Murder of Janelle Patton on Norfolk Island: Killer Glenn McNeill walks free from prison

A New Zealand chef who committed Norfolk Island’s first murder in more than a century will be released from prison within weeks.

The body of 29-year-old Sydney woman Janelle Patton was found wrapped in a black plastic sheet at the island’s Cockpit Waterfall Reserve on Easter Sunday 2002.

Ms Patton suffered 64 injuries, including stab wounds, a fractured skull and a fractured pelvis, and her death sparked a police investigation that made headlines around the world.

More than two decades later, despite the conviction of Glenn Peter Charles McNeil for Ms. Patton’s murder, her murder remains a topic of discussion on true crime podcasts and among amateur sleuths.

McNeill’s story about what happened on the day Mrs Patton was killed changed repeatedly after his arrest and a motive for the murder was never established.

Ms Patton, who worked in the hospitality industry, had moved to Norfolk Island to escape a bad relationship in Sydney more than two years before her life was taken by McNeill.

Relationship problems continued to befall her, with several failed affairs and occasional angry encounters with local men and women.

Mrs Patton was last seen alive on the morning of March 31 during her daily walk around the island, where her parents were honeymooning.

Detectives sent from the Australian mainland had to be sworn in as Norfolk Island officers before they could speak to the 2,771 residents and visitors on the island at the time.

Mrs Patton’s parents, Ron and Carol, had been in Norfolk over Easter when their daughter was murdered and had every reason to believe the crime would be solved quickly.

Police knew the names of everyone present on the island, which covers just 35 square kilometers and is about 1,400 kilometers east of Evans Head on the NSW north coast.

Instead, the hunt for Ms Patton’s killer dragged on for years as islanders insisted it couldn’t be one of their own. Despite a hearing in 2004, there were sixteen local ‘persons of interest’.

Those named included a man accused of pulling Ms. Patton’s hair at the club, and another with whom she described sex as “not rape, but not what I wanted.”

The inquest heard that Mrs Patton had fought fiercely for perhaps 15 minutes when she was beaten, cut and stabbed to death with sharp and blunt instruments.

Mrs Patton’s diary entries include references to a former island friend who spat on her and later described himself as her ‘first enemy on Norfolk’.

About half of the area’s population is descended from British sailors who rebelled against naval officer William Bligh on the HMS Bounty in 1789.

The mutineers, led by Fletcher Christian, hid on Pitcairn Island with their Tahitian wives and their descendants were resettled in the former penal colony of Norfolk in 1856.

Those “real” islanders make up about a third of the permanent population: the Buffet, Quintal, Nobbs, Evans, McCoy, Adams, Young and Christian families.

They speak a mix of archaic English and Tahitian – but only among themselves – and the Norfolk telephone book lists their nicknames.

Among the persons of interest cleared of any involvement in Mrs. Patton’s murder were ‘Bucket’, ‘Spindles’, ‘Jap’, ‘Tugger’, ‘Moose’ and ‘Frenzy’.

Early in the murder investigation, Australian Federal Police fingerprinted most of the island’s adults but found no match to evidence found at the crime scene.

In February 2006, four years after the discovery of Ms Patton’s body, 28-year-old father-of-two McNeill was arrested in New Zealand.

McNeill had been questioned about a burglary shortly after Ms Patton’s murder and had his fingerprints taken, along with a DNA sample, both of which were re-examined in 2004.

Two of the prints found on the plastic sheet used to wrap Ms Patton’s body were McNeill’s and hairs matching her DNA were found in the boot of his Honda Civic.

Broken pieces of green glass removed from Ms. Patton’s hair also resembled the particles recovered from that vehicle.

The only foreign DNA found on Ms. Patton’s body was from an unidentified woman.

McNeill had arrived in Norfolk with his girlfriend in 2000 and had worked in several restaurants on the island before returning to his home country after Ms Patton was murdered.

He initially claimed he had smoked cannabis on the day Ms Patton disappeared and accidentally ran her over while driving his Civic.

“I just drove down the road and let out my smoke,” McNeill told investigators.

‘I bent down to pick them up and hit her. At first I thought I was going to hit a cow or a dog. I got out and saw she was under the car and I panicked.”

McNeill said he put Ms Patton’s body in the boot of his car, which he drove to Cockpit Waterfall Reserve, and stabbed her only to make sure she was dead.

He later retracted that statement and in February 2007 he was tried before a jury composed of fewer than 2,000 eligible voters on the island.

McNeill gave evidence that he did not kill Mrs Patton and did not see her on the day she was killed, claiming that if he had made a confession it was due to mental illness.

Lawyer Peter Garling – now a judge in the NSW Supreme Court – advanced the contention that Ms Patton was murdered by a woman in a jealous rage.

The jury found McNeill guilty and he was sentenced to 24 years in prison with a minimum term expiring on February 1.

McNeill, who served his time in NSW prisons, unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the Federal Court and the Supreme Court refused permission to appeal.

Three years after his conviction, the American broadcaster NBC aired an episode of Dateline in which McNeill’s girlfriend, Shelley Hooper, put forward a new theory about the murder.

Mrs Hooper said Mrs Patton was murdered by a drug-dealing couple who forced McNeil to dispose of her body.

McNeil later made the same claim from prison, adding that he had been wearing surgical gloves that he had buried in his garden. Police searched McNeil’s former property, but no gloves were found.

Norfolk Island lawyer John Brown, who represented McNeill, told the ABC there were “quite a few” inconsistencies in the case against his former client.

“One was that the only DNA found on the deceased was from a female,” Mr Brown said.

“And there’s no way he could have put female DNA on the deceased, that was one of the things, but there were a number of them.”

The ABC reported that McNeill was expected to serve his parole in New Zealand after his likely release was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Norfolk Island.