A Perth inmate has been jailed for life with a non-parole period of 21 years for murdering an Aboriginal child sex offender in his jail cell and saying he was proud of the killing.
The Western Australia Supreme Court heard Evan James Martin, 43, was already serving an 11-year sentence in Hakea Prison for attempting to kill a different paedophile when he choked Ashley Bropho, 40, to death while saying “picture the little faces and say goodbye” in March last year.
Martin’s lawyer told the court he was a victim of child sex abuse himself and was not capable of rational thought at the time, but Justice Bruno Fiannaca said the murder was “deliberate and calculated” and that Martin had showed no remorse or empathy for Bropho.
Justice Fiannaca muted Martin’s microphone during sentencing as he yelled “but he was a dirty rotten paedophile” while appearing via video link from Casuarina Prison.
He also said that Martin had an “abhorrent moral stance” on child sex offenders and considered that to have aggravated the circumstances of the offence, along with his “vigilante behaviour” and the fact that it happened in a prison setting.
The Court heard that Martin believed sex offenders “deserved to die”, and that he wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions after the murder saying he was “fucking so proud of taking his (Bropho’s) life”.
He said in letters to friends that he did “what I thought was right for me” and had previously told other inmates that he would do the public a service by killing paedophiles.
And in his confession to police Martin said: “I finished him … I was extremely confident the dog was dead”.
The court heard Martin had attacked Bropho a day earlier along with another inmate. Then when Bropho was alone in his cell Martin entered, put him in a chokehold, and then stood on his throat until he was dead. He then called prison officers and told them what he had done.
Bropho, the stepbrother of Terrence Kelly, who is serving 13 years for kidnapping four-year-old Cleo Smith, had pleaded guilty to a 2022 child sex crime described as “every parent’s worst nightmare”.
His nine-year-old victim was walking the family dog in a Perth park at 10am when Bropho lured her into his home where he lived with an NDIS-funded carer.
He kissed the girl, pushed her onto the bed and exposed himself when his carer intervened and the girl managed to escape.
Bropho was assessed as having an above average risk of reoffending and an elevated risk of future violent sex attacks in a pre-sentencing hearing just days before he was killed by Martin.
