Robert George Dent has been found not guilty of murder due to unsoundness of mind after he used a mallet and knife to kill his elderly parents in 2021.

July 18, 2023

A man who used a mallet and knife to kill his elderly parents after hearing voices has been acquitted of their murders due to unsoundness of mind.

Robert George Dent, 48, cut his mother Bernice’s throat and bludgeoned his father Colin in September 2021 in the regional Western Australian town of Capel.

Their bodies were discovered when the recluse tried to cut off his penis in a failed bid to kill himself and called triple zero.

He had spent three days with the bodies inside the family’s house.

“They’re both in their beds dead,” he told the operator.

“I have been hearing voices … I’ve covered them up with doonas and tried to make everything smell nice … Sorry about that.”

When police arrived at the property, they found Dent covered in blood, with religious crosses drawn on most of his face, body, legs and feet.

They also found a mallet by the front door and a blood-covered knife on a kitchen bench and walls covered in writing and satanic messages.

These included allegations against relatives, who he claimed were members of a paedophile ring and devil worshippers.

He begged for help in the text and wrote he was going to be sexually assaulted and killed, with the intention of making it appear as if his relatives had killed his parents and him.

Dent tried to clean up some of the blood and sprayed air freshener in the home, about 200km south of Perth, to mask the smell of his parent’s decomposing bodies.

He was unemotional when he told a first responder he also wanted to die and later admitted to the killing his mother, 74, and father, 75, in graphic detail.

“It was horrible. Horrific. I killed them both,” he told detectives.

“I love my mum and dad … They’ve been the best carers for me.”

Dent, who had a long history of mental illnesses and had not left the family home for about 10 years, pleaded not guilty to the murders, claiming he was of unsound mind at the time.

Psychiatrists told his judge-only Supreme Court trial in June that Dent had either schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia and was psychotic at the time of the killings.

His symptoms started when he was 17 but he was initially diagnosed with chronic fatigue and was not given appropriate medical treatment.

Instead, his mother turned to alternative remedies, which resulted in the mental illness becoming entrenched and normalised.

Dent slowly became more and more reclusive, and spent much of his time in his room, often sleeping.

He did not socialise with others, except on rare occasions, and even then only in his room, where he also ate his meals.

He did not watch much television or listen to the radio or go outside during the day due to perceived electromagnetic sensitivities and photosensitivity.

He also did not go to the shops after 2000 and as a result, had little contact with the outside world.

Justice Amanda Forrester found he was not capable of controlling his actions and was deprived of the capacity to know that he should not attack his parents.

“As a result of his mental impairment, at the time of the killings, the accused was experiencing paranoid delusions and command auditory hallucinations,” she wrote in her verdict judgement handed down on Monday.

Justice Forrester said Dent had experienced an alternative reality and did not know what was right or wrong according to ordinary standards.

“I am satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the accused was, by reason of his mental impairment, deprived of the capacity to control his actions,” she said.

Dent was placed on an indefinite custody.