John Christopher Walmsley Found Guilty Of Assisted Murder. CREDIT: fairfaxbar.org

A Canberra heroin addict, John Christopher Walmsley, is now facing four years in jail due to a botched suicide attempt. On New Year's Day 2011, an unnamed 25-year-old woman ended her life in a supposed suicide pact with Mr Walmsley. The former survived, called triple-0 and performed CPR on his then girlfriend to no avail.

During the trials, it was found that the woman had long been suffering from bipolar disorder and self harm. She had met Mr Walmsley in 2010, just as he was recovering from his heroin addiction, but it soon became clear that he was going back to his old habits and she was with him. She became heavily addicted to heroin until checking herself into a Canberra rehabilitation centre, where she resided until she died.

On the day of her death, the woman checked herself out of the facility and took the $500 cash bond that she paid upon entry. This money was very quickly spent on a huge amount of heroin. The heroin that mixed with a cocktail of prescription drugs took her life. The woman's mother tearfully read her daughter's will to the jury; the will was basically a letter that left the woman's three-year-old daughter in the care of her mother. The most incriminating piece of information was that the letter was titled, My Suicide With John.

Mr Walmsley has been placed in the time of the letter writing and had even bought and prepared the drugs for the both of them in his Ainslie Village unit. They both took a copious amount of the substances and while Mr Walmsley awoke, the woman did not. The jury was told that when he came to, the woman was foaming at the mouth while blood was also coming out of the deceased's mouth. The prosecutors argued that by his administration and preparation of the drugs, he had helped in her demise. Mr Walmsley argued that neither of them was supposed to die.

The judge stated that even though Mr Walmsley was at a confused state of mind at that particular moment, it did not exempt his moral culpability. Justice John Burns sentenced him to four years, backdated to take into account time spent in custody, with a non-parole period of two years and four months.