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Mad and Dangerous: Kurt Dumas

On the afternoon of 11 September 1985, in Melbourne, a young woman had a terrifying encounter with one of the most dangerous Australian criminals you’ve probably never heard of.

The woman, 30, was in the toilets at the Midtown Plaza in Melbourne’s central business district (CBD). The plaza is still located at the corner of Swanston and Bourke streets, though now it’s a bit dated compared to the slick newer shopping destinations in the city like The Emporium and Melbourne Central.

It was around 2 p.m. and the woman was washing her hands at the basin when she felt something hit her on the back. When she turned around she saw a man standing there with a crossbow. Reaching around to her back, the woman could feel an arrow protruding out of her body.

It is not known whether the arrow fell out of her back or the assailant pulled it out, but he then pushed her into a toilet cubicle and held a knife to her throat. ‘Do as I tell you and you won’t get hurt,’ the man told the woman.1

He demanded she take off her pants. Trying to stay calm in this life-threatening situation, the woman attempted to take control and asked the man to repeat what he’d said to her. It was a strategy to slow things down and buy her time. The woman told her attacker she was expecting a friend to arrive at any moment and that he’d be caught if he didn’t let her go.

Her gamble worked: The young man hurriedly got his crossbow and left the toilets.

A few months later, the woman saw the image of her attacker on television and in newspapers. It was his eyes she recognised first … his frightening eyes. His name was Kurt Michael Dumas and he was in the media because he’d been charged with murdering a young woman with a crossbow.

***

Kurt Dumas and Lyndell Martin were friends. The pair, aged 20 and 19 respectively, had known each other around three years. They had met when they were both patients at the Parkville Adolescent Unit in Melbourne in 1982 and had kept in sporadic contact. Ms Martin had schizophrenia and Dumas had significant psychiatric problems that had already seen him hospitalised several times.

On 18 November 1985, Dumas popped around to Ms Martin’s flat in Carlton and arrangements were made for her to come to his place in inner-city Fitzroy that night for dinner. It had been several months since they had seen each other.

What exactly went on in the flat that evening is not known, but Lyndell Martin never made it home. She would be found dead, by Dumas’s mother Gail, in the bathroom/laundry of his Clauscen Street flat four days later. The Sun reported that a 14-centimetre steel-tipped arrow was embedded in the victim’s abdomen.2

The day after he’d killed Ms Martin, Dumas fled to his parents’ house in Chadstone (a south-eastern suburb). He took two .22 rifles and the next day boarded a train to Ouyen, more than 400 kilometres from Melbourne, near the town of Mildura. Why Dumas chose this town is unknown.

He was arrested in Ouyen on 20 November and charged for being in possession of the firearms. Sergeant Paul Gunning, the arresting officer, followed his ‘copper instinct’ and spoke to Dumas just outside the town. Dumas told Sergeant Gunning he was in the area for hunting, hence the rifles. While Dumas feigned looking for his shooter’s licence (he didn’t have one), the policeman saw an array of other things in the bag including a knife, which Dumas said he used for skinning rabbits. Dumas gave the sergeant a false name and address.

On 21 November, he returned to Melbourne and returned to his flat, where Ms Martin was still on the bed. Dumas moved her body to the bathroom/laundry and covered it with towels, which is how she would be found the next day.

While his mother was discovering the horror of Ms Martin’s body in his flat, Dumas, using a false name, flew to Launceston, Tasmania. He was staying in a youth hostel when he was arrested. Police found a disturbing travel kit in his possession: ‘a crossbow 10 arrows, some bullets, a pair of female panties, a lock of Miss Martin’s hair, a pair of handcuffs, some masking tape and a stainless steel kitchen knife’.3

Dumas was interviewed by both the Launceston Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) and Melbourne detectives from the homicide squad who had travelled to Tasmania.

During the August 1986 Coroners Court inquest into Ms Martin’s death, the court heard that after his arrest, Dumas admitted that he had killed Ms Martin. Dumas told detectives, ‘I didn’t mean to kill her; I just went off my head. It was Monday night at my flat and she just went crazy. She wouldn’t shut up. I knew I had to fix her so that’s when I went and got it – the crossbow. It is the quickest and most accurate thing I have.’4

Dumas shot Ms Martin once. Coroner Hal Hallenstein found that she died of blood loss resulting from the chest wound ‘unlawfully and maliciously’ inflicted by Dumas.5

The details of Ms Martin’s last moments are among some of the most disturbing in Australian crime. The Sydney Morning Herald reported ‘police alleged Dumas bound Martin with masking tape and crepe bandages before killing her’.6 Detective Senior Constable Rodney Wilson told the Coroners Court that Dumas had also admitted, ‘I had sex with her after I shot her. She was still alive, she was resisting me.’ Senior Constable Wilson said at the inquest that when he asked Dumas why he’d done that Dumas told him, ‘Well, it couldn’t be any worse for me, could it?’7

The coroner’s report concluded the stab wounds on Ms Martin’s body were done after she died, possibly several days later. Police alleged Dumas told them he had returned from Ouyen to the flat a few days later and stabbed Ms Martin in the stomach to test the sharpness of his knife.8

Dumas’s extraordinarily disturbed life was revealed at the coroner’s inquest. His mother Gail gave evidence and detailed the hopeless facts of her son’s condition and behaviours. From court records and newspaper archives the picture emerged of Dumas as an extremely dangerous young man. He’d had mental health troubles from a very young age.

Dumas was born in Michigan, USA, on 12 December 1965. Mrs Dumas told the Coroners Court that her son had suffered severe head injuries after falling from a table at the age of three months. She said that since that accident Dumas had undergone several brain operations in America, one requiring him to have a plastic plate inserted in his head to slow a leakage of fluid in his brain.

The operations changed her son. Mrs Dumas said he was violent, unpredictable and had been asked to leave three schools because of this behaviour. He also spent some years as an inpatient in mental hospitals, including the one where he met Ms Martin.

The Dumas family immigrated to Australia in 1972. Kurt Dumas returned to the United States for a short time in 1978, but returned to Australia in 1979.

Dumas had younger brothers and had unpredictable violent outbursts towards them. He was also involved in petty crime and addictive behaviours, including compulsive eating. Court documents detail that in 1979, Dumas, then aged around 14, forced two young girls, aged 2½ and five years old, to undress and then he also took his clothes off. This incident saw him sent to a child and family clinic for assessment.

The Dumas family was in crisis and according to court documents ‘Mrs Dumas made a premeditated attempt to kill Kurt to “save the world from him” ’.9 Mrs Dumas was admitted to hospital for psychiatric care and her son was sent to a state government centre for boys called Baltara, then located in Parkville in inner-city Melbourne.

Shortly after this incident, the Dumas family decided to send Kurt back to the United States to live with his grandparents in Michigan. But his behaviour did not change and somehow (it was not detailed how) it was discovered that the teenage Dumas had plans to kill his grandmother and aunt.

He was sent to Fairlawn Center in Michigan, a child psychiatric asylum (now closed), for assessment and treatment.

He returned to Australia in early 1981 and was again in trouble. Serious trouble. Suspended from school for physically hurting a classmate, Dumas ended up at the adolescent psychiatric centre in Parkville and doctors believed he had borderline psychosis. Soon after, Dumas was admitted to Larundel Hospital in Melbourne’s north as an involuntary patient under the Mental Health Act. This admission was because Dumas had, according to court documents, attempted to ‘extort money, sexually molest and kill a family of your acquaintance’.10

His life, at such a young age, was already the stuff of nightmares and doctors who assessed him said his prognosis was ‘extremely poor’.11

***

After the coroner’s inquest Dumas was ordered to stand trial for the murder of Lyndell Martin in the Supreme Court. He entered a plea of not guilty. No application for bail was made and he remained in custody where he had been since the murder.

The trial started in December 1986 and lasted nine days. The judge was Justice George Hampel, who sentenced notorious criminals including Hoddle Street mass killer Julian Knight (sentenced in 1988) and retired in 2000 from the Supreme Court.

Dumas pleaded not guilty and his story changed somewhat from what he’d told police after his arrest in Tasmania.

Mrs Dumas gave evidence in court that she had seen her son on the morning of 19 November – the day after he killed Ms Martin and he told her he’d lost his job. The mother and son planned to catch up later that same day but Dumas never showed up. Concerned when she hadn’t seen him for a few more days, Mrs Dumas went to her son’s Clauscen Street flat and found Ms Martin’s body on the floor of the bathroom/laundry, covered in towels.12

When Dumas was being questioned in court the day after his mother, the jury heard Dumas had moved Ms Martin’s body so that he could sleep on his bed. This was not disputed by the accused.

In sworn evidence, Dumas said on the evening of 18 November he and Ms Martin ‘started kissing and cuddling on the couch and eventually had sexual intercourse’. The pair then had dinner and Dumas said Ms Martin started ‘yelling and screaming’. Dumas said he wound masking tape around Ms Martin’s mouth, which she ripped off before continuing to scream. Dumas said he told her to ‘shut up or leave’. Dumas admitted using the crossbow and that he ‘blew my lid and fired it’ but he said he’d put together the weapon to ‘scare her into being quiet’.13

Under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Bruce Walmsley on 11 December, Dumas told the court he did not intend to harm Ms Martin ‘at all’ and said the young woman was a ‘good friend’. ‘I was in a state of shock, not knowing what was going on, what was happening,’ he said in court.14

Dumas was ‘quite stunned’ at what happened. ‘I was scared, I panicked. I packed some things and ran off, literally,’ Dumas said.15

Mr Walmsley asked Dumas whether it had been distressing for him and Dumas responded, ‘Well, I couldn’t eat for days.’16

Dumas denied raping Ms Martin after he’d shot her with the crossbow. It was also alleged by police that Dumas had handcuffed her to the bed to stop her resisting him. ‘When someone’s dead or dying, that’s sick, that’s sick,’ he responded.17

Letters written by Dumas to a work colleague also revealed the depths of his disordered and violent mind. The sentencing remarks stated, ‘These letters provided graphic evidence that there was something very wrong with the applicant’s mentality.’18

John Bato, who had worked with Dumas at a smallgoods factory, gave evidence at the trial about a letter sent to him by the alleged crossbow killer. Mr Bato said that in the letter Dumas wrote his nickname in prison was ‘William Tell’.

Mr Bato also confirmed the contents, read out in court, which included, ‘I’m sorry what’s happened. I didn’t plan it, the chance was there and I took it … So John, I’m capable of killing someone and I’m not even feeling guilty. I’m not a mad killer.’19

Dr Barnes, a forensic psychiatrist who studied Dumas’s medical and social history, wrote in his report, referred to by Judge Hampel in his sentencing remarks:

I am quite convinced we are dealing with a person with significant psychiatric disorder and that a clear cut diagnosis has not been possible, but there are certain neurological features relevant to his presentation which cannot be overlooked … his whole history is punctuated with episodes of quite bizarre behaviour and in particular of his having a chaotic and disturbed fantasy life manifest by the writing of various notes, letters, plans et cetera …20

Another eminent specialist, Dr Bartholomew, described Dumas in his report as ‘markedly paranoid and close to psychotic’.21

On 19 December 1986, Dumas was sentenced to life imprisonment, but Justice Hampel fixed a minimum term of 18 years before the young killer could be considered for parole.

Justice Hampel said, ‘The evidence and all the surrounding circumstances, in my view, plainly demonstrate that there is a real likelihood that a crime of the kind committed on Lyndell Martin may be again committed by you.’22

These words would end up tragically prophetic.

As for the assault of the woman in Melbourne’s Midtown Plaza, Dumas was questioned about it after his arrest in Launceston but the details of the crime were kept from the jury during his murder trial. The case went to court in 1989. Dumas instructed his counsel to say he had nothing to do with it.

The victim bravely gave evidence about her terrifying encounter with Dumas, telling the County Court of Victoria on 6 February that she recognised Dumas as her attacker when he appeared on television and newspapers after his arrest for killing Ms Martin.

After the woman detailed her encounter with Dumas, the prosecutor asked her if she had felt any pain from the arrow that had embedded in her back.

‘I think I did but I was more aware of other dangers than the immediate pain,’ the victim answered.23

The Crown prosecutor Tim Doherty said Dumas told police he intended to rob the woman and gave a detailed account of the attack to detectives. However, when he was charged over the Midtown Plaza attack (after he was sentenced for the murder of Ms Martin) he told his legal team to say he was not responsible.

On 7 February 1989, Dumas was convicted of unlawfully and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm and sentenced to a minimum of three years to be served concurrently with his time for Ms Martin’s murder.

Chief Judge Glenn Waldron said, ‘It must be said that this young woman firstly was fortunate in not suffering a more severe or lasting injury as a result of what he did and secondly, I am sure, survived as she did only because of her presence of mind in what was a very perilous situation for her.’24

Dumas served his time at various prisons in Victoria.

On popular Australian crime website ‘Aussie Criminals’, one commenter ‘jrcart’ wrote on 17 January 2015: ‘… I remember Dumas from both pentridge [sic] and Barwon prisons. I’m surprised he was in mainstream, but most stayed well away from him anyway. Everyone called him Robin Hood …’25

Dumas’s 1986 life sentence (with the 18-year minimum) was the first imposed in Victoria after legislation was introduced that meant a life sentence was not mandatory for murder. The Crime Amendment Act (1986) gave the power to fix a minimum term when imposing a life sentence. The thinking behind the changes to the act was that (among other things) at the time all murders were treated identically under the act whether they were, for example, organised crime hits or family violence. The change gave the courts the power to set a minimum parole term.

Dumas’s sentence was lengthy but he was released after his minimum term, which would have been around 2003.

***

Dumas ended up back in America, living in Michigan, his place of birth. From early January 2004, he rented the basement of a house that belonged to a woman named Denise Ann Rock Howes, 34. The house was in the township of Redford, in Wayne County. Ms Howes still lived in the house with her ex-husband Mark, but she was in a relationship with a man called Todd Neumann.

On 7 December 2004, Mr Neumann became concerned when he couldn’t get in contact with Ms Howes at all. He had called her workplace, only to be told she hadn’t shown up. He drove by the house but did not see Ms Howes’ vehicle.

In his statement to police, Mark Howes said he last spoke to his ex-wife at around 9 a.m. on 7 December, and she had told him Dumas’s tickets to go to Hawaii had been cancelled and he had returned to the house.

Several police and witness statements said Dumas had been going to visit his daughter in Hawaii (there’s no other mention of Dumas having a child so whether the girl was born in the time when Dumas returned to the US in the late 1970s or when he returned after his sentence for Ms Martin’s murder is unknown) but his stepfather had cancelled the ticket. (This implied that Gail Dumas had also returned to live in the US at some stage.)

Later that night, around 10 p.m., Mr Neumann started driving around the neighbourhood, checking for signs of Ms Howes. He spotted her car – a 2000 Jeep Cherokee – but she was not the driver … Kurt Dumas was. Mr Neumann frantically followed the vehicle and ended up blocking it in a dead-end street. He called police and Sergeant Eric Pahl and Officer Nicholas Lentine were first on the scene.

Investigating the ‘suspicious situation’, Sergeant Pahl saw the driver of the Jeep try to cut through a park that bordered the dead-end street but the vehicle got caught in a ditch.

‘I activated my lights and the Jeep tried to back out of the ditch,’ Sergeant Pahl wrote in his incident report. ‘I approached … and saw a [white male] subject sitting in the drivers [sic] seat “revving” the engine in an effort to get out of the ditch … I called for him to stop and he continued “revving” the engine. I went around and opened the drivers [sic] door and got the subject out of the vehicle.’27

When Sergeant Pahl patted him down and asked his name, Dumas gave no response. Dumas did not have a driver’s licence but he had his social security card and passport and that’s how the sergeant discovered his name.

Dumas was placed under arrest and Sergeant Pahl put him in the back of the police car while he tried to find out more about the wellbeing of Denise Howes. A search of the car uncovered a knife and a short-barrelled rifle found in a duffel bag. The rifle was loaded.

Two officers were sent to Ms Howes’ address to check on her – Timothy Paull and Lawrence Turner. They arrived at 11.10 p.m. to find the house in complete darkness. They had the keys to the house, which had been found in the Jeep, but they knocked first and rang the doorbell several times. Ms Howes’ large dog was at the door barking at the officers and they waited a few minutes until Mr Neumann arrived so he could calm the animal.

The policemen turned lights on and called out for Ms Howes, ‘Denise! Denise!’ No answer.

Mr Neumann told the officers when they were approaching the main bedroom.

‘As I opened the bedroom door I saw a female lying face up on the bed,’ Officer Paull wrote in his report.28

Officer Paull shouted to his partner to get Mr Neumann out of the house.

He recalled in his statement, ‘I saw that there was a piece of duct tape over her mouth. There was a green towel over her midsection. She had a brown sweater pulled up just over the top of her breasts. I could see that she was naked from the waist down …’29

He saw blood on Ms Howes’ legs, a large pool of blood on the left side of her head and her arms appeared to be pulled back under her body, as if bound. There were no signs of life when Officer Paull checked the victim and he immediately radioed to his colleague Sergeant Pahl to make sure Dumas was secure in the police car.

Officer Lawrence Turner interviewed neighbours. Some of them said they had been told by Ms Howes that she was planning to evict Dumas from the house in December because she thought he was stealing from her. Some of the neighbours also told Officer Lawrence that Dumas did not drive and that Ms Howes would never have let him drive her vehicle. Dumas told police he’d had permission to use the Jeep.

Dumas was taken to the Redford Police Department to be charged and processed.

When the officer on the desk, Keith Cooper, checked the arrestee’s body he found a spent shell casing in the right front change pocket of his pants. ‘Yeah, you will need that,’ Dumas said to Officer Cooper.

Officer Cooper stated in his incident report that while fingerprinting Dumas, he said, unprovoked, ‘They shouldn’t have picked a fight with me and I went back to check on her.’ Dumas told Officer Cooper he was in a bad mood because of his cancelled flight to Hawaii.

Dumas, handcuffed to the wall, then asked Officer Cooper, ‘How’s jail?’

Cooper responded, ‘Why is that?’

Dumas answered, ‘You know, you know I’m guilty.’30

It was another strange exchange between Dumas and police. The Redford Police didn’t know of Dumas’s violent past and how he’d committed an almost identical crime nearly 20 years ago (though this time he had used a gun instead of a crossbow).

They would soon find out.

The officer in charge of the case was Adam Pasciak, then a sergeant. Sergeant Pasciak gave Dumas his Miranda Warning on 8 December at around 2 a.m. and he agreed to a police interview.

Dumas told Sergeant Pasciak that after he’d returned to the house on the morning of 7 December from the airport, Ms Howes arrived around an hour later and started to question him about his job status and how he was going to pay his bills. This angered Dumas, who said Ms Howes was ‘pushing his buttons’.31 It was at this point that he decided to go down to the basement and get his gun.

Sergeant Pasciak wrote in his report:

Dumas stated that he stayed downstairs for a few minutes before deciding to come upstairs with the gun, which had a full magazine but no round in the chamber. At this time he brandished the gun (a sawed off .22 rifle) at Howes, telling her not to ‘fuck with’ him, and racked a round into the chamber. He stated that she looked afraid and made as if to reach for the phone. Dumas stated he panicked and pointed the gun at Howes [sic] head and pulled the trigger. Per Dumas, Howes fell to the floor but appeared to still be alive. He stated he carried her across to the master bedroom and attempted to put her on the bed, dropping her and causing her head to strike a dresser. He stated he put her on the bed, observing that she was still breathing but unconscious …32

Dumas told Sergeant Pasciak he sat on the couch for several hours. At one point Dumas picked up the ringing phone. It was Mr Neumann, who wanted to speak with Ms Howes. Dumas told him she was asleep. Dumas’s next move was virtually a mirror of what he did to Ms Martin all those years ago.

Sergeant Pasciak recounted what Dumas told him:

After hanging up with Neumann he checked on Howes and observed she was still breathing. He stated at this time he removed his clothes and had non-consensual sex with her, putting duct tape over her mouth when she made noises during the sex, and taping her arms behind her back as well. When he finished he stated he covered her with a towel …33

Dumas then scurried around the house, searching for loose money. His plan, he told Sergeant Pasciak, was to hide out in the woods. He managed to find $178 in change, cashed it at a nearby bank and then bought supplies to help him survive in the woods. He had taken Ms Howes’ car and he told police it was later that night, around 10 p.m. that he decided to go back to the house and check on her and that’s when he was spotted by Mr Neumann and was caught out.

Like he told authorities after he’d killed Lyndell Martin, Dumas said that he hadn’t planned to kill Ms Howes. However, when searching the house and examining the home computer, detectives found something that showed Dumas had thought about harming Ms Howes before the day he shot and raped her.

Sergeant Pasciak showed Dumas a printout from Ms Howes’ computer of a text message Dumas had written, dated 3 December 2004, stating she was ‘condemned to death’.34 Dumas told the investigating officer he did write it but he had no intention of actually hurting Ms Howes, except in an extreme case where he needed money.

He also said he’d served jail time in Australia for killing a woman in ‘similar circumstances’ and that he had a problem with his temper.

Sergeant Pasciak sent a facsimile to Interpol to try to find out more about the murder Dumas said he’d committed in Australia. The fax, dated 13 December, read:

I am investigating a homicide … in Redford involving Kurt Michael Dumas W/M 12-12-65 (our case number is 28356-04). The victim was a female he was living with, whom he shot and had sex with. He informed me that he had been arrested in Melbourne Australia November 18, 1985 for a similar offense and I am trying to get confirmation of this. He has been formally charged here in Redford and his next court appearance is 12-21-04 – Any help in obtaining information about the Australian incident before the hearing would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Sgt Adam Pasciak35

Dumas was charged under Michigan state law with murder/non-negligent homicide.

According to an article from the Redford Observer newspaper dated 12 December, Dumas was arraigned on one count each of first-degree murder, felony murder, first-degree criminal sexual conduct and using a gun during a felony.36

There have been smatterings of mentions in the form of comments about the murder, including from Mr Neumann who, along with Ms Howes’ family and friends, must have been further devastated by the fact Dumas had raped and murdered before.

Mr Neumann left a comment on a post on the ‘Melbourne Murder Tours’ Facebook page expressing his anger: ‘If they knew his condition would worsen why the fuck did they let him go. He did the same thing to my fiancée Denise Ann Rock.’ [Author’s note: Rock was Ms Howes’ maiden name.] (On 29 January 2014, the page had posted some detail about the murder of Lyndell Martin and Dumas’s jail sentence. The page posts daily about crimes from around Melbourne.)

Dumas’s legal team negotiated a plea bargain with the state that meant there was no trial. He pleaded guilty to second-degree homicide and felony firearms. He was sentenced on 8 April 2005 to a minimum of 43 years (maximum 80 years) for the homicide charge and two years for firearms offence. His earliest possible release date is 2049.

Dumas is in prison at Oaks Correctional Facility in Michigan.