Samuel Leonard Boyd was born in Scotland and emigrated to Australia with his family when he was 11 years old. Little is publicly known about his early life before his crimes, but by the early 1980s, Boyd was living in New South Wales and working as a pest exterminator. 

Boyd’s series of killings began in September 1982 when, while working as a pest exterminator in Busby, New South Wales, he attacked and murdered 29-year-old Rhonda Celea, a young mother of two. Boyd slashed her throat and left her naked body in the hallway of her home, partially covered with a child’s dress. Her underwear, pantyhose, and dress were found scattered nearby.

On April 22, 1983, Boyd’s violence escalated. After drinking with his acquaintance Gregory Wiles at a pub in Liverpool, Boyd viciously beat Wiles to death with a hammer. He then dumped Wiles’ body on a roadside, where it was later discovered with his pants pulled down.

Later that same day, Boyd drove to Glenfield Park School for children with special needs, where his mother had previously worked. Armed with knives, he took three female supervisors, Helen Hartup, Patricia Volcic, and Olive Short, hostage. Boyd forced the women to undress, perform sexual acts, and then brutally slashed and stabbed them. Helen Hartup and Patricia Volcic were killed, while Olive Short survived the attack despite sustaining severe injuries. The brutality of this massacre shocked the Australian public and became known as the Glenfield Massacre.

Police launched a large-scale operation, and special operations officers arrested Boyd later that same day. In January 1985, a jury convicted him of four counts of murder and one count of malicious wounding. Chief Justice O’Brien sentenced Boyd to five consecutive life terms without parole. In 1994, Boyd’s malicious wounding sentence was re-determined under new laws to 25 years, but the four life sentences remained consecutive and without parole. Appeals in 1995 were dismissed.

In 2016, Boyd sought to have a minimum term set for potential parole, offering to undergo chemical castration. He denied deriving sexual gratification from violence against women and blamed his past actions on drug use and pesticide exposure. The application was rejected, leaving Boyd to serve the remainder of his life in prison.

Today, Samuel Leonard Boyd remains incarcerated, serving four consecutive life sentences plus 25 years, marking him as one of Australia’s most notorious spree killers.