Jilted Scots teenager disembowelled girl of 16 and murdered her parents

Jason Downie became obsessed with Chantelle Rowe and launched a frenzied knife attack after she spurned him.

He disembowelled Miss Rowe and stabbed to death her parents, Andrew and Rose, at their family home in the small town of Kapunda, in the wine-producing Barossa Valley, near Adelaide.

At Elizabeth Magistrates Court, in Adelaide, Downie, 19, admitted the triple murder via a videolink from jail.

He was cleared of a second charge of raping Chantelle, after prosecutors tendered no evidence, and was remanded in custody. Downie, an apprentice mechanic from Onthank, Kilmarnock will be sentenced at the Supreme Court in Adelaide next month.

He emigrated in 2004, and lived with his mother Lorna and his elder brother Jamie. He is understood to have a teenage half-sister still in Kilmarnock.

Police believe he became fixated with Miss Rowe, and launched the frenzied knife attack after she said she did not want to date him.

The bodies were discovered on 8 November, 2010.

Detective Superintendent Grant Moyle, of Kapunda Police, said they had all suffered “multiple stab wounds” and Miss Rowe suffered “barbaric injuries”, in which she was disembowelled.

The day after their deaths, Downie asked to go home early from work because he said he knew the dead family.

He was arrested on 16 November after a workmate gave him a lift to the local police station.

Hours before his arrest, his workmates joked with him about it. A colleague said: “When the fellas heard that he was to be taken to the police station, they even joked with him that they were going to lock him up.”

Downie was arrested after a week-long manhunt, and a suppression order protecting his identity was lifted a week later after police revealed that they had finished checking an alibi he claimed to have for the killings.

His name had already been all over social networking sites connecting him with the deaths.

Kylie Duffield, a niece of the dead couple, said she felt “emptiness”. She said: “It’s been a long year and we came in expecting a different outcome so we’re just trying to absorb the one we just heard.”

She said the admission of guilt had not made dealing with the deaths any easier.

She said: “Do we wake up in the morning and pick up the phone and talk to them? Do we watch a 16 – 17-year-old girl now – have a baby, get married? When you hear guilty or not guilty it makes no difference other than the fact now we don’t have to sit through any more gruelling processes.”

The family’s surviving son Christopher Rowe, 25, found out about the deaths while holidaying on Australia’s Gold Coast.

Ms Duffield said: “Christopher wakes up every day and clasps on to God knows what. We just don’t know where he gets it from.

“He can’t pick up the phone now and go home and say ‘Mum I’ve had a bad day’.

“I can go home and talk to my mum – he can’t.

“There’s mixed emotions at the moment and probably a little bit of emptiness.

Ms Duffield said police had put forward “a really compelling case”. She said: “Obviously that showed.”

Mr Rowe, who was in tears throughout the hearing, had only learned of his parents’ and sister’s deaths when he logged on to Facebook after hearing there had been a serious incident near where he lived.

He wrote: “Can someone tell me what’s going on? That’s my parents’ street.”

Det Supt Moyle said: “The family will never recover fully and they will bear the brunt of this terrible crime for many years to come.”

A source close to Downie’s family said: “We can’t believe it – he was a quiet, gentle giant.”

Downie was friends with Chantelle – who was pregnant and had a boyfriend – and regularly went to watch her play for the local netball team.

On Downie’s Bebo page, which he last updated last year, he said he was in a “relationship”.

He wrote: “My name is Jason and I have loads of nicknames like Scotty, ScottDog, and Bagpipes. I grew up without a dad since I was two months old so I have been raised up by my mum all my life. I respect and love her to death, even though we have our bad moments. Love my family in Scotland – haven’t seen them for six years – love ya and hope to see you soon.”