Darryl Young looks directly into the camera – his eyes give nothing away and he’s giving a thumbs up – but the person taking the chilling selfie has no idea they’re standing with a triple murderer.
The photo was snapped less than six hours after Young raised a gun to the heads of his neighbours Mervyn Schwarz, Maree Schwarz, and Graham Tighe and shot them at the front gate of his Bogie property, Shannonvale.
The selfie – taken by wind farm worker Liam Parnell – was taken at the request of police as a proof of life and to show Young wasn’t armed, after officers found the bodies of his three neighbours on his driveway.
The haunting image was among more than a 100 exhibits shown to the jury who convicted Young of the triple murders, and the attempted murder of sole survivor Ross Tighe on August 4, 2022.
Young tried to convince the jury he didn’t shoot the family – his defence team attempting to pin the killings on Ross – but they didn’t believe him, and he was sent to jail for life with a non-parole period of 40 years.
He will be eligible for parole when he is 99 years old, if he’s still alive.
In Young’s isolated corner of northern Queensland, the sweep of wild hills and valleys were picturesque against the horrors committed at his front gate.
Eerie crime scene photos showed Mervyn Schwarz’s cowboy hat sitting on the red dirt next to his body, his work boots crossed at the ankles close to the gate.
A few metres away, Graham Tighe is lying on the ground below his mother Maree Schwarz, who’s sitting in the driver’s seat of a maroon LandCruiser with dogs in the back. The ignition is running.
She almost got away, until Young shot through the car window, shattering the glass and killing her.
The steel front gate to Young’s property – two hours from the nearest town – offers trespassers a stern warning that they cannot enter.
A second maroon ute has been driven from the scene by an injured Ross Tighe, who ran for his life and hid in long grass, leaving behind his own Akubra in the chaos.
He drove the wild track from Young’s gate so frantically he got a flat tyre – but he kept driving on the rim, a bullet in his belly, until he eventually found help.
The family – who owned neighbouring property Sutherland Station – had driven the 30-40 minute trip to Young’s front gate the morning of August 4, 2022 on his insistent request they have a meeting, as he was under the belief the family had stolen some of his cattle.
They obliged, only to be met by Young who pulled a rifle from the back seat of his silver Nissan Navara, declared “I’ll end this once and for all”, and shot them.
Young tried to pin the killings on Ross, but the prosecution relied on a crucial piece of evidence which sank his defence case – bullet casings.
Spent 30-30 bullet casings found at the crime scene were shown to the jury – including one found 50cm inside Young’s property gate, and another 7m further inside the gate. Another two were found near Graham’s body.
Inside Young’s homestead, another spent bullet casing was found in a long-life milk carton.
Expert ballistics witness Sergeant Ian Bruce gave evidence that all five spent casings had been fired from the same gun. But no gun was ever found.
Inside that milk carton was also a trail camera – one of many found around the dilapidated, cyclone damaged homestead on Young’s property.
One of those cameras had been at the front gate and captured the days leading up to the killings, including capturing Young arriving at the property the day before.
The final photo on the camera’s SD card was a dark, blurry picture taken at 8.33pm on August 3, 2022.
Prosecutors suggested it was a photograph taken as Young was pulling the camera down, knowing what he was planning the following morning.
Young told a jury in his trial that he took the camera off hours earlier – a statement prosecutors said was a lie.
Inside Young’s house – which consisted of two liveable rooms, half a roof, mattresses on the floor and computer chairs at the dining table – he also denied that boxes of 30-30 ammunition found by police were his.
One box had five missing bullets – bullets consistent with those which had been used to kill Merv, Maree and Graham.
After shooting the family, Young drove an ATV more than 3km through the steep terrain on his property to a high ridge line where wind farm workers had arrived earlier that morning and were conducting testing.
Young had let the two workers through the front gate about 7.30am – just 30 minutes before the killings.
The workers told a jury that Young was at the gate when they arrived, and didn’t follow them.
It was on this ridge line that police called wind farm worker Liam Parnell and asked for a photograph of who he was with – showing their hands – as there had been a shooting.
Mr Parnell took two selfies with the group he was with – his co-worker Matthew Garbutt, Young, his son Derek Young and his family friend Sharon Young.
In one photo – taken about 2pm – Young is giving a thumbs up to the camera.
He murdered the family around 8.07am.
After hours of negotiations, the group drove down the ridge and met SERT at the front gate where they were arrested, split up and questioned. Young was charged.
Young’s first taste of custody was a full-body mug shot taken in the early hours of the morning, barefoot and dressed in work clothes at Bowen Police Station.
Four years and 34 days later, Young would appear in court to hear his sentence – this time dressed in a blue checkered shirt and jacket, weathered, with no family in support, and with a noticeable twitch in his neck.
He left the Townsville courtroom a guilty man – a convicted triple murderer – who will likely die in jail.