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Episode: Case 302: The De Gruchy Family

Author: Casefile Presents
Duration: 00:45:15

Episode Shownotes

*** Content warnings: Child victims *** Wayne and Jennifer De Gruchy lived a comfortable life in the New South Wales suburb of Albion Park Rail with their three teenage children, Matthew, Adrian and Sarah. But on the morning of Wednesday March 13 1996, detectives arrived at a scene that would

shake the local community to the core. --- Narration – Anonymous Host Research & writing – Vikki Petraitis Creative direction – Milly Raso Production and music – Mike Migas Music – Andrew D.B. Joslyn Sign up for Casefile Premium: Apple Premium Spotify Premium Patreon For all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/case-302-the-de-gruchy-family

Full Transcript

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00:02:29 Speaker_00
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00:02:45 Speaker_00
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00:02:57 Speaker_00
It was just after 8.30am on Wednesday March 13 1996, when a team of eight detectives were called to a residence in the New South Wales suburb of Albion Park Rail.

00:03:09 Speaker_00
Detective Sergeant Danny Sharkey, who headed the crew, quickly drove to the address in Shearwater Boulevard, accompanied by several colleagues. The house was easy to spot, thanks to an ambulance parked outside.

00:03:23 Speaker_00
As the detectives pulled up to the small one-storey brick home, they saw a tall, dark-haired teenager doubled up on the front lawn with an older man next to him. The teenager was crying and asking repeatedly, what's happened? Who's done this?

00:03:40 Speaker_00
He was so distraught that the paramedics rushed him to hospital. Detective Sharkey briefly spoke to the older man, a neighbour whose name was Steve Bailey.

00:03:52 Speaker_00
Steve described how he'd been outside talking to a friend when the teen ran out of the home screaming that something had happened to his mother and sister.

00:04:01 Speaker_00
Steve had entered the residence only to be confronted by a terrible sight in the front bedroom. He immediately called the police. Detective Sharkey carefully entered the house and headed straight towards the dimly lit front bedroom.

00:04:17 Speaker_00
The windows were closed with the blinds drawn, but amongst the darkness was a double bed, a dressing table, and a treadmill.

00:04:26 Speaker_00
On the floor lay a broken denture plate, a pair of slippers, and a book with the words, Love Story printed in bold on the back cover. Detective Sharkey could make out a figure laying on the bed.

00:04:40 Speaker_00
It was a woman dressed in a nightie, partially covered with a blanket. The mattress and a pillow beneath her head were soaked with blood. The woman herself was unrecognisable.

00:04:52 Speaker_00
She had suffered multiple severe fractures to her skull and facial bones causing extensive underlying brain trauma. The cause of death appeared to be a shotgun blast to the head.

00:05:05 Speaker_00
Looking around the room, Sharkey saw several family portraits along the wall. They depicted a family of five consisting of a mother, a father, and their three adolescent children. All smiling.

00:05:45 Speaker_00
The deceased woman was identified as 41-year-old Jennifer DiGrucci. She lived at the home with her husband Wayne and their three children, 18-year-old Matthew, 15-year-old Adrian, and 13-year-old Sarah.

00:06:00 Speaker_00
Detective Sharkey moved out of Jennifer's bedroom and into the next one along the hallway. A big white teddy bear sat by the door and band posters decorated the wall.

00:06:11 Speaker_00
A portable Walkman cassette player lay on the floor by a single bed with pink sheets. Lying on the bed, on top of the floral blanket, was 13-year-old Sarah DeGrigi. She was wearing pyjamas and one of her legs was dangling over the side of her bed.

00:06:30 Speaker_00
Though her face was half-concealed by a blood-soaked cushion, it was clear that Sarah had also sustained severe and fatal head injuries. Detective Sharkey and his team did a quick walkthrough of the premises, careful not to touch anything.

00:06:46 Speaker_00
They needed to make sure there weren't any other victims inside, or an offender. After they confirmed that the house was clear, they called in the crime scene examiners.

00:06:58 Speaker_00
A pathologist estimated that Jennifer and Sarah DiGrucci were killed between 8pm and 1am the previous night, Jennifer appeared to have been targeted first.

00:07:10 Speaker_00
She had gone to bed, read for a while, then taken off her glasses and put them on the bedside table before turning off the light and going to sleep.

00:07:20 Speaker_00
While Jennifer's pillow and mattress were soaked with blood, the absence of blood elsewhere suggested that the killer had covered her head while attacking her.

00:07:29 Speaker_00
Injuries to her hands indicated she had woken during the assault and tried to defend herself.

00:07:36 Speaker_00
Small spots of blood on the wall above the body were swabbed for further analysis, as was a small reddish stain at the bottom of the wash basin in the ensuite. Next to be examined was Sarah's room.

00:07:50 Speaker_00
The walkman on the floor indicated she might have been listening to music through its headphones when her mother was attacked, preventing her from hearing the assault.

00:08:00 Speaker_00
The blood-soaked cushion which partially covered Sarah's head had come from a chair in the dining room, The killer had presumably taken it into Sarah's bedroom to cover her face during the murder, just like they'd done to Jennifer.

00:08:14 Speaker_00
As Sarah raised her right arm in defence, her killer pressed the cushion down on her head, smothering her. Notably, Sarah had a bruise on her right forearm that resembled a tram track.

00:08:28 Speaker_00
It was about 15 centimetres long and 5 millimetres wide, with two parallel lines that seemed to close off at the end. Throughout the house, various cupboards had been left open.

00:08:45 Speaker_00
Disconnected cords in a cabinet under the television suggested a video cassette recorder had been stolen. In Matthew DiGrucci's bedroom, drawers and a wardrobe appeared to have been rifled through and a metal money box sat on the floor.

00:09:00 Speaker_00
Aside from these disturbances, the house was neat and tidy. Valuable items, including a jewellery box containing earrings, necklaces and rings, had been left untouched.

00:09:12 Speaker_00
There was no sign of forced entry, but some of the windows and the rear sliding door had been left unlocked. Detectives noted that the house backed onto a reserve that joined the banks of Kuna Bay, a quiet picturesque inlet.

00:09:28 Speaker_00
They considered the possibility that an intruder had entered the property from the reserve with the intention of committing a burglary and then killed Jennifer and Sarah during the course of the crime.

00:09:40 Speaker_00
A search of the Dugucci's backyard, fishpond and roof space turned up nothing of interest. The shotgun believed to have been used in the double homicide was nowhere to be found. Matthew DiGrucci had spent the night at his girlfriend's house.

00:09:56 Speaker_00
He'd arrived home that morning to discover his mother and sister murdered. There was no sign of Jennifer's husband Wayne or the couple's middle child, 15-year-old Adrian.

00:10:08 Speaker_00
Given it was a Wednesday, officers contact Adrian's school to see if he was there. He hadn't turned up for class. The washing machine in the DiGrucci's laundry contained two towels and a pair of rubber gloves.

00:10:25 Speaker_00
The items had recently been washed, yet some faint staining remained on the towels which looked like blood. Investigators theorised that the killer had used these items to clean up the scene.

00:10:38 Speaker_00
In the tiled hallway that connected the bedrooms, testing of some faint reddish stains revealed them to be blood diluted with water. This indicated that someone had tried to wash the blood away rather than simply wiping it up.

00:10:53 Speaker_00
Perhaps this meant the killer had bled too and tried to remove any evidence of their presence. Next to Jennifer's side of the bed, something else caught the eye. A large piece of carpet had been cut out from the floor and removed.

00:11:10 Speaker_00
Closer inspection revealed that two smaller sections of carpet had also been excised and taken. Tufts of carpet fibres around the cuts suggested these removals were recent.

00:11:23 Speaker_00
Detectives surmised that the killer had done this to hide identifiable evidence. There were more reddish stains in the family bathroom, this time in the bottom of the washbasin and on the mirror above the vanity unit.

00:11:38 Speaker_00
In a faint red smear on one of the vanity unit doors was a partial fingerprint. After the entire house had been examined from top to bottom, the forensic investigators turned their attention to the property's garage.

00:11:54 Speaker_00
There was no internal connecting door between the garage and the house. Access was either through the garage doors at the front or via an exterior door at the rear of the house. Detectives were cautious as they approached the garage.

00:12:11 Speaker_00
occurred to them that the perpetrator could be inside, hiding with shotgun ready. They carefully opened the door, wondering if they would find an armed Adrian DiGrucci inside. But instead, they saw a body sprawled across the floor.

00:12:29 Speaker_00
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00:14:42 Speaker_00
The body was identified as 15-year-old Adrian DiCruci. He lay next to an oozing glue gun and an overturned small wooden chair. looked as though he had been fixing the chair when he was attacked.

00:14:57 Speaker_00
When crime scene examiners pulled back the blanket, they confirmed that Adrian's injuries were as brutal as Jennifer and Sarah's. His head had been so severely wounded that a number of his teeth were lying on the ground next to him.

00:15:12 Speaker_00
Fleeces of cast-off blood streaked across the ceiling indicated that Adrian's body had only been covered after the violent assault. Beneath Adrian's t-shirt, his chest was marked with the same parallel tram track-like bruises as Sarah's right arm.

00:15:29 Speaker_00
There was also a circular mark, but unlike his mother and sister, Adrian had no defensive injuries.

00:15:37 Speaker_00
When it came time to transfer Adrian's body from the crime scene, investigators noticed large areas of skin peeling off his left arm where it had been in contact with the concrete floor.

00:15:49 Speaker_00
As soon as his body was removed, they were hit with the strong smell of petrol. His clothing was soaked with it. A red jerry can sat nearby.

00:16:00 Speaker_00
It appeared that the killer had poured petrol on Adrian's body as if intending to set him alight before changing their mind. The triple homicide was sustained and extremely violent.

00:16:14 Speaker_00
number of police who attended the crime scene were subsequently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:16:21 Speaker_00
While the brutality they saw in the DiGrucci home wasn't the only reason they acquired this mental health condition, it was a contributing factor.

00:16:33 Speaker_00
Given that all three victims had been killed in the same way, the attacks were likely committed by one person. Yet autopsies revealed that the murder weapon was not a shotgun as initially believed.

00:16:47 Speaker_00
The victim's head and facial injuries were actually caused by repeated blows with a heavy object such as a crowbar or wheel brace.

00:16:56 Speaker_00
The handle of a wheel brace, the device used to loosen and remove the nuts on a car wheel before changing a tyre, could cause the long parallel bruises found on Sarah and Adrian.

00:17:08 Speaker_00
The circular wound Adrian sustained to his chest could also correspond with the wheelbracer's round head. Jennifer DiGrucci's Toyota Cica was parked in the family's driveway.

00:17:21 Speaker_00
A search of the car revealed a tuft of carpet fibres on the floor near the back seat, similar in colour to the grey carpet removed from Jennifer's bedroom. It had a tiny reddish stain that looked like blood.

00:17:35 Speaker_00
An expert concluded it was highly probable that the tuft had its origin in the bedroom carpet. The rear space that contained the car jack was closed, but it hadn't been clicked shut. The jack was inside, but there was no sign of the wheel brace.

00:17:54 Speaker_00
In the boot, detectives found a brand new spare tyre. The car itself was less than a year old, If the tyre had never been changed, it seemed odd that the jack hatch was open and the wheel brace was missing.

00:18:10 Speaker_00
Police sourced the wheel brace from the same model Seeker from a local Toyota dealer. When they compared the tool to Sarah and Adrian's injuries, they found that it was a perfect match.

00:18:26 Speaker_00
Right from the start, the investigators knew there was something about the DiGrucci murder scene that wasn't quite right.

00:18:34 Speaker_00
Jennifer and Sarah had been in bed, not disturbing an intruder, and Adrian was in the garage where the killer would have had to actively seek him out.

00:18:44 Speaker_00
While a burglar interrupted in the act might assault a homeowner in order to get away quickly, committing a triple homicide of such violence seemed an extreme way to cover up a break-in.

00:18:57 Speaker_00
frenzied nature of the crime was also in contrast with the careful efforts the killer had made to clean up the scene. If the robbery was staged, the detectives had to look at alternative theories.

00:19:11 Speaker_00
The most likely being, someone wanted members of the DiGrucci family dead and had tried to throw the police off. With Matthew DiGrucci having been taken to the hospital, that left only the patriarch Wayne DiGrucci unaccounted for.

00:19:28 Speaker_00
When detectives called Wayne's workplace, they were told that he was on the road. But eventually, the DiGrucci's home telephone rang. Detective Sharkey answered. Wayne DiGrucci was on the other line, calling home to check in on his family.

00:19:44 Speaker_00
He sounded surprised to be greeted by a detective instead. Wayne was almost two hours away in the Greater Western Sydney suburb of Parramatta. Detective Sharkey carefully broke the news of the family member's deaths.

00:20:00 Speaker_00
He then arranged for officers to collect Wayne and bring him in for an interview. Upon arriving at the police station, Wayne sat down to provide a statement.

00:20:13 Speaker_00
He explained that he'd spent the previous night at his parents' home in Western Sydney, which he often did on weeknights due to his workplace being located there.

00:20:23 Speaker_00
last contact he'd had with his family had been when he chatted on the phone with Jennifer at around 6.30 the night she was later killed. Wayne had told Jennifer he intended to stay at his parents' home for an additional night.

00:20:39 Speaker_00
At the station, Wayne was also reunited with his only surviving child, Matthew. The teenager had spent the morning in the hospital being treated for shock and the pair spoke to a grief counsellor.

00:20:53 Speaker_00
In his own police interview, Matthew elaborated on his whereabouts during the killings.

00:20:59 Speaker_00
He said he'd driven to his girlfriend's house the previous night where he'd spent the entire evening, including the crucial time period between 8pm and 1am when the crime was thought to have taken place.

00:21:12 Speaker_00
It was only when he returned home in the morning that he discovered the crime scene. Wayne and Matthew were permitted to return home to examine their belongings in case anything was missing that police hadn't noticed.

00:21:26 Speaker_00
They couldn't find Jennifer's purse. Matthew also pointed out that some CDs and a number of other items, including two calculators belonging to him and his brother, were also gone.

00:21:40 Speaker_00
As husbands are more usually the perpetrators in family annihilation cases, it was vital that Wayne DiGrucci's alibi be confirmed.

00:21:49 Speaker_00
the day of the murders, Wayne claimed to have attended a company golf day at Pennant Hills Golf Club in Sydney before spending the night with his parents. Two colleagues confirmed that he was at the club till around 7pm.

00:22:03 Speaker_00
Wayne's dad confirmed he was with his son in the evening until 10.30 when he went to bed.

00:22:11 Speaker_00
However, a neighbour of the DiGrucci's reported having seen a car similar to Wayne's Holden Ballina being driven in Shearwater Boulevard in the early morning hours before the murders were discovered. The driver looked like Wayne.

00:22:26 Speaker_00
Detectives began to calculate whether it was possible for Wayne to have driven back to his house in the middle of the night to kill his family.

00:22:34 Speaker_00
But that theory was scrapped when detectives found out his Holden Ballina had been in an accident and was in for repairs. The car Wayne had been driving at the time was a rented Holden Commodore.

00:22:48 Speaker_00
Nine days after the murders, a memorial service was held for Jennifer, Adrian and Sarah DiGrucci. Among the mourners was Wayne DiGrucci, supported by his only surviving child. Casefile will be back shortly.

00:23:11 Speaker_00
Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content.

00:23:34 Speaker_00
Sometime after the DiGrucci triple homicide, several local boys were riding their BMX bikes alongside a dam at the old Borrell Brickworks.

00:23:43 Speaker_00
The structure was located on the western side of the Princess Highway in Winoona, a coastal suburb 30 minutes drive north of Albion Park Rail. As they cycled along, the boys spotted a bag in the shallow water.

00:23:59 Speaker_00
They fished it out and went through its contents. Among other things, the bag contained a hammer and a big piece of carpet. The boys helped themselves to a couple of items from the bag, then tossed it back into the dam.

00:24:15 Speaker_00
While they thought nothing of the incident, one of the boys mentioned it to his father.

00:24:21 Speaker_00
A few weeks later, it occurred to the boy's father that the bag might hold some significance to the murder investigation that was currently featured all over the news.

00:24:31 Speaker_00
The discovery was brought to police attention on Sunday May 12 1996, exactly two months after the DeGrigi murders. The following day, officers headed to the old Borrell Brickworks Dam.

00:24:46 Speaker_00
Police divers located not one, but two bags, a red and white sports bag and a black backpack. Their contents were laid out onto sheets of plastic,

00:24:58 Speaker_00
There was a VCR, a calculator labelled A. DiGrucci, various CDs and videotapes, and Jennifer DiGrucci's purse.

00:25:09 Speaker_00
The sports bag contained a piece of carpet similar in size to the piece missing from Jennifer's room and a small Ziploc bag containing a number of unopened Band-Aids. There were also pieces of a torn up note. One of the officers remarked,

00:25:26 Speaker_00
Wouldn't it be funny if that note was a how-to list? The note was carefully dried out and then the pieces were put back together like a jigsaw puzzle.

00:25:40 Speaker_00
Printed on the flip side of the paper was the letterhead for a hotel located further north along the New South Wales coast, Noah's on the Beach. Pieced together, the handwritten portion did in fact contain a list.

00:25:56 Speaker_00
It read in part, open gate, throw bottle down the track, throw things down wall in roof, tracksuit pants one, knife two, t-shirts two, shoes two, open blinds to see through, Sarah, mum, Adrian, have a shower.

00:26:21 Speaker_00
The note appeared to be a list of instructions to fake a burglary. While it was possible that the items in the bag could have been stolen and discarded by a random intruder, this seemed unlikely due to the use of one single word. Mum.

00:26:38 Speaker_00
This was a name only one of Jennifer's three children would call her. And there was only one Degrucci child whose name wasn't on the list. At 7.30am on Saturday June 22, Detective Sharkey found 18-year-old Matthew DiGrucci at his girlfriend's house.

00:26:58 Speaker_00
He told the teenager that he wanted to speak to him about the murders of his mother and siblings. Matthew asked when. Sharkey replied, now.

00:27:12 Speaker_00
Detective Sharkey and his colleagues had been suspicious of Matthew DiGrucci ever since they found a problem with his alibi.

00:27:20 Speaker_00
In a police interview on the day the bodies were discovered, Matthew said he'd been at his girlfriend's house the previous night from the early evening on.

00:27:29 Speaker_00
But when detectives checked with Matthew's girlfriend, she told police that Matthew had called her at around 8pm and said he would be over shortly. Yet two hours passed with no sign of him.

00:27:43 Speaker_00
At 10pm Matthew's girlfriend rang the DiGrucci house to check where he was. There was no answer. He finally arrived at her house roughly an hour later. Matthew explained he was late because his mum had asked him to stay.

00:28:00 Speaker_00
The DiGrucci's had received some prank phone calls saying three members of their family would die that night and it had left them shaken. Matthew hadn't mentioned anything about prank calls or death threats in police interviews.

00:28:16 Speaker_00
If true, detectives couldn't understand why he would have omitted this detail.

00:28:21 Speaker_00
And since it was estimated that the three DiGrucci family members were murdered between 8pm and 1am, his girlfriend's story put Matthew at home for several hours during this crucial window.

00:28:34 Speaker_00
Phone records revealed that Matthew had spoken to his girlfriend from the DiGrucci house on the night of the murders, but there was no record of the alleged prank calls. There were a few other factors that caught the detective's attention.

00:28:49 Speaker_00
According to Wayne DiGrucci, when he called home on the evening of the murders, Jennifer told him that she'd refused Matthew's request to borrow her car.

00:28:59 Speaker_00
yet Matthew had told detectives that he'd borrowed the Toyota Cigar to drive to his girlfriend's house.

00:29:06 Speaker_00
He'd driven it back home the next morning at around 8.30 and parked it in the driveway before entering the home to find his mother and sister murdered.

00:29:15 Speaker_00
This meant that Matthew DiGrucci was the last one to access the Cigar and its wheel brace, which was suspected to be the murder weapon, had been stored in the back prior to disappearing altogether.

00:29:33 Speaker_00
Degrucci extended family had picked up on the suspicion against Matthew and were not happy about it. Wayne Degrucci's brother Paul even advised Matthew not to cooperate.

00:29:45 Speaker_00
But Matthew agreed to a follow up interview as requested, accompanied by several relatives. As he was over 18 and could be interviewed without a parent or guardian present, Matthew was escorted into an interrogation room alone.

00:30:02 Speaker_00
After some preliminary questions, Detective Danny Sharkey became more direct. He said, Matthew, I believe that you know a lot more about what happened to your mother, brother and sister, more than what you said in the statement you made.

00:30:18 Speaker_00
Is there anything you want to say to me about what happened? Matthew sat silently with his arms across his stomach, rocking back and forward with his head bowed. Another detective asked if Matthew had anything to say about the night of the murders.

00:30:35 Speaker_00
He didn't answer. Detective Sharkey then stated, Matthew, this is not going to go away. We will be investigating this for as long as it takes. Do you understand what I'm saying? After a long silence, Matthew finally spoke.

00:30:56 Speaker_00
I told the policeman the other night what I know. detectives questioned why Matthew didn't return home until after 8 on the morning after the murders when his mother needed her car much earlier to drive his siblings to school.

00:31:11 Speaker_00
Why would he have kept the car from her, unless he knew she no longer needed it? They then turned their attention to the car's missing wheel brace, asking Matthew if he knew where it was. Matthew told the detectives that he felt sick,

00:31:28 Speaker_00
They wrapped up the interview by informing Matthew that they would need blood and hair samples from him for elimination purposes. When Detective Sharkey opened the door to the interview room, Matthew's uncle Paul was waiting right outside.

00:31:44 Speaker_00
While Matthew was taken back to the rest of his family, Paul made his displeasure known to the detectives.

00:31:51 Speaker_00
As far as the family was concerned, their grief over the loss of Jennifer, Adrian and Sarah was being compounded by the police's baseless and unfair pursuit of Matthew. The investigators weren't dissuaded. They questioned Matthew again.

00:32:09 Speaker_00
They wanted a record of his exact movements in the house when he discovered the bodies to compare his account against the evidence.

00:32:17 Speaker_00
Matthew gave mostly monosyllabic answers as he leaned on the interview table, his chin on his hand and his face expressionless. This time, he told police that he'd arrived home at 8.30am.

00:32:31 Speaker_00
He said he'd gone inside to get his wallet, then left straight away to go buy cigarettes. He hadn't seen any members of his family at the time. When he returned, he walked back down the hallway to the kitchen and noticed the house was unusually quiet.

00:32:49 Speaker_00
He retraced his steps up the hall, past Sarah's door, and into his mother's room. It was then he discovered his mum's body and immediately ran outside in a panic. When asked if he'd gone into Sarah's bedroom, Matthew said that he hadn't.

00:33:07 Speaker_00
This was one of the first anomalies in his account. Neighbour Steve Bailey was certain that when Matthew ran out of the house on the morning of the murders, he had said, there's something wrong with mum and Sarah.

00:33:21 Speaker_00
But according to Matthew, he hadn't gone into Sarah's room at all, so how could he have known there was anything wrong with her? Detective Sharkey also noted it as strange when Matthew had listed two calculators as missing from the house.

00:33:38 Speaker_00
He wondered how a young man who had just lost three members of his family would notice something as inconsequential as this at such an intense time. By this point, police had canvassed the neighbours.

00:33:56 Speaker_00
They learned that Matthew was sometimes violent towards his mother and that the two often fought about him wanting to drive her car. When police asked Matthew if this was true, he replied, wouldn't call them arguments."

00:34:11 Speaker_00
The detectives wondered whether the whole terrible incident had been over something as trivial as Jennifer's refusal to let her son borrow her car. The partial bloody fingerprint on the vanity door in the family bathroom was found to be Matthew's.

00:34:29 Speaker_00
Blood spots throughout the house, including in his mother's room and the attached ensuite, were also confirmed to have come from him.

00:34:37 Speaker_00
This hinted that Matthew had not only interacted with the crime scene, but had entered several rooms he had not established in his sequence of events.

00:34:47 Speaker_00
As Matthew had no wounds on his body, detectives were aware that all this could be brushed aside by claiming the blood was the result of an innocuous and unrelated incident, like a nosebleed.

00:35:00 Speaker_00
Yet, his prints were also found on the jerry can of petrol left near Adrian's body. While he did use the jerry can to put petrol in both the family cars, the last person to use the can would have been the one who poured petrol on Adrian.

00:35:17 Speaker_00
Matthew was brought in for questioning for a fourth time so that detectives could see how he responded to the mounting evidence against him. Matthew again arrived at the police station with his supportive father and a number of relatives in tow.

00:35:32 Speaker_00
They were still angry, feeling that detectives were still wasting time on Matthew instead of going out and catching the real killer. In the interview room, it appeared that Matthew was starting to feel the pressure.

00:35:47 Speaker_00
At one point, Detective Sharkey thought the young man was on the verge of making an admission. Suddenly, one of Matthew's uncles burst into the room. Even though the detectives escorted the uncle out again, the moment was lost.

00:36:04 Speaker_00
Matthew DiGrucci was subsequently placed under covert surveillance but he never said or did anything incriminating. With nothing close to a confession, the police built the case against him from the mounting forensic evidence.

00:36:18 Speaker_00
Over a hundred samples, specimens, and exhibits had to be examined. Matthew's DNA was found on the carpet tuft recovered from Jennifer's car, on the hallway tiles, and on the wall above his mother's bed.

00:36:34 Speaker_00
Detective Sharkey looked at his suspect's known movements on the night of the murders. Matthew had spoken to his girlfriend from the Shearwater Boulevard house at 8 and arrived at her house around 11.

00:36:47 Speaker_00
Her home was the only place detectives knew Matthew had definitely driven to that night. Perhaps he'd dumped the stolen items from the DiGrucci residence somewhere along the way,

00:37:00 Speaker_00
Investigators found out there were 15 creeks and waterholes on the route between the two houses.

00:37:07 Speaker_00
Police rescue squad officers began searching the area's watercourses to a distance of 500 metres from the banks looking for anything from the DiGrucci residents.

00:37:17 Speaker_00
When they learnt that some local boys had found a bag in a nearby dam, they finally had a lead. The dam where the bag was found was located at the old borough brickworks between the DiGrucci residence and Matthew's girlfriend's house.

00:37:38 Speaker_00
To test a theory, Detective Sharkey drove the distance between the three locations and found the 31 kilometre drive could be comfortably completed in 26 minutes when travelling 5 kilometres below the speed limit.

00:37:52 Speaker_00
Matthew DiGrucci had plenty of time between the phone call to his girlfriend at 8 and his arriving at her house at 11 to drive via the dam and ditch the evidence.

00:38:04 Speaker_00
With lines like, quote, hit arm with pole, hit leg with pole, and cut somewhere with knife, the note recovered from the dam suggested Matthew had intended to harm himself to make it look like he too had been attacked.

00:38:21 Speaker_00
The lack of follow-through indicated that part of the plan had changed. A handwriting expert later found 12 points of comparison between the how-to list and Matthew DiGrucci's writing.

00:38:33 Speaker_00
His report said, There were many significant similarities between the note and samples of Matthew's writing, and no significant differences. is my opinion that the person who wrote the specimen writings also wrote the questioned writings on item 1."

00:38:55 Speaker_00
On the morning of Saturday June 22, three months and nine days after the murders, Matthew DiGrucci was arrested at his girlfriend's home and taken into custody.

00:39:06 Speaker_00
Wayne arrived at the police station soon after and arranged legal representation for his son. After another interview, during which Matthew made no admissions of guilt, the 18-year-old was charged with the murders of his mother, brother, and sister.

00:39:23 Speaker_00
Later that day, police went back to the DiGrucci's house to search Matthew's bedroom. They found a single sheet of a notepad bearing the words, NOAH'S ON THE BEACH, the same letterhead on the back of the how-to list.

00:39:38 Speaker_00
The note indicated an intention to dispose of evidence in the walls via the roof space. Police checked the roof space only to discover that there was no access to the internal wall cavities. No evidence had been disposed of there.

00:39:54 Speaker_00
In the immediate aftermath of Matthew's arrest, headlines in the local newspaper declared, Father Vows to Stand by His Son,

00:40:04 Speaker_00
In the first court appearance after his son's arrest, Wayne DiGrucci was quoted in the media as, offering to put up a $100,000 surety for his bail, to open his home to him and to drive him to and from work each day in an effort to acquire his freedom.

00:40:22 Speaker_00
Matthew DiGrucci's legal aid solicitor applied for bail, telling the court the accused young man had the full support of his father and the remaining members of his family.

00:40:32 Speaker_00
They had found the allegations against Matthew unbelievable and Matthew had continued to live with his father in the Shearwater Boulevard home where the murders were committed.

00:40:43 Speaker_00
Despite his father's unwavering loyalty, Matthew was denied bail and remanded into custody. By the following day, the family had appointed a senior barrister to represent Matthew in another bail hearing.

00:40:58 Speaker_00
According to media reports, the lawyer had angry outbursts and was critical of the police case, saying that it was dangerous stuff when people were convicted on forensic evidence alone.

00:41:10 Speaker_00
Despite the lawyer's appeals, Matthew was again denied bail, with the magistrate stating, I am also not satisfied he's not a danger to the community or that he would not commit further offences.

00:41:25 Speaker_00
Two and a half years later, Matthew DiGrucci stood trial. His defence endeavoured to present their client as a gentle and loving boy who never fought with his family or had any anger issues.

00:41:39 Speaker_00
This description contradicted statements given by outside observers of the DiGrucci family dynamic, including Matthew's girlfriend. She attested to the anger Matthew harboured towards his mother and that he had a penchant for alcohol and cannabis.

00:41:56 Speaker_00
The torn up how-to list penned by Matthew was considered the strongest piece of evidence against him. He had never confessed, the murder weapon was never located, and no clear motive had been established.

00:42:10 Speaker_00
While Matthew conceded to writing the damning note, he insisted it was a to-do list for his upcoming birthday, not a murder plot. After a period of being deadlocked on Wednesday October 14 1998, the jury found Matthew DiGrucci guilty.

00:42:30 Speaker_00
He received a maximum sentence of 28 years with a non-parole period of 21 years. Matthew failed to appeal his conviction in 1999 before making a final attempt to the High Court in 2002 at age 24.

00:42:48 Speaker_00
The court's five judges unanimously agreed that the arguments offered against Matthew's guilt were too improbable.

00:42:57 Speaker_00
In addressing the particularly brutal nature of the murders, one of the judges stated, The mind recoils from the idea that an apparently quiet, gentle young man of good character and with no known animus against his family should brutally slay his mother and young sister and brother.

00:43:20 Speaker_00
During Matthew DiGrucci's incarceration, he was involved in a brutal group attack against two inmates who were brothers. The others who participated in the assault included three other convicted killers and two violent sex offenders.

00:43:36 Speaker_00
The prison attack resulted in one of the brothers suffering severe head injuries and requiring brain surgery. The other victim was treated for a broken arm. Aside from this incident, Matthew seemingly served the rest of his sentence quietly.

00:43:52 Speaker_00
With a 21 year non-parole period, his earliest possible release date was in 2017. That year, Matthew was approved for day release and began working in an abattoir.

00:44:05 Speaker_00
In an attempt to reassure the public, a spokesperson clarified that, DeGrucci had been working in the chill room and had no access to knives. Despite the day release, Matthew was refused parole at his first attempt.

00:44:23 Speaker_00
The state parole authority said he presented an unacceptable risk to the community and he had not participated in the required external leave programs. Two years later in April 2019, it was announced that Matthew DiGrucci had been approved for parole.

00:44:41 Speaker_00
He walked out of prison in August that year, aged 41 years old. Under the conditions of Matthew's release, he was forbidden from returning to the areas related to his crimes.

00:44:55 Speaker_00
While he was not allowed to contact, stalk, harass or intimidate any of the family members of his victims, he was permitted to reach out to those who continued to support him.

00:45:07 Speaker_00
Jennifer DiGrucci's side of the family spoke to the media through a representative. They said that while Matthew's sentence would end, they had to endure a life sentence because of what he had done.

00:45:21 Speaker_00
Matthew's supporters claimed that he was motivated to do nothing else than live a normal community life, and his legal representative maintained that he was no longer a risk to society.

00:45:33 Speaker_00
Yet, in a letter to the parole authority before his release, Matthew expressed his own concerns about his ability to reintegrate, citing limited support and his lack of skills to contribute.

00:45:48 Speaker_00
The family members who remained supportive of Matthew, including his father Wayne, felt he had been unfairly stitched up by the investigators. To this day, Matthew asserts his innocence,

00:46:02 Speaker_00
This is in stark contrast with the opinions of case detectives who never doubted Matthew's guilt. They are still left questioning what perceived indiscretion led Matthew to bludgeon his mother and siblings.

00:46:16 Speaker_00
A forensic detective who worked the investigation told the Canberra Times, Matthew DiGrucci has never admitted to it. For someone who doesn't admit they did it, how can they be rehabilitated? he's done something like this over something so trivial.

00:46:35 Speaker_00
If something made him snap down the track, you wouldn't know what he would do. I wouldn't want to be living anywhere near the guy if he gets out." By the time his son was released, Wayne DiGrucci was a pensioner living in Tasmania.

00:46:52 Speaker_00
Matthew was permitted to contact his father who continued to support his only living child.

00:46:59 Speaker_00
Wayne had been a witness at the trial and because witnesses are not permitted in court until after they've given evidence, he'd never heard the full case against his son.

00:47:10 Speaker_00
But by 2003, seven years after the murders, enough time had elapsed for the bereaved husband and father to want to know the truth. He contacted the case's lead detective Danny Sharkey to request a meeting to discuss the crime.

00:47:27 Speaker_00
subsequent appointment ended up taking nearly an entire day. The detective showed Wayne statements, photographs and evidence lists and patiently explained why the detectives had targeted his son.

00:47:42 Speaker_00
Right from the start, everything had pointed to Matthew. Detective Sharkey detailed the holes in Matthew's story until it became obvious that Wayne could understand why the police concluded his son was a killer. was a lot for the father to take in.

00:48:01 Speaker_00
Detective Sharkey told Wayne to get in touch if he ever needed any further information. He didn't hear from him again.