One of Australia’s most dangerous female prisoners – feared by guards and inmates due to her violent attacks, including a frenzied jail stabbing murder – is already on shopping trips ahead of her release into the community.
Rebecca Butterfield, whose prison record includes fatally slashing a female inmate 34 times with industrial scissors, attacking guards with shivs, boiling water and urine, and kicking a pregnant nurse, is locked in a high-risk cell at Long Bay’s Forensic Hospital.
But imprisoned well past her maximum sentence under a provision in the NSW Crimes Act for the detention of high risk violent offenders, Butterfield is now on the path to being freed.
The NSW Supreme Court revoked orders that kept her behind bars last year, and only regular psychiatric reviews are keeping her inside, but her release is inevitable.
‘She isn’t being held indefinitely. There will come a day when she has to be released. We just don’t know when,’ a source told The Sunday Telegraph.
Butterfield, who can strike at any moment in a violent outburst, has been granted multiple day-release outings such as food shopping and is expected to enjoy more as she is readied for integration back into society by order of the NSW Supreme Court.
The court has demanded Corrective Services NSW cease what have been ongoing attempts to keep her in custody, even as she poses a more serious management risk than notorious inmates such as Bassam Hamzy, Bilal Skaf or a number of jailed terrorists or gang members.
Butterfield’s brutality behind bars, which includes multiple bloody attempts to kill herself, have evolved since her initial incarceration for a relatively minor offence.
From daughter of a country cop to one of Australia’s most dangerous inmates, Rebecca Butterfield has killed another prisoner, attacked guards and injured herself in violent ways behind bars
Butterfield, now 51, is incarcerated in the forensic hospital at Long Bay Correctional Complex, where prison officials are under court order to prepare her for release with outside trips including grocery shopping expeditions
The daughter of a country NSW police officer, Butterfield was charged with malicious damage in the main street of her home town, the offence sparked by her fury at a failed prosecution against a man she accused of sexually assaulting her.
Butterfield was not jailed then, but her behaviour escalated.
In 1997, she 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.
In 2000, she stabbed a neighbour who had tried to stop her self-harming five times and was sentenced to a minimum three years for malicious wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.
In jail, Butterfield again attempted to self harm and prison psychiatrists diagnosed her as having extreme rage and self loathing as part of a personality disorder.
She acquired a reputation as a wild and unpredictable inmate and added four months’ imprisonment to her jail time in 2002 for assault occasioning bodily harm while inside.
She was transferred to Emu Plains Correctional Centre for women as she neared the end of her sentence and came in contact with Filipina businesswoman Bluce Lim Ward, 30, who herself was nearing release after serving time for fraud.
At Emu Plains, in far western Sydney, on May 7, 2003, Butterfield grabbed industrial scissors from a prison workbench. Ward had earlier warned officers that Butterfield had threatened to kill her.
Inside Emu Plains women’s prison while nearing her parole date, Rebecca Butterfield threatened another female inmate and then carried out her deadly attack
Butterfield picked up a pair of industrial scissors and brutally attacked Bluce Lim Ward, who had been approaching jail release, fatally stabbing her 34 times
Until that moment a comparatively minor offender, Butterfield stabbed Ward from behind through her ribs and heart. Ward died at the scene.
Butterfield was moved immediately to Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre where she was placed in segregation, and subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Then Corrective Services Commissioner, the late Ron Woodham, placed Butterfield on an extreme high-risk classification as she made threats against guards, including a specific threat to kill a female prison officer.
Marked on her prison file was the warning: ‘Exercise caution on all external escorts. Butterfield is able to remove handcuffs’.
But the assaults on staff continued. She head-butted one officer, and pulled out a colostomy bag and threw it at another.
She cut her own throat three times, on one occasion almost bleeding out. She tried to hang herself, insert sharp items under her skin, and was severely burnt in 2008 after setting fire to her cell.
The following year, after hearing repeated banging sounds coming from Butterfield’s cell in Silverwater Women’s self harm unit, a senior prison officer opened the cell door to a shocking scene.
The officer, who had years of dealing with drug dealers, thieves, con women and calculating killers in female jails, was nevertheless absolutely horrified at what she found when she investigated the thudding sounds.
Rebecca Butterfield will be released into the community where it is expected she’ll live in an NDIS-funded residence and be under some supervision by authorities
Of all the women locked away in Australia, Butterfield has long been considered one of the most aggressive and unpredictable
Inside the cell, the officer found Butterfield with her skull split open.
Later moved to tears when describing the moment, the seasoned officer said she found the then 34-year-old inmate with a skull fracture through which could be seen Butterfield’s pulsing brain. She had banged her head against the cell wall 105 times.
Due for release in 2015 at the end of her sentence, Butterfield became one of the first inmates detained under the Crimes Act 2013 amendment which catered for high-risk violent offenders.
While in prison, and further to the manslaughter of Bluce Lim Ward, Butterfield has been convicted of further offences.
Her extensive Corrective Services NSW file contains reports on more than 110 disciplinary matters, including 40 assaults.
In 2000, she cut open a male officer’s face with a piece of jagged plastic.
In 2008, she committed four assaults, kicking the pregnant nurse while being treated at Westmead Hospital, throwing a cup of urine at an officer, boiling water at another and assaulting a guard during a strip search.
Despite being held in high-risk circumstances in Long Bay, Butterfield is in the process of her preparation to return to life on the outside, with expeditions such as grocery shopping to familiarise her with normal activities.
Now aged 51, it is believed Butterfield will live in an NDIS residence upon release.
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