Roland Griffiths looked his step-daughter in the eye before performing an act so evil it could see him jailed for the rest of his life.
The 41-year-old had menaced his family of seven for years, but on March 14, 2022 his rage ended in the death of his wife Kylie Louise Sheahan in the most horrific of ways.
It happened where what should have been the safest place a person can be – inside Ms Sheehan’s Albanvale home in Melbourne’s northwest.
What set Griffiths off that day is no mystery. The reason so petty it beggars belief.
It ended with Ms Sheehan, aged just 36, being doused in petrol and set alight in front of her children.
That Griffiths had been angry that day was nothing unusual.
He was a shocking drunk with an even worse temper.
On the day he became a killer, Griffiths had been stewing on a routine family incident the previous day involving an iPad.
Roland Griffiths and Kylie Louise Sheahan on the day of their wedding
His young son had run onto the road while his 11-year-old step-daughter was supposed to be watching him.
An enraged Griffiths remonstrated with the child and tried to break her iPad.
He then got stuck into a bottle of Jack Daniels, which he continued to polish off the following day.
Accustomed to her husband’s tantrums, Ms Sheehan did her best to ignore him, but that only seemed to further antagonise him.
Griffiths tipped over a wall unit in the lounge in a fit of rage before fetching a can of petrol.
Undeterred by the screams of his terrified children, he poured the fuel over his wife’s head, down her neck and all over her body as he threatened to burn the house down.
‘Do you want me to burn it down? Do you want me to set it alight?’ Griffiths yelled.
Ms Sheehan begged Griffiths to stop, pleading for the lives of her children.
Ms Sheahan (pictured) was burnt alive by her husband who had been stewing on an iPad-related incident from the previous day
The Albanvale home in Melbourne’s northwest where Ms Sheehan was murdered
‘I won’t do it. I swear, I promise, I won’t do it,’ Griffiths told her.
With his 17-year-old daughter struggling to intervene, Griffiths grabbed a lighter and looked her in the eye before sparking it up.
‘It was all red,’ the teenager later told police, describing how she watched the flames spread up her mother’s arm.
She too was caught in the inferno alongside her 16-year-old sister and Griffiths himself.
The kids had heard Griffiths threaten to burn the house down before, but hoped he would never follow through.
‘You know, it’s so easy to light you guys up when you’re asleep, right?’ he told them about seven months before the blaze.
After dousing the flames on himself, Griffiths dragged his wife to the shower before taking her outside and hosing her down.
By then, the house was ablaze with the kids still inside.
Roland Griffiths had been an abusive partner and terrorised his large family
Griffiths’ injured step-daughter managed to rescue her 10-month-old brother before escaping the house.
A neighbour recalled Ms Sheehan only had thoughts about their safety as she lay dying on her front lawn.
‘Help my kids,’ she pleaded.
‘Keep quiet. Don’t say anything,’ Griffiths responded.
When paramedics arrived, Griffiths couldn’t help but blame his wife’s dire condition on her.
‘Why didn’t you stop me? You should have stopped me, and I should be in jail,’ he was overheard saying.
When police arrived the cold-hearted killer continued the blame game.
‘It’s not my fault, just send me to jail,’ he told an officer.
Roland Griffiths heads back to jail after a pre-sentence hearing on Wednesday
With 91 percent of her body sustaining full-thickness burns, Ms Sheehan died an agonising death the following day.
Her 16-year old daughter also suffered burns to 53 per cent of her body.
Griffiths told police he had little memory of what went on that day, but claimed he had nothing to do with the fire.
‘I remember me and Kylie were out at the shops. We came home, all the kids were out the front, and then I heard Kylie screaming,’ he said.
‘That’s when I went inside. Kylie was down on the ground. I pulled her out of the house. Didn’t even know at the time, I didn’t even realise there was a fire.’
Pressed on the matter, Griffiths conceded he might have had something to do with the fire.
‘Maybe I just f***ing take things too far. And then I think this is something that I would f***ing do to scare them, and it got out of control,’ he said.
Griffiths initially pleaded not guilty to Ms Sheehan’s murder, running a callous murder trial that ended with a hung jury.
Roland Griffiths faces life behind bars for his horrific attack on his wife and kids
Facing a retrial in February, Griffiths pleaded guilty to murder on the day it was to begin.
He also admitted recklessly causing injury to his 16-year-old and assaulting a guard in prison.
On Wednesday Griffiths fronted the Supreme Court of Victoria for a pre-sentence hearing where he came face-to-face with those who loved Ms Sheehan in ways he could not imagine.
‘When I woke up from my coma, I knew before anyone told me that my mum had died,’ his badly injured daughter said in a statement read to the court.
Griffiths’ other daughter turned to face her ex-stepfather in court, saying he had called her mother ‘the love of my life’.
‘You killed Kylie Louise Sheahan, but don’t even call yourself a dad or father because that is not what parents do. I hope you don’t get out of jail… because we’re doing better without you,’ she told him.
Ms Sheehan’s father, Tony Sheehan, told the court he had raised his daughter to be tough and to stand up for herself.
‘Kylie was hot-headed sometimes. She never took a step back. She’d always tell you what she thought,’ he said.
Ms Sheehan’s father Tony Sheehan leaves the Supreme Court of Victoria on Wednesday
‘Kylie was a tough kid. I taught my kids to stand up for themselves and not be pushed around. Unfortunately, this was Kylie’s undoing. I don’t know if she’d still be here if she’d taken a step back. No-one has the right to take anyone’s life, no matter who they are. What gave him the right to put her life in danger?’
Prosecutor Erin Ramsay said Griffiths deserved nothing less than life behind bars.
The prosecution described the murder as a ‘heinous act of family violence’ that was aggravated by the use of fire, a breach of an intervention order and its impact on the children.
‘Mr Griffiths set fire to his wife, the person he was supposed to love,’ she told the court.
‘Not only was the offending witnessed by the two children, they both were actively trying to stop him from hurting their mother and he persisted in the face of that.’
Griffiths’ barrister Jacob Kantor said his client accepted he was facing a ‘substantial’ prison term and the offending was ‘very serious’.
He asked Justice John Champion not to jail Griffiths for life, but to hand him a ‘high term’ with a non-parole period as he had pleaded guilty and it was difficult for him to receive medical treatment behind bars.
Justice Champion will sentence Griffiths at a date to be fixed.
