Thomas Clarke’s life ‘fell apart’ before brutal murder in country Victoria

The brutal and gruesome murder of a 72-year-old man in his country Victoria home has assured Thomas Clarke will spend at least 15 years in prison.

Clarke was sentenced in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday, in a matter the court said was without “any particular cases (with) strong comparative value” guiding the judge on how long to send the 57-year-old to prison.

John Hunter, 72, was slaughtered and then butchered in his house in the town of Dimboola, northeast of Melbourne, in January 2023.

A convicted rapist, Mr Hunter had recently been released from prison and there were untrue rumours going around Dimboola that he was a pedophile.

Clarke, along with Jodie Hill, went into Mr Hunter’s house, where the 72-year-old was hit on the head with a hammer, stabbed in the eyes with a box cutter, carvings were made in his torso, and his penis and scrotum were cut off.

Ms Hill was acquitted last year, and Clarke separately pleaded guilty.

Delivered this week, the sentencing decision of Justice Jane Dixon is a sordid account of the crime’s brutality, as well as Clarke’s life crumbling at middle age into drug abuse and complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

Clarke was sentenced to 21 years in prison with 15 years’ non-parole. Justice Dixon would have imposed 24 years with a 21-year minimum if he had not pleaded guilty.

John Lindsay Hunter

John Hunter had just been discharged from hospital the month before he was killed. Mr Hunter is survived by two sons.

The 72-year-old had bought the house in Dimboola, and his sister Heather Featherstone hoped to see more of him after the pair grew a closer relationship in recent years, the court sentencing decision revealed.

He was on an oxygen concentrator to help him breathe, and during the attack the oxygen tube was ripped from his face.

Largely housebound and requiring other people to run his errands, David Brown “in poignant terms” counted Mr Hunter as a friend.

“Mr Brown felt supported through his friendship with Mr Hunter. He expressed sadness that although Mr Hunter did not appear to have much time left due to ill health, it was disappointing that his time with Mr Hunter was further shortened by a senseless act of violence,” Justice Dixon said.

In Dimboola, Mr Hunter was the “subject of unsavoury rumours”.

“Mr Hunter had recently spent some time in prison after being convicted of rape. The rumours were to the effect that he was a pedophile but these rumours were untrue,” Justice Dixon said.

‘Between 20 and 23 January 2023 in Dimboola’

Clarke pleaded guilty to murdering Mr Hunter between January 20 and January 23, 2023, and accepted he was “complicit in the murder of Mr Hunter by intentionally assisting Jodie Hill in the commission of that offence, and that you struck Mr Hunter to the head with a hammer and were present when Jodie Hill pierced his eyes with a sharp implement”.

“You were also present when certain post mortem damage was inflicted to Mr Hunter’s body,” the judge said.

Clarke had taken a bus to Dimboola on the morning of January 20, visited his aunt and sister and then gone drinking with his cousin and the cousin’s girlfriend, Jodie Hill.

When the cousin went to the bottle store about 5.45pm, Clarke and Ms Hill went for a walk, were captured on CCTV being “physically affectionate”, and bought more alcohol from the Victoria Hotel.

The pair then went to Mr Hunter’s house.

They knocked on his locked door, demanding money, but were told to leave. Clarke and Ms Hill then went inside.

Mr Hunter was attacked, though the court could not say which of the pair initiated the attack.

Clarke and Ms Hill grabbed a hammer and a box cutter from the kitchen bench.

Mr Hunter fell over at some point, and Clarke hit him in the head with the hammer.

“Jodie Hill used a sharp implement on Mr Hunter’s eye sockets, causing damage to both eyes,” Justice Dixon said.

Mr Hunter’s body was dragged to a bedroom, his shirt pulled over his head and “Jodie Hill made incised carvings on his torso and removed some parts of his body … the deceased’s penis and scrotum”.

A forensic pathologist ruled his genitalia were cut off after he had died, because there was no blood from those wounds.

Police later found the boxcutter wrapped up in a curtain, which had been laid on the body.

“Following the attack on Mr Hunter, you and Jodie Hill took away some boxes of power tools, food and pills, along with items used in the attack, and disposed of those items in the Wimmera River,” Justice Dixon said.

“You also washed yourselves in the river. None of the items taken from the premises were ever recovered from the river by police.”

Clarke and Ms Hill went back to Clarke’s aunty’s house about 3am, had sex, and Ms Hill later returned to the caravan she shared with Clarke’s cousin.

The following day, Clarke took a bus to Ararat and then a train to Ballarat, and at a friend’s house “confessed to him that you had killed a man in Dimboola and that it was something that you had to do”.

The investigation

On January 23, three days after the attack, a friend of Mr Hunter’s could not contact him so went to his house.

The friend found Mr Hunter’s body.

Mr Hunter’s oxygen machine ran a long pipe from his bedroom, and the body was found in a spare bedroom.

The oxygen machine had been unplugged and power to the house had gone off a few hours earlier.

Forensics found DNA samples on the floor and on the body “consistent” with Clarke’s DNA, as well as Ms Hill’s.

Police and the courts suspect Clarke was cut during the attack, but “it is not alleged however, that at any time during the attack Mr Clarke was wielding the box cutter”.

Mr Hunter had concussive head trauma, a damaged windpipe, and went into cardiac arrest because of damage to his eyes.

The autopsy also found compressions to his neck, a fractured skull, fractured ribs, the stab wounds to his eyes had deflated his left eye socket, and he had cut injuries across his stomach.

When he was arrested on February 2, 2023, police deemed Clarke was unfit to be interviewed and he was taken to hospital. The next day he was fit to be interviewed.

Clarke told police a man named Andrew and woman named Chrissie or Christina were responsible, and that he followed them into the house.

Much of Clarke’s account of Andrew and Christina’s actions were consistent with what the Crown believed happened. After the interview Clarke was charged with murder.

In jail, authorities intercepted mail Clarke wrote to Ms Hill, where he blamed another man for the killing.

In late 2024 and early 2025 pre-trial hearings began. Clarke offered to plead guilty in July 2025, and he was arraigned late that month.

Ms Hill went to trial in November 2025 and was acquitted by the jury.

Clarke’s sentencing was pushed back from March to April 27 for expert reports to be furnished.

Thomas Clarke

The reports provided about Clarke detail childhood sexual abuse and neglect, but a young man who became a respected holder of water management, food harvesting and traditional practices knowledge on Wotjobaluk Country, in what is now northwest Victoria.

Clarke’s mother was taken in the stolen generations.

“You experienced confusion as to who your mother was, as between your biological mother and your Aunt Faye, but you understand this was a protective mechanism to ensure that you were not removed into care,” Justice Dixon said.

Aged 20 in 1989, Clarke was put on a good behaviour bond by the courts for property offences, and seven years later was fined on summary and police offences after a fight in a pub.

Clarke began hearing voices in his head aged 12 or 13, tried to hang himself in primary school, and self harmed amid “lifelong suicidal ideation”.

He started drinking and smoking cannabis in year 9, dropped out in year 11 and went to an electrical apprenticeship.

Clarke was the first Indigenous person in Victoria to be an A-grade certified electrician.

He moved to Melbourne for better work with his partner, they had a daughter and then a son, and he found “stability in your life and a sense of pride and purpose” working for Powercor, Justice Dixon said.

But then Clarke’s mother died, followed by multiple other family deaths. Members of the family blamed the 25-year-old for his mother’s death.

Clarke and his wife separated, and in 2007 his partner’s new partner hit Clarke on the head with a brick and stomped on him, requiring metal plates be inserted into his skull.

After two weeks in hospital, Clarke’s memory, concentration and emotional control all began to wane, as memories of childhood trauma resurfaced.

In 2010, Clarke and the mother of his children got married to stabilise the family home, and he agreed to stop drinking.

Justice Dixon says Clarke taught his children about self-determination and pride in their culture, avoided drug abuse and kept steady work.

But he suffered vertigo from a head injury, would get dizzy climbing ladders and fell off, breaking his shoulder one day; ending his career as an electrician.

Seven years after reconnecting, the marriage fell apart, as Clarke began drinking heavily and abusing drugs.

He was kicked out of the family home and had a family violence intervention order put in place, losing contact with his kids and becoming homeless.

On the streets at 49, Clarke began injecting meth and by 2022, was shooting up heroin.

He began dating another drug user and they would go on benders. Clarke moved between his aunty’s in Dimboola, other relatives’ houses or sleeping rough in Melbourne.

“Memories of childhood abuse haunted you and you could not control the voices in your head. In the months leading up the offence, you felt the voices had become menacing to you and you sought help from local doctors and medical clinics,” Justice Dixon said.

Clarke could not get a bed at an Aboriginal men’s health centre so turned to his cousin and Jodie Hill in Dimboola.

‘Stability fell apart’

A psychiatrist report tendered to the Supreme Court found Clarke has complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), a severe personality disorder, and a psychotic-like state, with cognitive deficits owing to a brain injury, though another doctor found any cognitive impairments to be relatively mild.

“Dr Darjee opined that it is unusual to come across an individual with the severity of personality dysfunction that you had,” Justice Dixon told Clarke in court.

“The conditions you suffer were connected to your general background, and childhood exposure to abuse, neglect and poverty,” she said.

“Although you had managed reasonably well until around the age of 50, people with CPTSD and personality problems can be scaffolded by stable relationships and work, despite underlying fragility.

“In your case, that stability fell apart as you approached the age of 50.”

Justice Dixon was prepared to accept “there may have been a degree of psychological dissociation during the offending”.

The judge said blaming ‘Andrew’ and ‘Chrissie’ was an attempt to offer a “plausible alternative narrative”, but the attack “may have been triggered and exacerbated by memories of childhood abuse in light of your wrongheaded ideas about the victim of your crime”.

Punishing Clarke and denouncing such violence was balanced with “the risk that you could spend the rest of your life in prison due to your age, current health issues, and what research shows about the life expectancy of male prisoners of Aboriginal background,” Justice Dixon said.

With three years already for time served, and 15 years non-parole on a 21-year sentence, Clarke could walk free in 2038, aged 69.