Suspect is charged 30 years after fatal family-court-related attacks on judges, others
A former firefighter in his late 60s has been arrested and faces more than 30 charges, including murder, in a series of family-court-related attacks that terrorized the legal community in Sydney, Australia, between 1980 and 1985.
Leonard John Warwick is accused of killing his brother-in-law, a judge, a judge’s wife and a minister. They were slain in a bomb attack on the church Warwick’s sister-in-law attended, according to the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph.
No one was killed in other bombings in which Warwick is also charged. The alleged motive was a child-custody battle.
A spree of attacks which are alleged by law enforcement to be linked to Warwick began in February 1980. That was when the suspect’s brother-in-law, Stephen Blanchard, was shot to death as he slept at his father’s home, according to a Telegraph timeline and a lengthy Sydney Morning Herald article last year by Debi Marshall, who wrote a book on the case.
Justice David Opas, who presided over a 1979 custody case involving Warwick’s then-wife and their one-year-old daughter, was shot to death when the judge answered the doorbell at his home in June 1980.
Justice Richard Gee took over the custody case, and in March 1984 a bomb went off at his home, injuring the judge and his two children.
Justice Ray Watson took over from Gee, as Gee was recovering from his injuries. In July 1984, Watson’s wife, Pearle Watson, was killed by a bomb at the door of their home.
No one was injured in the April 1984 bombing of the family law court in Parramatta, where the custody case was being pursued.
In February 1985 an undetonated bomb was discovered under the hood of a car parked outside the former home of Gary Watts, the attorney who represented Warwick’s estranged wife, Andrea Blanchard, also known as Andrea Warwick. Although Watts no longer lived there, the home was still listed as his address in the telephone directory. The new tenant happened to open the hood, intending to do some work on the car before he drove it again, and spotted the bomb, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Less than six months later, a bomb went off at a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall in suburban Sydney, as some 150 people were attending services there, killing minister Graham Wykes and injuring other attendees. Andrea Blanchard had sought help from her sister, who was a member of the congregation, in getting out of Sydney.
The bombings stopped after Andrea Blanchard relinquished custody of the couple’s daughter, by then about seven years old, to John Warwick, the Daily Mail reported last year.
Despite an offered reward of half a million Australian dollars, the case went dormant for decades, until a reinvestigation began three years ago. reports Australian Broadcasting Corporation News.
“The evidence that we’ve gathered includes significant new evidence, historic evidence enhanced using technology not available 30 years ago, witness evidence that was historic and new witness evidence,” said New South Wales deputy police commissioner Nick Kaldas, following Warwick’s arrest on Wednesday.
Homicide squad superintendent Mick Willing said the crimes impacted not only individuals but the legal system and the entire country, reports the Daily Telegraph.
“These crimes instilled a great deal of fear, particularly for those people who worked in and around the family law courts around that time,” he said.
The Australian also has a story.
News reports don’t include any comment from Warwick, who is being held without bond, or his legal counsel.
