Mothers Who Murder

by Xanthe Mallett

  Another case worth reviewing in terms of motive for why men intentionally kill children is that of James Harry Barton, who on 29 June 2007 was charged with three counts: count one of manslaughter, count two of murder and count three of attempted murder. The motive given was provocation.17 In the court documents, the victims were referred to by initial only because two of the victims were children, and to protect their identity their family members’ identities also had to be kept confidential. Consequently, the adult male Barton murdered was called ‘M’, the second murder charge related to ‘N’, M’s three-year-old daughter. The third count related to the attempted murder of M’s five-year-old son, ‘J’.

  At the time of the incident, M was living in Housing Commission premises with his two children in Albury, a major regional city in New South Wales, 350 kilometres south-west of Canberra. M had sole custody of the children since the breakdown of his relationship with their mother, ‘K’, following a violent argument. Barton (aged fifty in 2007) had known M for about thirty years, having met through a citizen’s band radio club. It is not clear what led to the establishment of this enduring relationship as the two men were very different, but what is clear is that understanding the background to the men’s connection will help explain why the situation arose in which Barton felt compelled to kill his long-term associate. M was the one who had been in trouble with the law and had a significant criminal record. Added to that, he was often violent and resorted to intimidating behaviour; he was also involved with drugs as both a user and a supplier. In contrast, Barton had been in full-time employment all his adult life and had nothing to do with drugs. He’d had one run-in with the law in 1977, when he was involved in lighting fires, but that was the extent of his previous criminal history.

  You wouldn’t necessarily call the men friends, as evidence presented at Barton’s trial irrefutably established that M had been blackmailing Barton regularly since 1994, the basis of which was Barton’s inappropriate sexual behaviour towards an eleven-year-old boy. This was admitted by Barton to police when he told them that during a camping trip he had tried to touch the child in a sexual manner. M had been present at the time, giving him the information he needed to blackmail Barton. Although the jury was asked to exclude the reasons behind the blackmail from their deliberations when they considered whether Barton was guilty as charged of murder and attempted murder, at sentencing the evidence supporting Barton’s claim M was extorting money from him was included. It comprised a significant amount of written material, as well as around twenty conversations Barton had recorded between himself and the deceased, transcripts of parts of which are included in the court documents.18

  The gist was that M was a violent and intimidating character, who threatened Barton with going to the police if he did not continue to pay for M’s silence. M had also organised for other acquaintances to threaten Barton with violence, one of whom put a gun to Barton’s head and in that way managed to extract money from him. M had also bragged to various people who gave evidence at the trial that he had been blackmailing Barton – the proof was overwhelming, and that’s what Barton’s plea of ‘provocation’ was based on. Things had reached a crisis point between the two after Barton’s mother died, as M knew Barton was set to inherit her house and saw that as a way of getting more money from him. Bring into this unhealthy and violent mix M’s two young children.

  On Friday 3 September 2004, Barton went to M’s home and once there was told that M had bought a new vehicle, and that he was expected to supply the finance and make the repayments. Barton told M that the purchase could not go ahead as he could not afford it. After putting the children to bed, M got a rifle out and threatened Barton. Barton grabbed the gun and, according to his version of events, shot M in an act of self-defence. He then expected the imminent arrival of the police, as he was sure someone would have heard the shot, but when no one came he covered the body with a duvet and went home, leaving the children asleep and alone in the house with their father’s body overnight. Barton returned in the morning just as the children were getting up.

  Barton had sole custody of the deceased’s two children all day on 4 September. At around 6 pm he was captured on CCTV at a petrol station buying 10 litres of fuel. He then returned to M’s house with the children, where they all watched a film until around 11 pm after which both children went to bed. Shortly after, a fire started. Barton claimed that at this time he was in the yard retrieving the family dog, saying the fire started ‘spontaneously’. A neighbour rang the fire brigade at 11.36 pm. Barton called the emergency services at 11.37, but he failed to tell the dispatcher that there were children on the premises. The judge at Barton’s trial said this call was made to ‘cover his tracks’, adding there was no urgency in his voice when he made the call. A fire investigator gave evidence that the fire had been lit deliberately; it caused very significant damage and the property later had to be demolished. The fire was probably accelerated by the fuel that Barton poured at various places around the lounge, including the area where M’s body was found.

  The Crown asserted that Barton lit the fire to 1) get rid of M’s remains, and 2) to kill the children. J survived the inferno, and was in fact saved by Barton who broke the window of the child’s room and rescued him. This would at first suggest he did not intend to murder him; however, the presiding judge considered that Barton only saved the boy to deflect suspicion when neighbours started expressing concern about M and the children still being inside the house. Other people tried to save N, while Barton remained outside, saying it was impossible to rescue her. There was also evidence that Barton had given both children methadone, which it was suggested was intended to make them drowsy so that they would not be aware of the fire at all.

  In an ironic twist in this case, the young boy who was the source of the blackmail between the men never made a formal complaint. Years later – by which point he was an adult – when the police requested a statement as a result of Barton’s murdering his blackmailer, the man denied ever having been touched inappropriately. Regardless, Barton was certainly frightened of going to prison over the incident should M ever tell the police. The surviving victim in this case, J, suffered only minor physical burns that healed quickly, but at the time of the trial he continued to suffer psychologically. He knew exactly what had happened to his father and sister, and his main question was ‘why’?

  Barton was not, according to various experts, suffering from any psychiatric disorder. However, he did have neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1),19 and from the court documents it appears this affected Barton psychologically, causing him to suffer from low self-esteem and apparently explaining how the ‘friendship’ with M may have developed in the first place. Barton was found not guilty of the murder of M, but instead was found guilty of manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to a fixed term of five years. He received a fixed sentence of thirteen years for the attempted murder of J. Finally, Barton was sentenced to thirty-seven years’ imprisonment for murdering N, with a non-parole period set at thirty years. His sentence began on 13 September 2004. He appears to feel distress at the thought of the children’s suffering, but does not feel he is – legally at least – responsible for what occurred.

  The saddest part of this situation is that Barton could simply see no way out, and the murder and attempted murder of the children were just part of him ridding himself of a dominating and violent presence in his life. Although not the children’s parent, after having murdered their carer Barton was acting in the role of loco parentis at the time he decided to kill them. He knew the children well. They had reason to trust him, and should have been safe with the man they called ‘Uncle Jamie’. However, his poor problem-solving skills and fear of prosecution (which may or may not have been legitimate), left one child dead and one forever psychologically scarred.

  The final murderous male is a somewhat unusual case: that of sixty-nine-year-old John Walsh, who murdered his wife and two grandchildren, and attempted to murder his daughter. The two
child victims in this case remain anonymous as a statutory non-publication order was established, forbidding publication of the names of the children until further order. Therefore, the judge at trial elected to refer to all four victims as well as the children’s father by their initials only.

  The situation was that Walsh’s daughter, ‘SW’, and her husband, ‘DH’ (both police officers in New South Wales, SW serving at Parkes20 Police Station) had separated. SW and DH had two children, a son ‘KH’ aged seven at the time of the incident and a daughter ‘JH’ aged five. The children were in Walsh’s care at the time of the incident because after the breakdown of the marriage, SW’s parents would regularly look after the children overnight at Cowra while SW was at work. Her parents would then take the children to school the next morning, and SW would collect them in the afternoon.

  On the evening of 29 June 2008, SW dropped the children at her parents’ house for the night. The next day she tried to call her mother a few times from work, but couldn’t get an answer. At around 11 am she spoke to her father, who said her mother (JW) was taking a nap. SW left work at around 12 pm and arrived at her parents’ house at 1.40 pm. SW went straight into her parents’ bedroom to check on her mother, who was lying on the floor with her back leaning against the bed. SW noticed her mother looked pale and she asked her father if her mother was ill. Walsh said his wife was lying on the floor to get comfortable as she was suffering from a stomach ache. SW asked Walsh if her mother was dead, to which he answered ‘No, no, don’t be stupid’.21 Walsh then offered SW a cup of tea and asked her to come and have a chat in the lounge. As SW entered the lounge she noticed the children’s school uniforms were still laid out where they’d been put the night before. When SW questioned him about it, Walsh said the children had gone to school in ‘mufti’ (plain clothes, that is, not uniform).

  SW then went to the children’s room and found her daughter JH lying on the bottom bunk, partly covered by bedding. She couldn’t see her son. While SW was still in the children’s room her father came in, and she asked him what was going on, saying ‘What have you done?’ Walsh tried to calm her, saying the child was sick and the doctor had been called. However, SW found her daughter was cold and unresponsive, and she realised that JH had been dead for some hours. It was at this point, when SW still had her back to her father, that Walsh attacked her from behind with a small axe, managing to strike SW’s head a number of times. During this fight, Walsh told his daughter ‘I am doing this because I love you. When I am done with you lot I am going to Newcastle to kill your ex-husband. We are all better off this way. This is the way it has to be.’22 SW managed to fight her father off and escape to a neighbour’s house where she called the police.

  Walsh left the scene before the police arrived, but a significant media campaign led to a tipoff that the offender had checked into a hotel in Hay, 400 kilometres away. Walsh was arrested. Meanwhile, SW had been taken to hospital where she was found to have three lacerations to her head that required sutures. Her worst injury was a depressed skull fracture and the lining of her brain was torn; this injury was repaired surgically with titanium plates used to replace damaged parts of her skull. She survived.

  Walsh admitted to the three murders and the attempted murder of his daughter, and gave the police a full account of what he had done. He killed his wife, JW, by hitting her on the head with the shaft of a hammer, then stabbed her, after which he ran the bath and drowned his granddaughter, JH. After JH was dead he let her pyjamas drain of water and then put her back in bed. He then woke his grandson, telling him he needed to go to the toilet. As the boy walked back to his bedroom, Walsh hit him on the back of the head with a hammer, knocking him to the floor. Walsh then hit him on the head again and put him in the bath to make sure he was dead. KH was then put on the bottom bunk with his sister. SW just hadn’t seen her son there when she found her daughter dead. Walsh even killed the family dog, telling police he’d done that because, once he left the house, there would be no one to care for the dog. At some point, Walsh packed some clothes in a bag and at 9 am he went to the children’s school to tell them the kids were sick and wouldn’t be in that day. He told the police that he packed the clothes as he intended to go to Newcastle to kill SW’s ex-husband, and a note was found at the house of the man’s address.

  It’s hard to find a motive in this case. In an interview tendered at the sentencing hearing SW said could not think of a reason her father would perpetrate these acts. She had not noticed any signs of mental instability; all she could add was that she felt Walsh had been suffering from depression since her brother committed suicide in 2002. This was undiagnosed and she did not feel it explained his actions. Apart from that, Walsh had a loving relationship with his wife and his grandchildren. Walsh said that his wife’s murder was a mercy killing as he said she was sick, but the judge did not believe on the balance of probabilities that Walsh genuinely believed this. Walsh said that he added his daughter and grandchildren to this list as, once he killed his wife, he knew he would go to prison and there would be no one to help care for them. He showed signs of premeditation: he collected the weapons and kept them to hand and ran the bath to drown the children and the dog. He also told lies to the school and to SW after he had killed the victims. But he still gave no real explanation for the offences.

  A number of experts prepared medical reports, none of which helped explain why Walsh did what he did. A forensic psychiatrist gave evidence that ‘he was not able to state with any confidence that the offender was suffering from an abnormality of mind resulting in significant impairment over his control at the time of the offences’. Nor was there evidence that Walsh was suffering from any neurological disorder that could explain his actions. Certainly, Walsh was not in a ‘normal’ state of mind, whatever that might be for him as an individual, but he does not appear to have been psychiatrically or neurologically impaired at the time. We are therefore no closer to understanding why this hideous crime happened.

  Unsurprisingly, Walsh was found guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his grandchildren, JH and KH. For the offence of causing grievous bodily harm to SW with the intent to kill he was sentenced to imprisonment with a non-parole period of twelve years. For the murder of JW, Walsh was sentenced to prison, with a non-parole period of fifteen years.23 These murders remain unexplained.

  IN CONCLUSION

  As I am from the United Kingdom, I am very familiar with the high-profile child death cases that have gone through the British criminal justice system, and since relocating to Australia in 2012 I have become aware of similar case history here. The same problems also occur in both countries when it comes to trying to protect vulnerable children. Clearly, to date, Britain and Australia alike are yet to find a solution.

  My aim when I started writing this book was that I wanted to look at why women kill their own children. However, what I learnt early on while looking through the case files was that you cannot separate men and women because in so many of the cases where children die at the hands of their carers, both sexes were involved with the final, murderous acts. As a result, it wasn’t possible to just look at one sex dichotomously and completely exclude the influence of the other, as I had come to the conclusion that in many child death cases, without the involvement, stimulus and power of the other partner – either as a passive or active influence – the murder would not have happened.

  I knew that to better understand why women are the main protagonists in killing their own children, I needed to also consider why men take that role. I started with many preconceptions, but put those aside to see what the case details would tell me. What I found was a range of motivations, some of which mirrored what we saw in the female-led cases; some were simply inexplicable. Possibly the most important point I took away from this comparison was that both men and women, alone and in unison, kill their children for many complex reasons, and simply saying women kill for love and men for vengeance is not borne out by the facts. Women can
be cruel and vengeful, and men can kill for love. Misguided and damaged it may be, but it is their version of love nonetheless.

  Chapter 10

  THE END OF MY JOURNEY

  In early 2014 I watched the news and became painfully aware that almost every other week we hear about a child dying at the hands of their parents. My feeling was supported by the statistics, with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting that, on average, twenty-seven children are killed in Australia by their mother or father every year.1 The article sought to explain the inexplicable, and asked what warning signs might signify those children most at risk, so they could be better protected.

  It struck me that in the case of Luke Batty, who was murdered by his troubled father, everyone involved was a victim of some kind. I was also reminded that regardless of the tireless work of those who care for vulnerable children, we simply cannot protect them all. The case of Luke exemplifies this. Luke was eleven years old when his father, Greg Anderson, took a cricket bat and a knife and murdered his son at the end of cricket practice at Tyabb oval in southern Melbourne on 12 February 2014.2 Although his mother knew his father was psychologically troubled and had battled against an undiagnosed mental illness for over twenty years, she had never had reason to fear that he would ever harm his beloved son.3 Police confirmed that Anderson, who was fatally shot by police after they were unable to subdue him with capsicum spray after the attack on his son, was the subject of outstanding warrants as the result of alleged assaults and was known to the Department of Human Services. Luke’s mother, Rosie Batty, is reported as having lived in fear of Anderson for the last decade.