Teenage 'satanists' dreamed of killing
The Age (Australia), September 4, 1999
By Suzanne Klotz
Two sadistic lesbian teenagers who dubbed themselves the "Anti-Christ" and "Angel of Sorrow" stalked and unleashed a merciless and sickening attack on a vulnerable tourist, the Brisbane Supreme Court was told yesterday.
Sarah Fotini Bird, 19, of Melbourne, has pleaded guilty to attempted murder and Aleaha Jade Schipper, also 19, of Buderim in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, has pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm with intent.
Prosecutor Mr Peter Ridgeway has asked for life imprisonment for Bird, who stabbed 59-year-old New Zealand grandmother Dulcie Brook 22 times and cut her throat from ear to ear as she walked alone in Noosa National Park on 30 June last year.
Schipper helped by repeatedly hitting the woman on the head with nunchakkas and then dumping her body down a cliff.
Mr Ridgeway said Ms Brook only survived because of her courage, and because Bird's knife was blunt and bent when it stabbed her.
Bird and Schipper, who were loners, were bonded not only by their lesbian relationship but by a strange "satanistic" reality constructed by Bird, which she fed to Schipper.
"Their relationship centred on the development of a pervasive and insidious system of beliefs situated around a satanic precept," Mr Ridgeway said.
"Their belongings contained copious writings, diaries and journals by both, which showed the two were involved in a relationship which was sexually oriented and they both had defined roles derived from a satanic lexicon devised by Bird."
Bird decided she was "Kargulin", the Anti-Christ, number two on Satan's totem pole, and that Schipper was "Satiryn", the Angel of Sorrow, and Kargulin's lover.
She gave Schipper a certificate welcoming her as a satanic devotee and as her satanic, sadistic, sexual ritual partner.
Bird called the satanic lexicon she devised - which outlined complex characters, anthology, and history - as "the little game I'm playing with Aleaha", and wrote that without it things would be so boring they wouldn't have a relationship.
"It's an obsessive, massive invention exhibiting features which, to say the least, are bizarre," Mr Ridgeway said.
Bird's journal revealed she saw herself as an all-powerful killer.
"I'll never be caught or found, I will be feared by everyone," she wrote in her journal.
"No one will be free from their fears until my last slaughter.
"When you touch the victim, you can feel their fear, you can touch the perfection of life, which in minutes you will destroy."
During the police interview Bird gave after the pair were caught eight days after the attack, she often laughed, and greeted the revelation she had stabbed her victim 22 times with the comment "that's pretty cool". She said it had been her "dream" to kill.
"It was an interest for me, I have no idea how it came to be an interest for me but it was," she said during the interview.
"We came to a joint agreement that we should get some money, but we didn't intend to kill her, but we got desperate in the end and I succumbed to my desire to kill someone."Mr Ridgeway said the interview revealed Bird had been amused, excited, challenged and stimulated by the attack.
"In all your years at the bar and on the bench you will never have seen a more sickening display from the humanoid species," he told Justice Margaret Wilson.
Schipper's barrister Mr Greg McGuire asked for seven to 10 years' jail for his client, saying the 12 to 13 years suggested by the prosecution was excessive.
Justice Wilson adjourned the sentencing until Friday.
