Bowe Maddigan sentenced to life in prison after sexual assault and murder of 11yo Zoe Buttigieg

THE family and friends of murdered 11-year-old Zoe Buttigieg have expressed their anger over the fact that the girl’s killer will not be dying in jail.

Family and friends of the fourth grader took to Facebook after Bowe Maddigan was sentenced to life in prison with a non parole period of 28 years to express their concern over the justic system.

“Should be life for a life,” posted one family member.

Earlier...

HE WAS an apparently normal party guest invited to celebrate a Saturday evening in an ordinary suburban house where he sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl and then ended her life.

But today, Bowe Maddigan, after pleading guilty to the 2015 murder of fourth grader Zoe Buttigieg, was sentenced to life in prison, with a non-parole period of 28 years.

The nightmare on Inchbold Street in the northeastern Victorian town of Wangaratta began when Zoe was sexually assaulted and murdered in her own bedroom.

The court heard that 30-year-old Bowe Evan Levi Maddigan had entered Zoe’s room after a heavy night of partying because he wanted her sexually for himself.

“She was entitled to feel safe where she was but it was there that you violently ended her life,” the Supreme Court of Victoria’s Hon. Justice Lasry said in court today.

“The fact that you killed her is incomprehensible. The method of killing was violent and was face-to-face. The lack of explanation is a troubling feature of your conduct.”

After the verdict was read in court, the crowd, reportedly comprised of 30 close family and friends of the victim, erupted in applause.

“I’m not going to have this turn into a circus” Hon. Justice Lasry told the court.

Maddigan, 29, was new in town and not long out of a Victorian prison where he had served time for drug charges.

He had met Janelle Saunders, Zoe’s mum, who worked at Wangaratta’s Big W, a week earlier through a mutual friend.

On the Saturday night, Ms Saunders and her partner were having friends around for drinks.

In evidence later given at Wangaratta Local Court, Ms Saunders and her guests enjoyed a marathon drinking and cannabis session that lasted well into the morning of Zoe’s sexual assault and murder.

Ms Saunders said she had engaged in conversation with Maddigan, who she described as “very deep” and “artistic”.

She said he had been drinking and smoking cannabis, jumping from topic to topic as they talked in the hours before the murder.

When Ms Saunders went to bed at 7am on Sunday, October 25, she had been drinking bourbon and coke for almost 12 hours.

At 11am, she woke and went into her daughter’s bedroom and found Zoe’s dead body. Bowe Maddigan had left the house.

Neighbours heard a scream, and then police and an ambulance arrived.

Medical examiners would find that Zoe had been sexually penetrated before she was killed.

Meanwhile, police had been called to the Hume Highway near Glenrowan, 16km south of Wangaratta, where a dishevelled and barefoot man had been seen wandering along the highway.

Maddigan was shoeless and wearing cargo pants and a singlet and behaving erratically when police and paramedics picked him up about a kilometre south of Glenrowan’s BP service station.

The court heard Mr Maddigan, who appeared to have “superficial lacerations”, told police he was walking to Melbourne.

A knife was found in his belongings that “seems to have been taken from the Saunders’ house.”

He was admitted to Wangaratta’s Kerferd psychiatric clinic and, later, when police made the link between Maddigan and the murder of Zoe Buttiegieg at the Inchbold Street house, he was placed under police guard.

In August, Maddigan pleaded guilty murder and committing an indecent act with a child under 16.

Maddigan made his first appearance in Wangaratta court four days later, arriving in the back of a police paddy wagon from which he screamed “F**k you. Die in hell, you dog” to waiting media.

ncG1vNJzZmimlazAb6%2FOpmWarV%2BjrrW1zqeYpWeSpMSmecyam52hnpzBsLqMrJynrJWjsKawjK2mZqSZm7Jutc1mp6uho6S7bq3FrZyrZaChsqKwyKeeZp%2Blnrm1xYytpmarla3CoriMmqqsmaWhwW6tzZ1kpq2imbKzec6fZGppqZqus7vLnWSzp5Vir7bA06Keop2XZLumw9Jmqq2noq58eH%2BVm2tubJVmfaJ9xW5pcJuRarN5gsCfmWprYmWCoq8%3D