Irishman jailed for murder in Perth

By Sean Ryan

A 35-year-old Irishman has been jailed for at least 17 years following his conviction for the murder of another Irishman in Perth in 2013.

Vincent Martin Crowe confessed to stabbing 21-year-old Kenyon 'Kenny' Meyler (pictured below) in the neck in February of that year. The court heard that Crowe was high on the drug Mephedrone at the time of the killing.

Crowe had also drunk a substantial amount of alcohol and had become fixated about a minor verbal altercation between one of his friends and the victim, even though the men had resolved the dispute and shaken hands.

While Crowe claimed he could not remember anything of the attack, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but Western Australia prosecutors pushed ahead with a murder charge and he was found guilty in the WA Supreme Court after a retrial last week.

During Crowe’s sentencing this afternoon, the victim’s mother Melanie Meyler said her son was a fitness and nature-oriented man who didn’t like drugs and was loved all over his home county of Wexford. “He brought joy to everyone he met and Kenny had a wisdom about him — an old soul,” she told the court, weeping.“I am lost without Kenny.

"A part of me left with my son. My world fell apart.” She said the fact that Crowe put the Meyler family through two trials showed his cruelty.

Crowe’s defence lawyer Judith Fordham said her client was remorseful. She argued it was not possible for him to have formed an intent to kill given that the Mephedrone had left him with a lack of expression after the attack, reflecting an absence of understanding about what had occurred.

She said he had taken heroin in the past, but had not taken Mephedrone before. Therefore, he didn’t know that the obscure drug would make him aggressive. “He couldn’t be expected to have known,” Ms Fordham said.

“This was an act brought about by the psychological effect of this particular drug.”