Former girlfriend jailed over role in bus driver murder

The ex-girlfriend of the man who bashed Port Hedland bus driver Lindsay Judas to death with a metal pole while camping on the outskirts of Broome has been jailed for her part of the crime.

Sammy Jonathon Hietanen, 39, was found guilty of his murder by a Supreme Court jury sitting in Broome last week and will be sentenced in June.

His then girlfriend Stacey Marrie Knight, 24, pleaded guilty in January this year to being an accessory after the fact to the unlawful killing of Mr Judas.

Her jail term was reduced to 22 months based on her early guilty plea and her promise to give evidence against Hietanen.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Hall made her eligible for parole and backdated the sentence to July 6, 2015.

All details surrounding her court case were suppressed until the conclusion of Hietanen’s trial.

The prosecution alleged that while knowing what Hietanan had done, she assisted him in order to escape punishment.

She was originally charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder, but the State accepted her plea to the lesser charge of being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter.

In sentencing Knight, Justice Hall said the aggravating factors were that she remained silent after the murder for 21 months that “must have caused great trauma” to his family as she “must surely have realised”.

“You also sold property of the deceased,” he said. One would have thought that in doing so that would have reinforced for you a memory of what had occurred to the deceased.”

Mr Judas was last seen on CCTV in February 2013 in Broome before he was reported missing by his employer.

His body was found in a shallow grave in bushland off Crab Creek Road in November 2014 with major skull and arm fractures.

Hietanen and Knight befriended Mr Judas at the Pardoo Roadhouse the day before his death on February 7, 2015.

In giving evidence at his trial, Knight said her former boyfriend was a “very scary man” who later bashed her when she asked him what happened “that night” with Mr Judas.

Hietanen used a tow rope to drag Mr Judas’ body about 35 metres to a site where he buried him in a shallow grave on February 8, 2015.

He and Knight, who were both on the dole, abandoned their Mitsubishi Triton and travelled around Australia in the four-wheel-drive Nissan Navara owned by Mr Judas.

They sold the camping and fishing equipment inside the vehicle in Darwin and Queensland.