by Cam Lucadou-Wells
A man who inflicted cruel and prolonged torture sessions against a series of victims in Cranbourne and Dingley Village has been jailed for up to a decade.
Shayne Smith pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court to intentionally causing serious injury, false imprisonment, extortion and drug trafficking and firearm offences.
In sentencing, Judge Scott Johns said Smith and several others in his “drug-related criminal milieu” visciously tortured victims to humiliate, extort or deter them from speaking to police.
One of the victims was assaulted at an associate’s house in Cranbourne after being interviewed by police.
He was repeatedly beaten, stripped naked and branded on the chest and buttocks with a heated-up coat hanger bent in the shape of a penis.
Smith joined in the assaults and forced the man to drink a potentially lethal amount of up to 20 mL of GHB and to cut up a beanbag cover to wear as clothing.
He also burnt the victim’s legs with a ‘Trade Flame’ device and pushed an electric drill into his legs, arms and body.
“Eventually (the victim) was allowed to leave. Seriously assaulted. Seriously injured. Humiliated and degraded,” Judge Johns said.
The man later lost consciousness at home and spent 10 days in an induced coma at The Alfred hospital with multiple fractures, cuts, bruises, lung inflamation and a puncture wound.
As part of a separate extortion attempt in Dingley Village, Smith texted an associate that “you’re about to see true fear in someone”.
Smith cable-tied a victim to a chair, blindfolded and gagged him before inflicting a “terrifying episode of torture” in which the victim thought he was going to die.
An associate Krishneil Chand said on the phone “When they make it difficult it is more fun” but sometimes he’d “like it to be easy”.
The victim taken to Monash Medical Centre with head injuries, a drill hole to his chest and a severely broken nose.
At Taylors Lakes, Smith struck another victim unconscious to the head with a MAPP gas bottle as part of an “cruel and extremely violent” group assault.
Smith struck him to the head several times causing severe bleeding, stabbed him to the chest with broken glass and branded him with a red-hot coat hanger.
He also forced the man to drink a dangerous quantity of GHB, and filmed him mopping up his blood with his own clothing.
Chand dragged the man around the room by a dog choker chain attached to the neck.
Judge Johns noted the “severe and enduring” impact and psychological harm to the victims.
Without empathy, Smith enjoyed inflicting pain on others in a self-centred way, the judge said.
It was difficult to reconcile Smith’s good work history and limited criminal record with the “extraordinary breadth” of offending, he found.
His excessive substance abuse at the time provided the best explanation.
Smith’s disrupted, disadvantaged childhood as well as mental health issues such as complex PTSD and adult ADHD were also noted.
Judge Johns found subsequent signs of “genuine remorse” as well as “some optimism” for his rehabilitation.
Smith was jailed for 10 years and eight months, including 670 days in pre-sentence detention. He will be eligible for parole after serving six years and nine months.
Meanwhile, Chand pleaded guilty to intentionally causing injury, false imprisonment and possessing meth.
Chand was already in custody for a violent extortion and kidnapping of a man from Sandown Park Motel.
With a lengthy criminal history, he “clearly had an appetite” for that sort of violence, Judge Johns noted.
He was jailed for four years, including a two-year-and-nine-month non-parole period.
The week before, Cranbourne associates Darren Whittaker, 41, and Richard Tuckerman, 23, were jailed for up to five-plus years for their involvement.
