William "The Mutilator" Macdonald

And Retribution

Before passing sentence, Mr Justice McLennan said that it was the most barbaric case of murder and total disregard for human life that had come before him in his many years on the bench. William MacDonald had shown no signs of remorse and had made it quite clear that, if he were free, he would go on killing as often as the urges came upon him.

William MacDonald was sentenced to prison for life and his papers were marked: "likely to offend again". Shortly after his incarceration he bashed another prisoner almost to death with a slops bucket in Long Bay Jail and as a result was declared insane by a panel of doctors. MacDonald spent the next 16 years at the Morisset Psychiatric Centre for the criminally insane on the New South Wales central coast.

In 1980 William McDonald was found sane enough to be released back into mainstream prison society and has since been in the protective custody section of Cessnock prison about a two hour drive north west from Sydney. He requested to live in this section of the jail because it was quieter and he would not be disturbed by the prison louts. Here he lives a reclusive existence reading and listening to classical music and is known as 'old Bill'.

The Mutilator is the second longest serving prisoner in Australia (child killer Leonard Keith Lawson has been in prison since November 1961) and has spent so much time locked up that he is convinced that freedom would kill him. In December 2000 he declined to attend a court hearing set down to grant him a date when he would be eligible for parole.

"I am institutionalised now," he said recently. "I have no desire to go and live on the outside. I wouldn't last five minutes. I am too old and besides, I have everything I could ever want where I am."

But while he has no desire to live outside of prison, MacDonald doesn't mind the occasional day-trip out of Cessnock Prison to the nearby city of Newcastle. But what he sees he doesn't particularly like.

In a May, 2000 interview with author Paul B. Kidd, William 'the Mutilator' McDonald, the most feared serial killer in Australia's history who held the nation's largest city under siege, said without the slightest hint of irony:

"It's terrible out there. People aren't even safe in their own homes."