolific serial killer”.

The prosecutor said there was also a map featuring a Sydney art gallery and Sydney library and a comment that Pettiford’s “weapon of choice” would be a fish filleting knife.

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Self-described ‘Hand of Death’ killed two men,slashed inmate’s throat,jury told

Campbell said in a January 2020 interview,Pettiford “spoke at length about a plan to commit multiple other murders in Sydney” and kill multiple homeless people.

The prosecutor told the jury that annotations on a red pin board found in Pettiford’s cell included,“you will not feel,hear,see,smell or taste me,but I can promise you this,I will kill you quickly”,“you haven’t lived unless you’ve killed” and “you will never see me coming”.

The board also included references to “carotid,12 seconds” and “subclavian,three seconds”.

Campbell said Pettiford told police piercing or puncturing the subclavian artery resulted in a three-second death,and further said,“I know I’m evil,right? But I always say I’m calculated and controlled evil”.

In his opening statement,public defender Jason Watts said while the Crown case was “this man is not mentally ill,he’s just wicked”,the defence argued a different conclusion could be drawn.

He said the issue was whether Pettiford could establish,on the balance of probabilities,that at the time of the Murray and Mellows acts he was suffering from a mental health impairment and “unable to reason with a moderate degree of sense and composure as to the wrongfulness of his actions”.

Regarding Pettiford’s talk of having some broader plan,the barrister anticipated psychiatric evidence that this was consistent with someone having a “grandiose perception of themselves”,and that people subject to manic episodes are often engaged in “goal-directed behaviour”.

Watts said Pettiford had since been prescribed antipsychotic medication and argued “the proof is in the pudding” given the “complete change” in him while in custody over the past few years.

The trial continues before Justice Hament Dhanji.

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