By Mitchell Clarke
The family of murdered Pakenham woman Kylie Blackwood won’t have to face a gruelling trial, after the man charged with her murder admitted he killed her, almost six years to the day she died.
Scott Alan Murdoch pleaded guilty on Thursday 8 August before the Supreme Court prepared to assemble a jury for his criminal trial.
Murdoch also pleaded guilty to intentionally causing serious injury to an elderly woman, a lesser charge to the one he was originally facing, attempted murder, as his lawyers and prosecutions struck a deal to avoid going to trial.
Just months before stabbing Ms Blackwood in her home, Murdoch reportedly broke into Ilona Prohaska’s Endeavour Hills home on 21 May 2013. He slit the 79-year-old grandmother’s throat and pushed her to the ground breaking her spine and shoulder.
On 1 August 2013, Murdoch broke into the Blackwood family home on McCaffery Rise.
Police believe he was planning to rob the house but disturbed Kylie, which led him to repeatedly stab her in the neck and chest, leaving her to die.
Her body was found by her 11-year-old twin daughters when they walked home from school after she failed to pick them up.
The family was without answers until detectives released footage in 2016 of a white Nissan Tiida driving near the house. A day later, on 8 April 2016, Murdoch was charged with her murder, almost three years after her death.
The extent of Murdoch’s violent and callous past has been revealed, with details emerging that he was on parole when he attacked Ms Prohaska and killed Ms Blackwell.
In 2006, on a date with a Berwick woman he met online, Murdoch choked her unconscious, stabbing her in the face and arm after she refused to have sex with him.
He served time in prison but was released after five years, where his actions would result in the death of a much loved daughter, wife and mother.
Murdoch will appear before Justice Jane Dixon on Friday 16 August before he is sentenced at a later date.
