A neo-Nazi who murdered the father of her child because she wanted to end their relationship and get hold of his life insurance has lost her appeal against conviction in Western Australia.
Melony Jane Attwood plotted with fellow white supremacists to bludgeon 42-year-old FIFO boilermaker Alan Taylor to death with a hammer as he slept in the Girrawheen house he owned and allowed her lover Robert Edhouse to live in.
The WA Supreme Court heard Mr Taylor did not know the pair were in a relationship, but may have suspected, and their motive for the 2016 killing was getting hold of a $1 million life insurance policy they believed he had.
Attwood, who led Aryan Girls and pretended to have separated from Mr Taylor in a Centrelink sham, wanted him “out of the way”, trial judge Justice Lindy Jenkins found.
She also found Edhouse may have wanted to eliminate his sexual rival, retain cohesion of the Aryan Nations group he presided over and impress Attwood.
The killers trashed the house to make it look like a burglary, then went to a cinema in a bid to create an alibi.
Attwood made a distressed-sounding triple-zero call when she returned home.
She has continuously protested her innocence and argued her lawyer didn’t follow instructions at trial, but her appeal was dismissed on Thursday.
Read the article by Rebecca Le May in The Canberra Times.