Lee Torney
Lee Patrick Torney was a career criminal from Melbourne, Australia. Torney was sentenced to life for the [...] of fellow criminal Sidney Graham but due to a change in sentencing laws was released on lifetime parole after 11 years. He was known to have close links with the Williams family, and police informer and former Williams' friend known only as Mr X told police that it was rumoured Torney had carried out 'hits' for the Williams family. Torney was also known to have said that he couldn't shoot a deer but that he had no such problem with Shooting People.
In late 2004 Torney was in need of somewhere to lie low, and he moved himself uninvited into the home of Graham Holden who was a friend of Torney's family. Torney's own family hated and feared Lee as he had been violent and abusive towards them numerous times.
After invading Graham Holden's home he proceeded to subject Holden to a variety of forms of horrendous psychological abuse, which included threatening the lives of Holden, his son, his sisters and their children. Despite his parole conditions Torney had an assortment of unregistered firearms at Holden's house, tools of his 'trade' as it were. He also set up a [...] crop in the Crown Land at the rear of Holden's property in Chewton, Victoria.
Not long after Torney had moved himself into Holden's home, Holden stopped living there himself as Torney's abuse became more and more intolerable, and he began to make attempts to get Torney out. Three phone calls were made to the police to report Torney's collection of illegal firearms as well as his unwanted presence in Holden's home, but for reasons that can only be guessed at all three calls were ignored. This inaction from the police lead Holden to suspect that Torney must have had some kind of police protection, so he then tried several other tactics to get Torney out of his home. He moved all of his furniture out, but Torney put a mattress back in and continued to stay there. Holden toyed with the idea of burning the house down, but decided against that and instead put the house up for sale. When the sale process proved to be a slow one, Holden hit upon the idea of spraying Torney's [...] crop with herbicide, with the thought that he would then no longer have that reason to hang around.
Unfortunately, the death of Torney's [...] crop did not have the desired effect, as on the 16th April 2005 when Torney found the plants dead, he blamed Holden and became enraged, and picking up a shovel he hit Holden from behind, striking him on the back of the legs. Coming after many months of being subjected to nightmarish psychological abuse, and knowing that Torney (according to Torney's own accounts to Holden) had killed many people without any qualms whatsoever and had also threatened to kill Holden and hide his body in a mine shaft, and also knowing that Torney had a loaded gun in his car a few metres away, in desperate fear for his life Holden wrestled the shovel from Torney and defended himself, hitting him in the head.
Knowing (again from Torney's own accounts) that Torney had done 'hits' for the Williams family, Holden immediately was struck with the thought that the Williams family would not be happy with someone [...] one of their own for whatever reason and would seek revenge, so he decided that the safest course of action was to do what Torney had threatened to do with Holden after [...] him, and that was to put Torney's body in one of the numerous mine shafts dotted throughout the Crown Land at the rear of his property.
The Purana Taskforce who were investigating the Melbourne gangland killings regarded Torney as missing, believed dead, and when his body was retrieved from the mineshaft on 7 March 2006, they initially suspected him of being the 29th victim of the gangland killings, but soon realised this was not the case.
Holden was eventually arrested and charged with [...], but pleaded not guilty on the grounds of self defence. Part way through the trial he was belatedly offered the charge of [...] rather than [...], and due to what can only be described as a legal technicality he was advised to plead guilty to this charge rather than continue with his plea of self defence, and he currently awaits sentencing. The only fortunate development is that while George Williams, the father of Carl Williams, initially showed interest in the legal proceedings, he has seemingly sensibly decided that the circumstances of Torney's death meant that it was not of his concern.