Last updated: December 28, 2014



Collar bomb hoaxer Paul Douglas Peters sentenced to at least 10 years in jail over Madeleine Pulver ordeal

Madeleine Pulver addresses the media after the man who fixed a mock collar-bomb around her neck was sentenced to more than 13 years in jail.

The man who strapped a fake collar bomb on a Sydney teenager will be sentenced today

Madeleine Pulver

Madeleine Pulver and Paul Douglas Peters. Source: Herald Sun

HOAX collar bomber Paul Douglas Peters will spend at least 10 years in jail for the act on Madeleine Pulver.

Judge Peter Zahra said in handing down a total sentence of 13 and a half years that the terror the teenager would have felt for many hours "cannot be described."

Peters will be eligible for parole in August 2021.

Peters was given some reduction for his guilty plea, and the sentence has been backdated to his arrest in Kentucky on August 15 last year.

Madeleine and her family remained composed as the sentence was announced after close to two hours of remarks by the judge.

Paul Douglas Peters

Paul Douglas Peters jailed for at least 10 years. Source: The Daily Telegraph

Peters didn't give evidence during the sentence proceedings, and Judge Zahra said there are "matters which point against the suggestion that the offender has given a reliable account" of his thinking at the time he broke into the Pulver home and his claim he set out to get caught.

He said the two page document attached to the device was "an extortion note."

"The contents of the document..was to place the victim in fear that she would be killed," Judge Zahra.

"He was armed. He concealed his face...(Madeleine) was extremely vulnerable.

"It was a deliberate act of extortion."

He said it was "unproductive to speculate" why Peters chose Madeleine as his victim, as there is no objective evidence to reveal his reasoning but that he wouldn't accept the extortion was "not the product of him being in a psychotic state or taking on the persona of a character in the book."

Earlier in court, Peters started to cry as Judge Zahra spoke of the unravelling his life in the lead up to his crime.

The court heard Peters, left "distraught" by the breakdown of his marriage and career trouble, believed "he had lost everything."

Pulver case

The Pulver family leave court. Picture: Ross Schultz Source: The Daily Telegraph

He told a psychiatrist that he had to find "an ingenious way to trap myself" because he was drinking heavily and knew he needed help.

"I had to catch myself out," the court heard Peters said.

"I had to lay evidence along the way to trap myself "

The court heard Peters started to merge himself with John Chan, one of the characters in his book and was looking "for dual revenge- for Chan and for me."

He told psychiatrist Bruce Westmore that Madeleine was a random victim.

"(Her identity) is not relevant at all, I've never met her in my life," he said.

Police officer Karen Lowden, the woman who supported Madeleine during her ordeal when she was "crying and scared for her life " is among a packed courtroom this morning.

Madeleine, sitting between her parents, has looked over in Peters' direction a few times since he was bought into the dock, but the 52 year old is staring blankly ahead during Judge Zahra's remarks.

Earlier, flanked by her parents Bill and Belinda, Madeleine said "I'd just like to say I'm happy it's nearly all over."

"It's been quite an ordeal."


The Pulver family attend court sentencing. Picture: Ross Schultz Source: The Daily Telegraph

The 52 year old, who pleaded guilty to aggravated break and enter and detain for advantage earlier this year, has been sentencing in Sydney's District Court since 10am this morning.

During sentencing submissions the court heard from three psychiatrists who provided varying accounts of Peters' state of mind on August 3, 2011- the day he broke into the Pulver home in Mosman, and strapped the box device around the teenager's neck with a bike lock and two-page ransom note attached.

Peters later told a psychiatrist he had no memory of the crime other than walking up the front steps of the Pulver home.

The court heard Peters was suffering from a bipolar disorder and was in a state of "isolation" and "personality disintegration" when he committed the crime, which subjected Madeleine to an hours-long ordeal as international experts had to be called in to eventually determine the device was a hoax.


Sentencing of Paul Peters as Madeleine Pulvers faces her bomb hoaxer. Picture: Ross Schultz Source: The Daily Telegraph

But Crown prosecutor Margaret Cunneen SC told the court that Peters- who once enjoyed a successful finance career- had simply "gone to the wrong house" having initially intended to extort a wealthy trust beneficiary who lived in Mosman, before changing his target to the next-door neighbour of the Pulver family.

She said that Peters, hit by "the humiliation" of his failed extortion and "act of urban terrorism" later told police he had assumed the role of one of the characters in a novel he spent a decade writing to hide his botched crime.

The court heard Peters- who was arrested in Kentucky two weeks after the crime- devoted half his time to penning the historical novel, described as "dark" by his ex wife Debra, and the remainder to tracking down beneficiaries of a multi million dollar trust.

Judge Peter Zahra said during a sentencing hearing this month that the failed extortion plot- during which Peters wore a rainbow striped balaclava and armed himself with a baseball bat was "implemented with precision."