The “brutal” rampage of a man who called himself the “Hand of Death” has been revealed after he was jailed for nearly four decades over crimes a court found displayed a “complete lack of humanity”.
Kevin James Pettiford was sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court earlier this week after he was found guilty of murder and attempted murder.
The 38-year-old slumped in his chair and kept his head bowed as he learned his fate for bludgeoning a man to death and trying to cut the throat of another man.
He wore a green prison tracksuit and maintained a blank expression while twisting his beard in his fingers as Justice Hament Dhanji recounted his horrific crimes.
‘Brave’ beginning
Despite the callousness of Pettiford’s crimes, the court heard he had previously been on the right side of the law when he rescued a woman who was being attacked in 2006.
He had been “commended by police and the victim for his bravery” at the time, Justice Dhanji told the court.
Yet only six years later, Pettiford went to hospital and told them he was having homicidal urges.
He told medical staff he had seen a man and a woman walking down the street and he had felt a violent urge to kill the man and rape the woman.
It was “the first manifestation of a long held ideation”, Justice Dhanji said in the sentencing proceedings.
“(Pettiford) said he’d had fe...
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