A woman who was allegedly murdered in her home by her lodger last week was also landlord to a man jailed years earlier for a brutal murder he blamed on the ‘witches of hell’.
Donna Baraket, 63, was found dead inside her home at Tweed Heads, on the Queensland-NSW border, last Wednesday after neighbours called emergency services concerned for her welfare.
Her tenant Connor Bulluss, 25, was found in a nearby pharmacy with blood and cuts on his hands and later charged with her murder.
Bulluss had been living at the Lakes Drive home with Ms Baraket for two weeks before she evicted him.
In an eerie coincidence, Ms Baraket was also landlord to Brendon Troy Griffiths, who murdered a homeless man a decade earlier.
Griffiths, who is currently in prison, lived in Ms Baraket’s home for seven years before the brutal crime in 2014.
Donna Baraket, 63, (pictured) was found dead inside her home at Tweed Heads, on the Queensland-NSW border, last Wednesday after neighbours called emergency services concerned for her welfare. Her lodger Connor Bulluss, 25 has been charged with her murder
In an eerie coincidence, Ms Baraket was also landlord to Brendon Troy Griffiths (pictured above, inside her home) who was convicted of a murder he later claimed the ‘witches of hell’ made him commit in 2014
Griffiths sprinted at Hoani Shaune Love (above) knocking him to the ground and causing a brain injury from which the 48-year-old died three days after the attack
On the night of September 27, 2014, Griffiths returned home woke another of Ms Baraket’s lodgers, Kym.
Then aged 38 and suffering from psychotic episodes, he asked Kym to lie about his whereabouts earlier that evening, saying: ‘If the cops come around here asking for me, can you tell them that I was at home all day?’
Griffiths explained he had encountered a man who aggressively challenged him and he had retaliated, saying he ‘grabbed the guy by the head… [and] smashed his head down’ and then elbowed and punched the man who ‘went to the ground’.
The incident Griffiths described happened on the street outside the Centro Tweed Shopping Centre, where homeless grandfather Hoani Shaune Love, 48, had been drinking with friends around 6pm.
Griffiths and another man were trying to get drugs from Mr Love and two people he was with at the time.
A ‘highly intoxicated’ Mr Love stared at Griffiths and told him to ‘go away in loud and vulgar language’, the NSW Supreme Court would later find.
Griffiths, who was already taking prescription opiates and benzodiazepine, ‘became angry and walked behind Mr Love, grabbing his head, forcibly extending his neck and pushing his thumbs into Mr Love’s eyes’.
He stopped when Mr Love’s companions yelled at him, and began to walk away but then turned back and took a running jump at the older man.
Griffiths would later admit that ‘a switch in my head just flicked and I turned and sprinted at him … 10, 20 or 30 metres, enough to get a good sprint up and have good solid contact.
‘I feel like the witches of hell just reached up and got into my decision-making capacity and just took control for a few seconds.’
Griffiths’ (pictured) guilty plea to manslaughter was rejected and he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 16 years in prison until 2026
Griffiths, now 48, was living at the Lakes Road home of Ms Baraket when he murdered Mr Love and was arrested there 10 days later
Ms Baraket had owned the Lakes Road home where she was allegedly murdered for almost 18 years and rented out the spare rooms to tenants
Mr Love’s head struck the pavement as he fell from the bench. He died three days later in Gold Coast University Hospital from blunt force trauma and a brain injury.
On the day Mr Love died, Griffiths again asked his flatmate to lie for him.
Griffiths approached Kym in the kitchen of the Lakes Road house, saying: ‘Have you spoken to the cops? What did you say?’
After telling him that she told police what he had asked her to, he demanded to know specifically what she had told him.
Kym answered: ‘I said “You were here with me. I told them you were here all afternoon”.’
Griffiths replied: ‘That’s good. I wasn’t having a psychotic episode when it happened. I knew what I was doing.’
He then said: ‘Okay, I’ll tell them I was here with you all afternoon. That’s cool, it’s sweet.’
According to NSW Supreme Court documents, Kym instead told the police the truth in two separate statements.
Police arrested Griffiths at Ms Baraket’s Lakes Drive house on October 6, 2014, however he did not go to trial for several years.
He tried to plead guilty to manslaughter on the basis his mental capacity was impaired by schizophrenia, his disordered personality traits and substance abuse disorder, but the plea was not accepted.
While in jail, he had told a psychologist of his fears of the mafia, and conspiracy theories about the September 11 terror attacks, the Bali bombings and aliens.
In September 2018, a judge convicted him of Mr Love’s murder and sentenced him to 16 years prison.
Police outside the Lakes Road house last week after Ms Baraket’s body was found inside the home where she had lived for 18 years until her death
Connor Bulluss was arrested by police and charged with the murder of his landlord Donna Baraket who had allegedly evicted him soon beforehand
Mr Love’s daughter Toni released a statement abut her father’s death, saying her family ‘couldn’t understand why this happened’.
‘My dad’s life was cut short at such a young age and nobody deserves to lose someone in such a senseless and violent way,’ she said.
Griffiths will be first eligible for parole on October 12, 2026.
Bulluss had been renting from Ms Baraket for about two weeks before she kicked him out a week ago, on February 4, and tossed his possessions onto the front lawn.
On Wednesday the alleged killer ran into a pharmacy about 10 minutes from Ms Baraket’s house.
‘He came in with his hands all cut up and my husband thinks it could have been self-defence,’ the pharmacist’s wife Hannah said.
Neighbours told Daily Mail Australia the Lakes Road property was a known drug house and Ms Baraket was a user who had been in and out of rehabilitation for years.
