A 48-year-old man was jailed for the murder of his three-year-old son after taking the child into a bathroom at his aunt's Sydney apartment and attempting to kill them both in May 2023. His aunt had to unlock the door with a butter knife to find them lying in a pool of blood in the failed murder-suicide.
The boy, who was three years and nine months old, could not be revived. In a phone call from jail after his arrest, the man asked his son what colour he saw. The boy said red. "Do you want to be red too? (He) said 'yes' and then I did it," he told his partner.
The man also told prison staff he had killed his son because he wanted them to become two ghosts. Justice McGuire found the man was experiencing bizarre beliefs spurred by paranoia that his son was better off dead than being cared for by someone else.
The killing occurred one-and-a-half hours after his partner packed her bags and left, calling police to make a domestic violence complaint against him. Days before the murder, he had assaulted his partner, accused her of infidelity, and smashed her phone. He had abandoned his home west of Sydney and taken his partner and son to his aunt's apartment.
After his arrest while in hospital, he told staff he knew he would be arrested but had no family members to help take care of his son. He said he tried to kill himself and his son so that the Department of Family and Community Services would not put the child into foster care.
The sentencing raises questions about how courts balance mental illness against the gravity of killing a defenceless child. Under NSW law, the standard non-parole period for the murder of a child under 18 is 25 years. However, Justice McGuire imposed a 18.5-year non-parole period, expiring on 30 November 2041.
The man had only made very limited expressions of contrition and remorse. Recent claims to a forensic psychiatrist that he heard voices telling him to "kill everything he loved" at the time of the murder were inconsistent with statements made to police and hospital staff soon after, the judge noted.
The judge reduced the sentence after finding that the man's time in custody would be more onerous because of his mental illness and that he was likely to spend it in protective custody because of the nature of his crime. Justice McGuire said the man had "perversely and egregiously breached the trust, protection and love" his son deserved.
The man's partner had been in a relationship with him that ended in 2014 due to his violent behaviour and drug use. She recommenced the relationship six months after the biological mother's death in April 2021, when he soon began using methamphetamine. The case reflects the intersection of domestic violence, drug abuse, and mental health in filicide. Support is available through 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.