🚨 SCHWARZ AND TIGHE FAMILIES FINALLY BREAK THEIR SILENCE AFTER DARRYL YOUNG VERDICT — EMOTIONAL COURT STATEMENT LEAVES ONE DETAIL HANGING IN THE AIR…
A farmer has been found guilty of gunning down three neighbours and attempting to kill a fourth after luring them to his property over a dispute about livestock.
A jury on Friday found North Queensland farmer Darryl Valroy Young, 63, guilty of murdering Mervyn Schwarz, 71, his wife Maree, 59, and her son Graham Tighe, 35, at his remote property in Bogie, near Bowen, on August 4, 2022.
Young, who has been dubbed the “Beast of Bogie”, was also charged with attempting to kill Tighe’s brother Ross Tighe, who was shot in the stomach.
Late on Friday the jury returned a majority guilty verdict — 11 jurors to one — for that criminal offence.
Young had pleaded not guilty to all charges, triggering a trial in the Townsville Supreme Court that started on August 10.
The trial heard Young had accused his neighbours of stealing and selling calves that belonged to him, with a “tense” phone call used to set up a meeting at his front gate to settle the dispute.
Prosecutors told the court that during talks he again accused them of duffing before he went to his car and said something like: “I’ll end this once and for all.”
He then retrieved a rifle and started firing, killing three people, the court was told.
“I turned around and started running. I fell down five, six times. I just wanted to get out of there,” Tighe told the court.
He added: “I was telling myself on the way back … I know they’re going to be dead. Try not to look.”
An injured Tighe escaped in a ute before flagging down help.
Young denied he was at the front gate when the family were killed and said he had a good relationship with his neighbours.
“I didn’t shoot the family,” he said.
His defence said there was “not one trace of scientific evidence” on his body, clothes or car, and that Tighe could have murdered his own family before shooting himself.
Schwarz family ‘living a life sentence’
Supporters of the victims, including friends and family, were in court to hear Friday’s verdict.
In a statement on behalf of the family’s loved ones, Guy Schwarz said that while the trial has ended, what his family lives with every will not.
“We are grateful for the jury for the guilty verdict but no verdict, no sentence can give us back Merv, Maree, Graham, or what Ross had to survive that day,” Schwarz said.
“Darryl Young took three people we loved and very nearly took a fourth.
“No sentence he receives will ever compare to the one he has imposed on our family.
“His will we called life. Ours actually is.”
Young joins serial killer Leonard Fraser and Singh sibling slayer Max Sica among the infamous few with three or more murder convictions in Queensland.
