‘Matthew was a prick of a kid. We were never close.’
MATTHEW Wales might have been dim, but he was determined. The youngest of five, he carefully selected a date to kill his wealthy mother and stepfather – only to have to abort the plan just before deadline.
His infant son, Domenik, became ill just hours before he was to poison his mother, Margaret Wales-King, and her husband, Matthew’s stepfather Paul, at a family dinner. But Matthew had been planning the murders for months so, while the cancellation was technically a matter of life and death, in practical terms it would only delay the inevitable.
Although he would tell police much later he had dreamed of killing his mother since he was a child, it was in early 2002 that his fantasy began to turn to reality.
Matthew’s anger was honed by his reliance on his mother’s wealth, which gave her control of his life. He needed her cash but there were always apron strings attached. It was a recipe for resentment, but no one realised just how much so until it was too late. With an IQ of just 83, Matthew was on the thick side of stupid, but he was convinced he knew one thing. If his millionaire mother was dead, along with her invalid husband, he could have the money without having to please her to get it.
Or so he thought.
For as long as he could remember his mother’s very existence was a constant reminder of his own inadequacies. His brother and sisters had attained financial independence and no longer needed to rely on their mother’s inherited wealth, which had come from the road-building empire her father established between the wars.
But Matthew was seen as the runt of the litter. Too slow to make his own way in business, too weak to stand up to the family matriarch, and too pathetically greedy to refuse her money, he sold his self-respect for access to the family trust accounts.
As murders go, police see the Wales-King case as a classic domestic motivated by resentment and greed. To them, it was an open and shut case. At least, it would be once the bodies were found.
But Matthew Wales’ family maintains there is more to the killing than has been exposed in court. After failing to persuade the media of this, they employed a public relations firm to help promote their assertion that Matthew was a pawn in the hands of his manipulative and cunning wife, Maritza.
According to some people close to the family, they see Maritza as a hot-blooded Chilean bombshell who helped turn the malleable Matthew into a cold-blooded killer.
In an orchestrated publicity campaign, family members made it clear they were convinced she was a key player in the murder plot.
Yet police say there is no evidence to support their theory and believe she may simply have been caught up in the web of greed, malevolence and violence.
Both husband and wife have denied the claims, with Matthew telling police, ‘Maritza had nothing to do with this at all.’ But she did originally give her husband a false alibi and was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. The family still maintains she is guilty of much more.
They believe that while Maritza didn’t physically kill her in-laws, she was deeply involved. They publicly suggested that the young mother callously stood by while the couple lay dying after being bludgeoned in the front yard of Matthew’s rented Glen Iris town house.
They say the autopsies show that Margaret and Paul Wales-King were still alive after the initial attack and that if Maritza had called an ambulance they may have survived.
‘She could have saved them,’ one said. ‘If she gets away with a suspended sentence or a rap across the knuckles, then certainly we will be very unhappy.’
For more than a year the real-life soap opera surrounding the Wales-King murders fascinated Melbourne. The rich family, the intrigue and their internal squabbles made headline news. The Herald Sun published more than 70 articles on what it dubbed ‘Society Murders’, including 12 on page one. The Age published more than 50 reports, including six on the front page.
For days, reporters and television crews stood outside Matthew’s home yelling questions and waiting for his inevitable arrest. Police who were trying to build their case quietly found many of their moves telegraphed in media reports.
A former homicide squad detective rang a crime reporter to ask for the inside story. He said he wouldn’t pester the detectives on the case but wanted to know the unpublished details for his wife. He said he had investigated dozens of murders without his wife showing a great deal of interest but she was riveted by the Wales-King case.
Even the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, while waiting to go on air at a Melbourne radio station, asked the host what was the ‘real’ story behind the double murder. So who is the family whose secrets were exposed through this public tragedy?
MARGARET Wales-King was born on June 16, 1933, the eldest of two daughters of Doreen May and Robert John Lord, a man who made a fortune through road construction.
She went to boarding school and the exclusive Loreto Mandeville Hall in Toorak. She later went to business school and, while always an astute manager of money, her loves were the arts, paintings, decorating and antiques.
On June 17, 1957 – one day after turning 24 – she married Brian John Wales and, a year later, had their first child.
They lived in Camberwell and, like many upwardly mobile families, spent summer holidays at Sorrento and winter breaks at the snow.
They had five children – Sally, Damian, Emma, Prue and Matthew, who was born on February 18, 1968. That year the couple met Paul King while on holiday at Brampton Island. Brian Wales was a commercial pilot who was often away from home. Paul and Margaret were to become friends, then lovers. It was to prove a fatal attraction, if Matthew Wales’s claimed motives are to be believed.
In 1975, Brian and Margaret Wales separated. A year later, they divorced. Soon after the separation, King moved in with Margaret. This created a split in the family, a rift that never completely healed.
Paul Aloisius King was five years older than Margaret and lived in Sydney until the 1960s, when he moved to Melbourne to take up a position as advertising manager for a wool company. He did not marry and lived alone in a small flat in Prahran. He retired in 1976 and, according to friends, was besotted with Margaret.
The four elder Wales children blamed him for their parents’ break-up.
They dismissed him behind his back with the nicknames of ‘The Butler’ and ‘The Shadow’ because he was so subservient to Margaret.
But he did become a father figure to Matthew, who was just seven when his parents split. While four of the Wales children would spend holidays with their dad, Matthew stayed home with his mother and stepfather.
This drove a wedge between Matthew and his brother and sisters. Put simply, they felt he was a spoiled brat. ‘Mum adored Matthew to the stage where we used to call him “Golden Boy” – he could do no wrong in mum’s eyes,’ sister Emma was to say. ‘Matthew was the baby of the family and I feel he was mum’s absolute masterpiece because he was so beautiful and she was so very into aesthetics.’
But ‘golden boy’ would prove to be fool’s gold. He struggled at school, lied at home and grew into an uncontrollable teenager, prone to violent outbursts.
His brother and sister felt he was allowed to get away with fewer family duties and could always rely on his mother to support him, even when he was clearly wrong.
Tellingly, Emma recalls that he was cruel to animals. ‘I used to tell mum, but Matthew would lie and get out of it.’ Crime profilers maintain that a consistent trait in cold-blooded killers is a tendency to torture animals when they are children.
His mother – and her money – was always there to bail him out. But Matthew was far from grateful. He knew he was different. Like a cuckoo chick in the nest, he just didn’t fit in. His brother, Damian, was to say, ‘Matthew was a prick of a kid. We were never close.’
While searching for a motive, homicide detectives later found: ‘He felt he had been alienated from his family by the deceased Wales-King and harboured this anger for years. He has also felt that his mother constantly used money as a bargaining tool to enable her to exercise her will over him and the rest of the family, which also upset him and affected him deeply.’
He left Caulfield Grammar for the John Morrey School of Hairdressing where he completed his apprenticeship. In 1997 he opened a franchised hairdressing salon in the Knox shopping centre, called Hair House Warehouse.
He had a small but loyal client list. One was an attractive girl from Boronia, Maritza Pizzaro.
The youngest of three children, Maritza had migrated to Australia at 13 with her parents, Mario and Honoria Pizzaro, in 1976 to settle in Melbourne’s outer east.
She went to Aquinas College in Ringwood where she completed Year 10. She then went to work at The Age taking classified advertisements. Her relationship with Matthew was her first serious one.
According to Emma Wales, Matthew often confided in her about his love life – ‘He was a real kiss-and-tell merchant.’
She said Maritza asked Matthew to go to her house to do her hair. ‘When Matthew arrived at her door, apparently Maritza was wearing a see-through negligee and a g-string and apparently the hairdo went out the window, as did all caution … from that moment on he was besotted with her.’
They married in 1999 and had their only child, Domenik, the following year.
Emma told police she saw her sister-in-law as a gold-digger. ‘She seemed like a vulgar little guttersnipe really … Maritza aspired to being rich, rich, rich, that’s all she wanted to be. I’ve never met anyone as blatant a liar as Maritza.’
Marriage did not mature Matthew. If anything, it made him worse. He walked out on the hairdressing business after an argument over rent and did not even bother to collect his equipment.
While Matthew clearly loved Maritza deeply, other members of the Wales family felt he had simply added another dominant woman to his life.
Even when the couple moved in together, they were not truly independent. Their house in Horace Street, Malvern, had been bought by Margaret Wales-King ten years earlier on the condition her wayward son service a $50,000 mortgage.
When the property was sold in 2001, Matthew demanded his share of the profits. His mother tried to keep $70,000 in trust for him but, after a dispute lasting months, finally agreed to hand over all the money. Some family members questioned the wisdom of selling his only solid asset. Having sold their house, the couple and Domenik rented a four-bedroom townhouse in Burke Road, Glen Iris.
Matthew used the money from the sale to help set up his new wife in a trendy women’s fashion shop in High Street, Armadale, called Maritza Imports.
Emma would later tell police that her sister-in-law lacked the business and sales experience to succeed. She claimed Maritza’s brother once said his sister’s only retailing experience was to, ‘wiggle her arse in a men’s shoe shop’.
In December, 2001, the simmering tensions between members of the family threatened to break out into open warfare. As always, it was about money, power and control. The children wanted to free themselves from their mother’s financial interests. Margaret and her sister, Sydney socialite Dianna Yeldham, controlled a trust that owned a Gold Coast unit bequeathed to them by their father. But the real owners were their children. When Mrs Yeldham decided to sell, Margaret wanted her share invested back into her trust, but she needed her children’s agreement.
According to police, ‘Much to the deceased Wales-Kings’ irritation, all the children wanted to be involved in the negotiations and were initially hesitant to sign their consent.’
Mrs Yeldham said, ‘Marg was concerned about winding up her trust because she didn’t want the children to have control of the money.”
Margaret’s son-in-law, Angus Reed, told police she was motivated by power: ‘I would say Margaret tried to manipulate her children through the use of money.”
The dispute went on for two months. The only person whose opinion didn’t matter was Matthew – his mother gave him the documents and demanded his signature. Margaret either believed that after all she had done for him she could rely on his loyalty – or she thought he was too stupid to understand the document.
He signed but clearly believed it was the final proof that his mother would always treat him like a child.
Matthew didn’t speak to his mother for a month and when he finally did it was almost certain he had already decided their relationship was over.
In late March, 2002, he went to his in-laws’ home in Kew and took some blood pressure pills, prescribed for Maritza’s mother, Honoria, from the kitchen cabinet. Matthew was preparing to poison his mother.
He invited Margaret and Paul for dinner that week but the arrangement had to be cancelled when Domenik became ill.
But time was on his side. The dinner date was rescheduled for Thursday, April 4.
FOR years Paul King had devoted himself to his strong-willed wife. He had few friends of his own and was happy to be the submissive partner in their relationship.
‘The boys called him “The Butler” because he doted on mum and did whatever she wanted … mum directed him in what she wanted him to do, which he was fine with. It worked well for both of them,’ daughter Sally, was to say.
Or, as Prudence said: ‘Paul was like a slave and he did everything for her.’ In early 2000, Paul King suffered a stroke while at their property at Red Hill. At one stage he was so ill Margaret began making funeral arrangements. He survived with diminished speech capacity but, after a series of setbacks, ultimately needed 24-hour care.
Margaret Wales-King had to rein in her lifestyle to care for her incapacitated husband. ‘Mum found this complete turnaround of roles difficult to deal with,’ Sally said.
Her social life began to shrink as she nursed Paul. She took bridge lessons as an escape from her caring duties. The idea of an evening meal at the home of her problem child must have seemed a welcome, if brief, respite.
Maritza saw her mother-in-law on the Tuesday. ‘She was very busy; she said we should catch up. She told me she was taking Paul to a centre on Wednesday, which is like a nursing home, to see whether he likes it or not.’
Margaret and Paul spent the Thursday afternoon entertaining friends, Janette and Fred Roach. They had two glasses of wine each and just after 6pm Margaret told her friends, ‘I’m sorry, I’m going to have to kick you out now because I’m expected at my daughter (in-law’s) home for dinner.’
She was always punctual. The invitation was for between 6.30pm and 7pm. She rang and said she would arrive at 6.50pm.
Margaret drove their silver Mercedes sedan in the driveway of the double-storey town house enclosed by a large concrete rendered fence. No one could see in off the busy road and no one would have seen Matthew carefully hiding a piece of pine timber in the garden hedge before the arrival of his guests.
As the house husband, it was his job to prepare dinner. While Maritza played with their son, Matthew prepared the first course of homemade vegetable soup.
In the kitchen he crushed his mother-in-law’s blood pressure tablets and the prescription painkiller, Panadeine Forte, and mixed it into Paul and Margaret’s soup bowls. He then served vegetable risotto accompanied by a Chilean red and an Australian white wine.
He would later tell police he picked the drug cocktail because the blood pressure medication would make them drowsy and the Panadeine Forte would numb the pain when he beat them to death. And people said he was heartless.
On April 9, Maritza made a statement to police. In it she said she didn’t know how her in-laws came to disappear in suspicious circumstances five days earlier.
She lied.
But about a month later, on May 10, she made a conditional confession. She did not speak to police but made a ‘can say’ statement to her lawyers on the condition it could not be used against her.
In the statement she gave her version of what happened that night. ‘I only had a small glass of white wine that evening and I can recall Paul and Margaret drinking red wine.’
‘During the course of the dinner I noticed Paul and Margaret appeared to be drowsy and Margaret appeared to be slurring her words. I simply thought this was due to the alcohol that was consumed.’
She did the dishes and made them camomile tea and honey while the three others went into the lounge room. ‘At this stage Margaret appeared less affected by alcohol.’
She said she went upstairs to change and feed Domenik. She was gone 30 minutes.
When she came downstairs she found the house deserted and the lights off. She thought her guests had gone home without saying goodbye because they did not want to disturb Domenik.
‘I noticed that the front door was open and I looked outside and found Paul and Margaret lying on the ground.’
Police were later to establish that at some time after 9pm the drugged couple tried to go home. They were drowsy and unsteady on their feet. As they walked across the courtyard Matthew picked up the piece of wood and hit his mother over the back of the neck ‘with great force’. She fell face first to the ground breaking her nose in the fall. He then struck the frail and helpless Paul King across the left arm and then the forehead. He also fell face first. ‘My head was going bananas and I just kept on hitting. I just kept on hitting,’ Matthew later confessed to police.
He checked for signs of life by listening for breathing and searching for a pulse. He found neither.
Matthew also expected to be arrested within minutes. After he attacked the couple he looked up and saw a girl in the bedroom of a flat opposite on the phone and looking directly at him. He thought she was calling the police. She was on the phone at 9.08 talking to friend but had seen nothing. In her confession Maritza, then 38, recalled: ‘I said, “What happened?” and Matthew told me to “get inside”. He was crying and shaking and said, “I hit her”.
‘I ran upstairs crying and was violently ill. I did not know what to do. Later, upstairs, I looked out the window and saw Matthew drag Margaret and Paul over to the fence. This was by the wall on the grass. I then saw him put two doona covers over them.
‘Matthew then came upstairs looking white and pale and said to me, “Do you hate me for what I have done?” I said, “I don’t know”. I felt sick. I said, “What are you going to do?” and he said, “I’ll cover them and fix it”. I can’t remember exactly when but I asked him what he did and he said he’d hit his mother over the back of the head with piece of wood.’
She asked why he did it and he replied, ‘I had to do it. It’s a relief.’ Matthew put on a pair of latex gloves from the kitchen and drove his mother’s car to the corner of Page and Armstrong Streets, Middle Park. He then walked to Beaconsfield Parade where he hailed a taxi and went home. Almost as an afterthought he dumped the gloves down a drain near his house.
They were never recovered.
He went upstairs and tried to sleep but returned several times to check on the bodies, eventually covering them with his son’s deflated wading pool.
He also ripped a sheet in half and used it to cover their faces in what crime profilers say was a classic attempt to depersonalise his victims.
As he had so many times in his protected and self-obsessed life, Matthew made plans without thinking through the consequences. Usually, he could rely on his mother to work out a way to rescue him from himself but she was lying dead in the garden.
This time he was on his own and out of his depth.
As a criminal, Matthew made a good hairdresser. He left a trail a trainee policeman could follow without breaking into a sweat. The next day he withdrew $200 from an automatic teller machine, hired a trailer and bought a heavy shackle from a local service station.
He then bought cord, chain and three concrete bricks. His first rather unoriginal plan was to dump the bodies in the Yarra. He returned home and slipped the bodies into two doona covers, then chained and weighted them down. He put them in the trailer and again covered them with the deflated pool.
Maritza would later confess, ‘Matthew told me he was going to get a trailer. I went to work. Matthew told me later that he’d put Margaret and Paul in the garage. I didn’t look in the garage and I didn’t know what to do.’
On the Saturday, two days after the murders, he decided it was time to move. First he rang his mother’s home to leave a message on her answering machine. He reasoned that once she was discovered missing the message from a concerned son could conceal his involvement.
He then left with the bodies. ‘About 11.30am he went out with the car and the trailer. I knew that Matthew was going to dispose of Margaret and Paul. He told me it was best if he didn’t tell me where. I can’t recall when but within a few days he told me that he had buried Margaret and Paul at Marysville. I have never been there and didn’t know where it was,’ Maritza said.
He drove along the Woods Point-Warburton Road looking for a track where he could dig a grave, undisturbed. But he couldn’t even get that right. Two men, Jamie Tonkin and Craig Lamont, were returning from a camping trip when they spotted a red Nissan Patrol about to turn up a track off the main road. The bodies were later found only 50 metres from the intersection.
Matthew didn’t usually take to hard work but this time he made an effort, digging a grave over a metre deep. He put his mother in first and Paul on top. He later told police that he put his stepfather on top because Margaret had dominated him for years. Again, placing her face down to hide her face was a way of depersonalising her in death.
He made some ham-fisted attempts to make it look as if the couple had been killed by robbers, stripping them of jewellery, money and a mobile phone. But he left his mother with her $90,000 diamond ring – not for any sentimental reasons but because he panicked.
He returned home and ordered top soil for his garden, believing the new earth would conceal any forensic evidence left on the grass in the garden.
On the Sunday his sister Sally rang and left a message on the answering machine saying she was concerned because she hadn’t heard from Margaret. Matthew did not return the call.
The following day the soil arrived and he dug up the murder scene, spreading the new soil over the area. Then, worried that animals could disturb the grave site he returned to Marysville with six large river rocks and the remaining soil.
He knew that Sally was going to her mother’s home that day and the couple would be reported missing within hours. He went to the house for a family meeting. The police were already there.
According to Emma, Matthew was as bad an actor as he was a killer. ‘He burst into the front room, his head looked like it was going to explode and I could see the veins in his neck and his body was puffed up like a blowfish. He looked very emotional and asked, “What’s going on?” acting as though he was surprised to see the police and acting as though he feared the worst. He then walked himself into the corner of the room and let out a distraught cry and moan … His face was distorted, he seemed overwhelmed by the whole situation, which I thought was an absolute over-reaction as no one had mentioned anything about what had happened to them. The police had not even had a chance to introduce themselves to Matthew. ‘For all he knew, Mum and Paul could have been away for the weekend. Sally and I were not crying – we didn’t look distraught and we didn’t alarm him in any way.
‘This made me believe that his reaction was fake.’
EVEN before the bodies were discovered, police were treating the case as a double homicide and Matthew as the main suspect. As always with a suspicious disappearance, detectives begin at the last known sighting.
They immediately felt that something was rotten there and it wasn’t the leftover risotto.
On April 9, Matthew made a statement to police saying he hosted a pleasant dinner party for his mother and stepfather and they had then headed home. He could shed no light on their disappearance.
On the same day, Maritza was interviewed and backed up her husband’s story. She said that at the dinner Margaret mentioned she had sufficient American Express points to fly around the world. ‘She said she needed a holiday because she had been looking after Paul for two years.’
Maritza said the couple would not disappear without contacting the family. ‘If she goes somewhere she would always ring. She was always busy, we practically had to make an appointment to see her.’
Maritza said she referred to Margaret as ‘mum’ and they would often just have a coffee and a chat. But in her first interview she did betray underlying tensions. ‘The family has always had its ups and downs but everyone got along fine. Mum was sometimes a bit standoffish. She was a bit snobby.’
By April 10, the homicide squad was in control of the investigation. Later that day the couple’s Mercedes was found abandoned in Middle Park. Forensic tests found traces of blood in the driver’s foot-well area that proved to be a positive match to the victims.
Matthew may have been wearing gloves when he dumped the car but he still left traces of scientific evidence. But it was not sophisticated forensic tests that would expose Matthew Wales as a liar and a killer – it was a detective’s nose for simple clues. On April 11, police went to his home and one immediately noticed a strong smell of cleaning fluid coming from the garage and a pile of fresh mulch on the front garden beds.
Five days earlier Matthew had bought the fluid to clean blood spots from the concrete floor of the garage. Typically, he didn’t quite finish the job.
When police checked the floor they were able find a small amount of blood, which proved to be a positive match to Paul King. They also found four blood spots inside the house.
Officially, the case was still a ‘suspicious disappearance’ but police knew it was murder.
What they needed were the bodies.
On April 29, two Parks Victoria rangers noticed a mound they first thought to be a lyrebird’s display area in the forest east of Marysville. But it seemed too big, and the wrong shape, so they returned for a second look and discovered a male body. When police examined the grave they soon found the second body.
On April 30, police seized a doona cover, ‘D’ shackles, green twine and a mattock from Matthew’s house.
Detectives established that Matthew had bought a child’s pool on January 11 from Toys R Us, identical to the one found at the grave site. The pool was missing from his Glen Iris home.
They found he hired a trailer and bought chains and digging equipment. He bought the concrete cleaner on April 6 – two day after the murder. While police were trying to build a case against Matthew, the media was camped outside the house, making the homicide investigation increasingly difficult. It was Melbourne’s worst-kept secret that Matthew Wales was to be arrested.
On May 9 a forensic examination of the river rocks found at the gravesite showed traces of three layers of paint identical with the layers from the trailer hired by Matthew Wales. The following day Maritza Wales made her ‘can say’ statement to police via her lawyers – telling them her husband was the killer. It was the final piece of evidence they needed.
Matthew was arrested on the next day and made a full taped confession.
He maintained he did not kill his mother for his share of $6 million – the value of the family estate. ‘Everybody will probably think this is about money, OK? And it is about money. Not in the use of me getting money.
‘It’s the way she used her power for money – she used it against us all the time. I just feel like every time she wanted me to do something she used it.’
But if it was about money, then Matthew was again the loser.
He and his brother, Damian, were joint executors of the will. Each of the five children and Paul King were to receive equal shares and all would have been millionaires.
But Margaret Wales-King put a strange condition in her will: her children could collect their share of the estate only after the age of 40. Matthew, the youngest, was 34. As the convicted killer, he loses all claims on the estate.
As always, he missed out. Effectively, he shot himself in the foot when he hit them over the head.
Under the terms of the will, the share assigned for Paul King will be divided among Margaret’s 11 grandchildren.
This means that Matthew’s son, Domenik Wales, is entitled to around $110,000. But some members of the family were determined that the money should not be controlled by the woman they fear may have got away with murder. Maritza.
On the day they were to be sentenced the court was packed with family members watching the guilty couple and the media watching the family. Many members of the Wales family felt angry and betrayed by the coverage of the double murder.
They felt their loss had been turned into sport and that they had been portrayed as rich and uncaring. They were victims of a terrible crime but their private relationships had become fodder for dinner party gossip. They felt that, in death, Margaret was unfairly vilified as a manipulative and grasping matriarch, rather than a woman who tried her best to care for an invalid husband and a deeply flawed son.
Several members of the family stared aggressively at Matthew, but he did not look back, not because he wanted to avoid them, but because he remained oblivious to their glares. He appeared unconcerned about his fate as he was sentenced and seemed worried only about Maritza’s future.
On April 11, 2003 – one year and one week after the murders – Justice John Coldrey delivered sentence in the Victorian Supreme Court after the pair had pleaded guilty.
‘Matthew Wales, you told the police of great animosity and hurt between your mother and yourself and of anger that had been building up in you for years. You stated that your motive was not to be found in any desire to obtain your mother’s money, but in the reaction against her using that money to manipulate you. You asserted that not only had your mother used the power of her money against you but also against your sisters. Indeed, your sister Prudence Reid, speaking to you prior to the funerals, had the impression that you believed that the family had been done a favour by your mother’s death.
‘That impression was shared by your father, Mr Brian Wales.
When he spoke to you at Port Phillip Prison on May 29, 2002, it appeared to him that you thought of yourself as a hero and as having done the family a favour in killing Margaret and Paul, no one else in the family having the guts to do so. That was certainly not the view of your siblings.
‘Family members also make it clear that their upbringing, in which you, Matthew Wales, participated, was a privileged one involving access to several farms, a beach house, a unit at the snow and the benefit of a number of overseas trips. Moreover, all the children, including you, benefited from your mother’s assistance in obtaining a primary residential property. At the end of the day it should not be forgotten that it was up to Mrs Wales-King to determine how she used her own money and how prudent her approach should be in retaining or distributing it. Ultimately, it was being preserved for the benefit of her children, all of whom, at this time, were adults.
‘On their various accounts (those of his brother and sisters), you were adored by your mother, who showered you with gifts, love and support. She was proud of you and your brother Damian as fathers; she was an advocate for you, always trying to be positive and to build you up.
‘It was also your view that your wife Maritza who, I accept, you idolised, and her family, were looked down upon by your family.
‘According to Maritza’s record of interview, you were reluctant to introduce her to your family, labelling them as “a bunch of snobs”. It was put that when eventually driving to meet them in Boronia, your mother queried where the suburb was, how she could leave a Mercedes parked there, and asked your view whether it would be stolen. Your sister, Sally Honan, speaks of you passing on Maritza’s views that your mother felt her family were just “wogs”. Your own view of your wife was that she was intelligent, stylish and elegant, and accomplished in retail business. Indeed you believed your mother to be jealous of Maritza’s business achievements.
‘These murders were premeditated. The victims were elderly and vulnerable. After the killings you made a persistent and systematic effort to avoid detection. Moreover your lies and dissembling conduct, which continued until the time of your arrest, has caused your relatives, particularly your sisters and brother, an added level of distress and anguish.
‘Maritza Wales, the Crown do not allege that you had any role in the planned killing of Mrs Wales-King and Paul King and I am quite satisfied that you did not. Apart from the factors to which I have already referred, it is inconceivable that you would have been a party to the killing of your parents-in-law in the front yard of your family home and without any plan for the disposal of their bodies. As I have already endeavoured to make quite clear, I am quite satisfied that your husband acted alone in perpetrating these crimes.
‘It follows that you were confronted with a totally unexpected and horrific situation. In the accounts of both you and your husband, your reaction to the revelation of these crimes has been detailed. It involved shock; distress (which manifested itself in vomiting); anger; a withdrawal from physical contact with your husband; an endeavour to distance yourself from these events and the frequent urging of him to go to the police. Your husband’s procrastination about contacting the authorities, phrased in terms of wanting to spend more time with you and Domenik, had the effect of you living a lie in the days and weeks that followed the killings. Eventually, faced with his continuing failure to contact the authorities, you took matters into your own hands and, through your solicitor, informed the police of what had occurred. ‘In the course of your interview, you were asked, in effect, why you had not earlier told the police what had happened. You responded, “Because I was thinking of Domenik. I was thinking of Matt. I was thinking of everything except for the right thing”.
‘I have no doubt that as a wife and mother you were faced with a conflict between doing the right thing and loyalty to your family manifested in the fear of losing a husband with whom you were deeply in love and the loss to Domenik of his father. No one would wish to be confronted with such a dilemma.
‘I accept that you have already suffered greatly through the publicity generated by this case. In itself this constitutes a measure of punishment.
‘Further, one of the consequences of your decision to contact the police has been the effective destruction of the marriage which was the cornerstone of your life. Whilst the serious nature of your offence and the need for general deterrence dictates that a prison sentence be imposed, the requirements of justice may best be achieved in the circumstances of your case by wholly suspending that prison term. The length of the sentence will be two years suspended for the whole of that period.
‘Mrs Wales, I am giving you the opportunity of a future in which you are free to bring up your son.
‘Matthew Wales, in your case I have concluded that the appropriate sentences are as follows: on Count One, the murder of Margaret Wales-King, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for 20 years. On Count Two, the murder of Paul King, you are also sentenced to be imprisoned for 20 years. I order that ten years of Count Two be served cumulatively with Count One, resulting in a total effective sentence of 30 years. I fix a minimum of 24 years before you become eligible for parole.’
MEMBERS of the family shook their heads in disbelief when they realised Maritza would not be jailed. She left the court with her head bowed. Matthew was escorted to a prison van. He did not look back.
Outside the court, the family released a statement calling for an inquest into the deaths.
‘Tragically, the confession of our brother today stands as the so-called factual account of the details and reasons behind these brutal crimes. To us, his account was self-serving and based on selfish opportunity and selfish greed. We believe we have a right to the full facts. We believe the public has a right to know.’
Damian Wales had the last word, ‘We are just at the mercy of what two people have said, two people who are proven liars, and who are obviously criminals.’