The Case of Brittney Dwyer

Welcome everyone! Tonight we have a crazy case to discuss – of greed and stupidity. Normally we talk about relationship crime with husbands and wives or boyfriends and girlfriends. But something we talk about family relationship crime like when we did the case of Jennifer Pan on episode 12. (Which by the way was a bat shit crazy episode. You should visit our site www.murderandlove.com to check that episode out) The episode tonight will focus on family relationships. So strap in and strap up and let’s get into tonight’s show.

What we’re gonna talk about today is the case of Brittney Dwyer.

Brittney Jade Dwyer was born in 1997 in New Zealand to Aaron and Tonya Dwyer. Now, I’m not sure where in New Zealand she was born, but our story picks up in Brisbane, Australia. I wasn’t able to find much about her childhood, but her mother said that she was always a strong-willed and adventurous girl. She loved hanging with her brother, Ryan Whitwell-Dwyer, and did a lot of rough and tumble activities with the boys like playing soccer – she loved soccer. On the outside, it looked like Brittney would be a very happy, well-adjusted young lady. She was raised in a very settled family, with a stable domestic life and with no known trouble at home. As a child, she was very happy; she loved going to school and had many friends.

As Brittany grew into her teenage years, she became more distant from her family – this seems to be normal behavior for teenagers. I don’t know why. I matured more slowly than the other girls in my high school, in the sense that I still played with my younger brothers up until I was in 12th grade. Then in 12th grade, I suddenly just didn’t feel like hanging with them anymore. I just felt like I was too old for the games. Is this what happened to your son Char? He is an only child; did he become distant when he was a teenager? Anyway Brittany did this and started finding it hard to fit in at school. Because of this, she just started isolating herself from her peers, but this made it even harder on her because the kids started to bully her. As time when on, she found a kindred dark spirit in a new friend named Shelby Lee Holmes. Her mother hoped that with this friend, Brittney would go back to her normal self. However, Brittney was struggling to come to terms with depression and an obsession with all things dark. What do you think that means? “All things dark?” That’s kind of a general term right?

Tonya said that Brittney went from happy child to self harming, violence and death obsessed her as a teen. She would spend a lot of time watching murder documentaries…..ummm sounds like me as an adult – well the murder doc part. Even though her mother hoped Brittney’s new friend would bring her sweet little girl back, Shelby actually had a fascination with knives, blood, and violence, which helped bring Brittney even further down the dark rabbit hole. Brittney and Shelby would often visit cemeteries, talk about and obsess about blood and knives. They constantly texted each other – which is not out of the ordinary for a teenage girl. 

It’s like the old saying goes, you are who you hang out with. There was obviously something about Shelby that caught Brittney’s attention. It could probably be that she was the only one who was willing to hang with her. When you’re a child, it’s so easy to make friends, but as you grow up and come into yourself, friendship becomes harder. In high school, you’re now in a time where sheep flocks start forming; everyone wants to be like the “cool kids.” If you don’t fit into that mold, the teens don’t want to talk to you. If your personality isn’t a strong one, it’s easy to get depressed and then fall into the wrong crowd. When I was in school, I didn’t fit in. I was teased and bullied. I had some friends, and that was fine with me – it was usually the misfits. But I usually wanted to be left alone so I could read anyway so it didn’t matter to me. When I was in 10th grade, I got tired of being teased, and that’s where the Ky you love and know was born. After a short time, people knew to stop messing with me. Funny thing is, when I got mean, everyone wanted to be my friend. At first I let it go to my head and I left my other friends behind, but then I realized these people are sheep and I went back to my books. I hurt one of my best friends at the time and I regret it. Her name was Adriana Baxter. I thought I found her on Facebook to apologize, but I’m not sure. Anyway, that was my sob story – back to Brittney. 

This would explain why she got linked to Shelby and why she started following in what Shelby liked to do.

As Brittney got older, the self harm became more frequent. It was also reported that she began introducing drugs into her life, like weed, cocaine and ecstasy. She often spoke about smoking an ounce of weed a day. Is that a lot?

When Brittney turned 18, she moved out of her mom’s house and moved in with Shelby. Now, there were allegations that the two had a romantic relationship, but Shelby denied this. Why do people always think you’re sexually involved with anyone you spend a lot of time with. That’s what best friends are – just someone you love so much and like being around. You don’t have to be romantically involved. I wish people would just get their heads out of their butt holes. As with most kids, they’re ready to move out of their parents homes because they think being an adult is sooooo easy – but when they are out, they have trouble paying bills and being responsible. Well, Brittney was no different. Bills started stressing her out. Paying rent stressed her out. And basically adulting stressed her out. So what do you think she did? Do you think she went back to her parent’s house? Nope. She started taking MORE drugs. Sounds rational.

In the meantime, in 2016, Brittney’s grandfather, Robert Whitwell, lived alone in a suburb of Adalaide, Australia. His wife, Joyce, was suffering from dementia and lived in a nursing home. One day, he called his daughter, who is Brittney’s mom. They were just talking like – how are you doing dad? How’s the blood pressure? We’re gonna come down and see you soon. – stuff like that. Then Tanya got into a normal conversation with him, trying to convince him to put his money in the bank. You know how old people are; they don’t trust their money to be in the hands of “the man,” meaning the bank.  So he’s telling her no I’m not putting my money in the bank. So Tanya asks him, “Dad, how much money do you have just sitting around your house?” To which he replied, “You don’t need to know all my business, young girl, but I have more than $100,000.” Tonya was like “In your house?! Suppose a drug dealer knew you had this much! What do you think they would do?” Robert said, “don’t worry. It’s not out in the open in my house. It’s hidden out in my shed! What do you take me for? I’ve been alive longer than you and I know what I’m doing!” Tonya said, “OK Dad. I’m not gonna argue with you.”

However, what she didn’t realize was that it wasn’t a drug dealer she had to worry about; it was her own daughter Brittney who wanted to steal this money. 

Brittney went home with thoughts of easy money and how to get her hands on it. If she were to get her hands on $100,000 then that would last a lifetime right?! She would never have to work again! She sat down with Shelby and told her about this money, “Hey Shelby, all we have to do is drive to Adelaide and get the money. My Poppa would never know!” Shelby was like, “D’you know how far that is?” “Yea let’s just hop in the car and get it! Can you imagine how much money this is!?” So Brittney ended up convincing Shelby to drive from Brisbane to Adelaide – this is about a 1,246 mile drive meaning it would take about 22 hours. There is no one on this planet who would convince me to do this drive unless it’s for an amazing reason – and stealing is not one of those reasons. Anyway, they made the drive, parked close to the house, and observed Robert to see when he would be out of the house. The next evening, while he was gone, they went into the yard by climbing over his fence. They tried desperately to get into the shed, but stopped when a light came on in the yard and a neighbor’s dog started barking. So they figured this was calling unnecessary attention to them and they left. 

After this incident, some time went by and Brittney met a 22 year old woman named Bernadette Burns. Bernadette was a very stressed out woman; depressed and just trying to make ends meet. At 17 she’d lost custody of her daughter and this led her to spiraling from depression into drug addiction.

In August of 2016, Brittney again tried to steal her grandfather’s money. This time, however; she convinced her new friend, Bernadette, to drive her the 1200 miles. I guess Shelby said eff that LOL. Brittney’s motto for this trip was to “do whatever was necessary to steal her grandfather’s savings.”  Instead of just robbing him though, this time, they planned on killing him as well. Why? Robbing wasn’t enough??!!! 

When they arrived at the house, Brittney suddenly had a change of “heart” for lack of a better term. She said she got cold feet, felt incredibly insecure, and didn’t think she could go through with the murder. Bernadette said bump that! I drove all the way here. I wasted money on gas! I put miles on my car! I’m not leaving here empty handed. For about 20 minutes, Bernadette sat in the car with Brittney, trying to convince her to go in the house and do what they came here to do. Finally, at about 11 AM, Brittney knocked on the door. Her grandfather answered the door, happy to see his lovely granddaughter who he fell in love with the moment she was born. He, of course, invited her into the house. Brittney went inside the house wearing gloves and carrying a knife. She was also carrying a bag with bolt cutters, tin snips, a hammer, gloves, and cable ties. Bernadette, in the meantime, waited in the car while and played with her makeup Brittney and her grandfather sat on the couch and began going through photographs and videos of Brittney and her brother when they were children. They even sat down to have breakfast together. What a sweet grandfather!

After some time, Brittney sent a text to Bernadette saying that she couldn’t actually go through with the plan, but Bernadette answered saying “just harden up and do it” and reminding here that “we’ve come all this way” She also reminded Brittney that her mother would know she had visited her grandfather so she should just get on it with! My thing is – so? So my mom knows I visited my grandfather. She would say good job! Oh but if she stole the money, her mom might suspect her. Right?

After spending time with her grandfather, Robert walked her to the front door to say goodbye and give his granddaughter a hug and kiss. As they got closer to the door, Brittney pulled out the knife she had brought with her and stabbed her grandfather in the neck. Robert spun around, put his hands on her neck, and started shaking her while pleading with her and asking her why she was doing this. Brittney stabbed him in the chest and in the neck again and stood back watching. Robert started to slowly walk into the kitchen and he grabbed some band-aids.

Brittney walked over and helped him put bandages on the wounds. She even put one on the stab wound on his neck. As her grandfather slowly sat down, losing life – slowly dying, Brittney went and washed the dishes. After she dried her hands, she texted Bernadette with a message saying ‘it’s done.’ So Bernadette came into the house, wearing gloves, they both searched for the money. In the end, they were unable to find the $110,000 – because it was in the shed and not in the house – but they found $1000 in Robert’s wallet so they took that, along with some coins, and two digital cameras. An hour after the murder, while they were driving home, Bernadette posted on Facebook and said “the story of my life; I knew better but I did it anyway”

When they got back to Brisbane, they sat and relaxed with their roommates, Jodie Greaves and Jamie Dennis. Soon, Brittney blurted something weird out. She said that her uncle had died in Perth due to a home invasion. Everyone was like….oooookkkkk. Right after that, Bernadette walked up to Jodie and whispered, “Can I tell you something, but you can’t tell anyone other than Jamie?” Jaime was like, “OK. Why are yall acting all weird?” Bernadette then confessed that the reason they went to Adelaide was to rob Brittney’s grandfather of his money.

Later on, Jodie remembered a conversation with Brittney the night before she went to Adalaide, that Brittney nonchalantly said that “she was going to murder her granddad” Why do these peole keep telling people these things?? If you go back through all of our shows, you’ll see that these idiots keep telling anyone who will listen that they’ve killed or going to kill someone. The other mistake they do is text message plans. I mean what’s going on here?!

Anyway, even though she told Jodie this, she didn’t take it seriously and just thought Brittney was joking. 

However, soon she would find out it was no joke at all.

Three days later, Robert’s neighbors noticed that his newspapers were piling up in the front of this house so they thought that they’d better go check on him. That’s when  they found Robert’s body slumped in a chair. He’d bled to death with a simple bandage stuck to his neck.

Police were called out and, while doing a search of the premises, they found $98,000 hidden in the shed and $30,000 hidden in the house. So two things I learned:
#1 He actually had $128,000 hidden on the premises

#2 Children are always children are always children. What do I mean? Have you ever asked your child to look for something, they said they looked really well but didn’t find anything, but when you go and look you find it sitting out in the open – even a blind man could find it? Yea, well that was Brittney and Shelby. Shelby once and Brittney twice.

After police disclosed how much money was found, Brittney and Bernadette did the only thing you would think to do in a situation such as this. What do you think that was? 

They started texting each other. 

Brittney texted Bernadette saying “$114,000 found in the shed… you should have let me finish”

So reverse a bit. When Robert’s body was found, the cops called Tonya to tell her that her father had died. Tonya then called Brittney to tell her saying, “ The police have just rung and Poppa has just passed away.” Brittney was actually still on the road at the time and she started crying hysterically. Now this is where I’m confused – it was like 3 days later; why was she still on the road home? Anyway, her mom told her that she needed her to fly down to Adelaide and be with the family during this difficult time. Some time after this is when the amount of money found was disclosed. 

Ok, now we’ve caught up.

In the days that followed, Brittney grieved with her family. She’d started chain smoking, which her mother found weird, but nothing else different about her. 

During this time, Ryan, Brittney’s brother, birthday came around. The family spent the day at one of their grandfather’s favorite places. The family didn’t want to miss Ryan’s birthday. They figured if Robert were still alive, he wouldn’t have wanted them to miss this time, so they incorporated him by going to a favorite spot of his. There’s actually a picture of Brittney and Ryan on that day. Ryan looks happy, but you know he’s actually still sad that his grandfather is gone. Brittney, the murderer, is playing around and looking happy as well. I’ll post this picture to our Facebook page. Search @relationshipcrime – all one word.

Weeks went by and Brittney and Bernadette thought they’d gotten away with murder.

And they probably would have. If…

…it wasn’t for an anonymous tip to the police. 

On August 26, both Brittney and Bernadette were arrested. The tip also led police to Shelby. 

In court, how do you think Brittney plead? Wrong! Much to my surprise, she pled guilty!

In pre-trial, Brittney said the motivation for the murder came from the TV show American Horror Story. I’ve heard of the show but never watched it. Have you? On the show, it shows gruesome crimes with different characters in different locations. 

As part of Brittney’s own defense, she claimed that the murder was also in large part motivated by the fact that her grandfather had sexually molested her which, according to her mother and her grand-uncle, was impossible to have ever happened. The court dismissed this because there was no evidence to back this up and clearly it was a panic accusation just thrown out for sympathy.

In court evidence was presented of 19,000 text messages between the two girls over the course of 2 years discussing killing people at rave parties or going on rampages slitting throats. Shelby said these messages were a joke. They just watched a lot of horror movies and they would joke about doing these things.

It was also disclosed that Brittney suffered from borderline personality disorder, anti-social traits, and issues with rage. In addition to smoking an ounce of weed a day, she coupled that with a bottle of vodka, cocaine and ecstasy. The prosecution said this statement was an exaggeration and a coverup for her real intentions of murdering Robert. They said, “The amount of drugs she was talking about taking is a near impossibility. She talked about smoking an ounce (or 28g) of cannabis a day. Even hardened cannabis users would normally smoke an ounce in a week.” Basically, stop with the excuses; you’re a horrible woman.

Bernadette presented that she never intended for Mr. Whitwell to be killed or harmed, but would have chosen violence IF it were necessary. Against a sweet old man??? 

Justice Kevin Nicholson described Brittney’s offense as “evil and abhorrent”. He said that she remained a danger to the community, which I completely agree with.

In closing arguments, the judge said she was motivated by greed (agreed) and an “unnatural interest with violence and with seeing people die”. “This murder was brutal, callous, cold-blooded and dispassionately planned,” he said. (again, agreed) He also said, “Strangely you assisted Mr. Whitwell to apply a band-aid to one of the cuts and used a cloth to help clean off some of the blood. While you were waiting for him to die, you busied yourself washing the dishes.”

Because Brittney pled guilty to murder, she didn’t have to stand trial. Bernadette pled guilty to murder without intent. Now, is this the same as the Alford plea? This is where a defendant who doesn’t admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence. So basically she was like, yea I was there, but I didn’t know that she was going to do that.

Ryan, Brittney’s brother, asked the court if his sister and Bernadette could receive the maximum penalty allowed by law for their crimes. He said (in a court document that was read out loud in court), “My grandfather Robert Whitwell was a proud and giving family man, always went above and beyond for anyone in need. The upset and anguish that you have both cast upon [the] Whitwell and Dwyer families is unforgivable.”

Supreme Court Justice Kevin Nicholson sentenced Brittney to life with a non-parole period of 20.5 years. She also received an additional six months for the home invasion, bringing her total jail time to 21 year – and this is also before she becomes eligible for parole.

Bernadette received life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 13.5 years for the murder because she was found to not have murderous intent. I call bullshit on that because there was evidence that she pushed Brittney to commit the murder.

Shelby was given a 17-month suspended sentence for trespassing in Robert’s house when Brittney first went over to rob him. 

Brittney and Bernadette are currently alive in a prison in South Australia and Robert is dead.

By the way, Brittney was 19 when the murder happened and Robert was 81.

Robert’s neighbors had told the media that, four days after Robert was found dead, they’d seen Brittney outside his house just hanging around. “She was on her phone, sitting in the gutter outside the home. I’m still scratching my head wondering what happened in there and why.” She was basically sitting around looking nonchalant, probably while her family were in the dealing with the death of their beloved grandfather/ father.

Brittney’s mother has often spoken to the media saying that her daughter what she got because she is guilty, has pleaded guilty, and has admitted to the murder.

In 2017, Brittney put out an apology statement in which she said that she would take it all back if she could. In her apology, she also lashed out at Shelby for saying that they were not a couple and that they were only friends. Which, it sounds like you made a statement so that Shelby could hear you instead of an actual apology.

I saw someone on YouTube posted on this comment for Murder Mystery & Mayhem’s video. The said:

“I actually went to primary and high school with Brittney, years 6 – 8 or 9 before she left, I can’t remember which year exactly. I was never really involved with her during primary school, but in high school she used to follow me home, often trying to catch up to me to talk to me. She always had a very off putting energy around her, like I should be cautious. She just seemed very, strange I guess. She would expose her chest to me randomly and generally talk about some really strange things. I started walking a different way home in an effort to avoid her, she would never approach me during school likely because I was always surrounded by my friends then. I think she had some serious mental issues from a young age that her parents may never have noticed. I was young and barely knew her but these interactions may have been a cry for help I never noticed due to being immature and knowing no better. I’m not sure, and it’s such a strange feeling that I knew a future murderer. It is a shame it came to this, and she never got the help she needed in time. It’s no excuse of course, and she still deserves to be punished for the murder, but I believe it could have been prevented if she got the help she needed in time, instead of being surrounded by similarly mentally dysfuntional people leading her deeper into the darkness.”

And that’s Brittney Dwyer and Robert Whitwell.

Whew!

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