Garry David’s sickening act inside Melbourne’s Pentridge prison that saw him locked up without committing a crime is revealed for the first time
EXCLUSIVE
A shocking act of mutilation can be revealed as the horrific incident that sparked one of the biggest controversies in Australian legal history.
More than 30 years after Victoria threw out more than 1,000 years of common law precedent to keep one man in prison after he served his maximum sentence, it can be revealed that it was a severed penis that prompted Victoria to kill a man to deny his statutory punishment. right to freedom.
Garry David had served every day of his fourteen-year sentence for the attempted murder of three people during a pizza robbery in Rye, Victoria in 1982, when Victoria sentenced him to a further twelve months in prison.
This happened even though he had not been convicted or even charged with committing a crime.
And until now, the real reason Victoria was at risk of committing a civil rights atrocity has never been revealed.
Glenn Broome (pictured) was just 17 when he was sent to Pentridge for theft. He soon found himself involved in a shocking act of violence
Garry David (pictured) had served every day of his fourteen-year sentence for the attempted murder of three people during a pizza robbery in Rye, Victoria in 1982, when Victoria sentenced him to a further twelve months in prison
‘He committed an act so shocking that prison authorities, police, medical professionals and the Supreme Court of Victoria decided he simply had to be a threat to others, even though he had not committed a violent act against anyone else during the age of 14. Spent a year in Victoria’s most secure prison,” reveals Australian crime writer James Phelps in his new book, Australia’s Most Infamous Jail, Inside the Walls of Pentridge Prison.
Glenn Broome was only 17 when Garry David presented him with a severed penis. The now respected community worker had just arrived in Pentridge on a theft charge when he became directly involved in the atrocity that made David too dangerous even for the law itself.
The following is a graphic account told to Phelps and published in his new best-selling crime book.
A shocking act of mutilation at Pentridge Prison (pictured) could be revealed as the horrific incident that sparked one of the biggest controversies in Australian legal history
Garry David was so infamous in Pentridge that there is a mural of him on the wall (pictured)
‘I was just a kid and I was there because I stole cars. They gave me a job as a shelter, which meant serving food to all the prisoners in the “D Division”, which was the remand prison at the time.
‘My job was to follow a guard and place the meals in the traps, which would be open or opened when the food was announced.
“Anyway, we got to a certain cell and the guard shouted, ‘The food’s gone!’
Broome picked up the tray and was about to place it on the open hatch when a bloody hand shot through the opening.
‘Cock up!’ the prisoner shouted before slamming his detached and mangled penis on the hatch.
‘I could believe it. It took me a moment to figure out what it was, but there was no mistaking what it was.
‘He had cut off his penis and thrown it in my face when I opened his trap. It was a bloody, severed penis.”
Broome was stunned, still and silent. Even now, 43 years later, he struggles to understand what he saw next.
“He was covered in blood and standing there with no penis,” Broome revealed. ‘And he laughed. He looked straight at me and smiled.
‘It wasn’t a happy laugh either. It was a bloodcurdling laugh. I can’t even begin to describe how disturbing his noises actually were.”
The guard snapped the trap and ordered Broome back to his cell. And forget counseling; Broome wasn’t even asked if he was okay.
‘I was shocked. I inquired the next day and learned that this Garry David was a lunatic. He was what they called a ‘self-harmer’. He had a history of self-harm.
‘I had never heard of self-harm until I arrived at Pentridge. It was called “chopping”, usually done to get attention. But poor Garry was out of his mind.’
David, also known as Garry Webb, would commit 39 shocking acts of self-harm before dying from a blood infection in 1993. Remarkably, surgeons were able to reattach his penis after an act so shocking that Victoria changed the law.
The next time, the surgeons couldn’t save David’s penis. They were also unable to reattach his testicles when he ripped them off using just his bare hand and his fingernails in a separate self-mutilation.
In addition to attacking his own genitals, David also nailed his feet to the ground, severed his Achilles tendon, drank battery acid and even swallowed razor blades.
A former G Division guard said working with prisoners with mental illness could be a very serious challenge.
“You never forget prisoners like Garry David,” the guard told Phelps.
‘The things he did. I don’t even want to think about it.’
Broome, who was released from Pentridge prison in 1992, now works as a prison lawyer.
His full and uncensored account can be heard in a new book cast that combines narration and actual interviews about Bookenstein.
Until now, the real reason Victoria was at risk of committing a civil rights atrocity over an incident at Pentridge Prison (pictured) has never been revealed.
Glenn Broome (pictured) turned his life around and became a respected community worker
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