Henry Hammond – who beat a Courtney Herron to death in a Melbourne park – is plotting to live free in the community in complete SECRECY

The monster responsible for the brutal murder of Melbourne woman Courtney Herron has launched a secret bid to ban reporting publicly identifying him as her killer, partly because it is damaging his mental health.

Daily Mail Australia can reveal that taxpayer-funded lawyers acting on behalf of Henry Hammond have applied to the Supreme Court of Victoria for a disbarment order that they hope will prevent his name from ever being made public again.

Hammond, 32, was found not guilty of murdering the 25-year-old in August 2020 due to an intellectual disability.

He had been charged with murder the day after Ms Herron’s body was found among tree trunks by three dog walkers in Parkville’s Royal Park, just outside Melbourne’s CBD, a year earlier.

She had been beaten to death with a branch by Hammond before he attempted to bury her body under piles of leaves and branches.

Victorian Legal Aid Solicitors – a state government-funded agency that provides taxpayer-funded legal representation to residents in distress – plans to apply for a suppression order on behalf of Hammond on November 11 under provisions set out in the secret Crimes (Mental Impairment and Fitness to be Tried) Act 1997.

Unlike Victoria’s Open Courts Act, VLA is not required to notify media agencies of its intentions, meaning the application would likely have been unopposed had it not been exposed by this publication.

Daily Mail Australia can reveal Hammond managed to convince VLA lawyers that the court-ordered gag order was justified because his mental health and rehabilitation were being affected by continued media reports about him.

In September last year, Hammond was repeatedly released on supervised day leave from the psychiatric hospital where he would spend 25 years.

Multiple sources confirmed Hammond was enjoying his freedom, with grainy photos showing him dining at restaurants along Station Street in Fairfield – near Thomas Embling Hospital in Melbourne’s northeast.

The footage appeared to show Hammond dining at Japanese restaurant Matsuya – a location frequented by Hammond’s victim and her friends before he brutally took her life.

The request to suppress Hammond’s name will be made without any input from Victoria’s Office of Public Prosecutions, which is not a party to the proceedings.

Unless the media counters successfully, the order is likely to be issued ‘in the name of public interest’.

The filing has infuriated Ms Herron’s long-suffering father, John Herron, who has fought in vain to secure justice for his late daughter.

Mr Herron, himself a criminal lawyer, took aim at the government of Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, which he branded a disgrace.

“Once again as predicted, the Victorian government is likely to unleash killers on the streets of Melbourne, especially killers of young women,” he told Daily Mail Australia.

‘The Victorian Government is questioning why the toll on women is increasing, which is directly linked to them putting more and more high-risk offenders on the streets, which inevitably leads to the deaths of women.’

Mr Herron said the government’s inaction was a mockery of condemning men’s behaviour.

“The increase in the number of women murdered is directly linked to the type of perpetrators they continually release onto the streets of Victoria,” he said.

‘For years this was always the route the government had planned and it makes a mockery of the Victorian justice system when, as far as Thomas Embling says, no one is serving the nominated 25 year term. The average is around three to four years.

“It makes a complete farce of the conviction of these murderers.”

Prime Minister Allan did not respond to Daily Mail Australia’s queries within deadline.

Mr Herron took further aim at VLA, which he suggested had more important issues at stake than representing Hammond’s whims.

“This application is funded by Victoria Legal Aid, or the taxpayer. “Victoria Legal Aid is actually very scarce for people who need it at the moment, but there is no problem in allocating resources and funding to release killers early and inevitably end up attacking more women on the streets,” he said.

Mr Herron said Hammond had a long history of attacking women before killing his daughter.

“He has shown no remorse and, based on information, has not changed in any way,” he said.

Hammond, the homeless son of a wealthy Sydney banker, should never have been released onto the streets to kill in the first place.

Just months before he murdered Ms Herron, he had been released from prison on a community order after a judge ruled his 10-month sentence for assaulting another woman in August 2018 was “manifestly excessive”.

Then came the frenzied attack on Ms Herron, in which he smashed her head in an attack that lasted almost an hour.

Hammond told the doctors that he believed he was the Norse god Odin and that he feared that Mrs. Herron – a woman he had only just met – was possessed and would kill him.

Mr Herron said the public has a right to know when deranged killers will be allowed back into the community, whether on a supervised day release or in total freedom.

“Let us make no mistake that these suppression applications are simply designed for the early release of these high-level offenders, and this is the mechanism through which they pass,” he said.

“As usual with the Victorian Government, visibility and information surrounding the release of these killers is completely absent and the public is left completely in the dark.

“Victoria’s use of suppression orders is unprecedented in Australia and more than 50 percent of suppression orders across the country come from Victoria.

“Suppression orders are not intended to protect the victims who come last in the distance and suffer at the hands of these perpetrators, or even the future victims who are likely to fall with the flood of these people on the streets of Victoria.”

Daily Mail Australia has been told that Thomas Embling reported on Hammond’s day trips that management quickly brought them to a halt ‘until the heat died down’.

Hammond is not the first murderer to be paroled from Thomas Embling, or secretly unleashed.

Thomas Embling psychiatrists have previously told Victorian courts they believe releasing killers into the community is in the best interests of their rehabilitation.

However, many Victorian judges believe that telling the community – or the killers’ victims – about such releases is not in the best interests of the killers and suppress any trace of it.

Daily Mail Australia is aware of at least one brutal killer who has been found not guilty of murder by reason of mental disability in recent times and has already been allowed back into the community under supervision.

Hammond was brutally beaten by another patient within Thomas Embling just before Christmas in 2021.

A well-placed source said the violent assault landed Hammond in hospital, where he was transferred to Thomas Embling’s ‘transitional unit’ on his return.

The unit facilitates the day release of patients and prepares them for an upcoming release.

It is understood Hammond impressed staff within the department, leading the hospital to soften its position on temporarily releasing him back into the community with the intention of releasing him altogether.