NSW: Valera wanted to take out victims eyeball court told

AAP General News (Australia)
08-03-2000
NSW: Valera wanted to take out victims eyeball court told

By Jodie Duffy

WOLLONGONG, NSW, Aug 3 AAP - Two-time killer Mark Valera, seeking revenge on his father
for staring at him, had intended to take out the eyeball of his first victim, a jury was
told today.

But instead of taking out the eye of the victim, Dapto shopkeeper David O'Hearn, he
had pierced it with a sharp object after brutally bludgeoning Mr O'Hearn to death.

Mr O'Hearn's mutilated body was found in the loungeroom of his Albion Park Rail home
in June, 1998.

In his closing address, defence counsel John Nicholson said at the time he mutilated
the eye, Valera may have been thinking about the years of physical and alleged sexual
abuse he had suffered at the hands of his father Jack Van Krevel.

"It has relevance to the issue of his father staring at him," he told the New South
Wales Supreme Court.

Earlier in the trial, Mr Van Krevel admitted to the court he had physically abused
his son and said he would often stare at him in a threatening manner with clenched fists.

But Mr Van Krevel strongly denied any sexual abuse.

Mr Nicholson told the court: "He (Valera) was seeking to solve a problem with Mr O'Hearn
that he has with his father and that is bizarre."

The court heard the accused was so disgusted with his father he changed his name from
Van Krevel to Valera.

The court heard Valera slayed Mr O'Hearn after the shopkeeper allegedly crouched on
all fours inviting him to have sex.

The crown alleges it was a random attack and that blood splatter on Mr O'Hearn's jeans
indicated he had died with them on.

But today, Mr Nicholson said it didn't matter if the jeans were up or down.

If they were up he said, "it means the reaction was instant ... it supports the accused's
case," he said.

The court was told the tools used to mutilate the body included a kitchen knife, a
razor blade, corkscrew, craft string, hacksaw, silver platter and a hammer.

"They bespeak bizarre, they bespeak disarray, they bespeak disorganised, they bespeak
disturbed," Mr Nicholson said. "And the mutilation itself cries out frenzied."

The court was told police found in Valera's home compact discs of satanic heavy metal
music, on the front covers of which were drawings of mutilated bodies.

Mr Nicholson told the jury it was part of Valera's psyche when he entered into an altered
state of mind.

Valera has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mr O'Hearn and to the murder of former
Wollongong Mayor Frank Arkell two weeks later.

He has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

The trial continues.

AAP str/ah/was/br

KEYWORD: VALERA NIGHTLEAD

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