IT could be how, at just 17 years old and after returning out-of-breath to a pool hall after murdering two men with his bare hands, Tony Dent was able to blab to a couple of other young punks: “I just bashed an old drunkie and I got fifty dollars off him … I went up and bashed another two [sic]’’.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Maybe, it could be how, as a 53-year-old and just a stone’s throw from the scene of the double murder, Dent left another bloke to die an awful death by bashing him senseless and gagging him with his own underpants after pulling off his trousers and cleaning out his pockets.
Possibly, it could even be the cold-blooded text message he sent the day after the latest death, which read: “I might belt another maggot as it’s addictive feeling like this.”
Or even when Dent stared down a NSW Supreme Court judge, and as he was being removed from a court for bashing two co-accused in the dock and constantly yelling out, and said to him: “You look at me again and I’ll rip your f – – – ing face off’’.
There are countless examples of the savage, frightening and evil levels of violence that Anthony Richard Dent is able to stoop.
Dent has spent most of his adult life behind bars, and has been back in the “big house” since his arrest over the murder of Tony O’Grady on Thomas Armstrong Oval on March 24, 2014.
In fact, he had only been released from his latest stint four months before he attacked O’Grady as the 52-year-old was rolling a cigarette on the way to a promised party.
O’Grady, who enjoyed the company of those underprivileged and homeless, was lured to his death because it was known he had inherited a substantial amount of money.
Dent ended up getting $500 for the murder.
Sometime earlier that day, Dent and several other men had hatched the plan to rob O’Grady, enticing him to the park with the suggestion if there was alcohol then there would also be girls.
O’Grady was caught on CCTV buying Jim Beam bourbon from cellars at Hamilton.
But as he walked across the Wickham park, just metres from Maitland Road, he was savagely set upon by Dent.
The cause of death was the injury to his head from “blunt force trauma” together with asphyxiation from the gag stuffed down his throat.
After bashing him into the ground, and with his foot on his back to subdue him, Dent got some rope from another man and hogtied O’Grady.
One of the men was to later tell authorities O’Grady was pleading with Dent: “Please stop. Please leave me alone’’.
He took off his victim’s pants and rummaged through them, taking out his house and car keys and throwing them to another man. The man took off and removed O’Grady’s car from his home before dumping it on Ash Island.
In the meantime, Dent went to use O’Grady’s bankcard. Unsuccessfully.
Dent returned to the park later to look for a PIN and found O’Grady was dead, later making a phone call where he simply told the men that O’Grady had “gone’’.
It would have been an awful death.
But Dent didn’t care. He never has.
Some 37 years beforehand, and just 50 metres from where he would kill O’Grady, the then 17-year-old Dent killed two men behind a shed near Passmore Oval.
This time it was for $50.
Ronald Hamilton and Allan Sichter were drinking behind a shed on the eastern side of Passmore Oval on October 20, 1977, when Dent came across them.
He would later return to a pool hall and boast of bashing two men for $50, breathing heavily and rubbing his hand, complaining of having a sore knuckle.
The men who he had boasted to went to the scene and found Hamilton and Sichter dead.
When they told Dent, he didn’t believe them.
He would later tell police he chanced upon them and claimed they had “accosted him” and he acted in self-defence.
The fight was a “very hard one” and he fought back “heavily”.
He claimed the men were alive when he left them, that he had only punched them and never touched them once they went to ground.
The autopsy would disagree.
Hamilton’s cause of death was “haemorrhage due to traumatic rupture of the heart” and “multiple skeletal fractures’’.
In layman’s terms, the blows were so intense that the sack around his heart blew apart, his sternum was broken, and he had suffered 16 rib fractures.
Sichter’s cause of death was a “fractured neck and larynx” and “internal haemorrhage’’.
To break his neck, there would have had to have been at least two blows, and more likely three or four.
His death was “not instantaneous but caused by a cumulative effect of the broken neck and loss of blood’’.
It was opined that Dent would have jumped on top on the men after bashing them.
In the argument to have the 1977 murders admitted as evidence in the O’Grady murder trial, it was submitted that they all occurred within 50 metres of each other; both occurred about 8pm; the victims were known to be people who drank a great deal and they were aged in their fifties; both involved a “considerable deal of unarmed violence”; the motive was robbery; and all men were left alive but died of their injuries.
It was also submitted: “the tendency to erupt violently and to kill perhaps unsuspecting victims in an outburst of violence with only the weapon of his own body, his hands and knees and feet, this is a tendency which must be regarded as extremely unusual in the community, even among those who commit homicide’’.
Justice Robert Allan Hulme ruled the evidence inadmissable and the jury never heard of the 1977 murders during the O’Grady murder trial.
But when the jury found Dent guilty, Justice Hulme took the perhaps unusual step of telling the jury members of the murders and, in effect, Dent’s reputation.
But that was already known to anyone who knew him.
There is no doubt the other men involved in the O’Grady murder were frightened of Dent.
One man, RC, was to tell authorities that he was worried and scared of Dent “doin’ something stupid. Like, ‘cause he’d killed someone he was gunna come back after all of us so he had no witnesses’’.
A sentencing judge said: “In a telephone call [the man] heard Dent saying he needed to get rid of all the witnesses; “all the witnesses have got to go’’.
The man left Dent’s flat immediately, fleeing to Queensland where he was later arrested and extradited back to face charges.
Later, in a yard whilst on remand at Long Bay Jail, the man was approached from behind by Dent and punched, calling him “a dog”.
The fight was broken up by prison guards and the man was put into protective custody but still still received threats from others.
“They told me, like, ‘you’re going to cop it in the yard tomorrow when you come out and – ‘cause of Tony – dogging Tony up and that’’.
Another man, JM, told authorities that he did not want to be involved in the robbery of O’Grady, but Dent insisted.
“Otherwise, he was gonna hurt me,’’ JM said.
Even during the murder, Dent was to threaten JM, and he would later say he took the threats seriously.
“Every few words out of that man’s mouth were “I’ve already done two life sentences, I’m not afraid to go back to jail.’’
Dent had even shown JM old newspaper articles about the 1977 Wickham Park murders.
It continued in the dock of the historical Darlinghust Supreme Court building in February as pre-trial legal argument was about to begin.
Dent and the two men, RC and JM, were sitting side-by-side in the courtroom dock before Dent rose to his feet and began “delivering heavy blows towards JM’’, Justice Robert Allan Hulme was to recount on sentencing JM and RC.
“Some four or five blows made contact before JM tumbled down the steep flight of stairs leading to the cell complex,’’ Justice Hulme said.
“Dent then turned his attention to RC, delivering five or six heavy punches to the top of his head while saying, “f – – – off. If I see you again you fat dog I’ll kill both of you.’’
Both men later pleaded guilty to lesser charges and told prosecutors they were prepared to give evidence against Dent.
On the same day as the court bashings, Dent continued his vicious intent.
During the argument about whether the jury in the murder trial should hear of his double murder conviction, he snapped.
Dent: Are you f--king serious or what? Oh, f--k this s--t. It's all f--king nonsense. It's nonsense. If you want a kangaroo court do whatever but get on with it. This is f--king nonsense. It was 40 years ago. I was a 17 f--king year old child, you idiot. I'm a 55 year old man. Get on with it.
Justice Hulme: Mr Dent, you're going to have to learn to behave yourself.
Dent: No, f--k behaviour. It's a Kangaroo Court. Why don't you just f--king do it? F--k you.
Justice Hulme: This hearing can proceed in your absence if you wish.
Dent: I couldn't give a f--k. Do you think I care? Do you really think I care?
Justice Hulme: Mr Austin, I'm minded to have your client removed
Dent: F--k you. If you ever look at me like that again, I'll come up there and rip your f--king face off, you f--king c--t. You heard me.
But of all his bravado and extreme bouts of violence, Dent has always picked his mark.
He was almost a model prisoner whilst serving his two life sentences for the 1977 murders, later redetermined to 15 years under the Truth In Sentencing legislation, and during other stints for assault and armed robbery.
Even RC was to tell authorities that he had first met Dent in jail for a few years before the O’Grady murder, and he appeared fine even though he admitted to be “in for double murder”.
In fact, he said Dent was “all right in jail”; he spoke well and was never violent.
And then there was Dent’s arrest a few weeks after the O’Grady murder following a significant manhunt.
The heavily-armed State Protection Support Group officers had surrounded a house in Cessnock where they had information Dent was hiding and were expecting him to go off.
But he surrendered meekly in the backyard as a couple of officers jumped over a fence.
Evil and a coward.
