Cancer has done what the justice system could not and ensured Corrimal rapist and killer Sidney Justin Bowtell will never have his freedom.
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Almost 27 years after he dragged 81-year-old grandmother Anne Gladys Motbey off Keira Street to rape and kill her, Bowtell died in Long Bay jail on Monday, aged 45.
His funeral is later this month in Redcliffe, Queensland, according to an unnamed source.
Bowtell was an angry, pug-faced 17-year-old on bail for armed robbery when he spotted Mrs Motbey walking home from carpet bowls late on September 21, 1988.
He ran at her from behind and grabbed her by the throat.
Mrs Motbey was "probably dead, or at least unconscious", when he committed the rape, a court would later note.
Retired Wollongong detective David Ainsworth remembers well the discovery, the next day, of Mrs Motbey.
"It's one of the most horrifying murders and rapes that I've ever attended," he said.
"He [Bowtell] was a good six-footer, red curly hair and broad shoulders ... Mrs Motbey was only a little frail woman.
"She didn't deserve to die in the manner in which she did. To take his frustrations out on a poor little lady like that is disgusting.
"[Bowtell's death] couldn't happen to a better person. He should never have been allowed out."
Wollongong police reacted with relief on July 20, 1989, when Judge Jane Mathews sentenced Bowtell to life in prison, largely on the strength of a damning psychiatric report that branded him "incurable, violent, incapable of learning ... a danger to be at large", and beholden to a personality disorder.
But the sentence was reduced to 21 years, with a minimum term of 15 years, when more positive psychiatric reports materialised in 2000.
Six months later, Bowtell escaped from Grafton Correctional Centre with a fellow inmate.
The pair kidnapped a woman, gagged her and took turns brutally raping her.
Bowtell received lengthy additional prison time for his reoffending, but his sentence was whittled back on appeal so that he became eligible for parole in September last year.
His total jail term would have ended in September, 2017.
On January 14, Bowtell was granted parole on medical grounds, and released to Darlinghurst's Sacred Heart Health Service for palliative care for six days.
The Mercury understands he was wheelchair-bound, with a thick, red beard, and extensive tattoos on both arms.
Authorities considered him so incapacitated he did not require supervision.
He was returned to custody on January 20, and died 13 days later.