Inside ‘gangster’ world of two young women who staged infamous car boot kidnap

They loved flashy cars, gangster talk and rap music – and when they staged their terrifying car boot kidnap of a stabbed and bleeding girl, they were just three minutes from potentially dumping her body in the notorious Belanglo State Forest.

Kayley ‘Kayza’ Ketley’s social media pages are littered with pictures of guns, girls, ‘gangsta’ style jewellery, and rap lyrics such as ‘murda is my bizness’ and talk of shooting and bullets.

Latia ‘Tia’ Henderson’s is filled with cars, bikes and tributes to her murdered teen lover, Brayden Dillon, shot dead aged 15 as he slept by a Brothers 4 Life gang member in an alleged revenge killing.

And now both women are facing jail sentences after pleading guilty to their roles in the kidnap and vicious assault of Tisha Phillips, 24, their ‘friend’ who drove them around in her new car. 

The two young female offenders are from Campbelltown Council shire region in southwestern Sydney.

Ketley is also a schoolfriend of a member of the rival Alameddine family, engaged in Sydney’s deadly shooting war with the Hamzys.

Kayley ‘Kayza’ Ketley’s social media pages are littered with pictures of guns, girls, ‘gangsta’ style jewellery

Chilling details can now be revealed of conversations about a plan to dump Nisha Phillips body in the notorious Belanglo Forest, serial killer Ivan Milat’s burial ground

It can also now be revealed Ketley has a criminal history of drug possession, a wounding which put her in prison but the charge was later dropped, and of stabbing a man who was hospitalised for two months.

Like the knife wounds she inflicted on car boot victim Tisha Phillips, Ketley stabbed the man in the leg, deeply piercing his peroneal nerve, after a fight over Christmas shopping.

In Tisha Phillips’ case she ended up taken hostage in the boot of her own white Holden Commodore stabbed by Ketley after a perceived slight escalated in ‘one second flat’. 

BLEEDING IN THE BOOT 

Then 12 weeks pregnant, Henderson smoked ‘some blaze’ (cannabis) with Ketley and then drove unlicensed down the Hume Highway with Ms Phillips in the boot passing out from blood loss and fearing she would bleed to death. 

Henderson, then aged 18, and Ketley, 24, filmed videos of themselves stoned and singing rap songs inside the car with Ms Phillips locked in the boot managing to undo a tail light screw with a fingernail. 

The videos, which will be played at their sentencing hearings in October, show Henderson with long painted orange fingernails swinging in her car seat to hip hop hits. 

Video will be played at the sentencing hearings of Latia Henderson (above) swinging in her car seat to hip hop hits as the victim lay bleeding in the boot on the way to Belanglo 

Nisha Phillips (pictured) was ordered into the boot of her own Commodore by Ketley who threatened to kill her after a perceived slight

Nisha Phillips unscrewed the tail light of her Commodore (above) with her fingernail and frantically waved through the gap, eventually spotted by drivers on the Hume Highway who rang police 

SINISTER TRIP 

In the videos, her mobile phone is tethered to the Commodore’s dashboard panel with the directional route to the Belanglo Forest visible on the screen. 

It was only when Ms Phillips, the girls’ supposed friend and chauffeur, poked her hand through the tail light and a truck driver on the Hume Highway spotted it and called Triple-0 that she was saved.

Police facts in the case reveal chilling conversations about the plan to dump Ms Phillips’ body in Belanglo – burial ground of infamous serial killer Ivan Milat – and just how close Nisha, then aged 24, came.

Around 11am on February 3 last year, startled drivers on the highway around 32km south of Campbelltown spotted Ms Phillips’ hand poking through her car’s left tail light and frantically waving.

 A truck driver and another motorist called triple-0 as the Commodore continued driving south, with Henderson’s phone making recordings of her and Ketley singing to rap at 11.40am, 11.43am, 11.47am and 11.48am.

In the boot, Ms Phillips had passed out a few times, and whenever she heard the music turned down, she placed the tail light back into its space.   

Kayley Ketley has previous convictions for drug possession and is guilty of another stabbing, and her Facebook page is littered with references to guns, and ‘gangsta’ rap lyrics about murder and bullets of a man

Latia Henderson is currently on bail after being released to give birth to her baby son in August last year but faces sentencing over her role in the kidnap in October 

SCENE OUT OF A MOVIE

At 11.48am Senior Constable O’Leary in an unmarked NSW Police vehicle spotted the white Commodore 78kms south of Campbelltown and around 10km north of the Belanglo State Forest turnoff, with a hand protruding from the tail light space.

At 11.53pm he stopped the car on the Hume Highway, just 6km north of the Belanglo turnoff, a three minute drive away at the speed  limit of 110k/ph.

 Officer O’Leary’s bodycam video shows him asking Henderson who was in the back of the vehicle, to which she responds, ‘in the back?’

Unable to locate the boot release, O’Leary asks ‘why have you got a woman in the back of your car, in the boot of your car?’ to which Henderson and Ketley appear to panic.

When he asks again, Henderson replies, ‘I don’t know’ and Ketley, ‘what the f*** bro?’, and a second officer Senior Constable Brendan Quinn leans down to the tail light and asks, ‘what’s your name love?’

Quinn folds down the Commodore’s rear seats and assists Ms Phillips out through the car’s interior, panting and in distress and telling police the other two women have her phone and that she has multiple stab wounds. 

The 12 hour ordeal of Nisha Phillips began with her being stabbed at Claymore and then continued only ending three minutes before the Belanglo Forest turnoff 

Kayley Ketley told Nisha during the 12-hour ordeal, ‘I’m going to make you squeal like a pig. Last time this happened I got four and a half years. Today I’m going to kill you’

Asked by Quinn, ‘what was the story, have they taken you hostage?’ Ms Phillips, crying and distressed, agrees.

 At 12.21pm, Ketley tells police ‘this is a joke bro … it’s a joke’ and after she is arrested on the spot, in a subsequent recorded police interview she will say ‘she didn’t know someone was in the boot’. 

Ketley names a woman friend she claims gave them the car to drop off at a Southern highlands Thrifty car rental in exchange for a different car.

She goes on to say she didn’t stab anyone, and that she heard a noise from the boot, but they were playing loud music and she ‘thought it was an issue with the tyres’.

‘WHO’S THE GIRL IN THE BOOT?’

She also said her prints or DNA wouldn’t be on the knife in the car, but that she was ‘really badly “drug f***ked” from back in the day and her brain doesn’t work like it used to’.

Latia Henderson told police in her recorded interview she didn’t see the stabbing, didn’t see Ketley put the victim in the boot, and ‘I didn’t even know she was in there. I had no idea she was in there’. 

Instead of harming the victim, she helped her by giving her water, that it  was an ‘iffy’ situation for her and she was scared Ketley ‘would do something to her’.

Nisha Phillips gave a recorded interview while in an ambulance on the way to hospital, describing what had led to being stabbed by Ketley.

‘Hustle the pretty things ‘: Latia Henderson (pictured) posted dozens of glamorous photos of herself on Facebook and Instagram and loved attention 

Latia Henderson’s social media pages included glamorous phots of herself, plus images of cars including this one with the strange message about wanting to ‘marry a Commodore’

During a 12-hour overnight ordeal spanning several different suburbs before the drive to Belanglo, Ketley stabbed Ms Phillips after she refused to change the music in the car, stop at McDonalds and, the offender claimed, had ‘hit on’ Henderson. 

‘I think she misinterpreted a question that I asked her … she got really mad over that question .. started verbally attacking me … threatening me…big talk,’ Ms Phillips told police.

FROM ZERO TO 100 IN ONE SECOND FLAT 

‘She started escalating really quick…like it was zero to 100 in like one second flat. It got really heavy really quickly … because I chose to defy her in a sense, like authority.’

Ketley also told Ms Philips, ‘I will slit your throat without even blinking, with no effort at all.’

After stabbing her in the knee and the upper thigh, Ketley said, ‘I am going to make you squeal like a pig. I just need to get it all out. 

‘Last time this happened I got four and a half years and this time it’s not going to happen like that. Today I’m going to kill you.’ 

She threatened to stab her again while ordering her into the boot. 

Police facts reveal Ms Phillips met her attackers in November 2020, and would drive them around because neither had a licence. 

Ketley had been convicted of drug possession in 2015, and charged again in 2016, when she was also charged with wounding a person with intent, which was no-billed in 2020. 

Kayley Lee Ketley posted images of herself in sunglasses showing off her gangster -style jewellery, tattoos, alcohol, and cash

The Claymore house where Nisha Phillips’ ordeal began lasting 12 hours before a truck driver saw her hand frantically waving from her car boot in which she lay bleeding 

Kayley Ketley’s name with a heart written on the window of the house where she stabbed Nisha Phillips over a perceived slight and the 24-year-old’s ordeal began

On her Facebook page in the same year she posted a photo of herself giving the camera the middle finger alongside a post claiming she was ‘On the run cuz about to go in lol looking at 5+’.

She also claimed on Facebook to read the Bible and to be a Seventh Day Adventist, and regularly posted images of herself in sunglasses showing off her jewellery, tattoos, alcohol, and cash.

Subsequent posts includes talk of having  a girl gang, defying her ‘haters’, talk of ‘hoes’ (whores) and images of guns and rap song lyrics.

WANNABE GANGSTER GIRL

One image of a gun has the words ‘It’s funny how the one person you’d take a bullet for tends to always be the one behind the gun’, to a friend responds, ‘Dat is so tru ay’ and Ketley writes, ‘Badly’.

Ketley reproduces the lyrics to the Iggy Azaela song, Murda Bizness, including ‘hit the club with bad bitches, stacks of hundreds, bunch of fifties … click click clack bangbang we in the murda bizness’ 

Latia Henderson’s Facebook page is full of images of trail bikes and cars, including a shiny black late model Holden, with her post ‘I’m going to marry a Commodore’.

Latia Henderson (above) and Kayley Ketley were arrested after Nisha Phillips’s stabbing and abduction, initially pretending they didn’t know anyone was in the car boot

Henderson seemed heartbroken over the loss of Brayden Dillon, murdered in his bed aged 15 execution style by a member of the Brothers 4 Life gang (above the two together)

She also posted dozens of glamorous photos of herself on Facebook and Instagram and loved attention, writing ‘Hustle the pretty things’.

Henderson, who is on Supreme Court bail after her release just weeks before giving birth to a son in August last year, pleaded guilty to a charge of take/detain in company with the intent to commit serious indictable offence occasioning actual bodily harm.

Now aged 20, she also pleaded guilty to driving without a licence, take and drive conveyance and had two further charges dismissed, including a charge of unlawful wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. 

 Ketley, 26, remains behind bars after pleading guilty to kidnap in company with serious indictable occasion, reckless wounding and cause grievous bodily harm to person with intent.

GUILTY PLEA 

Ketley pleaded guilty to two charges of take and drive conveyance without consent of the owner, and a backup charge of possessing a prohibited drug.

While in custody, Ketley also pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with intent in the Boxing Day 2020 stabbing of a 46-year-old man at a Rosemeadow house where they both were tenants.

After an argument among housemates in which the victim was accused of ‘stealing more than $300 of food and Xmas shopping’, a 30-year-old man shoved him on to a bed and put pressure on his neck making him unable to breathe.

Ketley stabbed him in the left leg, then the right leg and drove off in his car, forcing him to make it to nearby houses to get help.

He spent two months in Liverpool Hospital with a deep nerve injury requiring surgery and skin grafts.

Ketley was charged while on remand in custody for the car boot kidnap and stabbing, and pleaded guilty in June this year.