The dark and twisted fantasies of Australia’s youngest murderer, who stabbed a little girl through the heart when he was just 13, were laid bare last week in graphic and disturbing detail.

As he sat a few metres away from me, I can tell you, he didn’t bat an eyelid.

The man, now 39, who abducted and murdered three-year-old Courtney Morley-Clarke in 2001, was brought to court in person.

He arrived in handcuffs by prison truck from jail, accompanied by two stocky correctional officers and was placed into the dock of Campbelltown Court number 3.

The judge read out details of his adult fixation with explicit images of naked children, child rape, and sexual violence and abuse against women – but he showed no sign of being disturbed by any of it.

But sitting across from him, what struck me most was just how unremarkable he looked. He looked like any bloke you might pass in the street.

I’ve met a few killers, including Ivan Milat, Bruce Burrell and Neddy Smith, and shared a prison yard or courtroom with many more, like schoolgirl-in-a-barrel killer Justin Stein and wife-murderer Chris Dawson.

None of them seemed as ordinary as this man, who watched on impassively while the court heard about the depraved fixations that fill his mind.

Aged 13 and under arrest, SLD (left) slumps next to a detective on his home street after leading police to the vacant lot where he dumped three-year-old Courtney Morley-Clarke’s body

SLD (above, leaving Long Bay jail) is now 39 and looks like any ordinary bloke in the street, despite harbouring sick fantasies about women and children

Aged 13, SLD stabbed neighbour Courtney Morley-Clarke, three, through the heart. He is due to walk free from jail in under two years

It’s been 25 years since this man was the boy under arrest in Northwind Avenue, Point Clare, on the NSW Central Coast, a once-peaceful neighbourhood in uproar over his diabolical actions.

A skinny kid in floral-print board shorts and T-shirt pulled over his head, SLD was marched up the street by detectives.

SLD had kidnapped blonde, blue-eyed toddler Courtney from her bed, stabbed her with a knife and dumped her body.

On that long-ago summer’s day, her parents had discovered her missing from her room at 7am. Police found her body in the long grass of a vacant lot at the other end of the street about 11am.

While devastated residents watched and Courtney’s family huddled inside, police led SLD down Northwind Avenue to a tidy brick home.

That would be the last anyone outside prison walls would see of SLD for two decades.

The man now sitting in the dock for sentencing looked nothing like a criminal – more like a bus driver or a postie – especially compared to the tattooed men pacing the halls outside Campbelltown Courthouse.

SLD made several creepy approaches to women with young children near the showers on Bulli Beach, asking one ‘is dad around?’ as she dressed her young son

SLD served 20 years for Courtney Morley-Clarke’s murder and was released under supervision in April 2023, telling authorities his greatest desire was to finally lose his virginity

If he hadn’t been in prison uniform shorts, T-shirt, socks and sandshoes, all in the same bottle-green, he could pass for any law-abiding citizen.

SLD has a noticeable paunch, greyish-white hair and looks older than his age, perhaps a consequence of spending all but 125 days of the last 25 years in jails around the state.

Steel-rimmed glasses perched on a pointed nose, set in an unremarkable, pudgy face – yet behind it, the most disturbing thoughts were clearly at work.

He sat in the dock looking around, resting his chin on one fist, calmly listening as Judge Paul Johnson described the vile cache SLD had bragged that police wouldn’t be able to find on his phone.

He listened as his defence lawyer argued down his sentence to just a couple more years, claiming that his client started off accessing an ‘ordinary pornographic website’.

The court heard that offenders – sex offenders, child killers, murderers, you name it, even on parole and under community supervision – are allowed to access one site: Pornhub.

SLD was being sentenced this week for images downloaded to his phone, including one of a five-year-old girl naked from the waist down.

Police facts obtained by the Daily Mail show that between March and April last year, SLD made searches for ‘movie rape virgin child’ and ‘real child rape porn’.

The scene at Point Clare in 2001 after toddler Courtney Morley-Clarke was stabbed to death and 13-year-old neighbour SLD eventually led police to her body

He also accessed a web address entitled ‘real drugged girl raped in hotel leaked dark web’.

On SLD’s phone, police found 43 images he had downloaded which depicted women in sexually violent situations, including being tied up, looking scared or in pain, and having hands placed over their mouths.

One image was titled ‘the raped virgin’.

The images of adult women he downloaded included women with their hands tied behind their backs, and a woman naked from the waist down, blindfolded and bent over a table with a man behind her engaged in a sexual act.

The images form part of the case against SLD on five charges of breaching his supervision orders, one of possessing child abuse material, and one of attempting to use a carriage service to access child abuse material.

He pleaded guilty and Judge Johnson sentenced SLD to a maximum term of four years and six months with a non-parole period of two years and 11 months, backdated.

This means he will be up for parole on March 8, 2028.

Judge Johnson acknowledged SLD’s prospects of rehabilitation and not reoffending were ‘not positive’.

But what makes him so dangerous is not just the judge’s warning – it is how utterly unremarkable he now appears. Gone is the child killer the public remembers. In his place sits a man who could pass unnoticed in any crowd, his violent impulses hidden behind an ordinary face – the kind you wouldn’t look at twice.

The scene at Point Clare on the NSW Central Coast after three-year-old Courtney Morley-Clarke’s body was found dumped and police then arrested neighbour SLD, then aged 13

SLD served 20 years for Courtney Morley-Clarke’s murder and was released under supervision in April 2023, telling authorities his greatest desire was to lose his virginity.

By June, he was back in jail having breached his supervision orders, out on bail in July, returned to custody in August, and then released on a five-year extended supervision order in September.

On October 24, 2023, he was charged with three breaches of an order not to associate with children after approaching women with young children while at Bulli Beach, south of Sydney.

He approached two mothers with their young daughters and asked: ‘Hi, I just got out of jail. Do you come here often?’

SLD was wearing an electronic monitoring anklet, but it’s unlikely he would have been reported or charged if an off-duty prison officer hadn’t happened to be there and noticed the device.

The officer watched SLD approach one woman feeding an infant and then another from behind as she dressed her 15-month-old son.

One of the women was in the process of dressing her child when SLD asked, ‘Is dad around?’ When the woman replied, ‘Yes, he is’, SLD responded: ‘Oh that’s good, I guess.’

After being charged and refused bail in a local court because ‘he must have been aware there were children’, SLD exploded at the magistrate

‘This is bulls***,’ SLD shouted, ‘You’re basically calling me a paedophile, judge … If I get bashed in prison I am going to sue you, dog. If I get bashed, you’re f***ed.’

SLD claimed his approach to the women had been sexual, to ask them on a date, repeating it was his intent on losing his virginity immediately upon his release.

SLD was escorted out from court on Wednesday by the two prison guards, put back in the truck and driven off again to jail.

He’ll be out again in less than two years, back on the street, just another bloke with greying hair, a pot belly and a hankering to find a girl.

SOURCE: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15866521/SLD-Courtney-Morley-Clarke-Candace-Sutton.html