Samurai Killer: The bizarre story of a home invasion gone fatally wrong | 60 Minutes Australia

good evening and welcome to a special edition of 60 minutes i'm tara brown as acts most crimes are relatively straightforward to understand there are villains and there are victims in this one though the roles are blurred the intended targets of the crime have become the criminals while the original offender is a casualty it all happened one day two and a half years ago when jett mckee stormed the home of blake davis and hannah quinn he was drugged up armed and hell-bent on robbing the couple but in the chaos of the attack it was black davis who got the upper hand he killed jet mckee with a samurai sword blake says he did it to save his girlfriend's life but it's what this couple did next that makes this story truly confounding on friday a court made its final judgment on this extraordinary case these are the final steps of freedom for 31 year old blake davis he's been convicted of manslaughter and his 26 year old partner hannah quinn found guilty of being an accessory after the fact for killing a man i just heard a woman scream with a samurai sword in the middle of a suburban street there's a gun on the ground in the middle of the day quickly but as they prepare to hear their sentence the couple says they're not violent criminals it's just like he's gonna kill her he's gonna kill it he's gonna kill him i need to save my girlfriend right now rather they're being punished for a crime they never wanted to commit i can't explain the terror that went through me in that second when i realized that i might be shot dead right now in the middle of the street they maintain all they ever tried to do was defend themselves i just tried to run as fast as i could i just thought like you know she's about she's about to die [Music] forrest lodge is a quaint and quiet inner suburb of sydney but two and a half years ago it became the scene of one of australia's most bizarre crimes it was here that a series of terrifying events led to an attack you'd only expect to see in a movie but this was no film set and the outcome was devastatingly real at the end of it one man was dead and a young couple adamant they'd been forced to defend themselves were branded as murderers never at any point did i think that i was going to be labelled as a murderer for you know saving my girlfriend from a threat that i thought was about to kill her [Music] friday 10th of august 2018. cctv cameras capture hannah quinn on her way to buying brunch after waking late on her return and just before she disappears inside her boyfriend blake davis's house hannah spots a stranger acting suspiciously he was looking around the property like around sort of his shoulder and around that shoulder and around the yard and then he saw me and he sort of did a double take when he saw me and just like the whole it was only a two second thing but it gave me a really weird feeling little did hannah and blake know in the next few minutes their lives would be irreparably changed unannounced and uninvited the stranger with his face now masked by balaclava comes through their door i jumped and i screamed did you immediately recognize him as the man who'd been looking around the property it just clicked i went oh my god that's the person that i just saw walking through the gate and now they're bursting through the house i've just jumped up in shock and within those few seconds all i can see is black balaclava black jumper black gloves and a gun just pointed straight at my head give it all your [ __ ] money he started demanding money and valuables from us he said give me all your [ __ ] money give me your [ __ ] money and i think i started screaming get out get up get up i put my arms off immediately because this guy was holding a gun right out towards [Music] think i lost us mind again i think i lost my mind a bit i'm hiding from sirens white guys trying to end my life the man behind the balaclava was jett mckee where do you get your influences from oh just from here day to day life really a rapper who was on his way to a rap sheet for violent home invasions [Music] his music video seemed to mirror his life here he's acting out the role of armed and masked intruder a run-through for the real life attack on hannah and blake the day mckee broke into their home followed a night of feeding a long-held gambling addiction with hundred dollar bills one after the other losing on the pokies high on eyes and along with his gun armed with knuckle dusters cable ties and pepper spray mckee was on a violent mission [Music] where's the money where is it where's your money i screamed out no there's no money here to alert the neighbours that we were being robbed and within two seconds of that the gun went from my head straight to hannah's head and that was the most scary and terrifying thing to have someone have a gun to the person you're in love with and think you're about to watch them um you know be killed and be shot so i've taken a step in front of hannah and had my hands up and i think i've said something like well whoa it's just waving this gun around like just waving it around he said that if we don't give him the money that he wants that he would shoot us he told us that there were more people that knew where we lived essentially if we didn't comply that he would hurt us that they would come after us did you believe him yeah it was a malicious threat of you know i'm going to kill you people will kill your families we know where your family lives it's hard to imagine how terrifying this moment was for the young couple but it was about to get worse he directed the gun like back towards me and he was kind of waving it in my face but within a split second he brought up his other hand to the gun and it made like a one metal noise my next image is just a split second waking up on the ground and i've just got blood all over my face what did you think it happened to you i thought i'd been shot but blake hadn't been shot wearing knuckle dusters jed mckee had hit him knocking blake out with a devastating blow to his left eye i remember the smacking sound that it made when it hit his face and i watched him actually fly a little bit like onto the ground and his head hit the fence and that also made another loud whack when he fell down and he just they stayed on the ground and then move when blake came to dazed and disoriented hannah and the intruder were no longer there the pain was horrific it was a searing throbbing pain where everything was just spinning in circles and i couldn't see properly i didn't know what had happened and i could just hear hannah screaming and i didn't know where they were i didn't know if he'd kidnap tanner if he was dragging her down the street if he'd shot her if he was bashing her all i could think is i've got to say [Music] forest lodge a suburb of sydney and despite being the middle of the day a home invasion is underway the target of the attack blake davis is now out cold lying helplessly on the ground after being king hit by masked assailant jet mckee but blake's girlfriend hannah is still very much in the line of fire i feel this yank on my shoulder and i realized that the man is trying to take um my hand back but i gotta have my shoulder so at this point you and he are pulling and looking it's still on yeah it's still on my shoulder um and it sort of comes off my shoulder and i've still got the handle um and we were outside right now sort of like as trying to pull the back my stoma got through the door i think he was saying just [ __ ] let go just [ __ ] let go and i think i was still screaming leave me alone or get away from here why didn't you just give it to him i ask myself that question a lot um and it's just instinct you act completely off instinct and um and for whatever reason i've i've i fought to keep my bag let go [ __ ] but what hannah did next would surprise manny he got the bag off me and i ran after him to get my bag back when jett mckee won the struggle and took off with her handbag hannah gave chase why would you run after someone who has terrorized you with a gun can you explain that i don't think i can explain it but they are questions that i ask myself i have asked myself over and over again um and i will carry with me for my entire life it was like my mind wasn't thinking at the time my body just moved at this point in time blake was just regaining consciousness i wake up to hearing hannah screaming and i tried to get myself up because my head was just in the most horrific pain and everything was spinning i couldn't i couldn't see anything but red from my left eye and blood had covered my face so much i could barely see out of my right eye as well by now hannah had caught up with the fleeing mckee who was fueled by toxic near lethal levels of ice we were both running down the middle of the street and i remember just catching up to him and reaching out to grab my bag back um and i sort of yanked it back and he stopped and um turned around and as he's taking a step forward towards me his hand comes up to punch me and i somehow reacted so quickly and took a step backwards and off to the side and watched him fall right onto the ground in front of me and that's when i looked down at him he had the gun pointed up at me and yeah the fear the terror that just that i felt has been inexplicable [Applause] out of his sight but hearing her screams blake is convinced hannah is about to be shot as he believed he had been it was just like he's going to kill her he's going to kill her he's going to kill her like i need to save my girlfriend right now in that moment blake made a choice that will haunt him for life to protect hannah he grabbed one of his prized samurai swords which was on display in his lounge room to him it was the closest and only option to save hannah but the consequences for them all would be dire i just tried to run as fast as i could i just i just thought like you know she's about she's about to die and when i got to the street i could kind of make out that looks like two people in a tussle which was the gunman and hannah and i just tried to run up as quick as possible to just you know save her and make sure she was okay to the terrified pair the gun was a deadly weapon but little did anyone know it only contained blank cartridges blake with sword in hand believed he had to strike immediately or his girlfriend would be killed bike came into my side vision and had the sword in his hand and i saw him just sort of bring the sword down onto the man that was holding the gun at me i just saw blood and just sort of went what the [ __ ] the hell is going on right now what the hell is going on [Music] blake can't recount his reaction in that awful moment because he doesn't have a clear recollection of striking jett mckee i can't actually tell you that i have a specific memory of hitting him with the sword i don't actually have an image or memory and i'm not i'm not sure if that was because of the concussion or because of the circumstances do you remember what you saw the aftermath of striking him with the sword no i i didn't see anything flashbacks of the attack are all he has but blake is certain he had only one intention when he went to hannah's aid in trying to save hannah did you intend to kill him no not at all and that's something i'll live with for the rest of my life because i had no one no intention to even hurt him my intention was to get hannah away and just to make sure she was okay the horror was played out in full view with one neighbor reporting it to police emergency in real time there's a gun on the ground i just remember turning around and running in that moment hannah's greatest fear was not that mckee was hurt but that he was now after them oh my god he's trying to stand up quickly quick and i remember looking back behind me and i saw him get hitting up and i turned like i said wrong [Music] how gorgeous black davis and hannah quinn are a young couple who have been in love for the past four years excited about spending their lives together it feels like a different lifetime wasn't it yeah definitely does but what they dreamed of a regular easy life is now an impossibility after jett mckee broke into their home where's the money where is it where's your money viciously attack blake and threaten both their lives while trying to rob them the consequences of that attack a scene greeted with shock and horror will be with them forever it's like living in a nightmare every day you wake up thinking this can't be true this this hasn't happened this this hasn't turned everything upside down and you know and now our lives are just full of angst and heartbreak and sadness and trauma you know it's just every day is it's reliving the trauma that we've been through insisting he had to defend hannah blake hit jet mckee with his samurai sword knocking him to the ground but to their minds that did not end the threat i remember hannah saying run because it seemed like he was coming after us at that point it was panic it was it was let's get as far away from this person as possible witnesses have told police that they saw the man stagger down the street bleeding badly from the head while jet mckee did manage to get up the blow from the samurai sword would prove to be fatal and within the hour blake and hannah were police targets wanted for murder with paulie on the hunt for a killer or killers in that moment when you have decided you have to run did you think you'd done something wrong at this point i i don't think it it even crossed my mind um at this point i think it was just get out of here before this person shoots us did you think at any point that you need to call an ambulance did you think he does need help i've got to do something here if it did wonder you know just this person need medical attention but at the same time it had absolutely no idea that the injuries were so serious you know he got back up you know i turned around i saw him getting back up and went [ __ ] he's gonna come after us and that scared me more than anything but it's what the couple did next that would raise the suspicions of authorities [Music] they raced home hid the sword in the backyard and then concussed blake packed a bizarre grab bag of nunchucks a toy pellet gun and 21 000 in savings blake says to this day he is perplexed by what they took with them it was my prop bag because i'd been doing acting for many years what made you decide to take those things those items it just showed you how much my head was not in a good place to have five nunchucks in a bag and and um to be you know leaving with this it just kind of showed i guess how irrational and how much we weren't you know okay at that point we were just going off fear and impulse but i i don't know even why those things were taken i'm pretty sure i said to like grab the money because i thought that someone would be coming back to get the money with their one bag packed they escaped the house and hid in a nearby laneway it's like this shock wave comes through me and i'm like we've got to keep going we've got to keep moving and get away from this guy who's coming after us for the next three days convinced jett mckee and his accomplices were after them they didn't stop moving from hotel to hotel with almost every step tracked by cctv we didn't want to actually go and stay with family or friends out of fear that if someone found us then we were putting our loved ones in danger and that's kind of why we jumped from hotel to hotel because we could start to question everything you start to look over your shoulders at you know every single person and see that there's a potential danger or threat anywhere does that include the police i mean police are there to protect you so if you're that fearful why not call them in to help you i don't think there was even a thought of the the police at that first initial time when that had happened just because we were running off fear we've seen you in a cab we've seen you in lifts we've seen you in hotels checking in two and a half years later watching it all unfold on cctv footage blake and hannah are adamant it was fear not guilt that made them flee that fateful friday were you actually on the run from police not at all not at all it's always been put on us well you know you'd flee for those three days but i i think if we were really fleeing then you know you would have done everything possible to get away from it and make yourself disappear which we didn't do but the man they were fleeing from jet mckee was no longer a threat having died at the scene blake and hannah claim they only learned of his death the following day from a taxi radio the news report said that someone had died and that's when we both just looked at each other and started crying and i think realized the gravity of the situation that we'd found ourselves in um but we didn't realize how serious it was until the saturday and we realized that of course like we definitely are going to need to talk to the place about what had happened and what had occurred so why didn't you still just not thinking straight at all and completely um i think bewildered and a bit dumbfounded by the whole situation um but on sunday morning the first thing that we did was make contact with the police they finally met with police on monday evening three days after the attack giving themselves the chance first to see a lawyer but coming to terms with having killed another was still beyond black did any part of you ever imagine you could be capable of such a thing no i never wanted to hurt anyone let alone take a life away it's just it's it doesn't feel real and i i have not known how to come to terms with something like that and you understand that the reason that you're under arrest is in relation to a murder investigation on meeting with police the action was instant instead of accepting they'd been acting in self-defense police arrested and then immediately charged both blake and hannah with murder how did you expect the authorities to respond i don't think it was a something i comprehended at that point in time um we were never told even by the lawyers that we were going you know to be charged with something as serious as murder did you at any time make a plan or have any premeditations with yourself and blake in regards to murdering jeff mckay no and for you hannah i could not comprehend or understand why that it happened but after a police search of their home not all was as it seemed you were small containers containing cannabis and this was not a random attack i didn't meet this person at my property once i believe that's when he would have seen there was a draw full of money so my initial reaction waking up was i've been shot like my eye's gone the photo of the injury to blake davis's left eye is certainly not pretty done when he was punched by home invader jett mckee who was armed with knuckle dusters [Music] the vicious blow knocked blake out cold my orbital displacement was four mils pushed in towards the nose uh and then there was three fractures surrounding it as well um which had spread apart it wasn't just bleeding from the eye there was some blood going from inside the eye socket and coming out of my nose and mouth as well it's the middle of the day and the body lies in the middle of the road it was a shocking and violent attack on blake that eventually led to mckee's death thirty-year-old man had just been struck in the head with a samurai sword but as it turns out while mckee was a stranger to blake and partner hannah the attack on them was not random mckee had been driven to blake's house by a friend who knew the pair kept cash at home this friend had sold cannabis to hannah who was on selling it to her friends making her easy prey for jett mckee why did this man target you i had met up with someone that the man um was friends with and i'd bought cannabis off him a couple of times um i i never would have considered myself a drug dealer or someone yeah who dealt cannabis um at that point in time i'd been a heavy cannabis user and smoker for a number of years and i sort of started buying larger quantities of cannabis and so splitting it up with friends and things like that so um i guess this this friend of the man who entered our home thought that we must have heaps of money or something um and that's why we were targeted that friend who is now serving time in an overseas jail and can't be identified for legal reasons was meant to be jett mckee's getaway driver he and mckee had pulled off a similar home invasion just weeks earlier where he attacked the victim with a crowbar this time around he and mckee staked out hannah and blake's house for two days before the attempted robbery i did meet this uh person who was the the getaway driver at my property once and when hannah had purchased some cannabis i believe that's when he would have seen there was a draw full of money how much money was in the draw i believe that was three thousand dollars yeah police found the three thousand dollars in cash and a small quantity of marijuana when they searched blake's home but it was the discovery of another twenty thousand dollars the couple had taken when fleeing that really raised eyebrows the money was found in an abandoned bag in the laneway hannah and blake had hidden in the 20 odd thousand dollars that was found was that money from drugs no when i um i first met hannah she had a tin of savings and after months of us dating we decided we wanted to go on a holiday together and i said um i'll match what you have and let's go on holiday together why did you leave the bag with all that money in it behind i'm not really sure you've really forgotten all your savings yeah and i mean it seems um crazy um it's not a situation where you didn't want to be found with that much money on you well no because then we wouldn't have taken it with us you know um i have there's no rationale to to what happened or why that was left behind so running not calling the police was any of that because of your involvement with cannabis not at all no not at all um definitely not i think if that was any thought on our minds we would have made sure we you know taking the cannabis that was in um the forest lodge home with us um i think you know marijuana had nothing to do with our thought process whatsoever at that point in time uh it was just an impulse of let's get away from here the way the crown ran its case you would have you know thought perhaps it was a drug trial not a not a murder trial it was a tactic that seemed to work on the jury at hannah and blake's criminal trial according to hannah's defense lawyer lauren mcdougall it felt like the crown were running a case that it was a turf war so i thought that that it may have had an impact on the on the jury's deliberations certainly do you think that you know knowing what blake and hannah say about their drug use that that in any way can justify the type of attack that they suffered no absolutely not for blake and hannah's side it was always a very obvious case of self-defense against an unwanted attack in their home we woke up that day wanting to have a beautiful nice day together we didn't wake up that day wanting to disrupt someone's life or hurt someone or or do anything malicious but it was argued in court when jet mckee grabbed hannah's bag and made a run for it blake and hannah no longer needed to defend themselves that by giving chase they became the assailants was he running away at the time that you attacked him well no not at all my first visual that i was able to kind of make out was a gunman and my girlfriend in a physical fight on the street and i believe if someone has a gun to you and you're not able to defend yourself then when can you defend yourself especially if someone's coming to your house where you know that that's you that's your safe space but this is now on the street this is no longer in your home yeah so i think what that does is it makes you feel like having someone point a gun at your partner to the point you think they're about to be killed if if you can't save them then then what can you do really it's a question most of us ask ourselves what would and could we do if faced with such a threat according to lauren self-defense is a complicated legal argument essentially the the main thing to understand with self-defense is that the reaction of someone has to be proportionate with the the threat or the perceived threat and for blake uh you know the threat had never dissipated he was constantly of the of the view that hannah was in danger as them as as the as the deceased and hannah went out onto the road in his mind she was still in danger why do you think the jury didn't accept that i think the jury were troubled by various aspects of the case the use of the sword i think probably troubled them i always think if he didn't get a sword what if he got something else would that have been a different outcome it's an exotic object that he happened to have lying around some of the jury might not have understood or accepted that hannah went went after the deceased she left the house and followed him to get her bag back and then probably also the fact that they didn't go to the police sooner i think that didn't sit well with the jury perhaps i'm just not sure i wish i knew ultimately the jury judged hannah guilty of being an accessory to manslaughter after the fact blake got off his murder charge but was found guilty of manslaughter for using excessive force when he tried to defend hannah to have a verdict come back to say the self-defense was excessive resulting in a manslaughter charge was still just unbelievable when you reflect though on those events do you agree that anything you did was excessive i believe if i if that hadn't happened then hannah could have been the one who had died it's hard because i've i've never comprehended anything besides this being self-defense and and to be told that it was excessive it just makes you question well how do you save someone you love them what do you do and more than anything i i wish that he wasn't dead and i wish that he was still alive and i will live without for the rest of my life but central to this case was hannah's life ever really under threat this was clearly self-defense things were definitely misconstrued in the courtroom maybe they just didn't believe you the jury in the trial of blake davis and hannah quinn has made its judgment it's found the force blake used to defend his girlfriend hannah against home invader jett mckee was excessive with mckee's death blake was found guilty of manslaughter and hannah guilty of being an accessory to manslaughter after the fact four months later on march 18 its sentencing day before justice natalie adams i am left with no doubt that the lives of both the mckee family and the davis family have been shattered forever as a result of the events that occurred in hereford street forest lodge on the 10th of august 2018 [Music] justice adams conceded mckee's attempted armed robbery in blake's forest lodge home would have been terrifying to anyone in assessing the objective seriousness of this offence of manslaughter it is pertinent to have regard to the fact that mr davis killed mr mckee in response to a horrific home invasion for blake davis who already suffered from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder the attack sparked an even more acute response he was concussed uh he's in a situation where he's very worried about his partner they're in survival mode in many ways and so he's acting an impulsive way without really thinking through the consequences of what he's doing in the days just after the attack psychologist tim watson munroe was asked to help counsel a distraught hannah he unlike many others understands her confounding decision to chase the attacker down the street after he stole her handbag she's confronted with somebody with a firearm and knuckle dusters and she's terrified so if you're terrified do you race after somebody who's just terrorized you with a gun this is one of the issues i think that perplexes people but to me that's totally understandable and it's the so-called fight-or-flight response so people who are confronted with potentially life-threatening situations um behave your overrides judgment so she was fighting yes in that moment yeah according to tim it was blake's anxiety and ptsd and hannah's pre-existing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that helped shape what they did next on striking mckee instead of calling police they impulsively went on the run for three days the decision making that happens immediately after jet mckee is struck they run they run and everything seems completely and utterly chaotic i think in the context of what we've described somebody having adhd somebody being concussed both people being very fearful adrenaline coursing through their veins this type of confusional state is not uncommon and so do you believe her when she says that and blake says the same thing that they weren't on the run from police they were running for their lives at that particular moment i do believe her yes in their final days together as they awaited sentencing blake and hannah hoped others would understand the threat they felt when they came face to face with jed mckee in 2018. he burst into their home threatening them with a gun he used knuckle dusters to knock out blake fracturing his eye socket when blake came to his face covered in blood the pain was so great he thought he'd been shot and he says he believed mckee was about to use the gun on hannah i just thought like she's about to die and she he's going to shoot her too do you remember seeing him holding a gun on the street when i got up to them i i i have a pretty big blank but i i i knew in my heart of hearts the threat was still there um i knew that the gunman and the gun were indivisible but contentiously onlookers on the day tell a different story how do you explain the fact that witnesses say they didn't see a gun they did end up seeing a gun on the ground but they were 85 meters away and most people didn't see that i had a sword people said described it as a stick or people described it as a pole if you can't make out that someone is holding a sword you're not going to be able to make out that someone's holding a gun much closer to the action and claiming to have a clear memory of what happened hannah says mckee was pointing the gun at her at the time blake hit him with the sword henry is there any chance that he didn't have a gun any chance he didn't happen no um i'm sorry i was a bit taken aback by that question well you're the closest witness aren't you so yeah what what is your response to you know people doubting that he in fact had a gun pointed at you in that moment it it it hurts i suppose because in directly i'm sort of being told that like i could be fabricating that or something but that gun was very real how else can you explain it being on the ground if he wasn't holding it none of the eyewitnesses described seeing a gun in the hands of the deceased when he was running or a gun being produced by the deceased at any time prior to him being struck it would be the most critical and damning piece of the case for the jury and as justice adams revealed during her sentencing remarks ultimately the jury did not believe hannah i am satisfied that mr mckay pointed the pistol at them inside the premises had it somewhere in his body while he ran and dropped it near the car either at or after the fatal blow consistent with the jury verdict i'm not satisfied that mr mckee was pointing a gun at miss quinn at the time of the fatal blow would you please stand mr davis justice adams sentenced blake to a non-parole period of two years and nine months in jail having regard to all of the evidence but in particular the evidence of the eyewitnesses and the injury itself i am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that mr davis intended to kill mr mckee at the relevant time blake immediately applied for bail to appeal the judgment but was refused leaving a distressed hannah to head home without him it's too hard to hold together huh take a moment take a moment while a jail term for black was always expected the reality of it is too much for an overwrought hannah what did you think was going to happen it's like you've literally thought he'd be sitting there next to me right now you thought blake would be there next to you perhaps even harder still was to hear that the court did not accept that jet mckee posed a risk to hannah at the time he was killed by blake i know it's incredibly difficult but one of the things that was raised by the judge was that she she didn't believe that a gun was pointed at when she was making her sentencing remarks she didn't believe that what was your reaction to that felt like a dagger in my heart there was nothing like being told that um you're not believed about the single most traumatic event of your life and to to share that and to say that you're not believed last friday it was hannah's turn to be sentenced she avoided jail but was given a two-year community corrections order without blake until his release in 2023 while the legal judgment is that blake's response to the attack by jett mckee was unreasonable hannah remains convinced blake never had a choice hannah are you happy with that decision how do you view what he did that day i will forever be grateful to him for saving my life um i will forever be heartbroken um and tortured that somebody lost their life that day but um the the i count my blessings that i'm still here [Music] we asked jeff mckee's family for comment but they declined hello i'm tara brown thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss 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Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 1,562,704

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, criminals, jail, arrest, police, death, murder, samurai, sword, fight, suburban, break, in, rapper, australian, accident, protection, gun, robber, meth, drugs, survival, stories, incredible, law, judge, drug dealer, couple, love, relationship

Id: _Lj_8ov8w20

Length: 45min 10sec (2710 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021