A Supreme Court judge says the way Charlie Gander’s body was destroyed after he was murdered in Victoria’s north three years ago has added to the horrible impact on his family.<\/p>\n
Three people await sentencing after the 19-year-old Benalla man was found dead in a burnt-out car on Christmas Eve 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dimitri D’Elio, 27, has been found guilty of murder, kidnapping and arson, with 41-year-old Danny Clarke and 40-year-old Kylie Stott found guilty of kidnapping, and Stott also found guilty of manslaughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At a plea hearing in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Wednesday, D’Elio’s lawyer Emma Strugnell argued that the “objective gravity” of the murder offence could not be assessed as there was a lot of “speculation on the manner and timing of Mr Gander’s death.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A two-day plea hearing is being held in the Supreme Court of Victoria. (ABC News: Gary Rivett)<\/p>\n
Ms Strugnell argued that the pathologist report was inconclusive on the cause of death, and D’Elio’s murder offending must lie at a mid-range level of objective seriousness.<\/p>\n
Justice Michael Croucher said he had found it difficult to look at the photo of Mr Gander and his mother, which was shown in court on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
He described the destruction of Mr Gander’s body as a “horrible thing to do”, saying it added to the impact on his loved ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Crown Prosecutor Mark Gibson KC pushed back against describing D’Elio’s offences as mid-range, saying the motive “strikes at the heart of the legal system”.<\/p>\n
Victim ‘did what was right’<\/p>\n
During the trial, the prosecution painted the case as one of “retribution” that the three accused wanted to exact against Mr Gander for “lagging” one of their friends in a police interview about a firearms offence.<\/p>\n
The jury was played a video recording of Mr Gander’s police interview during the trial and told he received a copy of the interview, which he mistakenly left behind at the accused’s residence.<\/p>\n
Mr Gibson told the court that by telling police what the actual situation was, Mr Gander “did what was legally and morally right”.<\/p>\n
“Against a background of someone making someone pay for lagging, that is something that the court needs to condemn, denunciate,” Mr Gibson said.<\/p>\n
Justice Croucher said one of the most “heart-wrenching” things to him was seeing Mr Gander hesitating to speak in his police record of interview.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Charlie Gander’s family created a memorial at Bunbartha, where his body was found. (ABC News: Charmaine Manuel)<\/p>\n
Justice Croucher said while he was not blaming police, it “unwittingly set in train events that led to his demise”.<\/p>\n
“When you look at that poor kid \u2014 callow, open-faced. He was in far too deep,” the judge said.<\/p>\n
“He was mixing in the drug world.”<\/p>\n
Ms Strugnell told the court that D’Elio was only 23 at the time of the offending and, now aged 27, was “entitled to be considered a youthful offender at time of sentence”.<\/p>\n
Ms Strugnell said that D’Elio had converted to Islam in custody, had taught himself Arabic and was dedicated to study of the Koran.<\/p>\n
She said his conversion was relevant to his prospects of rehabilitation and had been “instrumental” in D’Elio understanding his life choices leading up to the offending.<\/p>\n
Justice Croucher said he would sentence Clarke this week as he “is currently doing time that he shouldn’t be” with D’Elio and Stott to be sentenced in February next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Supreme Court judge says the way Charlie Gander’s body was destroyed after he was murdered in Victoria’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,188693,188692,1108,13328,24275,2968,44,1049],"class_list":["post-339484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-benalla","tag-charlie-gander","tag-court","tag-judge","tag-manslaughter","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}