A NSW Policewoman who survived an axe attack by her father after he murdered her mother speaks out after she paid him visit in jail

Note: Cross posted from (blogger angelzfury) Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse.

Permalink

http://www.smh.com.au/national/woman-speaks-out-on-fathers-family-murder-20091005-gjc0.html

 

A NSW policewoman who survived an axe attack by her father after he murdered her mother and two children has spoken out about the horror and about a visit she paid him in jail.

The policewoman says her father has never and could never provide a reason why he went on a rampage at the Cowra family home, in central western NSW, on June 30, 2008.

Her father, 70, will spend the rest of his life in jail for the murders of his wife, 52, his seven-year-old grandson and his five-year-old granddaughter.

The policewoman left her children with her parents the night before but returned to the home the next day to make the gruesome find and fight off an attack from her father who first offered her tea.

Her mother was clubbed over the head with a hammer shaft, stabbed in the neck and attacked with a lump hammer.

Her father denied she was dead when she discovered her body and then offered her tea and a chat.

She went down the hall into the room her children stayed in and found her daughter, who had been drowned in the bath and then placed in her bed.

"I remember leaning down and putting my hand on her cheek to see if, like, she was still warm because maybe I could bring her back (but) she was cold," she told the Nine Network's A Current Affair.

She was unable to locate her son but he was already dead, killed with the same hammers her father used to kill her mother.

She turned around in the children's room to find her father standing behind her, holding the axe.

"And I'm looking at this axe going, 'I'm next'," she said.

Her father's first strike landed on the top of her skull and as she fell to her knees, he struck again in the same area.

As he went for a third swing, she grabbed the axe, pulled herself up and asked him: "What have you done and why?"

"He goes, 'I'm doing this because I love you. When I'm done with you lot, I'm going to go to Newcastle and do your ex-husband. We're all better off this way - it's just how it has to be."'

She got the upper hand and then ran out of the house to the neighbours, who dialled triple-0.

Her father fled the scene but was later caught and pleaded guilty to the three murders and to the attack on his daughter.

She once visited him in jail, hoping for answers.

"He was all jovial and friendly," she said.

"He interrupted and he just goes, 'If you're here looking for a reason why, I don't have anything to offer'."

"At the end of that visit I don't think I've ever been that angry in my life."

She realised later no reason could justify what he had done.

"I can't get my mum back and I can't get my kids back but everything else in my life I can get back and will get back, and the more I do, the less he has."

Technorati Tags: Policewoman,father,woman,children,horror,Cowra,June,life,wife,shaft,neck,hall,room,daughter,cheek,Nine,Network,Current,Affair,skull,knees,area,Newcastle,husband,kids,fathersNote: Cross posted from (blogger angelzfury) Battered Women, Battered Children, Custody Abuse.

Permalink