Case 351: Neelma, Kunal & Sidhi Singh

*** Content warnings: Child victim, child sexual assault *** On April 22 2003, Queensland police arrived at a suburban home in Brisbane’s Bridgeman Downs to find a confronting scene. Three siblings, Neelma, Kunal and Sidhi Singh, had been killed while their parents were overseas, their bodies left in a spa bath with the taps running. Detectives quickly honed in on Neelma’s ex-boyfriend, Max Sica, but according to Max, the real suspect was much closer to home. --- Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/ Research & writing – Elsha McGill Production & music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/ Audio editing – Anthony Telfer Sign up for Casefile Premium: Apple Premium https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/casefile-true-crime/id998568017?ign-itscg=30200S&ign-itsct=casefile_podcastsSpotify Premium https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/9gSwcv7USsbPatreon https://www.patreon.com/casefileFor all credits and sources, please visit https://casefilepodcast.com/case-351-neelma-kunal-sidhi-singh Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  It was just after 2 o'clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 22, 2003, when 33-year-old Max Seeker pulled into Glass Tree Close, a quiet cul-de-sac in the leafy outer Brisbane suburb of Bridgeman Downs. He parked in front of the large two-story brick home belonging to the Singh family. Max's ex-girlfriend, 24-year-old Neelma Singh, lived at the property with her parents and two younger siblings, 18-year-old brother Kunal and 12-year-old sister Sidhi. Although Max and Neelma were no longer romantically involved, they still saw each other often, and Max had brought his two children and niece with him to see if the Sings would like to go see a movie.

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  Max had tried to call Neelma earlier, but she hadn't answered, so he decided to just show up instead. This wasn't something he would normally do. Neelma's parents didn't approve of the two spending time together, and he wasn't welcome at their home. But her parents were currently on an overseas trip, leaving Neelma in charge of the household. Max and the kids got out of the car and walked across the front lawn to knock on the door. There was no answer.

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  Max tried calling Neelma's mobile as well as the Singh's landline, but nobody picked up.

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  Max told his 11-year-old son to go check if the Singh's car was parked in the attached garage. The boy reported that the car was there, as was the family's pet dog, a Jack Russell puppy named Bujo. Max's son then went around the back of the house and peered in through the kitchen window, but he couldn't see anybody inside. The entire house was eerily silent and still, unusual for the typically vibrant household. The Sings were an Indian-Fijian family who had immigrated to Australia from Fiji seven years prior, and their home was usually a hive of activity. Not only were the three Singh children well-liked and popular, with friends coming and going,

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  but their father Vijay was a successful businessman, and their mother Shirley was a beauty and massage therapist who ran a salon from home. It was strange for the house to be so quiet. Max tried the door at the rear of the garage and found that it was unlocked. This was odd. Neelma always kept the door locked unless she was outside having a cigarette. Having visited the property several times before, Max knew that internal access to the house could be gained via the garage. He handed his car keys to his children and told them to go wait in the car while he checked inside.

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  The children returned to the vehicle and played among themselves. About 10 to 20 minutes later, they saw Max emerge from the house, holding the dog Bujo and sobbing.

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  Minutes earlier, Max had placed a call to 000 requesting police assistance. "I've got three dead bodies in a bathtub," he said.

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  Police arrived at the Singh family home not knowing what to expect. Downstairs in the dining room, water was dripping from the waterlogged ceiling, which had started to buckle and looked like it could collapse at any moment.

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  While the rest of the ground floor showed nothing out of the ordinary, the upstairs, where the home's four bedrooms were, told a different story. At the top of the carpeted staircase, there was a streak of blood in the carpet. Those streaks continued down the hallway, leading from Neelma's room to the main bedroom belonging to her parents. The police followed the blood smears into the main bedroom, where they noticed another streak of blood on the carpet, as well as spatters of blood on the bed and surrounding wall. But it was in the adjoining ensuite that the true horror of the situation was unveiled.

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  The spa bath that overlooked the window was overflowing, and the surface of water was murky, brimming with bodily fluids and foam. A pile of blankets, sheets, pillows, and towels had been thrown into the water, partially concealing what lay within.

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  While these conditions made it difficult for the police to know exactly what they were dealing with, they identified what looked like the body of a young woman lying across the top of the spa. It was 24-year-old Neelma Singh. Underneath her, they could see the arm and leg of her 12-year-old sister, Sidhi. Both of their bodies were pale and clammy, indicating they'd been in the hot water for a considerable amount of time.

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  Having been told that there were three bodies in the home, the officers cast their eyes around the ensuite, looking for the third. It was only when they lifted one of the blankets and peered into the spa for a second time that they noticed a pair of hairy male legs submerged at the bottom, belonging to 18-year-old Kunal. Max Seeker told the police that when he'd first entered the home, he'd smelt a terrible stench. Fearing someone could be in the house, he grabbed a large wooden spoon from the garage to arm himself and followed the dog upstairs. He heard a tap running and followed the sound into Shirley and Vijay's ensuite, where he found the spa bath on and water all over the floor.

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  Max said he turned the taps off and then used the wooden spoon to lift the blankets up, which is when he saw the bodies of the three siblings and called 000 from the upstairs landline. Max was visibly distressed, and his parents quickly arrived at the scene to comfort him. The Seekers were a proud Italian family who had known the Sings for roughly seven years, having met them when the Sings first moved to Australia and into the house next door to theirs in the Brisbane suburb of Stafford Heights. Max's father Carlo had warmly welcomed the Sings with pizzas from his pizzeria. Over time, the two families got to know each other well,

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  with Carlo Seeker acting as a kind of father figure to the Singh children when their own father Vijay was overseas on business. As they watched the house team with investigators and tried to comfort their distraught son, it was difficult to comprehend the horrors that lay within.

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  Crime scene examiners and forensic pathologists soon established that the three Singh siblings had been lying in the spa for a significant amount of time before Max discovered their bodies. But they hadn’t been killed in the bathroom. The attack had started in Neelma's bedroom, during which a struggle had ensued and the 24-year-old had been manually strangled to death. She was then hit over the head post-mortem with an unidentified object that had left three symmetrical lacerations. The killer then made their way across the hallway where 12-year-old Sidhi had been sleeping in her parents’ bed, as she often did due to being afraid of the dark.

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  The killer hit Sidhi over the head with the same weapon they’d used on Neelma, with a lack of defensive wounds indicating she’d been asleep the whole time. Kunal had been asleep in his own bedroom down the hall when he too had been hit on the side of the head. The killer then wrapped the siblings’ bodies in bed sheets and dragged them into the spa bath in their parents’ ensuite, leaving the hot water tap running and the jets switched on. Not only had this resulted in extensive water damage to the property, but the water had been heated to 32 degrees Celsius, interfering with the natural decomposition of the bodies. The forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsies therefore couldn’t determine

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  when exactly the Singh siblings had died. But they were able to confirm that while the force of the hit alone had killed Sidhi, it had only rendered Kunal unconscious. He’d still been alive when he was thrown into the spa with his sisters and drowned. The children’s parents, Shirley and Vijay Singh, were in Fiji attending a wedding when they received word that something bad had happened to their children. Shirley called her eldest daughter Sonia, who was married and lived with her husband in Brisbane. All Sonia would tell her was that they needed to get home as soon as possible.

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  Sonia was incredibly close with her three younger siblings, and she was grappling to get her head around what had happened to them. Despite the detectives’ request, she refused to be the one to identify their bodies. Shirley and Vijay boarded the next flight. They were met at the Brisbane airport by a team of detectives who told them they would be taken to the police station for questioning. Shirley still couldn’t grasp the possibility that someone could have hurt her beautiful children. The family had moved to Australia in 1993, seeking a life free of the political unrest that had threatened the safety of Fiji’s Indian community.

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  They’d successfully reestablished themselves in Brisbane, where the children fully embraced the Queensland lifestyle while maintaining strong ties to the Indo-Fijian community and the traditional values of their Hindu culture. Every time she travelled back and forth between Fiji and Australia, Shirley took it in turns to buy her kids something special from the duty-free. It had been Kunal’s turn this time, and he’d asked his mother for some DKMY cologne. As the detectives led the Singh’s through the airport, Shirley excused herself to go and buy the cologne, the cruel reality of what had happened still not sinking in.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Back at the crime scene, investigators had very little to go by. The killer had used bleach to cover their tracks, and smears in various bloodstains suggested they’d also worn gloves while committing the attacks. There had been no signs of forced entry, and the house alarm had been turned off, indicating that the killer had been welcomed as a visitor and not an intruder. None of the neighbours had heard anything particularly out of the ordinary, not even the dog barking, which suggested that the siblings had likely been killed by someone they knew. With very little forensic evidence to go by, detectives started the painstaking task

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  of identifying the hundreds of fingerprints and DNA samples found throughout the house and attempting to attribute them to a known visitor to the home. Phone records also helped detectives narrow down on a time of death. Sonia, the eldest daughter, had been chatting online with Neelma at around 8:30pm on the night of Sunday, April 20, 2003. Neelma had cut the conversation short, saying she had to go because someone was at the door. She didn’t say who this person was. Later, at around 11:10pm, Neelma spoke to Max Seeker on the phone, after which there

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  was no phone or online activity from anyone in the household, and nobody saw them the next day. Given that all three of the Singh siblings were in the habit of regularly texting, calling, and emailing their friends, investigators determined the murders had therefore occurred sometime between 11:30pm on Sunday, April 20, and 7 o’clock the following morning. After dumping the bodies in the spa, the killer had spent a significant amount of time cleaning up the house. Every known visitor to the home was contacted and asked to provide their whereabouts during this key timeframe. One by one, individuals were crossed off the list, but it was a time-consuming endeavour,

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  and the horrific nature of the crime had Brisbane residents gripped in fear. Members of the Indo-Fijian community were terrified that they could be next. Investigators hoped that an arrest would be swift, but even the murder weapon remained a mystery. It took the traumatic task of identifying her children’s bodies before Shirley Singh finally accepted they were gone. She and her husband Vijay agreed to do a walkthrough of the crime scene to see if they could point out anything the police might have missed. Shirley noticed that their mop was not in its usual spot and had clearly been recently

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  used, with a bucket of bleach-filled water sitting in the laundry. The laundry basket which she and Vijay always kept in their bedroom was also downstairs, supporting the belief that the killer had remained in the house cleaning up after committing the crime. Although some of the bedroom cupboards had been opened, very little was missing save for a few sentimental items. In Neelma's room, her jewellery box had been thrown on the floor, and various items were missing, including bracelets, necklaces, pendants, and several 22-carat gold earrings. However, whoever had taken the jewellery had only taken one of each of the pairs of earrings,

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  leaving the others behind. Neelma was a dedicated diary writer, and her most recent diary, in which she kept a detailed record of phone conversations and updates about her romantic life, had been taken, while all of her old ones sat untouched in a drawer. A camera was also missing, along with several photos of one of her ex-boyfriends, a man named Amit. With other items of value, including cash and laptops, sitting untouched around the house, this revelation bolstered the police theory that Neelma had been the target of the crime. The fact that she had been attacked first and was the only one who had been strangled

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  suggested that her younger siblings had likely only been killed to eliminate any possible witnesses. For Shirley and Vijay Singh, that theory made sense. They told the police that in the lead-up to their murders, their family had been subject to ongoing threats and harassment, most of which had been directed at Neelma. While the ordeal had started in late 2002, it had ramped up over recent months. And they were certain they knew who was responsible. Massimo Seeker, who went by Max, had been interviewed by the police several times

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  in the days following his discovery of the bodies. They’d been naturally curious about him, not only because he’d been the one to make the grisly find, but because of his extensive criminal history. Ten years earlier, in May 1993, then-23-year-old Max and two of his mates went on what a judge later called “a grand rampage of lawlessness”. Among other crimes, they slashed the tyres of a police car, shot a 22 rifle into a school, and set fire to a police station. Max, who was already married with two children, eventually pleaded guilty to 83 offences arising

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  from the spree and was sentenced to nine years in prison. He served three before being released on parole in 1996. The following year, he and a fellow former prisoner threw a Molotov cocktail at the home of a mutual enemy, and Max was again convicted of attempted arson. He served another three years in prison, during which his marriage fell apart. Through interviews with the Singh family, the police learnt that when Max was released on parole in the year 2000, he was put on house arrest at his parents’ home in Stafford Heights. The Singh family were still living next door at the time.

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  Neelma Singh was 21 and working at a hotel in Brisbane, eager to carve a career in the tourism and hospitality industry. One night, she was held up at knife point by two masked assailants. Shaken by the incident, Max became a source of comfort for Neelma, and by the end of 2001, she confided in her mother that their relationship had become romantic. This was not welcome news. While the Singh’s liked the Seeker family, given that Max was older, divorced with children, and a convicted criminal, they didn’t feel that Max was a good fit for their daughter.

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  Shirley warned Neelma that Max was bad news, but Neelma assured her that Max was a good guy who had been wrongly judged and had seen her through a very difficult time. She promised that Max treated her well and made her happy.

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  Although Shirley still didn't approve of the relationship, she kept the information from her husband, knowing just how strongly he would forbid it. Vijay was a firm believer that his daughters shouldn't establish any kind of relationship with a man unless they intended to marry him. He also expected that Neelma would marry an Indian man from a good respectable family, preferably one who shared their Hindu faith. Max started spending more time at the Singh home, and the more Vijay got to know him, the stronger he felt he was not right for his daughter. Late one night, Vijay found Max and Neelma sitting side by side at the computer.

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  In his view, this close contact at such an hour was at complete odds with their customs and beliefs, and in front of Max, he started yelling at Neelma and Shirley for allowing such a thing to happen.

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  In early 2002, Neelma applied for a job as a flight attendant with Amret's Airlines.

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  It was a highly competitive role, and after a grueling interview process, she was selected to go to Dubai for a three-month training programme. Her parents were thrilled that it would put some distance between her and Max, but the two remained in regular contact the whole time. By March, the Singh family had bought a block of land in Bridgeman Downs, a 10-minute drive from their first residence, and started building their dream home. Kunal, who was studying business management but had dreams of being a designer, had helped design it, sketching plans for the landscaping and an eventual water feature for the front yard.

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  One day, Vijay was working at the building site when Max approached him and asked for his permission to marry Neelma. Vijay was incredulous. "You are a criminal," he said, "you are not fit for my daughter," before threatening to smash Max in the face with a brick. Max was furious. "You don't know what I'm capable of," he warned. "I'll bring you down. I can cave your fucking head in right now and get away with it. Capisce?"

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  Two months later, Neelma secretly returned to Australia and moved in with Max to a unit his parents owned in Briby Island, 80 kilometres north of Brisbane. They lived together for six weeks before Neelma moved back in with her family at their new home, admitting to her mother that she'd seen a different side of Max during their brief time living together. She said that Max was apparently part of a gang who were planning to kidnap an Asian businessman for ransom, and that she'd seen him hack into his friend's computer. Neelma told her mother she was going to break things off with Max, but given he was a dangerous man, she'd need to do it slowly.

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  By the end of 2002, Max was still hanging around, and it was Shirley who told him to stay away from her daughter for good. Sonia Paddock, the eldest married Singh daughter, also opposed to the relationship, and sent Max a string of emails warning him away. Shortly after, friends and relatives of the Singh family received an email from an unknown sender with the subject line: "Introducing the true Sonia Paddock." Inside were doctored photos of Sonia advertising bondage services on a sex website, as well as a profile from an alternative lifestyle directory which suggested Sonia was bisexual.

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  Sonia was convinced that Max had sent the emails in retaliation for her disapproval, hoping it would make her look bad in the Indian community. Neelma tried to move on from Max and started seeing other men. In February 2003, Vijay received an email from someone calling themselves Peter Pan with the subject line "Gossip." It spoke about a sexual liaison Neelma apparently had with one of Vijay's employees. Two weeks later, on March 6, an email from an unidentified address arrived in the inboxes of Vijay and several other friends, relatives and business associates of the Singh family,

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  including Neelma's ex-boyfriend and one of her coworkers. The subject line simply said "Neelma Singh, introducing." Inside were several naked photos of Neelma, including one of her on the toilet and one in which she was handcuffed to a bedpost.

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  Neelma had no doubt that Max had sent the emails. She had consented to him taking the photos during their time together in Briby Island. When a friend who had received the provocative emails wrote to Neelma asking what was going on, Neelma explained that she'd recently tried to end things with Max, and he'd reacted badly and was blackmailing her. She also said that some of the photos had been digitally altered, with her face being used on somebody else's naked body.

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  The email brought great shame to Neelma, but also to her parents, who feared that their family's reputation within their community had been tarnished.

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  The Singh's suspected that Max had somehow accessed Neelma's email account and gained access to her contact list, which he then used to distribute the images.

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  He was somewhat of a computer whiz, having studied computing during his time behind bars.

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  Max denied sending the photos, claiming that his computer had been hacked. But this incident marked a turning point for Neelma, and by mid-March 2003, she was so humiliated by the violation that she barely left the house and was too afraid to use her computer in case it was bugged. Well and truly done with Max, she avoided seeing him and stopped answering his calls.

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  Neelma told her mother that she'd seen Max driving past their property and that he'd once spied on them from the building site next door. Around the same time, Shirley started finding doors mysteriously unlocked around the house and blinds retracted.

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  Vijay took Neelma to the police station to report Max's behaviour, but the officers on duty felt that Vijay was pressuring her to make a statement, and nothing further was done.

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  Vijay organised for a security alarm to be installed in their home, with the primary purpose of keeping Max away. On March 15, 2003, just over a month before the murders, Max sent Neelma a text message, saying: "I have some stuff I really need to speak to you about. I haven't got long left, Nim. I'm sick."

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  On March 29, Neelma accepted a phone call from Max, during which he told her that he was in hospital with an inoperable stage IV brain tumour and only had a few months left to live. He didn't want his family to know about it, so he'd burned any evidence of the tumour, such as scans, X-rays and letters from his doctors. Max told Neelma that she was the only one he trusted and that he wanted to spend time with her before he died. But he wasn't going to wait until the tumour killed him. Instead, Max said he planned to spend a nice day with his family before driving his car off a mountain so that they and Neelma could get an insurance payout.

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  Neelma was crushed. She spoke with Max for hours, organising Hindu prayer blessings for him and urging him to tell his family what was going on.

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  When her own family found out about it, they didn't buy Max's story for a second. Shirley and Kunal warned Neelma that it was just a ploy to get her attention, and she quickly started doubting it herself. Neelma told her doctor everything she knew about Max's tumour, and they too cast doubt on his story. But Neelma was a caring and compassionate person, and she couldn't help but worry about Max. By April, the two were back in regular contact.

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  When Shirley and Vijay left for Fiji on April 13, they had no hesitation in leaving Neelma in charge of the household. She adored her siblings and always took great care of them. Being 12 years older than Sidhi, Neelma had doted on her younger sister since the day she was born, caring for her with such affection and tenderness that Shirley said Sidhi was like Neelma's living doll. But without their parents there to keep an eye on things, this also left the door open for unwelcome guests.

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• 34:12Speaker 00

  In the days following the murders, Max Seeker had been open and forthcoming during his questioning with police. He openly admitted that he'd visited Nilma at her family home several times while her parents were away. Usually late at night when the younger ones were already in bed. And that they'd had sex on these occasions. Max said these visits were entirely consensual and pre-arranged. This was supported by data that showed the house alarm had been turned off on each occasion.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  What Max didn't initially tell police is that he and Nilma had plans to catch up that Sunday night. This was revealed by phone records, which showed that Nilma had invited Max over to take part in a prayer session. At 8:56pm, she texted him to say she'd see him later that night, but also mentioned. "I think I'm coming down with something, feeling like a day before you get sick." She said she would give him the one ring. Max explained this was a code Nilma used to signify that her siblings were asleep and that the coast was clear for him to come over. Max called her straight after that and they spoke for two and a half minutes.

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  According to Max, it was during this call that Nilma told him she was feeling too sick for him to come around and they cancelled their plans. But at 11:10pm, records revealed that Nilma had called Max's phone. Marking the last contact that any of the Singh children had before they were killed.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Max denied having gone to the house on the night of Sunday, April 20. Saying he was at his parents' home all night, an alibi which both they and some earlier visitors to the house supported. Max's older brother, who also lived at the Seeker house, said that he'd gone into Max's room at around midnight to tell him something. But found him fast asleep in bed.

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  Early the next morning, Max had gone to pick up his kids from his ex-wife's house and had then spent the day running errands. Movements which were confirmed via various witness statements, CCTV footage and phone records. Days after he'd discovered the bodies, Max had attempted to join the police for a videotape to walk through of the crime scene. But he'd become too distraught and had punched a mirror. His father took him to hospital where he was treated for signs of shock.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  News of the murders was making headlines across Queensland and media throngs gathered outside the property. With some suspecting that Max could have been involved. Max's mother, Anna, fronted reporters to deny any such claims, saying. "Some police might think he did it, but he did not. These kids were next door to us for seven years. They were beautiful, nice kids. I know very well my son would never be able to do such a sick thing, such a terrible thing like that. My son is now very traumatised by what he saw in that house."

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  On the night that the bodies were discovered, police had searched Max's parents' home in Stafford and confiscated his clothing. But none of it revealed signs of blood, bleach or anything else tying him to the scene. The carpet in his vehicle looked like it had come into contact with bleach, but further testing revealed no sign of the product.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  The police did, however, find some interesting software on his computer. Max had installed Cyberscrub, an advanced software program that essentially erased everything from his hard drive. He had activated it just after eight o'clock on the night before the Singh bodies were discovered. In his car, a box of latex gloves was also found. It was also revealed that just days before the murders, on April 16. Max had arranged to meet up with Neelma's ex-boyfriend, Amit. The man whose photos had been taken from Neelma's bedroom. There had been some talk among the Singh family about Neelma rekindling this relationship.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Although there is conflicting information about whether or not Neelma had any interest in doing so. Max told Amit that he was gay and his relationship with Neelma was a sham to deflect attention from this fact. He also told him about his brain tumor, saying that he'd be dead in a month.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  Neelma had allegedly said similar things to a friend during a phone call on the day before she was killed. Although it sounded to her friend like she'd been prompted to say such things. While all of this was obviously of interest to the police, they hadn't found any evidence to implicate Max in the crime. And given that he'd provided an alibi, they were conscious not to let tunnel vision get in the way of their investigation. A major incident room was established at the Petrie Police Station. Where officers filtered calls from the public and continued following up the alibis of known visitors to the Singh property. Max Seeker was high on the list of persons of interest, but the police were considering all possibilities.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  And as far as Max was concerned, the real person the police should be looking at was much closer to home.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  According to Max Seeker, the sibling’s father, Vijay Singh, was the one who shouldn’t be trusted. Max said that Vijay had been cheating on his wife for years with multiple partners, and that he was physically abusive towards the women in his family. While he explained that the family dynamic had always been toxic, he said that tensions had recently been boiling within the Singh household due to an affair that Vijay was having with a woman in Fiji.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Shirley Singh confirmed this. While she’d always known that her husband could be unfaithful from time to time, this most recent affair had been different. In October 2002, Vijay had returned from a trip to Fiji in an uncharacteristically good mood. He admitted he was seeing another woman, and told Shirley he wanted her and the kids to move out so he could move his new girlfriend in. Shirley confided in Neelma about this, and without Vijay’s knowledge, the two of them secretly travelled to Fiji to track Vijay’s lover down.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  They discovered that the woman was a married nightclub manager who had recently separated from her husband and was living in a flat paid for by Vijay. Shirley confronted the woman and a fight broke out between them, leaving the police to consider whether to press assault charges against Shirley.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Neelma emailed Max from Fiji to explain what was going on, saying: “I spoke to Dad as well. He told me that when I get to Brisbane, he would cut me to pieces. He said he really wants to bash us up, and he will really do it. Now, the big favour I need from you is I want Papa bashed. I want his nose broken, two black eyes, lose a couple of teeth and a couple of bruises, preferably in his private areas. Money shouldn’t be a problem, but it has to be done really well.”

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Vijay convinced the Fijian police to drop the charges against Shirley, and she and Neelma returned to Brisbane. Max was so infuriated by the way Vijay was treating the women in his family that he started to suspect he could be abusing young Sidhi too. Max said he approached the 12-year-old and asked if her father ever touched her.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  Her response was yes. She allegedly said that sometimes when she slept in the main bedroom alone with her father, he touched her bottom and moaned.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  On the night of November 11, 2002, Shirley was still reeling about the discovery of Vijay’s Fijian girlfriend when Neelma told her that Vijay had been inappropriately touching Sidhi. Shirley was enraged. After downing several glasses of wine, she accosted Vijay while he was sleeping, grabbing him by his shirt and shaking him awake. Vijay retreated to his home office and locked himself inside. Max arrived at the house around the same time, having been called by one of the children.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Shirley found a spare key to the office, and Max forced his way inside, closing the door behind him and telling Neelma and Shirley to leave. Vijay had recently started receiving threatening phone calls and had taken to the habit of recording some of his conversations, including this interaction. Max launched at Vijay, grabbing him by the throat and pushing him hard against the wall.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  “What you did to your daughter, I’ll fucking kill you,” he yelled. “I will put you down. I am not a woman, I’m not a kid. Capisce? I could cave your fucking head in right now and get away with it. Capisce? I know what you did to your daughters. I’m going to tear you apart.”

• 43:56Speaker 00

  Vijay vehemently denied the allegations, claiming Max had brainwashed his family into believing his lies. He repeatedly told him to leave, but Shirley said Max had her permission to be there.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Both men called the police, and two officers quickly arrived to break up the argument and take statements from those present. Shirley subsequently took out a restraining order against Vijay, and he moved in with their eldest daughter, telling friends he didn’t feel safe at home.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  According to Shirley, when she later spoke to Sidhi about the allegations, the 12-year-old explained that when Max had asked if her father ever touched her, what she’d actually said was: “Of course he does. He hugs me all the time.”

• 44:47Speaker 00

  A police investigation was launched, but no evidence was found to support the allegations, and no charges were laid against Vijay. He eventually returned to the family home, and Shirley made it clear to Max that he was no longer welcomed there.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Shortly after, Shirley received an email from an anonymous sender whom she believed was Max, asking what type of mother would stay with a man who had abused her daughter.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  A record check revealed that Vijay Singh did indeed have a history of violence towards Neelma. Back in October 1997, he’d been charged with assaulting the then-18-year-old, resulting in a $1,000 fine and a three-year good behaviour bond. The incident had occurred after Vijay found Neelma speaking on the phone to a boy she had a crush on. Incensed, he’d hit her over the leg so hard with a pool cue that it broke.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Kunal and Sidhi witnessed the entire incident.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Neelma was so badly bruised that she could barely walk and had to stay home from school for three days. When she returned, Shirley wasn’t sure who else to turn to, so they told the principal, and the principal reported the incident to the police. Neelma spoke to a counsellor about the violence she and her mother experienced at the hands of her father, and said she wanted to remain living at home to protect her younger sister. The police investigating the Singh family murders had already confirmed that Vijay was in Fiji at the time the killings took place. While this gave him an ironclad alibi, it didn’t rule out the possibility that Vijay could have orchestrated the murders in some way.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  When the police asked Shirley Singh about some of the allegations Max Seeker had made, she admitted that her husband could be physically violent and threatening towards her and her daughters. One particularly bad incident involved Vijay dragging Shirley along the carpet by her hair and punching her in the face, an incident which landed her in hospital and saw Vijay served with a domestic violence order. But Shirley said that Vijay had never laid a hand on Kunal. For all his shortcomings, Shirley said that Vijay loved his children dearly, and there was no way he would have ever played a role in having them killed.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Back at the Singh residence, the crime scene investigation continued. When the forensic examiners had been dusting for fingerprints, they’d placed newspapers on the floor to protect the carpet. When they picked the newspaper up, they were surprised to find a full footprint impression had revealed itself at the bottom of the stairs. A thorough examination of the carpeted staircase revealed a set of footprints made in bleach on every second step. The only full impression was at the bottom of the stairs, with the bleach marks then becoming fainter with each step upwards. All up, there was one full print and eight partial prints. Based on this discovery,

• 48:08Speaker 00

  the police believed the killer had been wearing socks at the time of the murders and had either intentionally dipped them in bleach or accidentally walked through bleach during the clean-up.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Two weeks into the investigation, as officers continued to bag evidence for testing, one of them was inspecting the garage when they found a three-pronged garden fork behind the family’s barbecue. One of the prongs was slightly bent, and the other two looked like they had been recently cleaned, yet smears of red remained visible. Wondering if this could explain the three symmetrical lacerations on Neelma and Sidhi's heads, the garden fork was taken for testing, confirming the pattern matched and that it contained blood from all three of the Singh siblings. While this was a significant breakthrough, there were no fingerprints or foreign DNA

• 49:03Speaker 00

  on the garden fork, further solidifying the belief that the killer had worn gloves. Given that the murder weapon belonged to the household and hadn’t been brought to the scene, it also suggested the possibility that the killer could have acted on impulse. But investigators also considered whether the use of the garden fork could hold some kind of ceremonial significance. The Singh’s were strong devotees of Lord Shiva, a principal deity in Hinduism who symbolises profound wisdom and self-discipline. In many depictions, Lord Shiva holds a three-pronged fork known as a trishula.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  This represents his mastery over the three fundamental aspects of existence: creation, preservation, and destruction, as well as his power over the past, present, and future. Shirley Singh told the police that Max Seeker was well aware of the family’s religious beliefs, and that he also had strong knowledge of forensic procedures. She said he’d once put on plastic gloves before handling some documents Neelma had shown him, which had struck her as odd. The Singh’s were so convinced of Max’s guilt that when the joint funeral for Neelma, Kunal, and Sidhi took place on May 14, he was escorted from the chapel by police at

• 50:27Speaker 00

  the family’s insistence, in front of the hundreds of mourners who had packed into the chapel to pay their respects. The siblings’ coffins were adorned with their favourite flowers: red roses for both the Neelma and Kunal, and friendship pennies for Sidhi. When it came time for them to be taken away for cremation, Shirley threw herself at the coffins and had to be held back. It was all too much for the grieving mother. Earlier that day, the coffins had been brought to the family home for a private Hindu prayer ceremony. Later reflecting on this experience, Shirley said: “There is no way to easily express how I felt.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  It was soul-destroying. When you welcome children into the world, you do so with an unspoken promise to love and to protect them for life. In ways, I felt like I’d failed them.” Although the police remained convinced that Neelma had been the intended target of the murders, they also considered the possibility that the Singh family could have been targeted over an issue with their finances or business dealings. On the surface, the Singh’s appeared to be financially comfortable: they ran successful businesses and owned their new home in Bridgeman Downs, as well as an apartment in Brisbane and another house in Fiji.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  However, the police discovered that just five months before the murders, the couple had registered a charge against their home with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, a move that is often associated with seeking major finance or struggling with current debt. Vijay had also recently won a court case against one of Shirley’s nephews for money owed to his company. This had essentially left the nephew bankrupt, and he’d had to sell his house to pay Vijay back. Despite this, both Shirley and Vijay denied having any issues or enemies within their professional dealings, explaining these events as standard game when operating a business.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Vijay’s brother, who co-owned the family business in Fiji, said: “Everything was going very well, the business and everything. We had our competition, for sure, like everyone, but nothing that would make anyone ever think of doing something like that.” But that didn’t explain why, when the police checked the message bank on the family’s landline in the early days of the investigation, they found a threat directed at Vijay. “Pick up the fucking phone,” said a man with a Fijian accent. “I know where your family lives. You fuck with my family, I’m going to fuck with your family. If you don’t call tomorrow, I am going to rape your wife and daughter.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Both will die.” Other threatening messages also suggested that Vijay owed various people money. Vijay said he hadn’t even been aware of the message directed towards his family, but admitted there had been others like it. He told the police he thought Neelma and Shirley had paid someone to make the calls, so that he’d be scared into ending his affair with the Fijian nightclub manager. Shirley admitted she had also received two calls from a man who claimed to be the disgruntled husband of Vijay’s lover. He said something along the lines of:

• 53:58Speaker 00

  “If Vijay does not leave my wife alone, I am going to have him killed or bashed.” The threatening calls and emails had become so frequent that Vijay had started recording his phone conversations, as well as other interactions within the family home, including some of his run-ins with Max Seeker, which were given to the police during the course of the investigation. Then there was Shirley’s massage and beauty business which she ran from the family home. Many of her clients were men, ranging from all ages. While Shirley denied outwardly offering any sexual services, she admitted that some of the male clients became aroused during their massages.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  She said this only happened by accident, and that when it did, she offered to give them “hand relief” if they asked for it. Neelma sometimes spoke to customers on the phone to handle bookings, but Sidhi never did. Shirley admitted she sometimes asked Kunal to let his presence be known when male clients were visiting, but she couldn’t think of any one of her clients who would want to hurt her or her family. Weeks turned into months with no arrests. During this time, Max Seeker conducted several interviews with various media outlets, saying that he’d become the prime suspect for the murders, despite having nothing to do

• 55:28Speaker 00

  with the crime. While he admitted to having a significant criminal history, he clarified that in his view, none of the crimes he’d been convicted of involved violence, and he was being unfairly judged for the poor choices he’d made in the past. He provided detailed accounts of discovering the bodies, during which he remained stony-faced, leaving some members of the public questioning how an innocent man could show such little emotion upon recalling such a horrendous incident. Max described himself as being “public enemy number one”. While he admitted to reporters that he never had a brain tumour, he claimed it was Neelma who came up with the idea.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Apparently, she thought it could garner some sympathy from her parents and allow them to continue seeing one another. Max outwardly denied the suggestion that he had killed Neelma because she rejected him and then killed her siblings to eliminate the witnesses, instead casting public suspicion on Vijay Singh. While he stopped short of outwardly saying that he thought Vijay was behind the murders, he said Vijay was abusive towards the women in his family, and that Neelma had been very afraid of him. “I’m not here to prove anything,” Max told one reporter. “The police need to prove who did this, and we’re all waiting for that. It’s not up to me to say I think this person did it or this person did it, because

• 56:57Speaker 00

  that just makes me a bad person.” Asked why he agreed to the interview, Max said he was doing it for the three Singh children who were unable to speak out about the abuse they’d been enduring while they were still alive.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  While Shirley admitted to the police that some of the allegations Max had made about her husband were true, it wasn't until nine months into the investigation that she came clean about some other aspects of their marriage. Shirley estimated that over the course of their marriage, Vijay could have cheated on her with as many as forty different women. While this upset Shirley deeply, she wanted her children to have a father, as well as a comfortable and financially stable life, which she believed Vijay provided, and so she chose to stay with him. But as their children grew older, Vijay's sexual demands became more extreme. He wanted Shirley to take part in threesomes with him, saying it was her duty as his wife,

• 57:59Speaker 00

  and that he'd stop cheating on her if she agreed. While Shirley had no interest in such a request, she wanted to satisfy her husband, and saw it as the only way to keep her family together. When she reluctantly obliged, Vijay subsequently hired sex workers to visit their home on several occasions, which made Shirley physically ill. On the weekends, Vijay also started taking Shirley to swingers' clubs in the city. They sometimes hired motel rooms to have sex with others. At home, Vijay forced Shirley to watch pornography with him and participate in phone sex. According to Shirley, the only reason she ever provided hand relief to some of her

• 58:44Speaker 00

  male massage clients was because Vijay encouraged her to, so that she could tell him about it later on. He even shared a fantasy which involved her having sex with Max Seeker. All the while, Vijay continued to be violent towards her. Shirley turned to alcohol to numb the pain, drinking heavily while the children were at school. During a particularly rough patch, she had once asked a relative for advice. "If you get a sore on your finger, you don't cut it off," they told her, "you try to heal it." Despite all the affairs and violence, Shirley felt it was her duty to be an obedient wife,

• 59:29Speaker 00

  and she ultimately decided to stay with Vijay to keep the family together. By the time Shirley finished telling police all of this, one of them described her as being "an absolute basket case." It was clear to them that all of the behaviour she'd described went against everything she believed in, and that she felt great shame at telling them the truth. While this revelation certainly helped paint a clearer picture of the true family dynamic, the police still didn't think Vijay had played a role in organising to have their children killed. That the murder weapon had come from within their own house indicated this wasn't an organised crime.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  If someone had come to the home intending to kill, they would have come prepared with their own weapon. Despite the shocking reality of what had been happening behind closed doors at the Singh residence, it didn't change the fact that the police investigation was becoming increasingly focused on one person. When Max Seeker publicly declared himself the prime suspect in the murders, the police had never said any such thing. The more attention he drew to himself, however, the more suspicious they became. From the moment Max discovered the bodies, it wasn't just his criminal history or fractured

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  relationship with the Singh family that had raised eyebrows. Max had told the police, and then later the press, that when he discovered the crime scene, he had seen three bodies in the spa bath. Given that the first responders on the scene had initially only identified two bodies, and it was only later when they moved some of the bedding aside that the third body was revealed, they found Max's statement dubious. Some started to think that the reason he knew there were three bodies in the spa was because he was the one who had put them there. Other elements of the crime scene supported this possibility.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  None of Max's DNA was found in the house, despite him admittedly having had sex with Neelma in the days before the murders. The killer appeared to have gotten in through the rear garage door, which Max was known to use. The sensor lights and alarm were turned off, which Neelma was known to do when Max was coming over. The dog hadn't barked, suggesting a familiarity with the killer. Given that the victims were attacked while sleeping, it also suggested the killer knew the layout of the home and the sleeping habits of those within. That the killer had stayed so long to clean up the scene also indicated they knew they

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  wouldn't be disturbed. When the police spoke to Max's ex-wife, she said he had a fascination with CSI, a popular TV show that revolves around a team of crime scene investigators who work with police to solve crimes using advanced scientific methods. She said that Max often taped the episodes, and that one of his favourites involved a death in a spa bath. He also frequented a website that explained how to remove DNA and fingerprints from crime scenes. At the time Max discovered the bodies, two tradesmen had been working on the house adjacent to the Sings.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  They'd seen Max at the house so many times that they just assumed he lived there. While Max was inside the house, a trestle table belonging to the tradies had blown into the Sings' front yard, just missing Max's children who had been standing nearby. Max had come out to speak to the tradies before going back inside and calling 011. Thinking Max was calling to report them and the rogue table, the tradies packed up and left. Max never told the police about this incident, but when news spread about the murders, the tradies called the police to report it themselves.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  The interesting thing about this was that the tradies estimated the trestle had blown into the Sings' yard at 2:15pm. Max told police he hadn't even arrived at the Singh property until around 2:20, yet a neighbour who recognised his car said he was parked on the street at around 2pm. If this was true, it meant Max could have spent as long as half an hour inside the house before placing the call to 011 at 2:33pm. This raised the question of what he could have been doing inside the house for so long, why he lied about it, and whether he could have been using that time to stage a scene or destroy evidence.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

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• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  By late March 2004, the investigation into the murders of Nilma, Kunal and Sidi Singh was nearing its one-year anniversary, and no arrests had been made. The previous 12 months had taken a huge toll on the surviving members of the Singh family. Shirley and Vijay barely spoke, yet both remained living in the Bridgman Downs home on the brink of financial collapse. Not only had they spent an estimated $180,000 fixing the water damage caused to their home, but Shirley had been too distressed to work. Vijay eventually had to sell their business in Fiji and put their investment properties on the market.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Six months after the murders, he had a heart attack and had to be fitted with a stent and put on lifelong medication. While it pained Shirley to stay in the home where her three children were killed, it also helped her to feel close to them. She set up several shrines in their honour, including one in the spa where their bodies were found. She kissed their photos every night, leaving their bedrooms untouched as though they might one day return, sometimes cooking their favourite meals and setting places for them at the table. The only thing that kept Shirley going was the memory of her children and the possibility that their killer would soon be caught.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  As this began to look increasingly unlikely, she self-medicated with prescription sleeping pills and alcohol and was hospitalized three times in six months. After celebrating what would have been Kunal’s 19th birthday, she tried to take her own life by overdosing on sleeping pills and then drowning herself in the same spa where her children lost their lives. Her eldest daughter Sonia, who was struggling through her own grief at the loss of her three younger siblings, found Shirley unresponsive, an incident that further added to her own trauma. Shirley spent 13 days in the mental health unit before returning home, where her self-destructive behaviour continued.

• 1:08:30Speaker 00

  Some nights, she mixed wine with sleeping pills and stumbled the 30-minute walk to the cemetery where her children’s ashes were buried, sometimes falling asleep at the gates. One day, officers working the case visited Shirley and told her how important it was she stayed healthy and strong. They considered her a key witness and said that without her, the person responsible for killing her children might never be held accountable. And, with the one-year anniversary looming, they were determined to finally make a move. On March 31, 2004, police ramped up their focus on Max Seeker, and after a routine

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  visit to the parole board, he was taken into custody for a full interrogation. The garden fork used in the killings was laid out on display, and according to one officer, when Max saw it, he went pale and his demeanour changed. Over the course of 18 hours, the accusation was put to Max that he had carried out the killings before returning to the house days later to stage the discovery. Max made various admissions, including that he was the one who had sent the emails containing sexually explicit photos of Neelma and her older sister Sonia, but he forcefully denied having anything to do with the murders.

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  He said he’d only sent the emails because Vijay was stopping Neelma from being with him, and he wanted to make Vijay look bad. After Max’s interrogation, the police officially declared him to be their primary person of interest. Search warrants were carried out at the homes of his parents and sisters, where the walls were x-rayed and various items were taken for forensic testing. The police then set about testing the nine sock-clad footprints that had been made in bleach on the Singh staircase. Queensland Police hired the builders who had constructed the Singh’s home and had them build an exact replica of the family staircase inside the Petrie Police Station.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  Everything was identical, from the angles and dimensions of the stairs to the type of carpet. The only thing that differed slightly was the underlay. Detectives filmed Max for hours, walking up and down the replica stairs to record how his feet naturally pressed into the surface. They had him do it barefoot as well as wearing socks of varying thickness. They recorded his footprints using both ink and bleach, and while standing and sitting. A Canadian crime scene examiner who specialised in foot impressions was flown to Australia to supervise the experiment. He determined that there was no anatomical difference between Max’s left footprint

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  and the highly intact print found at the very bottom of the staircase. Both prints shared the same measurements and unique characteristics. A forensic podiatrist who studied the impressions agreed. While neither of the experts could definitively say that the footprints had been made by Max Seeker, they both concluded that he couldn’t be eliminated as being the one who left them. This was a breakthrough for the investigators, as it was the closest they’d come to finding physical evidence placing Max at the crime scene. But it still wasn’t enough to warrant an arrest. For that to happen, they still needed something more concrete, either something indisputably

• 1:12:09Speaker 00

  tying Max to the scene, or a confession. Audrey Brown, not her real name, had met Max Seeker when they were both teenagers, having worked in his father’s pizzeria. They’d been good friends at the time, and could spend hours talking about anything and everything. That was until Max started to display some odd behaviour, sometimes following Audrey home with his car lights turned off. Unnerved by this, she stopped spending time alone with Max, and the two drifted apart. But, after Audrey heard about what happened to the Singh siblings, she reached out to

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Max, putting a sympathy card in his parents’ letterbox. From there, the two rekindled their friendship and started getting together often to chat. During these conversations, they often shared theories about the Singh murders, speculating over what the killer might have done and why. Around this same time, Audrey was giving a statement to the police about an unrelated matter when she mentioned the contact she’d been having with Max Seeker. The officer she spoke to was intrigued and passed the information on to the homicide squad who reached out to Audrey, curious to know what she had learned during these encounters.

• 1:13:36Speaker 00

  In late March 2004 and early April, when the heat was placed on Max, she agreed to wear a wire while discussing the murders with him. He didn’t say anything incriminating during that time, and Audrey refused to wear the wire again, but she did agree to keep the police in the loop of their conversations. Audrey told Max she was considering writing a book about the crime, and he was receptive to the idea, sharing details with her about his life and relationship with Neelma. Although Max trusted Audrey, it was also clear that he was paranoid when it came to talking about the murders. He sometimes patted her down to make sure she wasn’t wearing a wire, or asked her

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  to remove her shoes and glasses in case they were fitted with listening devices. During one meeting, Audrey claimed that Max warned her. “If I ever find out you’re talking to the detectives, I’ll take you for a little drive.” Audrey’s perspective on Max’s guilt fluctuated constantly. While she thought he was typically a nice person, she also saw a darkness in him that could come out of nowhere. In one conversation, he’d tell her he was going to find the real killer and conduct his own investigation. In the next, he hypothesized about his own involvement, saying that if he had committed

• 1:15:02Speaker 00

  the murders, it wouldn’t have been in a jealous rage, but a pre-planned attack. In October 2005, the police became concerned for Audrey’s safety and advised her to stop telling them about her conversations with Max. While they continued to follow up on any new leads and slowly continued eliminating visitors to the Singh home through the painstaking DNA process, the investigation had mostly come to a standstill. Police kept Max under close surveillance, who by this point had become romantically involved with another Indo-Fijian woman, and in 2006, the two welcomed a daughter together.

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

  Once a week, those still working the Singh case met up for lunch to discuss any recent developments. Max once happened upon the group by accident, and from that point on, he returned to the restaurant every week, sitting in his car and watching them. While he never said a word, the investigators believed it was a sign of Max’s confidence in his belief that he’d gotten away with murder.

• 1:16:15Speaker 00

  Despite the police warning, Audrey Brown continued meeting up with Max from time to time to discuss the case. While the police had mostly lost interest in what she had to tell them, that all changed in mid-March 2008. According to Audrey, she and Max had planned to meet up on the evening of March 16, which was the night before Max’s birthday. Audrey had cancelled at the last minute, which had upset Max to the point that he began drinking, and then asked Audrey to come and pick him up, so they could talk. Audrey reluctantly agreed, and drove them to their usual meeting place in a nearby park.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  She noticed that Max seemed a bit wobbly on his feet, and unguarded in the way he was talking, but not noticeably drunk or slurring his words.

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  After exchanging the usual pleasantries, Max allegedly asked Audrey if she was going to grill him about the murders again. She said that she was. Max then insisted they get out of the car, in case it was bugged.

• 1:17:23Speaker 00

  The last time they’d met, they’d discussed the concept of remorse. Audrey told Max that she still was trying to work out if he was remorseful about what had happened, and she asked him if he ever cried. According to Audrey, Max responded that he had remorse for what he did, saying: “I cry like a baby about it. If I could take back what happened, I would.”

• 1:17:50Speaker 00

  As the discussion continued, Max allegedly said: “Do you know how hard it is to kill somebody that says ‘Please don’t, don’t, please’? You know, it’s not easy to kill somebody who’s saying that.”

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  Audrey spoke gently to Max, touching his hair and reassuring him that he was a good person. They spoke for four hours, and when it came time to leave, Max allegedly said: “Am I a bastard?”

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  Audrey assured him that he wasn’t, to which Max responded: “If I am, I want it to be by you. If I am bastard, it is okay.”

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  Audrey reported the conversation to the police, who saw this as the closest thing they’d ever had to a confession. In April, Audrey agreed to wear a wire while meeting with Max again, to see if they could get something on record, but Max denied that the previous conversation had ever taken place. Regardless, the police felt that coupled with the footprint evidence, the dubious alibi, and a potential motive involving Neelma's rejection, the alleged confession from Audrey might finally be enough to proceed with charges against Max.

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  As police worked to get their ducks in a row, in September 2008, an unexpected report came in from a Brisbane high school. One of their students, a 13-year-old girl, had apparently told her friends she was having a sexual relationship with an older man, and it had been going on since she was nine years old.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  That man was a friend of her family’s, who sometimes babysat for her: Max Seeker.

• 1:19:45Speaker 00

  The girl was hesitant to speak to the police at first, claiming she had only disclosed the details about the relationship to her friend as a means of coaxing information out of her about her own abuse. But eventually, when pressed further, she gave a detailed description of the alleged offences that had occurred between her and Max Seeker over a four-year period. These incidents had allegedly taken place while Max was under police surveillance for the Singh case, and sometimes while his girlfriend was upstairs.

• 1:20:17Speaker 00

  For these offences, on October 29, 2009, Max Seeker was indicted on 20 charges involving the sexual assault of a child, including two counts of rape, six counts of unlawful carnal knowledge with a child, and nine counts of indecently dealing with a child. Max denied the allegations, and was released on bail.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  By December that year, the police had only two DNA profiles left to exclude from the 300-plus profiles that had been collected from the Singh household during the initial crime scene investigation.

• 1:20:54Speaker 00

  They successfully located those individuals and ruled them both out as suspects, leaving only Max Seeker on a list of known visitors to the house, who couldn’t be conclusively excluded as the killer. On December 30, 2008, one week after Max married his long-term girlfriend, and as they were preparing to head to the Sunshine Coast for their honeymoon, police visited Max at his house near Briby Island, and placed him under arrest for the murders of Neelma, Kunal, and Sidhi Singh.

• 1:21:27Speaker 00

  With the murders deemed more serious than the child sex abuse charges, it was determined that Max would face trial for the killings first. His lawyer told reporters that the case against his client was entirely circumstantial, and said the police had collected no physical evidence in the nearly six-year investigation to warrant the arrest. He predicted the upcoming legal battle would become one of Queensland’s most notorious criminal trials, a battle that Shirley Singh welcomed. Addressing reporters out the front of her home, tears streamed down Shirley’s face as she thanked the police for their tireless work, saying: “It’s the end of one long battle, and the beginning of another one.”

• 1:22:13Speaker 00

  It wasn’t until the committal hearing started in August 2009 that it became clear just how big that battle would be.

• 1:22:23Speaker 00

  The brief of evidence against Max Seeker was so large that detectives had to hire a truck to transport it to court.

• 1:22:31Speaker 00

  All up, there were approximately 36,000 pages of documents, over 300 video cassettes, and 400 audio cassettes, amounting to over 670GB of data. There was so much information that Max’s defence lawyer, who had taken on the case pro bono, quickly became overwhelmed with the demands, calling it “an enormous burden for any barrister”.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  Max’s lawyer called for the case to be thrown out entirely, arguing that police had tunnel vision on Max from the start, when, in his view, the evidence suggested that Vijay Singh had far more motive to kill his children than Max did.

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  Given Vijay’s infidelity, it was also possible that the crimes had been committed by a disgruntled husband or boyfriend seeking their revenge on Vijay. The same went for his business dealings. He also implied that the Singh’s unconventional sex life meant that strangers often came and went from the house, and it couldn’t be proven that one of them wasn’t responsible.

• 1:23:39Speaker 00

  When Shirley Singh was pressed on the stand about her husband’s affairs and history of domestic violence, she asked Max’s lawyer: “Why are you picking on Vijay? Ask me about my good life.”

• 1:23:56Speaker 00

  All up, it took 95 days for the evidence to be presented, making it one of the longest committal hearings in Queensland legal history. Despite the circumstantial nature of the case, the judge ruled there was sufficient evidence for Max Seeker to proceed to trial.

• 1:24:15Speaker 00

  Max’s legal team applied for the trial to be heard by judge alone, arguing that the amount of media coverage over the years could have impacted Max’s right to a fair trial, and that it was too heavy a burden to expect a jury to sit through over 20 weeks of evidence that was so complicated that offence admitted even they found it confusing.

• 1:24:37Speaker 00

  The application was rejected, and the trial officially kicked off before a Supreme Court jury in January 2012. By this point, Max was 41 years old, and had been held in custody for three years, during which bail had been refused twice, and he was forbidden from seeing his children due to the pending child sex offence charges against him. His wife, Shiv Seeker, supported him fully, saying she’d known Max was a murder suspect since the day they’d met, but had never once questioned his innocence.

• 1:25:13Speaker 00

  Shiv urged the public to let her husband have his fair day in court, rather than what she saw as an ongoing trial by media.

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  The prosecution case was that Max had been obsessed with Neelma Singh, and had become deeply jealous when she rejected him and began seeing other men. He strangled her, and then killed her siblings to eliminate any witnesses, knowing this would cause deep pain to their father, whom Max did not like, and had also been rejected by. He then stole sentimental items belonging to Neelma, cleaned up the scene using bleach, accidentally leaving footprints behind in the process, before destroying any evidence including whatever data was on his computer. He then staged the discovery of the bodies, and went on to feign ongoing distress over

• 1:26:05Speaker 00

  the incident, while casting undue suspicion on Vijay Singh.

• 1:26:10Speaker 00

  Having insider knowledge of the dysfunctional family dynamics, he was perfectly poised to try and steer the investigation elsewhere.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  The prosecution disputed allegations that investigators had ignored other possible suspects due to having tunnel vision on Max Seeker.

• 1:26:29Speaker 00

  Over the near-six-year investigation, over 100 police officers had formally logged over 1,500 lines of inquiry, questioned over 800 witnesses, eliminated 300 DNA profiles found in the home, and assailed expertise from numerous specialists.

• 1:26:47Speaker 00

  While they acknowledged that the case against Max Seeker was circumstantial, they said it was up to the jury to decide whether they could prove their case beyond reasonable doubt.

• 1:26:59Speaker 00

  Max Seeker had chosen not to take the stand, though videos of his police interviews were played to the court. The defence criticised the circumstantial case, arguing that after all those years, the police still hadn't found any incriminating DNA, blood or fingerprint evidence linking Max Seeker to the crime scene or the victims' bodies. They hadn't even provided any direct evidence to definitively support their timeline that the murders had occurred in that seven-hour window during the Sunday night and early Monday morning. And if that timeframe couldn't be concretely ascertained, the defence argued that it cast doubt on all of the alibis provided by other persons of interest who police had ruled out.

• 1:27:44Speaker 00

  In the defence's view, it was highly improbable that Max could have brutally murdered three people, scrubbed the crime scene with bleach, and then arrived at his ex-wife's house the following morning to pick up his children with no indication of what he'd just done. They didn't even think the murders and subsequent clean-up could have been carried out by a single person in that seven-hour timeframe. Sure, Max had a chequered criminal past, but none of that involved violence. Family and friends said that while Max had his faults, he'd always been protective of women and children. The defence clarified that it had been true when Neelma told her mother that Max was part

• 1:28:26Speaker 00

  of a gang who were planning to kidnap an Asian businessman for ransom. However, Max had actually been acting as a police informant at the time, and had fed the police details which prevented the kidnapping from going ahead. At the time, he'd told his parole officer that Neelma knew about the plot and had expressed concern for her safety. It was suggested that the murders could have been a ramification of that, but this was quickly disputed when it was revealed that the would-be kidnappers were already in jail at the time of the Singh murders. Max's lawyer argued that given the Singh family's complex personal history and business dealings, there could have been other people wanting to take revenge on the family.

• 1:29:11Speaker 00

  There were also other avenues that hadn't been fully explored, such as Neelma's comment to her sister Sonia that someone had knocked on the door at around 8:30pm on the night of the murders. That person had never been identified. He aggressively cross-examined Vijay and Shirley Singh about their unconventional private lives and the dynamics of their marriage. They answered every question openly, despite the obvious discomfort, sometimes being reduced to tears. When the defence put it to Shirley that she had told the police her husband probably assaulted her around 50 times over the years, she responded:

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  "We've been married for about 25 years. I think 50 is not too bad." The defence was also scathing of the testimony from Audrey Brown, the woman who claimed Max had made a drunken confession. Notes Audrey had written during her interactions with Max over the years were tendered into evidence, and Max's lawyer likened them to a Mills and Boon's romance novel. He questioned both Audrey's intentions and her memory, highlighting that when giving testimony, she stated "I don't recall" roughly 155 times. As for the footprint evidence, the defence pointed out that when the replica staircase

• 1:30:37Speaker 00

  was built at the police station, carpet from a different batch was used, as was a different underlaid, thus questioning the accuracy of the testing. While the two experts who testified said they couldn't exclude Max Seeker as being the one who left the footprints, they also couldn't say with certainty that he was the one who left them. In closing arguments, the prosecution said: "Only one person on this earth was known to be expected at the house after 11pm on that evening. It was Max Seeker." Any other theories about who the perpetrator could be was, in their view, purely speculative.

• 1:31:22Speaker 00

  Max's defence lawyer told the jury: "It's not good enough you think he could have done it or probably did it. You have to be sure beyond reasonable doubt. It is better to let 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison." After a 76-day trial, the longest in Queensland history, the jury deliberated for three and a half days before delivering their verdict on July 3, 2012. For the murders of Neelma, Kunal and Sidhi Singh, Max Seeker was found guilty on all three charges.

• 1:32:04Speaker 00

  The judge, Justice John Byrne, thanked the police for their tireless efforts in getting justice for the Singh family, describing their pursuit of Max as a manifestation of the high value a civil society places on life. Asked if he had anything to say, Max stated: "I didn't kill no one, and the Queensland justice system and police are corrupt." Max's family stormed out of the building, his mother shouting that her son was innocent and that the police had covered up evidence to secure his conviction. At the sentencing hearing two days later, Vijay spoke of the incomprehensible pain of

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  losing three children at once, saying that not a single day had gone by that he and Shirley hadn't shed tears for their babies. "Because of this man's actions, we've been given a lifetime sentence of loss and sadness", Vijay said. "What wrong or harm did my children do to the accused, who so callously and cowardly ended their lives? Losing our children has shattered our lives forever. Our hearts suffer from the deepest wounds." Shirley fondly shared memories of her children and spoke of the deep regret she felt about being overseas at the time they were killed.

• 1:33:27Speaker 00

  "I have no words to explain the effect of the violent crime", she said. "I lost my flesh, my blood, my three innocent children without any accepted reason. They never hurt anyone, harmed anyone, annoyed anyone. They were happy, loving, caring and full of humour. How can anyone be so cold-blooded to do what was done to my children?" The eldest Singh daughter Sonia spoke of how the murders had negatively impacted her relationship with her parents and her own experience of motherhood. She had been just 26 when her three younger siblings were killed.

• 1:34:12Speaker 00

  Nine years later, she still blamed herself for not being there to protect them. "Neelma and I had always planned to be there for each other", Sonia said. "I felt and still feel that I failed her. I let her down. I let my Kunal and Sidhi down. I still haven't forgiven myself and slowly burn inside from time to time." Having done a walkthrough of the crime scene with her parents, she remained haunted by the sight of Sidhi's blood on the walls. "She was only 12, my beautiful, sweet and innocent sister, who I held in my arms from the day she was born.

• 1:34:56Speaker 00

  What runs through a person's mind to act with such cruelty?" Justice Byrne described the killings as brutal, horrific crimes in the worst categories of murder. He accepted that Max Seeker went to the Singh home on Sunday, April 20, and that something happened in the bedroom between himself and Neelma. "Enraged by jealousy, most likely you strangled Neelma with both hands, intending to kill her", the judge stated. "To ensure that Kunal and Sidhi would not tell that you had murdered Neelma, you murdered them too. You set about covering your tracks.

• 1:35:38Speaker 00

  The deception you practised included using your own children, taking them to the house on the Tuesday afternoon when you pretended to discover the bodies." Byrne said Max's deliberate conduct consciously added to the agony of the Singh family and called his attempt to pin the crimes on Vijay despicable. The fact that Max had forced the family to publicly confront private and humiliating matters, which he knew had nothing to do with the murders, prevented any leniency in the judgement. "You are manipulative and deceitful", said Justice Byrne. "You have no remorse whatsoever.

• 1:36:19Speaker 00

  Your only anxiety is for self-preservation." Max Seeker was given three life sentences with a non-parole period of 35 years, the longest murder sentence ever handed down in Queensland. Outside court, Vijay Singh thanked those involved in the investigation, saying: "The sentence gives a little bit of peace of mind, but we will never see our children again."

• 1:36:52Speaker 00

  The Sica family were stunned by the sentence. Throughout the trial, Max's wife, Shiv, had been sharing details of the proceedings on her blog, saying there were certain pieces of information that were purposely being withheld from the public, and that from the start, her husband had been unfairly subject to a trial by the media. Shiv, along with other members of the Sica family, were convinced that corrupt police had set Max up after deciding almost as soon as the bodies were found that he was the prime suspect. Shiv wrote: "Do you honestly think the authorities care whether Max is innocent? Who better to blame than an ex-criminal,

• 1:37:34Speaker 00

  especially one who was involved in the arson of a police station 10 years previously?"

• 1:37:41Speaker 00

  Max's brother, Claudio, appeared on A Current Affair, saying Max was at home in bed when the murders took place. He offered a $270,000 reward for anyone who could come forward with information that cleared his brother's name. Shiv told the presenter that Max felt deeply for the Singh family, saying: "Max and I, we've always prayed for those three children, and will continue to do so."

• 1:38:10Speaker 00

  Max Sica faced court for the child sex offenses in October 2012, this time in a judge-only trial. The teenage complainant alleged that Max, a trusted family friend, had subjected her to various sexual acts, including intercourse, starting when she was nine years old. She alleged that this abuse sometimes occurred as frequently as once or twice a week, and that she'd fallen in love with him during this time.

• 1:38:40Speaker 00

  Testimony was presented that showed the complainant had been subject to a medical exam at the time the allegations first came to light. Despite claiming Shiv and Max had sexual intercourse as many as 100 times over a four-year period, the teenager's hymen was still completely intact. Based on this evidence, the judge stated:

• 1:39:04Speaker 00

  "As this is fundamental to the prosecution case and has a significant impact on the complainant's credibility, I am left with what to my mind is a reasonable doubt about the guilt of the accused." Also citing a lack of independent evidence or witnesses to support the claims and inconsistency in the complainant's testimony during cross-examination, the judge ultimately found Max not guilty on all counts.

• 1:39:32Speaker 00

  Outside court, Max's brother, Claudio, told reporters the acquittal was proof that the police had created the child sex charges to prejudice Max's murder trial. He said: "Justice has finally been served, but not fully. The jury in the murder trial obviously did not do their job."

• 1:39:54Speaker 00

  Max appealed against his murder conviction and sentenced the following year, arguing the complexity of the case and pre-trial publicity meant the trial should have been heard only before a judge. He also argued that the court had put too much weight on the opinions given by the experts regarding the footprints found at the Singh home. The panel of judges rejected his appeal and upheld the court's original decision, prompting one of Max's supporters to yell out: "There is no justice. Shame on you."

• 1:40:29Speaker 00

  In 2023, Max lodged a complaint to the state's Crime and Corruption Commission, alleging that Queensland Police planted evidence against him in the murder investigation and investigated the case selectively rather than exhaustively. He later dropped the case.

• 1:40:47Speaker 00

  In 2025, Max's legal team launched an application seeking a second appeal on the grounds that new or compelling evidence had been uncovered in support of his innocence. The result of that application remains to be seen.

• 1:41:05Speaker 00

  Throughout the investigation and subsequent legal proceedings, many have noted it is difficult to be sympathetic towards Vijay Singh given everything that came out about the way he treated his wife and children. But it has also been noted that his past moral failures and abusive actions shouldn't lessen the profound trauma and grief the family experienced as a result of the triple homicide. At the center of that loss was Shirley Singh. In 2023, Shirley wrote a book with the help of a close family friend named Emily Eklund Power, calling it Shirley's Story: A Tale of Strength, Courage, and Hope. Shirley used the book to explain her side of the story

• 1:41:49Speaker 00

  and to pay tribute to her children. In the lead-up to its release, Shirley told A Current Affair that she and Vijay still lived in the same house despite splitting up, and that the children's bedrooms were still kept as if they were alive. Shirley said: "I still tuck them into bed. I still wake them up and say good morning to them. I kiss them. It's like I feel as if they're still there with me. Call me silly, but that's how I live."

• 1:42:24Speaker 00

  Just three years earlier, the Sings had been dealt another unimaginable loss when their surviving daughter, 43-year-old Sonia, collapsed at work after suffering a brain aneurysm. She was put on life support, but died two days later. Speaking about Sonia's death in her book, Shirley said: "I really can't put into words how it felt to lose her. As a parent, you take pride in watching your children succeed and watching them grow old. We had once again been robbed of that joy. Did I question my faith? Sure.

• 1:43:07Speaker 00

  Did I wallow in self-pity? Definitely. But I soon realized there was something greater at play, something that gave me a sense of peace. Sonia was with her siblings.

• 1:43:22Speaker 00

  The four of them together again."

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