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[Music] Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at
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any time you need support, please contact your local crisis center. For suggested phone numbers, for
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confidential support, and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this
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episode on your app or on our website. It was nearing 4:30 on the cold, misty morning of Saturday, August 28, 1993,
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when married couple Ted and Jan Warner were jolted awake by a loud knock on their front door.
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The Warers lived on Prince Edward Park Road, a quiet and leafy residential street in the southern Sydney suburb of
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Waronora. Set on the waterfront of the Waronora River and surrounded by bushland, it was
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highly unusual to hear a disturbance at such an hour. Ted got up to open the door and was
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surprised to find his neighbor, 23-year-old Jeffrey Gillum, standing there dressed in nothing but a pair of
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boxer shorts and smelling of smoke. Jeffrey lived next door to the Warers with his older brother, 25-year-old
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Christopher, and their parents, Helen and Steven. The Gillums were a fixture of Prince
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Edward Park Road, having lived in the neighborhood for over two decades. They were wellliked with locals viewing
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them as a loving, warm, and sociable family, always keen to lend a hand to those in need or bring a plate of food
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to the neighborhood barbecues. Ted had known Jeffrey Gillum his whole life and had never seen him in such a
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state. typically neatly presented and wellspoken. His pale skin was covered in goosebumps and he appeared to be highly
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agitated. He started speaking in a strange disjointed fashion, asking Ted to call
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Trip0. They're all dead, Jeffrey mumbled. He's killed them. Set them on fire. Ted was stunned as he tried to make
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sense of Jeffrey's semi-jibberish claims. Mom and dad are both dead. Jeffrey continued.
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He's burned them. I've killed him for what he did. Ted ushered Jeffrey into his house and
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dialed Trip0. As Ted tried to explain to the operator what was going on, the operator asked if
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Jeffrey had been drinking. Ted lent over to smell Jeffrey's breath, noting that it didn't smell like alcohol, but
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kerosene. He handed the phone to Jeffrey so he could explain things for himself.
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In a halting and distracted manner, Jeffrey told the operator that his brother Christopher had killed his
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parents and set their bodies on fire. He said that he had chased Christopher down the stairs and killed him for what
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he did. He killed them. Killed them. Jeffree stammered. I don't know why. [Music]
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Like most of the other homes in the area, the Gillums lived on a long narrow block that sloped downwards from Prince
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Edward Park Road and towards the riverfront. External stairs led down from the street
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and to their modest two-story home, which was surrounded by an assortment of towering trees and greenery.
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The upper floor consisted of the combined lounge, dining, and kitchen space, which gave way to Steven and
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Helen's bedroom. From the lounge room, a spiral staircase led to the downstairs bedroom belonging
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to Christopher, which had an adjoining on suite and rumpus room. Jeffrey lived in the converted boat
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shed, which was attached to the main house by a set of external stairs. At 4:43 a.m., a team of firefighters
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arrived at the property to find smoke rising from the roof. Jeffrey Gillum was waiting for them at
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the bottom of the external stairs in a highly agitated and emotionally distraught state.
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He appeared to be disoriented and delirious. speaking incoherently about his parents being dead inside the house.
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The firefighters ran along the side balcony to the rear of the house. Flames roared from inside Helen and
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Steven's bedroom as well as from a second fire in the lounge room. The firefighters opened the sliding
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glass doors that led to the upper living space, but were met with a wave of heat
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so extreme that they couldn't enter. Then the window from Helen and Steven's bedroom shattered, shooting flames
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outside. Within minutes, the team was able to get the flames under control. One of the firefighters entered the
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smoke-filled lounge room and found Helen's badly burned body lying face down in the southern corner near the
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front door. She had been stabbed 17 times with 13 of the wounds to the front of her chest.
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The firefighter continued into the bedroom, fighting flames as he went. There on the bedroom floor, he found
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Steven's body lying face down. He had sustained a total of 28 wounds, 16 of which were to the front of his
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chest. Parallel to the bed was an axe. [Music] Police officers arrived at the scene and
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accompanied firefighters as they kicked in the door to the downstairs rumpers room. The area was dark except for the
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reflected light of a spot fire that continued to blaze upstairs. There they found Christopher Gillum's
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body lying next to the billiard table naked except for a towing dressing gown. His body was unaffected by the fire, but
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riddled with stab wounds. Like his mother, he'd been stabbed 17 times, a majority of the wounds to his
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upper chest. Next to his body lay a knife. After being examined by paramedics at
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the scene, Jeffrey Gillum was taken to Southerntherland Police Station, where at 8:22 a.m. he agreed to participate in
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an electronically recorded interview. The traumatic events of the morning had clearly taken their toll on the
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23-year-old. He sat wrapped in a blanket with a somewhat bewildered look on his face,
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his eyes casted downwards as he quietly mumbled brief answers to all of the officer's questions.
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According to Jeffrey, the previous evening had been an ordinary Friday. His girlfriend Haley had come over for
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dinner, leaving at around 1000 p.m. After that, he watched television with his parents in the lounge room before
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having a shower and then going to bed. He wasn't sure exactly what time this was, but thought it was sometime before
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midnight. Jeffrey said he was fast asleep when suddenly he was awoken by the intercom
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that connected the boatshed with the main house. It was his mother, Helen, screaming for
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help. Jeffrey couldn't understand anything she was saying, but he wasted no time
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thinking about it. He quickly pulled on a pair of boxer shorts and raced through
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the garden to the staircase that led to the sliding glass doors upstairs. This took him less than a minute.
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He unlocked the door and ran into the lounge room. There he found his mother's body lying
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near the front door. A knife was on the floor nearby next to the piano and his brother Christopher
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was standing over her with a match in his hand. Christopher looked at Jeffrey from
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across the room and said, "I've killed mom and dad." With that, Jeffrey claimed that
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Christopher set Helen's body on fire. As the flames quickly started spreading, Jeffrey looked towards the bedroom and
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saw his father's Steven's body on the floor. Within seconds, the fire reached the
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bedroom and set Steven's body ablaze. Unable to believe what he was seeing, an overwhelming feeling overcame Jeffrey.
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All he could think was that he had to get his brother. He grabbed the knife from the floor and
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lunged towards him. Christopher turned and ran down the spiral staircase with Jeffrey chasing
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behind. Everything from there was a bit of a haze. Jeffree didn't know if he first
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stabbed Christopher while they were on the stairs or once they reached the bottom. But by the time they were in the
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rumpus room, Jeffrey had him cornered. He launched towards Christopher and began stabbing him repeatedly.
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Christopher fell to the floor as Jeffree continued to strike him. He didn't know how many times he stabbed
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his brother or what he did with the knife afterwards, but he eventually ran back up the stairs.
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By then, the fire had spread throughout the lounge room, and the air was thick with smoke.
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Jeffrey raced out the sliding doors and to the Warner's home next door to raise the alarm.
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As word of what happened spread around Waranora, those who knew the Gillum family were left in complete shock.
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To the outside world, they had always appeared to be a completely normal, stable family.
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58-year-old Steven Gillum was a cheerful and easygoing bloke. He'd recently retired after decades working for the
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New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority and spent his spare time sailing, playing golf, and working
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casually at the local boat shed. His wife, 55-year-old Helen, worked as a school nurse with the Southern Sydney
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Health Service. She was the more serious of the pair, known for her nononsense attitude when
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it came to raising her two sons, but she also enjoyed a good laugh and was fun to
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be around. Steven and Helen loved their two boys and had worked hard to give them a solid
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upbringing. Life on the Warora River meant that Steven was able to share his passion for
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sailing with his children. It was through their shared love of boats that Steven and Jeffrey
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established a particularly close bond. They spent a majority of their weekends out on the water, honing Jeffrey's
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sailing skills for competition. Such was his talent that he'd once won a national championship.
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When he wasn't out sailing, Jeffree spent his time surfing, socializing with friends, and studying for his civil
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engineering degree. He only had 6 months left before he was set to graduate and the future was
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looking bright. While Jeffrey was known to be light-hearted and easygoing like his
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father, Christopher Gillum was more shy and reserved. He often joined his family on their
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boating adventures, but seemed happier to just hang around in the background. Christopher's passions lay elsewhere in
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fencing, computers, and piano. He was such a talented pianist that neighbors often asked the Gillums to
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keep their windows open when Christopher was practicing so they could hear him play.
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One uncle described the Gillum brothers as impressive young men who had been well brought up with old-fashioned good
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values. This made it all the more difficult for their friends and family to believe what
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had happened. According to Jeffrey Gillum, that winter had been a bit rough on Christopher.
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Having completed a degree in chemical engineering the previous year, he was struggling to find a job in the wake of
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the recession that hit Australia in the early 1990s. His parents had urged him to study a
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one-year teaching degree as backup, but Christopher wasn't particularly enjoying
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it and also had doubts about his future employment prospects. He'd done some practical teacher
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training at a tough Western Sydney high school and didn't feel particularly cut out for the role.
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To make matters worse, Christopher's girlfriend had recently broken up with him.
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He retreated further into himself, spending most of his time at home on the family's computer.
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Jeffrey claimed that in the weeks leading up to the murders, Christopher had been acting strangely.
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Tensions seemed to be boiling over between him and their father, and they'd been arguing constantly.
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Jeffrey told his girlfriend Haley that Christopher had lost it and that he'd been going off at their parents throwing
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things and pushing and shoving their father. About 2 weeks before the murders, Haley
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was on the phone to Jeffrey when she overheard an argument in the background. When she asked Jeffrey what they were
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fighting about, he responded, "I don't know what's going on, but I think it's to do with money. If there is
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a fight, I'll have to break it up. At around 5:00 p.m. on the night before the murders, Jeffrey had gone to the
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beach with his close friend Wayne to check out the surfing conditions. Jeffrey told Wayne that his brother had
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been acting strangely and had been going off at the drop of a hat. Wayne had known the brothers for several
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years and was shocked to hear that Christopher had been pushing and shoving Steven Gillum.
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He asked what the fighting was about. Jeffree said he wasn't sure, but he thought it could be over money given
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that Christopher wanted a new car. Jeffrey declined an invitation to watch a movie at Wayne's house that night. He
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said his dad was due home from golf and he wanted to be there in case Christopher acted out again.
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When Jeffree got home at around 8:00 p.m., his girlfriend Haley was there, having arrived unannounced.
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While she'd been waiting for Jeffrey, Haley had briefly crossed paths with Christopher when he came out of the
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computer room to grab a coffee. While Haley hadn't observed anything out of the ordinary, she thought she could
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sense some underlying tension between Christopher and his parents. Jeffrey and Haley ate dinner together
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and then played billiards before Jeffree walked Haley out to her car at around 1000 p.m.
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Again, he repeated his concerns about Christopher's behavior. What am I to do about my brother?
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Jeffrey asked. It's pretty serious. I've never seen him so psycho. He is pushing my father
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around. I don't know what to do. In the bathroom attached to Christopher's bedroom, police found two
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empty packets of Panadol brand paracetamol in the clothes basket along with a 25 mm syringe filled with a white
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paste, a glass cup with a white substance on it, and a knife containing the same white substance.
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Each of these items tested positive for paracetamol, leading to the presumption that Christopher had likely prepared
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this highdosese mix of panadol ahead of time with the intention of taking his own life.
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What he hadn't accounted for was his mother calling Jeffrey for help on the intercom, thus foiling his plans as he
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died by his brother's hand instead of his own. Post-mortem examinations of Steven and
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Helen's bodies were unable to determine in which order the two had died or their
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times of death. All pathologists could say for sure was that the stab wounds had been inflicted
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while the two were still alive and that they'd both died within minutes of being
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attacked. Samples taken from the carpet of the upper floor of the Gillum's home tested
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positive for mineral tarpentine or a similar flammable hydrocarbon liquid, indicating that Christopher had used an
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accelerant to start the fire. Searchers of the property didn't turn up any such containers, but given that
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mineral tarpentine was sold in lightweight plastic bottles, investigators reasoned that any evidence
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relating to this would have been readily consumed by the fire without leaving a trace.
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For the death of his brother, Jeffrey Gillum was charged with murder and denied bail.
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He spent a month in the psychiatric unit of Long Bay Jail as he struggled to accept the magnitude of the situation.
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Friends and family rallied around him, providing whatever support they could to get him through this tragic time.
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Jeffrey was eventually granted bail on the condition that he undergo psychological counseling and move in
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with a family friend who had been supporting him since his arrest. He faced trial for Christopher's murder
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in April 1995, where he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Two psychologists found that Jeffree
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suffered from no ongoing mental disorder, psychiatric condition, or violent tendencies.
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He'd simply reacted, albeit in a very extreme manner, to the circumstances he was presented with at the time.
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They were both of the view that there was minimal risk of Jeffree offending again, that he showed deep remorse, and
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that his prospects for rehabilitation were excellent. The crown accepted Jeffrey's
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manslaughter plea, and he was sentenced to a 5-year good behavior bond with the judge describing the whole situation as
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a remarkable human drama. Two months later, a coronial inquest was held to formally solidify the
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circumstances of Helen and Steven's deaths. The coroner found that the couple had
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died by stab wounds inflicted by their son, Christopher, and the case was officially closed.
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Jeffrey Gillum did his best to move on with his life, focusing on one small task at a time.
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He completed his engineering degree with honors and secured a stable job. His relationship with Haley ended and he
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started dating a friend of his from university named Rebecca. The two developed a deep bond and began
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making plans for their future together with a house, marriage, and children on the horizon.
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After everything Jeffree had been through, he worked hard to create the life he'd always envisioned for himself
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prior to the tragedy. Many admired the way in which he was able to pick himself up and carry on.
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But for Jeffrey's paternal uncle, Tony Gillum, things weren't sitting right. Ever since the funerals of Steven,
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Helen, and Christopher, Tony Gillum had felt like something was a little off. He'd watched Jeffrey during the funerals
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and was surprised to see that he hadn't shed any tears. Even the sight of his family's coffins
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hadn't sparked any visible emotion. Tony had been in such a state of shock after the murders that he had taken half
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a year off work. Meanwhile, he felt like a Jeffrey was carrying on as though he was unaffected,
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completing his university degree so quickly and with flying colors. When it took a Jeffrey 6 months to
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collect his family's ashes, Tony started to get really suspicious. Tony found the allegations that
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Christopher had killed his parents over disputes about money to be completely without logic.
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Although Tony lived interstate and didn't visit his half-brother and his family often, he had caught up with
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Steven and Helen just 6 months before the murders, and everything had seemed perfectly fine.
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If there had been tensions between them and their eldest son, they certainly hadn't shown it.
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Tony was also a bit takenback by Jeffrey's claims that Christopher was the more shy and withdrawn member of the
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family. As far as Tony was concerned, it was Jeffrey who had always been the aloof
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one, whereas he'd always found Christopher to be friendly and talkative. If anything, Tony thought that Jeffree
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was jealous of the extra care Christopher received from their parents and could be a bit of a bully.
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When the crime scene was examined, investigators had found a 25 L jerry can containing roughly one L of petrol in
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the small al cove at the front of the house where the bins were kept. There was also a freshly cut length of
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garden hose which appeared to have been cut from a longer hose that ran from an outdoor tap to a boat in the carport.
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Jeffrey explained that on the night before the murders, he and his father had cut the hose in an attempt to siphon
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some petrol out of his car to use in one of their motorboats for an upcoming trip. They wanted to make two-stroke
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fuel, but then realized the car contained the wrong kind of petrol, so they aborted their mission and put the
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jerry can back near the bins. Tony found this hard to believe. Not only was it likely that Steven
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Gillum would have the proper equipment needed to pump petrol without having to use this crude method, he had been
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scheduled to enter a golf tournament that Saturday. If there was no sense of urgency to get
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the boat ready, why would the two be outside so late on a cold winter night undertaking such an arduous task?
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A thought began to form in Tony's mind. Was it possible that Jeffrey was actually responsible for all three
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deaths and had created the story of his brother's so-called psycho behavior to set Christopher up for the crime?
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Tony wasn't the only one who felt this way. Ted and Jan Warner, the couple who lived
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next door to the Gillums, had been suspicious of Jeffrey's story ever since he knocked on their door on the morning
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of the murders. Despite claiming to have just stabbed his brother to death, there didn't
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appear to be any blood on him. Ted had looked Jeffrey up and down, and the only blood he'd seen was on the
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little toe of Jeffrey's right foot and the shin of his left leg. There was also a spot of blood on one of
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his fingernails. Jan had noticed this, too. In her view, the blood on Jeffrey's legs looked pale
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pink in color, as though he had tried to wash it off. While Jeffrey had been at the Warner's
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home waiting for the firefighters to arrive, he'd switched between sitting on their light colored leather couch and
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lying on their kitchen floor in the fetal position. Jan gave him a jumper to wear, but
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instead of putting it on, he just hugged it to his body. Afterwards, the Warers didn't notice any
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blood residue on the couch floor or their white-colored telephone. After the police had taken Jeffree in
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for questioning and cordoned off the house as a crime scene, Jan had turned to her husband and said, "I think he's
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making it up." In 1996, after the Coronial Inquest had officially declared that Christopher was
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responsible for the deaths of Steven and Helen, Jeffrey was able to apply for his
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share of the family's estate. He was only entitled to 50% with his four grandparents entitled to the rest.
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Given everything that Jeffree had been through, three of his grandparents wanted Jeffree to have their share to
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help him rebuild his life. However, Steven's mother, Jeffrey's grandmother, Jesse Gillum, who lived in
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a house under Steven's name, did not. Jeffrey sought further legal advice and discovered that he was actually entitled
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to 100% of his parents' estate. This included their $900,000 home in Warora, his father's boats, as well as
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Jesse's house in Marong. The paperwork was sent out to all of his grandparents to formally sign it over,
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but Jesse refused to do so. Jesse called her son, Tony Gillum, in a state of distress, saying that Jeffrey
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was trying to harass her into signing her entitlements back to him. It was at this point that Tony could no
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longer ignore the red flags. He flew to Sydney and visited the detective who had
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been in charge of the investigation. I've got my suspicions about Jeffrey. Tony said
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what the detective told him next was shocking. During the initial police interview with
00:28:06
the Jeffrey Gillum on the morning of Saturday, August 28, 1993, the interviewing detectives weren't sure
00:28:13
what to make of his account. They had a hard time believing that two separate slayings could have occurred in
00:28:21
the same household at around the same time. If Jeffrey was capable of killing his
00:28:27
brother, they thought it stood to reason that he could also be capable of killing
00:28:31
his parents. They also thought it seemed highly strange that Jeffrey's first reaction
00:28:37
upon seeing his parents' dead bodies had been to attack his brother rather than check on his parents to confirm if they
00:28:45
were actually dead or try to stop the fire. One of the detectives put these questions to Jeffrey directly.
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I don't know why I killed my brother, he responded. I was just chasing him. I don't know why.
00:29:03
The detective pressed on. You're saying that your brother has killed your mother
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and father, and I'm just wondering whether it's just a convenient ploy on your behalf to tell us that when in fact
00:29:15
you've killed the whole three of them. Jeffrey kept his eyes casted downwards and mumbled back, "I haven't."
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He also couldn't explain why he hadn't checked on his dad or tried to stomp out the fire first.
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I don't know why, Jeffrey said. I just thought of other things and just did the wrong thing. Obviously,
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during the interview, one of the detectives had also scribbled down a note for the other that read, "If he's
00:29:50
just stabbed his brother, where's the [ __ ] blood?" Their suspicions grew upon hearing
00:29:57
Jeffrey's explanation for the jerry can of petrol with its makeshift siphon that
00:30:02
was found in the Gillum's alcove. To the detectives, it sounded like Jeffrey had been trying to use the
00:30:09
petrol as an accelerant to start the fire with before finding it too hard and using mineral tarpentine instead.
00:30:17
They'd also been curious about the timing of the events. A woman named Christine Shaw lived on the opposite
00:30:24
side of the road to the Gillums on a slope that overlooked their property. In the early morning hours of Saturday,
00:30:31
August 28, 1993, Christine had been reading in bed at around 3:45 when she heard the screams of two people.
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One was a man making a guttural sound that reminded Christine of someone being struck by lightning.
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The other was a distressed sounding woman who seemed to be desperately trying to reason with someone.
00:30:56
Christine couldn't hear what was being said, but the voices alerted a neighborhood dog who started barking
00:31:03
incessantly. Eventually, at around 3:57 a.m., Christine went to the window to see what
00:31:10
was going on. But by the time she got there, the voices stopped, and she couldn't see anything.
00:31:18
The dog continued to bark, waking its owners at some point between 4 and 4:15 a.m. They got up to try and quiet him,
00:31:28
but didn't hear any other voices. It was presumed that Christine Shaw had overheard Steven Gillum in the throws of
00:31:36
death and Helen Gillum defending herself against her attacker. But if that was the case, it meant that
00:31:44
they had both been attacked at around 4:00 a.m. Jeffree claimed that upon hearing his
00:31:51
mother's cries for help over the intercom, he'd immediately raced to the house, which took less than a minute,
00:31:58
and everything had happened very quickly from there. Why then hadn't Jeffrey arrived at the
00:32:04
Warner's house next door to raise the alarm until around 4:30 a.m.? What had he been doing for that
00:32:12
unaccounted for period of around half an hour? While all of these factors were dubious,
00:32:19
it was when the autopsies came back that the detectives really started to question things.
00:32:25
Forensic examination had revealed that Steven, Helen, and Christopher Gillum had all been stabbed a similar number of
00:32:32
times, with a vast majority of the wounds concentrated on their chests and none on their abdomen.
00:32:40
If there had been two separate killers, what were the chances that both had struck in such similar manners?
00:32:49
Testing was done of the blood found on Jeffrey's left shin and right hand to determine who the blood came from, but
00:32:56
the samples weren't strong enough to make an identification. Then there was the knife, which
00:33:03
according to Jeffrey had been used in all three of the killings. The knife had been tested for
00:33:09
fingerprints, but none were found. Nor was there any blood on the handle of the knife, nor the blade. There hadn't been
00:33:17
any prints on the panadol filled syringe or any of the other items in Christopher's laundry basket, either.
00:33:26
Tony Gillum couldn't believe what he was hearing. He asked the detective why they
00:33:32
hadn't charged Jeffrey with Steven and Helen's murders if they believed he was guilty.
00:33:38
The detective said that they had actually recommended that charges be laid, but the director of public
00:33:44
prosecutions declined. Tony refused to accept this. I'll sort that out, he said.
00:33:54
[Music] After discussing the situation with his other brother, Tony rang Jeffrey and
00:34:00
asked him to meet with them. Jeffrey refused, questioning why and saying he wouldn't speak to anyone about the night
00:34:08
of the killings without his solicitor present. Tony then decided to take matters into
00:34:14
his own hands. He began writing letters to the Department of Public Prosecutions urging
00:34:21
them to charge Jeffrey for the murders of Helen and Steven Gillum. The DPP refused, citing a lack of
00:34:29
evidence. Tony began reaching out to journalists and other members of law enforcement
00:34:35
trying to raise awareness to the situation in any way possible. Eventually, his story caught the
00:34:41
attention of the production team at the Channel 9 television program 60 Minutes,
00:34:46
who launched their own investigation. Steven's mother, Jesse, told 60 Minutes she didn't believe Christopher Gillum
00:34:55
played a role in the murders at all. She described him as a lovely chap with a beautiful personality who had no malice
00:35:04
and was bullied by his younger brother. Jesse recalled, "Jeffrey could never walk past Christopher without thumping
00:35:13
him. They always did it. It was just a known thing. I don't think they liked each other at all. I really don't."
00:35:22
Neighbor Ted Warner expressed his disbelief about Jeffrey's story, too, saying to have two homicidal maniacs kind of
00:35:32
crack out of their egg in the one night in the one home in the one suburb is pretty scary stuff.
00:35:40
In Jeffrey's version of events, Christopher had lit his mother's body on fire and the house had blazed from
00:35:47
there. But 60 Minutes had four separate arson investigators look into the case, and
00:35:54
they found evidence to indicate that the fire had actually started in the main bedroom near Steven Gillum's body, thus
00:36:01
creating further doubts about Jeffrey's story. They also consulted a leading criminal
00:36:08
barrista who raised questions about Jeffrey's timing of the events. Jeffrey had told the police that
00:36:14
approximately 90 seconds had passed between him hearing his mother screaming for help on the intercom, racing
00:36:21
upstairs to the lounge room, and witnessing Christopher light her body on fire. If this was correct, it gave Christopher
00:36:30
just 90 seconds to stab Helen 17 times before running around the house pouring out mineral tarpentine in preparation
00:36:37
for the fire before Jeffree arrived. The 60 Minutes team reached out to renowned New South Wales forensic
00:36:46
pathologist Dr. Godfrey Oakley to examine the case on their behalf. After reviewing the crime scene photos
00:36:54
and autopsy reports, Dr. Oakley raised some questions about the lack of blood on Christopher's body. While the
00:37:01
dressing gown he'd been wearing was soaked in blood from his own wounds, it was free of any blood spatter, as were
00:37:08
his arms, legs, and face. If Christopher had been the one to attack his parents, Dr. Oakley expected
00:37:16
that his whole body would be splattered with blood. Only a few drops were visible on his
00:37:22
neck and a chin, and forensic experts agreed this could have come from his own wounds.
00:37:29
Looking at the crime scene photos, Dr. Oakley noted that the knife was lying underneath Christopher's left arm.
00:37:37
This positioning, coupled with the fact that there was no blood or fingerprints on the knife, led Dr. Oakley to conclude
00:37:44
that the knife had likely been washed and then placed there. As for the lack of blood found on
00:37:51
Jeffrey Gillum, Dr. Oakley reasoned this could only be explained by an attempt at
00:37:56
cleaning himself or having been in contact with water. Asked if he thought the crime had been
00:38:03
committed by one killer or two, Dr. Barley said, "I think the probability is that there was one killer. I think it's
00:38:12
reasonably probable and I don't think it is reasonably probable that two people killed in exactly the same way. I think
00:38:21
that the evidence which was shown on the dead brother demonstrated that he wasn't
00:38:26
involved. I think that he wasn't part of it." Jeffrey declined to be interviewed for
00:38:34
the program. Without his explanation for all of the evidence 60 Minutes had uncovered, the host of the segment
00:38:41
called for an official coronial inquiry to be held. He also said that DNA testing should be done of the blood
00:38:49
found on Jeffrey's body to determine which family member it came from. Steven Gillum's family, unwilling to
00:38:57
accept the fact that Christopher had gone to his grave condemned as a double murderer, strongly agreed.
00:39:05
One of Steven's brothers steadfastly stated, "All of these questions have to be answered."
00:39:16
The 60-minute segment reinvigorated interest in the case, and to Tony Gillum's relief, it was announced that a
00:39:23
second coronial inquest would be held to examine all the available evidence relating to the deaths of Helen and
00:39:30
Steven Gillum. Jeffrey refused to speak to the press, creating further doubt about his story
00:39:37
in the eyes of the public. After all, if he had nothing to hide, then why not share his side of the story?
00:39:46
The inquest commenced in late 1999 with hearings scheduled to be held over several months.
00:39:53
The council assisting the coroner presented the court with all of the questionable elements of the case with
00:39:59
significant focus on the blood evidence and the similarities between the stab wounds of the three victims.
00:40:07
Testimony was also delivered from various witnesses about Jeffrey's physical appearance at the time of the
00:40:13
crime. Some recalled that his hair had been wet or shiny looking, suggesting the
00:40:19
possibility that he could have washed it. But according to testimony from one blood spatter expert, the lack of blood
00:40:27
on Jeffrey didn't hold any major significance. Anyway, he told the court that it was a common misunderstanding to
00:40:35
think that the amount of blood on an attacker was linked to the level of violence they inflicted.
00:40:42
A detective who had attended the crime scene also gave evidence that he hadn't been surprised by the lack of blood on
00:40:49
Christopher or the murder weapon that was found lying beside him. A huge amount of water had cascaded into the
00:40:56
downstairs space due to the firefighting efforts on the floor above. A tarpolan had been placed over Christopher's body
00:41:04
in an attempt to preserve any evidence, but water had already dripped onto him before this occurred.
00:41:11
The detective therefore assumed that any blood on Christopher or the knife had been washed away.
00:41:18
However, DNA testing had since been done of samples taken from the drops of blood
00:41:24
on Jeffrey's feet. And while the results were below laboratory level after 5 years in storage, there were some
00:41:31
indications that the blood was Helen's. Of the four forensic experts who gave evidence, two believed that the number
00:41:40
and pattern of the stab wounds indicated that only one killer was involved in the
00:41:45
crimes. Dr. Christopher Lawrence, the pathologist who had conducted the Gillum family autopsies, was experienced in
00:41:53
dealing with triple homicides and told the court, "I honestly cannot recall a group of three sets of wounds that
00:42:01
looked this much the same. However, while he found this compelling, Dr. Lawrence said it didn't necessarily
00:42:10
prove that only one person was responsible. The forensic experts recommended that
00:42:16
the knife be formally re-examined, while Christopher's dressing gown and Jeffrey's boxer shorts should undergo
00:42:23
full chemical analysis. After all of the evidence and witness testimony was presented, the coroner
00:42:31
found that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that Jeffrey Gillum could be
00:42:36
responsible for murdering his parents, and they recommended that the director of public prosecutions consider laying
00:42:43
charges. There was just one problem. [Music] After Jeffrey's manslaughter plea back
00:42:53
in 1995, key pieces of evidence including the knife, the clothing worn by all four
00:43:00
family members, carpet samples taken from around the bodies, the piece of freshly cut garden hose from the petrol
00:43:07
siphon, and Christopher's fingernail scrapings had all been destroyed by the police. Other items, like the jumper Jan
00:43:16
Warner had given to Jeffrey to wear after the killings, had never even been taken into evidence.
00:43:23
Anything that could be useful for further testing was no longer available. In July 2000, the director of public
00:43:32
prosecutions, Nicholas Cowry, notified his decision not to press murder charges against Jeffrey Gillum. Without these
00:43:40
key pieces of evidence, he felt there was no reasonable prospect of securing a conviction.
00:43:48
Jeffrey's uncle, Tony, was outraged. Refusing to accept this conclusion, Tony continued trying to attract attention to
00:43:57
the case in any way he could. He put a sign on the rear windscreen of his car that read, "The DPP is protecting a mass
00:44:06
killer by the name of Jeffrey Gillum." and parked it out the front of Nicholas Cowry's office in the city.
00:44:14
He even offered his own $200,000 reward for information. Tony continued the fight for 3 and 1/2
00:44:22
years, motivated by the blatant way in which Jeffrey continued to live his life, seemingly with no consequence for
00:44:30
his alleged actions. During this time, Jeffrey got married and bought a house in St. Ives, an
00:44:37
affluent suburb in Sydney's upper Northshore. He continued to enjoy sailing using the
00:44:44
sailboat he'd inherited from his father. In early 2004, thanks to Tony's persistent efforts, the New South Wales
00:44:54
Homicide Squad finally decided to reopen the investigation. With the key pieces of evidence no
00:45:00
longer available, their focus was on uncovering new and compelling evidence that could convince the DPP it was worth
00:45:08
prosecuting Jeffrey Gillum for his parents' murders. Looking back through the case file, they
00:45:14
noticed that several items of Jeffrey's clothing had been found in the burned wreckage of his family's lounge room.
00:45:22
Jeffrey's girlfriend from the time confirmed this was the same clothing he'd been wearing when she'd visited the
00:45:28
Gillum home on the night of the murders. Given that Jeffrey had shown up on the Warner's doorstep wearing nothing but
00:45:36
boxer shorts, investigators wondered what his clothing was doing in the lounge room.
00:45:42
An examination revealed there was no blood on any of the garments. This led them to theorize that Jeffrey
00:45:50
could have hastily undressed before attacking his family to avoid getting any blood on his clothing and had left
00:45:57
them behind, assuming they'd get burned in the fire. The location where Christopher Gillum's
00:46:04
eyelasses were found was also of interest. Christopher was shortsighted and had mild aigmatism, a common eye condition
00:46:14
that causes blurred or distorted vision. He wore glasses at all times except when
00:46:20
sleeping or showering. According to his ex-girlfriend and a former flatmate, Christopher always kept
00:46:28
his glasses next to his bedside because he needed them to move around, even wearing them to go from the bedroom to
00:46:35
the bathroom. But after the murders, his glasses were found on the window ledge in the
00:46:42
downstairs bathroom. Investigators thought it was highly unlikely that Christopher would have
00:46:48
walked upstairs in the dark to kill his parents without his glasses on. They deemed it more probable that
00:46:57
Jeffrey had waited until his brother was asleep before moving his glasses to put
00:47:02
him at a disadvantage. The reason Christopher wasn't wearing them was because he'd been roused from
00:47:08
his sleep upon hearing his parents being attacked and had run upstairs in a panic
00:47:13
without stopping to find his glasses first. Christopher's vision impairment also
00:47:20
highlighted another crack in Jeffrey Gillum's story. Those close to Christopher said he
00:47:27
wasn't very confident when it came to driving. He rarely borrowed the family vehicle
00:47:33
and refused to drive at night, therefore making it highly unlikely that his desire for a car would have been a
00:47:40
strong enough motive to kill his own parents. Detectives reintered the first responders who attended the Gillum
00:47:49
residence on the morning of the attacks. The firefighter who had been operating the pump at the rear of the fire truck
00:47:56
recalled that Jeffrey Gillum had been brought over to him by another officer. When Jeffrey was about a meter and a
00:48:04
half away, the firefighter could smell petrol on him. Given his experience in the field, he
00:48:11
was familiar with the smell of petrol and could distinguish it from any other accelerants.
00:48:18
Based on this statement, investigators felt that the odor Ted Warner had smelt on Jeffrey's breath, which he described
00:48:26
as kerosene, had actually been petrol. With a second witness backing Ted's recollection, investigators cast even
00:48:35
more doubt on Jeffrey's claims that he'd tried to siphon the petrol with his father earlier that evening.
00:48:42
Had he done so, the smell would have been washed away in the shower he claimed to have taken before bed.
00:48:50
They were more convinced than ever that Jeffrey had attempted to siphon petrol from his car by sucking on a garden hose
00:48:58
in order to set fire to the house. Another firefighter recalled that when he arrived at the Gillum's property with
00:49:06
breathing apparatus, Jeffrey was standing near the garage by himself in a highly agitated state.
00:49:14
He apparently said, "Don't go in there. Somebody's got a knife." Investigators believed this was
00:49:22
Jeffrey's final attempt to deflect the firefighting efforts in the hopes that the fire would obliterate all evidence
00:49:30
that proved the real killer was him. This just left the question of motive. If the case made it to trial, it wasn't
00:49:42
the prosecution's responsibility to prove motive, but it would certainly help strengthen the brief of evidence
00:49:48
before it was presented to the DPP. The detective leading the homicide investigation decided to search the
00:49:56
dusty storage unit attached to the Southerntherland Police Station where the Gillum family murders had first been
00:50:03
investigated. Along with Christopher Gillum's student diary, he found a box containing three
00:50:11
mini cassette tapes. It appeared that among other things, Jeffrey Gillum had used one of the tapes to record his year
00:50:19
12 English homework. In it, he gave an audio review of the book Stories from Suburban Road by
00:50:27
Australian writer Tom Hungerford in which he likened some of the characters in the book to his own life.
00:50:34
Jeffrey said that he had an older brother who was favored by his parents and that like one of the characters in
00:50:41
the book, he often got in trouble for things that his brother got away with. As far as investigators were concerned,
00:50:50
the tape proved that Jeffrey Gillum had a motive to kill his entire family. Uncle Tony Gillum agreed.
00:50:59
He had come to learn that Helen and Steven Gillum had apparently been very tight with their money. A longtime
00:51:07
friend of Stevens told Sydney Morning Herald journalist Shelley G that quote money was important in that house,
00:51:16
overly important, and there was no need for that. He recalled that when Helen and Steven
00:51:24
had lent Jeffree money to buy a car, they also charged him interest. While this was intended to be character
00:51:32
building, Tony believed it likely fueled Jeffrey's hatred of his parents. He had been spending time with the
00:51:39
sailing fraternity where most of the other members came from well-off families. And Tony thought that Jeffrey
00:51:46
came to resent his parents' financial habits. This was a hate crime, the lead detective told Shelley G with certainty.
00:51:57
A very passionate hate crime. Jeffree hates his family. With the motive established,
00:52:07
investigators believed they had a clearer picture of what transpired at the Gillum home in the early morning
00:52:13
hours of Saturday, August 28, 1993. Having spent the last couple of weeks voicing concerns about Christopher's
00:52:23
behavior to his friends and girlfriend, Jeffrey Gillum had essentially been laying the groundwork for the account he
00:52:29
later planned to give the police. The fact that Jeffrey had told his friend Wayne that he had to go home on
00:52:37
the night of the attacks to keep an eye on things between his brother and father
00:52:41
wasn't a premonition, but part of the plan to make it look like Christopher was in a disturbed mental state.
00:52:49
At home, the unexpected visit from his girlfriend Haley gave Jeffrey one final chance to proclaim Christopher's
00:52:56
so-called psycho behavior. After Haley left, Jeffrey then waited in the main house until his family was
00:53:04
asleep before creeping into his parents' bedroom shortly before 4:00 a.m. He brought an axe with him as backup,
00:53:13
just in case the stabbing was unsuccessful, or in case Christopher heard the struggle and came to
00:53:19
interfere. The position of Steven's body next to the bed and the lack of any defensive
00:53:26
wounds indicated that he'd been stabbed while he was still asleep. The location of Helen's body indicated
00:53:33
she had only managed to move a short distance from the bedroom to the lounge room before she too was attacked.
00:53:41
Once he had killed his parents, Jeffree went down to kill Christopher only to find him already coming up the stairs.
00:53:49
Seeing Jeffrey, Christopher immediately retreated back down where Jeffrey launched his third fatal attack.
00:53:57
Afterwards, Jeffree showered, cleaned the knife, and planted the panadol paste and associated items in Christopher's
00:54:05
laundry basket to make it look like his brother had intended to take his own life after committing the murders.
00:54:13
Jeffrey then attempted to siphon petrol from his car to use as an accelerant, but finding this too hard, he grabbed
00:54:21
some mineral tarpentine instead. He dowsed the bodies of his mother and father to destroy any evidence and then
00:54:29
set them a light. When Jeffrey arrived at the Warner's home next door, they noted that he
00:54:36
hadn't been out of breath and was cold to the touch. Yet, in the recording of his trip0 call made from the Warner's
00:54:45
phone, Jeffree sounded breathless as he spoke to the operator. To the police, this indicated that
00:54:52
Jeffrey had likely waited outside to make sure the fire had really taken hold before going next door to raise the
00:55:00
alarm. He fainted breathlessness on the trip call to make it look like he had immediately ran from the blazing house
00:55:08
to call for help. He then tried to prevent one of the first responders from fighting the fire by saying someone in
00:55:15
the house had a knife. While Jeffrey's story had remained mostly unchanged, there were some small
00:55:24
discrepancies. When he called trip0, he told the operator that when he first went
00:55:30
upstairs after hearing his mother's cries for help, his brother was standing there with a knife.
00:55:36
He told the same thing to a detective on the scene. However, during his police interview and
00:55:43
a subsequent video walkthrough of the crime scene, Jeffree claimed the knife had been on the floor near the piano.
00:55:52
Then there was the matter of Jeffrey's keys, which had been found on a table near the glass sliding doors upstairs.
00:55:59
In the video walkthrough of the crime scene, Jeffree initially told the police that upon hearing his mother's screams,
00:56:06
he'd locked the boat house behind him out of habit and had placed the keys in his pocket.
00:56:12
When shown the keys on the table, he said he must have placed them there upon entering the house, but had no memory of
00:56:19
doing so. The police found this hard to believe. If he really had walked in on Christopher about to set their mother's
00:56:29
dead body on fire, surely the keys would be the last thing on his mind. They thought it was more likely that the
00:56:37
keys were on the table because Jeffrey had stayed in the main house all night and had never even gone down to the boat
00:56:44
shed at all. Speaking about the case to ABC's Australian story, Tony Gillum explained,
00:56:53
"Jeffy's story was fanciful. We know neighbors heard guttural screams before 4:00 a.m. That was when the murders were
00:57:02
taking place. The trip0 call was made at 4:34 a.m. For Jeffrey's story to be true, his mother would have had at least
00:57:12
been alive for 20 minutes before making a call over the intercom to Jeffrey in the boat shed with serious stab wounds
00:57:19
to herself. Now, I don't think so. In 2005, the homicide squad submitted a brief of evidence to the Department of
00:57:33
Public Prosecutions to see if they had sufficient evidence to charge Jeffrey for the murders of Helen and Steven
00:57:40
Gillum. The DPP not only went ahead with the charges, but served Jeffrey with an
00:57:46
exeicio indictment, meaning that the case would go to trial without the need for a committal hearing.
00:57:54
By this point, Jeffree had married his girlfriend, Rebecca, and the two had one young daughter and another on the way.
00:58:02
He requested a stay on the indictment, arguing that a trial would be oppressive, unfair, or in breach of the
00:58:09
rule against double jeopardy. The request was rejected, and the trial went ahead in February 2008.
00:58:19
The prosecution's case was that Jeffrey Gillum had been financially motivated to
00:58:24
kill his parents and then frame his brother for the crime. They presented witnesses who testified
00:58:31
to Christopher's good character. None of them had ever seen him act aggressively towards his father or
00:58:38
anyone else for that matter. Christopher's ex-girlfriend spoke about him with a genuine affection, describing
00:58:46
him as a gentle person who didn't have a hostile bone in his body. Nobody close to Christopher could
00:58:53
imagine him fighting with his parents over money, particularly for the purpose of buying a car.
00:59:01
The prosecution submitted that Christopher couldn't have pulled off the attack without his glasses on.
00:59:08
Furthermore, video demonstrations were presented by a fire expert who said that if the fire had been started by
00:59:15
Christopher like Jeffrey claimed, it would have started out small, slowm moving, and easy to put out.
00:59:24
Jeffrey would have had 10 to 15 seconds to try and stop it. Yet, in his version of events, he did nothing.
00:59:33
The prosecution told the jury, "Jeffrey didn't do a thing to try to stop that fire, and that's not what an innocent
00:59:41
man, a man who had not killed his parents, would do in those circumstances." They also presented testimony from
00:59:51
various experts who said that it was very rare to see such a high number of stab wounds on all three victims,
00:59:58
particularly when the wounds were concentrated on the chests with none to the abdomen.
01:00:05
One expert noted a distinct pattern of injury in each of the victims that implied there was only one perpetrator.
01:00:14
The prosecutor told the jury that the similarities in the stab wounds were so remarkable that it defied logic to
01:00:21
believe that two brothers independently got into a homicidal rage using the same
01:00:26
knife in the same way. [Music] But the defense posited that the events had played out exactly like Jeffrey
01:00:38
Gillum had always maintained. They said the evidence didn't suggest this was a carefully planned crime, but
01:00:46
a frenzied attack committed by a deranged individual as the result of a spur-of-the- moment emotional or
01:00:53
psychiatric disturbance. With Christopher becoming increasingly withdrawn in the months leading up to
01:01:00
the murders, they put it to the jury that the person more likely to have snapped that morning was Christopher.
01:01:09
The fact that Christopher's glasses were in the bathroom wasn't a tactical move by Jeffrey, but indicated that it was
01:01:16
actually Christopher who had taken a shower after killing his parents. In one of the crime scene photos, it
01:01:24
appeared as though Christopher had a soap bubble in his ear, and a towel with his name monogrammed onto it was also
01:01:30
found rolled up into a ball in his bedroom. This suggested that Christopher had stabbed his parents and then gone
01:01:38
downstairs to shower under the assumption they were both dead. It was only when he heard his mother screaming
01:01:45
for help on the intercom that he realized she was still alive. He quickly threw on his dressing gown and raced
01:01:53
upstairs to stab her repeatedly in the back just seconds before Jeffrey arrived.
01:02:00
Christopher's ofthalmic surgeon testified that while Christopher's uncorrected vision was below average,
01:02:07
and he certainly would have benefited from wearing his glasses, he would have been able to negotiate a familiar
01:02:13
environment and perform everyday tasks quite well without them. The surgeon felt that Christopher would
01:02:21
have been capable of going upstairs, taking a knife out of a cutlery drawer, and distinguishing between his mother
01:02:28
and father. The defense said that any similarities in the stab wounds was pure coincidence.
01:02:36
If Helen's blood was on Jeffrey's feet, this was simply because he had come into
01:02:41
contact with her blood when standing alongside her body. A blood spatter expert also said it was possible that
01:02:48
Jeffree had brushed against something that was soaked in Helen's blood or that a drop of her blood had fallen from the
01:02:54
knife when he picked it up. He also said it was possible the blood spatter on Christopher's neck and chin
01:03:02
could have resulted from stabbing his parents. As for the lack of blood or fingerprints
01:03:09
on the knife, reports from first responders showed inconsistencies regarding the knife's original location.
01:03:17
Some said it was lying on the floor. Others said it was propped against Christopher's body.
01:03:24
Approximately 10,000 L of water had been pumped into the upper level of the house
01:03:29
during the firefighting efforts. Footage captured at the crime scene showed that Christopher's hair and body
01:03:36
were wet and that water was dripping through the roof and down the staircase to the floor around him.
01:03:43
Any blood from the knife or on Christopher's body had likely washed off. The knife was also handled extensively
01:03:52
by the police using cloth and paper prior to it being tested for fingerprints. But according to one police expert, the
01:04:01
material the knife handle was made of typically didn't show fingerprints. Anyway,
01:04:08
the knife was never forensically examined for the presence of blood before it was destroyed by the police
01:04:13
years later. Based on these various factors, the defense didn't believe the lack of blood
01:04:20
or prints on the knife proved anything. The same went for the lack of prints on the syringe filled with panadol paste
01:04:29
and associated items that were found in the laundry basket in Christopher's bathroom.
01:04:35
Testing had been done on other items around Christopher's room, such as his fencing swords, a beer bottle, billyard
01:04:41
balls, and the sliding doors. And these didn't have any prints on them either, nor did the laundry basket in which the
01:04:49
panadol kit was found. This suggested the prince had simply been eliminated as a result of the
01:04:56
firefighting efforts, or alternatively, that Christopher himself had washed his hands immediately before handling the
01:05:03
panadol. Testimony from one of the prosecution's own experts said that freshly washed
01:05:10
hands don't leave fingerprints. Other seemingly suspicious details like Jeffrey's clothing being found in the
01:05:18
lounge room could be explained by the simple fact that Jeffree had showered in the upstairs bathroom before going to
01:05:25
bed that night. He left his clothes there so his mom could wash them for him like he always did.
01:05:32
While this might show that Jeffree was an untidy young man, it didn't prove he was a killer.
01:05:40
The fact that he was cold to the touch when he arrived at the Warner's home wasn't a sign that he'd been lurking
01:05:46
outside waiting for the fire to take hold, but a common symptom of shock. One of the biggest weaknesses in the
01:05:55
prosecution's case was explaining why Christopher had stayed downstairs and done nothing to help his parents when
01:06:02
their screams could be heard by neighbors over 50 m away. Their case relied on Christopher having
01:06:09
never made it upstairs and being killed at least 15 minutes before Jeffree started the fire.
01:06:17
But during the autopsies, the carbon monoxide levels of all three victims had been tested to determine if they were
01:06:24
dead before or after the fire started. For a non-smoker, the normal level of carbon monoxide is between 0.5 and 2%.
01:06:37
None of the Gillums smoked, yet all three of them had higher levels of carbon monoxide than usual.
01:06:44
Helen's blood carbon monoxide level was 3%, Stevens was 4%, and Christopher's was 6%.
01:06:54
Such high levels suggested all three of them had inhaled smoke before they died.
01:07:00
But if Christopher died 15 minutes before Jeffrey allegedly started the fire, how could this be explained?
01:07:10
Testimony was delivered for the prosecution by forensic pathologist Dr. Christopher Lawrence, who advised the
01:07:17
jury not to place any significance on this. He explained that even though the carbon
01:07:23
monoxide levels in all three of the deceased were higher than average, they were still within reasonable limits.
01:07:32
Dr. Lawrence stated in the normal course of things in looking at a person with stab wounds and
01:07:39
fire damage, a level of less than 10% would be assumed to be that the person had died before the fire started.
01:07:50
appearing on the stand. Jeffrey Gillum's original version of events remained unchanged,
01:07:57
but with the expert testimony indicating that Helen, Steven, and Christopher had
01:08:02
all been dead when the fire started, this effectively ruled out the possibility that anyone other than
01:08:09
Jeffrey could have lit the fire. The trial ran for several weeks before the jury were left to deliberate.
01:08:19
[Music] Members of the jury were unable to agree on a verdict and the case was dismissed
01:08:29
with a retrial scheduled for 2008. This time the evidence presented by both sides was essentially the same, but the
01:08:38
prosecution made no mention of Jeffrey's financial motive. The jury deliberated for eight days
01:08:45
before delivering the verdict for the murders of Helen and Steven Gillum. Jeffrey Gillum was found guilty.
01:08:55
Jeffrey, who had been attending the trial each day while out on bail, looked completely stunned. His wife, Rebecca,
01:09:03
let out a loud sob. At the subsequent sentencing hearing, the judge who had presided over both
01:09:10
trials called Jeffrey Gillum a consumate liar and a brilliant actor who had planned the killings over several weeks.
01:09:20
He told the packed courtroom, "There is no reasonable possibility that the killings were a spur-ofthe- moment
01:09:27
reaction to some unknown emotional or psychiatric disturbance that came upon the offender in the early hours of the
01:09:35
morning of 28 August. I have no doubt that the crown's scenario placed before the jury contains
01:09:42
the true account of what occurred. While the judge had instructed the jury to ignore the evidence about the panadol
01:09:51
paste as it wasn't helpful in indicating who had killed Steven and Helen, he said
01:09:56
that the guilty verdict indicated the panadol was part of a scenario manufactured by Jeffrey to paint
01:10:03
Christopher as deranged. Acknowledging the lack of motive, the judge also questioned the decision of
01:10:10
the prosecutor to accept Jeffrey's manslaughter plea back in 1993. He said that decision had to be seen in
01:10:19
the context that Jeffrey's entire extended family had been supportive of him and convinced of his innocence at
01:10:26
that time. The judge explained therefore the delay in the prosecution was not due to police or prosecutor
01:10:35
incompetence. The offender was so convincing in his behavior and so unlikely to have killed
01:10:42
his doting parents that initially he fooled everybody by his conduct and his extraordinary account of the events of
01:10:50
the night. It can be easily understood that the police and prosecutor found it impossible to believe that he could have
01:10:57
come up with such a plan to kill his family as has now been uncovered. So audacious, cunning, and evil was it.
01:11:08
The judge sentenced Jeffrey Gillum to the maximum penalty of life in prison for both murders.
01:11:15
Outside court, Jeffrey's uncle, Tony Gillum, appeared vindicated. With his 13-year long campaign for
01:11:23
Jeffrey's guilt paying off, he intended to have Jeffrey's inheritance recovered and redistributed among the family.
01:11:31
He also intended to seek compensation for the financial and psychological costs of pursuing Jeffrey's conviction
01:11:38
as his marriage had ended and he'd lost his job as a result. with a gold medal that Christopher
01:11:45
Gillum had won in fencing hanging proudly around his neck. Tony told reporters, "Christopher went to his grave as a
01:11:54
convicted killer of his parents, which is not true, and that's why I've been doing this, to clear Christopher's
01:12:01
name." Tony also wanted a full inquiry to be done into the initial police investigation and why it took so long to
01:12:11
secure a prosecution. He told the Sydney Morning Herald, "I want some answers why this whole fiasco
01:12:19
took place. I want an apology from the justice system. Sorry for wasting the last 13 years of your life. I want
01:12:28
someone in authority to apologize to me." For Jeffrey's wife, Rebecca, the conviction and sentence came as a
01:12:40
complete shock. Back in 1999, when it was announced that a second coronial inquest would be
01:12:47
taking place, Jeffrey had already served his good behavior bond for Christopher's
01:12:51
manslaughter and was relieved to be putting all of the legal proceedings behind him and moving on.
01:12:59
Jeffrey and Rebecca had been in the throws of planning their wedding, which went ahead while the inquest was
01:13:05
underway. It was as beautiful as the couple had envisioned, attended by all of their
01:13:11
friends and relatives. When Jeffree was served the exeicio indictment in 2006, Rebecca was 38 weeks
01:13:20
pregnant with their second daughter, and life had been looking good for the couple.
01:13:25
They had never realistically considered the possibility that Jeffree could be charged with his parents' murders, and
01:13:32
the indictment had left them completely shell shocked. While Jeffree was out on bail awaiting
01:13:38
his trial, the couple welcomed their third daughter. Rebecca genuinely believed that her
01:13:45
husband would be acquitted and free to return to the happy life they had worked hard to build together.
01:13:52
After all, the Jeffrey who Rebecca and their friends knew was nothing like the Jeffrey the prosecution painted him out
01:13:59
to be. For starters, Tony Gillum's suggestion that he'd been stone-faced at his parents' funerals was completely absurd.
01:14:09
Several other mourers who were there recalled Jeffree sobbing uncontrollably. A friend of Jeffre told Australian
01:14:17
story. He grieved deeply for them all. I remember going up to Jeff and giving him
01:14:24
a hug and letting him know that I was there for him. And I just remember he was crying and tears streaming down his
01:14:32
eyes and he couldn't even speak to me. He was just sobbing. Another friend agreed, saying I was next
01:14:42
to him, he was just in tears the whole time. The reason it had taken Jeffree so long
01:14:49
to collect their ashes was because he simply couldn't face the pain of it all. There was also no validity to Tony's
01:14:58
claims that Jeffree had moved on with his life unaffected after the murders. He hadn't breezed through his university
01:15:06
degree at all, but had fallen 6 months behind. He'd only persevered because he knew
01:15:12
it's what his parents would have wanted, and he couldn't have done it without the
01:15:16
help of his teachers. Jeffrey had struggled to get a job because of the criminal charge against
01:15:22
him. It took a lot of hard work to rebuild his life, including regular counseling and ongoing support from
01:15:30
family and friends. For those close to Jeffrey, the suggestion that he'd been financially
01:15:37
motivated to kill his family was ludicrous. Jeffrey had never cared that much about
01:15:43
money, and the money he did inherit was mostly used to pay for his legal fees. Far from living lavishly, he'd used the
01:15:52
rest to buy a house that was near Rebecca's family. It was a small, run-down property that
01:15:59
needed lots of work. He then invested the remainder. He'd kept his family sailboat because it
01:16:07
was his father's pride and joy, and it held a lot of significant memories for him.
01:16:14
Jeffrey had never tried to harass his grandmother, Jesse, into signing over her portion of the estate.
01:16:21
In fact, it was the very opposite. Steven Gillum's will clearly stated that he wanted Jesse to be taken care of in
01:16:29
the event that she outlived him. He wanted Jesse to stay in the home he had bought for her with Steven's trustee
01:16:36
paying all of her rates, taxes, and outgoings. Jeffrey had happily honored his father's
01:16:43
wishes. He'd continued paying all of Jesse's bills and for the maintenance of her home until she eventually moved into
01:16:51
a nursing home. At this point, Jeffree wrote to Jesse's solicitors offering to sell the house to
01:16:58
pay for her new living arrangements. He never got a response. It was only after Jesse passed away that
01:17:07
Jeffree sold the house in 2007 to help pay the legal costs of his first trial. As for all of the other claims that Tony
01:17:16
had made against him, Jeffree barely knew his uncle. His refusal to get together with Tony hadn't been because
01:17:24
he was hiding something, but because he didn't have a close relationship with that side of the family, and his lawyer
01:17:30
had advised him not to discuss the case with anyone. There was no sinister reason for Jeffrey
01:17:36
avoiding the media either. Jeffrey was simply a very private person. He had no desire to relive the traumatic events
01:17:45
unless forced to by the courts, and he also wanted to protect his family's privacy.
01:17:52
Furthermore, Jeffrey's legal team had advised him not to engage with the media, which in turn allowed the press
01:17:59
to create a false image of him that fit the prosecution's narrative. Those close to Jeffrey knew him to be
01:18:07
kind, honest, generous, and quick-witted. He adored his wife and daughters and prioritized family.
01:18:16
After he was handed his life sentence, Rebecca told their eldest daughter that there had been a dreadful mistake and
01:18:23
daddy wouldn't be coming home for a long time. But Rebecca refused to accept the guilty
01:18:30
verdict. She knew Jeffrey better than anyone, and she had no doubt that he'd been telling
01:18:37
the truth about what had happened all along. Rebecca told Australian story, "I have a
01:18:44
relationship that many people probably wouldn't have the chance to know in a lifetime, and it's incredibly special.
01:18:52
If I believed that Jeff was guilty, I'd be the last person to support him. And in fact, I think I'd be the person most
01:19:00
angered by having been misled for all these years. I guess I reject outright the
01:19:06
possibility that he could never be released. I don't think I'll ever be able to accept it. I never will accept
01:19:14
it. [Music] Jeffree had always had a large group of supporters, but they'd predominantly
01:19:22
stayed silent, convinced that he'd be found not guilty. When that didn't happen, Rebecca
01:19:29
enlisted the help of a friend named Jill, who had a legal background, and asked her to read over the trial
01:19:35
transcript. Jill also read over all of the available evidence that the jury hadn't been
01:19:42
allowed to see. The first thing Jill noticed was this was no clear-cut, straightforward case.
01:19:50
If it was, the first trial never would have resulted in a hung jury, and the second jury wouldn't have needed 8 days
01:19:58
to deliberate. Rebecca and Juul gathered several of Jeffrey's friends and created the Jeff
01:20:05
Needs Justice Support Group. Together, they started going through the case in detail and sharing all of the
01:20:13
information they found online. The more they uncovered, the further convinced they were that Jeffrey had
01:20:20
been the victim of a severe miscarriage of justice. At Jeffrey's trial, despite the
01:20:27
defense's objections, three experts for the prosecution had been allowed to express their opinions about the
01:20:34
similarities in the stab wounds sustained by Steven, Helen, and Christopher Gillum.
01:20:40
These opinions were provided without reference to any existing scientific research.
01:20:46
One of the experts had shown the jury diagrams that supposedly showed the similarities between the wounds.
01:20:54
The Justice for Jeff's support group studied these diagrams and found they weren't even accurate to the wounds the
01:21:01
victims had sustained. There were also some important differences between Christopher's wounds
01:21:08
and those of his parents, which were never highlighted to the jury. Steven and Helen's stab wounds were more
01:21:15
or less vertical, while the majority of Christophers were horizontal and closer together.
01:21:23
Steven and Helen also had wounds to their necks while Christopher did not. The group reviewed over 70 scientific
01:21:32
research papers on stab wounds and discovered that the expert opinions presented at trial had no scientific
01:21:40
merit. The stab wounds were no more similar to each other than they were to stab wounds
01:21:46
sustained by victims of multiple stabbings in unrelated cases. There was also nothing unusual about the
01:21:54
lack of wounds to the victim's abdomen. According to the research, the chest is the most common site for stab wound
01:22:02
injuries. It turned out that the prosecution had also sought opinions from an internationally recognized leading
01:22:10
forensic pathologist named Professor Steven Cordner. He had given evidence at the second
01:22:17
coronial inquest, saying the only thing similar about the stab wounds was the number of wounds and the fact they were
01:22:25
likely all inflicted with the same knife. Professor Cordner had said, "I do not think it is safe to conclude that the
01:22:35
three deaths were by one hand." The prosecution had refused to call Professor Cordner at Jeffrey's trial,
01:22:44
claiming he was unreliable. Jeffrey's support group got hold of this report and discovered that Professor
01:22:52
Cordner argued that aspects of the prosecution's evidence was both factually wrong and scientifically
01:22:58
unsound. He also expressed the view that the prosecutor's arguments based upon that
01:23:05
evidence were unfounded and misleading. To the group, the prosecution's decision
01:23:12
not to submit Professor Cordner's evidence had been a calculated move, as it would undermine a significant
01:23:18
argument of their case. [Music] One of the things that most astonished the group was the prosecution's claims
01:23:28
that there was nothing significant about the higher carbon monoxide level in Christopher Gillum's bloodstream. His
01:23:35
level of 6% was significantly higher than that of his parents and over four times the upper limit of normal.
01:23:45
All the scientific research on carbon monoxide suggested that Christopher had been alive near the fire and inhaled
01:23:52
smoke before he was killed, just like Jeffrey had described. They sought an opinion from a specialist
01:24:00
American toxicologist named Professor David Penny who had been studying the effects of carbon monoxide for over 30
01:24:07
years. He found that the levels of carbon monoxide in the bloodstreams of all three members of the Gillum family
01:24:15
indicated they had all still been alive when the fire started. Professor Penny provided an affidavit
01:24:24
discrediting the evidence presented by Dr. Lawrence at trial, stating it was preposterous to assert that the person
01:24:31
died before the fire started. Based on Christopher's 6% carbon monoxide level, Penny said he would have
01:24:40
been inhaling smoke for between 2 to 4 minutes prior to his death. The group examined the video
01:24:48
demonstrations presented by the fire expert who claimed that Jeffrey would have had up to 15 seconds to try and
01:24:55
stop the fire if it had indeed been lit by Christopher like he claimed. The demonstrations were made using bare
01:25:04
timber and PVC pipes to represent Helen and Steven's legs. They didn't take into account the
01:25:12
clothing they were wearing, which would have acted as a wick and accelerated the
01:25:16
fire. In the demonstrations, mineral tarpentine had been poured around the bodies rather than directly on them, and
01:25:24
the fire was lit some distance from where the tarpentine had been poured. In Jeffrey's version of events,
01:25:32
Christopher had poured the tarpentine directly onto his mother's body and then lit her directly.
01:25:40
The group consulted some fire experts who added that the body temperature of the victims would also play a
01:25:46
significant role in how the fire developed in its initial stages. They conducted their own demonstrations
01:25:54
taking these missing elements into account and found that the fire traveled quicker, further, and higher than in the
01:26:01
demonstrations shown to the jury and fit with Jeffrey's description of what happened.
01:26:09
As for the jerry can of petrol, the group had no doubt about Jeffrey's claims that he and his father had tried
01:26:15
to siphon it the Friday night before the murders. While they didn't plan on going boating
01:26:22
that Saturday, they did have plans to take the boat out on Sunday. With both of them already tied up with other
01:26:29
arrangements on Saturday, Friday night had been their only chance to get things ready.
01:26:36
The prosecution claimed that Jeffree gave up on siphoning the petrol after it became too hard. Yet, the jerry can
01:26:44
contained one liter of petrol. If Jeffrey had really wanted to start a fire, he could have easily used this
01:26:52
rather than sourcing the mineral tarpentine. Also, if he had been responsible, it
01:26:58
didn't make sense that he'd have left the jerry can out in full view for investigators to find.
01:27:06
The fire officer who claimed he had smelt petrol on Jeffrey hadn't come forward with this information until
01:27:13
2005, 12 years after the fact. This statement had been one of the fresh pieces of evidence that contributed to
01:27:22
Jeffrey being charged with his parents' murders. Yet, petrol hadn't even been used in the fire. So, what relevance did
01:27:30
it hold? The same went for the allegation that Jeffree had warned one of the firefighters not to enter the house
01:27:38
because someone inside had a knife. Again, this statement wasn't given until 2005, and it directly contradicted the
01:27:48
original statements from witnesses back in 1993 who said that Jeffrey was largely incoherent when the firefighters
01:27:56
arrived. Two other firefighters had told police that when they arrived, it was actually
01:28:02
neighbors who warned them not to go into the house because someone was down there
01:28:06
with a knife. The prosecution had never disclosed that they intended to present this evidence
01:28:13
at the trial, which meant the defense had no opportunity to counter this point. The cassette tapes found by the homicide
01:28:22
squad that allegedly captured Jeffrey Gillum talking about his disdain for his older brother had been ruled
01:28:28
inadmissible at trial because they'd been recorded at least 5 years before the deaths.
01:28:35
However, they'd formed an important part of the DPP's decision to charge Jeffree
01:28:40
with the murder of his parents in the first place. It took 2 years before Jeffrey's support
01:28:46
group were finally allowed to listen to them for the first time. As they pressed play on the book review
01:28:54
of stories from Suburban Road that supposedly suggested Jeffrey's motive, they were dismayed to realize that the
01:29:01
voice on the tape didn't sound even remotely like Jeffrey. Furthermore, Jeffrey had no memory of
01:29:09
ever reading stories from Suburban Road by Tom Hungerford, nor did any of his classmates from the time.
01:29:18
Later on in the tape, a second male had recorded himself talking about his job as a road safety engineer.
01:29:26
The group managed to track this man down, and he confirmed the voice was his. He had absolutely no link to the
01:29:34
Gillum family. Justice for Jeff members discovered that the tapes hadn't been entered into
01:29:41
evidence during the crimes in 1993 and that none of the original investigators recalled having seen them. Therefore,
01:29:50
the tapes could have come from anywhere. Another piece of evidence that had been
01:29:56
deemed inadmissible was a statement from one of Helen's work colleagues. She stated that on the afternoon of
01:30:04
Thursday, August 27, 1993, the day before the killings, Helen had seemed agitated.
01:30:12
She expressed concerns about one of her sons, saying she was very worried about him and didn't know what to do.
01:30:20
Helen was uncharacteristically abrupt with one of her clients and left work 2 hours early, presumably to go home and
01:30:28
meet with this son. The prosecution had wanted to call Helen's colleague as a witness,
01:30:34
believing it was evidence that Helen had been worried about Jeffrey's behavior in
01:30:38
the leadup to her death. The evidence was ruled inadmissible because Helen had never mentioned which of her two sons
01:30:46
she was worried about. Rebecca Gillum sent out a group email to a large number of former students who
01:30:55
had studied engineering at university with the Jeffrey. One of them found an old timet that
01:31:02
confirmed they had a lecture scheduled between 1:30 and 4:30 on Thursday afternoons in August 1993.
01:31:11
A friend of Jeffre recalled that both he and Jeffrey had attended the lecture together on Thursday, August 27,
01:31:19
indicating that the son Helen had voiced concerns about was in fact Christopher.
01:31:26
A member of the Justice for Jeff support group named Paula was tasked with going
01:31:31
over some of the scientific evidence. She sat down and watched the crime scene video for the first time.
01:31:40
As Paula watched the glove investigator point to key items, she noticed something next to the call button on the
01:31:47
intercom of the Gillum's lounge room. It was quite obviously a bloody fingerprint.
01:31:55
The investigator in the video swiped right past it without mentioning a thing, and the intercom was not taken
01:32:02
into evidence or subject to any form of testing. To Jeffrey's support group, this bloody
01:32:10
fingerprint was clear evidence that Jeffrey's story was true. Helen had been stabbed in the chest, neck, and arm,
01:32:19
meaning she had seen her attacker. So, if Jeffrey had been the attacker, there would have been no need for her to use
01:32:27
the intercom to call for his help. In 2011, Jeffrey's legal team used the new evidence uncovered by the Justice
01:32:38
for Jeff Group to appeal against his conviction on 18 different grounds. At a subsequent hearing at the New South
01:32:46
Wales Court of Criminal Appeal, Dr. Christopher Lawrence, the forensic pathologist who told the jury there was
01:32:53
no significance to the carbon monoxide levels in the victim's bloodstreams, admitted he was not fully qualified to
01:33:01
give evidence when it came to carbon monoxide levels. According to Dr. Lawrence, he had warned
01:33:08
the prosecution that it would be more appropriate to have a toxicologist give this evidence.
01:33:14
He said that he'd changed his view over time and now believed it was possible that Christopher had been alive for at
01:33:21
least a short amount of time after the fire was lit. The panel of three judges was highly
01:33:29
scathing of the prosecution's carbon monoxide claims. With this evidence discredited, it called their entire
01:33:36
timeline into question. The new evidence that disproved that similarity of the stab wounds as
01:33:43
indicating there was only one killer also significantly weakened their case. In December 2011, having spent over 3
01:33:54
years behind bars, 42-year-old Jeffrey Gillum's double murder conviction was quashed and he was released on the
01:34:01
condition of a $100,000 shorty. A statement released by the panel said, "It is inevitable that a miscarriage of
01:34:10
justice has occurred. Jeffrey walked out of the courthouse arm in-armm with Rebecca as a 50 strong
01:34:19
group of his supporters applauded wildly. His aunt Clare, who had supported him since the beginning, told reporters,
01:34:28
"We can't quite believe this has happened, that Jeffrey is actually free and here with us. This has been a black
01:34:36
cloud hanging over us for nearly 20 years. Today, that cloud is lifting." But his ordeal wasn't over as the court
01:34:48
of appeal still had to decide whether he would be subject to a retrial. It was a painful 6 months for Jeffrey
01:34:56
and his supporters as they awaited the decision. As the panel deliberated in late June
01:35:02
2012, an article in the Sydney Morning Herald stated, "An a quiddle decision would mark the
01:35:10
end of a 19-year long saga that has involved nearly a dozen court cases and coronial hearings occupying hundreds of
01:35:18
hours, thousands of newspaper column inches, and an extraordinary emotional roller coaster for the members of the
01:35:25
extended Gillum family and their friends. It would also raise further questions about the way alleged offenders are
01:35:33
tried in New South Wales. In particular, it would raise questions about the use of forensic scientific
01:35:41
evidence to prove a person's guilt or innocence and the ability of juries to understand this evidence and its
01:35:48
fallibility. The panel was divided, but with a majority decision of two against one,
01:35:58
Jeffrey Gillum was acquitted of all charges and officially declared a free man. Tony Gillum was outraged.
01:36:08
As Jeffrey was leaving the court, Tony yelled, "It's not over yet, Jeffrey. I'll fix you."
01:36:16
But Jeffrey was unfazed. Squeezing Rebecca's hand, he told reporters. This has been a horrendous experience
01:36:26
for us. I'm glad today that I have been acquitted of the charges. I would just like to thank all the supporters that
01:36:33
stuck by me, most importantly my wife Rebecca and my children and everyone that's fought for the truth to be told.
01:36:42
I am very happy to be going home a free man and that's just all I want to do. Go
01:36:49
home. 3 weeks after Jeffrey's acquitt, Tony Gillum died of a heart attack at the age
01:36:58
of 60. A close family friend told reporters Tony was completely burnt out after the
01:37:06
legal fight. He'd spent too many hours going over the case in painstaking detail, chain
01:37:13
smoking and downing beer after beer. Several members of law enforcement and the legal world attended Tony's funeral
01:37:21
to pay their respects, where he was remembered as a compassionate, caring, and tenacious man.
01:37:28
The lead prosecutor from Jeffrey's trial read a psalm to the packed chapel that said, "Here, Lord, my plea for justice.
01:37:38
Pay heed to my cry." She told reporters, "In the face of the tragic loss of his three beloved family
01:37:47
members, Tony Gillum had the strength of character, integrity, and decency to apply all his energies toward honoring
01:37:55
their lives. Tony's crusade had not only deeply impacted his health, but it also cost
01:38:03
Jeffrey Gillum 3 years of his freedom. Golden Jail, where he'd served his time, was a 2 and 1/2 hour drive from his home
01:38:12
in St. Ives. While Rebecca and their three daughters had visited him on most weekends,
01:38:19
Jeffrey had missed out on so many milestones, including many of his daughter's firsts.
01:38:26
After his aqu quiddle, Jeffrey remained as tight-lipped as ever with the media, eager to move on and live a quiet, happy
01:38:33
life with his family. For those who knew the Gillum family, the entire saga was difficult to
01:38:42
comprehend regardless of the legal outcome. With the Jeffrey being acquitted, the
01:38:48
horrifying reality was that the seemingly normal Christopher really had snapped and killed his parents and that
01:38:56
Jeffrey's instinct had been to kill his brother in response. His auntie Clare had discussed the case
01:39:04
with her former doctor. She told journalist Shelley G that she'd asked him, "How could this possibly have
01:39:12
happened in a normal family?" The doctor's response was abrupt. Normal people don't kill people.
01:39:23
But when Shelley G spoke to a forensic psychiatrist about the case, they disagreed.
01:39:30
Anybody can do anything. He said, "Whenever I start lecturing a new bunch of students, I always say, don't for a
01:39:39
moment think you're immune from being a criminal or that your father or your mother or your sister won't end up in
01:39:45
jail." Our motives vary, but that aptitude to kill is within us all in the right
01:39:52
circumstances. [Music] [Music]