Douglas Crabbe - Trials

Trials

At an October 1983 court hearing a police video taken on 18 August 1983 was shown to the court. It showed the bodies of the four people killed instantly - two men and two women - in the makeshift mortuary set up at the back of the motel. It also showed the damage to the bar area of the motel, with clothes and boots embedded in the ground under the truck and near its bloodstained bull bar, from which the officer who took the video said many of the dead had been pulled. Crabbe, charged with five counts of murder at the hearing, sat expressionless as the video was shown.

Ronald Slinn, a building manager from Yulara, told the court he was hit by the truck, jamming his left leg under the front axle. He managed to drag himself out and found his 45-year-old wife Patricia Slinn half underneath with her face downward; she had been killed instantly. A motel guest testified he saw a man, later identified from police photographs as Crabbe, running as if fleeing something. The man told the guest "Okay mate, I'm not going any further. I've gone far enough." After leaving to get help the guest found that the man had disappeared.

At the trial in March 1984 a witness testified that Crabbe had been rude and aggressive in the bar. This witness reported she had later seen Crabbe on the floor of the bar, being held down by three men. A second witness corroborated that a man had been involved in a scuffle with three men. The witness testified that after the truck crashed into the bar he saw the man who had been involved in the scuffle leave the truck's cabin and exit "very quickly" towards the rear of the truck via the gaping hole the truck left in the side of the building. The witness had been knocked down by the truck.

Crabbe offered no reason for his actions. At trial he pleaded memory loss from his removal of the second trailer until waking to the sound of the truck's exhaust amid the damaged bar room after impact. He was convicted of all five counts of murder by a jury. The judge sentenced him to the mandatory term of life imprisonment on each count of murder, each term to run consecutively. Asked if he had anything to say, Crabbe replied "No, nothing." Crabbe later appealed to the Federal Court of Australia, which found that the judge at the original trial had erred in his summing up to the jury and the convictions were set aside and a retrial ordered. The Crown then appealed that decision to the High Court of Australia, but this was dismissed.

Crabbe pleaded not guilty at his second trial which was held in the Darwin, Northern Territory Supreme Court in 1985. This trial concluded on 7 October 1985 when a second jury convicted him on all five counts of murder. Crabbe was again sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment with a thirty-year minimum (the longest in the Northern Territory's history) backdated to 18 August 1983, the day of the murders and his arrest, to be served at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre.

In early 2005, Crabbe was moved to a prison in Perth, Western Australia after strong pleas from his family, including his sister, Flo. Crabbe will be eligible for release on parole on 18 August 2013 at the age of 66; if he is paroled, he will be on parole for the rest of his life.