Muhammad Mirza used to throw animals off buildings. Then a body washed up in a Fremantle harbour

3 months ago 22

Muhammad Mirza preyed on vulnerable young women, luring them to his Gosnells home with the promise of drugs, only to take advantage of them sexually and then dump them on the streets in a state of acute withdrawal.

That was the finding of a psychiatrist who examined Mirza before he was sentenced to decades in jail on Thursday for the murder of 25-year-old Helen Marsuk in 2022.

Helen Marsuk’s remains were found by a member of the public in the early hours of December 4, 2022 in waters near Success Boat Harbour in South Fremantle.

Mirza was just 21 years old when he stabbed Marsuk 12 times in her torso, back and face, hid her body in his bathroom for two days, burned her belongings and then dumped her in Fremantle Harbour.

He then repeatedly lied to police, first claiming someone else had killed Marsuk, and then tried to suggest she had stabbed him first and that he retaliated in self-defence. None of it was true.

During his sentencing in the Supreme Court of WA on Thursday, it was revealed that Mirza had a propensity towards luring strangers to his home for sex, promising them drugs he did not have.

He lurked in chat groups on apps such as Telegram, the court was told, and admitted to a court-appointed forensic psychiatrist that, on multiple occasions, he had thrown cats and dogs off building roofs.

Mirza told the psychiatrist it gave him “a sense of power”.

The court heard that in 2022, months before Marsuk was murdered, Iraq-born Mirza engaged with Armadale Health Service after the break-up of a relationship.

Medical notes revealed he spoke of “increasing violent ideation towards animals”, and that he enacted part of that ideation during sexual contact with women.

Judge Amanda Forrester expressed disappointment in court on Thursday that he wasn’t referred for intensive psychotherapy at that stage.

Instead, Mirza’s world collided with that of a woman who was full of promise but struggling.

Born in an Ethiopian refugee camp and then granted refugee status to start a new life in Australia, Marsuk had plans to study law.

But her mental health declined and, after giving birth to a son, she turned to drugs and was willing to have sex to secure them.

“The circumstances in which she met you … should not have diminished the respect she was entitled to,” Forrester told Mirza on Thursday.

“Ms Marsuk was entitled to be treated with respect.

“Violence of this kind is abhorrent … you killed her in a terribly violent way.

“You had no regard for her dignity. You disposed of her body in the most callous manner.”

Mirza was caught after his DNA was found on a post at the Fremantle harbour and under Marsuk’s fingernails. It had already been on file after he had been arrested over an unrelated traffic incident.

As he was being driven to the police station, Mirza expressed fear that her killer would come after him and his family. That was the first lie he told, which evolved into many others.

He maintained his innocence through a trial earlier this year, but a jury found him guilty of intentionally causing Marsuk’s death.

It was also revealed that in the days following her death, while body lay in his bathroom and her blood was still smeared all over his house, Mirza invited another woman to his home, saying that he was attacked by an Aboriginal man to account for the blood and a wound on his arm.

On Thursday, as she sentenced him to life in prison, Forrester said Mirza had traits of psychopathy and narcissism, and he had shown no remorse for his offending.

She said Marsuk’s six-year-old son would have to grow up knowing the “violent way his mother died and the way you treated her after her death”.

Forrester sentenced Mirza to a minimum of 20 years behind bars for Marsuk’s murder, backdated to his 2022 arrest, as well as a further three years for interfering with a corpse and destroying evidence.

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