A MAN who calls himself "the hand of death" bludgeoned two homeless men to death in NSW and Queensland before he slashed the throat of another inmate at Cessnock jail because he thought the man had "no one" on the outside, a jury has heard.
Kevin James Pettiford, now 38, used a large rock to attack Andrew Murray while he slept rough in Jack Evans Boat Harbour park at Tweed Heads on November 21, 2019.
About two months earlier, Mr Pettiford had used a rock to kill another homeless man, David Collin, as he slept in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast.
After he was arrested, Mr Pettiford made admissions to being responsible and told police "he had always wanted to kill".
He was refused bail and sent to Cessnock Correctional Centre where in the days after Christmas 2019 he targeted fellow inmate Nathan Mellows because he said he had "no one and nowhere to go when he got out".
The jury is expected to be shown CCTV footage from inside the jail showing Mr Pettiford approaching Mr Mellows from behind and using a weapon made from a razor blade to slash his throat.
Mr Mellows survived and Mr Pettiford later made admissions to the attempted murder, calling himself "The Hand of Death" and saying he targeted his victim's carotid and subclavian arteries because "death would follow very rapidly".
Despite his admissions and the CCTV footage, Mr Pettiford has pleaded not guilty to murder and causing wounding with intent to murder and on Tuesday faced the first day of an estimated five-week trial in NSW Supreme Court.
There is no dispute that Mr Pettiford struck Mr Murray with the rock and killed him or that he slashed the throat of Mr Mellows, but the issue for the jury to determine is whether or not he was suffering from a mental health impairment at the time of the attacks.
If a defence of mental health impairment is established then the jury will be asked to return two special verdicts of act proven but not criminally responsible.
A jury was empanelled on Tuesday morning and told by Crown prosecutor Brendan Campbell to expect to hear and see "confronting levels of violence" during the trial.
Mr Campbell said it was the prosecution case that Mr Pettiford targeted Mr Murray because he was homeless and attacked him while he was asleep.
Much of the evidence is expected to focus on psychiatric experts who have assessed Mr Pettiford and formed opinions about his mental state at the time of the attacks.
And as well as the murder and attempted murder, the jury was told about the murder of Mr Collin in Queensland in September, 2019 and another razor blade attack on a prison guard at Goulburn Correctional Centre in March, 2020.
The trial continues.
