A HITMAN murder trial, a host of other callous killings and lengthy jail terms for sexual predators were the court cases that dominated the headlines in the Hunter in 2023.
From guilty verdicts in the contract killing of Stockton grandmother Stacey Klimovitch, to the acquittal of Justin Dilosa for the murder of Danielle Easey and another two decades behind bars for disgraced former Swansea MP and convicted paedophile Milton Orkopoulos, these were the most horrific or engaging criminal cases of the past 12 months.
As well as those matters, there were another half a dozen Hunter murder trials, a backyard torture and kidnapping, a well-known masseur jailed for abusing 15 clients, a wannabe serial killer and a rapist jailed for his fourth attack over the last 40 years.
The cases: R v Jason Paul Hawkins, R v Stephen John Garland
- It was a murder that shocked the Hunter. A hitman contracted to gun down a grandmother on her front doorstep at Stockton.
And faced with a mountain of circumstantial evidence pointing towards him being that hitman, Jason Paul Hawkins had to come up with a story.
The result was a completely implausible tale about how he got out of a car bound for Stockton on the night of the murder and someone else must have killed Stacey Klimovitch.
CCTV footage placed Hawkins in the car at Heddon Greta, but he gave evidence he jumped out on John Renshaw Drive and ran into bushland after seeing a gunman emerge from another vehicle.
Despite being drug affected and unfamiliar with the area, Hawkins claimed while the murder was being committed he was walking some 18 kilometres along the Hunter Expressway towards Argenton.
The jury saw through his alibi and Hawkins was convicted of murder. He is looking at a possible life sentence when he is sentenced alongside the driver, Stephen Garland, in February.
The case: R v Justin Kent Dilosa
- When Danielle Easey's body was found in Cockle Creek in 2019 and Justin Dilosa was charged with murder, there were those in the community who expected he would spend the next few decades behind bars.
But fast-forward four years and after two trials, a hung jury and a murder acquittal, Dilosa could be eligible for parole as early as next month.
Dilosa admitted to the cover-up, but denied being in the bedroom at Narara when Ms Easey was stabbed and bludgeoned to death. And after two trials in NSW Supreme Court, the jury were left with some doubt he was directly involved in the murder.
The first jury found Dilosa's ex-partner Carol McHenry guilty of murder, but was deadlocked over Dilosa's role. McHenry was later jailed for a maximum of 22 years and six months.
In December, he was sentenced to a maximum of six years, with a non-parole period of four years, essentially time served awaiting the trials.
He was not released immediately and the NSW State Parole Authority has said he would not be considered for parole until late January, 2024.
The case: R v Milton Orkopoulos (2020)
- He was the Member for Swansea and they were vulnerable children who came to him for guidance after the death of a parent or to ask about building a skatepark.
But Milton Orkopoulos, the man they thought was "trustworthy and decent", was a "wolf in sheep's clothing", an elected official who was preying on children in his electorate.
For more than a decade, including the time he was a Lake Macquarie City Councillor and then Swansea MP, Orkopoulos was grooming, drugging and raping boys aged between 10 and 17.
Orkopoulos, the disgraced MP now convicted of sexually assaulting seven boys between 1995 and 2005, was in November jailed for a maximum of 20 years, with a non-parole period of 13 years.
The case: R v Zack Mavin
- Robert Palmer's family said he was thinking of his beloved Shortland community when he decided to have a go at a man who had just held up a service station on Sandgate Road on a night in December, 2020.
He had no idea, but it would ultimately end up costing Mr Palmer his life because the man he stopped to argue with was heavily armed and suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
In May, after a judge-alone trial in Newcastle Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Campbell found Mr Palmer's killer, Zack Mavin, did not know what he was doing was wrong when he attempted to hold up the service station and then fatally stabbed Mr Palmer.
Justice Campbell delivered special verdicts of act proven but not criminally responsible to charges of attempted armed robbery and murder, finding Mavin had "no appreciation of the wrongfulness of his actions" and was suffering from a mental health impairment on the night of December 12, 2020.
Mavin was referred to the Mental Health Review Tribunal and will be detained as a forensic patient until he is no longer a danger to the community.
The case: R v Adam Andrew Bidner
- The brutal death of father-of-six Shane Mears was a callous and cowardly crime.
"This is a very serious crime where a defenceless man going about his ordinary life was deliberately driven down by the offender using a large motor vehicle, severely injured, and left to die in the dust," Justice Helen Wilson said.
And it was Aberdare man Adam Andrew Bidner who used his two-tonne four-wheel-drive as a weapon and reversed over Mr Mears while the pair were scavenging for scrap metal at the Cessnock tip on the afternoon of July 5, 2020.
In July, Justice Wilson jailed Bidner for a maximum of 24 years and eight months, labelling it a most "cowardly crime".
The case: R v Kevin George Smith
- There was no dispute that it was Kevin Smith who stabbed his rival, Daniel Pettersson, in the chest during a struggle at a home in Jesmond in January, 2022.
But Smith pleaded not guilty to murder on the basis of self-defence, claiming he had been forced to defend himself after Mr Pettersson burst into the home and the pair wrestled over a hunting knife in the kitchen.
And so in the context of what was a months-long feud, including a love triangle and a bitter dispute over paternity, Smith's brief murder trial in September focused on just those crucial few minutes between when Mr Pettersson arrived at the house and when he collapsed outside.
The jury were presented with two competing versions and Mr Pettersson was either the aggressor or had showed up at the home not looking for a fight but to see his son.
After deliberating for more than a day, the jury found what Smith had done in stabbing Mr Pettersson, an unarmed man, was not necessary or reasonable in the circumstances and, therefore, he was not acting in self-defence.
Smith was found guilty of murder and will be sentenced in March.
- PART TWO OF THE BIGGEST COURT CASES OF 2023 IN MONDAY'S HERALD
