Vic: 'Society Killer' a stranger to reality
By Mike Hedge
MELBOURNE, April 11 AAP - The "Society Killer" looked more like a confused child clingingto an older sister as he sat in the Supreme Court today listening to a judge describehis crimes.
According to the family that once loved him, Matthew Wales is anything but.
A year ago this week, Wales, 34, killed his millionaire mother and her husband, beltingthem over the head with a piece of wood as they left a dinner party at his up-market Melbournehome.
After leaving them lying for a day under a pile of rubbish in his garden, Wales buriedthem in a shallow bush grave and set about laying a false trail for police.
But Wales's cover-up was as unsophisticated as the man himself.
To transport the bodies, he hired a trailer from a local garage and paid for it withhis credit card; he bought chains and shackles and paid for them the same way; and afterthe burial he returned to the grave in bushland east of Melbourne to camouflage it withgrass from his front lawn and decorative rocks he bought from a nursery.
Even before the grave was discovered he had aroused the suspicions of his family byhis lack of interest in the search for the couple.
Later, his behaviour at a memorial service resulted in almost open animosity betweenhimself and the rest of his family.
A few days later he was charged with his mother's murder and began revealing a taleof justification that was to impress almost no-one.
Wales claimed his mother, Margaret Wales-King, had used her considerable wealth tomanipulate him financially and emotionally.
In official police interviews he wept as he told how his mother had also disliked hiswife Maritza, and had denigrated her family.
On the night of her death, Wales said, she had "sat back like a queen" and lauded over him.
Wales even claimed he had been sexually molested by her husband, Paul King. The claimwas rejected by the judge.
As the alleged pressure imposed by his mother mounted, Wales hatched his murderous plan.
But Justice Coldrey also outlined another side of the story, one in which a lovingmother had supported her underachieving son throughout his life.
While Wales's interviews with police were riddled with expressions of dislike, otherfamily members gave evidence of a loving relationship and of a mother who publicly defendedher son.
"You were adored by your mother who showered you with gifts and love," the judge said today.
Justice Coldrey also told Wales he had an IQ that placed him in the "lower averagelevel", that he was immature, that he had always displayed learning difficulties, butthat he had "no organic brain disfunction".
Through it all, Wales sat in the prisoner's dock seemingly failing to acknowledge thatthe judge was talking about him.
Every few minutes he looked at his wife sitting alongside him, seeking her hand and,it seemed, an understanding of what was happening.
But Maritza Wales, 39, hardly looked at her husband or responded to him, her head bentforward as she wept almost constantly during the judge's summing up.
Her initial decision to stand by him had led to her being charged with perverting thecourse of justice and she appeared to comprehend more than he did the gravity of the situation.
It had been Wales's similar inability to comprehend the reality of his life that hadled him to kill, Justice Coldrey said.
While he dismissed Wales's claims that his mother had done anything that might haveprompted him to kill her, he accepted that the son had not seen it that way.
Wales's view of his mother had become so distorted he had contemplated building anelectrocution device with which to kill her, the judge said.
After the killings he regarded himself as a "hero" who had done the family a favour.
But at the same time, Wales was not suffering from any identifiable psychiatric disorder.
His brother Damien would agree.
He claims his brother and his brother's wife are liars who together painted a falsepicture in an attempt to somehow justify their crimes.
Family sources claim the true reason for the murders was not that Wales was treatedbadly by his mother, but that he was treated too well.
They say she had funded house purchases and business ventures for her son and had drawnthe line when he wanted more money to establish a coffee shop after his wife's clothingbusiness went broke.
When she drew the line at what she believed was yet another folly, Wales became bitterand more twisted.
In court today it was difficult to tell what Wales felt or thought, but you sensedit had little to do with reality - even when Justice Coldrey told him he would spend thenext 24 years in jail.
AAP mh/dk/kim/de
KEYWORD: WALES SCENE
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