The monster responsible for the savage killing of Melbourne woman Courtney Herron has launched a secret bid to ban reporting that publicly identifies him as her killer, in part because it is affecting his mental health.
Daily Mail Australia can reveal taxpayer-funded lawyers acting on behalf of Henry Hammond have applied to the Supreme Court of Victoria for a suppression order they hope will forbid his name from ever being publicly reported again.
Hammond, aged 32, was found not guilty of the 25-year old’s murder due to mental impairment in August 2020.
He had been charged with murder the day after Ms Herron’s body was found in between logs by three dog walkers in Parkville’s Royal Park, just outside Melbourne’s CBD a year earlier.
She had been beaten to death by Hammond with a branch before he attempted to bury her body under piles of leaves and branches.
Victorian Legal Aid lawyers – a state government funded agency that provides taxpayer-funded legal representation to struggling residents – plans to apply for a suppression order on November 11 on behalf of Hammond under provisions provided under the secretive Crimes (Mental Impairment and Fitness to be Tried) Act of 1997.
Unlike the Open Courts Act of Victoria, VLA is not required to inform media agencies of its intentions, which means the application would likely have been unopposed had it not been uncovered by this publication.
Daily Mail Australia can reveal Hammond was able to convince VLA lawyers the court-imposed gag order was justified because his mental health and rehabilitation was being impacted by ongoing media reports about him.
Courtney Herron was brutally killed by Henry Hammond, who was later found not guilty by way of mental impairment
Henry Hammond wants his name to be wiped from history so that he may walk free in secret
In September last year, Hammond had been repeatedly released on supervised day leave from the secure psychiatric hospital he was supposed to spend 25-years within.
Multiple sources confirmed that Hammond had been enjoying freedom, with grainy photographs showing him dining at restaurants along Station Street in Fairfield – near Thomas Embling Hospital in Melbourne’s inner north-east.
The images appeared to show Hammond dining at Matsuya Japanese restaurant – a venue frequented by Hammond’s victim and her friends before he brutally took her life.
The application to suppress Hammond’s name will take place without any input by Victoria’s Office of Public Prosecutions, which is not party to the proceeding.
The order, unless successfully opposed by media outlets, will likely be made ‘in the name of public interest’.
The application has enraged Ms Herron’s long-suffering father John Herron, who has fought in vain to achieve a skerrick of justice for his dead daughter.
John Herron has only memories of his daughter to cling to now. He remains focused on providing her with justice
John Herron and daughter Courtney when she was just a little girl
John Herron and Courtney in happier times. She was brutally killed by Henry Hammond
A criminal defence lawyer himself, Mr Herron took aim at Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan’s government, which he branded a disgrace.
‘Yet again as predicted the Victorian Government is likely to let loose killers on the streets of Melbourne, and particularly killers of young women,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘The Victorian Government wonders why the toll on women is increasing, which is directly correlated to them placing more high risk offenders on the streets, which inevitably leads to women being killed.’
Mr Herron said the government’s inaction made a mockery of its calling out of men’s behaviour.
‘The increase in women being killed is directly correlated to the type of perpetrators that they are releasing continuously on the streets of Victoria,’ he said.
‘For many years this was always the pathway planned by the government and it makes a mockery of the Victorian judicial system when, as far as Thomas Embling goes, nobody serves the nominated 25-year term. The average is around three-to-four years.
‘It makes a complete farce of the sentencing of these killers.’
Premier Allan did not respond to Daily Mail Australia’s questions by deadline.
Mr Herron took further aim at VLA, which he suggested had more important matters to deal with than representing the whims of Hammond.
‘This application is being funded by Victoria Legal Aid, in other words the taxpayer. Victoria Legal Aid is actually very sparse for people who need it at the moment, but there are no qualms in allocating resources and funds to allow killers to be released early and inevitably ending up attacking more women on the streets,’ he said.
Tributes at the site where Courtney Herron was killed in 2019
Henry Hammond had a shocking history of violence against women before killing Courtney Herron
Mr Herron said Hammond had a long history of attacking women before he killed his daughter.
‘He has shown no remorse and in fact, from information, has not changed in any way, shape or form,’ he said.
Hammond – the homeless son of a wealthy Sydney banker – ought never have been released onto the streets to kill in the first place.
Just months before he killed Ms Herron, he had been released from prison on a community service order after a judge ruled his 10-month sentence for assaulting another woman in August, 2018, was ‘manifestly excessive’.
Then came the frenzied attack on Ms Herron, in which he smashed her head in an assault that lasted close to an hour.
Hammond told doctors he had believed he was the Norse God Odin and that he feared Ms Herron – a woman he had only just met – was possessed and would kill him.
Henry Hammond was spotted enjoying a meal at Matsuya Japanese restaurant last year
Footy great Sam Newman once interviewed Hammond on The Footy Show
The public will never know if and when Henry Hammond walks among them again
Mr Herron said the public had a right to know when deranged killers were allowed back into the community whether it was on escorted day release or total freedom.
‘Let us make no mistake that these suppression applications are simply designed for early release of these high-level perpetrators and this is the mechanism they’re going through,’ he said.
‘As usual with the Victorian Government, the visibility and information about the release of these killers is completely absent and the public is completely in the dark.
‘Victoria’s use of suppression orders is unparalleled in Australia and more than 50 percent of suppression orders around the country emanate from Victoria.
‘Suppression orders are not designed to protect the victims who come a distant last and suffer at the hands of these perpetrators or indeed the future victims that are likely to occur with the flood of these people on the streets of Victoria.’
Daily Mail Australia has been told reports of Hammond’s day trips from Thomas Embling saw management quickly bring them to a halt ‘until the heat died down’.
Hammond is not the first killer to walk free from Thomas Embling on day release, or to be cut loose in secret.
Thomas Embling psychiatrists have previously told Victorian courts that they believe releasing killers back into the community is in the best interests of their rehabilitation.
Crazed killers are known to frequent the Fairfield Park Boathouse & Tea Gardens (pictured)
Courtney Herron had shown Hammond kindness. He returned the favour by beating her to death
However, many Victorian judges believe telling the community – or the killers’ victims – about such releases is not in the killers’ best interests and suppress any trace of doing so.
Daily Mail Australia is aware of at least one savage killer found not guilty of murder by way of mental impairment in recent times, already allowed back into the community on supervised day release.
Hammond was brutally bashed by another patient inside Thomas Embling just before Christmas in 2021.
A well-placed source said the savage beating left Hammond in hospital, which in turn saw him transferred to Thomas Embling’s ‘transition unit’ on return.
The unit facilitates patients’ day releases and prepares them for imminent release.
It is understood Hammond impressed staff within the unit, which led to the hospital softening its stance on releasing him temporarily back into the community with a view to setting him free altogether.
