26 Years For Stabbing Death Of Fellow Inmate
The Age
Friday November 18, 2005
A MAXIMUM-SECURITY prisoner who was linked to a seven-year-old murder by DNA technology was sentenced to 26 years yesterday for the death of a fellow inmate.
Stephen Matthew Wenitong, 33, was on remand at the Barwon Prison on March 2, 1998, when he and Nathan Daniel Berry, 27, stabbed Brian Edwards, 48, repeatedly in the prison's high-security unit. Berry was sentenced to 23 years for the murder.Wenitong and Berry were arrested in St Kilda in January last year by homicide squad cold-case detectives. They had pleaded not guilty to murdering Edwards.Wenitong had gained notoriety in 2000 when he and another man, on trial for assault of a prisoner, bared their buttocks and abused a judge in the County Court and a juror was struck with a bag of excrement. Wenitong later served six months for contempt.Justice Betty King set a non-parole period of 20 years for Wenitong and 17 years for Berry.
© 2005 The Age