Prosecutors today built a compelling case against an itinerant fruit picker
charged with starting a fire at an Australian hostel that killed 15 young travellers, including 24-year-old Julie O'Keefe, a graduate of the Waterford Institute of technology and a former pupil of Laurel Hill Convent School in Limerick.
The court in Brisbane was told Robert Paul Long had confessed to the crime when he was captured and had written suicide notes.
Prosecutor David Meredith said Mr Long, who had lived at the Palace Backpackers Hostel for two months but left a week before the fire, made the confession to two police officers, one of whom suffered minor injuries when he was knifed in the jaw by Mr Long.
"I'm dying, I started that fire," Mr Meredith said police officers were told by Mr Long when he was captured in a park at Howard, Queensland, on June 28, 2000.
Mr Long, 38, has pleaded not guilty.
As well as Ms O’Keefe, the fire at the 100-year-old building in nearby Childers also killed seven Britons, three backpackers from Australia, two from the Netherlands and one each from South Korea and Japan.
Mr Meredith described Long as a deeply disturbed man who had told some backpackers at the hostel that he was dying from lung cancer, had only two months to live and had left two suicide notes in the days leading up to the June 23 blaze.
"I am going to take my own life due to the fact I found out last week I had cancer of the lungs," one of Mr Long's letters said, according to Mr Meredith. "I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me."
"One thing I will write down is I want to die. See you later, Rob Long. P.S. There are a lot of good people in Childers and I'm sorry if this hurts them but I just couldn't think of any other way out."
The prosecutor also said the jury would hear from a witness who saw Mr Long with a brown bottle in his hand, pouring liquid into a rubbish bin "with a smile on his face, and then he growled."
Childers, 190 miles north of the state capital Brisbane, is a popular fruit and vegetable picking area where young travellers often stop for weeks at a time to earn money for their trips around Australia.
Mr Meredith said Mr Long, who had "expressed antagonism to backpackers in general" before the blaze, knew that a fire at the wood-constructed hostel would be damaging and likely cause fatalities.
"When he lit the fire he intended to kill a person or persons unknown," said Mr Meredith. "Long lit the fire that burned down the Palace hostel. That amounts to murder."
But Mr Meredith said the prosecution would "not be playing up the horror of that night" in order to get a conviction.
Mr Long faces life in prison if he is found guilty of the one arson charge and two charges of murder. The trial is expected to take six weeks and will include about 160 witnesses, 40 from overseas.
Jurors were taken today through the Palace hostel site on an "interactive crime scene" computer program that gave 360-degree views of most of the burned-out rooms in the hostel.
Mr Long, who stared straight ahead from the dock during much of Mr Meredith's address, often swivelled in his chair to get a better view of screens showing the computer tour.
Among the dead were 27-year-old twins Kelly and Stacey Slarke from Western Australia state, the only deaths for which Mr Long is charged with murder.
Mr Long was only charged with murder in those cases because prosecutors think it likely he will get the maximum life sentence if convicted, and charging him with the murder of all 15 victims would prolong the trial.
Mr Meredith said evidence would be given that the hostel's smoke alarms were either not working or had not been activated on the night of the fire, but that was immaterial in deciding whether Mr Long was guilty.
"Some of the residents might have got out if they had been given earlier warning," he said. "However, for your purposes this is irrelevant. It does not change the criminality of the actions of the accused."
AP