The Husband Who Played Grieving Widower After Killing His Wife

In June 2016, Karen Ristevski vanished from her home. Her husband, Borce, told their daughter she had gone for a walk and never returned. For months, police and family searched in vain. Then, in February 2017, hikers stumbled upon her skeletal remains in a quiet nature reserve. Police pieced together CCTV footage and phone records, leading to Borce’s arrest. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2019, after prosecutors were unable to prove intent. Now, 7NEWS Investigations Editor Alison Sandy is digging deeper, not just into Karen’s case, but into a disturbing pattern: women whose deaths could have been prevented or discovered earlier, had the warning signs of escalating intimate partner violence been recognised sooner. If you need support, it's available at 1800 RESPECT. Find out more about the Kiss & Kill podcast here https://7plus.com.au/kiss-kill. CREDITS Guest: Alison Sandy https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0533976/Host: Gemma Bath https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemmabath/?originalSubdomain=au Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahli-blackman-205a891b7/?originalSubdomain=au Group Executive Producer: Ilaria Brophy Audio Engineer: Jacob Round GET IN TOUCH Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @truecrimeconversations https://www.instagram.com/truecrimeconversations/?hl=en Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes. Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] or send us a voice note. https://help.mamamia.com.au/en-US/send-a-podcast-voice-note-467960 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. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It's March 6, 2017, at St John's Uniting Church in Essendon, Melbourne. And Karen Ristevski's family are farewell-ing her at her funeral. Hundreds of mourners dressed in black are in attendance, after the business owner and mother of one's body was found hidden in bushes 50 kilometres from home in the Macedon Regional Park. She vanished nine months ago. Her husband Boris said she left the house after an argument over finances to go for a walk and clear her head. As the months dragged on, he maintained the image of a distraught husband as he door-knocked and attended searches. He participated in tearful media appeals, holding up photos of his missing wife and begging for news.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  And now, here he is, pallbearer of her coffin, his face solemn, his grief evident. But it's all an act. He killed her. He buried her. He lied repeatedly about it, as he played the role of worried husband for years.

• 1:11Speaker 00

  I'm Gemma Bath and you're listening to True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. Karen Ristevski vanished from her home in Avondale Heights on June 29, 2016. The search for her was intensive, and Boris was right up the front leading the way. Then, in February 2017, Karen's skeletal remains were found by hikers. Her husband Boris was arrested for murder in December, after police pieced together CCTV footage, phone data, and inconsistent alibis.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  On the eve of his trial, he pled guilty to manslaughter. At the time of sentence in 2019, his crime was described as a heat-of-the-moment killing, making it feel like a spontaneous act that appeared out of nowhere. Unable to prove intent, prosecutors settled for the manslaughter charge over murder. Because despite the post-defence cover-up, lies, and lack of remorse, they were unable to point to premeditation. In the eyes of Seven News Investigations editor Alison Sandy, Rustevsky is a killer narcissist. She's been investigating lots of them in her podcast Kiss and Kill. Perhaps the most textbook example she reexamines is the case of Jared Badenclay.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  He too reported his wife and mother of his three daughters missing. It was 2012 and he claimed she'd gone for a walk and failed to return. Her body was discovered just 10 days later and Jared was arrested and charged with murder soon after. A jury convicted him of murder, but in 2015, he successfully appealed and had his sentence changed to manslaughter. That was overturned by Australia's highest court and the murder conviction was reinstated. Today, we look back at the cases of Badenclay, Rustevsky, and other examples of intimate partner violence that shocked the nation to explore the escalation patterns that cost women their lives. Alison joins us now.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Alison, thanks for joining us on True Crime Conversations. I wanted to start by giving listeners a bit of an idea of your background because you've worked in and around intimate partner violence, domestic abuse relationships, that kind of world for quite a while now, haven't you?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Gemma, I mean, I think we kind of live it a bit because I mean, when you, I mean, as a journalist, obviously you cover a lot of crime naturally. I've been a journalist now for 30 years and police and courts is kind of the start anyway. And then I obviously politics, I've always been quite into politics. So the overlap there and then of course, FOI, Freedom of Information, which is a national, nationally I've been doing it. So you look at all the key issues that affect or impact our society, you know, health being a massive one. And then true crime podcasts becoming a thing, which I love because.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  It actually allows you to properly go into everything. As a journalist, obviously, this, you know, you're having, you know, only so much space or, you know, having to break it up over several articles and, and it can be prohibiting. So it, having a podcast, that forum for journalists is like a godsend. So you can absolutely do all you need to do to properly interrogate the issues.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  I think as a society at least, we're getting better at telling the stories or expanding on the topics of things like narcissism and gaslighting and coercive control. Whereas a lot of these cases that you're revisiting, back in the day, we didn't kind of have that vernacular.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  We certainly didn't, even though I'd been in this space for such a long time. But talking to the experts, and these are the people who, you know, the academics that sit down there and study the theory and look at cases. And, and I feel like I was offered the red pill in The Matrix and I took it and now I'm just like this all-knowing, like, you know, understanding. And I, and it's like we've been gaslit all our lives, like with these cases. That whole idea and, and Jane Monken Smith, oh my gosh, she's amazing. She invented the homicide timeline and she talked about it, you know, crimes of passion, you know, being this idea, like they'd rationalize it, like you just snapped, lost control.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Like it was not something that was intentional. These people, they didn't mean it, you know. And now when you look at the homicide timeline, yes, they did mean it. And it was a eight factor journey for them that led to them planning and ending somebody's life.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Can you tell us a bit about that homicidal timeline? Because that is something that you focus quite heavily on in your investigation. What does that even mean for people that are like, what?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, homicidal. Well, so it's eight stages, starting with, you know, the isolation and the building, you know, the love bombing, all that sort of thing. First, I guess the first step for a perpetrator is to entrap the victim. And when you think about it, we, particularly my generation, we grew up thinking Prince Charming, you know, you'd meet your soulmate one day. It was a very romantic fairy tale idolized idea of what love was. And so getting that swept off your feet, uh, which is still a real reality, right? We're not, I guess, it, it, the hard thing is making the distinction.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  And understanding the difference between being swept off your feet and love bombing. So Jane Moncton Smith during, in our series, explains that way better than I can. But it is very much if it's moving too fast, if they say I love you early. I mean, again, you know, because we're all a bit idolistic about love. And what's love to one person isn't necessarily to another. So there's no harm in that happening. But it's more than the control aspects. And she used one example where the girl and, and guy were going out and the date was earlier in their relationship. And she, you know, comes to pick her up and she gets in the car and he goes, what are you wearing?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And I can't do it. She doesn't have this great accent. And she's like, well, you know, what, what do you mean? And he's like, you know, are you trying to embarrass me? Are you trying to humiliate me and attract other men? And, you know, sort of, you look like a slut, you know, like.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  This is again, early on. You know, and she said, this is a real story. And so she goes back in and changes and then they go out and have the best, most romantic time. Everything was lovely. It was like, you know, the fairy tale sort of thing. And then she says, that is introducing one of the rules then. So what do you think would happen if she wore that dress again?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  You know, so all of a sudden, the jealousy rule has come in. And it's a control mechanism. It turns it back on the, the woman. And, and I know this, and I don't want this to be, seem like we're the man hating exercise. It's not that.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  But there's a problem in Australia and globally. And statistics say this, that we have a woman being killed in an intimate, intimate partner homicide once a week on average in Australia, once a week, like that's.

• 8:57Speaker 00

  And it's been for years, years and years and years.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  It's not changing.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's actually increasing because globally, it's one in three women globally will experience domestic family or sexual violence. So that's globally, as well as the fact that in Australia, in the past two years, according to Domestic Family Violence, Sexual Violence Commission, it's increased by 10% in the past two years.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  10%, that's.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  That's a lot.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a lot. So it's so important to understand why this is happening and why the messages aren't getting through. And I, I think you then have to look at the way it's treated on the frontline. And of course, we, we, we've reported so much on ABOs.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  And the revolving door of the offenders who breached them just going in and out. And the Tyrone Thompson, which we feature is a prime example of the victim, Mackenzie Anderson, could not have done more to prevent herself from getting killed. She did all the right things. The ABO, he kept, he breached eight times, eight times. And then he got out again and two weeks later, he'd killed her. He told people he was going to kill her. She moved away. She did everything she could. And then he come in and he killed her. And then they still didn't. Consider it premeditated, or, you know, it still was considered mid-range violence, even though he stabbed her seventy-eight times.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And so I wanted to go in to explore that because it's it's legalistic, right? Yeah. And so when when we when we deal with it, we're seen as a bit simple in not understanding the legal, you know, aspects and how the legal system works. So I did, I spoke to experts to try to understand, I think, you know, so that people knew what was the issues and why they kept coming up. And and, you know, we've got explanations there from Chief Justice Bell about the ABO and the bail applications. And and then there's that argument, of course, that we don't have prisons, enough prisons to put them away.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  And so then I just I just wonder, though, why women have to lose their lives when all the signs are there that that's going to happen. And it's just like, oh, damn. You know, it gets me upset.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Gemma Bath. I'm speaking with journalist Alison Sandy about some of Australia's worst cases of intimate partner violence that had warning signs being noticed earlier, she believes could have been prevented. Up next, we talk about the similarities in the cases of Karen Ristevski and Alison Baden-Clay.

• 11:50Speaker 02

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• 12:26Speaker 00

  I want to use the story of Karen Ristevski to further explore what we're talking about because her story is quite a unique one in the context of what we're talking about. Firstly, for those that don't know what happened to Karen, can you tell us a little bit about how her case first made headlines, what her story was?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Well, with Karen, it was a prolonged process because I guess I like to compare it to the way that the Jared Baden-Clay, Alison Baden-Clay case, sort of, because it's very similar in a lot of ways.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  There are a lot of similarities.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, with the husband, the grieving husband.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Reporting their wives missing, like it, when you look at them side by side, Karen's husband reports her missing, Jared reports Alison missing.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  They come out to the public, grieving husband, very vocal.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the difference is, is with Boris and Karen, sadly, it took a lot longer to find her body than it did Alison Baden-Clay. But equally so in Boris and Jared Baden-Clay's cases, police knew straight away that, you know, there was an issue. And I speak to a family member who was there at the time when Karen first went missing and the way that it, it happened. There is a lot more resistance in the situation with Boris than there is with the Baden-Clay.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I mean, everyone accepts, I feel like everyone accepts that Jared did it. Whereas in Boris's case, certainly his family, I've already received a, a very hostile call from when I politely reached out by email, you know, I know where, um, obviously Boris and Karen's daughter is. But I reached out, just said that I was working on this and if she'd like to have a chat to me. Anyway, um, and that, and she doesn't, but can you imagine if I didn't let her know, you know, and didn't offer her the opportunity? So got a very hostile phone call asking me, do I have a child? How could you do this? You know, and I basically said, well, he did.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  He did do this, you know, this is the thing, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. And I suspect that they think that, that, that what Boris is saying is that he pleaded guilty to manslaughter because they were going to pin it on him anyway. So, but he didn't do it. And that's kind of the, the case. So it is a, it is a really, it's a much more sensitive, tricky story to report. Now, the other thing is Alison's family took care of the girls when Jared Baden Clay went to prison. So they've grown up with Alison's family. Um, whereas the situation with Sarah is not like that.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Um, she's very much been, remained close. She was a lot older, she, she was very close to her dad. Uh, in fact, by all accounts, she was closer to her dad than she was to her mum. And I cannot imagine the pain and the suffering she's, I mean, she basically, well, virtually lost both parents. So it's horrific what she's been through. So it is, you've just really got to tread carefully with a case like this one.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And so as subsequently, speaking to family, her family members, they are treading very carefully as well. So I have, I have spoken to one on the record, uh, many others off the record.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  I think the biggest difference between these two cases that I can see is that we know a lot about Jared Baden Clay and Alison's

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  relationship and the gaslighting and the emotional abuse and the, all of those elements that we talk about from that timeline, they were there with Jared. But we don't have, well, we haven't seen the evidence of that. If there was any with the Rostevsky's, all we've got is his kind of post offence behaviour, which was very bizarre. He, you know, he's been convicted of manslaughter. And after she went missing, he was the grieving husband, he was at her funeral, acting, you know, the, the devastated widower. So the courts kind of re- reflect that, like, you know, you're not showing remorse, you lied.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  How, why did you focus on that case, given that you are looking at the psychology and the behind the scenes kind of stuff, when with Rostewski, we really don't have that, apart from the post offence stuff?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but when you talk to family members and you look at the reports that we have got and behind the scenes with the police, so when you see all of that and you can then put it to the experts to analyse, yes, he does fit that criteria. I mean, he's, because one of the things that I asked Dr Russ Scott, for example, when he was the author of the narcissistic rage and the killing of Alison Baden-Clay, I asked him, how can you assess him if you haven't met him? And he said, you have to base it on their behaviours, because the thing with people with narcissistic personality disorder is they don't, they won't present as their true and honest selves anyway.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  You can only ever judge, make analysis on their behaviours and what they did at the time. So having all this extra insight that will reveal from the family members, as well as the police, will give that insight as what, and allow for our, the people that we have working with us, the experts, to provide their diagnosis.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  Can you give us a little bit of an idea of this behind the scenes stuff with Rostewski in terms of, because that would be, I couldn't find evidence of what the relationship was like in terms of the coercive control and stuff like that. Can you give us some insight into what you've learnt?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Like, one family member who was there at the time has given a lot of insight into how he was and his paranoia with the police. Like, he, you know, he, he basically ended up ostracising anyone that he couldn't trust because he thought, you know, I mean, the bugging and, and that they were reporting to the police. So, yeah, when you, when you speak to those family members, they do provide a lot more insight.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  Given the context you've got, the descriptions we heard at the time with the Rostewski murder was that it was a heat of the moment killing. What is your opinion on that as a, as a description?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's the one that's been rebuked by the homicide timeline creator, Jane Moncton Smith, also forensic criminologist Claire Ferguson and Laura Richards, who does her own show, which goes through that saying, you know, quoting Moncton Smith here, that we've all not always kind of known that the crime of passion narrative is that load of rubbish. And it is, it really is, because when you go through, and I don't know if you've had a look at the first episode yet, but Towardsey and Claire Ferguson talks about

• 20:19Speaker 01

  that last moment in the homicide timeline where the walls are closing in, you know, the trigger being that this is the only outcome that they can proceed with, you know. So again, I won't try to explain it because I can't do it as well as they do. But it is very much looking, when you look at the situation of, you know, the financial stress and things like that, they are very much a common theme. And I don't know about you, but I think 90% of the cases of intimate partner homicides I've covered over the years have been when the woman is trying to leave.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the most dangerous time.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I still can't believe, in some cases, the hidden homicides, that it's still not treated as such. So I still feel like, even though it's really obvious, the theory's there, this is, you know, even as a layperson who's not analysing all this sort of stuff, why in these situations is it still deemed as being spontaneous? You know, that the, you know, that this is, this leaving part is just an act of where you snap or, you know, you lose control. I don't, I mean, you think of losing control,

• 21:46Speaker 01

  I mean, has it?

• 21:47Speaker 00

  You don't kill someone.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. Do you think that, how is it acceptable that losing control and killing someone going together is acceptable?

• 21:57Speaker 00

  It's funny you say that those terms have kind of been debunked by experts in this area because I still see them on headlines recently.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's the problem. It's not being debunked in the legal process and even in the investigative process in a lot of cases. So you would have individual cases where, um, where you see, gosh, I have to mention it, Amy Wensley. There is no obvious, more obvious case I have done where, I mean, for example, in the US, they've brought in Joanna's law, right? Where they have, I think it's 10 things and they list all these things that mean it's not accidental or a suicide, which a lot of them are staged to look like. And hers ticks every single box. They only need one of those for Joanna's law to be,

• 22:51Speaker 01

  you know, invoked, like they, like with Joanna's law, if one of these boxes are ticked, they have to treat it as a homicide. But, so it seems strange that they would need to make it legislation, but they do, they do need to make it legislation. And because it just doesn't happen. There were different people. You would have seen the Gabby Petito footage, no doubt. Oh my gosh.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  What's going on? What can we say?

• 23:17Speaker 04

  I just, I, we've been fighting this morning, some personal issues.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  He was alone, David. We were camping yesterday and camping got, missed out supplies and stuff. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I hit the bump there.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  I was distracting him from driving. I'm sorry.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  Can I get you to step out of the vehicle for me, man?

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Just hang tight right there.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  It's very compelling.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, so on, she is seen as the perpetrator in that situation. Like that to me just blew me away as I'm watching that. And still it's been misdiagnosed.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  You have described Jared as being possibly the most obvious expert abuser when we look at him in hindsight. Why do you say that?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Because, like you mentioned earlier, everything in court, like there was, it was like. All there. And when you listen to the whole and read the whole documents, we got a lot of the court audio, so we got to hear the impact as well. It is, it's like the eight stages, the homicide timeline playing out in real life, you feel like it's a Shakespearean tragedy as you, it's just horrific. You know, if you go fast forward to stage four and how he's managed to undermine her confidence

• 24:42Speaker 01

  so much, whittled it away so that she, like Abby Petito, would blame herself. So even his infidelity, right? She blamed herself for that. She, at the, at the stage, you know, because of this depression that she had from adverse effect from antimalarial medication on there when they were first went overseas. And that was kind of kept coming back as well. And that's to say that she didn't have some mental health anxiety. You would if you were married to him. You know, like it's just, it's, but it's not clinical depression. She wouldn't have been able to get up and go for a

• 25:21Speaker 01

  walk if she was clinically depressed. So, so it, it, it, as I said, um, and then the financial stress and then the, I mean, he also looked up, you know, the life insurance, you know, policy. I think the thing with someone like Jared Baden Clay and Boris Rostevsky is while you think they're not a good husband, the thought of them being a killer seems like an extra step, right? It seems like it's a little bit more of a gap that you can't, it doesn't make sense. But when you actually look at it and their personalities and the, the abuse that they had to put up with, I think in Karen's situation was a little bit different because there's the, the ones that

• 26:04Speaker 01

  actually rely on the woman, not the, not wanna be the breadwinner to control the finances and things like that. So there was, there was a little bit of a, a different dynamic there. But as I said, we, we do cover that, um, with Anthony Erickson first before we get to Rostevsky. So again, that, that sheds a bit of light. It's not a cookie cutter approach. They're all kind of different. And the thing about expert abusers is they They cater to the situation, like any, anyone that knows what they're doing and, and is practised at it. They, they just look at, okay, so this is this situation, so I have to do this, you know.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  So whatever the tactic is, whatever the, the thing is that keeps them in check, that, that allows them to, them to control. That's, that's what they use. Others will use children.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  You know, because they know that the mum will often, you know, that's her, her real, I guess, way to get to her. Cause the child is used as an emotional tool.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Do you think with a lot of the cases that you've analysed, it is that kind of like perfect family from the outside? And then when you kind of peel back the covers, is that how these men get away with it for so long?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I think so, but also it's a normality of the situation too. I mean, you've got to remember in Australia, they only, I mean, in, in the, in the sixties, I believe. It was only then that women could start to own a house, could actually be on the deeds of a house. And then the seventies, they brought in no-fault divorce. And then eighties and nineties were kind of said, oh, everything's good now, you don't need to worry, you're all equal, we're equal. So it, it does kind of create a culture where women have lower status, you know? And, and which is the whole argument that Jay Moncton Smith says is that women have such low status, even when they lose their lives.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And it's just horrific. So you'll notice also Gemma, cause the other thing is that not all lives are equal. So in the cases of Alison and Karen, they're middle-class women, they're more relatable. So they get more publicity and look, they all, like they should. It was horrible. They, they, they were killed by a man. So absolutely they should, but not all women get that.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  After the break, I speak with Alison about Tyrone Thompson, jailed in 2022 for the murder of his partner and the patterns of coercive control and violence that defined the case.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  So you're really looking into like patterns of behaviour, you're kind of trying to work out why these men who do murder, what's going on in their brains, what like, how is it unfolding? How are their relationships falling apart in this way? You have given them the label narcissistic killers. Can you tell me about that? Or killer narcissists?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's killer narcissists or expert abusers and or expert abusers. Look, certainly with, you know, narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder. It did come up in courts for Tyrone Thompson, as well as there was an independent study done on Jared Baden Clay called narcissistic rage and the killing of Alison Baden Clay. So there are precedents and there are factors that we go into and we talk to the experts to explain that. And, um, and I guess it's to me, and this is not being a forensic psychiatrist or psychologist like I've spoken to, or even a criminologist.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  But to me, it is obviously the, um, the lack of empathy and the lack of remorse and the objectification of the people involved. And it just being this whole idea of not having control, this loss of control, that is the trigger. It's not like they talk about people being violent and in Thompson's case, it's like he's this crazed, violent, you know, like he's a ticking time bomb, but he's exploding all the time, just not necessarily to that length of, of killing someone until he does. But in a lot of these cases, there isn't any violence.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  According to the domestic violence death review team in New South Wales, it was a quarter, I think in their 2023, 2023 report, a quarter did not have a record of violence. That's not to say there wasn't any, but a quarter. So, and when you speak to the experts and they talk about what coercive control is, and then how many end up going to jail, it's, they basically have to plead guilty for that to happen. It's really, really hard because violence is such a key. Indicator in their mind to to get a conviction on that basis.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  So you can go through the courts and and really um it with that one in New South Wales was successfully prosecuted. It was because they pleaded guilty. So what I guess the good news is is that people understand now that it's outlawed. But the system doesn't actually provide enough understanding so that it can be used properly.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, the system's more set up for those very violent people who are continuously physically doing things.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you could see potentially people like Tyrone Thompson might be handled better now. But even then, in here, in this case, yeah, I it it just. It is a it's a tough gig, I think, to get these over the line. And I think um when I speak to other people and and people that are going through it. They seem to feel like this seri- this issue of women getting killed is not being taken seriously enough. And they compare it to something like the One Punch Can Kill campaign I did up in here in Brisbane with alcohol field violence and cab lines and things like that. And it was horrific.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  And I'm so glad, particularly as a mum of a, you know, soon to be teenage boy, that this issue has been dealt with properly. But I also think that equally, they there is a big, I guess, elephant in the room that women getting killed in domestic violence, family violence situations, isn't being treated properly. And there's a big discrepancy there. Do you know they don't even calculate the number of femicides nationally? At all, like federally, like there's no government body or anyone like that. They don't even count it.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  For those listeners who don't know that story, who is Tyrone Thompson and what did he do? Who was his victim?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Okay, so Tyrone Thompson and Mackenzie Anderson, they went out when they were in Sydney. It was during Covid lockdown generally. So the mother, Tabitha Accret, who is an absolute powerhouse in this area, like she is a force of nature. She has really um come through with this, but she had restricted contact because of Covid um with Mackenzie. But Mackenzie got involved with Tyrone and like she was very young, she was twenty one when she died. But she um she was in this bad relationship. She had a child, a twenty three month old, who witnessed her being murdered in her home after she ran away from him.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  After eight breaches of an ABO, she fled to Newcastle to be closer to her mum. He found her when he, one of his many releases after breaching his ABO. And basically, she armed herself with a knife um when he came in and he was threatening. And she knew what he, and she had a child there, which, you know, her twenty three month old. And he then went and um ended up stabbing her seventy eight plus times. And she, it was so bad that he used two knives because one snapped. And the little boy, twenty three month old, was there the whole time. When the police arrived, they couldn't see him but for the blood.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  And Mackenzie was, you know, it was obviously um, there was no, it was just this. She'd done everything, absolutely everything, to escape that situation. So Tabitha Accret, who was in Cairns at the time, she got the phone call. She's got a a son of her own who was twelve, I believe, at the time. And she had to get back, didn't want to tell her son straight away because she didn't want him to be on the flight and have to worry about it. She had to pull herself together, get back, go get her grandson. Um. And he was, basically, they they tried to, they put him in the bath and tried to clean him up.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  And he just crawl, basically crawled over to her and attached himself to her like a koala. Um. So she had to then become a mum to him and couldn't grieve properly. Because she had to be strong for him and he didn't sleep for weeks properly. And he would just whimper. And so she's now having to go through that whole process of rehabilitating him. Again, she tells it much better than I do. Tyrone Thompson, he uh, his court case. He's been in and out of courts most of his young life, like he, you know, um, and. Gosh, let's face it, we all kind of chose badly when we were young.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not, and she did try to break it off several times, like it was, so, you know, the fact that. You know, people will say, well, why did, why, why did you go out with someone like that? Uh, you know, I mean, these people can be so charismatic, they can be so, you know, I guess. If you didn't know any better, you might think him good looking. Anyway, um, and he really tried to forge a relationship with her son. Tabitha Accret said how that kind of worried her for a bit, but she realised that that was a way of controlling. Mackenzie, um, by using her child. So he, um.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he's obviously of, obviously violent sort of person. He was, um, that was his tactic, his violence. Other ones like Rostevsky and Baden Clay use other methods, more subtle methods. But, um, violence was definitely his number one thing. They talked about him having aspects of narcissistic personality disorder, but also antisocial. Personality, you know, like it, there was, there was many, there are many issues with Tyrone Thompson. But he will, um, be out by the, before his forty, under the, uh. The, under the current sentencing. So it, uh, the.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Again, Tabitha goes into the issues, like he, he would not, he's not a model prisoner. In fact, he's the opposite. They put him in isolation cells and I think he's destroyed cameras and nurses won't go near him and all this sort of stuff. And so they don't want him in there because he's too much trouble.

• 37:39Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, doesn't that mean he won't make parole?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Good behaviour and bad behaviour. Yeah, I know, right? So it's just like this whole situation where there's always excuses for the perpetrator. And because he's young, there's seen to be a chance of rehabilitation. But the problem is, as the experts say, personality disorders don't afford, they don't have that good rehabilitation prospect, you know, associated with them because they are who they are. And a lot of people don't, particularly narcissists, don't recognise that in themselves. So yeah, so that's Tyrone Thompson. But yeah, so that was in Newcastle. Yeah, so it wasn't that long ago.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And then, of course, they had, he was sentenced and then Tabitha Ackrett appealed. There has also been a new law introduced now in New South Wales subsequently, thanks to the advocacy of Tabitha Ackrett, who was very strong in, I mean, she's got a, she's actually really well versed in this, like she, she knows what she's talking about. And so it's now 25 years non-parole, but that doesn't apply to Tyrone Thompson because it, you can't make a retrospective, so. And she failed in her appeal. And we do, we go in a bit to that, to the Justice Weinstein sentence and his explanation

• 39:05Speaker 01

  of why it was considered by many would, would, would think that it was too light. And then, of course, the appeal and then the Justice Bell explains that as well. So, yeah, I mean, it's certainly a really good one to show the flaws in the legal system, that's for sure.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Obviously, you're focusing on behaviour and psychology, but we've, you know, we've talked about the restrictions of the court systems. So how, like, how do we change this? What, how do you think we change this? Because it's obviously the court systems that need to change as well as the cultural behavioural stuff.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely, it does. So awareness is one thing. Political will is another. For example, Queensland seems much more conducive to the idea of bringing in new legislation, reforming it. They've got, they've got a, two women who, Deb Freckington, who's the Attorney General, and Amanda Cam, who we speak to, is the Domestic Violence Prevention Minister. So the fact that they have people in those roles, and we've brought in Coarse of Control, same with New South Wales, same with South Australia. So there seems to be more of a political will in that area, which is great. So it's easier to focus on the ones that seem happy to do it.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  But then when you've got the, in Victoria, they've got arguably the best colonial system in the world, or one of them. So they have a really good lot of people to speak to in that area as well. So anyway, it is, it is a case of, I think from my perspective, is getting it out there and looking at all the problems and having people reflect on it and hopefully getting some change, some meaningful change. It may be just incremental.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Or maybe just, you know, I mean, I know in Queensland, they're considering Claire's Law, which has been in place in the UK, I think, for 15 years. So, you know, I spoke to Jane Moncton Smith about that, about that, how that could work here. That's, that's the thing, I guess I'm hoping to do, because it's, we're only one cog in a very big machine, but media and getting the spotlight on it and shining it really brightly is, is key to getting change. So I'm, I'm talking to as many people as I can. And there is actually, you know, quite a lot of frustration from academics and legal professionals in this area to try to get change.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  So I think, I think, and then of course, you know, as I'm told, the ministers then have to convince their cabinet colleagues. So again, the media spotlight helps with that.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Has anything? As someone who has done this for 30 years, has anything surprised you in unpacking all of this stuff?

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely it has. It is very much. It's like what they say, that you know that this is wrong. But I think, I think what surprises me is that it has been, as I said, feel like that I've been part of the majority of the world who's been gaslit in this area in thinking that, yeah, in thinking that this was, that I believed, I guess, the crime of passion narrative as much as anyone else did, I suppose. And so, yeah, it's all been quite shocking. But I guess the biggest shocks, and you'd feel it too, are the individual cases.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  I think mid-range violence describing Tyron Thompson's murder of Mackenzie Anderson, that was shocking, you know. But again, I'm made, I kind of feel a little bit silly saying that when you're kind of explained the legal parameters and all the different things. And it's not, it's not the explainer's fault, it's just that's the way it is. And that's why you need to change it.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Thank you to Alison for helping us to tell these stories. If you or someone you know is experiencing family violence, support is available. Call 1-800-RESPECT for 24-hour confidential support. You can find more about the Kiss and Kill podcast via the link in our show notes. And if you'd like to hear more about the case of Alison Baden-Clay, we recorded a separate episode with Mark Ainsworth, who led the investigation. You'll find that link in the show notes as well. True Crime Conversations is hosted by me, Gemma Bath. Our senior producer is Tali Blackman. The group executive producer is Alaria Brophy. And there's been audio design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on.