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The Sex Goddess

Romeo and Juliet they were not. He was a fat, bald, bespectacled sales manager of a suburban Adelaide tyre centre. She was a feral, overweight, frumpish housewife and mother of two. A member of the South Australian media described her as ‘having a head like a dropped pie’. Yet, for all her physical shortcomings, to her lovers 28-year-old Michelle Elizabeth Burgess was a sex goddess. It was rumoured in local parlance that she was exceptionally ‘hot in the cot’ and that one of her main attributes was that ‘she could suck a golf ball through a garden hose’. Her exotic sexual talents ensured that the men in her life followed her about like lovesick schoolboys, willing to do whatever she desired, even if it meant committing murder at a minute’s notice.

Given these circumstances, the sex goddess had little trouble in manipulating two of her horny admirers into setting up and then brutally killing an innocent housewife – the wife of one of the murderers – she wanted out of the way.

Until late 2000, Michelle Burgess had lived a mundane existence with her husband Darren and their two young children at their ordinary suburban home at Evanston Gardens, a suburb of Gawler, 40 kilometres north of Adelaide and adjacent to the Barossa Valley. During their eight-year marriage Michelle had cheated on her husband twice. But it was the extramarital affair with her husband’s boss, 39-year-old Kevin William Matthews, that would change two families’ lives forever.

Kevin Matthews and Michelle Burgess had previously met at a Beaurepaires Tyre Christmas function. Matthews was sales manager of the Port Adelaide store while Darren Burgess worked at the Elizabeth branch. Michelle Burgess obviously wasn’t impressed at that first meeting and later described Kevin Matthews to her husband as a ‘pig dog’ and his wife of seventeen years, Carolyn, who was 37, as ‘feral’.

Darren Burgess’s thirtieth birthday party was held at the Burgess home in September 2000. Michelle strangely insisted that Kevin and Carolyn be invited; party-goers could have been mistaken into thinking that Michelle and Kevin were an ‘item’, if it wasn’t for the attendance of their respective spouses. The couple spent most of the afternoon arm in arm and chatting secretly.

At Kevin Matthews’s fortieth birthday party, also in September 2000, and held at the Matthews’s home, again the couple spent most of the time draped in each other’s arms with the progressively drunker Matthews announcing to everyone that Michelle was his new ‘best friend’.

Over the following months their relationship developed into a serious affair and they could be found openly kissing and cuddling at bars and local parks during extended lunch hours. Mr Matthews and a woman answering to Michelle Burgess’s description regularly drank eight glasses of scotch a day at the Hampstead Hotel and embarrassed other patrons with their passionate embraces.

At a Christmas party held at the Burgess house later that year, Michelle Burgess was showing off a new tattoo on her backside to anyone who was interested in taking a look. Kevin Matthews was very interested. Carolyn Matthews complained to Darren Burgess that ‘his wife was out there showing her arse to her (Carolyn’s) husband’.

On Christmas Day, 2000, Mrs Burgess was wearing an expensive gold necklace. When her husband asked where it came from, she explained it away by saying that it was only a cheap one and had cost $10. Darren Burgess later found an empty Zamels (an Adelaide jewellery store) jewellery box and a card which read ‘Chook loves Daffy … This is just enough to tide you over Christmas. Don’t waste it on scotch.’

But soon the lunches, expensive mixed drinks, gifts, overnight motel accommodation and 2000 mobile phone calls back and forth began to add up and took a savage toll on the Matthews’ joint bank account. Carolyn Matthews was aware of the depleted funds and the family’s increasing financial difficulties. Urged on by Darren Burgess, who faxed her copies of telephone bills of up to $1600, outlining hundreds of phone calls between her husband and his wife, she confronted her husband and threatened to throw him out of the family home if he didn’t break off the affair immediately.

Also cruelly aware of what was going on, as it was the talk of the tyre business, Darren Burgess confronted his wife about the alleged affair. Michelle admitted that she had been meeting Matthews regularly for coffee and that she and Kevin had realised that they both had troubled marriages. Darren Burgess left the family home in January 2001. Not long after he received a text message from his wife threatening him and his new girlfriend. ‘She’s dead. You’re dead. That’s a promise not a threat,’ it said. Later in court Darren Burgess would testify that from that day on he held grave fears for his life.

Confronted with circumstances that neither of them seemed able to handle, the lovebirds looked around for a solution. It was Michelle who suggested that the easiest and most obvious way out of the whole mess would be if her husband and his wife simply weren’t around any more. And the best way to arrange that was to have them both murdered. With the ache in his groin calling the shots, Kevin Matthews agreed. The fact that there was a $100,000 insurance policy on his wife’s life made the deal seem all that more attractive.

Michelle Burgess began asking around to find a hitman. She confronted another mother, Kathleen Cowled, at her children’s primary school, and casually asked her if she knew of anyone who could plant someone ‘six feet under’. Cowled said she thought she may know someone and asked her brother, David William Edgar Key, 28, – an illiterate drug addict and convicted armed robber – if he would be interested in the job. He was.

Michelle Burgess and David Key met outside the school and agreed that for $50,000 from the insurance policy on Mrs Matthews’s life, Key would murder both Carolyn Matthews and Darren Burgess. Michelle Burgess gave David Key two handwritten ‘contracts’; one for the murder of Mrs Matthews and one for Darren Burgess. Each contract included a photo of the intended victim so there would be no mistake. To seal the deal Michelle Burgess then took Key home and had sex with him.

Michelle Burgess came up with the plan that Carolyn Matthews and Darren Burgess 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, David Key moved in with Michelle Burgess and carried on their affair right under the besotted Kevin Matthews’s nose. Key, who by this stage was well and truly under Burgess’s sexual spell, liked the idea of the fake car accident. But in the end it wasn’t feasible. They would have to find another way.

•••

At approximately 5.30 pm on 12 July 2001, Kevin Matthews picked up his three sons from out the front of their house to take them to the video shop to select some titles for the long weekend starting the following day. Matthews had rung ahead from work and told the boys to be waiting at the front gate. When they arrived home 20 minutes later, the boys walked into the house ahead of their father – who had lingered behind them to do something in the front yard – and almost tripped over the dead body of their mother. The eldest boy rang 000. Kevin Matthews could be heard yelling frantically in the background.

At first paramedics thought that it was a suicide given the cuts on Mrs Matthews’s wrist. But as soon as they discovered other wounds to the body, the area was sealed off and the house became a crime scene.

Police were immediately suspicious of Kevin Matthews. It didn’t take them long to find out that he was having an affair. His phone records showed that on the day of his wife’s murder, Matthews and Michelle Burgess had called each other sixteen times. Matthews and Burgess were placed under 24-hour surveillance and their phones were tapped.

After a high-speed chase through the Barossa Valley on 26 July – two weeks after the murder of Carolyn Matthews – David Key was pulled over by police on an unrelated matter. Key was arrested at gunpoint and taken into custody for parole violations relating to his prison term for the armed robbery. While questioning Key, police went through his wallet and found the ‘contract’ – complete with photograph – to murder Michelle Burgess’s husband, Darren. They put two and two together and came up with four – Michelle Burgess, David Key, Kevin Matthews and his late wife, Carolyn.

Forensic detectives examined Key’s boots which were found to match the boot pattern found in the blood at the Carolyn Matthews murder scene. A DNA test of a bloodstain from one of the boots matched that of Mrs Matthews.

At the Adelaide Remand Centre on 2 August 2001, Key was formally charged with Mrs Matthews’s murder. Two days later, Michelle Burgess was also arrested and charged with murder. When questioned as to her whereabouts on the day of Mrs Matthews’s murder, Burgess admitted that she had visited Kevin Matthews at his work during the day, but not with Key.

She said that she was with 31-year-old Jason Colenso, a friend of Key’s who she was also having a sexual relationship with. Colenso had moved in with Michelle Burgess the day after David Key was arrested.

At Burgess’s first court hearing, the smitten Matthews – who was still on the loose but under strict surveillance – turned up with the word ‘Forever’ written in Texta on the rim of his sun hat. He took it off and pointed it out to Burgess in the courtroom. The following day Kevin Matthews lodged a claim for the $100,000 insurance on his wife’s life.

With Key and Burgess locked up and the police investigation intensified, the witnesses began to crawl out of the woodwork. One of the many of Michelle Burgess’s old boyfriends said he saw her with a man talking to Matthews at the Beaurepaires Tyre Centre shortly before the murder.

On 24 July 2001, at the Old Spot Hotel at Elizabeth, Matthews was overheard saying to Burgess, ‘You know you are going down for it, too many people know about it.’

Kevin Matthews was arrested on 7 September 2001, and also charged with the murder of his wife. When he appeared in the Adelaide Magistrate’s Court six hours after he was arrested, he seemed uninterested and bored. He looked around, soaking up the ambience, and said, ‘Cool’.

In a statement given to the police, Kevin Matthews described what happened when he arrived home on the evening of 12 July, 2001. ‘We came home from the video shop … I’m just trying to get this right in my head … there was some recycling and empty cartons and that sort of thing on the front lawn. As I walked in, I saw a frying pan so I grabbed it,’ he said. ‘The boys walked into the lounge room with the videos and one asked where Mum was. He found her. I can’t remember much after that.’

Kevin Matthews said in the statement that he told one of his sons to ring 000, then they performed CPR until ambulance officers arrived and ushered them out of the house. ‘At one stage there was a woman behind us, I think she was a cop,’ he said. ‘She let us keep going with CPR … obviously she thought we knew what we were doing.’

At first Key was going to plead not guilty to murdering Mrs Matthews but on the eve of his trial he changed his plea to guilty and became the Crown’s star witness against Burgess and Matthews in return for a lighter sentence. On 6 August 2003, in the Adelaide Supreme Court, David Key was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 20-year non-parole period. Justice Margaret Nyland told Key that if it wasn’t for his plea of guilty and cooperation with police, he would have received a 30-year non-parole sentence.

Key, who was standing in the dock alongside his co-accused, Kevin Matthews and Michelle Burgess – who had both pleaded not guilty to murder – was expressionless and stared blankly ahead as his sentence was handed down. When Justice Nyland read out his non-parole period, his hand began to shake and he dropped his gaze and stared blankly at the floor as if holding his head in shame.

At Michelle Burgess and Kevin Mathews’s trial, which began on 13 August 2003 in the Adelaide Supreme Court before Justice Nyland, it was obvious that the defendants had decided not to take matters too seriously. It seemed as if to them it was a game that would shortly be over and they would be free to resume their affair where they had left off.

Every day Matthews swaggered into the dock as if he didn’t have a care in the world. One day he fell asleep in the dock. He and Burgess whispered between themselves and she openly flirted with him. Early in the trial Matthews made a practice of swinging around in his seat and looking into the public gallery and making faces at anyone who was looking at him. Burgess did her best to look like a sultry sex goddess. Whenever the subject of sex came up she would giggle into the back of her hand until she seemed to remember where she was and then she would correct herself and sit up and take attention. Then it was back to being sultry again. If anything, they were like a pair of naughty children being admonished in the principal’s office.

All throughout the trial Burgess and Matthews used an Adelaide community radio station’s Sunday night program The Prison Show to express their eternal love to each other. While a part of their defence was based on the fact that their friendship was platonic, the radio program aired romantic poems and messages to each other describing themselves as soulmates who were destined to be together forever.

In his opening address to the jury, prosecutor Steven Millsteed, QC, said that the motive behind the murder was lust and greed.

‘It’s the prosecution’s 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,’ Mr Millsteed 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 stabbing was brutal and involved the use of a long-bladed kitchen knife.’

The court then heard a poem found in Michelle Burgess’s diary 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.

 

One of the first witnesses for the prosecution, Michelle Burgess’s former friend and neighbour, Cassandra Hutchison, told the court that there was no doubt in the world that Burgess and Matthews were having a sexual relationship. She said that they (Hutchison and Burgess) would often talk about Kevin Matthews and that he promised Burgess 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 (Burgess’s husband),’ said Mrs Hutchison. ‘She was constantly talking about how good the sex was with Kevin. Michelle told me that she had given Kevin an ultimatum to leave Carolyn and if he did not she would stop giving him sex.’

Mrs Hutchison said that she rang Carolyn Matthews and told her that her husband was having an affair with Burgess but the conversation only lasted about 15 seconds before the line went dead. She never found out Mrs Matthews’s reaction.

Mrs Hutchison said that just after Christmas, 2000, Michelle Burgess told her that she had received a phone call from Carolyn Matthews telling her to stay away from her husband. Burgess found the call to be amusing. ‘She was telling me and laughing at the same time. She didn’t seem at all concerned about it,’ Mrs Hutchison said in evidence.

The court then heard that at his wife’s wake held at the Matthews’s home after the funeral on 19 July, a drunk Matthews left the house at 11.30 pm saying that he ‘couldn’t hack it any longer’ and had to get away. This aroused the suspicions of Carolyn Matthews’s best friend, Kaylene Kenyon who, with her husband, had decided that they would stay at the Matthews’s house for the night because they had been drinking and didn’t want to drive.

While driving, Kevin Matthews rang his home and spoke to Mrs Kenyon, who demanded to know where he was. The conversations Matthews had on his mobile that night were taped by police.

At 12.02 am, Matthews rang Michelle Burgess on her mobile. She apparently wasn’t at home. Matthews said, ‘I’m scared … I’m out the front of your house.’ Burgess replied, ‘Why are you driving around? Put your car in the driveway … I will talk to you when I get there. Do not leave.’ Matthews responded, ‘The shit was going down. I could not get hold of you.’

At 12.09 am, Matthews rang his home from his mobile and spoke to Kaylene Kenyon, who asked, ‘Where are you, Kevin? Don’t fucking lie to me. I just want to know what’s happening.’ Matthews replied, ‘I needed to have a drink. I needed to get out.’ The answer was, ‘Kevin, do you want me to come and get you?’ The phone then cut out.

Matthews called Burgess on her mobile at 12.12 am, saying, ‘Carolyn’s bridesmaid is at home. She reckons I’m lying. She reckons I’m out seeing someone.’ The mobile phone then went dead. At 12.36 am Matthews called Mrs Kenyon at his home and said, ‘I’ll be home in about three to four minutes. I’m on Victoria Road. I’m going to go through the back streets.’

At 12.41 am, David Key rang Michelle Burgess on his mobile.

Burgess: ‘His wife’s bridesmaid has turned around and said to him, “I’m not stupid Kevin. Do you think I’m stupid? You’re off with your girlfriend.”’

Key: ‘Do you want me to go down and give her a fucking visit too?’

Burgess: ‘What a fucking bitch. He buried his fucking wife today for fuck’s sake. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. The shit’s going to hit the fan.’

Key: ‘Baby, do you want me to come down?’

Burgess: ‘This lady is looking after his kids. She does not need to see me even though there’s nothing going on.’

Key: ‘Why does she think you’re seeing Kevin when you’re seeing me?’

Matthews returned home over an hour after he left, wearing the same clothes he had left in but he wasn’t wearing any socks. ‘Are you having an affair?’ Mrs Kenyon accused. ‘No. What makes you think that?’ Matthews replied.

‘It was your behaviour tonight,’ Kenyon said. All of them then watched a video of Carolyn and Kevin Matthews’s wedding before going to bed.

The court then heard from Michelle Burgess’s estranged husband, Darren, who said that he was aware of at least two affairs that his wife had had during their marriage. He said that he had left his wife because he was aware that she was having an affair with his boss. Darren Burgess said that as far as he knew that since he and his wife had separated, she was having sexual relations with Matthews, the now convicted murderer David Key, Jason Colenso and another Jason she had met over the Internet.

Mr Burgess said that a month after the break-up his wife had approached him and told him that she had cervical cancer and had only twelve months to live. She wanted to get back together with him so their two young children would have a family.

Mr Burgess told the court that he was at his son’s soccer practice when his wife turned up with David Key in tow. Mr Burgess said that 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.’

The star witness for the prosecution was always going to be David Key. He told the court that he had been approached by Michelle Burgess through his sister to kill Mrs Matthews and Mr Burgess for a sum of $50,000. He had agreed. The original plan was to kill Mrs Matthews in a motor vehicle and make it look like an accident. ‘I had a plan,’ Key told the court. ‘I was going to tie her (Mrs Matthews) 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 the accomplice that Key needed to help him stage the crash – an associate of his named Scott Rose – wasn’t available at the last minute so there was a hasty change of plans.

Key told the court that on 12 July 2001, with Michelle Burgess’s two children in the back of the car, he and Burgess were driving around Adelaide’s northern suburbs. A hysterical Kevin Matthews was constantly on the phone to Burgess. Matthews told Burgess that he wanted to talk to her immediately as ‘he had had enough’ of the whole deal and wanted out. After dropping the children off at Michelle’s parents’ home they drove to Beaurepaires at Port Adelaide. Key waited outside and smoked cannabis while Burgess went inside. From the car Key could see their animated conversation taking place in the showroom. Burgess came to the door and waved Key inside, telling him they had decided that Mrs Matthews was to be murdered that evening.

Given that Key could no longer stage the car accident as he didn’t have an accomplice, the plan now 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 to select some videos for the long weekend. When they had left, Burgess and Key would enter the house where Mrs Matthews was alone and stab her to death. She would be dead in the house when Matthews and his sons arrived back from the video shop about half an hour later.

At 5.24 pm, Matthews rang his home and told his sons to be waiting out the front of the house for him to pick them up to take them to the local video store. Burgess and Key drove to a street near the Matthews’s Nambucca Avenue, West Lakes home and waited until they saw Matthews in a Beaurepaires work ute pull up at the front and pick up the three waiting boys.

As soon as the ute had left, Burgess and Key went to the house and confronted Carolyn Matthews as she stepped out the front door to put out the rubbish. Key showed Mrs Matthews the handwritten murder ‘contract’ he had been given by Burgess when they did the deal. Mrs Matthews looked at the document in amazement and pointed at the photo and said, ‘That’s me’.

Michelle Burgess then punched Mrs Matthews heavily on the side of the face and Key dragged her bleeding into the lounge room.

The court heard that Key then told Burgess that he wasn’t ready to kill Mrs Matthews as it was all happening too fast. But Burgess would have none of it. Together they dragged the protesting Carolyn Matthews through to the kitchen and Burgess rummaged through the drawers and produced the biggest knife she could find, held it out to Key and insisted that he stab the woman to death there and then.

Key refused. But Burgess wasn’t to be denied. She forced the knife into Key’s hand. ‘Be a man,’ she purred. ‘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 told the court that then there was no holding him back. He grabbed Mrs Matthews, who was trying to protect herself with a frying pan, and brutally stabbed her seven times about the neck and chest and once in the back with the long bladed carving knife. Mrs Mathews also took five deep wounds to her hands and wrists as she tried to defend herself. Mortally wounded, she died almost immediately.

It was only a matter of minutes from the time Burgess and Key entered the house to when they left with Mrs Matthews lying dead in a pool of her own blood on the kitchen floor. Key threw the frying pan Mrs Matthews had used to defend herself along with three knives – one of which was the murder weapon which he had wiped clean with a tea towel – on the front lawn. Michelle Burgess was laughing as they walked away from the house.

The pair of murderers drove to the nearby seaside suburb of Grange where Key washed the splattered blood from his face in the ocean. Burgess smoked a cigarette while she phoned Matthews on his mobile from a public phone booth and left a five-second message on his message bank to let him know that the job was done.

Endeavouring to incriminate Kevin Matthews in the actual murder, prosecutor Steven Millsteed told the court that it was just too much of a coincidence that he (Matthews) couldn’t have known that his wife was going to be killed in the 20 minutes he was away from home with his boys at the video store.

Mr Millsteed said that David Key had a ‘very narrow window of opportunity’ in which to kill Mrs Matthews. Mr Millsteed also pointed out that Mrs Burgess and Mr Key were seen talking to Mr Matthews at his workplace, Beaurepaires, minutes before the murder.

‘Does it make any sense that these two killers would speak to Kevin Matthews about tyres and then minutes later leave his office and murder his wife?’ Mr Millsteed said. He pointed out that Mrs Matthews was dead within seven minutes of Mr Matthews picking up his three sons from outside the family home to take them to the video store.

‘He could not get away from that house fast enough because just a short time away there would be the arrival of Burgess and Key,’ Mr Millsteed said. ‘When they returned home the teenage boys discovered their mother in the kitchen. They walked in first and their father followed. Funny about that.’

Mr Millsteed told the court that Mr Matthews appeared distressed and confused because if he showed no emotion it would have been a ‘dead giveaway’.

‘Upon seeing the bloodied body of Carolyn and the devastating effect on his sons, the enormity of what he had arranged hit home,’ he said.

The court heard bugged conversations recorded between Mrs Burgess and two unidentified males at her home on 28 July 2000, after her live-in lover, hitman David Key, had been picked up after the high speed chase. Mrs Burgess was concerned that someone had told the police that Key was involved in the murder of Mrs Matthews.

‘At the moment, honestly, I don’t trust anybody,’ she told the men. ‘As soon as I find out who it is they are six feet under and I am going to do it myself and that is no fucking lie. Because that’s a backstabber and they’ll find out what a real stab in the back is. Dave is not going down for this. I won’t let it happen,’ she said. ‘They have had us all under surveillance since it happened so someone dobbed Dave in because this is all about Dave, not about anybody else. Well, it’s about me as well because I am with Dave. They want Dave and they are going to nail him and just keep him in jail until they nail him.’

Nine days later Michelle Burgess was arrested and charged with the murder of Mrs Matthews.

The court heard excerpts from a five-page letter from David Key in the Adelaide Remand Centre to Michelle Burgess. Due to Key’s inability to read or write it was handwritten by another inmate. It was written on 27 July 2001, the day after Key had been arrested. The letter told of Key’s undying love for Michelle Burgess and her two children. Key requested her to do burnouts in his VN and VP model Holden Commodores and take pictures of herself doing it to send to him. ‘Don’t be chicken,’ Key said in the letter. ‘I want your face behind the wheel.’

Key also asked that if there were any reports of the previous day’s chase in the papers where he had been arrested at gunpoint, could she bring them to him.

In his closing address to the jury, Mr Millsteed said that Kevin Matthews and his manipulative lover – who allegedly hired the hitman, whom she was also having an affair with – were ‘as guilty as if they had put the knife in themselves’ and that it was difficult to think of a more brutal and callous crime than the one which put an end to Carolyn Matthews’s life.

‘David Key’s role in the death of Mrs Matthews was disgusting,’ Mr Millsteed said. ‘It was appalling. He stabbed to death this decent, hard-working mother of three boys for money and to impress a woman he wanted to be with. You might think he is repulsive and vile.’ Mr Millsteed told the jury that there didn’t seem any logical explanation why Kevin Matthews didn’t just leave his wife to be with his lover other than that he was fearful of losing contact with his three sons and half of his West Lakes Shore family home.

Mr Millsteed impressed upon the jury that the insurance money of $100,000 obviously was a factor and that Mr Matthews had tried to claim it shortly after his wife was murdered. In the months leading up to Mrs Matthews’s murder, Kevin Matthews had gone from being in a secure financial position to being in deep financial trouble and was ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. He told the court that Mr Burgess had become a man who spent most of his working week drinking with Mrs Burgess and that he was ‘a bit of a high flyer for a man who had a reasonable income’.

Mr Millsteed explained to the jury that Mr Matthews had denied to police that he was sexually involved with Mrs Burgess and that they were so close that they were having a ‘brother-sister type relationship’ and even had the ‘gall’ to tell police that he and Mrs Burgess were just friends. He pointed out that telephone records showed that in the months leading up to Mrs Matthews’s murder, Mr Matthews and Mrs Burgess had made 2000 phone calls to each others mobiles. ‘Do you believe for one moment that they were telling police the truth?’ he asked the jury. ‘It makes an absolute mockery of the suggestion that these two people were not having an affair.’

In his final summing up to the jury in the defence of Michelle Burgess, Gordon Barrett, QC, said the Crown would have the jury believe that his client was both extremely manipulative and extremely stupid. Mr Barrett said that Mrs Matthews was murdered solely by Key who was erratic, violent and on drugs.

‘In getting mixed up with David Key she was simply out of her depth,’ Mr Barrett said. ‘Mrs Burgess, like everybody who comes to court, is deemed to be innocent,’ he said.

In conclusion he said that Mrs Burgess and Mr Matthews 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 lasted two months, Michelle Burgess and Kevin Matthews stood side by side in the dock as the forewoman handed down the verdicts that had taken the jury seventeen hours to reach. Guilty as charged.

At first Matthews seemed shocked at the verdict. He heaved his chest in and out like a rampaging wrestler. His nostrils flared and the veins in his face looked as if they would pop. He ground his teeth so hard that the grinding was almost audible. But it soon passed and he quickly regained his composure and looked into the public gallery, winked and blew a kiss at his supporters. With that Justice Margaret Nyland 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, Matthews leaned over to talk to Burgess. She glared fiercely and ignored him and headed abruptly in the direction of the court’s holding cells as if to say that if she never saw him again it would be too soon.

Even after the guilty verdict was handed down, Matthews remained seemingly oblivious to the fact that he and his mistress had ruined so many lives. From his prison cell Matthews wrote a letter to Michelle Burgess’s former husband, Darren, which said in part: ‘Give my future stepchildren a big sloppy kiss from me.’

During Burgess and Matthews’s non-parole period hearing held on 2 April 2004, a victim impact statement from Matthews’s anguished eldest son Ken was read to the court:

‘You had a great life, great friends, a nice house, a family who loved you and you threw it all away for one stupid woman, one stupid mistake,’ the note read in part. ‘You will never be forgiven for this. How could anybody forgive you?’

In her pre-sentencing summation of the case, Justice Margaret Nyland was scathing:

‘Kevin Matthews, in my opinion, a particularly callous aspect of your conduct on the day in question was the fact that, when you returned to the house, you permitted your children to precede you into it, as a result of which they discovered their mother’s body,’ Justice Nyland said. ‘As I said in sentencing Key, one can only speculate about the long-term impact such a traumatic event will have upon them. It is obvious from the victim impact statements that the actions of you both have had a significant impact upon your families.

‘At the date hereof, you, Burgess are aged 30 years. You have no prior record. A perplexing aspect of your behaviour is the fact that it appears that, prior to these events, you were a person of good character and cared about your children and you were involved as a volunteer at their school and also with the fundraising committee.

‘Matthews, you are now aged 43. You also have no relevant antecedent history, and hitherto have been a person of good character. In particular, you have been actively involved in the lifesaving movement as president of your club, as well as taking a part on various committees and being a rescue and resuscitation coach. You were granted life membership of your club as a result of your substantial service to them.

‘This was, however, a premeditated, heartless and brutal crime. As I said when sentencing Key, this was a crime which, in my opinion, was committed out of lust and greed. In my view, that places it in the most serious category of crimes of murder. Although Key was the person who actually killed Mrs Matthews, I am satisfied that he was only the instrument for the execution of plans made by the two of you to get rid of Mrs Matthews, and, as such, I consider your criminality, in fact, to be greater than that of Key.

‘In reaching an appropriate sentence, however, I bear in mind that Key does have a prior conviction for a very violent crime. I indicated to Key that the circumstances of his crime warranted a non-parole period of 30 years’ imprisonment, but, in view of his plea, his cooperation with the authorities, and his undertaking to give evidence at your trial, I reduced his sentence to one of 20 years’ imprisonment.

‘Neither of you, however, is entitled to a discount on a proper sentence as a result of any plea or any indication of contrition. I have finally concluded that each of you should receive a non-parole period equivalent to that which I would have imposed on Key prior to allowing for any discount. Burgess, in your case, I fix a non-parole period of 30 years to commence from 4 August 2001. Matthews, in your case, I fix a non-parole period of 30 years to commence from 7 September 2001.’

Family and friends of Carolyn Matthews cheered as the sentence was read. Burgess showed no emotion. Matthews winked and smiled at his family as he was taken away as if he were going off on an extended vacation on a luxury holiday resort.

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

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

Matthews also took umbrage to the mentions of him in the article and wrote to the newspaper concerned and said:

‘The story was on Michelle and her ways, so why was a photo of me in the story? We were not proven to have had an affair. We were convicted of murder, not adultery.

‘My innocence is still maintained, this Michelle and I are not lovers and were not lovers. If you must write this tripe please use the word “alleged”. Your story does not help my case when you print “Kevin Matthews, Michelle’s lover”.’

‘We are not lovers now and Michelle is in a relationship with the ex-screw from Northfield.’

It was yet another brainless, backhanded insult to a decent, hard-working woman and devoted mother, Carolyn Matthews, who died at the hands of people who no longer had any feelings for each other and would most likely never see each other ever again.

It is all such a horrible shame.