Woman found guilty of cutting off her bisexual boyfriend’s head and limbs before setting him on fire
Lindy Yvonne Williams said she discovered her partner’s disembodied torso wrapped in plastic (Facebook)
A woman has been found guilty of murder after decapitating and dismembering her bisexual boyfriend.
Lindy Yvonne Williams, 60, had already pleaded guilty to interfering with George Gerbic’s corpse by way of dumping his torso by the side of a road 50 miles from their home in Queensland, Australia, before setting fire to it.
However, she had denied killing Gerbic, 66, saying that she had left the house after a confrontation over his sexuality, only to return two days later to find him with no head, arms or legs.
Williams initially said Gerbic was in Brazil for the World Cup (Facebook)
A jury took eight hours before finding Williams guilty on Friday (July 27) of murdering Gerbic in September 2013. She has been sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for the next 20 years.
Police managed to identify the charred torso by using prescription medicine samples, visiting the couple’s home in July 2014, where Williams said that Gerbic had travelled to Brazil for the World Cup.
She also told authorities Gerbic had recently emailed her with an invite to meet him in Hawaii.
Once police had found nothing to suggest Gerbic had left Australia, Williams tearfully told them Gerbic had become violent at their Sunshine Coast home, cutting her with a knife before slipping in her blood and hitting his head.
Lindy Yvonne Williams and George Gerbic (Facebook)
In the recorded interview, which was played to the court, Williams said she locked herself in her bedroom overnight before coming out the next day to find the 66-year-old unconscious.
After fleeing the house for two days, she said she returned to find that her boyfriend’s head, arms and legs were all missing, with his torso wrapped in plastic on the floor.
In reality, she had gone to a local hardware shop, purchased an electric saw and chopped up the body.
She then masqueraded as her victim, using his phone and email account to send his family and friends messages to convince them he was still alive.
During the sentencing at Brisbane Supreme Court, Justice Flanagan told her: “For 10 months you undertook a very detailed and sophisticated cover-up,” ABC News has reported.
Williams cut off her boyfriend’s limbs and head with an electric saw (Supreme Court of Queensland)
“That cover-up including lying to so many people.”
He added: “What I found most distressing was the lies you told to George Gerbic’s parents.
“The act of cutting up George Gerbic with a saw… is, on any view, a horrific act. It has denied the family the closure that would come from being able to bury their father.
“There was a heartlessness in what you did in lying to George Gerbic’s parents, his ex-partners and indeed lying to his friends.”
The judge added that if her story to police had been true, “it is inexplicable why a person in that situation would not have not gone immediately to police, or at least told close friends.”
Williams has been sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for the next 20 years (Flickr/bloomsberries)
He continued: “This surely must be one of the worst cases of interference with a human body.
“Because you dismembered his body, it remains unknown where his head is, where his lower body is, and where his hands are.”
It remains unclear how Gerbic died.
In May, it was revealed that New South Wales police had discovered 88 cases where gay men had died under suspicious circumstances between 1970 and 1990 in Sydney and the surrounding area.
As well as the investigation conducted by New South Wales police, LGBT health and advocacy charity ACON previously issued their own analysis of the 88 deaths.
In ACON’s report, the charity also concluded that many of the deaths can be linked to both homophobia and inadequate investigations by police at the time.
The report published in May followed an investigation prompted by an initial inquest into the death of Scott Johnson, a 27-year-old mathematician who was found dead at the bottom of a 200-foot cliff in 1988.
