A man who killed his grandparents has been sent to a high-security psychiatric hospital for treatment after being found not guilty of murder because of mental impairment.
Supreme Court Justice Terry Forrest ordered Ross Konidaris, 25, on Tuesday to spend a nominal period of 25 years in the Thomas Embling Hospital.
His mental health will be regularly reviewed during his stay at the hospital and if doctors determine he is fit to live in the community, Konidaris will be able to apply to the Supreme Court to be released.
Justice Forrest had found Konidaris was not fit to stand trial after evidence from three psychiatrists revealed he was more likely to have been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, not a drug-induced psychosis, when he gunned down his grandparents in their Yarraville home on December 22, 2012.
Konidaris’ grandparents, Triantafillio, 81, and Stavroula, 84, had been married for 55 years when they were killed.
Konidaris, who the court was told had been recently assaulted in prison, was armed with a 12-gauge single-barrelled shotgun when he shot Triantafillio twice in the chest in his bedroom and then Stavroula.
Stavroula was screaming for her husband when Konidaris reloaded and shot her through the heart. He then poured petrol around the house and set it on fire.
Konidaris, a regular cannabis user who had taken cocaine and methamphetamines before the shootings, was convinced he had to kill his grandparents after becoming obsessed with a “paranoid fantasy”.
He believed his grandfather had previously killed a man and unknown people were out for revenge.
Konidaris feared because he shared the same surname as his grandfather that his life was in danger.
Justice Forrest said Konidaris’ family told police he had been acting strangely in the lead-up to the killings.
Konidaris’ mother, Gysoula, said: “Some friends had been telling me that [Ross] was sleeping in abandoned houses, which I could not understand given that he had a perfectly good room at our house.
“The first thing I noticed was that [Ross] started to become more and more paranoid.
“He would walk around the house at night checking windows and doors to make sure they were locked. He would also say someone was after him.
“In late November, early December, Ross went into the crawl space underneath the house. This happened a few more times where he would go in under the crawl space of the house for no apparent reason. After the first crawl space incident, Ross’ moods started to swing.”
Konidaris’ father, Jim, said: “I have noticed a change in Ross’ behaviour over a couple of months prior to my parents dying.
“Over this period Ross wouldn’t sleep much. He would say weird and silly things. There were a couple of times that I got up at night and I would see Ross walking around in the kitchen with a knife in his pants. He would go under the house looking for bombs.”
Konidaris’ maternal grandfather, George Moraitis, said that about 15 to 20 days before the killings, Ross started regularly searching the basement.
“One day he told me he had found a bomb under the house.
“I went under the house with him and he pointed out what he said was a bomb.
“I looked at it and it was just a piece of coal. He thought it was a bomb. I broke it in half in front of him to show that it wasn’t a bomb. He showed me some cans in the basement and he said someone had been down there. He said the person who put the cans there must be the same person that put the bomb there. It just didn’t make sense to me.”
Konidaris continues to have the delusional belief that killing his grandparents was justified.
