Douglas Crabbe

Crabbe will be reconsidered for parole no later than 2022. If he is paroled, he will be on parole for the rest of his life.

Crabbe applied for parole in 2016, but despite the recommendation of the WA Parole Board that Crabbe be paroled, the Attorney-General overruled them and rejected the application.

Crabbe became eligible for release on parole on 18 August 2013 at the age of 66. His first parole application was rejected on 5 September 2013.

In early 2005, Crabbe was moved to a prison in Perth, Western Australia after strong pleas from his family, including his sister, Flo.

Crabbe pleaded not guilty at his second trial which was held in the Darwin Supreme Court in 1985. This trial concluded on 7 October 1985 when a second jury convicted him on all five counts of murder. Crabbe was again sentenced to five consecutive terms of life imprisonment.

At the trial in March 1984 a witness testified that Crabbe had been rude and aggressive in the bar. This witness reported she had later seen Crabbe on the floor of the bar, being held down by three men. A second witness corroborated that a man had been involved in a scuffle with three men. The witness testified that after the truck crashed into the bar he saw the man who had been involved in the scuffle leave the truck's cabin and exit "very quickly" towards the rear of the truck via the gaping hole the truck left in the side of the building. The witness had been knocked down by the truck.

The episode was documented by Australian rock band Hunters and Collectors on their 1984 album The Jaws of Life, with the lyrics of the opening track, "42 Wheels", sung from Crabbe's point of view. The original artwork of the vinyl LP includes the memorial plaque at the pub where the incident happened.

Douglas John Edward Crabbe (born 1947) is an Australian murderer currently imprisoned in Perth for a multiple murder which occurred when he drove his 25-tonne Mack truck into the crowded bar of a motel at the base of Uluru (Ayers Rock) on 18 August 1983. Five people were killed and sixteen seriously injured.

In February 1983 Crabbe was arrested and charged for assaulting a car load of youths at a service station near Tennant Creek. The youths were harassing the service station's console operator and also provoked Crabbe, who retaliated by jumping up and down on the bonnet of the victim's car.

On 24 March 1983, Crabbe attended a country and western function in Curtin Springs and became involved in two fights involving police. During Crabbe's later murder trial a witness testified that on his second ejection from the Curtin Springs establishment Crabbe was informed he was barred, to which he replied "If that's the case, I'll drive my truck through the pub." Crabbe denied that he had said this.

On the evening of 18 August 1983, Crabbe spent an hour at the Inland Motel bar before being refused service for intoxication. The bar was part of the Inland Motel, a short distance from the base of Uluru. It was on the eastern side of the rock, a few minutes walk from the camp site from which Azaria Chamberlain disappeared in 1980 but which had closed by August 1983. Crabbe, then aged 36, walked behind the bar and confronted bar staff before being involved in a fight and being ejected from the premises at 12.30am.

At an October 1983 court hearing a police video taken on 18 August 1983 was shown to the court. It showed the bodies of the four people killed instantly - two men and two women - in the makeshift mortuary set up at the back of the motel. It also showed the damage to the bar area of the motel, with clothes and boots embedded in the ground under the truck and near its bloodstained bull bar, from which the officer who took the video said many of the dead had been pulled. Crabbe, charged with five counts of murder at the hearing, sat expressionless as the video was shown.

In 2004, the Northern Territory's mandatory 'life means life' legislation was repealed and an automatic 25-year non-parole period was fixed under the new laws. Later that year, the Northern Territory DPP applied to fix a longer non-parole period, and the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory increased that to a thirty-year minimum (the longest in the Northern Territory's history) backdated to 18 August 1983, the day of the murders and his arrest, to be served at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre.