
Shock details emerge about Audrey Griffin's killer and his 'sleepless' final days before he was found dead in a jail cell
The man charged with murdering Audrey Griffin before taking his own life had been on a drug binge and had not slept in five days when he was arrested.
Adrian Torrens, 53, was accused of murdering Ironwoman athlete Ms Griffin on March 24 and leaving her body half-submerged in Erina Creek, on the NSW Central Coast.
The 19-year-old had left the Hotel Gosford at about 2am and was walking along The Entrance Road, towards her father's house, for about an hour when she came into contact with her killer.
Police alleged Ms Griffin was killed during a 'physical altercation' with Torrens, who'd been headed to the home of his estranged wife Michelle Torrens after she'd taken an apprehended violence order against him.
Investigators initially ruled Ms Griffin's death a case of misadventure but received a tip which led officers to arrest Torrens in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Surry Hills on April 21, one month after the teenager was killed.
Police claimed Torrens' phone had pinged near her body and his DNA was found under one of her fingernails.
Torrens was taken to Sydney's maximum correctional facility at Silverwater Prison and locked in a glass-fronted single cell.
Torrens hadn't slept for five days following an intense drug binge around Sydney, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
Prison workers were on high alert and kept Torrens under the 24-hour surveillance of a special risk intervention team.
Additionally, he was ordered to wear prison greens, which cannot be torn, in order to minimise the risk of self-harm as he withdrew from drugs.
'He was 53 years, which is considered elderly for an Aboriginal inmate coming off drugs,' one prison guard said.
'Any human that does not sleep for five days is on drugs.'
Following several sessions with counsellors, Torrens was moved into a shared cell.
It was there he asked a fellow inmate if he could borrow a razor. He claimed he wanted to be clean-shaven for his court appearance the next day.
However, the courtrooms were closed the following day for Anzac Day public holiday.
Torrens used the twin-blade razor to take his life and, despite the best efforts of officers and later paramedics, was pronounced dead at 4.50pm on April 24.
Torrens (left) used a razor blade to take his own life following a five-day drug bender in Sydney and three days behind bars
His body was not moved until a relative could formally identify him, in line with Indigenous cultural practices.
The Coroner is now using CCTV footage to piece together the final moments of Torrens' life and check for any breaches of care as part of a public inquest.
At the same moment Torrens died, Ms Griffin's loved ones were holding a vigil for her at Terrigal Beach.
Her mother, Kathleen Kirby, received the phone call informing her of her daughter's killer's death as the event ended.
Torrens' suicide meant Ms Kirby and Ms Griffin's father, Trevor, would never be able to seek courtroom justice for their daughter's death.
'She was my best friend, a better version of myself,' Ms Kirby said.
'Anger is not the answer, this is now my time to grieve.'
Ms Griffin's body was discovered face-down in blue-green algae-infested water at 3.34pm on March 24.
Her father arrived at the scene at the same time as officers.
'Imagine what that was like, having to identify your own daughter?' he said.
The crime scene was just 11km from the home of Michelle Torrens, which she previously shared with the killer.
In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Australia, she revealed she'd received several threatening messages from Torrens on the night of Ms Griffin's murder.
'He rang me 12 times and because he was blocked, I was receiving them as text messages,' she said.
'He started calling from 7pm and the last phone call was at 12.10am on the night he killed her.
'He kept threatening to kill my son and I. My children are completely traumatised.'
A distraught Michelle said both she and Audrey had been let down by the legal system.
'My heart goes out to Audrey's family,' she said.
'I do feel let down by the police and the judge, on the first night of the AVO, the very first AVO, the police took four hours to come here to do a welfare check.
'When he breached his AVO [that was taken out] to protect me, they took five months to find him.
'I lived in fear he would carry out one of his threats.'
Torrens was hit with the latest AVO just two months before Ms Griffin's murder.
He was prohibited from stalking, assaulting or threatening his estranged wife, recklessly destroying her property, or harming her two dogs.
That AVO was due to expire on July 15, 2026.
He'd avoided jail a few months earlier, in October 2024, after using a carriage service to harass, menace or offend his wife, which broke the rules of an earlier AVO.
He pleaded guilty to the charge but was only handed an 18-month community corrections order.
At that time, Torrens had a history of breaching an AVO from a previous partner.
He had stomped on the woman's chest, broken her arm and threatened to kill her with a knife.
Torrens had also been jailed in 2014 and 2018 for theft, fraud, assault, intimidation and twice breaching an AVO.
His ex-wife told the Telegraph she still lives in fear of retaliation from Torrens' associates.
'He was coming for me that night,' she said.
'He called me at midnight, and 12 times that day. He threatened me and the children.
'He took Audrey instead, my heart goes out to her family.'

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


BBC News
44 minutes ago
- BBC News
The murder of John 'Goldfinger' Palmer in Essex still unsolved
In June 2015, John "Goldfinger" Palmer was shot six times in the garden of his secluded woodland mansion in Essex. But due to an oversight in the police response, the 65-year-old's death was put down to natural causes - until a murder investigation was eventually launched six days later. Ten years on, detectives are still hunting whoever killed the man once described as Britain's richest criminal. Palmer earned his nickname following the audacious 1983 Brink's-Mat men disguised in security uniforms stumbled upon £26m worth of gold, diamonds and cash in a warehouse just outside London Heathrow dealer Palmer was accused of melting down the gold in a shed in the garden of his mansion near years later, on 24 June 2015, he was gunned down as he was burning documents in the garden of his home in South Weald near prosecutors had charged him a month earlier with fraud, firearms possession and money laundering. At about 17:30 BST, a suspect believed to be a contract killer scaled his garden fence having seemingly watched him through a carved-out was killed in the only part of the garden not covered by was found unconscious by his son's girlfriend. Two police officers attended at about 19:20 and had assessed his death as "non-suspicious" on account of an operation wound from recent gall bladder surgery. A week later, a post-mortem examination revealed he was, in fact, shot in the chest, abdomen, arm, elbow, back and kidneys. "It's definitely not something I'm going to hide behind; we did make mistakes," said Det Supt Stephen Jennings of Essex Police, speaking to the BBC's Gangster podcast series in 2022."We didn't do enough background checks on John."Had we done that, the officers would have realised he had quite a substantial criminal background."They didn't really check the body well enough to discount any third-party involvement." Roy Ramm, former commander of specialist operations at New Scotland Yard, said it was a "very serious error"."You talk about the golden hour in investigations - that was lost, the day was lost, several days were lost - and I do not envy the senior investigating officer who picked up the case and tried to make progress with it," he told the BBC. "It was nigh on impossible."The two young police officers later faced disciplinary action. Humble beginnings Born in Solihull near Birmingham, Palmer was one of seven children raised in a poor single-parent was a serial truant and left school at 15 without learning to read or teenager worked in roofing but moved on to street trading, which included selling paraffin off the back of a moved to Bedminster in Bristol and made his first £100,000 (£2m in today's money) from a jewellery set up Scadlynn, a company trading precious scrap business partner Gareth Chappell was later jailed for 10 years for conspiring to handle stolen goods in connection with the Brink's-Mat raid. The gold When Palmer was identified as a Brink's-Mat suspect, he accused the Met Police of "overreacting"."I'm completely innocent of anything to do with this so-called 'Mats-Brink' bullion raid," he said, sitting beside a hotel pool in Tenerife in 1985, after being tracked down by BBC war reporter Kate continued to deliberately - or mistakenly - confuse the Brink's-Mat name when he stood trial at the Old Bailey in 1987, and it blew kisses to jurors after they found him not guilty of conspiring to handle stolen gold Brink's-Mat heist, and the cat-and-mouse chases that followed, have been dramatised in BBC One TV series The the final episode, which aired earlier this month, the fictional detective, played by Hugh Bonneville, signs off with: "It's Brink's-Mat - it's never over."Palmer seemed unable to shake off the spectre of the 1983 raid. Timeshare empire Instead of going to ground, Palmer became one of the biggest landowners in Ramm, who oversaw investigations into Palmer and the laundering of the Brink's-Mat gold in the 1990s, said his team was "convinced" he invested earnings from the robbery into the amassed an estimated fortune of £300m which he used to buy a West Country mansion, a French chateau with its own golf course, a jet, turboprop-powered helicopters, a £750,000 yacht, and a classic car collection including Porsches and and Elizabeth II were jointly ranked 105th in the Sunday Times Rich prosecutors accused him of masterminding a timeshare fraud which involved 16,000 victims who were scammed out of more than £ found him guilty of conspiracy to defraud at the Old Bailey and he was jailed for eight years in 2001. David Farrer KC, the lead prosecution counsel, described Palmer as the "biggest shark" in the timeshare waters - a quote that was rekindled for the final episode of The Palmer defended himself, Mr Farrer spent hours liaising with his opposite number in private."He could be quite pleasant and charming," said the retired barrister."That was invariably when he thought the case was going well for him. I've no doubt whatever of his potential violence. "If I had been anything other than prosecuting counsel he would have clouted me a few times."Mr Farrer recalled how during the trial, Palmer wore body armour and was shadowed by Special Branch officers because they were concerned a north London gang had put a contract out on him because he owed them served half his sentence, and in 2009, he moved in with partner Christina Ketley and their son at South Weald. Contract killer Speaking to the BBC's Crimewatch in 2016, Det Supt Jennings said the Spanish fraud prosecution - announced at the end of May 2015 - was the most likely motive for his was complicated when considering his links to the men behind the Hatton Garden heist of April 2015, the detective said, and because of recent "law enforcement intervention with organised crime families"."It was an opportunity for any one of those individuals at any subsequent trial to blame John for what took place and obviously he would not be in a position to answer that or refute it," said Det Supt Jennings. On the evening Essex Police revealed Palmer was murdered, Mr Farrer received an unexpected call from a Scotland Yard detective he had worked with more than 13 years earlier."I asked him, was it the Russians who did it?" Mr Farrer recalled."He said they thought it was much more likely this gang in north London, the Adams, and they certainly didn't think that it was directly anything to do with timeshare - in other words, the same people that caused Palmer to wear body armour during his trial."The Mail on Sunday singled out the Adams crime family as the brains behind the killing in a 2016 "Patsy" Adams, of Finsbury, north London, was jailed later that year for shooting an associate, and other members of the syndicate have received prison time in recent McCunn is more veteran lawyer led civil action against Palmer in the mid-1990s on behalf of insurers acting for the Brink's-Mat business."It could be linked to any number of activities he was known to be involved with," he told the BBC. 'Very dangerous people' A £100,000 reward was put up by Palmer's family and charity Crimestoppers in 2018 for information leading to a conviction - but that reward has Ramm said: "It is particularly important that this murder continues to be investigated because of who Palmer was, the role he played in the network of serious and organised criminals in the UK, in Spain - internationally."He offended and upset some very, very, dangerous people, and we need to know who they were." Palmer always maintained he did not know he had melted Brink's-Mat Ketley was due to stand trial in Madrid in 2019 in connection with the timeshare fraud, but the case against her was dropped. Other individuals were found guilty."Without doubt [Palmer] has made mistakes in his life; I believe he has paid for those mistakes," Ms Ketley told BBC Crimewatch."I was incredibly proud of the way he adjusted to a very normal life."She still owns the gated woodland property where Palmer was murdered. She did not respond to the BBC's approach for comment. A 43-year-old man from Rugby, Warwickshire, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder in 2015, but was released without February 2017, detectives said a 50-year-old man from Tyneside, who lived in southern Spain, was questioned on suspicion of murder in what was a voluntary interview. He faced no further Police says it has taken hundreds of witness statements, pursued hundreds of lines of inquiries and examined thousands of pieces of the failures on the day Palmer was murdered, a force spokesperson said on Friday: "It is always best to secure and preserve crime scenes as soon as possible to achieve the best forensic evidence and regrettably that was not the case in this incident."However, outdoor crime scenes by their very nature have less forensic opportunities."We believe this murder was a professional contract killing and our experiences of similar cases such as this are that these types of murderers are forensically aware, limiting our opportunity to secure evidence." Mr Ramm thinks detectives will need an organised criminal to hand over key information as "leverage"."I think that's probably the only way it's going to be solved - someone on the inside becomes an informer." Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.


BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Muriel McKay's family welcome 'strong' leads in search for body
The family of a woman murdered 56 years ago said a £1m reward for information had led to two "incredibly strong" leads in the search for her McKay, 55, was kidnapped in 1969, held to ransom and then killed at a farm in Hertfordshire, having been mistaken for the then-wife of Rupert grandson Mark Dyer said they had received information suggesting her body could have been buried behind a shop in Bethnal Green Road, London and at a house in Buntingford, said they were meeting genuine people "with really tangible leads" and links to the brothers convicted of her kidnap and murder. Arthur Hosein died in prison, while Nizamodeen Hosein later spoke to the McKay family, explaining where he had buried Metropolitan Police interviewed Hosein in 2024 and, despite scepticism about his account, carried out a third dig at Stocking Farm, near Bishop's Stortford but no human remains were found. In one of the leads, a woman has come forward to say her father told her before he died that he employed Arthur Hosein at the tailor's shop he ran on Bethnal Green described how a body had been stored at the property for 24 father also employed a former Polish World War Two soldier "who was apparently heavily involved in disposing of the body" behind the shop. Mr Dyer said he had informed his contact at the Metropolitan Police, who told him she would put someone on the lawyers have written to the shop owners and the tenants and they were ready with a scanning team. Mr Dyer has also spoken to a woman in a care home in said her family used to live next door to a man in Buntingford who used to supply things to the Hoseins at Stocking she was 17 years old, she was woken at 01:00 by a thumping sound and saw him through her window digging with a storm father said he reported it to the police but they dug in the wrong place."She is happy to come from her care home with her daughter and show the scanning team exactly where to scan," said Mr Dyer."If you look at this as a game, we are definitely getting round the board and we are throwing high-number dice now."Incredible, fantastic news". Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.


Times
2 hours ago
- Times
A long road to finding the truth on Agnes Wanjiru
It is four years since our reporter David Collins first revealed the possible involvement of British servicemen in the death of a young mother in Kenya. This weekend he reports that detectives in Nairobi have recommended one charge of murder against a British soldier after more than 20 others came forward to give evidence. Agnes Wanjiru, a hairdresser, was last seen going to a bedroom with a British soldier at the Lions Court Inn Hotel in Nanyuki, a dustbowl town three hours north of Nairobi. Her body was found in June 2012. She had been stabbed in the chest and then stuffed into a septic tank, possibly still alive. Comrades of the suspected killer said that army officers and military police failed to act on claims that a murder had taken place during a drinking binge at the hotel. In 2019 a Kenyan judge ruled that on the balance of probabilities a British soldier was responsible for Wanjiru's death. • Agnes Wanjiru killing: soldier may be extradited as 20 troops come forward Two years later we published our first investigation into the events of March 31, 2012. Our reporting prompted an individual we have called Soldier Y to make a witness statement to military police in which he identified a former colleague, Soldier X, who he says showed him Wanjiru's body on the night of the murder. This reignited the inquiry and, although the wheels of justice have ground slowly for Wanjiru's family, Britain's defence secretary, John Healey, has commendably vowed to help resolve the case. The Kenyan director of public prosecutions is reviewing the case file to decide on a murder charge. Prosecutors would then have to apply for the suspect, who is living in Britain, to be extradited for trial. If they do, the UK should surrender him without hesitation. It is a tribute to the power of investigative journalism that the horrific story, for so long shrouded in uncertainty and cover-up, is approaching this moment of clarity. If the Kenyan authorities ask for him, the army and the Ministry of Defence should hand over their man.