Sloan and Parkes were “one-percenter” drug dealers, bikie associates, who bounced between shady hotels, drug dens and pokies pubs in Sydney’s west.
It was there they met Carroll, a gifted HSC student and rising sports star in her younger years who had developed a drug addiction.
Her mother Anne Carroll told the court last week Najma meant “star” in Arabic, and she shone with a humanitarian spirit.
“Never did I imagine that after 33 short years, I would need to explain to the funeral director that, no, I did not have special clothes for Najma to be cremated in,” she said.
“I knew that instead Najma’s bludgeoned, charred and decomposed remains would need to be swaddled in white cloth before being placed into her coffin.”
Najma Carroll had been emotionally abused as a child, her mother learned years later, and struggled with addiction. But she checked herself in and out of rehabs and had plans for the future. Parkes and Sloan cut them short.
Police at the quarry, south of Sydney, where Najma Carroll’s body was found.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
“Najma put her trust in the wrong men,” her mother said.
Five months after Najma’s death, in December 2020, Parkes sat down with police in a prison interview room. It was his first chance to talk his way out of trouble.
Parkes told police Carroll was “down on her luck” and had used pandemic-era changes to superannuation to withdraw $8000. She invested it in their drug business.
“She saw an opportunity to make a dollar without doing f— all for it to be honest,” Parkes told police.
“I was an eyewitness to murder.”
Parkes told police the same story he had told his cellmate – Sloan had turned against Carroll over money.
“That old school bikie just turned, just changed towards her,” Parkes said.
“I didn’t see anything from her that would make me change towards her. I just saw a bubbly girl.”
Parkes repeated what he had told his cellmate about sitting in the car, watching as Sloan killed Carroll in the glare of his headlights.
The jury heard Carroll had met Benjamin Parkes and Robert Sloan while living in motels around Liverpool.
“He came around that way with a bat … and he bludgeoned her to death,” Parkes said in the interview. “He would’ve hit her 20 times, mate. I was absolutely frozen.”
Parkes told police Sloan was a killer and a “bastard” toward Carroll. He had told his cellmate the same thing.
Important evidence contradicted Parkes’ claim, however, and police knew it.
Cigarette butts at the scene had tested positive for Carroll’s DNA – she had time for a smoke at the remote quarry.
Police also knew forensic evidence showed Carroll was struck three times in the head, not 20 as Parkes claimed.
Prosecutors never believed Parkes and proceeded to trial.
They told the jury he and Sloan worried Ms Carroll “knew too much” about their drug business and formed a pact to kill her.
The jury, the only audience that mattered, listened to the recordings, interviews with police and agreed – Parkes was guilty.
Carroll’s mother was stoic as she faced each man at his sentence hearing. She read a statement about her daughter and they listened.
“Najma would want us all to continue with love and hope in our hearts, hope for an end to violence against women,” she said.
“The light of Najma’s shining star has been extinguished, but Najma’s spirit of courage, resilience and fortitude, in support of truth, justice and equality lives on in all of us. Vale Najma Carroll.”
Justice Natalie Adams will sentence Parkes on Friday.
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Source Agencies
