Two decades since Krystal Carr and Aiden Osborne started dating in their early teens, their joint Facebook page still reads: “Ozzy Loves Krystal 2day, 2morro, 4ever, Always, It is A Forever Thing”.
But their on-and-off romance of 20 years was plagued with violence and coercion which a court heard culminated in a frightening police chase where a young family was threatened.
Now, they’ve earned more jail time for yet another violent crime.
Carr, 33, and Osborne, 35, were sentenced in Dubbo District Court on Thursday for one count of robbery in company, in which Osborne was armed with a rifle and punched his cousin, breaking his face in several places.
The court heard on February 4, 2021, the pair and another couple were invited into Osborne’s cousin’s house. They had earlier asked him to lend them $200 but he said he would only give them $100.
While inside the victim’s bedroom, Osborne and his friend punched him on the face, saying it was because of “disrespect”.
Meanwhile, the girlfriends filled up bags with the victim’s belongings, including watches, sunglasses, earphones, shoes, clothes and a gold ring.
Osborne armed himself with an 11-caliber bolt action rifle found in a dresser, though it could not discharge, while his friend found a large knife and held it.
They threatened to kill the victim if he said anything before leaving with more than $4,000 worth of stolen items.
Judge Karen Robinson said Osborne’s cousin was left with “bruising and swelling to his head, including around his eyes, laceration and swelling to the left side of the upper left lip fractures on both eye sockets and fracture on the left side of his face”.
She said the couple was arrested for these offences in March 2022 while in custody for a “spree of serious criminal conduct” that involved a six-hour crime spree covering more than 200km.
During that spree which they committed in April 2021, they threatened a mother, father and their baby with a gun.
While sentencing them for the robbery in company, Judge Robinson said it was clear their 200km crime spree “occurred in the context of… a threat to the (Carr) of present, continuing, imminent and impending violence at the hands of Osborne”.
She said that to a lesser degree, Carr’s culpability for the robbery offence was impacted by a “coercing and controlling relationship” with Osborne.
The court heard the couple each had traumatising childhoods and first got together when they were aged 14 and 15 and struggled with drug addiction — predominantly of crystal meth.
It heard Carr left the “toxic” relationship in 2009 when she managed to quit drugs and got pregnant, but she relapsed when her baby was stillborn.
In 2021, the pair got back together, but Osborne was still using drugs and became “controlling and increasingly violent,” even sleeping with knives in the bed.
“Wood is a sawn off a rifle to frighten and threaten (Carr) and Osborne pointed a rifle to her face and threatened to shoot her”.
Judge Robinson said Carr played a far less significant role than Osborne in the offending.
She sentenced Osborne to four years and two months imprisonment with a non-parole period of two years and two months. That sentence was an accumulation of five months on his current non-parole period for the 200km crime spree, for which he was sentenced to nine years with a non-parole period of four years.
For the 200km crime spree, Carr was previously sentenced to four years in prison with a non-parole period of 22 months. For the robbery in company, she was sentenced on Thursday to three years imprisonment with a non-parole period of one year and eight months, an accumulation of two months on her current non-parole period.
Both offenders had previously pleaded not guilty to the robbery in company but later changed their pleas to guilty.
Osborne will be eligible for parole on September 2, 2026, while Carr will be eligible for release on October 2 this year.