He killed his wife with an axe, bludgeoned one grandchild with a hammer and drowned another. Ten years on John Walsh's blood lust is as strong as ever. Photo / 9News
WARNING: distressing content.
John Walsh is a stone cold murderer with an insatiable blood lust.
Last week, on the eve of his 80th birthday, the convicted triple killer was handed another life term for bashing his cellmate to death with a sandwich press in the aged care unit of Long Bail jail in January 2017.
"He is incapable of remorse," noted Justice Lucy McCallum at Walsh's sentencing hearing in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday.
And she should know. Ten years earlier, Justice McCallum had jailed Walsh for the murders of his wife and two young grandchildren in the NSW town of Cowra — a gruesome and frenzied attack that also left his police officer daughter Shelly fighting for her life.
On June 30, 2008, Ms Walsh had left her son, seven, and daughter, five, in the care of her father and her mother Jean, 52 overnight while she worked at nearby Parkes Police Station.
When Ms Walsh dropped by the next morning to collect her children, she was confronted with a scene straight out of a horror movie. First she found her mother's body; Jean had been stabbed in neck and clubbed over the head with a hammer.
She then went to the children's room and found the corpses of her children in their bunk beds. Her daughter had been drowned in the bath — along with the family dog — while her son had been bludgeoned to death with the same hammer used to kill Jean.
As Ms Walsh made the grim discovery, her father ambushed her from behind, swinging an axe at her head, causing serious injuries. She managed to fight him off and, bleeding heavily, fled the home of a neighbour who called police.
Following his arrest, the old man tried everything he could to evade responsibility for his actions. In the months leading up to the murders, Walsh, then aged 70, had been diagnosed with a brain tumour and been told he did not have long to live.
His legal team argued that the condition may have contributed to the fatal rampage but Justice McCallum didn't buy it, sentencing Walsh to two life terms for the children's murders, 15 years for killing his wife and 12 years for the attempted murder of his daughter.
In a 2013 interview with A Current Affair's Tracey Grimshaw, Shelly Walsh told of having visited her father in jail to ask him why he did it.
"He just shrugged his shoulders and said 'I don't know why myself'," she told Grimshaw.
"That was it, that was his answer."
Walsh displayed the same chilling nonchalance after killing Frank Townsend with a sandwich press in their Long Bay prison cell in January last year.
In police interviews, he told detectives he had wrapped the appliance in a pillow case before stepping toward Townsend and smashing it "choom, onto his face".
"I don't work in anger. I work in tactical … cold rage," he said.
When asked what he was thinking when he hit the other man, Walsh replied: "I don't think I was thinking anything."
"All I remember is bang, bang, bang … I shut it out probably," he told police. "The only thing I can't shut out is my own family … I don't know why that's happened because there was no anger, no drugs, no booze, just that depressing silence and I went and killed my wife.
"Maybe some people shouldn't be born"
The imposition of a third life term on Walsh ensures he will die in jail.
In the years since, Ms Walsh has managed to pick up the piece of her life with her partner Denise and the pair now live in Goulburn in the state's life with her partner Denise and the pair now live in Goulburn, in the NSW Southern Tablelands.
But she remains haunted by the loss of her mother and children, tortured by the belief she didn't do enough to keep them safe.
"That was my mum, but more so my babies. It was my job to protect them and I wasn't there," she told Grimshaw.