Valerie Dunn and Tracey Greenbury were both murdered by Leigh Robinson, Valerie in Chadstone, 1968 and Tracey in Frankston in April 2008.
Some argue that it is better to let ten guilty men go free before we execute an innocent, I can add on that letting the guilty live is dangerous to society ..... If Leigh Robinson was executed in the 1960’s, another life would not be lost. This is the consequence for failing to execute a murderer…
Readers vote in favour of return of death penalty in the wake of Leigh Robinson's conviction over murder of Tracey Greenbury
- Russell Robinson, AAP
- From: Herald Sun
- September 23, 2009 12:00AM
Noel McNamara's comments come after 61-year-old Leigh Robinson was convicted on Tuesday for murdering his girlfriend Tracey Greenbury, 33.
Robinson's latest conviction comes 40 years after he was sentenced to death in 1968 for the stabbing murder of an ex-girlfriend. That sentence was commuted to a 20-year jail term.
Mr McNamara said Robinson should never have been allowed out of jail, adding that maximum sentences for convicted murderers needed to handed out.
"Anyone that is classed as a murderer and has been sentenced as a murderer and then comes out and commits other crimes of violence, and gets slaps on the wrist, we just find that a terrible thing,'' Mr McNamara told AAP.
Should Victoria bring back the death penalty?
- Yes 69.15% (65 votes)
- No 30.85% (29 votes)
Total votes: 94
"The justice system needs to be completely overhauled. The community is outraged at it but the judges just go on and on.The government puts up the maximums but nothing ever comes of it. The judges still go on the same sentences.''
Mr McNamara's daughter, Tracey, was murdered in 1992. Her killer received a 10-year minimum jail term.
Mr McNamara also said a jury should have the right to know the accused's prior form before handing down a verdict.
"In other countries they are given that,'' he said. "Here we have a one-sided court system where hearsay is allowed by one side, the defence, but it is not allowed by the victims.
"We find that most offensive, particularly in violent crimes, murder and rape.''
Mr McNamara backed a suggestion by former federal MP Phil Clearly to introduce a national register of men convicted of violent crimes against women.
"I would be all in favour of anything that would improve this,'' he said.
"But our belief is if the justice system did its job in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem.''
At 4pm today, more than 77.5% of 2739 votes cast on heraldsun.com.au supported the return of the death penalty in Victoria.
The debate comes in the wake of yesterday's conviction of 61-year-old Robinson for murdering his former girlfriend Tracey Greenbury, 33. He shot her at close range as she cowered in a neighbour's hallway last year.
The Herald Sun revealed this morning that the grieving father of Robinson's first murder victim plotted to exact his own revenge on the man who viciously stabbed the teenager to death.
Returned digger Harold Dunn planned to shoot Robinson when he returned to the murder scene under police escort to re-enact the frenzied knife attack on Dunn's daughter, Valerie, in 1968.
"I want to shoot him between the eyes. I want to shoot him dead," he told his family at the time. "I don't care. I'll do 20 years if I have to."
Originally sentenced to death, Leigh Robinson was spared the hangman's noose by the State Government of the day and served just 20 years in prison.
Yesterday, 41 years later, Robinson was again convicted of murder, this time Frankston mother-of-two Tracey Greenbury.
Robinson was found guilty of firing his shortened 12-gauge shotgun into the back of Tracey's head on April 28 last year. She died instantly.
When told yesterday of Harold Dunn's planned revenge, Tracey's father, Max, said: "I felt the same way. Without hesitation I'd have done the same thing at the time."
"If Mr Dunn had killed him then Tracey would still be alive today. But then again the father would have been jailed for killing a monster."
Harold Dunn yesterday welcomed the jury decision.
"But they should've kept the mongrel behind bars. If they had, that young Tracey would still be alive," he told the Herald Sun.
Yesterday's jury deliberations were among the shortest in a murder trial. The five women and seven men took just an hour to reach a verdict.
The 61-year-old truck driver, who pleaded not guilty, claimed the loaded and cocked shotgun had gone off accidentally after he had pursued his victim into her neighbour's house.
After shooting her at point-blank range, Robinson walked away, leaving Tracey's shocked neighbour, Leoni Coates, fearing he would return to get her.
What the jury had not been told during the two-week Supreme Court trial was that Robinson had been sentenced to death for the June 8, 1968 murder of his former girlfriend, Valerie Ethel Dunn.
The then 20-year-old labourer slashed and stabbed the pretty shopgirl twice in the front and 14 times in the back with a long-handled kitchen knife in her Margot St, Chadstone, home.
Robinson also stabbed 17-year-old Valerie's boyfriend, Des Grewar, who survived and gave evidence at the murder trial.
According to family friend Ray Patterson, who discovered Valerie Dunn's bloodied body in her Chadstone home, Harold Dunn had asked to borrow one of his rifles.
"Harry knew when Robinson was coming back to the house for the police re-enactment," Mr Patterson said.
"He told me: 'I want to kill Robinson. I want to shoot him when he comes down the drive'.
"He was going to hide in the garage and shoot him. He was then going to give himself up and tell the detectives, 'OK, I did it. Here I am take me away'."
Mr Patterson, who was going out with Valerie's sister, Paula, at the time (and later married her) had been building a bird cage in the Dunn backyard when he heard the teenager's cries.
He rushed into the house and found Valerie lying in the hallway, covered in blood. Mr Patterson cradled her in his arms as she drew her final breath.
By this time, Robinson had fled the scene.
"Harold Dunn was a man who'd lost his daughter and he wanted revenge on Robinson," Mr Patterson said.
"But he didn't have his own gun. So he asked me for one. He asked me heaps of times.
"I said to him, 'I'm not going to give you a gun'.
"I didn't want him to get into trouble.
"I told him, 'they'll lock you up', but Harry said, 'I don't care. I just want to kill him'."
Mr Patterson said he then got rid of his guns.
The inside story of convicted rapist and double murderer Leigh Robinson
- Russell Robinson
- From: Herald Sun
- September 30, 2009
"Yeah, you could say that," he mumbled to Det Sen-Sgt Rowland Legg.
"If they'd hanged me, she'd still be alive."
Sadly, Tracey Greenbury's death warrant was signed six years before she was born.
On the day Robinson escaped the hangman's rope, Tracey's fate was sealed.
It was just a foregone conclusion when her brother Jeffrey, also a convicted murderer, introduced her to the extroverted truck driver almost twice her age.
Tracey Greenbury didn't stand a chance.
Forty years earlier, teenager Valerie Ethel Dunn's card was also marked the moment Leigh Robinson entered her life. Robinson slashed and stabbed the sweet 17-year-old shop assistant to death in her home in Margot St, Chadstone.
He stabbed her twice in the front and 14 times in the back with a black, long-handled kitchen knife on June 8, 1968.
Her boyfriend, Des Grewar, who had bravely gone to her aid, was also knifed in the frenzied attack.
Robinson, then 20, was arrested six hours later. He would later plead not guilty to murder. He was never charged with the attempted murder of young Des.
Robinson was convicted and sentenced to death, which was commuted to 30 years' hard labour after a mercy plea to the Bolte state government.
Robinson served just 15 years.
Tracey Greenbury, 34, was aware of Robinson's murder conviction.
But was she also aware that in the mid-1990s he had served five years for one count of rape and 11 of indecent assault involving two underage girls?
Until then, the Frankston single mother of two lived in the forlorn hope that the 60-year-old "who looks after me and the kids" had rehabilitated.
But Max Greenbury, her father, had misgivings.
Tracey tried to reconcile hisconcerns by telling him Robinson's murder was "way, way back in time".
Body: "Besides, don't people rehabilitate?" she suggested.
But Tracey's trust was brutally shattered when he assaulted her in his caravan, waving a handgun in her face while shouting: "Don't push my buttons."
A week later, on a wet and cold April morning last year, he made good his threat. At point-blank range, he aimed a 12-gauge shotgun at her head and pulled the trigger.
That afternoon, Paula Dunn was listening to the radio news bulletins describing the suspect as a man who had murdered a young girl 40 years ago and had been sentenced to death.
"I was in the kitchen and fainted," said Paula.
Memories of her murdered sister and the revulsion her family had for Robinson came flooding back.
She then rang sisters Pam and Barbara and other family members, including her own children.
Des Grewar was at his north Queensland home when the telephone calls started from Melbourne.
The earth-moving contractor is reminded daily of Robinson by long scars that are still visible on his chest and stomach.
But the news served only to re-ignite the emotional pain that he endured over the past four decades.
"It'll never go away. It's something you carry for life," Des said.
Married with children, Des retains deep feelings for Valerie. "I loved her and I'm pretty sure she loved me."
A year or so earlier, he'd discarded his remaining photo of Valerie, believing life had taken a different path.
But these days his thoughts constantly return to Margot St, Chadstone. They go back to the Dunns' modest house, of Harold - a carpet layer by trade - and Vera, and their four daughters.
Four doors down the road was Ricky Foster and his mother, widely known as "Fossie". They had a boarder: Ricky's old army mate, Leigh Robinson.
The families got along well and a friendship began between Robinson and Valerie.
Robinson, a labourer, had left school at 13. He had a high IQ, but also a troubled personality. This accounts for his expulsion from Oakleigh High School.
He never knew his father. According to official documents, Gwendoline Helen Robinson divorced William George Robinson in June, 1952, when Leigh was just 4.
According to prison psychiatrists, Robinson had a difficult childhood. He lived with his grandmother, then an aunt, before returning to Gwen.
He told prison officials that Gwen, often called "Robbie", had "certain drink problems".
Harold Dunn told police he initially had no objection to Robinson seeing his daughter.
But he was aware of turbulence in their relationship and of Robinson's anti-social behaviour. Robinson had worked part-time for him as a carpet layer. But Robinson was on the fringe of serious criminality well before Valerie Dunn's murder.
In his interview with homicide detectives - just six hours after Valerie's murder - he blamed the break-up on "every bastard who stuck their nose in".
He named one of Valerie's close friends. In her police statement, the friend recounted a terrifying incident two months earlier when Robinson chased them in his car at high speed.
"When we got to my house Leigh Robinson got out of his car and spoke to my mother," she told police.
"He said 'I will kill anyone who gets in the way', and he dragged Val into his car and drove off."
Robinson was arrested after a firearm incident in his car around the same time. It was Harold Dunn, by police request, who approached the agitated Robinson and persuaded him to hand over his gun.
Robinson was also convicted of breaking into an Oakleigh garage and stealing a box of tools.
Harold provided the bail money, and was never repaid.
Valerie's sisters said the Dunn women, particularly Vera, were disgusted by Robinson's loud and extroverted behaviour, and tried to stay clear of him.
By this time, Valerie and Robinson had been going out for about 12 months but she was keen to end the friendship.
Valerie had also begun to fear him, according to younger sister Paula.
Paula's boyfriend at the time was Ray Patterson, whom she would marry.
Patterson spoke of Robinson's darker side, notably his random criminality.
He recounted an incident when Robinson kicked in the back window of a parked car, then climbed in and ripped the radio out of the dashboard.
He would also syphon petrol from parked cars.
After Valerie called an end to their friendship she reunited with a former boyfriend, Des Grewar.
Robinson went into angry denial and developed bitter resentment towards Des, a panel beater from South Oakleigh. But he continued to work for Harold. Robinson was also harbouring violent fantasies, well before his frenzied attack on Valerie.
"I have had dreams and during those dreams I have dreamt that I was going to kill Val," Robinson told detectives in his police interview.
"I dreamt that we were going somewhere in the car and she ribbed me about the way I was driving the car and I caused an accident and we were both killed."
On the day of Valerie's murder, Robinson was on a job with Harold.
Body: Early in the afternoon, Harold asked Robinson to drop some materials off at Margot St in his car and then return to collect him.
Robinson never made it back.
About 4pm Robinson pulled up outside the Dunn family home. Valerie and Des were inside.
In his police interview, Robinson claims he asked Valerie if she would go out with him, and she asked where they'd be going.
"Down to the Golden Bowl (a tenpin bowling venue) because I haven't got any money," he told her.
Robinson said Valerie "just pulled a face of not wanting to go to that sort of thing.
"Then I said: 'What, aren't you coming out now?'
"She then said her favourite saying: 'I don't know'.
"That used to get under my skin because every time you asked her something, she said: 'I don't know'.
"She gave me another of those looks and that's when it happened.
"I was going to slap the look off her face, but I just grabbed the knife and swung it."
T HE knife was on the kitchen bench. With one swipe, Valerie fell to the floor holding her side.
"I went down to pick her up and she was yelling out 'Help' and Des came in. He was yelling and I jumped up and Des shot out of the place then, and Valerie got up and tried to follow him.
"And I tried to grab her. I didn't want her to go and to stop her I struck her a couple more times with the knife."
In his record of interview, Des Grewar said he was in the lounge at the time and heard Valerie screaming and calling his name.
"She was also screaming out Leigh's name," he told police.
"I raced out into the kitchen. I saw Val curled up on the floor and Leigh was stabbing her with a knife.
"I reached for Val and he stabbed me in the stomach.
"Val half picked herself up off the floor and I helped her and we made for the front door.
"While I was getting the door open Leigh got Val then. He was stabbing her in the back, in the hallway.
"He was still stabbing Val and immediately after that I went out through the door.
"I went to one of the neighbour's places. I looked back and Leigh was standing at the end of the driveway."
He said Robinson did not utter a word during the attack.
Robinson told police he had stumbled over Valerie in the hallway.
"She was crying and she called my name once. That's when I bent down and kissed her," he said.
"I didn't know what to do. She was crying and rolling on the floor and I just shot out the door."
Robinson says he jumped into Harold's car and drove around the corner into Waverley Rd, where he got out and tried to ring Valerie's house from a public phone box.
But he couldn't get through.
"I wanted to see if she was still alive," he told police. He then rang Detective Roy Cooke, who he knew from a previous criminal matter.
Robinson headed to a friend's house in Devon Meadows and confessed to the stabbings. The friend then accompanied him to police at Cranbourne where he gave himself up and handed over the murder weapon.
In November 1968, Robinson pleaded not guilty to murder despite evidence by Des Grewar and Ray Patterson. A Criminal Court jury found him guilty and Justice George Lush sentenced him to death.
Six months later it was commuted by state Cabinet to 30 years' hard labour, but Robinson completed just 15 years.
Des Grewar was devastated.
Not only had he lost the love of his life, but Robinson was never charged with attempting to kill him.
"I wanted revenge," Des said. "I wanted to do everything I could to make sure Robinson stayed in prison or was hanged.
"I even went to Russell Street (police headquarters) and tried to get him charged with attempted murder."
In his naivety, Des went to the reception desk where he says he was told to wait until Robinson was released and then have him charged.
"For years that's what I wanted to do. But life changes. I just got on with it," he said.
Harold Dunn has endured every day since without his daughter and has a succinct view of it all: "They should have hanged him there and then."
Now retired, former Homicide Squad detective Roy Currie regards Robinson as the worst killer he's investigated.
"During my police career I investigated more than a dozen murders," he said. "I regard Leigh Robinson as one of the most vicious in that group."
Robinson's time behind bars was spent mostly at Pentridge, in A Division, where he became heavily involved in the performing arts.
He also established a strong bond with TV star Gil Tucker, Constable Roy Baker in the Cop Shop series.
Over the years, Tucker gave character evidence when Robinson was in court for theft, and then the rape and indecent assaults of two underage girls.
He and Robinson visited each other's homes, and Tucker was a guest at his wedding.
Tucker, who ironically played a pathologist in a recent television episode of City Homicide, would not discuss with the Herald Sun his close relationship with Robinson.
Robinson's 15 years behind bars were marked by his brief escape from the Morwell River minimum-security prison, with the help of Colleen Thompson, his fiancee at the time.
Their relationship started as pen friends and blossomed when the mother of four visited him in Pentridge. Robinson tried several times to marry her while still serving his sentence, but each request was ignored by prison management.
They were arrested after 24 hours and Robinson had three months added to his term, while Thompson received a good behaviour bond.
In 1983, when Robinson walked out of Pentridge Prison a free man, Tracey Greenbury was still in primary school.
Years later, their paths would intersect and briefly track for several tumultuous months, until that cold, wet April morning last year when he called on Tracey with a loaded shotgun. Before then, Robinson would be in and out of jail.
In 1991, he went back inside for two years after pleading guilty to 14 counts of receiving stolen goods, one of burglary and two of unlawful possession.
In 1993, Robinson married Gena, a mother of five he met while serving time for Valerie Dunn's murder.
She taught prisoners how to make stuffed toys. They started living together soon after his release.
T HEY tied the knot after Robinson had been charged with the sex offences going back to 1987. In 1994, he was convicted and sentenced to five years.
A year into his sentence, Tracey Greenbury gave birth to her first child, Harley. She and partner Jeremy would have another child, Jamie-Lee.
But it was a troubled relationship.
The following year, 1996, the Greenbury family was rocked when son Jeffrey murdered a 70-year-old man in a Seaford caravan park.
The 27-year-old served 10 years and it was through those prison connections that his sister was introduced to Robinson. After Robinson's release, his brief marriage to Gena ended.
Despite the divorce they remained in close contact. Robinson phoned Gena while on the run after murdering Tracey Greenbury. She has since been to prison to see him a number of times.
After Gena, Robinson had a steady stream of girlfriends.
He got a job carting chickens and found digs in an old caravan and annex on the Pearcedale property of his trucking boss. He was known to his workmates as "Big Leigh".
Robinson also got to know Tracey Greenbury. They met at a backyard barbecue at the Mornington home of Jeffrey Greenbury.
They started going out but the relationship was rocky and Tracey had growing doubts about the truck driver.
Like Valerie Dunn 40 years before her, Tracey would pay the ultimate price for crossing Leigh Robinson.
Max Greenbury vividly recalls in the week before she was murdered how Tracey told him that Robinson had viciously assaulted her in his caravan.
He said Tracey told him: "Dad, he held a gun to my head."
Decision to save Leigh Robinson from death sentence had to be unanimous
- Russell Robinson
- From: Herald Sun
- September 30, 2009
Five months earlier, Justice George Lush had sentenced the 20-year-old labourer to death for killing former girlfriend, Valerie Dunn.
During Bolte's time as premier, 34 murderers on death row were spared the hangman's rope.
But not Ronald Joseph Ryan, who was executed in 1967 for the murder of Pentridge warder George Hodson.
Until hanging was abolished in 1975 in Victoria, all pleas for clemency went before Cabinet.
Leigh Robinson was no exception, and the last living member of that Cabinet can remember his submission.
But Vance Dickie, a former health minister, would not disclose the views of each member.
Mr Dickie, 91, said Justice Lush and the Solicitor-General were also present.
"They were never hurried decisions, I can assure you," Mr Dickie said.
"It was given terrific consideration. Each man had his own views, and weight was given to the views of everybody.
"Henry Bolte said the decision had to be unanimous, or not at all.
"There was never a vote (as such) taken. It was just general discussion.
"I suppose you could call it a vote, but all that was required was, have we got a unanimous decision on this matter.
"It wasn't a case of putting your hands up or anything ike that."
Asked what his own position was regarding Robinson, Mr Dickie replied:
"My view was that we were in Cabinet to make decisions, and the law of the land was capital punishment, and my view obviously concurred with the overall majority of the Cabinet."
The following day the Cabinet decision was endorsed by the Executive Council, which issued the following declaration:
"In the case of Leigh Robinson, his Excellency the Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, directed that the offender be imprisoned for 30 years with a minimum of 20 years before becoming eligible for parole."
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Sisters of misfortune
- Russell Robinson
- From: Herald Sun
- September 30, 2009
TRACEY Greenbury and Valerie Dunn were murdered 40 years apart, but there were many similarities about the killings.
ROBINSON was introduced to the two women by third parties. Tracey through brother Jeffrey, and Valerie through a neighbour and close family friend.
BOTH murders involved one-time girlfriends and centred on break-ups and rejection.
BOTH women had been subject to violent incidents in the lead-up to their deaths. Tracey Greenbury was assaulted in Robinson's caravan with a gun held to her head. Valerie Dunn was threatened with a .22 rifle.
BOTH women were killed in or around their own homes. Tracey was first assaulted and then chased from her house and shot two doors away in a neighbour's house. Valerie was stabbed to death in her kitchen.
IN both murders Robinson said nothing to the witnesses, one of whom he stabbed.
AFTER each murder Robinson fled in a car. While on the run he telephonedhis victims' families and close friends.
AFTER each murder Robinson arranged with police to give himself up.
EACH time he told friends he would take his own life.
THE families of both victims disliked Robinson and had serious reservations about his relationships with his victims.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/sisters-of-misfortune/story-e6frf7jo-1225780945202
A poll conducted in Melbourne, where Leigh Robinson committed his crimes, found 78 per cent of about 3000 respondents voted for the return of capital punishment.
Robinson served just 15 years in jail after his death sentence for the 1968 murder of Valerie Dunn was commuted to 30 years.
On Tuesday he was convicted of the murder of his girlfriend, single mother Tracey Greenbury.
Many believed Robinson should never have been released from prison.
Robinson's stepson Daniel joined the call - by declaring that Robinson should hang.
"He's done it before and he'll do it again. There is no delicate way of saying this," Daniel said.
"This man must hang. He must not ever be given the chance of getting out into society again, simply because he will kill if he is granted freedom."
A Supreme Court jury on Tuesday convicted Robinson of murdering Ms Greenbury on April 28 last year.
The jury had not been told that Robinson, 61, had murdered before.
Robinson's second murder conviction revived the debate on capital punishment, with many arguing Greenbury would still be alive if Robinson had been hanged 40 years ago.
It emerged yesterday that Leoni Coates, who watched in horror as Robinson murdered Greenbury, was living in a borrowed caravan.
Mrs Coates said she had been driven from her house by nightmares of the April 28 morning last year when her neighbour was shotgunned dead while cowering in the hallway of her home.
"Just about every morning I had flashbacks of Leigh Robinson pointing his shotgun at Tracey's head," she said. "It just got too much. I had to get out."
Call to bring back the noose after Leigh Robinson sentenced
- By Russell Robinson
- From: The Daily Telegraph
- October 01, 2009
- 54 comments
A poll conducted in Melbourne, where Leigh Robinson committed his crimes, found 78 per cent of about 3000 respondents voted for the return of capital punishment.
Robinson served just 15 years in jail after his death sentence for the 1968 murder of Valerie Dunn was commuted to 30 years.
On Tuesday he was convicted of the murder of his girlfriend, single mother Tracey Greenbury.
Many believed Robinson should never have been released from prison.
Robinson's stepson Daniel joined the call - by declaring that Robinson should hang.
"He's done it before and he'll do it again. There is no delicate way of saying this," Daniel said.
"This man must hang. He must not ever be given the chance of getting out into society again, simply because he will kill if he is granted freedom."
A Supreme Court jury on Tuesday convicted Robinson of murdering Ms Greenbury on April 28 last year.
The jury had not been told that Robinson, 61, had murdered before.
Robinson's second murder conviction revived the debate on capital punishment, with many arguing Greenbury would still be alive if Robinson had been hanged 40 years ago.
It emerged yesterday that Leoni Coates, who watched in horror as Robinson murdered Greenbury, was living in a borrowed caravan.
Mrs Coates said she had been driven from her house by nightmares of the April 28 morning last year when her neighbour was shotgunned dead while cowering in the hallway of her home.
"Just about every morning I had flashbacks of Leigh Robinson pointing his shotgun at Tracey's head," she said. "It just got too much. I had to get out."
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