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Mandatory Murder: The compelling true story of an outback murder from an award winning journalist, for readers of THE TALL MAN and SEE WHAT YOU MADE ME DO
A compelling true story of homicide and injustice in an outback town
At first it looked like a swag, said the grader driver. He'd found the body just off the road outside the outback town of Katherine in the Northern Territory. Police quickly identified the dead man as Ray Nicefero, who'd recently appeared in court for aggravated assault and breaching a domestic violence order. Three days later, three young local suspects were arrested, including nineteen-year-old Indigenous man Zak Grieve. A month later, Ray's former partner was also arrested. But when the accused faced court in the rough justice system of the Territory, it quickly became apparent that there were few provable facts to be had. Depending on who was talking, a loving friend could be an abusive monster, a battered wife a conniving temptress. And a joke between mates about the best way to dispose of a body could be a conspiracy to murder. The outcome of the case was no less murky, thanks to the Territory's mandatory sentencing laws, which, the judge said, 'brings about injustice'. Mandatory Murder is the compelling true story of murder in an outback town and the extraordinary aftermath. It raises several important questions, including how an Indigenous man who didn't attend a murder can be sentenced to jail for twenty years.
At first it looked like a swag, said the grader driver. He'd found the body just off the road outside the outback town of Katherine in the Northern Territory. Police quickly identified the dead man as Ray Nicefero, who'd recently appeared in court for aggravated assault and breaching a domestic violence order. Three days later, three young local suspects were arrested, including nineteen-year-old Indigenous man Zak Grieve. A month later, Ray's former partner was also arrested. But when the accused faced court in the rough justice system of the Territory, it quickly became apparent that there were few provable facts to be had. Depending on who was talking, a loving friend could be an abusive monster, a battered wife a conniving temptress. And a joke between mates about the best way to dispose of a body could be a conspiracy to murder. The outcome of the case was no less murky, thanks to the Territory's mandatory sentencing laws, which, the judge said, 'brings about injustice'. Mandatory Murder is the compelling true story of murder in an outback town and the extraordinary aftermath. It raises several important questions, including how an Indigenous man who didn't attend a murder can be sentenced to jail for twenty years.
320 pages, Paperback
Published June 16, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 13, 2020
A detailed account of a murder that occurred in Australia's Northern Territory. I had no knowledge of this case until I started reading this book and by the end of it I was swept up in the sad injustices of the NT sentencing system which has lead to someone who didnt even attend the murder having to serve a longer mandatory prison sentence than the people/persons responsible for the murder. A disturbing insight into just how unfair some mandatory sentencing can be, makes you rethink the current mandatory sentencing rules within Australia and whether they should be removed and each person sentenced on individual case by case basis. A true crime read that will stay withyou long after you have finished reading it. #stevenschubert #mandatorymurder #tea_sipping_bookworm #bookstagram #bookqueen #amazon#kindle #greatreads #goodreads #litsy
July 28, 2019
The book addresses the topic of mandatory sentencing for murder in the NT focusing on the inconsistencies in sentences handed out to a group of people involved in a contract killing in Katherine- with the bloke who changed his mind and backed out at the last moment getting the highest sentence.
I have no sympathy for a man who takes part in the planning of a murder and when he decides not to go ‘hands on’ doesn’t have the guts to report the plan to police- thereby enabling the murder to go ahead.
As far as I’m concerned he is as guilty as the rest.
They all should have got the maximum penalty.
Perhaps the lad should have got a better lawyer.
I have no sympathy for a man who takes part in the planning of a murder and when he decides not to go ‘hands on’ doesn’t have the guts to report the plan to police- thereby enabling the murder to go ahead.
As far as I’m concerned he is as guilty as the rest.
They all should have got the maximum penalty.
Perhaps the lad should have got a better lawyer.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2023
An entertaining and easily read true crime tale about a bunch of bogan fuckwits killing an even bigger piece of shit with a bunch of truly stupid friends and family being involved in the background.
It lost me a bit at the end as the author tries to make a point about mandatory sentencing but I'm not sure how anyone could feel sympathy for anyone involved in this crime.
It lost me a bit at the end as the author tries to make a point about mandatory sentencing but I'm not sure how anyone could feel sympathy for anyone involved in this crime.
September 27, 2019
The story of another battered woman who didn’t know how to escape, except to organise his murder.
And inflexible sentencing laws.
All round sad.
And inflexible sentencing laws.
All round sad.
July 12, 2019
Four years after she took a chance on love and moved her life across the country for a man, two months after her son asked if she wanted that man killed, one month after Chris brutally smashed in her ex-fiance’s head, Bronwyn Buttery made her first confession.
Bronwyn, mother of two young adult sons, separated from her husband, was a good worker who supported herself in unskilled occupations. One day in her work at a suburban Adelaide supermarket she met a delivery driver who asked her out on a date. She accepted. They dated for some weeks and Bronwyn found herself becoming lovingly attached.
In a move that would bring permanent change to her life – and the lives of others around her – she left Adelaide and moved to Katherine to be with the new man in her life, Ray Niceforo.
Bronwyn said she loved Ray, and perhaps she did. Using a line of credit based on the house she still owned in Adelaide, she bought them a laundromat, provided him the money to buy a number of ‘classic’ cars and even, a decade his senior and nearing 50, went on an IVF program in an attempt to give him a baby his Italian background pretty much expected of him. None of it worked. Ray frequently assaulted her. A friend even noticed fingermark bruising on her neck soon after their last IVF failure.
I thought of Congreve’s A Woman Scorned as I read the book, as there’s little doubt Bronwyn was hard done by. For example, at the start of the book, Ray had broken the conditions of an AVO. It appeared she used this as a basis of revenge. In her case, her fury extended to arranging the murder of her ex-fiance.
Her son Chris offered to perform the task, provided Bronwyn could stump up the funds necessary for the hit, five thousand for each of the three men who’d be needed, including Chris. Details were quickly worked out between the loving son and two accomplices. Frequently fuelled by a number of cones, the details of the who, the when and the how were soon arranged for what the trial judge would later say was most likely the first contract killing in Northern Territory history.
At the end of the trials, a young accused looked in the eyes of the jury as they filed in to deliver their verdicts. One of the women saw him looking and burst into tears. He knew his fate immediately.
Beyond that, I’m not going to say a lot more about the story. Despite the fact it’s an account of a recent crime and one about which you, like I, have probably read a great deal, it seems only fair to leave you to read what is a fast-flowing tale of capital crime and treachery. Every one of the main characters lies and, to a great degree, how it panned out depends on who you believe. It drew me in from the start and I had it read in a night.
Where I gleaned the greatest level of interest was in Steven Schubert’s look at how conservative governments are big on ‘Law and Order’ and tend to favour mandatory sentencing for particular crimes (from which the book’s title, Mandated Murder, has been drawn). As the author says, late in the book,
The media – or at least parts of it – whip up outrage about judges being soft on crime. Politicians give in to populist urges to quell the outrage.
All of which is a truism. Mandating sentences becomes a matter of concern for politicians who have little understanding of law. In this case, as the trial judge said, he could take no pleasure in the sentence of 20 years to life imposed on one of the accused. “It is the fault of mandatory sentencing provisions which inevitably bring about injustice.”
It is as an avoidable paradox.
Bronwyn, mother of two young adult sons, separated from her husband, was a good worker who supported herself in unskilled occupations. One day in her work at a suburban Adelaide supermarket she met a delivery driver who asked her out on a date. She accepted. They dated for some weeks and Bronwyn found herself becoming lovingly attached.
In a move that would bring permanent change to her life – and the lives of others around her – she left Adelaide and moved to Katherine to be with the new man in her life, Ray Niceforo.
Bronwyn said she loved Ray, and perhaps she did. Using a line of credit based on the house she still owned in Adelaide, she bought them a laundromat, provided him the money to buy a number of ‘classic’ cars and even, a decade his senior and nearing 50, went on an IVF program in an attempt to give him a baby his Italian background pretty much expected of him. None of it worked. Ray frequently assaulted her. A friend even noticed fingermark bruising on her neck soon after their last IVF failure.
I thought of Congreve’s A Woman Scorned as I read the book, as there’s little doubt Bronwyn was hard done by. For example, at the start of the book, Ray had broken the conditions of an AVO. It appeared she used this as a basis of revenge. In her case, her fury extended to arranging the murder of her ex-fiance.
Her son Chris offered to perform the task, provided Bronwyn could stump up the funds necessary for the hit, five thousand for each of the three men who’d be needed, including Chris. Details were quickly worked out between the loving son and two accomplices. Frequently fuelled by a number of cones, the details of the who, the when and the how were soon arranged for what the trial judge would later say was most likely the first contract killing in Northern Territory history.
At the end of the trials, a young accused looked in the eyes of the jury as they filed in to deliver their verdicts. One of the women saw him looking and burst into tears. He knew his fate immediately.
Beyond that, I’m not going to say a lot more about the story. Despite the fact it’s an account of a recent crime and one about which you, like I, have probably read a great deal, it seems only fair to leave you to read what is a fast-flowing tale of capital crime and treachery. Every one of the main characters lies and, to a great degree, how it panned out depends on who you believe. It drew me in from the start and I had it read in a night.
Where I gleaned the greatest level of interest was in Steven Schubert’s look at how conservative governments are big on ‘Law and Order’ and tend to favour mandatory sentencing for particular crimes (from which the book’s title, Mandated Murder, has been drawn). As the author says, late in the book,
The media – or at least parts of it – whip up outrage about judges being soft on crime. Politicians give in to populist urges to quell the outrage.
All of which is a truism. Mandating sentences becomes a matter of concern for politicians who have little understanding of law. In this case, as the trial judge said, he could take no pleasure in the sentence of 20 years to life imposed on one of the accused. “It is the fault of mandatory sentencing provisions which inevitably bring about injustice.”
It is as an avoidable paradox.
July 21, 2019
Steven Schubert does an admirable job in marshalling all the information related to this case to present it in readable fashion in this book, but its major contribution to public debate and conversation is hidden beneath what seems to be just another true crime book. I went to the Darwin Railway Club launch and Q and A with the author. I think the Q and A, the author and the moderator, thoroughly undersold the finer points of this book. Similarly, there are big and significant themes in this book that the author leaves to the very last chapters of the book, which come out in the trial and sentencing parts of the book. In a way I wonder if the book needed a better framing or a reframing. The first and second parts of the book plod along like a usual true crime work, about life in a small town, marginalised youth and struggling working class people. Then the truly gripping part comes in the section on the trial and sentencing (I won't go into more detail in case it spoils it for other readers). This book is very important in the context of legal and justice debates in the Northern Territory and more widely. I wanted more of the discussion that occurs later on to be more front and centre and to feature in the introduction of the book. The book's flaw is that it tries to be all things to all people. It needs a central argument, but one key argument that I can detect, where the passion seems to lie for Schubert, is only touched on in the last section of the book. I wanted more.
Read
December 25, 2019Considering the nature of this book - I won't be giving it a rating. (I did listen along to the audiobook while I read along in my physical copy)
Edit - Two days later and I'm still pondering this one. I'm actually starting to wonder what was the purpose of shedding light on this particular solved case?
My feelings are just so wildly bemused regarding the real life events that occurred for this book to be written in this first place. Like other True Crime books published by the ABC, It's a journalistic perspective. Steven Schubert is an award winning journalist and has been reporting on this case/ramifications that this chain of events had in a wider aspect. Earlier in the year I read The Lost Girls by Ava Benny-Morrison which has a similar approach to a completely different case study but for some reason, I felt a lot more strongly towards that one. The book suffered from so many people who lay on the periphery who refused to speak to Steven. It just didn't feel fully fleshed out. I found myself feeling so helpless that I struggled to pick it up simply because it's such a grim situation - upon googling more about the welfare of one of the 'perpetrators', I felt the gravity of the situation and how fucked up the entirety of what happened was and how even 10+ years later, it is still destroying an innocent man.
I would recommend reading if you want either a well written true crime study or have any interest in the crime itself.
Edit - Two days later and I'm still pondering this one. I'm actually starting to wonder what was the purpose of shedding light on this particular solved case?
My feelings are just so wildly bemused regarding the real life events that occurred for this book to be written in this first place. Like other True Crime books published by the ABC, It's a journalistic perspective. Steven Schubert is an award winning journalist and has been reporting on this case/ramifications that this chain of events had in a wider aspect. Earlier in the year I read The Lost Girls by Ava Benny-Morrison which has a similar approach to a completely different case study but for some reason, I felt a lot more strongly towards that one. The book suffered from so many people who lay on the periphery who refused to speak to Steven. It just didn't feel fully fleshed out. I found myself feeling so helpless that I struggled to pick it up simply because it's such a grim situation - upon googling more about the welfare of one of the 'perpetrators', I felt the gravity of the situation and how fucked up the entirety of what happened was and how even 10+ years later, it is still destroying an innocent man.
I would recommend reading if you want either a well written true crime study or have any interest in the crime itself.
May 27, 2020
The true-crime telling of a 2011 murder in the Northern Territory, Australia, and the investigation and trial that followed.
When the body of Katherine local Ray Nicefero is found by the side of a road, not long after he had breached a domestic violence order, the police investigation quickly focuses on 3 young local males and just as soon after, Ray's partner Bronwyn Buttery.
One of the male suspects is Bronwyn's son Chris, and the others are mates of his. This is a pretty standard True-crime story, with anecdotes from locals about the suspects and the victim to help the reader understand the backstory and reasons why someone would want Ray dead, and the type of people who might be capable of doing that, and a gruesome crime scene photo to help set the mood.
But the real story here is more about the Northern Territory Justice System, which according to the trial Judge himself, "brings about injustice", and the biggest question raised is how an Indigenous man, whom the judge believes was not even present at the scene of the murder, can receive a longer prison sentence than those who actually bludgeoned the victim to death.
Ultimately, whether you believe that Zac Grieve is guilty or just gullible pales in comparison to the questions raised about the Northern Territory's Mandatory Sentencing laws and a justice system which seems very heavily weighted against the Indigenous population.
Interesting, thought provoking and quite alarming....
When the body of Katherine local Ray Nicefero is found by the side of a road, not long after he had breached a domestic violence order, the police investigation quickly focuses on 3 young local males and just as soon after, Ray's partner Bronwyn Buttery.
One of the male suspects is Bronwyn's son Chris, and the others are mates of his. This is a pretty standard True-crime story, with anecdotes from locals about the suspects and the victim to help the reader understand the backstory and reasons why someone would want Ray dead, and the type of people who might be capable of doing that, and a gruesome crime scene photo to help set the mood.
But the real story here is more about the Northern Territory Justice System, which according to the trial Judge himself, "brings about injustice", and the biggest question raised is how an Indigenous man, whom the judge believes was not even present at the scene of the murder, can receive a longer prison sentence than those who actually bludgeoned the victim to death.
Ultimately, whether you believe that Zac Grieve is guilty or just gullible pales in comparison to the questions raised about the Northern Territory's Mandatory Sentencing laws and a justice system which seems very heavily weighted against the Indigenous population.
Interesting, thought provoking and quite alarming....
Read
May 29, 2021A true story of homicide in the N.T and mandatory sentences laws. Zak Grieves a co-conspirator to murder was sentence for life in prison with no parole for a murder he likely wasn’t at, which is a notably longer sentence than the accepted perpetrators.
November 28, 2019
Interesting read.
May 30, 2023
Audiobook.
July 30, 2023
A true story of family/friend/relationship complexities.
July 26, 2025
3.5 Stars
October 21, 2025
Mandatory Murder gives a basic understanding of mandatory sentencing and the powerless state of play for the judges when handing down sentences to the guilty. It’s a sorry business when the instigator of the crime is now out on the street (clearly a self centred ignorant schemer), and the activators of the murder get sentences that are wrapped up in political warfare and completely out of the hands of the judge and jury.
The fight against crime does need a big boost of public education. I, for one, was ignorant to the ramifications of ‘mandatory’ sentencing and how it effects the individual and Schubert has done a great job of evidencing this bias.
A good read 3.5.
The fight against crime does need a big boost of public education. I, for one, was ignorant to the ramifications of ‘mandatory’ sentencing and how it effects the individual and Schubert has done a great job of evidencing this bias.
A good read 3.5.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews