'He was going to get murdered': Killer's chilling video confession over grisly murder
WARNING - DISTRESSING CONTENT: A video confession reveals chilling details of a Perth father's grisly murder from a man jailed for life over the crime.
Aaron Raymond Craig, 46, was sentenced in the WA Supreme Court on Friday to life behind bars for murdering 25-year-old Bradley Hoddy and dumping his body in a pine forest in mid-2006.
The fitter and turner told investigators he and two other men kidnapped Mr Hoddy, tied him up and drove him to an isolated pine forest over a $3000 gun debt.
Somewhere among the pine trees in a vast plantation near Jarrahdale is where the victim took his final breath more than a decade ago.
The victim, whose body has never been found, was presumed missing for several years until 2014 when Craig's ex-wife told police what she knew about the crime.
A police video confession filmed by detectives, obtained by 7 News, helped convict Craig.
"What do you think was going through his mind?" a detective can be heard asking Craig in the footage, filmed at the suspected crime scene.
"I think what was going through his mind was that he was going to get murdered," he responded.
Craig said the intention was only to scare him and he was shocked when one of his accomplices hit Mr Hoddy over the head twice with a piece of wood.
Asked if brain was visible after the victim was struck, Craig responded "Yes," revealing the man's skull opened up "just like a watermelon".
He was so shaken he said he had to walk away, but what he says he saw when he returned was equally as disturbing.
Craig claims he saw Mr Hoddy's body burning in a shallow grave between two pines trees - but he was still alive.
"He rose, he moved, from a lay down, he lifted himself up," Craig said.
He told police one of his associates stretched Mr Hoddy out, used their hands to cover him in soil and then drove away.
Almost 10 years after the gruesome crime, a tip-off from Craig's former wife provided police with the crucial breakthrough.
Yesterday the father-of-two was jailed for life.
Despite leading police to the murder scene, Bradley Hoddy's remains have not been found.
