Rebecca Butterfield killed her only friend, stabbed a guard, and even slit her OWN throat. But now she has been quietly released from prison

EXCLUSIVE

A notorious inmate – considered Australia’s most dangerous female prisoner – has been quietly released from jail despite being mental unstable, prone to fits of extreme violence and vowing to kill again. 

Daily Mail Australia can reveal Rebecca Jane Butterfield was transferred from Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre, in Sydney’s west, to Long Bay prison earlier this year before being released on May 5.

The 50-year-old was then immediately admitted to a secure forensic hospital, where she will receive ongoing treatment for a range of severe mental health disorders as an involuntary patient.

Doctors at the facility are now responsible for deciding if and when the deranged killer will be allowed to re-enter the community. 

Of all the drug dealers, killers and conwomen locked away in Australia, Butterfield has long been considered one of the most aggressive and unpredictable. 

She killed her fellow inmate and only friend by stabbing her 33 times with a carving knife during a frenzied jailhouse attack in 2003 before watching her bleed to death. 

Her extensive Corrective Service NSW file contains reports on more than 110 disciplinary matters, including 40 assaults, as well as slitting her own throat and bashing her head against a wall 105 times until she cracked open her skull. 

According to court documents, the high risk offender used a variety of tactics to lure guards and prison staff to her cell throughout her almost a quarter-of-a-century stretch behind bars before attacking them. 

During one violent episode, she stabbed a guard in the face, while on other occasions she threw urine, boiling water and even her colostomy bag at prison officers, and also assaulted a nurse treating her. 

In July, 2020, she lunged at officers while wearing ankle bracelets and threatening to take their guns.   

Later, in November that year, she pounced on a nurse trying to take her blood. 

During one outburst, Butterfield screamed: ‘I am going to kill again, I will kill when I get out.’

She was initially treated for several personality disorders thought to be linked to child sexual abuse but was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2019 after displaying psychotic symptoms, including hearing voices.

The legal system has struggled to contend with how to manage the volatile prisoner, who actually completed her full-term sentence almost eight years ago. 

In handing down his decision to release Butterfield, Justice Michael Walton noted her ‘extensive criminal history’ began in 1996 when the then 21-year-old was convicted for illicit drugs use, malicious damage and assaulting police. 

‘In 1997, the defendant committed her first offence of serious personal violence, which was an unprovoked malicious wounding of a taxi driver, whom she stabbed with a knife in his upper arm and lower chest,’ he said. 

Butterfield spent the majority of her time behind bars locked away in a mental health wing at the notorious Silverwater Correctional Centre in Sydney’s west

Her violent anti-social behaviour continued with further assault convictions the following year before she was found guilty of stabbing a neighbour who had tried to stop her from committing self-harm on November 5, 2000.  

‘Her neighbour had seen the defendant was bleeding from self-inflicted cuts to her wrists, and attempted to provide assistance to her,’ Justice Walton said. 

‘The defendant become very angry and stabbed the neighbour five times with a kitchen knife.’

Butterfield was sentenced to six years in prison for the wanton attack and soon began to develop a reputation as a wild and unruly inmate while racking up an additional four months imprisonment in 2002 for assault occasioning bodily harm.

She had almost completed her non-parole period when she killed her friend and fellow inmate Bluce Lim Ward with a knife she had taken from their unit’s shared kitchenette at Emu Plains Correctional Centre on May 7, 2003.

After pleading guilty to manslaughter, she was sentence to an additional 12 years in prison and has since been largely kept locked away in a mental health wing at Silverwater prison.

Doctors will now decide when the convicted killer is ultimately released back into society

Although her full-term expired on November 3, 2015, her incarceration has twice been extended by a ‘continuing detention order’ – a last resort provision sparingly used for the state’s most dangerous criminals. 

The first continuing detention order saw her imprisonment extended by five years after the presiding judge found she remained an ‘unacceptable risk’ to the public before a second, three-year extension was granted in January 2021.

With that order soon to expired, the state late last year argued Butterfield’s detention should be extended by a further 12 months before she was released into the community in 2025 on a four-year extended supervision order. 

However, Justice Walton instead ordered Butterfield’s imprisonment extended by just two months before she was released on a five-year extended supervision order. 

In handing down his judgement on March 1, he noted Butterfield was currently ‘admitted as an involuntary correctional patient receiving mental health treatment’ at a forensic hospital. 

He said Butterfield would be required to continue her treatment at the hospital for ‘an indeterminate time’ and that there would be no guarantee should would ever walk free entirely. 

‘In remains unclear when – or if – Butterfield will ever be discharged from the forensic hospital and fully released back into the community but she will remain on the strict extended supervision order for the next five years,’ he said. 

A court-appointed psychiatrist says Butterfield’s time in prison has done little to ‘manage or mitigate’ her extreme behaviour nor prevent her ‘commission of violence’

In making the ruling, Justice Walton said he had been assisted by court-appointed psychiatrist Dr Kerri Eagle’s report in January that noted Butterfield’s incarceration had done little to ‘mitigate’ her behaviour nor prevent her ‘commission of violence’.

Justice Walton also acknowledged she had begun to make some psychological progress since agreeing to fully cooperate with doctors. 

He said it made ‘imminent good sense’ to entrust Butterfield’s ongoing treatment – and ultimate release into the community – to mental health professionals under a strict five-year supervision order.  

‘(Dr Eagle) also opined that Rebecca remained an individual at a significantly elevated risk of engaging in future violence towards others, and an overall high risk of committing further serious violence offences, in the absence of an effective risk management plan,’ he said. 

‘She observed that the re-incarceration is unlikely to reduce the defendant’s risk of violence over the medium to longer term, and may increase her risk through destabilisation, disruption of effective treatment, and reducing her access to psychological supports.’