R v Puglia[2024] QSC 31

Sentencing Remarks 

R v Christopher Puglia

The Hon Justice Applegarth

12 March 2024

(draft remarks to be revised against official transcript)   

Christopher Puglia, you are to be sentenced for the brutal murder on 16 May 2020 of your parents, Franco and Loris Puglia.

You bludgeoned each of them to death with a sledgehammer in their home.  Their head and facial injuries from multiple blows were horrific.  

They were the first victims.  There are many other victims:  their elderly parents; your uncle and aunt who arrived at the home on 17 May, expecting to celebrate your mother’s 60^th birthday, only to find a bloody and disgusting murder scene; your brother James who soon was told the devastating news that his parents had been murdered.  These are but a few of your living victims.  You robbed a family of cherished loved ones.  You deprived this community of two fine citizens.  

Having killed your parents, and realizing the enormity of your crime, you did not call an emergency number.  You did not cry out to neighbours.  You showed no respect for the bodies of your parents or any concern the trauma that your aunt and uncle or some stranger would suffer when they discovered the bodies. You packed a bag and drove to Southport that night.  You then drove towards Sydney and were intercepted by police on the M1 south of Newcastle. 

The events leading up to these murders are in the statement of facts.  In brief, you returned to Brisbane in early 2020.  You lost your job as a result of COVID-19 and moved into your parents’ large home.  You had your own detached living area.  You did not try to get a job or Centrelink assistance.  You did not help with household chores like cooking or cleaning.  

Understandably, your parents became frustrated with you, and your relationship deteriorated.  There were aggressive, physical acts by you towards your parents.  They asked you to leave, and you did for short periods of time.  They gave you one chance after another when you asked to return to live in their home and promised to meet their expectations.

On the afternoon of 16 May 2020, you, your parents, and a family friend visited your father’s parents.  You told your grandparents that you hated living at your parents’ house.  Your grandparents suggested you get a job and move out.

That was good advice.  If you had heeded it, you would not be in the dock of the Supreme Court about to be sentenced to imprisonment for life. Your parents would be alive.  

Franco and Loris Puglia were contributors to society:  your mother worked for Guide Dogs Australia and your father was an insurance assessor.  The decades of life that lay ahead of them should have been full of pleasure, rewards for a life of work, and the company of friends and family.  

Your murderous actions are unexplained.  To say you were resentful, ungrateful, uncaring, and selfish does not begin to explain the enormity of your actions. 

Yours were not the actions of an impulsive adolescent.  You were aged 31 when you committed these offences nearly 4 years ago.  You have no criminal history.  You are now aged 35.

I take account of your guilty pleas in fixing a parole eligibility date.  The guilty pleas were compelled by the circumstances.  They have saved witnesses, including family and neighbours, from the trauma and distress of giving evidence at a trial.  That has some utility.   If you were truly remorseful, the plea would have been entered earlier.  The indictment was presented in this Court almost 2 years ago on 16 March 2022.  After numerous reviews it was listed in December 2023 for a trial on 25 March 2024.  You pleaded on 5 February 2024.  So, the benefit to witnesses, including family members of not giving evidence at a trial was delayed by a late plea.  You should get little benefit for a late plea that was compelled by an overwhelming Crown case.  It does not demonstrate remorse.

There was no mental health or other defence.  There is no expert report that identifies some other mental condition, falling short of a mental health defence, that might explain your murderous acts.

As Dino and Sara Puglia say in their victim impact statement, the loss of Frank and Loris has shattered their family in ways that are indescribable.  The sudden and violent loss of loved ones has left an irreplaceable void in their and others’ lives.  The toll taken on so many lives is immeasurable.

One hope is that after today your victims can try to forget about you; to erase you, as best they can, from their memories and thoughts; never speak your name; and never see your face.  You forfeited any claim to be treated as a member of their family when you killed your parents.  Hopefully, they can replace thoughts of you with thoughts of happy times, shared with Franco and Loris Puglia, and their achievements.  

There is only one sentence that can be passed, imprisonment for life on each count.  If I had any discretion in the matter, the result would be the same.  As for a parole eligibility date, the law requires you to serve at least 30 years before you can even apply for parole.  It will be for the parole authorities in decades to come to decide if you warrant parole at any stage.  

In Bugmy v The Queen, Dawson, Toohey and Gaudron JJ quoted with approval the following passage from the judgment of the Court in Deakin v The Queen: 

“The intention of the legislature in providing for the fixing of minimum terms is to provide for mitigation of the punishment of the prisoner in favour of his rehabilitation through conditional freedom, when appropriate, once the prisoner has served the minimum time that a judge determines justice requires that he must serve having regard to all the circumstances of his offence.”

Those and other principles are stated in R v Sica [2013] QCA 247; [2014] 2 Qd R 168 at [135]-[163] and R v Appleton [2017] QCA 290.

Despite your lack of a criminal history, these murders are of a gravity that warrants a non-parole period that reflects their brutality.  I accept that there is no evidence that they were planned or organised long in advance.  An aggravating feature is that each was a domestic violence offence.

This is not a murder that arose from excessive self-defence or some extenuating circumstances.  It is a double murder.  These were callous, brutal murders, where death came from several blows, delivered with deadly force.  They are not explained by some developmental or psychiatric condition, or exposure to violence or sexual abuse or some other severe trauma as a child. 

The sentence of life imprisonment serves the goal of deterrence and denunciation.  The period before you become eligible for parole need not be the minimum period. 

The Crown does not contend for an extension beyond the 30 years stated in s 305(2) because this is a way in which to recognize the value of your guilty pleas.  Your counsel submits to the same effect. 

The issue is whether 30 years is the minimum period that justice requires to reflect the enormity and brutality of your crimes, your lack of remorse, and the consequences for your many victims of these heinous crimes.  I accede to the Crown’s submission, although I consider that it would have been open to me to conclude that an extension beyond the minimum was required. 

In my view, the minimum time that you should serve before being eligible to apply for parole is 30 years.  

It will be for the Parole Board some time after 2050 to decide if you deserve the privilege of parole.  It will consider whether your rehabilitation (if any), any eventual genuine remorse, and the interests of community protection should see you released on parole or not.  It may consider my conclusion that it would have been open to me to extend the period to 35 years.

On count 1, you are sentenced to life imprisonment.  

On count 2, you are sentenced to life imprisonment.

I declare the period of 1392 days between 20 May 2020 and yesterday, 11 March 2024 as time served under those sentences.  

I fix a parole eligibility date of 19 May 2050.