Mothers Who Murder

by Xanthe Mallett

  The media’s response to Rachel Pfitzner was extreme, but not surprising. The Daily Telegraph called her evil, and said she despised her son.7 This is simplistic and doesn’t reflect the complexity of the causes and problems in this case. What came out in the press was the unrest between the two families – the Shillingsworths’ claim Rachel Pfitzner was addicted to drugs, which Rachel denies, and the Pfitzners’ claim Paul Shillingsworth was violent. The accusations flew back and forth. But none of it could help Dean. Also discussed in the press was the response of the government agencies charged with watching over and protecting Dean. Could his death have been avoided? Were chances to help him missed? Or was the outcome inevitable, the chain of events that would result in Dean’s eventual death set in stone with the first fateful contact between Rachel Pfitzner and Paul Shillingsworth?

  This case did lead to a special commission of inquiry into the actions taken by child protection services in New South Wales. Rachel Pfitzner was certainly known to the department and the family had a caseworker. As we have seen, a number of witnesses saw bruises on Dean’s body, and his behaviour indicated that he was being abused and neglected. A day after Pfitzner’s sentencing, the New South Wales Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, decided that Dean’s death was suitable for review by his office as well. An evaluation of the records held by DoCS by the Ombudsman’s office raised questions about the actions of the department as they related to the Pfitzner/Shillingsworth family.8 Questions were also asked about the adequacy of the response by other support services; thus the Ombudsman’s review was expanded to include the actions – or inactions – of non-government family support groups involved in Dean’s case. This investigation was completed and a report sent to the agencies involved, as well as other relevant parties, including Justice Wood. In total, DoCS had received thirty-four reports about Pfitzner’s three children prior to Dean’s death; none apparently warranted the department’s performing a comprehensive risk assessment. Unsurprisingly, the Ombudsman’s investigation concluded that DoCS continued to fail to adequately respond to reports about the risk of harm to Pfitzner’s children.

  This report followed an earlier account made to Parliament, focused on the death of a little seven-year-old girl called Ebony, who died as a result of starvation and neglect.9 On 24 November 2008, Justice James Wood AO QC handed down the inquiry report.10 The report listed a significant number of recommendations aimed at reforming the system and protecting vulnerable children like Dean. It was not the purpose to comment on Dean’s (or Ebony’s) cases specifically, as both were at the time still subject to criminal proceedings. In response to Wood’s report, the New South Wales Government developed a five-year plan to reform child protection, an initiative that sees the publication of annual reports.11 Shortly afterwards, the government actually apologised for the lack of action they took to protect Dean. The media were understandably damning, with headlines like ‘Dean Shillingsworth Condemned by his Protectors’12 and ‘DOCS errors and tragic cover-up in the death of little Dean Shillingsworth’.13

  The local community reaction was also noteworthy. Many people attended the reserve following the discovery of Dean’s body in the days that followed, and a spontaneous shrine of cards, flowers and balloons soon formed. The police took Rachel Pfitzner to the scene on 20 October 2007; many people will never forget the crowds swarming towards her and the police car in which she was travelling. A few days later, on 26 October, the community held a ceremony at Mandurama Reserve to commemorate Dean. Prayers were said by the 2000 people who gathered and the floating candles they left on the pond is an image that will always be associated with little Dean Shillingsworth.

  COMPARATIVE CASES

  Unfortunately, Dean’s case is not alone, and this situation is not even restricted to Australia. A comparative and desperately sad case is that of Peter Connelly – also known simply as ‘Baby P’. Outlined in more detail in Chapter 8, a synopsis of this case here allows a comparison to Dean’s scenario. Peter’s story is infamous in the United Kingdom, for the same reasons as Dean Shillingsworth’s case in Australia. The response to these cases is mirrored across the western world.

  Born on 1 March 2006 in North London to Tracey Connelly, little Peter only lived for seventeen months as a result of suffering fifty separate injuries at the hands of his mother and her de facto partner, Steven Barker, over an eight-month period, during which he was seen by health care workers sixty times.

  In December 2006, Peter ended up in hospital as a result of the physical abuse, where he remained for four days, after which he was discharged to the care of a family friend for his own safety, while social workers and the police investigated how he had come by his injuries. Connelly was arrested and on 19 December 2006 Peter was placed on the child protection register, but returned to his mother’s care on 26 January 2007.

  Peter was admitted to hospital twice more with additional injuries. At the trial, evidence came from a witness who said that in April she had seen a bruised and emotionally withdrawn Peter playing in the garden eating dirt. In a comment eerily reminiscent of those in Dean Shillingsworth’s case, the witness said ‘he wanted picking up and cuddles all the time’. No one knew Barker was living with the family during this time. In June 2007, Barker’s brother, Jason Owen, and his girlfriend moved into the house with Tracey, Peter and Barker.

  On 1 June social services visited the family, and found Peter lying on the sofa under a blanket, his face red, with bruises on his neck. A medical examination concluded that the bruising was the result of abuse, and on 4 June, Peter was again placed with a family friend. Peter stayed with this friend for five weeks, at which point he was returned to his mother.

  At 11.35 am on 3 August an ambulance was called to Connelly’s home and Peter was found in his blood-spattered cot, wearing only a nappy; he was stiff and blue – cyanotic – from lack of oxygen. The ambulance crew attempted to resuscitate Peter, but he was pronounced dead at 12.20 pm.

  As in Dean’s case, the authorities had numerous opportunities to step in as Peter was seen sixty times during those eight months by Haringey Children’s Services, as well as by health professionals from the National Health Service. The police immediately began a murder investigation and Connelly, Barker and his brother Jason Owen, as well as Owen’s fifteen-year-old girlfriend, were arrested. Connelly pleaded guilty to causing Peter’s death, and all three were convicted of causing or allowing the death of a child. Peter’s name was kept confidential until the conclusion of Barker’s criminal trial on 1 May 2009, when he was found guilty of raping a two-year-old girl. This child, like Peter, was on Haringey Council’s child protection register. Connelly was cleared of cruelty to the little girl.

  On 22 May, Connelly was given an indefinite jail term with a minimum of five years. Barker was sentenced to life with a minimum of ten years for the rape of the little girl and twelve years for his part in Peter’s death, the sentences to run concurrently. Owen received an indefinite term, with a minimum of three years.

  Peter’s injuries were extensive and, as with Dean, the suffering Peter endured shocked the nation. Unsurprisingly, Haringey Council child protection services and other agencies charged with protecting young and vulnerable children in the community were widely criticised. Various people lost their jobs, but this did not change the ultimate outcome. Reports were also written, aimed at preventing this type of abuse from happening again. It’s yet to be seen if any of these responses have had any real effect.

  CASE CLOSED

  Dean’s funeral took place in Brewarrina, his hometown, on Thursday 1 November 2007. It was attended by over 300 family, friends and community members. Victim impact statements written by Dean’s father, Paul Shillingsworth, as well as his paternal grandmother and Dean’s legal guardian, Ms Ann Coffey, showed that they loved Dean dearly and were devastated by his loss.

  With the benefit of hindsight, the steps that led to this little boy’s murder can be charted. Rachel’s unstable personality, her relationship with a
n allegedly violent male, the alleged issues of drugs and alcohol, all led up to a perhaps inevitable outcome. Looking back, I also wondered that if Ann Coffey’s recovery order had been heard on the first calling, whether Dean would not have been killed. On reflection, I don’t think so, as I’m of the opinion that the fragility of Rachel’s psychological health was rocked by Dean’s imminent removal. Although we will never know for sure, I think that whenever that happened – or whenever Rachel expected it to happen – it would have been the catalyst for her psychological breakdown that ultimately led to Dean’s death.

  There was never any real question as to the identity of the ‘who’ in this case: Rachel Pfitzner murdered her son Dean. So there is also no question that Rachel Pfitzner should have been found guilty. However, looking at Rachel’s psychology, her background, I wonder whether she should not have maintained her case for manslaughter and not changed her plea to murder. Was Rachel disturbed, sociopathic even? Possibly. The big question then is – did she intend to kill Dean?

  As with the cases of Lindy Chamberlain and Kathleen Folbigg, Dean’s death caused outrage and Rachel Pfitzner is hated. I’ve seen newspaper reports that say when Rachel was escorted to the duck pond where Dean was found spectators were screaming abuse at her; some were calling for the death penalty.14 This goes to show the depth of feeling associated with cases such as this. But I do not think Pfitzner actively sought to injure and eventually murder Dean. I think this sad case is the result of a set of terrible circumstances. I’m not making excuses. Pfitzner is clearly a dangerous woman. But evil – no.

  Chapter 5

  KRISTI ABRAHAMS (2010)

  On 1 August 2010, a ‘distraught’ Kristi Abrahams contacted the police to report that her daughter, Kiesha Weippeart, was missing, having wandered away from the family home. The child was six years and three months old. Shortly after the report to the police, Abrahams and her de facto partner, Robert Smith, gave a press conference, appealing to the public for help. The community swung into action, and a large scale search consisting of neighbours, family and friends took place around the couple’s Mount Druitt home in western Sydney.

  Had little Kiesha wandered off? Had she been abducted? How had she simply vanished? Big questions loomed, but the focus was – at least initially – on finding the little girl. Normally in cases where a child is killed, the parents are the first in the list of suspects. But as yet there was no body, and during the initial eight months of the search for little Kiesha, both Abrahams and Smith maintained consistently that they had no knowledge of her disappearance. It wasn’t until 21 April 2011 that Kristi Abrahams finally admitted to murdering her daughter.

  Similarly to the Rachel Pfitzner case, Kiesha had been killed by her mother in an act of uncontrolled violence. But perhaps this is not the only similarity. Kristi Anne Abrahams admitted murdering her daughter, and – like Pfitzner – is described as living an incredibly troubled life, more so than most of us can, thankfully, imagine. And there are other parallels that together equal a catalogue of warnings. Is that what led to little Kiesha’s murder – a set of predictable circumstances that could have been avoided? Can we direct the horror at the crime rather than the woman?

  THE SCENARIO

  Kristi Abrahams and Christopher Weippeart were a couple for around three years, from 2002 to 2005. On 6 February 2003, Abrahams gave birth to their first child, a son. Sadly, he did not survive, dying of cot death just six weeks later, on 23 March. Kristi became pregnant again and Kiesha was born on 22 April 2004.

  As with little Dean Shillingsworth, there was a history of child abuse, documented through medical records. On 4 July 2005, when Kiesha was fifteen months old, she was admitted to Mount Druitt Hospital, staying in overnight as the result of being bitten by her mother. Abrahams was charged and pled guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and made the subject of a good behaviour bond for twelve months. Abrahams underwent anger-management counselling and was ordered to enter a parental care plan before her child would be returned. This event saw the end of the relationship between the parents. Kiesha’s biological father, Christopher Weippeart, was out of the picture, and Kiesha was now under the protection of the Department of Community Services.

  In 2006, Kristi began seeing Robert Smith. At this time, Kiesha was still under the care of DoCS, and was introduced to Smith during controlled visits with Abrahams. DoCS decided it was safe for Kiesha to be returned to her mother’s care in late December 2006, and around the same time Smith moved into the young family’s unit in Mount Druitt. The abuse didn’t stop though, and when Kiesha was three she told a social worker her mother had burnt her with a cigarette.

  The family grew, with Smith and Abrahams having two of their own children, the first in February 2008 and the second in July 2010. The unit the family shared was small; Kiesha had a bedroom to herself, and Smith, Abrahams and the two youngest shared the other bedroom. This gave Abrahams the ability to claim less knowledge of Kiesha’s movements compared to the other children.

  At around 9.30 am on 1 August 2010, Kristi called 000 and said that Kiesha was missing. She said the front door had been left open and Smith had gone looking for her. The police became involved in the search; they couldn’t find any sign of forced entry into the unit or any evidence – save what the parents said – that the child had wandered off. They tracked her last known movements and very quickly found that she had last been seen by adults (other than Abrahams and Smith) at her cousin’s birthday party on 11 July. This caused the police some concern and confusion, as they simply could not understand how there had been no sightings of the child for three weeks prior to her disappearance. Kiesha was not seen alive again.

  The police initiated their investigation in 2011 and established Strike Force Jarocin, which in the end would comprise a significant undercover operation to get to the truth of the little girl’s disappearance. The investigation would follow thousands of leads and interview dozens of witnesses and suspects, all accompanied by an outpouring of public support. The police were never going to give up until they found out what had happened to little Kiesha. Initially, they would not confirm that Kiesha had not been abducted, and a forensic examination of the family’s apartment yielded no evidence of an intruder, including Kiesha’s biological father who was ruled out as a suspect.

  By this time, although they were still offically treating it as a missing person’s case, they had their sights on Abrahams and her partner Smith. On 21 April 2011 the police secretly recorded a telephone conversation, during which Abrahams made a number of admissions about Kiesha’s death. This was a revelation, as until then both Abrahams and Smith had been consistent in their claim to the police, DoCS and the media – who were by now also interested in little Kiesha’s whereabouts – that they had no knowledge of, or involvement in, Kiesha’s disappearance. During that telephone conversation Abrahams said that on 18 July Kiesha had been in her bedroom. Abrahams was trying to get the child ready for bed, they argued, and Abrahams admitted to giving her a ‘nudge’ with her foot to encourage her to put her pyjamas on. Abrahams said that Kiesha, who was lying on her bedroom floor, jumped, and in the process hit her head on the foot of the bed. She said Kiesha went ‘funny’, which can be interpreted as Kiesha having had a fit or seizure. Abrahams said she tried to wake her up by putting her in the shower, but it didn’t work. The only response was that the child made ‘weird’ noises, which Abrahams thought would stop – but they didn’t. Abrahams then said that Kiesha started to defecate and went ‘like jelly’. Abrahams said that Kiesha was still breathing, and she and Smith decided that she might sleep it off, so they put her to bed in their room. When they checked on her in the morning she had stopped breathing. Ten days later the couple reported Kiesha missing, saying she had simply disappeared from the unit.

  We will never know how the trauma happened that resulted in Kiesha’s injuries, but we can surmise that all of these symptoms indicate the same thing – a neurological seizure caused by an abno
rmal electrical discharge in her brain as a result of the head injury. For that to happen, one of a limited number of events had to have occurred. The possibilities are that she suffered a period of reduced oxygen to her brain, she was poisoned, she was suffering from a genetic condition, she had a brain tumour, or she had an infection, such as meningitis. Taking Abrahams’ statement into account, it is likely that this is, at least in part, reflective of the truth and Kiesha hit her head causing her fit. I doubt that Abrahams could have concocted a story that included so many of the symptoms of a seizure had it not been true. And we can be sure that Kiesha had what is known as a generalised seizure, where the whole brain is involved and the sufferer loses consciousness. That corresponds with Abrahams’ description of Kiesha as going ‘like jelly’ and defecating. She needed immediate medical attention. She didn’t get it.

  The morning of Kiesha’s death, Abrahams and Smith got a suitcase and put Kiesha’s little body in it, storing the suitcase in the child’s own bedroom – presumably while they decided what to do next. By this time, Smith was as implicated in the child’s death as her mother; it was Smith who went in search of a burial site, finding somewhere he thought suitable in bushland near his mother’s residence at Shalvey, a western Sydney suburb.

  The couple obviously decided to keep the child’s death a secret if they could, as three days after her death they took the suitcase containing Kiesha’s body by taxi to the site Smith had found. Smith admitted that he had spent those three days cycling around Sydney’s west looking for a suitable disposal site. They put some thought into avoiding detection, by booking taxis to and from the site under false names, and not from their home, and trying to disguise themselves. It didn’t work. In tracking their movements the police discovered that taxi records showed that at 5.00 am on 18 July 2010 the couple were picked up from Woodstock Avenue, Mount Druitt, and were subsequently collected at 7.15 am for the return trip home from Sedgman Crescent, Shalvey.