NEVER BOWL WITH JAMES PATRICK ROUGHAN

Mr. Roughan lives in Australia. He also has a very short temper. Throw some booze in the mix and ... well, let the Advertiser tell you all about it:

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.

Well, of course. Bowling's no fun unless you're drinking.