By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Two Cranbourne stand-over men who assisted in protracted and violent tortures have been jailed.
Darren Whittaker, 41, pleaded guilty at the County Court of Victoria to three counts of false imprisonment, two counts of extortion with threat to inflict serious injury and assault.
In a separate County Court hearing, Richard Tuckerman, 23, pleaded guilty to causing serious injury intentionally.
Both were said to be working under the same associate – in what Judge Scott Johns termed as a “drug related criminal milieu”.
Tuckerman joined in with a “prolonged” torturing of a victim at Tuckerman’s Cranbourne home after the victim had just been released from police questioning.
The man was filmed as he was punched, kicked, branded, burnt, drilled and forced to drink up to 20 mL of GHB. He was ordered to remove all his clothes and to cut up a bean bag to wear.
Tuckerman called him a dog and beat him with a pole so hard that it snapped.
“Eventually he was allowed to leave. Seriously assaulted. Seriously injured. Humiliated and degraded,” Judge Johns said.
“He was on the point of collapse and wearing nothing but the bean bag cover.”
The man later lost consciousness at home and spent 10 days in an induced coma at The Alfred hospital with multiple fractures, cuts, bruises, lung inflamation and a puncture wound.
Whittaker, who grew up in Dandenong, assaulted a man staying at his partner’s Cranbourne address in mid-May 2021.
He struck the man in the face with a baseball bat and told him to “get the f*** out of the house”.
Weeks later, the same victim was abducted from a Cranbourne West home by Whittaker, who was armed with a firearm.
He was told to get in a ute’s toolbox and was driven to an Oakleigh factory where the group’s leader demanded $14,000 and assaulted him.
Later, the victim was invited to Whittaker’s address. He was then abducted by the ‘leader’ to Dingley Village, cable-tied to a chair, blindfolded, gagged and assaulted.
During a “terrifying episode of torture” the victim thought he was going to die. Whittaker wasn’t present but voiced approval at the texted photos of the victim’s ordeal.
Judge Johns said the victim’s impact statement was “difficult reading”. He said Whittaker had “little if any empathy” for the victim’s “terrible ordeal” and “lasting and significant impacts”.
“I am not satisfied of any remorse.”
Another extortion victim was driven to Taylors Lakes where he was struck unconscious with a gas bottle and “further assaulted in a cruel and extremely violent manner” by four offenders including Whittaker.
The man suffered severe bleeding to the head, was stabbed to the chest with broken glass, kicked, and branded.
He was dragged by a dog choker chain around his neck, forced to clean up his own blood with his clothes and to drink a dangerous amount of GHB.
Whittaker struck the victim unconscious with a hammer punch to the head after he refused to get into a car boot.
The accused and his associate demanded cash from the victim, threatening to break the victim’s father’s arms and force him to sign over his house.
Judge Johns said Whittaker wasn’t sentenced for the “protracted vicious assaults that amount to torture” that were allegedly carried out by his associate.
But he still showed an “appetite for violence” and “indifference” to their “harm, pain, injury and terror”.
“You delivered them into their nightmares and only left when you were no longer needed.
“It is not to your credit that you simply played your role and no more. That you restrained yourself from a descent into gratuitous violence.”
Judge Johns noted the plans were “executed through a drug addled lens”.
He also factored Whittaker’s lack of empathy due to an anti-social personality disorder.
This was outweighed by the accused’s “bleak” rehabilitation prospects and the need to protect the community.
He had been previously jailed for significant terms.
At the time of offending, Tuckerman – a father of three – was on bail and using GHB and smoking meth daily.
Judge Johns noted that the accused’s “disrupted and dysfunctional” upbringing led him into homelessness and a drug lifestyle at a “tender age”.
His rehabilitation prospects were “reasonable” given his youth, remorse, work history and “limited” criminal history.
Tuckerman was jailed for up to five and a half years, and eligible for parole after three years and three months. He had already served 565 days in pre-sentence detention.
Whittaker was jailed for up to five years and one month, with a non-parole period of four years.
His term included 155 days in pre-sentence custody.
