23

The Sex Goddess

Despite being overweight and described by one member of the media as having a ‘head like a dropped pie’, the lovers taken by 28-year-old mother of two Michelle Elizabeth Burgess thought of her as a sex goddess. Her prodigious sexual talents ensured men would do anything she asked of them – even murder.

Until late 2000, Michelle had lived a regular life with her husband Darren and their two young children at suburban Evanston Gardens, 40 kilometres north of Adelaide in South Australia. But an affair with her husband’s boss, 39-year-old Kevin Matthews, would change the two families’ lives forever.

Kevin and Michelle first met at a Beaurepaires Tyres Christmas function. Kevin was sales manager of the Port Adelaide store. Darren Burgess worked at the Elizabeth branch. Michelle later described Kevin to her husband as a ‘pig dog’. Kevin’s wife of 17 years, Carolyn Matthews, was described as ‘feral’. But by the time Darren Burgess’s 30th birthday party was held in September 2000 – to which Michelle insisted Kevin Matthews and Carolyn be invited – partygoers could easily have thought that Michelle and Kevin were an ‘item’. Despite the presence of their respective partners, the pair spent most of the afternoon talking arm in arm. At Kevin Matthews’s 40th birthday party that same month, the couple again spent most of the time in each other’s arms. Getting progressively drunker, Matthews announced to all present that Michelle was his new ‘best friend’.

The relationship developed. After a few months they were seen openly kissing at bars and local parks during extended lunch hours. Kevin and a woman matching Michelle’s description regularly drank eight glasses of scotch a day at the Hampstead Hotel, where they embarrassed other patrons with their passionate embraces. At a Christmas party at the Burgess house that year, Michelle eagerly showed off a new tattoo on her bottom to anyone who wanted to look. Kevin was very interested. Carolyn complained to Darren Burgess that his wife was ‘out there showing her arse’ to her husband.

On Christmas Day 2000, Michelle wore an expensive gold necklace. When her husband asked where it came from, she said it had only cost $10. Darren later found an empty jewellery box from an Adelaide jewellery store and a card which read: ‘Chook loves Daffy … This is just enough to tide you over Christmas. Don’t waste it on scotch.’

The lunches, drinks, gifts, overnight motel accommodation and 2000 mobile phone calls back and forth soon took their toll on the Matthews’s joint bank account. Carolyn confronted her husband Kevin and threatened to throw him out of the family home if he didn’t end the affair. Darren Burgess also confronted his wife. Michelle admitted that she had been meeting Kevin regularly for coffee. She said the pair of them had realised they both had troubled marriages.

Darren moved out in January 2001. Not long afterwards he received a text message from his wife threatening him and his new girlfriend. It read: ‘She’s dead. You’re dead. That’s a promise not a threat.’

Unhappy with their situation, lovebirds Michelle and Kevin looked for a solution. Michelle suggested that it would be ideal if her husband and Kevin’s wife simply weren’t around any more. Kevin agreed. The $100,000 insurance policy on Carolyn’s life made the idea more appealing. Michelle started looking for a hitman. She confronted another mother at her children’s primary school, Kathleen Cowled, asking if she knew of anyone who could put someone ‘six feet under’. Cowled said she thought she may know someone – her 28-year-old brother, David William Edgar Key, an illiterate drug addict and convicted armed robber.

Michelle and Key met outside the school and agreed that for $50,000 from the insurance policy on Carolyn’s life, Key would murder both her and Darren Burgess. Michelle gave Key two handwritten ‘contracts’ – one for the murder of Carolyn and one for the murder of Darren. Each contract included a photo of the intended victim. To seal the deal, Michelle took Key home and had sex with him.

Michelle decided that Carolyn and Darren should be killed in separate staged car accidents. She wrote her plan down on a scrap of paper and gave it to Key. It read: ‘Look like car accident (both) alone. One this week (by Friday). One next week.’ Shortly after, Key moved in with Michelle. They carried on their affair right under Kevin Matthews’s nose.

At around 5.30 pm on 12 July 2001, Kevin picked up his three sons from their house to take them to the video shop. He had rung ahead from work and told the boys to be waiting at the front gate. When they got home 20 minutes later, the boys walked inside ahead of their father, who lingered behind. They almost tripped over the dead body of their mother. The paramedics thought it was suicide at first, given the cuts on Carolyn’s wrist, but after discovering other wounds to the body, they realised their mistake – the house became a crime scene.

Police were immediately suspicious of Kevin Matthews. It didn’t take long to find out that he was having an affair – phone records showed that on the day of his wife’s murder, he and Michelle had called each other 16 times. They were both placed under surveillance and their phones were tapped.

Then, on 26 July, David Key was pulled over by police following a high-speed chase through the Barossa Valley on an unrelated matter. He was arrested at gun-point and taken into custody for parole violations. While questioning Key, police went through his wallet and found the ‘contract’ – complete with photograph – to murder Darren Burgess. Forensic detectives examined Key’s boots. They matched a boot pattern found in the blood at the scene of Carolyn Matthews’s murder. A DNA test of a bloodstain from one of the boots matched Carolyn’s. On 2 August 2001, Key was charged with Carolyn’s murder. Two days later, Michelle Burgess was also arrested and charged with murder. Questioned about her whereabouts on the day in question, she admitted that she had visited Kevin at work, but not with Key. She said she was with 31-year-old Jason Colenso, a friend of Key’s she was also having a sexual relationship with. Colenso had moved in with Michelle the day after Key was arrested.

At Michelle’s first court hearing, Kevin – still free but under surveillance – turned up with the word ‘FOREVER’ written on the rim of his hat. He took it off and pointed it out to Michelle. The next day he lodged a claim for the $100,000 insurance on his wife’s life.

With Key and Michelle safely locked up, witnesses came forward. Kevin was arrested on 7 September 2001, and also charged with the murder of his wife. When he appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates’ Court six hours later, he looked uninterested and bored.

Key’s original plan was to plead not guilty to murdering Carolyn, but on the eve of his trial he changed his plea to guilty and became a witness against Michelle and Kevin in return for a lighter sentence.

On 6 August 2003, David Key was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 20-year non-parole period. Justice Margaret Nyland told him that if it weren’t for his guilty plea and cooperation, he would have received a 30 year non-parole period. Key stared blankly ahead as his sentence was handed down.

When Justice Nyland read out his non-parole period, Key’s hand began to shake and he dropped his gaze to the floor.

The trial of Michelle Burgess and Kevin Mathews began on 13 August 2003 in the Adelaide Supreme Court before Justice Nyland. It was soon obvious that the defendants didn’t take the situation too seriously. The pair whispered to each other. Michelle openly flirted with Kevin, who even fell asleep in the dock one day. Early in the trial Kevin would make faces at anyone in the public gallery looking at him. Michelle did her best to look sultry, giggling into the back of her hand whenever the subject of sex came up. Throughout the trial the couple used Adelaide community radio program The Prison Show to express their love to each other. Though part of their defence was the claim that their friendship was platonic, the program aired romantic poems and messages between the pair describing themselves as soulmates.

In his opening address to the jury, prosecutor Steven Millsteed QC said the motive behind the murder was lust and greed. ‘It’s the prosecution case that the accused were having an affair in the months leading up to the murder and that they hired Mr Key to murder Mrs Matthews in order to further their relationship and be together,’ he told the court. ‘The two accused were partners in a common purpose … their roles involved plotting Mrs Matthews’s death and hiring Key. Mr Matthews’s participation also extended to removing his sons from the house to allow the killing to take place.’

The court then heard a poem found in Michelle’s diary; it was allegedly written about Kevin Matthews:

 

The love I want walked into my life,

Although he has a wife,

He’s the man of my dreams all in one,

No one compares to him,

The love I wanted all my life,

Came to me one day,

He’s the man of my dreams all in one,

But there’s always the threat,

He will be taken away,

And I want him to stay.

 

Michelle’s former friend and neighbour Cassandra Hutchison told the court there was no doubt Michelle and Kevin were having a sexual relationship. She said Michelle would often talk about Kevin, saying he promised he was going to leave his wife. ‘Michelle told me she was having an affair with Kevin and the sex was brilliant – much better than with Darren,’ explained Cassandra. ‘She was constantly talking about how good the sex was with Kevin.’ Cassandra also said that just after Christmas 2000, Michelle told her she had received a phone call from Carolyn Matthews telling her to stay away from her (Carolyn’s) husband. Michelle found the call amusing. ‘She was telling me and laughing at the same time,’ Cassandra said.

The court then heard from Darren Burgess, who said he was aware of at least two affairs his wife had had during their marriage. He said he left his wife because he was aware that she was having an affair with his boss. Darren said that as far as he knew, since he and his wife had separated she’d had sexual relations with Kevin Matthews, David Key, Jason Colenso and another man named Jason whom she had met through the Internet. He added that a month after the break-up Michelle approached him and told him she had cervical cancer and had only 12 months to live – and that she wanted to get back together with him for the sake of their two young children. Darren also told the court that he was at his son’s soccer practice when his wife turned up with David Key. He said Key approached him and said, ‘If Michelle gets grief, I get grief, and then I make a few phone calls, and the person who makes the grief gets dealt with. I’ve been to prison and I’m not scared to go back. I’m a very powerful person.’

Key told the court that Michelle had approached him, through his sister, to kill Carolyn and Darren for $50,000, and that he had agreed. ‘I had a plan,’ Key said. ‘I was going to tie her [Carolyn] up and put her in the van … I was going to cut the brake line and put her in the front seat and tie her hands to the steering wheel.’ But at the last minute, he said, the accomplice he needed – an associate named Scott Rose – wasn’t available, so the plan was changed.

Key told the court that on 12 July 2001, he, Michelle and her two children were driving around Adelaide’s northern suburbs. Kevin Matthews was constantly on the phone to Michelle. He told her he wanted to talk to her immediately, as ‘he had had enough’ of the whole deal. After dropping off the children at Michelle’s parents’ home they drove to Beaurepaires at Port Adelaide to see Kevin. Michelle went inside while Key waited and smoked cannabis.

From the car, Key could see their animated conversation in the showroom. Michelle came to the door and waved Key inside. She told Key they had decided Carolyn was to be killed that evening. The new plan was that Matthews would go home and pick up his three sons – then aged 12, 13 and 16 – and take them to the video store. When they had left, Michelle and Key would enter the house and stab Carolyn to death.

At 5.24 pm, Kevin rang and told his sons to be waiting out the front of the house. Michelle and Key drove to a street near the Matthews’ home and waited until they saw Kevin pick up the boys. As soon as he left, the pair went to the house. They confronted Carolyn as she stepped outside to put out the rubbish. Key showed her the murder ‘contract’ he had been given. Carolyn looked at the document, pointed at the photo and said, ‘That’s me.’ Michelle then punched her heavily on the side of the face. Key dragged the bleeding woman into the lounge room.

The court heard that Key then told Michelle he wasn’t ready to murder Carolyn. But she would have none of it. Together they dragged their protesting victim through to the kitchen. Michelle rummaged through the drawers, produced the biggest knife she could find (a long-bladed carving knife), held it out to Key and insisted he stab the woman. Key refused. But Michelle forced the knife into his hand. ‘Be a man,’ she purred in his ear. ‘Kill her. Show me that you love me. If you want to be with me you will have to kill her. If you want to gain anything in life you will do this.’

Key then grabbed Carolyn, who was trying to protect herself with a frying pan, and stabbed her seven times about the neck and chest and once in the back. She also suffered deep defensive wounds to her hands and wrists. Carolyn died almost immediately.

Key threw the frying pan Carolyn had used to defend herself, along with three knives – one of them being the murder weapon, which he had wiped clean with a tea towel – on the front lawn. Michelle laughed as they walked away. The pair then drove to the nearby seaside suburb of Grange where Key washed the blood from his face in the ocean.

Burgess smoked a cigarette while phoning Kevin on his mobile from a public phone booth. She left a short message telling him the job was done.

Trying to incriminate Kevin in the actual murder, prosecutor Steven Millsteed told the court it was too hard to believe that he couldn’t have known his wife was going to be killed in the short time he was at the video store. Mr Millsteed said Key had a ‘very narrow window of opportunity’ in which to kill Carolyn. He also pointed out that Michelle and Key were seen talking to Kevin at his workplace minutes before the murder.

The court later heard excerpts from a five-page letter Key sent to Michelle from the Adelaide Remand Centre. Due to Key’s inability to read or write, the letter was handwritten by another inmate on 27 July 2001, the day after Key’s arrest. It told of his love for Michelle and her two children. Key also asked that if there were any reports of the previous day’s chase in the papers where he had been arrested at gun-point, and could she bring them to him.

In his final summing up to the jury in defence of Michelle Burgess, Gordon Barrett QC said the Crown would have the jury believe his client was both manipulative and stupid. Mr Barrett said Carolyn was killed by Key alone. He claimed Key was erratic, violent and on drugs. ‘In getting mixed up with David Key she was simply out of her depth,’ Mr Barrett explained. In conclusion he said that Michelle and Kevin were not having an affair, but were involved in an ‘intense’ friendship.

On 9 October 2003, two years and three months after the murder of Carolyn Matthews and after a trial that had lasted two months, Michelle Burgess and Kevin Matthews stood side by side in the dock. The jury had taken 17 hours to decide that they were guilty as charged. At first Matthews seemed shocked. He quickly regained his composure, and winked and blew a kiss to his supporters in the public gallery. Justice Margaret Nyland then handed down a mandatory life sentence to each of them. A non-parole period would be set at a later hearing. As they were led away, Kevin leaned over to talk to Michelle. She glared fiercely and ignored him before heading to the court’s holding cells.

From his prison cell Matthews wrote a letter to Darren Burgess, which said in part: ‘Give my future stepchildren a big sloppy kiss from me.’

At Michelle and Kevin’s non-parole period hearing, on 2 April 2004, Justice Nyland sentenced Michelle to a non-parole period of 30 years, to commence from 4 August 2001. Matthews also received a non-parole period of 30 years, to commence from 7 September 2001.

Two months after the trial, a prison officer who worked at the Northfield Women’s Complex quit his job because he was having a sexual relationship with Michelle Burgess. The resignation followed two earlier investigations into other prison officers linked with the woman. It was reported in the press that male prison officers at the Northfield Complex now refused to deal one-on-one with her as they were ‘concerned enough by a potential flirting situation’.

After news of the prisoner officer affair broke, Kevin wrote to Michelle saying he was ‘shattered’ and that he ‘wanted the ring back forthwith!’