On 4 May 1982, Australian Army personnel Robin Reid, then aged 34, and Nicole Louise Pearce (birth name Paul Wayne Luckman), 17, kidnapped two 13-year-old boys, Peter Aston and Terry Ryan, on the Gold Coast, Queensland.
Reid and Pearce then drove the boys at gun and knife point to Kingscliff, New South Wales, where they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted, before Aston was ultimately murdered.
Reid is said to have agreed "immediately", promptly closing the hood of the car and requesting for one of the boys "sit in the front" passenger seat while the other sat with Pearce, in the back.
Reid continued driving with one hand, holding the knife to Aston in the other, while both boys were repeatedly beaten and roughed-up; Ryan later said he was struck with the butt of the shotgun a couple of times, causing him to nearly lose consciousness.
Reid continued driving further, eventually crossing the Queensland-New South Wales border, into the beachside town of Kingscliff, where they forced the two boys out of the car and down a secluded beach track.
[2] The more the boys yelled for them to stop, the more angry the men would become; Reid and Pearce are said to have grown so tired of Aston's screaming that they ripped all of his clothes off and essentially "stuffed what would fit" into his mouth and throat, to silence him.