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Lennie Lawson: A Good Case for Capital Punishment

Few cases have outraged the Australian public as much as the crimes of Lennie Lawson. Although it all began more than half a century ago, the circumstances are still fresh in many Australians’ minds. Especially people from New South Wales.

Back in those days the death sentence was available for rape and murder. In 1954, 26-year-old Lawson was sentenced to death for the crime of double rape. The circumstances were horrific. Lawson had escorted five women who trusted him implicitly into bushland, then raped two of them at gun-point in front of the others, whom he had stripped naked and tied up.

It was groundbreaking stuff, the likes of which Australia hadn’t realised could happen here. Maybe overseas, in England or America, but certainly not here. Society demanded that the beast Lawson be made an example of. ‘String him up,’ cried the zealots.

As was usually the case when someone was sentenced to death, there were those who opposed such harsh punishment. But in this case there weren’t so many volunteering to wave a candle at dawn out the front of Long Bay Gaol as Lawson dropped through the trapdoor. This case was different.

There was no arguing Lawson’s guilt. There were no mitigating circumstances. No excuses. He was sane at the time he committed the atrocities. And he wasn’t in the least remorseful. Society had no place for such a creature. By rights he should die, in accordance with the law.

But while the courtroom gallery – and most of Australia – cheered when the death sentence was handed down, it was not to be. In what would become an oft-repeated example in the argument for the reintroduction of the death penalty, Lennie Lawson not only escaped the gallows, but was also released from prison after a relatively short term, only to commit crimes more terrible than the first ones.

The pro-capital punishment lobby argued that – obviously – if Lawson had have been hanged in the first place it would have saved two beautiful young lives.

There was nothing in Leonard Keith Lawson’s background to suggest that he would one day wind up Australia’s most hated man. Lawson and his younger sister were born in the country in New South Wales and enjoyed a good education at Wagga Wagga High School, where young Lennie was an excellent student. He was top of his class when he gained his Intermediate Certificate.

Handsome and popular, Lawson left school at 15 and took up an apprenticeship as a commercial artist with a Sydney publishing company. A fully fledged commercial artist at 17, Lennie had such a talent that he began freelancing, mainly for the firm he had worked for. Right from the beginning he was making a comfortable living.

Soon after, Lawson created the western good guys The Lone Avenger and Hooded Rider comic strip characters. These were published in comic book form and in weekly magazines and newspapers.

But Lennie Lawson’s talents with the pen didn’t end there. His other specialty was explicit pornographic drawings. These were absolutely illegal, but were in great demand on the black market and brought a good price. The only trouble was that in a lot of drawings the girls partaking in the sexual activities appeared to be dead.

Life was looking up for the young commercial artist with talent to burn. At 19 he married his childhood sweetheart. The union quickly produced a daughter and two sons. By now Lennie had applied his creative skills to photography, and had set up a studio which specialised in taking pictures of Sydney’s most beautiful young models.

Soon regarded as one of Sydney’s top photographers, Lawson was in constant demand. But on 7 May 1954, something inside the young man snapped, and he threw it all away.

That day it was Lennie’s assignment to take five of Australia’s most beautiful models to isolated Terrey Hills, on the outskirts of Sydney, and take pictures of them in a rural environment. Even though two of the models were still teenagers, there was no question of a chaperone – family man Lennie was considered beyond reproach and had worked with some of them before.

On the way to Terrey Hills some of the models engaged in a little harmless flirting with the handsome young photographer with the Clark Gable moustache, but that’s as far as it went. There was no conversation that would indicate what was about to happen to them when they arrived at their modelling destination.

The models were shading themselves among the gum trees while Lennie rummaged around in his giant camera bag. When he produced a sawn-off .22 rifle instead of a Hasselblad, they thought he was having a joke, and they laughed. But they soon stopped giggling when Lennie grabbed one of the girls, held the gun to her head and ordered her to get undressed.

Lennie Lawson’s hidden dark side had boiled to the top. Behind the façade of a respectable artist and photographer was a beast whose life revolved around the bizarre sexual fantasies that he captured in his pornographic drawings. That day he had the opportunity to make them a reality. It was the opportunity to act out his favourite.

Lawson would later tell a psychiatrist that in his fantasy he was the handsome young Arabian sheikh – whom he had drawn many times – and that he had captured five young girls and was holding them captive. As the days wore on the girls fell secretly in love with him; all he had to do was make love to them and they would worship him, and him alone, for all eternity. But there was a condition. He had to tie them up before he seduced them. Then they would be the sheikh’s forever. That’s how it went in the fantasy.

With the opportunity at hand to make his fantasy come true, Lawson had come prepared. From among the lenses and cameras he produced lengths of rope that had been pre-cut to the right lengths to tie the girls up with. Two pieces for each model. One for the wrists and another for the ankles.

From out of the camera bag Lennie also produced a huge pair of scissors and a roll of sticky tape. With the gun still in one hand he cut the girls’ clothes off, one girl at a time, until they all stood in front of him, modestly holding their hands over their privates. Lennie then tied all of them up and gagged them with the sticking plaster.

With all of the models rendered helpless, Lennie put down the gun, took his trousers off and paraded his erection in front of the terrified models and played with himself. Then he made four of them sit up on a rock in a semicircle while he raped the youngest of them, a 15-year-old, in front of the others. Still aroused, Lawson sat back on a rock and forced a 22-year-old married woman to give him oral sex.

Having climaxed, Lawson got dressed, then untied his victims. To their astonishment, he broke down in tears and told them that what he had done was despicable, and that he had no alternative but to take the gun and go into the bushes and kill himself.

Still terrified, but also aware that they were a long way from home, the models pleaded with Lawson to think of his young wife and family and not do himself in. They led him to believe that if he drove them home none of them would say anything about the rapes.

It seemed as if his fantasy had become a reality.

With the girls apparently eager to put the incident behind them, Lawson, even though he hadn’t taken any photos, still paid the girls in cash for the assignment and they all set out towards the city in Lawson’s car. Along the way one of the girls asked Lawson if he would stop the car so she could get some cigarettes. Once inside the shop she rang the police, who were waiting for Lawson when he arrived back at his studio.

Lawson offered no resistance when he was arrested and appeared surprised when he was charged with rape and numerous counts of indecent assault. He gladly signed confessions for what he had done. His defence was that all the girls were willing partners to his advances.

The press had a field day. They went as far as they could for those ultra-conservative times, and by the time they finished they had left little doubt of the horrors that had taken place that day in the bushland of suburban Sydney. All were trying to outdo each other, with headline articles telling ‘exclusively’ of ‘The Terror of Terrey Hills’ and the exploits of ‘The Beast of The Bushland’.

It was little wonder that the public were crying for Lawson’s blood. Rape was the lowest of the low in terms of crimes, not even considered a bar-room topic among the roughest of men, and now it was emblazoned all over the front pages of the papers. And Lawson was a man who had allegedly committed it twice in the one day, in front of girls he had forced – at gun-point – to undress. Fortunately, the press pointed out, the laws of the time were adequate to punish anyone who committed such vile offences: death at the end of a rope.

On the first day of Lennie Lawson’s trial, 24 June 1954, the gallery was packed, mostly with women, who had queued from the early hours to get a look at the young photographer with the movie star looks who claimed that five beautiful young women had lured him into the bushes, forced him to undress and then tie them up and have sex with two of them.

Lawson pleaded not guilty and the perfumed gallery oohed and aahed as irrefutable evidence of his guilt was presented to the court. Lawson’s only defence was that the girls were willing parties to his advances – albeit with a gun in his hand. This gave Lawson’s defence counsel, Jack Thom, little to work with. All he could offer in his closing address on his client’s behalf was this: ‘The facts did not establish a case of rape, but a “burlesque on the theme of rape”, in which everyone willingly took part.’

Acting for the Crown, Mr L.C. Furnell told the jury in his closing address: ‘The story of the accused is that, far from being “the Beast of the Bushland”, he was “the Babe in the Wood”, taken there by these scheming females to satisfy their lascivious tastes, and to give them the thrill of being raped. That is what you have to accept if you come to the conclusion that these girls are deliberately committing perjury to put a noose around this man’s neck.’

Mr Furnell told the jury that it was blatantly obvious that Lawson had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for the attacks, and had carried out his plan completely. Mr Furnell said: ‘If you don’t believe the stories of the girls, can you throw overboard the seven written confessions he made to the police? The statements match entirely the stories told by the girls.’

Before the jury retired to make its decision, it heard from a consulting psychiatrist appointed to the case, Dr John McGeorge: ‘Lennie Lawson is a very unstable individual and probably belongs to the psychopath class; that is, he is not in any sense insane but could develop further and could become more obviously abnormal. He appears to be lacking in moral sense and takes an almost morbid pride in the offence with which he has been charged. He is prepared to discuss it at considerable length and in complete detail. His account corresponds quite closely with that given in evidence by various witnesses. He is not insane. He is fit to plead.’

When, after two hours, the jury handed down the ‘guilty to all charges’ verdict, the least surprised people were the five models. Lawson’s father wept. Asked for any final words in his defence before he was sentenced, Lawson shook his head and stared at the floor. Mr Justice Clancy then told the prisoner that he would be executed.

Immediately after Lawson was sentenced, as he was being led from the court to the holding cells to be taken back to prison and death row, Mr Justice Clancy instructed an officer of the court to bring the condemned man back for a further dressing down.

It was unusual for a judge to vent his anger on a prisoner, but the elderly Mr Justice Clancy was so enraged by Lawson’s cowardly acts that he felt compelled to include these words:

 

Justice Clancy: Before you leave, I want to add this. It is not my practice, where a sentence is fixed by parliament, to make observations. In your case I propose to depart from that practice. I should not want you to leave this court in the belief that you can expect any clemency in any recommendation by me. I accept the law as it is, and I think it is a proper law, and a just law. I think that in your case there is no reason why it should not be carried out into execution.

 

The families and friends of the victims showed their approval by shouting and cheering. Lawson’s atrocities had outraged society.

But Justice Clancy’s vehemence was to be in vain.

Only a month into his sentence, Lawson was visited by the court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr McGeorge, who had become fascinated with the case, and with Lawson’s obvious intelligence and apparent acceptance of the death penalty. After several visits to Lawson’s Long Bay cell Dr McGeorge wrote in his report:

 

This extraordinary young man is quite cheerful and contented with his lot. There is no doubt that he is extremely unstable and an exhibitionist in the true sense of the term. The whole episode was probably planned with a view to publicity. His original intention was to commit suicide after the incident, but like all of his type, he lacked the courage to do it.

The only thing that has shaken his complacency was the surprising comment of the judge after sentence. Obviously, until then he had regarded it as an exciting, even an interesting experience. He is a psychopath, but it is doubtful that he will ever be certified. Although he knows that he must serve a long sentence, he is already making plans for his employment on his release. His judgment and moral sense are sadly defective.

He is not insane by any means and has quite a good measure in intelligence. He will probably turn his sentence to a good profit and will be a model prisoner and thus a sore trial to those with whom he associates.

 

Although Lawson didn’t appeal his death sentence, it was never likely to happen anyway. New South Wales was only a year away from the abolition of capital punishment and the last time someone had been hanged there was in 1940. The last person hanged for rape in Australia was 57 years earlier.

So while Lawson endeared himself to the prison staff by painting their portraits and drawing cartoon caricatures of them, the NSW Labor government lodged an appeal against the death penalty on his behalf. It was successful, and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Under NSW law at the time, this meant that he would do 14 years maximum, with time off for good behaviour.

As Dr McGeorge predicted, Lennie was a model prisoner. He became a renowned portrait artist of famous people: he couldn’t get them to pose for him, given his circumstances, so he painted them from photographs. One of the paintings was so good it was considered eligible for the Archibald Prize until it was revealed that it hadn’t been painted from the sitting subject (this is a condition of the award).

His evil seemingly behind him, Lennie embraced the Catholic faith while in jail and gave himself over to God. He painted holy scenes such as the Nativity on the walls of the Goulburn prison chapel. His work was so good that clergy came from all over the country to marvel at the man on whom God had performed a miracle. Lennie Lawson, the rapist, was a reformed man.

So when his parole came up for review in late 1960, as far as the Parole Board could see, the demons that had once resided in Leonard Lawson had been exorcised and he was ready to take his place back in society as a God-fearing citizen. He had paid his debt. On 27 May 1961, 7 years and 20 days after he was sent to jail, Lawson was released.

But not everyone was happy. The families and friends of the models were appalled that such an animal could be back on the streets.

A mere six months later, on the day after the first Tuesday in November (when Lord Fury bolted home with a leg in the air in the 1961 Melbourne Cup with Ray Selkrig on board), punters were surprised to find that the story of the 20/1 shot’s extraordinary win was relegated to a minor item on the front page of the dailies.

There was a much more important story to tell.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, under the headline ‘Artist on Two Charges of Murdering Girls’ was a report that said a well-known Sydney artist, Leonard Keith Lawson, of Anzac Avenue, Collaroy, had been charged with the murder of two girls. One of the teenagers was stabbed to death in Sydney and the other was shot and killed at Moss Vale in the state’s southern highlands.

Surely this couldn’t be the same Leonard Lawson who had been sentenced to death in 1954 for the rapes of two women? It certainly was. But under the law, the press wasn’t allowed to mention Lawson’s previous indiscretions – this could be considered prejudicial in any forthcoming trial. But that law didn’t apply to parliament.

Fearing public outrage against the NSW Heffron Labor government, the Minister of Justice, Mr N.J. Mannix, didn’t waste any time passing the buck. The day after the murders of the two girls Mannix carefully pointed out to state parliament that a Parole Board had been set up in 1950 – by another government, of course – to examine the cases of individual prisoners recommended for release. None of the board’s existing members was from the present government.

The board consisted of Judge A.S. Lloyd, a former District Court judge (chairman); Dr J.A. McGeorge, consulting psychiatrist to the Attorney-General’s Department; Mr L.J. Nott, former controller-general of prisons; and Mr J.V. Ramus, former superintendent of police. Without actually saying that if the citizens of New South Wales had a grievance, it was with these people, not his government, Mannix told the parliament that this was the Parole Board that had recommended Lennie Lawson’s release.

At Lawson’s trial for murder, at which he pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity, the court heard that after his release in May 1961, the accused went to live with his parents in Moss Vale. Lennie’s wife had left him while he was in prison and he had not gone to see his children, saying later that he thought it best that his children grow up without the stigma of their father’s crimes holding them back.

The prosecution told the court that Lawson found work as a commercial artist in Sydney and moved into an apartment in the northern beaches suburb of Collaroy. In his statement to the police Lawson said that about five weeks prior to the murders he had met Jane Mary Bower, the mother of one of the victims, and convinced her that she should allow him (Lawson) to paint a portrait of her daughter at the Bower family home.

The painting sessions led to a trust between Mrs Bower (who was unaware of Lawson’s past) and Lawson, and eventually she agreed to allow 16-year-old Jane to attend private sittings at Lawson’s apartment.

At 5 pm on Monday, 6 November 1961, Lawson picked Jane up in the city and took her to his apartment. No sooner were they inside than Lawson made sexual advances to the girl. When she resisted, he beat her about the head with a sock he had filled with sand. He then raped her as she lay unconscious on the lounge.

Jane regained consciousness during the sexual attack, and Lawson drove a hunting knife through her chest, killing her instantly. He then wrote ‘God forgive me, Len’ in eyebrow pencil across the dead girl’s stomach.

The police disputed Lawson’s version of what happened. They told the court that they were convinced Lawson had performed an act of necrophilia. Their forensic evidence indicated that Lawson thought Jane was dead when he was raping her, and when she woke up he killed her with the knife and then continued with the attack.

In his statement to the police Lawson said that after murdering Jane Mary Bower, he took off in his car and headed to Moss Vale and took refuge in the chapel at the SCEGGS private school for girls.

As the teachers and students arrived for morning prayer Lawson appeared, pointing a rifle at them. He told them that he intended holding them hostage so that he could negotiate his escape with the police.

Miss Jean Turnbull, the headmistress, approached Lawson, and in the struggle the gun went off five times, killing a 15-year-old student, Wendy Larcombe. Lawson was overpowered and handed over to the police when they arrived a few minutes later.

It took the jury just 17 minutes to find Lennie Lawson guilty of the murder of Jane Mary Bower. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The minister for justice, Mr Mannix, made a notation on Lawson’s file recommending that he should never be released.

Given that Lawson would spend the rest of his life in jail, the prosecution decided not to go ahead with the Moss Vale murder charge.

In 1972 Lennie Lawson was back in the headlines when he pleaded guilty to maliciously wounding Sharon Hamilton, a member of a concert group which had visited Parramatta Gaol on 18 June. The court heard that after the concert the 16 professional musicians had been offered light refreshments by an arts and crafts group at the jail, of which Lawson was the secretary.

After thanking the artists, Lawson, who had been standing behind Miss Hamilton, placed his left arm around her chest, held a crude knife at her throat and ordered everyone out of the room. In the struggle between Lawson and a number of inmates to free Miss Hamilton, she received a number of cuts that required stitches.

Giving Lawson an additional five years on top of his life sentence, Judge Head said that it was ‘an empty but necessary formality’.

Sadly for Miss Hamilton, the woman Lawson assaulted, life was no such formality. The horror of the attack played on her so much that several years later she took her own life, bringing Lawson’s toll of victims to three.

Lawson repeatedly applied for parole, but was rejected each time on the grounds that he was still a menace to society and likely to offend again.

He died of a heart attack in his sleep in his cell at Grafton Prison in November 2003. At the time of his death he held the dubious honour of being the longest-serving (in one unbroken stretch) prisoner in Australia: he had been behind bars almost 42 years.

 

Author’s note: I met Lennie Lawson in 2000 when I was in Grafton Prison to film a 60 Minutes segment on Australia’s longest-serving prisoners. Lawson had little remorse for his crimes and was more concerned to impress upon me his belief that he had served his time and should be released.

Lawson cried often during the interview. He wept as if on cue as he talked about his years in solitary confinement, where he never saw a tree or heard a baby cry. He cried as he told of his anguish at not seeing any of his children over the 40 or so years he had been behind bars. He was heartbroken that he had never been granted parole and that he would die behind bars.

He did. Alone. Nobody shed a tear.