29-year-old Katie Haley arrived home on a Friday night in March 2018 after a long shift at a Melbourne tavern. Her partner Shane had been messaging throughout the day, calls, accusations, jealousy, and control that had continued for hours...

After reaching her limit, Katie stands up and starts packing a bag. She tells him the relationship is over. She’s leaving with their daughter. But she never makes it out the door.

Today, we’re speaking with Katie’s sister, Bianca Unwin, who has since become an advocate for domestic violence awareness following her sister’s death, and who now speaks openly about coercive control and the warning signs that were not fully recognised at the time.

LINKS

If you’re experiencing family and domestic violence, Safe Steps provides immediate and confidential assistance. Find out more here. 

If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.

GET IN TOUCH

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Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at truecrime@mamamia.com.au or send us a voice note.

Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. 

CREDITS 

Guest: Bianca Unwin

Host: Gemma Bath 

Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman

Group Executive Producer: Ilaria Brophy

Video Editor: Julian Rosario

Audio Engineer: Tegan Sadler

Mamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.

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00:00:00.000 — 00:00:15.440 · Speaker 1

Bianca, thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations. Firstly, I want to acknowledge your sister and just say, I'm so sorry for your loss and what you've been going through for the past nearly decade now. She sounds like she was an incredible person.

00:00:15.640 — 00:00:26.760 · Speaker 2

She was, um, she was honestly the best sister I could ever ask for. She was the best mother to her two beautiful children. Um, the best daughter. And she is so, so deeply missed by us all.

00:00:26.880 — 00:00:32.160 · Speaker 1

Take me back to your childhood. How did you grow up? Where did you grow up? And what did your family unit look like?

00:00:32.200 — 00:01:26.970 · Speaker 2

Our family's always been really close to growing up. We were really, really close. Um, my sister was nine years older than me, so we didn't really have that sibling friendship, per se. We were constantly bickering. I was the annoying little sister when she was a teenager. She was, you know, too busy to play Barbie dolls and things like that.

So, um, we never were really close, um, growing up, but our whole family was super close. My sister was just someone that you could get along with. She was very shy, very reserved. But to us, the people that knew her, she was very loud, very out there, was very quirky. She had a very interesting way of looking at the world.

Some of her most famous lines are you wouldn't go camping, you'd go tenting or it wasn't insects attacking her, it was animals. Um, so it was just like those little quirky things that just constantly made us laugh. And yeah, she was just a very pivotal part of our family.

00:01:27.010 — 00:01:30.690 · Speaker 1

What was Katie most passionate about in life?

00:01:31.450 — 00:02:20.250 · Speaker 2

She was most passionate about her children, ultimately. She always wanted to be a mother. Growing up, that was just kind of. We always knew that she wanted to be a mum, and she did become a mum from a really young age, and that was her greatest passion in life. She also did love hairdressing and she became a hairdresser.

She was amazing at it. I was her guinea pig from the age of ten. Um, so I was annoying her because, you know, I'd get my hair done and I would complain about it because she's my sister. She wasn't my hairdresser, so I would complain about it. She would complain back that I had too much hair and then, you know, I wouldn't get that hair treatment.

I would get the get in the shower, pull your foils out and I'll dry it kind of vibe. But, um, she was very passionate about hairdressing, um, and she was just very passionate about her children and ultimately just wanted to give them the world.

00:02:20.290 — 00:02:30.010 · Speaker 1

Do you remember her relationships prior to Shane and like, her kind of love life? What was her relationships like? What was she like in them?

00:02:30.370 — 00:03:24.060 · Speaker 2

Unfortunately for Katie, she doesn't have a great track record in relationships, and I think that that really set the precedent for all the relationships that preceded, um, because when you're young, you kind of once you've kind of entered into those sorts of relationships where you aren't valued or, um, that behavior is kind of there and you're kind of made to feel less than.

You gravitate to people like that. You think that that's all you deserve in this life. And so unfortunately for Katie, she didn't have the best of relationships. Um, not all of them were terrible. They just definitely weren't right for her. Um, and it was something. Especially being a mum at such a young age as well, that she had to kind of consider her children in all of the relationships or anything like that, that what was in the best interests of them.

But it definitely was a pattern of behavior of her not being appreciated and her obviously not valuing herself more.

00:03:24.580 — 00:03:33.980 · Speaker 1

So for context, for listeners, when she met Shane, she was already a mum. She had a son. How did she meet him? What was the start of their relationship like?

00:03:34.020 — 00:04:38.260 · Speaker 2

So Katie met Shane through mutual friends. Um, and they just started off as friends. We were introduced to him, um, just in a general friend group at a, um, Aiden's birthday party. Um, he seemed nice enough. They bantered. It was really just a nice friendship. But then ultimately, you know, uh, feelings happened and they ended up dating, and he had already got two kids from a previous relationship as well.

So obviously we thought, oh, this is great. Like, he knows what it takes to be a parent. He understands the sacrifices that you make and that they are your main priority in life. So we thought like, this is a great dynamic. Like she seemed really, really happy. It was probably the happiest we'd ever seen her.

They seemed to just get along really well. There was an element of lightheartedness about their relationship, despite ongoing issues with ex-partners and everything like that that, you know, could weigh you down. But she seemed really, really happy. He seemed really happy, and we were just really excited that she'd finally found someone that we thought appreciated her and made her this happy, bubbly person that we know she is.

00:04:38.300 — 00:04:41.860 · Speaker 1

Did you spend much time with him? Did you get on with him?

00:04:41.900 — 00:05:39.110 · Speaker 2

We did, so we welcomed him into our family like we went on family holidays with him, which in hindsight, looking back like it makes a lot of our memories really hard to look at because he's there. Yeah. Um, so there's been a lot of attempts at, you know, the photoshopping to remove him. We've had lovely people reach out and they have removed him from family photos, because we can't look back on the last few years of Katie's life without him being a presence there, even to the extent of looking on her social media.

Like we don't get to just enjoy looking at her photos of her and her kids because he's popping up in all of them. He's he's very present. But we were yeah, very welcoming. We did lots of things together. Christmases, birthdays, like it was very normal. We all hung out. Um. It was. Yeah. It was just a good vibe, like to go on a family holiday.

Like there was no issues. We all stayed in the same cabin. It was just. We all got along. It was all jokey. We liked him at that point.

00:05:39.110 — 00:05:46.030 · Speaker 1

So it sounds like there weren't any red flags. Or even if you look back in hindsight, were there any kind of under the surfacing.

00:05:46.030 — 00:06:20.800 · Speaker 2

Of their relationship and even a couple of years into it, I wouldn't say that there were many red flags. Obviously we weren't in the relationship. And, um, we've come to know that when coercive control is kind of involved in relationships, it's very easily hidden. It's quite insidious. But from us looking in, there was no red flags.

The red flags came from the moment that they ended up having a daughter together, and it seemed to be a sense of jealousy, a sense of Katie wasn't giving him the adequate time or attention. And I would say that that's when the real red flag started for us.

00:06:20.840 — 00:06:36.760 · Speaker 1

Can you explain how that jealousy grew? Because it seems I mean, Katie's daughter was only ten months old when she died, so it's a relatively short period of time. How did this behavior escalate? What did that look like?

00:06:36.880 — 00:07:48.480 · Speaker 2

It started off really trivial, really little kind of just jealousy things where it was just nagging her about the time that she was not spending with him, or like she was always tired. Just these little remarks or comments about where she was spending her time. Um, which anyone that is apparent to a newborn knows that they are very time consuming and any good parent spends that time with them.

Any good parent like. She also still had her six year old son. He was going to school doing sports activities, so she was run off her feet. Um, up until giving birth, she was still working as a hairdresser 12 hour days. So for her it was, it seemed just silly. It just seemed like he wasn't understanding the gravity of being a parent.

Um, and I guess obviously becoming a parent with someone else. You also see their true colors. You see them in a parenting capacity that wasn't co-parenting, where you get to be the fun parent every odd weekend. So it started off very innocent, just little remarks in that. But it quickly grew to why aren't I your profile picture?

You always are posting the kids. You never spend time with me. He was complaining about intimacy, that she wasn't being intimate with him. She's given birth.

00:07:48.480 — 00:07:51.530 · Speaker 1

She's tired of two young kids.

00:07:51.930 — 00:09:18.050 · Speaker 2

Exactly. She's. You know, she went back to work relatively quickly, I believe. Uh, Indy was 3 or 4 months when she went back to work, because she didn't want that burden of finances to fall on Shane. So she was very much wanting to be involved, to give the kids the best life so that they weren't struggling.

Um, and ultimately, I ended up getting her a job at my work, waitressing at our local family bistro, because the money was better than being a hairdresser, and it meant less hours, because in addition to that, Katie also had a broken back from a car accident when she was 19. And so she'd done years of standing on her feet for 12 hour days with a broken back.

Um, she'd gone through labor. She'd carried children all with a broken back. She was a very resilient, strong, uh, woman. And I will forever admire her. Um, she is the motivation for whenever things feel too tough or too hard for me. I'm like. But Katie could do it like Katie did it. So for her to go back to work, I thought, this is this is better for you.

Like, you can actually take those breaks. It's shorter. It's in between school hours. Like, I could take shifts for her. If she couldn't work, I could take the night shifts. So I thought I was helping to make sure that their relationship didn't suffer because she wanted to help him out. And I thought, well, I'm doing a nice thing here and she's working with me.

So hopefully that alleviates some of that behavior that he was starting to exhibit, but it ultimately just escalated it far beyond what we could have expected.

00:09:18.210 — 00:09:25.930 · Speaker 1

Well, it kind of got to more much more surveillance, didn't it? So like a lot of checking in, what did that look like?

00:09:26.410 — 00:11:19.749 · Speaker 2

So for Katie, once we started working together, there was this element of him needing to know where she was, what she was doing at every second. And when I say that, I don't say that lightly. She was on the phone from the moment she had to walk into work, she would sign on up off the phone. And then the moment that she finished her shift, she would sign off and he would be calling.

He would know instantly if she hadn't called him to say that she was finished her shift, and sometimes she wouldn't call him straight away because we would stay back a little bit and, um, like, she would come and talk to me about a shift or we had something to discuss, or occasionally we would stay back and just eat our lunch together.

Um, because my mom was minding her daughter at the time, which mum used to laugh and go, oh, don't mind me, I'm just babysitting, you know, you guys enjoy your lunch. But it was really nice to have that quality time with my sister as well. Yeah, but he would know. And so that would be cut short because he would be calling her.

He would be harassing her. He would be texting her, going, I know you've finished work. You know why? Why haven't you called me? And it ultimately like, just kind of ruined it, that we wouldn't do it anymore because it was just he was just constantly at her from the moment she finished work. It then escalated further into him actually watching her from the car park opposite our work.

He would sit in the car and observe her at work and how she would interact with customers or coworkers. And all the while, my mum was minding their daughter who he was supposed to have gone and picked up. He was too obsessed with what Katie was doing at work, and obviously we only found all this out in hindsight.

Like we only found this out after what happened. Katie. But knowing it, it makes a lot of sense given we knew how persistently he was calling her, how much he was trying to dictate how she used social media, who she was posting, who she could talk to. It was

00:11:21.030 — 00:11:38.550 · Speaker 2

psychotic, to be frank. Like, the behavior was just completely something we've never dealt with. And we kept putting it down to jealousy. We're just like, he is ridiculous. He is so immature. Like, that was kind of the behavior because Katie was handling it and she didn't seem overly concerned. She was just like, he's ridiculous, right?

00:11:38.550 — 00:11:42.950 · Speaker 1

So she wasn't kind of scared by the behavior. She was kind of biting back a bit as well.

00:11:43.270 — 00:14:04.200 · Speaker 2

Yeah. No. So she wasn't like, Katie is not one to shy away from conflict. Um, as I grew up with her, as I said, I know she's not. She wasn't one to back down, and neither was I. So any behavior that she didn't agree with, like she would call it out, or she would say, like, I'm sick of this. She would hang up on him like she wouldn't just jump at his calls.

But you could see that it was consistently calling. And because she had that, um, setting on her phone where it would light up every time she was getting like a text or a call, the the flash would light up. We always knew, like, if she was on her phone, if he was calling her or texting her. Well, that's how I personally knew without her telling me.

Yeah, it even escalated to the point where my best friend, who we worked with, he had just moved over from Tasmania, so he hadn't made a lot of friends and we were hanging out quite a lot, which meant Katie was around him because he was coming to our house. Um, you know, hanging out. And Katie would be there to pick up the kids or drop the kids off.

So it was all just we were all just friends, basically coworkers. He didn't like that. And he actually contacted my friend and basically said, like, stop talking to my partner. You're causing issues in our relationship. All these things, which we told Katie and Katie addressed that with Shane head on and was like, that's not okay.

And it all stemmed from the fact that his car had broke down one day. They were both heading to the same direction. She had Indi in the car. I believe she had Aiden in the car as well, and she dropped him home and he felt that that was not acceptable and spiraled from there. And to the point that he created a fake Facebook page pretending to be a female, to message our friend to try and get Intel on Katie.

It was kind of like probing and prompting to be like, oh, it's okay. You can tell me if there's any hot girls at your work. You know, any girls that you like, all these sorts of things. And my friend knew instantly it was him. So we told Katie, and Katie addressed it with Shane. She went, I know you've created this fake profile Like you're ridiculous.

This is not okay. Don't do it. Like, cut it out. And they had a full blown conversation about it, where he even then messaged me and was like, you know, even when I get bad advice, like, I shouldn't be behaving like this, all these kind of acknowledgments of he didn't deny it. He never denied that he did it. He knew that he got caught.

00:14:04.240 — 00:14:06.360 · Speaker 1

And he knew it was wrong by the sounds of it.

00:14:06.560 — 00:14:16.240 · Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, he and he even like, to the extent he used that same profile to flirt with his male profile to make Katie jealous.

00:14:16.280 — 00:14:22.480 · Speaker 1

It's just wild to see, like, the person you met changed that much.

00:14:22.760 — 00:14:58.930 · Speaker 2

It was a very. It felt like a very drastic change. But something that I've realized is that that is the person they always are. That is always underlying. They're just very good at presenting themselves in a certain way until someone is trapped and then they can't get out. Um, so it seemed very sudden to us.

It seemed to be the escalation of them having a child together. But we believe that this behavior was ongoing throughout their relationship. And whether or not Katie saw it for what it was and hadn't told us, or it was just very subtle, that you don't even realize that it was building up to that point.

00:14:59.090 — 00:15:14.530 · Speaker 1

Well, to label the behavior, to be clear, this is coercive control. What we're talking about, some of the other behaviors that go hand in hand with this are things like isolation and gaslighting and financial abuse. Did any of those kind of play into their relationship that you knew of?

00:15:14.730 — 00:16:02.860 · Speaker 2

Yeah, definitely. So there was quite a bit of gaslighting just on every kind of topic, I can't even pinpoint. It was just that consistent. Making her feel crazy, making her feel like things weren't as they seem, even to the point. Like, um, he was supposed to be at work one day. He bumped into her at the same shopping center.

She was out with my Nana and he was just like, oh, this is such a coincidence. And when she was like, this isn't a coincidence. Like, you were meant to be over the other side of town. He gaslit her and he was like, no, it's. You know, made her feel crazy for thinking that she was being observed, monitored, followed.

Essentially. Um, the financial abuse of it was a very simple thing that I feel a lot of people wouldn't even realize is financial abuse. He wouldn't give her money to get fuel.

00:16:03.300 — 00:16:05.500 · Speaker 1

Oh, oh, which is a mode of transport.

00:16:05.540 — 00:17:04.060 · Speaker 2

He would be out of fuel, which meant she then couldn't go anywhere. So my parents would pay to put fuel in her car because she would be left without fuel. And anyone with kids knows how hard it is as well to go and get fuel, get the kids out, then get them back in the car. The logistics of it just made it so much harder for her.

So my parents would step in and when we were all out together, we'd get the fuel with no car. But it's a way of which you wouldn't necessarily deem it financial abuse when you're looking at it in isolation, but when it's a repeated behavior. It was his attempt at making sure that she couldn't go anywhere, that she couldn't go to work, that she couldn't go to the shops, or that she was becoming a burden for someone else.

And Katie was very independent. She was very strong headed, very, you know, mature and grown up. And she didn't want to rely on her parents. Yeah. So for someone like that, this was the ultimate way to make them retreat back in and to not let on what was going on, but also to then not want to ask for help, if that makes sense.

00:17:04.100 — 00:17:09.060 · Speaker 1

Yeah. Had it progressed to physical violence that you know of before?

00:17:09.140 — 00:17:32.740 · Speaker 2

Not that we're aware of. Obviously we have our suspicions, but the first documented instance of physical violence in their relationship was the night that he murdered her. And that is the scariest thing about coercive control is that the most coercive control cases, there is no documented violence.

That's not to say that there isn't violence, but there isn't any documented. So the first documented instance is often lethal.

00:17:32.740 — 00:17:37.859 · Speaker 1

And that's why it's so hard for a court system or a justice system

00:17:38.990 — 00:17:49.310 · Speaker 1

To kind of look at an instance like Katie's story with this kind of coercive control. Because even though it's so serious, there's nothing physical.

00:17:49.670 — 00:18:41.190 · Speaker 2

Yeah, there's nothing physical. So then they say, wow, you know, it's not like this was repeated behavior. You know, it was you know, he's not a threat to the community. He's not a threat to society because he's only exhibited this one display of violence. And in my opinion, that's the scariest thing because of what made them snap like that, what made them go from 0 to 100?

What made them go from coercive, controlling someone to using excessive force to take someone's life? To me, you can't deem them safe for community. You can't deem them. And at most they are definitely not safe for their next partner when they come out. And that person is a part of the community. So there is no there is no system in place in our court system.

There's no system in place in the way we, um, approach coercive control to show the seriousness of it, even when documented.

00:18:41.230 — 00:18:50.710 · Speaker 1

Can you tell us about the kind of week leading up to Katie's murder? Had you? Had she spoken about wanting to leave him? Did you know that that was perhaps on the cards?

00:18:50.910 — 00:19:53.959 · Speaker 2

I did. Um, Katie and I obviously got really close when we started working together. We'd only been working together for about seven months, but I would definitely say that we were friends at this point. We were sisters. We were friends. We were confiding in each other to an extent. We were both comparing relationships that we were in at the time, um, that were less than ideal.

Obviously, I didn't know the extent of Katie's. She didn't know the extent of mine, but we would compare them and say, like, who had the worst day or whose partner was being, you know, the worst that day. But again, we were saying to each other that we should leave our relationships. So I was saying to her, you need to leave like he doesn't treat you well.

You need to leave. Uh, she was saying to me, you need to leave like he's not treating you so we could see it for each other that we deserved more in relationships and that the way we like what was happening wasn't okay. Hades was obviously a completely different situation, but being 20 at the time, we were just comparing name calling or behaviors that Shane was doing, and

00:19:55.000 — 00:21:05.369 · Speaker 2

it literally just kept escalating in that last week, that last week it just got worse and worse than the conversations with Katie was like, she's like, I have to leave. I can't keep doing this right. It was always the I can't keep doing this. But then also at the same time, she didn't want to fail again because in her eyes, she had failed by having a relationship with her son's father and it not working out.

So she didn't want to have to do that again. She didn't want to have to go through the court processes for parenting my hands and things like that. So she really stuck at it for a lot longer than she ever should have, because she really wanted to give her children that family unit that we grew up with. and I think she definitely felt ashamed that she couldn't achieve that.

Um, and there's also that element of we have such wonderful parents and their relationship is no joke, not perfect, but it is the ultimate goal that the compassion and kindness that they show each other, the grace that they show each other when they're not doing well, is something that we aspire to have in our relationships.

And for your child to then be in a relationship where they're not accepting

00:21:06.410 — 00:21:32.370 · Speaker 2

that kind of love, they're actually accepting something far less and something that they don't deserve. That's crushing to a parent. So to come out and say that your parents are going to wonder, well, where did we go wrong? You don't see us behaving like that. And so for Katie, it was, I believe it was very much a sense of shame that she just wanted to be a mature adult and handle it herself.

And it went far beyond the length of time that it should have.

00:21:32.810 — 00:21:49.370 · Speaker 1

Up next, Bianca speaks about Katie's last day alive. I want to talk a bit about Friday, March 9th. As much as you feel comfortable, because it was a pretty busy day, wasn't it? You. Katie, had a lot going on. You saw her. Your parents saw her. Can you take us through what the day looked like?

00:21:49.490 — 00:22:06.130 · Speaker 2

So, uh, March 9th was. It was just a regular day, honestly. Um, I had just gone back to uni. I was studying criminology and psychological science, and I was in my second year at that point. Um, and I

00:22:07.650 — 00:25:23.710 · Speaker 2

was meant to go to uni, so I needed to get out of my shift. So my sister took my shift for me. Um, I ultimately didn't end up going to uni because I was slack and wanted to stay. It was a nice it was a nice day. It was nice weather. I wanted to go to the pool with my niece, um, which I regret deeply making Katie have that shift for me.

We ended up going to the pool. We took Indy to the pool. Um, it was a great day. She loved being in the water. We also had Aden home from school, so we took him and we were all just hanging out and my mum even commented, this is the best day ever because it was like it was just such a good day. We were having so much fun.

Um, Katie was at work and then she finished her shift. Um, a bit like earlier. My nephew had hand over with his dad, so my dad was handling that just a few blocks away, and I like, ironically enough, Katie finished with enough time to drive there, say goodbye to Aidan and say, I'll see you on Monday. Um, which originally my dad was like, why are you here?

Like, it's just going to cause issues. You've told him that I'm doing the hit. You know, initially in that moment, you're kind of like, oh, you're just going to cause drama. In hindsight, we are so grateful that she made it to give him a hug and a kiss and to say goodbye and to see him for the last time. Um, then my sister went back home.

My dad needed a haircut, so she gave my dad a haircut, which my dad now looks up in hindsight that it was his haircut for her funeral. Mhm. Um, and I was just studying and I was getting annoyed by all the noise in the house because she was arguing with Shane on the phone. Um, and they were going back and forth that he wanted her to come home.

She said, I can't, I'm cutting dad's hair. I'll be home soon. He just kept harassing her. Like you never want to spend time with me, you know? Please come home. Like just. He was just ridiculous that day. Beyond ridiculous. And I could hear her in the front lounge room saying, like, this is ridiculous. I can't keep doing this like I'm done.

She just constantly said, I'm done. And I've heard it so many times because she'd deactivated Facebook because of how often he was trying to get into her social media, how often he would lock her out of her phone. So like the I'm done comment was something that I'd heard a lot, but I didn't realize at this time was going to be that I'm done moment.

I ended up being a bratty 20 year old. I was like, oh, it's too noisy, I can't study, and I ended up leaving to go to the park to meet up with a friend to study. I didn't study, so I was just being dramatic at the time. And as I was driving back home, I saw my sister driving out of our street. She gave me her signature two honks and that is the last time I ever saw her.

Um, we then proceeded to go down into Melbourne because mum and I were going to the Ed Sheeran concert the next day. We were really, really excited. So I went to the pop up shop. We got, um, merchandise and then dad, mum and I went out for dinner. Um, it was a really good night. Like, um, it was. I was just so excited.

It was such a good night. Um, and as we were driving back past diggers rest,

00:25:25.110 — 00:25:35.680 · Speaker 2

um, I can't remember who, if it was my mum or my dad, but one of them got a really sick feeling and just came over really unwell at the time that we were like, oh, should we pop in and see Katy?

00:25:36.720 — 00:25:43.840 · Speaker 2

Ultimately, we did it because whichever parent it was wasn't feeling well, so we went home. It wasn't until,

00:25:45.480 — 00:27:16.320 · Speaker 2

I believe, two in the morning that we found out that Katy had been murdered via social media, a bit of context of how it all came about. Yeah. Um, Katy, when she got home, her and Shane went out for dinner with Indi, and Aiden was with his dad, obviously, so he wasn't home. So they just went out for dinner. They had dinner, they came home.

I know that they had an argument about social media again, about the work group chat about Katy not giving him enough time, all these things. Um, I know that she had said she was done. She started packing her bag. She said she was going to go to my mum's. Um, she actually did leave the house that night and started driving.

She only returned because Indy was asleep in her bed and she didn't want to leave Indy. So then she went to her son's bed and sat on the sun on her son's bed. Um, and obviously the police reports and everything told us that the neighbors had heard arguing. There was a lot of, you know, fighting. All the neighbors had documented hearing it for hours at that point.

At around. Just after ten, Shane texted his mom and said, she's leaving me. She's, you know, she's breaking up the family. She's leaving me. His mom texted back saying whatever she said to him. And then he said, hang on, she's back. I'll talk to you soon. And his mom texted and said, don't do anything stupid.

00:27:17.440 — 00:27:33.770 · Speaker 2

20 minutes after that, he texted his mom and said, I've done it. I've bashed her brains in. There are brains everywhere. So in that 20 minute period, Chain, grabbed a dumbbell bar, walked into my nephew's bedroom where my sister was sitting on his bed,

00:27:35.130 — 00:27:39.530 · Speaker 2

and repeatedly struck her across the face and head.

00:27:40.570 — 00:27:46.770 · Speaker 2

Whilst their ten month old daughter was in the room next door. It's a vision that haunts me.

00:27:49.690 — 00:28:43.650 · Speaker 2

I will never understand how someone can hurt someone because they don't want to be in a relationship with you anymore, especially when you are the reason they don't want to be in that relationship. And they gave it their all. She was defenseless. She was sitting on the bed. She weighed 42 kilos at the time of her death.

I would say she was scared, but I truly know my sister, and I know that when they said they had an exchange before he did it. I know for a fact that if she saw that weapon, which it speculation that she would have seen it because he held it behind his back. I have no doubt that he would have. He did say to her that he was going to use it on himself, and then I have no doubt that she would have.

Then go on, go on, do it. Because that is the attitude of my sister. I truly don't believe that she thought he was capable of killing her, because she would not have gone back to that house.

00:28:43.690 — 00:28:46.570 · Speaker 1

I'm so sorry, Bianca. It's just. It's horrific.

00:28:46.850 — 00:29:45.020 · Speaker 2

It's, um. Yeah. It's not something that we ever thought would happen to our family. Um, we that night found out via a social media post from Victoria Police. The local community page had been going off for a few hours saying that. What's going on in Sunbury? There's police helicopters, there's police on foot, there's dog squad.

Like what's going on? Um, earlier in the evening, my dad had got a phone call from Clayton police saying that they were looking for Shane's ex-partner, who's the mother of his children. Um, and that the address listed was our house. My dad said no, that's incorrect. We built this house. Um, they said, okay, we're just trying to locate her.

Dad said, I know who you're talking about. That's my daughter's partner's ex-partner. Um, if there's anything like, any concern, like, we can try and assist, you know. And they said, no, no. All good. And dad took their details because he thought that was really odd. And at this point, we were thinking something really bad had happened to her.

00:29:45.300 — 00:29:49.500 · Speaker 1

Because it's midnight. So you're all up at midnight going, what? What's going on?

00:29:49.540 — 00:31:00.940 · Speaker 2

So my brother was asleep. Dad was actually woken up by the phone call. So my mom and I were texting on our phones because we don't sleep. Um, we we struggle to sleep. And we were watching what was unfolding on the local news, our local community page. We were like, oh, like, I have a text exchange with my mom saying, like, I want to know what's happening.

Like, it's so bizarre. And then she was trying to get in touch with Katie and she wasn't answering. And I'm like, really weird that Katie's not answering. And we put it down to the fact that Shane would often lock her out of her home or she wasn't allowed to have her phone with her, or she would just choose not to because it was easier than dealing with shame, cracking up about her being on her phone.

So we just kind of went very weird. We ultimately went, well, I went to sleep. I'd just fallen asleep when my mom came and slammed into my room and was like, he's murdered her. He's killed her. And I then went on my phone because I was very confused. And I saw the post from Victoria Police that said a 29 year old woman has been located deceased in Diggers Rest.

They actually listed the street, which is very uncommon for them to actually this is straight before they've even notified family.

00:31:00.940 — 00:31:04.460 · Speaker 1

So that's how you knew because it was her age, her street, her suburb.

00:31:04.700 — 00:31:31.150 · Speaker 2

And the 28 year old man was in custody assisting police. Obviously it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Um, especially as we couldn't get in touch with her. My brother then got woken up, dad tried to call the police and he's like, hey, like, I, I have concerns for my daughter. I think it's my daughter.

Um, they were like, we can't tell you anything. So we all jumped in the car and drove us down to the crime scene. Um, and that's how we got the confirmation.

00:31:31.510 — 00:31:38.270 · Speaker 1

Do you know now why they didn't tell you how you why you had to find out from a press release.

00:31:38.310 — 00:33:27.960 · Speaker 2

Dad kind of went back and forth with them about this. We were kind of like, this isn't the protocol. Like I studied criminology. I was like, this is not how it's meant to happen. Like, you know, you tell us how it happens. And a lot of what we've experienced in the years since is not what is, you know, textbook of what's supposed to happen.

Um, I truly don't know why, but we weren't going to wait. So we drove down, um, I recall thinking, and I know this is so horrible and I hate repeating it, but it was the mindset I was in at the time hoping that it was his ex-partner, hoping it was someone else, not Katie. I was like, please don't be Katie, please don't be Katie.

I remember we pulled into the street. We could only get probably not even halfway down the street because it had been taped off. Her house was completely lit up. Police cars, crime scene cars, everything. And I just remember hopping out before dad even stopped the car and running to the tape. I remember my dad falling to his knees in the middle of the street and looking up in the sky like he was looking to the heavens, like he was I.

And I just remember my mom's ear piercing screams, and she ended up getting put in the back of the car, like, just to see it and like, um, and my little brother, who I always say was made to grow up way beyond his years. That night he was just 18, um, talking to the police and the detectives and trying to get an understanding of what had happened.

Um, and even while we were there, ABC rocked up. So ABC were aware of it before we, the family were aware of it. And they rocked up at the scene, which was just ridiculous to me. Um, and then obviously snapped out of it. And we my parents were like, well, where's Indy? Where's Indy? Like, we can't do anything for our daughter.

Where's Indy? And we found out that he had actually left the premises in my sister's car with Indy on his lap, and drove to his parent's house.

00:33:28.240 — 00:33:33.800 · Speaker 1

The next few hours. Was that just about getting Indy back? Is that what the focus was?

00:33:33.880 — 00:35:05.490 · Speaker 2

Yeah, 100%. So the next few hours was spent fighting with them, saying like, we want Indy back. Like she is with us primarily. She doesn't really, like, know these people. They don't really, because there was a bit of animosity between Katie and his family, and a lot of it is what led to this kind of becoming as big as it did with Shane and not being told boundaries and dad's like, no.

And it was basically we were taking. We weren't taking no for an answer. And we ultimately ended up being able to go and get Indy. She obviously had nothing. We had nothing. She couldn't go into the house. So no nappies, no nothing. Her stuffy like everything was kind of, you know, contaminated. So we weren't able to get access to anything.

Um, we did end up taking her home that night, and, um, sorting out stuff in the morning. I remember I went down to best and less like, as soon as it opened the next day to get her her favorite stuffy because she can't sleep without her stuffy and to get some clothes. And we had nappies dropped off at our door. But ultimately the biggest focus of that night was to get Endy.

We knew Aiden was safe. We knew that he was with his dad. Um, so the biggest concern was to make sure that we got ended. And then I just recall, we all just kind of sat in the lounge room and watched her. Um, I believe she was sleeping on the couch or on my mum. I don't recall, but I just know it was sitting there and we'd picked up my Nana as well.

We had to go and wake up my Nana because we didn't want her to find out. Um, so we had to go and wake her up at two three in the morning.

00:35:05.530 — 00:35:18.610 · Speaker 1

What a surreal experience to be trying to kind of grapple with what's just happened to your sister, but then going to best and less and buying a stuffy like that must have just been so bizarre for you.

00:35:18.770 — 00:36:33.260 · Speaker 2

It was really surreal, even to the point that I could have called work and been like, hey, you know, not coming in, but I actually we drove there. My best friend drove me there, and I walked in and I was just like, hey, Katie's not coming in for a shift today. Um. She's dead. Like, it was just. You don't know how you're going to react.

Yeah. And it was really weird, but I felt like I couldn't just drop that news on someone over the phone. Like, I wanted to also make sure that the people I'm telling are okay, because it was so jarring to me. Um, and it would have been very jarring to our work community. You know, um, one of the managers was one of the ones who walked her out one day because, um, it was late at night and he would always walk us out like he wanted to make sure we were safe.

And Katie had mentioned to him in passing about how Shane was kind of, like, jealous and all that. And my manager made a joke and was like, ah, should I, like, um, put my arm around you and give him something to talk about. Like as a joke. And she goes, no, don't, don't like that will cause you so many issues. And so I told him and like he was shocked, but, you know, wasn't surprised in the sense of how ridiculous that this person had become.

00:36:33.300 — 00:36:41.740 · Speaker 1

Did the police come to you the next day? When did they get involved? Were you kind of given any support or explanations?

00:36:41.780 — 00:37:01.420 · Speaker 2

The support was non-existent. Um, so basically, Katie was murdered on Friday the 9th of March. This was the long weekend, and evidently crime just stops on a long weekend. So it was about three days, I believe, before any detectives came to our house to formally confirm that it was Katie.

00:37:01.460 — 00:37:02.380 · Speaker 1

Really?

00:37:02.700 — 00:37:58.190 · Speaker 2

Yep. At this point, um, dad had had to. We had friends who were on the police force and stuff, and, you know, calls were made and things like that to, you know, just kind of say, like, this isn't acceptable. This isn't okay. But yeah, ultimately it was three days before anyone came. We originally thought the day after that there were these people in suits.

They were coming to the front door. So we were like, they must be the detectives. They were journalists. And they basically were like at the time. Do you have a comment? Um, if not, we'll put out something. Anyway, um, and do you have a favorite photo of Katie? Because if not, we're just going to grab whatever.

So basically we were kind of forced into I drafted up a quick, you know, statement and we provided a photo because what were we going to do that we're just going to grab it anyway. Um, but yeah, we didn't hear from the detectives or anything until three days later. During that time, we had found out what the murder weapon was via social media.

00:37:58.230 — 00:37:59.630 · Speaker 1

Via social media.

00:37:59.910 — 00:38:09.910 · Speaker 2

Police came, the detectives came and said, oh, you know, so she was murdered with. We're like, yeah, dumbbell bar. And they're like, how do you know that? And we're like, it's all over social media.

00:38:09.990 — 00:38:26.390 · Speaker 1

Did you find the media coverage because obviously the media are going to cover something like this, you know, like a young mother murdered. Was it hard? Like, what was it like as the family having the media knocking on your door, writing stories about your sister, grabbing photos from her social media?

00:38:26.790 — 00:39:56.960 · Speaker 2

It was a lot. It was very surreal. I will say that the media have been quite respectful of our family, and we are very privileged in that sense that, um, we know that a lot of people's experiences are very different. And we were very lucky, especially, um, as my mum's cousin works as a cameraman and in media.

So he kind of also put out that, you know, the, the vibe of, you know, please do not harass, you know, don't like and don't make it about Shane either. Like there was a lot of it that was about the details. But once more came out about Katie, they really did give Katie her voice and who she was like, they didn't let her get lost in the story, which I know can quite often happen.

So we are very privileged. But it was a lot. It was very surreal. We were a regular family like two, two days prior and nobody knew us. Um, I was doing a bit of journalism as a part of my criminology degree. Like, it was very foreign to be in the center of it over that weekend. Obviously seeing the video footage from the crime scene.

So seeing her body bag get wheeled out. Um, seeing the bloodied mattress, which at the time, we didn't even clue in that it was a single mattress. We assumed this had happened in her bedroom. Um, so it was only once they told us it was Aiden's room that we clicked and we were like, that was a single mattress covered in blood.

But they're all images that we should never have had to see.

00:39:57.000 — 00:39:59.760 · Speaker 1

You should never have found that out from the media, either.

00:39:59.920 — 00:40:45.480 · Speaker 2

Like, we saw the the glass doors smashed and obviously not being told any information for so many days. Your mind is left to piece together what's going on. So we saw the smashed glass. We didn't know that was from the police smashing it to get in. We only we thought, oh my God, there's been a massive fight.

Like she's fought for her life. She's, you know, and that's also horrifying because you're then going to this situation that hasn't unfolded, and then you find out that she was completely defenseless sitting on the bed. Um, and even then, I still say she fought like hell. Like there is no way there was an opportunity present.

She would have fought. But, yeah, dealing with the media, it was just. Yeah, it was a lot. Um, and to find out, a lot of the information from the media, I think was very appalling.

00:40:45.520 — 00:40:53.560 · Speaker 1

When you think back on those first few weeks, those first few months after losing Katie, what stands out the most to you.

00:40:53.720 — 00:42:16.060 · Speaker 2

The community and how they rallied around us? We were really, really lucky to have such a wonderful community, um, and supporting us. Within a month of her, just over a month after she was murdered, we actually had to plan a first birthday for Indy and we had such wonderful friends and family help rally around us on that day because at the end of the day, India only turns one once and we knew that Katie had already bought her presents and had started, you know, to wrap them and get them ready.

So we felt we owed it to Katie to give her this first birthday celebration. And you're doing this just over a month after you've lost Katie. And probably two weeks, I think it was after we actually got to have a funeral for Katie. So it was just a very confusing and a very big blur. Genuinely, mum and dad would not have survived if they didn't have Indy.

Um, and I know that for a fact. They had no choice but to get up every day they had a baby to look after. It was just a lot. And then dealing obviously with Shane's family and just there was a fair bit of animosity there, and we were dealing with a lot of that in the weeks leading up, like after the murder. Um, dad was dealing with the rental people, um, dealing with all the stuff to do with Katie's estate.

She didn't have a will, so it was just. You didn't get time to grieve. There has been no time to grieve.

00:42:16.140 — 00:42:27.980 · Speaker 1

I don't think people realize all of the admin that comes when something like this happens. You think you're going to be able to kind of sit there and and grieve and cry and be able. But like you're saying, there's so much to do.

00:42:28.340 — 00:42:31.419 · Speaker 2

Yeah. And it's even more complex when

00:42:32.460 — 00:42:41.620 · Speaker 2

both people who are listed on these things, whether it be electricity, water, the bills, everything like that, the rental, one of them's in prison, the other one's dead.

00:42:42.020 — 00:42:43.820 · Speaker 1

So how do you get access? Yeah.

00:42:43.980 — 00:43:09.100 · Speaker 2

How do you get access? Not only that, it essentially becomes this backwards and forwards. Because he's not sentenced. He's not. He's. Yeah. You're innocent until proven guilty. So at this point, there is no knowing. You don't know when the sentencing is going to happen. You don't know what the outcome was going to be like.

It was very early days and it was just the admin side, I think took a well and truly are very. Yeah. To kind of get through.

00:43:09.140 — 00:43:15.060 · Speaker 1

Even just the fact that I know your dad did a lot of that, but he having to explain over the phone over and over again what happened.

00:43:15.460 — 00:44:08.590 · Speaker 2

Why was he even dad? Because dad is not biologically Katie's dad. But by all accounts, he is the only dad she has ever had. And that is how she like, she was going to turn 30 that year and she wanted to get adoption papers. She wanted to legitimize like, um, so he's Katie's dad? Um, wholeheartedly. But when it comes to admin stuff.

Yep, he's Katie's dad. He has no rights to do it. So then you're trying to get a grieving mother to take on the admin when dad's trying to step up and do all that, and he's not allowed to, and he's constantly being reminded that he is not Katie's biological father. He lost his identity throughout this whole process.

He, by all accounts from the moment like she was born, was Katie's dad. And in that short period of time he was reduced to less than and he lost his identity.

00:44:08.910 — 00:44:38.870 · Speaker 1

After the break, we hear about why the court interrupted Bianca's victim impact statement. Shane pled guilty, which saved your family the horror of a trial. But the case still goes through a very lengthy process he went through. You know, the Melbourne Magistrates Court and then the Supreme Court. There's lots of mentions.

There's lots to do in that kind of time. What was that process like for you? I know you were studying criminology, but nothing prepares you for being thrown in as a victim's family. What was it like?

00:44:39.070 — 00:46:37.720 · Speaker 2

Very confronting process. Um, it was a very confusing process because I went in with the expectations of a system that works in the way that we are told it works. And knowing that all these people are coming out of my degrees with this optimism of this is how it works. You know, we are very victim focused and finding out it's really not um, we found out very quickly that our system is very perpetrator focused, um, the wellbeing and the interests of the perpetrator are at the forefront and always will be.

But basically I remembered the magistrates Court one, which was the first initial like plea hearing where he did plead guilty. We didn't even get to sit in that courtroom. We had to be walked in when it was time to hear his mention, because there were no seats for us, because his whole family and supporters took him all up.

So we had to stand there. We weren't allowed in because there was no seats. Then I know when we went to the Supreme Court, we had to be separated because they essentially were doing the same thing. They were adding to the trauma of, um, basically like, you know, the victim blaming and that there was laughing whilst in the courtroom.

His sister gave us the bird in the courtroom, and the judge didn't seem to care about that. Um, they literally walked shame right in front of us, like within arm's reach. Dad could have literally flicked his ear, which I just don't think is very mindful of victims. Like make sure you're placing them in a spot that it's not, you know, and like dad said, like tempting, tempting, but no, like he's like, I've got to be this person for India now.

I've got to conduct myself in a way that is better than these people. But it was full of high stress. We're going there. We're hearing details of what's happened to Katie. We're reading police reports. We're hearing the character references. So we gave our victim statements. But during that process, you're audited.

You're told what you're allowed to say and what you're not allowed to say, which.

00:46:37.720 — 00:46:42.200 · Speaker 1

I don't think people realize. You actually have to get your victim impact statement approved.

00:46:42.320 — 00:48:18.650 · Speaker 2

Yes. And so you have a lot of what you're not allowed to say, what you are allowed to say. And I had decided to stand up in court and face him. I wanted him to have to look at me, which was a very daunting thing, especially with his supporters laughing overhead and like gawking and, you know, but I stood there and he's a barrister at the time, Opposed and objected to my victim impact statement whilst I was on the stand, even though it had gone through the correct measures of being approved.

We've only just recently got back to being not afraid to bump into these people in the supermarket, and that for the fear of what kind of behaviors were happening. Because when you so blindly support someone at the expense of victims, I think it's a pretty fair thing to say that, like, your life now feels like you can't trust people.

We weren't allowed to be angry. We weren't allowed to. Yeah. It was. It was very cold. Like, how can you understand someone's it the impact that this kind of loss has on someone when you're not allowed to say how it's impacted you? Um, which is one thing. And then we had to sit there and listen to the character references of what a great guy he was.

And thankfully, thanks to Harry James, that's being abolished. Your reference ain't relevant. Amazing. Because it's not what you were before you did. A heinous crime does not diminish the crime in which you committed, and I think it's a great step forward for victims to not have to listen to what a great person, their abuser, their perpetrator or anything like that their murderer is.

Because at the end of the day, you're there for that crime and that defines them.

00:48:18.690 — 00:48:44.290 · Speaker 1

There have been some other changes since Katie's murder and Shane's sentencing, in that coercive control laws are now in place in. I was going to say a number of states, but it is a few states. It's only New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia that have jumped on in the last few years. Was that a comfort to you that that is now recognized by the court system, or how does that actually play out for you when you see it in the system?

00:48:44.610 — 00:50:51.460 · Speaker 2

It was rewarding to see it actually be implicated. I think it's a great step forward to acknowledging that not all abuse is physical, and that we are really trying to see the invisible essentially, which is such a challenge like you, but it gives victims a better standpoint to understand coercive control.

To know that it is something that is illegal, that the behavior is just as bad as physical abuse. I won't say that I'm overjoyed about it because it's common sense, and we should have already been implementing that with or without a law. If you're proving that someone is harassing you, stalking you, um, invading on your privacy, you know, basically restricting your ability to be a human being of your own capabilities.

Then I don't think we need a law to say, hey, that's actually very violating. And that goes against and especially when paired with, um, in our case, a murder case, I think it should have definitely had more of a wane in the sentence. I don't think we needed a law to tell us that that behavior contributed to her death, and that if intervention had happened earlier, if the warning signs had been recognized, um, on a court level or on a, you know, police ability, then We may not have ended up here.

I will say that I am incredibly disappointed in Victoria because we claim to be so forward thinking, and that we are leading the way when it comes to family violence and all the preventions and all these things that they're doing, and they love to pat themselves on the back about it. You can't even implement coercive control laws and you wait until other states have done it.

When we've got there's countries that have been doing it. And yes, it is difficult to, you know, convict. I understand that, but there's a lot of things that are difficult and with the right procedures, with the right paperwork, with the right documentation, there are ways to go about it. And in some cases, like Katie, it's very clear cut.

You can't disprove that there. There was coercive control there. It is very evident. And I know in so many people's lives they would be able to point that out as well.

00:50:51.700 — 00:50:59.310 · Speaker 1

What does life without Katie look like for your family now? Her kids are obviously nearly a decade older.

00:51:00.430 — 00:51:01.790 · Speaker 1

What is life like?

00:51:01.870 — 00:53:46.520 · Speaker 2

It's bittersweet, I would say. Um, we are living with a hole in our hearts, a hole in our life. Um, I think Katie's daughter, Indi puts it best. She misses her mum, but she doesn't know what she misses. Um, and I think that's kind of the element of all of us where we. We miss Katie. Um, we know what we're missing, but her children don't.

My children don't know what they're missing yet. They talk about their Auntie Katie all the time. Um, they literally go out to where she's laid to rest. Um, that's where we spend our mother's days. That's where we spend our birthdays, Christmases, Easter. This is our new normal with a person missing. And it's one where you play the constant what if's.

You constantly go like, what if it was like this? What if it was like that? I have to look at it as I met my partner through my sister at work. Um, and ultimately we now have two beautiful children. So I have to say that without Katie and what happened to her, I wouldn't have the life I have now. I just wish that she could be here physically.

But she definitely gave me this life. And I'm eternally grateful for that. My daughter has her name as her middle name, because I want her to be a very big part of our life. Her children are thriving, um, despite the circumstances, but they're going to have a lot of trauma for the rest of their lives. They're going to struggle to trust people.

I don't even know what it looks like for them to get into relationships. And I know for a fact that it's going to be so hard for my parents to allow me to date, but I'm also restrict someone you know they don't want to control her, but I know that it is going to be a very difficult time to entrust someone, the same way that they had to trust my partner and welcome him into our family, that we can't be completely shut off.

But yeah, there's this big absence in our lives, and it's one that could have been avoided. It's one that you know. This isn't how our lives were meant to be. Every happy moment for other families. And it's a sad one for us. There is no happy Christmases. There's moments of happiness. Um, birthdays. You know, you just had her birthday.

It was a happy day. But I know for a fact that I go home and I cry that night. I know for a fact that my mom cries. I know that I'm physically unwell. The week leading up to our anniversary, which it's been eight years, you think it would get a bit easier? And everyone says time heals. But when someone's taken in this way that's so unnatural and at the hands of someone else who you know will come back out into society and get to live their life.

It just it hurts and you're living on a countdown. You you can't fully enjoy life. And then you know that once they're out,

00:53:48.160 — 00:53:49.040 · Speaker 2

you're scared again.

00:53:51.080 — 00:54:00.490 · Speaker 1

Lastly, Bianca, what do you want listeners who have heard your story and heard Katie's story to take away from our chat and hearing the details?

00:54:00.530 — 00:55:27.490 · Speaker 2

I want people to understand that it doesn't have to be physical abuse. Just because you don't have signs of abuse doesn't mean that you aren't being abused. Coercive control is very real. Coercive control is invisible and it's so insidious and it it creeps up. So I want people who are in those relationships to acknowledge that they deserve better, that they it's not their fault, and to reach out to loved ones, family members.

And in that case, I want family members and friends and general society to educate themselves on it. To see the signs in case the person isn't able to see it for themselves. You need to be a safe space for someone. You need to not judge them, and you definitely need to not allow that isolation to take place.

Because had we been more open with Katie and not so shut off about the behavior because we were just. We just put it down to jealousy, and she was handling it, and we didn't want to get involved in the drama. There were adults. Maybe there would have been a different outcome. I highly doubt it in that case. But if we had it shut off, we wouldn't be living with the what ifs.

We would have been still her support person, and to this day, I've had to help friends and strangers who are aren't ready to accept what's happening to them. But and as hard as it is to watch someone go through that. Don't leave them. Don't, don't. I don't allow that isolation to take place because that is their greatest weapon.