On 4th March 2006, Claire Margaret McDonald gasped and burst into tears as a Victorian Supreme Court jury found her not guilty of the execution style murder of her husband, Warren John McDonald.
The court was told that McDonald had donned camouflage gear and lay in wait with a high-powered rifle for her husband to approach. She fired six shots, mortally wounding her husband.
McDonald successfully used the “battered woman syndrome” defence, claiming she had suffered years of abuse at the hands of her husband.
Within days, Queensland woman, Susan Falls, (pictured) having probably read the media reports of Heather McDonald’s stunning acquittal, decided to execute her allegedly abusive husband in the same fashion, in what prosecutors would describe as a cunning, calculated murder.