Sharpe family murders

John Sharpe was born 28 February 1967 in Mornington, where he also grew up. Sharpe met his New Zealand-born wife, Anna Kemp, when they worked together at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. They married in October 1994 and lived together in various locations around the Mornington Peninsula area south of Melbourne. At the time of the murders Sharpe was self-employed as a conveyancer. Their daughter, Gracie, was born in August 2002. She was born with a condition called hip dysplasia, a congenital abnormality in her hips which required orthopaedic treatment by a corrective harness for the first three months of her life. She cried often and had difficulty sleeping, a situation which appeared to place some strain on the marriage. Even after the harness was no longer required, Gracie still had difficulties with feeding and sleeping, for which Kemp sought professional assistance.[1]

In 2003, Sharpe purchased a high-powered speargun and an additional spear at Sport Philip Marine, a local shop in Mornington. He had not previously shown an interest in spearfishing. He practised firing the speargun in the backyard of the couple's residence, in order to become familiar with its operation. Later that year, the Sharpes purchased a house at 116 Prince Street, Mornington.[1] In November 2003, when Gracie was about 15 months old, Kemp became pregnant again. Sharpe later told police investigators that this pregnancy came as a surprise to him. Sharpe apparently decided that he did not want another child—in his mind, one was enough of a burden—and he began to resent Kemp and the unborn child.[1]

On 21 March 2004, Sharpe and his family attended a nephew's birthday party. Others present at the party noticed no tension or arguments between the couple.[1] On 23 March, Sharpe and his wife argued before retiring to bed. After both retiring to bed for the night between 9:00-10:00 pm Anna quickly fell asleep, while Sharpe lay brooding over the argument and the state of his marriage. After initially having thoughts about killing her he later left the bed and retrieved the speargun from the backyard garage. Returning to the bedroom, Sharpe fired the spear from a distance of a few centimetres into his wife's left temple. Noticing his wife was still breathing, Sharpe fired a second spear into her head, killing her. He then covered the body in towels and went downstairs to sleep on a sofa bed.[1]

The next day, Sharpe attempted to remove the spears but failed, removing only the shafts by unscrewing them from the heads. That same day, Sharpe took Gracie to, and then collected her from, her childcare centre. He also lied to a TV serviceman who came to the house. He later buried his wife in a shallow grave in their backyard.[1] Some time after his wife's death, Sharpe returned to Sport Phillip Marine (accompanied by his daughter) and purchased another spear for the speargun that he would later use to kill the child.[1] This was described at his sentencing hearing as being "circumstances of unspeakable callousness".[5]

In the following days Sharpe would attend Gracies childcare and advise that Anna had left him and would no longer be attending, as well as telephoning Anna's mother in New Zealand to adviser her that Anna he'd left him for the man she had been having an extramarital affair with and did not know her current where about but that she would return in a few days to collect Gracie.

On 27 March 2004, Sharpe put his daughter Gracie to bed in her cot and then drank several glasses of whiskey and Coke in order to "numb his senses." He retrieved the speargun from the garage, loaded it with the newly acquired spear, and fired at his daughter's head, penetrating her skull. With his child wounded and screaming loudly, Sharpe retrieved the two spear shafts which he had earlier removed from his wife's head and returned to the bedroom. He fired both into Gracie's head, but she was still alive, so he withdrew one spear and fired it again, finally killing her.[1] He returned to her bedroom the next morning and pulled the spears from her head. Sharpe then wrapped her body in garbage bags and a tarpaulin and disposed of her body at the Mornington refuse transfer station. At the same time he discarded the speargun, the spears and some of Gracie's clothes and toys.[1]

On 20 May 2004, New Zealand Police requested Victoria Police to conduct enquiries into the apparent disappearance of Kemp and Gracie. The same day, police from Mornington attended the Sharpe home and spoke with him. The family was initially shocked that Anna would have an affair being a devout Catholic and were sceptical as she had not reportedly taken Gracie with her, something her closest friends and family all agreed she would never do. After creating a fake email account to email her brother and other friends as well as receiving flowers purported to be from Anna without any telephone contact the family knew something wasn't right and that Sharpe likely was deceiving them. He would also use her phone and ATM card on several occasions throughout the south eastern suburbs of Victoria to create the impression she was alive and well. On 10 June, he was again interviewed by police in Mornington but he maintained the story that Kemp had left voluntarily on 23 March however police were unconvinced by his buzzer story and lack of emotion. Police would keep Sharpe under surveillance and witness him retrieving Anna's phone and ATM cards from a hiding place at a public bathroom in Mornington, as well as dumping potential evidence in a bin in Mount Martha.

On 22 June 2004, police arrested Sharpe and interviewed him twice: during his first interview, he continued to deny any knowledge of their whereabouts, but during the second, having spoken to his family, he admitted to both murders. He told police he killed his wife because she was "controlling and moody" and their marriage was unhappy.[9] He also told police he "was thinking of taking care of Gracie by myself and just amongst all this madness ... that's when I lost the plot".[10] According to some family members, Sharpe may have also killed his wife because she discovered his abuse of Gracie but this has not been substantiated.[11]

Police undertook a massive search lasting three weeks of the Mornington landfill site, and eventually recovered both bodies.[1][12] As sometime had passed between their initial duping and the retrieval operation their remains were scattered across several areas of the refuse station, with different sections of Anna's remains being found on separate days. Both were buried in Green Park Cemetery, Dunedin, under Kemp's birth name along with mention of her unborn son named Francis.

Sharpe appeared in the Supreme Court of Victoria where he was arraigned and pleaded guilty to the murders. On 5 August 2005, the Court sentenced Sharpe to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 33 years. Sharpe resides in protective custody while incarcerated, due to threats on his life from fellow prisoners.[1]

The stages of the Sharpe case were all major news items in the Australian print and television media of the time. The murder also received general media attention in New Zealand,[7][8] and sparked the interest of the New Zealand Police.[13] Some examples include:

• Crime Investigation Australia Season 1 episode "The Mornington Monster" (aired 2005) in which the crimes and Sharpe's actions were re-enacted.[14]
• 12 True Crime Stories that Shocked Australia (2005) by Paul Anderson[3]
• Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis (2008) by Brent E. Turvey.[15]
• 60 Minutes episode "Unmasking the Truth" (aired August 2009) about human lie detectors who can unmask killers "tearfully pleading for help in finding a missing loved one. And all the time, they know their husband, wife, even their own child, is already dead."[16]
• Why Did They Do It? Inside the Minds of Australia's Most Unlikely Killers (2015) which explores Sharpe's pathology, particularly his avoidant personality disorder.[17]
• Australian True Crime – Case 11 (May 2017);[18] Case 21 (August 2017)[19]

• Crime in Australia
• List of Australian criminals
• Timeline of major crimes in Australia

• Anna Kemp-Sharpe at Find a Grave
• Gracie Louise Sharpe at Find a Grave
• Francis Sharpe at Find a Grave