Guilty of murder: lover dismembered with power saw

Paul Bibby - Sydney Morning Herald - November 23, 2011

A Sydney man has been found guilty of murdering his girlfriend and dismembering her body with a power saw just as she was about to give evidence against him on assault charges. A Supreme Court jury today found Neal Richardson, 45, guilty of murdering Kiralee Grant, between April 17 and April 25 last year. Kiralee Grant was 41 at the time of her death. The court heard the couple had an unusual lifestyle, with Ms Grant working as a prostitute to supplement a pension, and that their relationship was characterised by drug and alcohol abuse. Ms Grant's dismembered body was found dumped in orange garbage bags on a property at Gerringong, on the NSW south coast, on September 30 last year. The day after Ms Grant's disappearance, Richardson was due to appear in Waverley Local Court charged with assaulting her. When Ms Grant failed to turn up to give evidence, the charges against him were dropped. Richardson pleaded not guilty to the murder, but did not deny he chopped up and disposed of the body. He claimed that he and Ms Grant had a fight during which she fell and hit her head on a coffee table, which caused her death. Fearing that he would be blamed, Richardson said he dismembered her body in the bath of their Malabar unit with a power saw, and dumped her remains in a bid to hide her death from authorities. The trial heard that Richardson later told Ms Grant's friends a series of stories about her disappearance, including that she had run off with a rich man from Blacktown. But the jury rejected Richardson's claims, finding him guilty after less than two full days of deliberations, which followed a three-week trial.

Discussion Points

In what ways is this story similar to that in the poem Porphyrias Lover by Robert Browning? The men both murder their lover. In what ways do you feel that the mens motivation to murder is different? Are there any similarities in their attitude to their lover? Are these murders both cases of domestic violence? Explain your answer.

TASKS
1.

Write a newspaper report on the murder of Porphyria. Make sure you write a good headline. It will help to go through the poem first and extract some facts from the story e.g. What time of day was it? What was the weather like? How was she killed? You can add other parts to the story if you want to such as who found the body and when

2.

Write a dramatic monologue poem with the title Kiralees Lover written in the voice of Neal Richardson. The poem can follow the pattern and rhyme scheme of Porphyrias Lover if you want but it doesnt have to.
Porphyrias Lover Paul Conneally PCAS 2012