A man who tried to murder a Sydney taxi driver by stabbing him 13 times in a ferocious attack inspired by a horror movie marathon is waiting on funding to secure supported living before he can be released on parole.
Luke William Woods was jailed for 10 years for the unprovoked and frenzied onslaught of elderly cabbie Neal Kent, who was lucky to live after suffering wounds to his head, neck and shoulders in Surry Hills.
Woods told police in an interview after his arrest that bingeing six movies including the Texas Chainsaw Massacre parts 1 and II and Friday the 13th at his Pitt Street hotel room that day had given him a “taste for blood”.
“I had the taste for killing, more killing,” he said of the December 30, 2013 attack.
“I was very drunk and angry with the world; watching these movies was making me want to emulate that stuff.”
The man with a significant intellectual disability had drunk 12 beers during his at-home movie marathon before he grabbed a 30cm knife and left the hotel room intending to rob a stranger.
Instead, he hailed a cab driven by Mr Kent, then 71, before instructing him to pull over at Fitzroy Place and stabbing him from the back seat.
Judge David Arnott found him guilty of wounding with intent to murder following a judge-alone trial in 2015 after his offer to plead guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm was declined.
Now 41, Woods has served more than the six-and-a-half-year non-parole period handed to him by Judge Arnott, which was backdated to January 2014.
He first became eligible for parole in July 2020.
Woods did not appear before the State Parole Authority on Thursday as he found the process of using a video link “incredibly frightening and stressful”, the board heard.
The authority heard no facilities would currently accept him, and he was waiting on applications for NDIS and state community safety funding to pay for supported accommodation to be finalised.
At present he has funding for a support worker but will require more money to secure a place to live.
The matter has been adjourned to January 14, 2021 for the process to be finalised when Woods could be granted parole.