21 years ago today, at around 9pm, my grandfather was coming to after being bashed unconscious and was untying himself from the phone cord that had been ripped from the wall and used to bound his hands together after at least one if not two thugs sat on him smashing his face over and over. He eventually managed to call 000 and told the operator with a bitten off tongue and mouth filled with blood, someone has killed my wife.
My grandmothers lifeless body lay on the floor metres away from him. I’m told the thugs also did incredible harm to her gentle body trying to get information where she had left their valuables in their home.
I don’t know much more about what she looked like, how they left her or how she suffered. I was never given the opportunity to call her up and say good bye, to give her a big hug, to say I love you.
I like to think that she passed quickly and that she was not left on the floor for the hour or more before struggling terribly to draw her last breaths. It’s quite possibly one of the most traumatic parts of the unknown sequence of events that took place that night, did she suffer or was it quick.
Their house was turned upside down, contents of every drawer, every cupboard, every nook and cranny emptied across the floor by the hunters who expected to find obviously more than they did that night. They even emptied the fridge. What did they honestly think there were going to find. This was all in stark contrast to the tip top shape my grandmother kept the house in since I can ever remember. Never anything out of place, everything sparking clean.
The scene that must have greeted police as they arrived with sirens and lights blaring waking the sleepy neighbourhood of McKellar from their beds must have also been traumatic in itself. This was not a scene from some American movie, it was unfolding in a family home right here in Canberra suburbia.
The murderers that night not only robbed my grandparents home and stole their lives, they robbed me of my innocence, they robbed me of my future. They tore a hole in my life that will never ever heal.
And now Twenty one years on we still seek answers from the community as to who may be done these horrendous things to two innocent pensioners.
If you know anything, no matter how small or insignificant it may be, please please call ACT Police or Crimestoppers and report it.
The people who did this need to be brought to justice, they don’t deserve to live freely amongst us.