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Gary
Lawrence McKINLEY
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Rape
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
November 21,
1986
Date of arrest:
9 days after
Date of birth: 1960
Victim profile: Wendy
Snowdon, 23
Method of murder:
Beating with
a rock / Strangulation
Location: New Plymouth, New Zealand
Status:
Sentenced to life in prison in June 1987
Wendy Snowdon, aged 23, had her life brutally cut short
by Gary McKinley when he attacked and raped her as she was jogging
through a New Plymouth park.
On Friday,
November 21, 1986, Wendy was planning to spend the day studying and had
the day off from her job as assistant planner at Olex Cable Limited. She
was taking a New Zealand Certificate of Engineering paper and her final
exam was on Monday.
Determined to keep fit for the National Lifesaving
Championships each year, she was an avid jogger. She had arranged to jog
with a friend but at the last moment the friend was unable to make it
and she went jogging on her own, for the first time. She planned to jog
through Brooklands and Pukekura Park in New Plymouth, which back onto
each other.
Around 10am she
ran down the grass slope and into the Brooklands Park. It is believed
that her assailant, Gary McKinley was hiding in bushes where several
tracks converge together. Wendy according to Police would have been
attacked by surprise and was knocked unconscious with a rock wielded by
McKinley.
McKinley carried
her body to a more remote location on the track and raped her. He then
tried to strangle her and left her lying on the track thinking she was
dead.
A person walking
a dog, who heard noises coming from further along the track, found Wendy
approximately twenty minutes later. She was rushed to Taranaki Base
Hospital and placed in intensive care. She never regained consciousness.
After an agonizing 16 days for family and friends, Wendy Snowdon, an
attractive, outgoing woman, died of her injuries.
Police
interviewed over 120 people who had been in the surrounding Brooklands
Park area on the day Wendy was attacked. An Okato man was finally
arrested and charged with Wendy’s murder. His name was Gary Lawrence
McKinley, a 26-year-old unemployed machine operator. He had a record of
past convictions including burglary, theft and aggravated assault.
When
interviewed, McKinley said that he had been taken over by another
personality. Psychiatric evaluation of him at Lake Alice Hospital found
no evidence to support his claim.
Gary McKinley
was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and six years jail for the
rape charge in the Hamilton High Court on June 1987.
Notably, Wendy’s
parents hold no malice for the man that took their daughter’s life;
instead they have looked to their Christian faith to help heal their
wounds – truly inspirational people.
Crime.co.nz
Inmate savagely
stabbed cellmate for scaring cat
Otago Daily Times
Fri, 31 Jul 2009
A Rimutaka Prison inmate who stabbed a fellow
cellmate who had scared a stray cat he had befriended, could be
sentenced to preventive detention, a judge ruled today.
Gary Lawrence McKinley was nearing the end of his
prison term after serving more than 20 years of a murder life sentence,
when he attacked cellmate Peter Biddle for scaring the feral cat.
On Boxing Day last year, McKinley stabbed Biddle
twice in the neck and once in the chest with a 12cm kitchen knife as
Biddle was watching Coronation Street.
He pleaded guilty in Upper Hutt District Court in
June to grievous bodily harm.
At his sentencing in the Wellington District Court
today, Crown prosecutor Michael Snape requested his sentencing be
transferred to the High Court so a sentence of preventive detention
could be considered.
The incident was of such a "violent nature" it
required a broader sentencing option, Mr Snape said.
McKinley's lawyer Paul Paino opposed the request in
written submissions.
But Judge Jan Kelly said the attack could warrant a
sentence of preventive detention and ruled McKinley be remanded in
custody until the case was heard in the High Court at Wellington on
October 7.
The attack on Biddle was sparked after he entered the
living room he shared with McKinley in the prison's minimum-security
unit, startled the cat and caused it to scamper away.
McKinley later told a prison manager: "I would do
anything to protect the cat, it's all I've got".
The two men were prisoners in the self-care unit used
to prepare long-term inmates for release.
McKinley was originally jailed in 1987 for the rape
and murder of 23-year-old New Plymouth jogger Wendy Snowdon.
Gary McKinley appears in the Wellington District Court
on an assault charge after
attacking an immate at Rimutaka Prison over
his cat.
Credit: NZPA / Andrew Labett
