Accused 'used head as bowling ball'

A MAN who allegedly decapitated a 17-year-old boy with a tomahawk in a suburban back yard later was said to have played with the teenager's head, rolling it in a paddock as if it were a bowling ball.A chilling videotape showing police interviewing one of two men charged with the murder of transient teen Morgan Jay Shepherd was played in Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday.

Christopher Clark Jones, 22, told detectives in the interview recorded in April that his co-accused, James Patrick Roughan, 25, stomped on Shepherd's head several times before stabbing him with a kitchen knife, then decapitating him. Mr Jones and Mr Roughan are facing a committal hearing on charges they murdered Shepherd and interfered with his corpse.

Mr Jones, who repeatedly broke down and cried during the interview, told detectives the three were "mates" and were drinking at a table in the back yard of Mr Roughan's home in the Brisbane bayside suburb of Sandgate at dusk on March 29.

"We'd all had quite a bit to drink," he said.

An argument erupted between Mr Roughan and Shepherd and both fell to the ground. Mr Roughan then stood and stomped heavily on the teenager's head, Mr Jones said. Shepherd was bleeding profusely and was making a "choking" sound.

Mr Jones said Mr Roughan then ran to the house, returned with a kitchen knife and stabbed Shepherd several times in the back. After severing the teenager's head with a tomahawk, Mr Roughan wrapped the torso in a carpet, dragged it under the house and stabbed it repeatedly with the knife.

"The c...'s psycho," Mr Jones told the two detectives. "He was just so calm about it. It was nothin' to him."

Mr Jones said that next morning, Mr Roughan hugged him, saying, "us Celts should stick together", a reference to their Celtic ancestry. Later that day, with the aid of two other men, Shepherd's body was bundled into the boot of a car and driven to a property at Dayboro, north of Brisbane.

Mr Roughan sat in the back of the car with Shepherd's head in a plastic bag on his lap, Mr Jones said. A shallow grave was dug on the property and the torso buried.

Mr Jones said Mr Roughan laughed as he "bowled the head up the hill, like it was a bowling ball". The hearing was told there were more than 100 knife wounds on Shepherd's body when it was found. Detective Sergeant Craig Williams said most of the wounds were believed to have been inflicted after death.