Mothers Who Murder

by Xanthe Mallett

  Dr Rob Milton3 was the attending forensic psychiatrist, who assessed Cheatham forty-eight hours after the incident took place. Milton diagnosed the offender as suffering from a condition known as hypochondriasis, ‘that is an excess of pre-occupation with physical disease and a tendency to interpret from very minor symptoms that the patient is suffering a fatal or serious disease’.4 When asked why he believed he had AIDS, Cheatham described some physical symptoms, but admitted he had been too scared to seek medical help. He was informed that his symptoms did not lead to a diagnosis of AIDS, but he disagreed, saying in his case they did. Dr Milton was of the opinion that Cheatham was delusional and preoccupied with the fact that he was suffering a fatal illness, which he believed he had passed to his family. Milton felt Cheatham’s actions were the result of this delusional state; Cheatham believed he was putting his wife and children out of their misery. Milton also believed the suicide attempt was genuine. On 9 March 1998 Cheatham was the subject of various medical tests while in Long Bay Prison5 hospital. Both the drug screen and HIV test were negative. Following review, the diagnosis was given as delusional disorder and hypochondriasis. He was considered to represent a severe risk of self-harm.

  The offender admitted murdering his wife and daughter, and the attempted murder of his baby daughter. He was found guilty and received an overall prison sentence of twenty-four years, with a non-parole period of sixteen years for the murder of his wife, sixteen years for the murder of his elder daughter and twelve years for wounding with intent to murder his younger daughter. He appealed his sentence on the basis of diminished responsibility and that the original trial judge had not adequately guided the jury as to that defence. The conclusion was that the court reduced his sentence to twenty-two years with a non-parole period of fourteen years, on the basis that the sentence would be served in protective custody and the fact that the sentence of twenty-four years did not take into account the offender’s ‘abnormality of mind’.6

  Clearly in this case, a psychiatric disorder led to the deaths of this family at the hands of the father. It was an unusual and sad case. I have not found a case where a female offender has suffered from this type of psychiatric disorder, hypochondriasis.7 These are not the actions of a stable mind, and his suicide attempt appeared genuine. Cheatham seemed to believe absolutely that he had infected his family with a terrible disease. If we look at this from the offender’s perspective, it could be argued that he committed the crimes out of love for his family.

  On 9 December 1999, Sandor Cikos murdered his de facto wife, Allison Penrose, and their two children, Jake aged four years and Travis aged eighteen months. As senior defence counsel highlighted, although there is no excuse for multiple murder, to understand the circumstances around the murders the relationship between the couple has to be examined. Cikos had been married before and it appears the woman was the dominant partner. When Cikos was thirty-two years old, and after thirteen years of marriage, the relationship broke down; by this stage they had three children. Initially after the separation he maintained regular contact with his children, but after he started a relationship with Allison his ex-wife started creating problems, to the extent that he virtually lost contact with the three children from his first marriage. Cikos and Allison intended to marry, but after Cikos suffered a series of work accidents that left him with multiple injuries, including fractures to his right leg, their plans were put on hold. Nevertheless, the couple went on to have a family; Jake was born in 1995 and Travis in 1997.

  Allison is described as having a strong, assertive character, and as being someone who enjoyed a social life and on occasions drank to excess. She was also quite an extrovert. One incident in particular appears to have had a profound effect on the relationship. Following a heavy drinking session at a nightclub with a group of friends, Cikos drove the group back to their house where they all continued drinking but he, as the designated driver and therefore sober individual, went to sleep. Allison then had sex in another room with two partners, a male and a female, and then took the female to the room in which her husband was sleeping as it was a fantasy of hers to watch him have intercourse with another female. But once this fantasy became a reality Allison became enraged, immediately berating her husband for having sex with another woman in front of her. She hit Cikos and ordered both him and the other woman out of the house.

  The tirade of abuse continued in the weeks and months that followed, and it appears the incident became all-consuming for Allison. She assaulted Cikos a number of times, including attacking him with a knife for which he needed eight stitches on his elbow, which resulted in an Apprehended Domestic Violence Order being taken out against her. Things reached a head when Allison gave him an ultimatum: either he kill the other woman he had slept with or Allison would have him killed. She set a deadline for the other woman’s death as February 2000. Allison told Cikos that if he left or went to the police she would arrange for something to happen to him. After months of physical and emotional abuse, Cikos felt that murdering his partner was the only option left available to him.

  Again, experienced psychiatrist Dr Rob Milton was the attending expert. Milton examined Cikos and came to the conclusion that the offender was not making the story up. He considered that what led to Allison’s death was her overwhelming jealousy combined with the offender’s inability to cope with her extreme reaction to the situation of the sexual encounter she initiated with her friend. The murder of the two sons was more problematic to explain in terms of motive, and Milton found no evidence of any cognitive defect or significant mental disorder. Cikos gave evidence that he had thought about killing his partner for some time, but the only difference at that moment was the imminent deadline she had set him for killing the other woman. He also said that he had not decided on when, until after she had gone to bed. The timing at least was not premeditated. He took a piece of pipe from downstairs and went back upstairs to where Allison was sleeping; he then proceeded to strike her on the back of the head with the pipe. This caused her to turn over, at which point he manually strangled her. He then went into each of the children’s rooms and put plastic bags over the boys’ heads but they did not suffocate; he strangled both of them. The only reason he could offer was that he could not bear the thought of them going through life with the pain of having lost their mother.

  After the fact Cikos showed genuine remorse and contrition, which were considered mitigating circumstances when it came to sentencing. He was sentenced to twenty-one years for each of the murders, to run concurrently, with a non-parole period of fifteen years and six months.8 Cikos was a man under stress, and it appears the imminent arrival of the deadline by which he had been ordered to murder the other woman, together with months of physical and psychological abuse, pushed him too far and he snapped. Without considering the reason for the murders of the children, the only explanation for which appears to be the one Cikos gave himself – that is, he didn’t want to leave them without any parents once he went to prison – this case could be argued to be the result of battered woman’s syndrome.9 Although the majority of interpersonal and domestic violence is perpetuated by men against women, a significant number of men are assaulted by their female partner every year, with some studies suggesting somewhere around 18 per cent have experienced some form of domestic abuse since they were sixteen. We understand that sometimes women, after prolonged and sustained abuse, snap. Was that the case here? Or was he a man who just could not cope with the pressure on him to murder someone, felt trapped, and was incapable of finding another solution to his problem?

  In 2004, thirty-six-year-old Steven Fraser was found guilty of the murder of his three children in 2001.10 His motive was apparently that he was scared he would lose contact with them after his estranged wife starting a new relationship. Fraser had a long history of psychiatric disturbance, which did affect him at the time of the murders as he was listed as ‘severely mentally disturbed’. However, his culpability was exacerbated by the fact that, in addition to
his fear about losing contact, he also wanted to punish his ex-partner, Maria, and that the crimes were clearly premeditated.

  Fraser’s relationship with his ex-partner had been troubled, and the couple had separated and reconciled on a number of occasions. More than once during arguments, Fraser had told Maria that if she ever left him she would never see the children again and he also made unspecific threats of harming the children. Regardless, in late 1997 the couple separated, and Maria moved into a house in Chippendale, a small inner-city suburb of Sydney. Custody of the children was split, with Maria taking them for four days a week, Fraser the remaining three days, but the arrangement was flexible. For around fifteen months Fraser lived at the house in Chippendale with the rest of the family, and Maria at all times encouraged him to spend time with the children as she thought it was good for all of them.

  In early 2001 Fraser moved out to live in a flat in Caringbah, a southern Sydney suburb, having told Maria that he did not intend to live with her again as he had never loved her. Relations between the couple appear to have deteriorated when Maria attempted to take the children abroad on holiday. Fraser blocked the trip, refusing to give his permission for the children to leave the country. This in turn led to Maria seeking to reduce his visitation rights. In July Maria began a relationship with another man, a situation that caused Fraser considerable distress. Following a confrontation at the Chippendale house about the relationship, Fraser took the children for an arranged visitation for the weekend of 18–19 August 2001. Maria never saw them alive again.

  Fraser’s highly emotional state continued, and conversations with his mother over the weekend led her to become concerned. Eventually she called the police who attended the scene. When the police entered Fraser’s flat they found the children dead and Fraser in the bath in the process of trying to commit suicide. Fraser had drugged his two sons (Jarrod aged four and Ryan aged five years) and daughter (Ashley, aged seven years) with sleeping tablets to try and ensure compliance, or at least to prevent them from fighting him, and then he drowned them in the bath. It didn’t work as planned in that the post-mortem on Ashley’s body revealed injuries that indicated that she had struggled violently against her father’s attempts to drown her, but he was eventually successful and murdered all three of his children in this fashion. Fraser then made a genuine, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at suicide11 by taking a significant number of sleeping pills and then getting in the bath, thinking he would fall asleep and drown as well.

  Fraser admitted killing his children, but made a plea of guilty of manslaughter as opposed to murder, based on the defence of substantial mental impairment.12 The Crown refused this plea, and the only decision the jury had to make was whether the defence demonstrated on the balance of probabilities that his culpability was diminished because of his psychological state at the time of the killings. Clearly, the jury did not accept his defence, as Fraser was found guilty of murder. For the murder of Ryan and Jarrod he was sentenced to twenty-three years in prison for each count, and for killing Ashley Fraser he received a term of twenty-five years. The non-parole period was set at twenty years.

  It may seem harsh that the jury did not consider Fraser guilty of manslaughter as opposed to murder, but although he was severely psychologically disturbed at the time of the killings, there was clear evidence that retribution against his ex-partner Maria Fraser was at least part of his motive. Fraser clearly under the impression that Maria Fraser would be the first person to enter the flat on the Monday morning, so before attempting suicide, he prepared the apartment to create what the court documents call ‘a horrifying spectacle for her benefit’.13 The children’s bodies appeared to have been laid out in such a way as to cause Fraser’s ex-partner the most distress, a ‘scene from her worst nightmare and one she would never forget’.

  It didn’t work as Maria was not the first on the scene. Instead, that was the police. Strangely, the first sight that met the police officers’ eyes on entering the flat was a child’s toy, a monkey, hanging from a noose with a knife through its body. The hands had been removed and were lying on the floor, and tomato sauce had been used to indicate the entry and exit wounds in an attempt to make it look as if the toy was bleeding. Next Ryan’s body was found on a mattress in the lounge, and on the child’s face were written the words ‘I love you Ryan, RIP. XO’. The next body found was the other son, Jarrod, on the double bed in the master bedroom. Jarrod’s face had also been inscribed with a similar message to Ryan, and above the bed on the wall, Fraser had written ‘I’m not to be toyed with!’ Ashley’s body was in the second bedroom on the lower bunk. On the computer the offender had set the screen saver to display the message as soon as the PC was turned on: ‘… I always promised you that come what may, Ashley, Ryan, and Jarrod would be with me forever, always … always … with or without you’. Fraser was clearly a disturbed man when he murdered his children but the evidence suggests forward planning, and that revenge was at least part of the rationale for his crimes.

  In the summer of 2002 Craig Andrew Merritt was tried for the murder of his three children on 2 September 2001.14 The children were all very young at the time of their deaths; Jackson Merritt was six years old, Taylah Pringle was eleven months, and Mikaylah Merritt was eleven weeks old. All were Merritt’s biological children but each by a different mother. Merritt had custody of all three children for the weekend as they were scheduled to spend the time with Merritt and his family for Father’s Day. The children were all bathed, fed, and put to bed as normal. At some point, Mikaylah woke up and Merritt brought her out of the bedroom in which she had been sleeping; at this stage there was a disagreement between Merritt and his mother as to who should attend to the baby. This may have added to the offender’s distressed state of mind later, in that his lack of confidence in how to manage the baby led to increased feelings of insecurity as a father.

  The offender had had a lot to drink, although how much is debated between family members. He then had a hostile exchange with his aunt on the telephone, again the focus of which was his children and the fact that they had three different mothers. Later Merritt sent her a text message saying ‘Thank you & good bye!’ This was followed by text messages in a similar vein to his then partner, Mrs Frary, who was awoken at 5.30 am after hearing noises in her house. Merritt was kneeling next to her bed, shaking and crying; he then spoke to her briefly before he left. She phoned the Merritt household and the children were found dead in bed. No major injuries were apparent, but post-mortems revealed that Jackson and Taylah had died from mechanical asphyxiation, consistent with intentional suffocation. The pathologist could not make a definitive diagnosis for Mikaylah’s cause of death, but given the circumstances and admissions by Merritt at Parramatta Police Station on the morning of the killings that he had ‘just put his kids to sleep’ the court considered that all three had been suffocated by their father.

  Merritt was diagnosed by an attending psychiatrist as suffering from a chronic, fluctuating, depressed mood, which had begun in late 2000. There was no psychotic disorder or major depressive disorder, nor was there evidence that he suffered from a mental disorder. He claimed, and the psychiatrist believed him, that he was suffering amnesia and did not remember harming his children. The psychiatrist noted that he knew and admitted to having killed his children, but had no memory of actually doing so. Although Merritt had stormy relationships with the mothers of his three children, partly as a result of his emotionalism and alleged problems with alcohol and gambling, he seems to have got on with them fairly well, at least in terms of access to the children. All of the mothers were of the impression that Merritt had good and loving relationships with the children, and there was no history of any violence or abuse on Merritt’s part.

  One ongoing issue was that he had argued with the mothers of his children as well as his own mother regarding his ability to care for the kids. Merritt had been in a heightened emotional state on the afternoon of the murders, talking to his mother about whether
he was a failure, having three children by three different women, and was a little concerned about caring for the new baby. In addition to his argument with his aunt, he also had an acrimonious exchange with his partner when she had been with them earlier in the day. In general, it had been a difficult day emotionally for Merritt, so much so that after the telephone call with his aunt she had become concerned that he might harm himself. At no point, however, did anyone ever think that he would hurt his children.

  Perhaps, had someone been looking, there were warning signs. In 1999, for example, Mikaylah’s mother gave evidence that Merritt had told her that he had considered committing suicide and taking Jackson’s life at the same time, but dismissed the idea, saying ‘why should he suffer because it’s not his fault’.15 Even knowing this and his emotional state on the day in question, the reason for his actions is still impenetrable. As a result, the motive at trial was listed as ‘incomprehensible’. Merritt plead guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment on each of the three charges of murder. It was his level of culpability that was really in question due to his disturbed mental state at the time of the killings. An appeal into the severity of the sentence in 2004 led to an overall reduction to thirty-four years, with a non-parole period of twenty-four years.16 It appears that Merritt felt he was inadequate father and this, together with his emotional instability, led to his desperate and murderous acts.