Glenn Matthew Cable

Convictions

Glenn Matthew  Cable violently assaulted his partner, Simone O'Brien (pictured below) on 25 September 2012 when she decided to end the relationship after finding out about his lies and deceit.

The pair met online about 10 months before the attack.

He had given her the impression he was well-off with properties in New South Wales, by purchasing a jet-ski and claiming to have made deposits on expensive cars, handbags and even a new house they planned to move into and share together.

The jet-ski was later found to be wrongly purchased from a Brisbane business who accepted an emailed receipt from Cable attesting he had paid a $30,000 deposit for it and other goods, when he had not.

Just days before they were due to move into the new property, the woman took a phone call from the real estate agent that brought her world crumbling down. There was no deposit and there would be no new house.

She challenged Cable about his lies, the extent of his deceit, and ended the relationship.

Cable stormed into Ms O'Brien's house and violently attacked her leaving her with horrific injuries.

Cable’s savage attack, which took place in the bedroom of her home and in front of her terrified teenaged daughters, was so vicious she spent a month fighting for life in intensive care before being transferred to the brain injury rehabilitation unit.

He face was rebuilt, she lost an eye and had multiple skin grafts to repair the damage to her skull from Cable’s attack.

In sentencing Cable, Justice Atkinson said:

"You inflicted unspeakable violence on this woman and some of the things that make it worse, that exacerbate it, it’s not just the injuries she suffered – and I will go through them shortly – but the circumstances in which you did it: in her own home; in spite and in the face of her desire to end the relationship with you; and then, in  front of her children, the two girls who ran into that room to try and protect their mother, which was a very brave thing for them to do. Their first reaction was to protect their mother. But you continued the attack in front of those two vulnerable children. So they have to live with that for the rest of their lives, what they saw that night.

You then continued the attack, notwithstanding that the young boarder who was at the house tried very bravely and very courageously to get you to stop. You still continued. It was only by the fortunate intervention of the two huge men who lived next door that you were stopped. Perhaps you’d already decided to stop because you  thought you had killed her, and you very nearly did. As well as the heroic and courageous efforts of her children and the boarder and her daughter’s friend to try to get you to stop, there were then the heroic efforts of the Queensland Ambulance Service and, in particular, Dr Rashford, to save Simone O'Brien's life.

But since then, of course, she has had to undergo a lot of suffering in order to get any kind of physical and psychological health back. And she’s been left with permanent disfiguring injuries to her face and head and her arm, but also, of course to her sense of psychological wellbeing and to the family and their sense of safety and psychological wellbeing."

The Judge went on to give the considerable medical details of Ms O'Brien's injuries.

The Judge went on "You rained multiple blows with a baseball bat upon this poor woman who was half your weight and only 156 to 160 centimetres tall; compared to you, a man of over six foot tall.

Obviously, given the extent of the injuries she has had to undergo a great deal of medical treatment from many, many specialties. She spent many days in the intensive care unit. She suffered from amnesia after the injury. She was discharged after a month to the brain injury rehabilitation unit. She’s had many, many ongoing  problems because of the loss of her right eye, because of the loss of skin on her face and head, because of those terrible fractures to her skull.

One of the effects, of course, of hitting her where you did, so hard, is that she’s been left with obvious injuries. So that in her day-to-day dealings with people, they can see how badly she’s been injured and that she has been disfigured. And, of course, unsurprisingly, it’s had a terrible psychological impact on her and her children. I’ve been shown photographs of what she looked like before the injuries and what she looked like afterwards. And you can tell from how good looking the children are, that she was a very good looking woman."

Justice Atkinson sentenced Cable to two years imprisonment on the fraud charges to be served cumulatively with a 15 year imprisonment term for attempted murder.

The earliest date for parole will be 24th March 2025.