The Thrill of It

Morgan Huxley was a 31-year-old self-made business man, a family man, and a good bloke all around. He was kind and caring. And he did not deserve what happened to him.

On the evening of September 7th, 2013, Morgan had been out celebrating with friends. They were drinking and having a good time, celebrating his friend’s engagement. On his way back to his home in the Neutral Bay neighbourhood of Sydney, Australia, he decided he wanted to have one more beer. He stopped off at The Oaks Hotel and had a beer at the front bar. What he didn’t know was that he was being watched.

From across the street, someone unknown to Morgan was watching him. They were standing outside the Curry Palace, an Indian takeaway restaurant. They were watching. They were waiting.

Daniel Jack Kelsall had set his sights on Morgan 20 minutes earlier as he stood behind him in an EasyMart as Morgan used the ATM machine. Kelsall had found his mark.

To look at him, Kelsall would seem entirely unassuming. He was young, just 20 years old, and scrawny, with curly red hair and glasses. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Kelsall looked “like a typical nerd – docile and owlish”. As it would turn out, he was anything but.

Kelsall was supposed to be on his way home after a shift at the cooking school across the street from The Oaks. He was supposed to be walking away. Instead, he was watching Morgan drink his beer.

This wasn’t the first time Kelsall had seen Morgan. They frequented a lot of the same spots. Morgan often got his morning coffee from the café near where Kelsall was employed as a dishwasher at the Sydney Cooking School. The Curry Palace was also a favourite of Morgan’s. It is entirely likely that Kelsall knew this.

At around 1:28AM, CCTV caught video or Morgan leaving The Oaks. Morgan reached the lights and crossed the street, out of sight from the CCTV cameras. Kelsall was close behind. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, slung over Kelsall’s shoulder was a “blue Phillips Fox bag, containing a chef’s apron, jacket, Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards, and a large Japanese steel kitchen knife.” By one interpretation, he was ready for work. By another, he was fully prepared for something else.

After a short walk, Morgan made it home to his two-storey townhouse. He quickly made it up the stairs and into his bedroom, where he opened a window and then collapsed into bed. His arrival had woken up his roommate, who got up to shut the door to her own bedroom so that the breeze from his window wouldn’t leave a chill in her room.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, she was woken up again by a knock at the door. She didn’t bother to check it, she knew her boyfriend was due home soon, and he had a key to the house. It couldn’t be him.

And it certainly wasn’t. The knock was Kelsall. The lack of answer did not seem to deter him. Covering his hands with his sleeves, he tried the door handle. The door opened. On soft feet, Kelsall made his way up the stairs and found himself on the landing. Hearing snores from the bedroom with the open door, Kelsall easily found Morgan. He pushed the door open with an uncovered hand. He was armed.

The Sydney Morning Herald details the account (warning – this is not for the faint of heart): “Kelsall jumps on the bed, pulls down Morgan’s shorts, lifts up his shirt, and gropes him. Jolted awake, Morgan lashes about in the dark, but Kelsall plunges the knife into his neck and back. As he desperately fights back, Morgan sustains deep wounds to his upper arms, shoulders and right hand. But the stabs keep raining down – 28 in all – his left and right carotid arteries severing with three-centimetre-deep gashes. One strike is so fierce the tip of the knife breaks, lodging in Morgan’s skull. His anguished screams fall silent; he’s unable to let out even a word because he’s choking on his own blood.”

Kelsall composed himself, and fled the townhouse, taking his knife and Morgan’s phone with him. Somewhere along the way, he must have ditched the knife – it has never been found. Neither has Morgan’s phone.

Morgan tried to get help; he tried to get to his feet. But he fell to the floor unconscious – blood was soaking the room in red.

The struggle woke Morgan’s roommate. She opened her bedroom door, turned on the light, and saw Morgan slumped in the doorway of his bedroom. Panicking, she tried to dial 999 – the emergency number back home in the UK. Not getting through, she then called her boyfriend and asked him to call the emergency services for her.

Following instructions, she began attempting CPR on Morgan, while her boyfriend waited downstairs for the ambulance. It arrived at 3:05AM. Police arrived shortly thereafter at 3:15 AM. The townhouse unit was quickly cordoned off. Morgan’s roommate and her boyfriend were brought to the North Sydney police station to give their statements. Morgan was rushed to hospital.

There was nothing left to be done. At 3:30AM, Morgan Huxley was declared dead. The homicide investigation was about to begin.

In talking to police, Morgan’s friend recalled a peculiar incident. Nearly six months prior, Morgan had told him that an unknown man had followed him home from The Oaks. The ‘young, small’ guy followed Morgan all the way home. Morgan figured the guy must have lived in one of the units. Then, Morgan got to his door, and the guy walked right by him and into his home. Morgan just pushed the guy out and locked the door. It would seem that Kelsall had had his eye on Morgan for a very, very long time.

Two weeks later, on September 24th, 2013, Detective Sergeant Mark Dukes took in the belongings that littered Daniel Jack Kelsall’s bedroom. Dukes and his partner, Detective Senior Constable Kelsey Priestly, had asked Kelsall to show them any knives he may have owned. Kelsall brought them to the kitchen and showed them two knives he had there.

The detectives found him to be helpful. Though odd, he was a meek young man, and didn’t have a history of violence. He seemed awkward. Being awkward certainly wasn’t too suspicious. However, being near the crime scene was certainly suspicious.

Kelsall had been brought to the detectives’ attention as they viewed CCTV footage the night Morgan was murdered. They spotted Kelsall in the footage at around the same time, seemingly running after Morgan. It certainly made the detectives curious.

Kelsall’s identity had been confirmed by a barista who worked at the café Morgan often frequented, and by Kelsall’s boss, Brett Deverall, from the Sydney Cooking School. The detectives got in touch with Kelsall, paid him a visit, and decided to bring him to North Sydney station for questioning. He seemed to have an absurd answer for everything.

When he was asked why he was running after Morgan in the CCTV footage, he calmly replied: “It was cold. Mum always tells me, if you’re cold, go for a jog.” He then went on to tell the detectives that even though he’d seen Morgan that night, he hadn’t spoken to him. The detectives let him go. There was forensic evidence to sift through.

Two days later, Kelsall called Detective Sergeant and told him that he has a confession to make. He’d lied, you see. He’d lied. He had, in fact, spoken with Morgan the night of the murder.

Sitting in Dukes’ car, the detective conducted an unofficial second interview. Kelsall told him that he and Morgan had had consensual sex at Morgan’s home. This, he said, would account for his DNA being in the home. It was during this encounter that he claimed they were attacked by a mystery person.

Kelsall then panicked; he was terrified. He ran out of the townhouse. He was too scared to say anything before, he said. Dukes didn’t buy Kelsall’s story for a second. He figured Kelsall knew he was stuck; knew they’d find evidence of Kelsall being where he didn’t belong, and so he’d crafted a story to account for that.

Dukes placed Kelsall under arrest. While he was at the station – from 4PM to 10:30PM – Dukes executed a search warrant of Kelsall’s home. Investigators removed clothes, his laptop, and the two chefs knives from the home.

In the two weeks that followed Kelsall’s initial arrest, the results from the forensics lab came back. Those results were almost exactly what Dukes was expecting – the DNA found at the scene and fingerprints from Morgan’s bedroom door belonged to Daniel Jack Kelsall. Morgan’s blood was also found on Kelsall’s blue bag, after he failed at washing it off.

However, the DNA evidence was not what put the final nail in Kelsall’s coffin. As reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, Dukes had contacted Kelsall’s doctor and psychiatrist. “Only 15 months before, Kelsall had confided to his GP, Dr. Susan Allman, about having ‘intrusive thoughts’ of killing someone with a knife on his way home at night. A month later he told psychiatrist Matthew Boulton that he ‘had thought of killing someone else, for the thrill of it’.” Kelsall even bragged about doing it with a knife and hiding the body. He claimed he wouldn’t get caught.

On October 8th, 2013 – exactly one month after Morgan Huxley’s murder, Daniel Jack Kelsall was arrested for the murder of Morgan Huxley.

On Monday, March 16th, 2015, Kelsall took the stand in his own defence at his trial. He was the only witness for the defence What he told the court was one fabrication after another.

He told the court that Morgan had invited him to his home in order to have sex. They went to Morgan’s bedroom, where Kelsall said he ‘fondled’ Morgan for a time, and then he was hit on the head by something hard. He said the mystery attacker went after Morgan, which allowed him to run out of the townhouse in panic and terror.

Despite the second unofficial interview not being admissible in court, the jury was just as disbelieving of the false statements.

Two days later, on March 18th, the jury returned a little more than two hours after beginning deliberations with a guilty verdict. They found the then 22-year-old Daniel Jack Kelsall guilty not only of murder, but also on one count of indecent assault.

Kelsall was sentenced to 40 years without the possibility of parole for 30 years. His solicitors are currently trying to reduce his sentence by 10 years.

Morgan Huxley was a kind, caring, gentle man. Daniel Jack Kelsall deserves every single one of his 40 years in prison.

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Sources:
Surviving the brutal murder of businessman Morgan Huxley – Greg Callaghan – The Sydney Morning Herald
Morgan Huxley murder: Daniel Kelsall wants sentence reduced by 10 years – Mazoe Ford – ABC