How Bunnings CCTV has helped lock up some of Australia’s worst killers

For most Australians the word ‘Bunnings’ now means a hardware store the way Coke is shorthand for cola and any adhesive bandage is a Band-Aid.

The chain has a stranglehold on the market and is almost as famed for its branded wide-brimmed straw hats, sturdy green umbrellas and fundraising sausage sizzles.

But for at least the past decade, references to Bunnings have increasingly featured as part of the evidence in murder trials, including in some of the nation’s most notorious homicide cases. 

A trip to Bunnings is a weekend ritual for many households, but it can also be a macabre mission ahead of executing a murder plot or in preparation to clean up a crime scene.  

Killers have been caught on Bunnings CCTV cruising the aisles for makeshift weapons, flammable liquids, digging implements, restraints and cleaning chemicals.

Among the products sought at Bunnings stores to commit or cover up homicides have been hammers, chainsaws, zip ties, gloves, duct tape and spades.

A Sydney husband bought 100 litres of hydrochloric acid over two Bunnings visits to destroy his wife’s body and a Sunshine Coast woman purchased a reciprocating saw to dismember her de facto partner.

While some offenders are captured filling their gruesome shopping lists on camera, others have been nabbed still in possession of the receipts for their grisly goods. 

For at least the past decade, references to Bunnings have increasingly featured in evidence in criminal trials, including in some of the nation’s most notorious homicide cases

Staff at one Melbourne store helped foil a terrorist plot which could have claimed countless lives when they reported a suspicious trolley-load of products to police. 

In November, Bunnings was found by the Privacy Commissioner to have breached privacy laws by using facial recognition technology on customers. 

The retail giant responded by releasing CCTV footage which showed scenes of staff members being threatened by assailants armed with knives and, in once instance, a shotgun.

Bunnings maintained it was using the technology to protect both customers and employees from a spike in violent attacks but its outlets have long contributed to helping solve major crimes.

Western Sydney tradie Meraj Zafar pleaded guilty in May to murdering his 19-year-old wife, aspiring doctor Arnima Hayat, in January 2022 at their North Parramatta apartment. 

Ms Hayat had wanted to leave the marriage and complained to friends about her husband’s violence before he killed her.  

Having choked or smothered Ms Hayat to death, 20-year-old Zafar conducted a number of internet searches including ‘can hydrolic acid burn through skin’ and ‘Bunnings near me’.

The day after the murder Zafar made two trips to Northmead Bunnings where he was caught on CCTV buying five 20-litre tubs of hydrochloric acid. 

Among the products sought at Bunnings stores to commit or cover up homicides have been hammers, chainsaws, zip ties, gloves, duct tape and spades. Thrill killer Trudi Lennon was filmed buying hydrochloric acid from Bunnings the day before murdering Aaron Pajich

Zafar then put Ms Hayat’s body in a bathtub and filled it with the acid in an attempt to dispose of her remains. 

The truck Zafar had driven to Bunnings was traced back to the apprentice builder, he pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to a minimum 16 years on December 19. 

Justin Stein was jailed for life in August for what a judged called the ‘unspeakably vicious’ killing of his partner’s nine-year-old daughter Charlise Mutten in the NSW Blue Mountains in January 2022.

Stein shot Charlise in the face and the lower back at his family home then tried to blame her mother Kallista Mutten, who was staying at a caravan park 90 minutes’ drive away at Lower Portland.

More than a day after Charlise was last seen alive, Stein drove to Marsden Park Bunnings in Sydney’s west and was captured on CCTV buying five 20kg bags of sand, as well as sealant.

Five days later the girl’s body was found inside a plastic barrel filled with sand on the banks of the Colo River.

Earlier this year Charles Dennis Turnbull pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to the murder of 22-year-old Darcy Schafer-Turner on the NSW mid north coast in late April 2023.

Mr Schafer-Turner’s body was found a fortnight later stuffed inside a metal cabinet floating in Warrell Creek near Macksville after being killed in an alleged drug dispute. 

Justin Stein shot Charlise Mutten in the face and the lower back at his family home then tried to blame her mother Kallista. He is pictured strolling around a Bunnings after the murder

Justin Stein is shown leaving a Bunnings store with the five bags of sand he purchased during his visit

Turnbull, described in court as ‘the cleaner’, had transported Mr Schafer-Turner’s body from Peakhurst in southern Sydney, where he was allegedly murdered by another man set to face trial in June next year.

Before picking up the body, 33-year-old Turnbull had made two visits to a Bunnings warehouse to stock up on material. 

On the first visit he bought coveralls, duct tape, gloves, chlorine and cleaning products. On a return trip he purchased the metal cabinet, rolls of black plastic, zip ties and a drill. 

Turnbull was sentenced in the Downing Centre District Court in December to three years and three months in prison with a non-parole period of two years. 

Tarikjot Singh was caught on CCTV in the Bunnings at Mile End in Adelaide’s inner west in the hours before he murdered 21-year-old aged care worker Jasmeen Kaur in March 2021 at Plympton.

Singh was seen casually strolling through the store, placing a shovel, cable ties, gaffer tape, gloves and a jerry can in his trolley. 

The 20-year-old at one stage asked a staff member for assistance. 

Ms Kaur, who had previously been in a controlling relationship with Singh, was bound with the tape and ties and buried in a shallow grave while she was still alive near Hawker in the Flinders Ranges. 

The CCTV was to form part of the evidence against Singh but he pleaded guilty to murder ahead of a Supreme Court trial and was sentenced to a minimum 22 years and 10 months in August 2023. 

Queensland woman Lindy Yvonne Williams bought this Ozito reciprocating saw at a Bunnings store 10 days after she murdered her partner George Gerbic

CCTV footage of three would-be terrorists browsing Bunnings shelves for bomb supplies in Melbourne’s north was tendered during their sentence hearing in October 2019.

Ahmed Mohamed, Abdullah Chaarani and Hamza Abbas had planned to detonate bombs and behead bystanders in Melbourne’s Federal Square and were twice caught shopping at Broadmeadows Bunnings in November and December 2016.

The trio bought metal pipes, light globes and batteries to make explosives, and Mohamed asked for 700 nail gun cartridges which are kept in a locked counter at Bunnings outlets.

Alert staff raised the alarm after becoming suspicious when the men scanned their unusual haul at the cash register.

The employees followed the group to their vehicle, wrote down the number plates and called police, who just hours later arrested the Islamic State jihadists.

Mohamed and Chaarani are serving minimum sentences of 28 years and six months, while Abbas is doing 16 years and six months.  

Ex-Mongol bikie Sam ‘The Punisher’ Abdulrahim survived an assassination plot in June 2022 when he was shot eight times leaving a funeral in northern Melbourne.

Ten days earlier, CCTV footage captured a man buying two plastic fuel cans from Bunnings at Epping and lugging them to a parked Subaru Impreza WRX.

Jihadists Ahmed Mohamed, Abdullah Chaarani and Hamza Abbas were caught shopping for bomb-making supplies at a Bunnings store ahead of a terrorist plot which was foiled

Detectives believe the jerry cans were used to carry fuel to incinerate a Mazda SUV used in the attempted murder which was destroyed in a crash after the shooting.

Thrill killers Jemma Lilley and Trudi Lenon pleaded not guilty to having murdered autistic teenager Aaron Pajich in June 2016 at their house in Orelia, south of Perth. 

The 18-year-old was stabbed to death and his body found in a shallow grave covered with concrete and tiles. 

When Lilley, 26, and Lenon, 43, faced trial an important piece of evidence which helped convince a jury they had planned to kill Mr Pajich came from Bunnings. 

The day before the murder the pair was captured on camera buying cement, sealable drums and hundreds of litres of hydrochloric acid to dissolve the vulnerable teen’s body.

Lilley and Lenon were jailed for life with a minimum 28-year term. 

Ten days after Queensland woman Lindy Yvonne Williams murdered her partner George Gerbic on the Sunshine Coast in September 2013 she went to her local Bunnings store.

Meraj Zafar was filmed in the work truck he drove to Bunnings to buy 100 litres of hydrochloric acid he used in an attempt to dissolve his wife Arnima Hayat’s body

There she bought an Ozito electric reciprocating saw which she used to cut off 66-year-old Mr Gerbic’s head, legs and hands. 

Mr Gerbic’s burning torso was found on Cedar Pocket Road near Gympie, 170km north of Brisbane, but was not formally identified for 10 months. 

During that time Williams told Mr Gerbic’s family and friends he was overseas but later claimed to police she had found his torso wrapped in plastic in their ensuite days after they had an argument.

Williams’s trial heard evidence had been located of the Bunnings transaction of the purchase of the saw. 

A jury found 60-yeer-old Williams guilty of murder in July 2018 and she was sentenced to life with a minimum 20 years. 

Justice Peter Flanagan said of Mr Gerbic’s dismemberment, ‘this surely must be one of the worst cases of interference with a human body’.

‘The act of cutting up George Gerbic with a saw which you had purchased from Bunnings is from any view an horrific act,’ he said in his judgment.

Lovers Jessica Ellen Stasinowsky and Valerie Page Parashumti turned to Bunnings after murdering 16-year-old Stacey Mitchell at Lathlain in Perth’s inner south-east in December 2006.

Justin Stein is pictured paying for the bags of sand he bought to weigh down a barrel containing nine-year-old Charlise Mutten’s body

Stasinowsky, 20, and Parashumti, 19, went to the Morley outlet with a shopping list which included spades, lime – which can delay rather than hasten human body decomposition – and a chainsaw.

The young women, who had previously discussed killing and pleaded guilty to murder, bludgeoned and strangled their friend to death then stuffed her body in a wheelie bin in a shed behind their house.

When they were arrested four days after Ms Mitchell’s death, the pair was still discussing whether to use a chainsaw and lime to dispose of her body. 

They were sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum 24-year term.

Bunnings evidence has also featured in unsuccessful murder prosecutions.

Matthew Leveson was seen leaving ARQ night club in Sydney’s inner-city Darlinghurst with his 45-year-old boyfriend Michael Atkins in the early hours of one morning in September 2007. 

Atkins returned about an hour later without 20-year-old Mr Leveson.

Shortly after midday that day CCTV cameras captured Atkins buying a mattock and duct tape at Bunnings in the southern suburb of Tarin Point.

Four days later Mr Leveson’s Toyota Corolla was found outside a public toilet at Sutherland, also in Sydney’s south, with a Bunnings receipt bearing Atkins’s fingerprint in the boot.

Atkins was charged with murder in August the following year but in October 2009 a jury found the electrician not guilty of that charge and an alternative count of manslaughter. 

At a 2016 coronial inquest into Mr Leveson’s disappearance Atkins was compelled to give evidence with the caveat he could not be further prosecuted.

Atkins agreed to lead to police to his young lover’s remains, which were unearthed in the Royal National Park, not far from where Mr Leveson’s car was abandoned, in May 2017. 

Businessman Pierre Assaad did not step inside a Bunnings store when he was trying to recruit an assassin to kill his ex-wife’s pastor, who he wrongly believed had meddled in his marriage, for $40,000.

But in May 2020, Assaad drove to the Bunnings carpark at Craigieburn on Melbourne’s northern outskirts, where he had arranged to meet a hitman who turned out to be an undercover cop.

A few weeks later Assaad contacted the detective again, calling himself ‘the Bunnings man’ and organised another meeting in the same carpark. This time he handed over a $4,950 deposit.

Assaad was jailed in December 2022 for two and a half years after pleading guilty to inciting the plot.