TEACHING A TODDLER WHO'S BOSS

For two-year-old Lewis Blackley, Haemon Gill was like a fun dad. They had been pals since Gill and Lewis’s 27-year-old mum Daisy De Los Reyes started a passionate relationship in August 2001. Three days a week, often more, Gill, 28, would stay over at Daisy’s home and he and Lewis would often be seen playing together in the front yard. Lewis had so much fun with Haemon that he would whinge when he had to leave him to go to crèche, even though he had lots of friends at crèche.

Lewis’s mum and his new ‘dad’ had both been buffeted about a bit by life.

Daisy had had a few mental breakdowns. Her battles with internal demons and with illegal drugs had triggered violent, unpredictable outbursts. Once, she told Vaughan Blackley, Lewis’s father, that her aunt had bought him a T-shirt and she wanted to put it on him. She asked him to close his eyes and to kneel on the floor. Then, instead of taking a T-shirt out of the bag, Daisy took a large kitchen knife. Luckily, Mr Blackley hadn’t trusted his unpredictable girlfriend and had only half shut his eyes. He saw her take the knife out of the bag, jumped at her, grabbed her hand and wrested the knife out of her grip. When Daisy and Vaughan split three months after Lewis was born, Mr Blackley wanted custody of his son. He was told, however, that mothers almost always won custody of their children. Despite the knife attack, Mr Blackley became more confident his son would be safe with his mother when Daisy started having monthly injections. They reduced her unpredictable outbursts. She was also heeding the advice of childcare nurses on how to deal with Lewis’s tantrums. When she couldn’t control or cope with his screams and head-banging, she put him in ‘time-out’, locking him in the lounge while she stayed in the kitchen or her bedroom until he calmed down.

Gill had also had troubles. He had finished Year 10 by correspondence after ‘minor skirmishes’ in the playground led to him being suspended a few times. In his first job – at his father’s clothing firm – he discovered a flair for art and clothes designing, but his ambitions were dashed when he injured his hand in a machine. He then drifted from job to job: brickie’s labourer to carpenter, bottleshop attendant to forklift driver to carpet maker. On the side, he kept on drawing, painting and designing clothes. From the age of 20 to 24, Gill worked on a garbage truck. The work kept him fit and gave him time to design clothes for skateboarders and surfers. Things started to look up when he returned to work as a clothes designer for his father but that soon ended when he clashed with his dad over the clothes’ style and quality. Gill then ricocheted to a falling-out with his mother, with whom he had been living since she and his father divorced when he was 13. In 2001, she accused Haemon of pawning her jewellery to buy drugs, chucked her 27-year-old son out of home … and took out an intervention order against him. Gill moved in with his ‘nanna’, but soon he was spending most of his time at Daisy’s.

So, in August 2001, a couple of life’s lifeboat clingers in the working-class Geelong suburb of Norlane found each other.

Daisy, a life model for art students, had found somebody she could have fun with, smoke some pot with, drink some cheap booze with, as well as someone who was fit and good-looking. So had Gill. Daisy had also found someone who made her baby laugh.

Gill would give his little pal ‘zerberts’, blowing ‘raspberries’ on Lewis’s belly. ‘Here comes the zerbert! Watch out! Prrrrrp. Here comes another one.’ Sometimes, Gill would tap Lewis’s head with a video cassette. Tap – ‘Where’s the video?’ – tap – ‘Does Lewis want to watch this video?’ – tap – ‘Well, come on then, champ, come and get it!’ – tap. Then there was the throwing-Lewis-on-the-bouncy-bed game. Lotsa laughs with that one, too.

But on the morning of 11 November 2001 the laughter ended in tears – lots and lots of tears.

About 6.30 that morning, a half-awake Gill walked through the lounge to the toilet, past Lewis lying on the couch. That’s where the boy normally slept because he slept better there than in his own bed. He was sort of wedged down the back of couch. Gill felt the boy’s head. It was cool but it was a cool morning, so he didn’t worry too much about that. He also checked that the boy was breathing. He was. On the way back from the toilet, he nicked Lewis’s pillow – he wasn’t using it anyway – and went to bed and to sleep. The next thing he knew Daisy was screaming. It was 9.40am and she had found her baby dead on the couch – cold, stiff, blue and dead.

Ms De Los Reyes: I found Lewis facing the other way [to the way she left him] on the other end of the couch and he was very cold and his face was all blue … I cried, I tried to shake him a little bit; carried him into the kitchen and carried him back and forth in the loungeroom … I nursed him. I didn’t know what I was thinking … I called Mark and Rose Shuttleworth [neighbours] and said that Lewis had passed away and he told me to call an ambulance.

Prosecutor: It was obvious to you that Lewis had passed away. Is that right?

Ms De Los Reyes: He, he was stiff and cold.

Prosecutor: What about Haemon Gill? What was he doing?

Ms De Los Reyes: He tried to call his nan but no-one was home. He just didn’t say a word. He was shocked.

Daisy thought maybe her son’s head-banging tantrum the night before – the tantrum she had punished him for by putting him into time-out – had proved fatal: that her two-year-old might have accidentally killed himself.

Gill didn’t tell his girlfriend that the night before he had hurt her son, his little mate … very, very badly.

• • •

On 10 November 2001, Lewis had been ‘whingey’. His mother remembered him: ‘Grizzling and asking for lollies … trying to get us to be attentive to him and everything.’

Ms De Los Reyes: … I couldn’t understand why he was whingeing a lot … Cry and whingeing.

Lewis might have been whingeing that day because he had not fully recovered from the diarrhoea he had had a couple of days earlier. During his nap from 12.30pm to 3.30pm, Daisy and Gill grabbed their chance to relax by smoking a few bongs of marijuana. When her son woke, Daisy took him grocery shopping.

Ms De Los Reyes: He jumped in the pram. He was quite happy about it. So, he likes to go out all the time and go for walks. So, yes, he’s fine.

About 5.15pm Gill’s mother, Sarah Kilburn, drove over to check whether her son and his girlfriend had voted that day in the federal election – they risked a fine if they hadn’t. They hadn’t, so she drove them through the heavy rain the few minutes to a shopping centre polling booth. Because of the rain, Ms Kilburn stayed in the car with Lewis while Gill and Daisy went to vote. Lewis was not happy to see his mother leave him – he was being a real mummy’s boy that day.

Ms Kilburn: He became quite distressed, actually, because his mother was leaving and he started crying quite a lot. It distressed me considerably because I am a grandmother … He continued crying until … I sat in the back seat with him. I pulled him on to my lap, cuddled him, held him, tried to play with him – just to soothe him, so he would take his mind off his mother being gone.

Prosecutor: Did he settle down?

Ms Kilburn: He certainly did. I was playing little games with him to keep him occupied and he seemed fine … I was playing a game with putting a lolly into his pocket which had Velcro on and I was pulling the pocket open and tucking a lolly into it…

Prosecutor: Did you see any bruises on his face?

Ms Kilburn: I didn’t notice anything except his little tears rolling down his face. He was distressed.

She said when Lewis saw his mother returning, he started to cry for her again but that he settled down when she was sitting next to him.

Ms Kilburn: He just wanted his mum.

When they got home, while making dinner, Daisy and Gill drank from a cask of Lambrusco and smoked more marijuana bongs. Lewis whinged and tantrumed.

Ms De Los Reyes: From the minute that we got back … he would not stop crying and asking for lollies and because it’s dinner time and I don’t want him to have lollies before he eats. So I close the loungeroom door, which the nurse advised me to do – if he’s really having a tantrum like that to let him go for a little and let him cry … I tried to calm him down and he wouldn’t stop … I just had enough so I closed the door [to the lounge] – time-out for me.

She said that while Lewis was in his lounge time-out tantruming – hitting the door, crying, screaming – for about 30 minutes, Haemon checked on him a few times. Gill tried to entertain Lewis out of his whingeing. He gave him a few zerberts and played the video-tap-on-the-head game and the throw-Lewis-on-the-bed game. Daisy wasn’t impressed, however, with one version of the throw-Lewis-on-the-bed game.

Ms De Los Reyes: When he didn’t stop crying, so he [Gill] – like all of a sudden – went just like that over his shoulder and he [Lewis] landed on his head on the bed … He cried a bit … I said: ‘Don’t do it again. He doesn’t like it.’

Frustrated, Daisy even called Lewis’s father in Sydney, telling him their child was ‘driving her nuts’, that he was ‘whingeing all the time’. She asked him to give her a break and take Lewis for a holiday. Mr Blackley – a driver on the docks – said he would happily take his son in a couple of months when he could get time off.

Mr Blackley: I have always wanted him [Lewis] to come up to Sydney with me for a holiday or, actually – initially – for good.

Mr Blackley excitedly told his friends that his son was finally coming to Sydney. He didn’t know that within hours his celebrations would prove to have been sadly premature.

Mr Blackley: The way she spoke I couldn’t tell that Lewis was in any harm.

Gill’s barrister Gavin Silbert: I put it to you that she sounded frustrated…?

Mr Blackley: She sounded like a mother that needed a break from her kid.

Mr Silbert: In fact, she asked you to take him away for six months, didn’t she?

Mr Blackley: Well, it was from a general conversation she said that, you know: ‘He’s whingeing a lot. Can you come and get him?’ She says: ‘Oh, can you take him for six months’ but … She was sort of laughing at the same time as she said it, so I didn’t take her seriously that Lewis was in any harm … She wasn’t being serious. It wasn’t like a full-on serious conversation … She was just being her normal ‘la la’ sort of dizzy self.

At 7pm, Lewis had a good meal of fried rice, feeding himself in his high chair. About 9pm, his mum finally managed to settle him down to sleep on the couch. Gill and Daisy had planned to watch a video then, but Daisy said she was too tired and went to bed about 9.30pm, leaving Gill with her sleeping son. The only person who knows what happened after that is Gill – and he’s not so sure.

• • •

About a week after Lewis died, Gill admitted to police that the night before the boy was found dead, he had hit him on the head a few times with a video cassette. But Gill said he was sure this did him no harm. He also admitted that when he threw Lewis over his shoulder on to a double bed, the child had landed awkwardly and hard on his head, but Gill said he also believed this hadn’t injured him.

Gill: He landed hard. He came down on his head … His entire body just flopped.

He acknowledged he had been angry with Lewis that day.

Gill: He was clingy to Mum. I think it offended me a bit with the fact that he just did not stop crying. He didn’t stop crying and … I tried to comfort him and he just didn’t want a bar of me and I think it offended me, and I just reacted.

Gill admitted that in his anger, he may have hit Lewis’s head a bit harder than he normally did with the video cassette, and a few more times than usual – maybe 20. He also admitted that a zerbert he intended giving the boy had turned into a bite. He said he bit the toddler on his hip and then felt so ashamed of what he had done, he rubbed the mark to try to make it go away. He could not explain how Lewis’s right leg had a spiral fracture – as if it had been twisted.

Later that day, police secretly recorded Daisy asking her boyfriend: ‘You tell me the truth, Haemon: Did you touch him?’ and Gill lying: ‘No’.

Daisy: [crying] Why did you touch him while he was sleeping?

Gill: They’re saying all sorts of stuff. I told you everything that happened that day.

Daisy: Oh, well what happened to him, Haemon? He’s got a broken leg. They told me … that someone broke his leg that night.

Gill: I don’t know … caught in the couch. They’re saying that to me. They’re saying it’s a twisting thing.

Daisy: [inaudible] … It’s murder. He was killed that night.

Gill: How did he die?

Daisy: Someone killed him that night. Who done it then?

Gill: [inaudible] … What you want me to say?

A few days later – after he had been charged with Lewis’s murder – Gill contacted police saying he had more to tell them.

Gill: So far, I, I’ve told the truth but there are issues, or, or parts of what has happened that I haven’t completed. [Pause] I bel … [pause, deep breath] I believe Lewis’s death is the fault of mine … I believe the death of Lewis Blackley is a result of some actions that I’ve taken.

Before going into the details of a tale that horrified even him, Gill listed some of his excuses. His ‘confession’ was mixed with self-pity, self-centredness and a readiness to deflect blame.

Gill: In no way have I intended the death of anybody … I’m horrified with this … I actually want to tell you this so that I may be able to get some help in some way as I’m not 100 per cent sure of my actions at the time. There are things I do know of but, as I say, there’s things that you police have told me that have just horrified me and, if I’m to blame for those things, I’d rather get some sort of help … I have been told I have a borderline personality disorder and I believe I was overcoming that…

I haven’t been happier in my life – with the time that I spent with Daisy and … if something has happened because of a disorder of some sort … I’d rather get it fixed up…

With the … personality disorder I’ve been given, I’m very easily influenced. I haven’t had good people around me for many years and so my life hasn’t been great. It hasn’t been going in the direction I wish it was and that is just to be a good person – a good, hard-working family-type person. And over the last, say six months … I’ve had great people around me. I’ve had fantastic situations around me … magnificent. Up until the night of Lewis Blackley’s passing – death…

On the night in question, my girlfriend Daisy had gone to sleep roughly at 9.30. We had been drinking … Daisy had gone to bed because she was quite intoxicated, couldn’t have any more drinks.

She went to sleep. I stayed up for quite some time in the kitchen drinking. We had a pretty hard day: Lewis was crying all day … and I just wanted to escape. I used the alcohol as a bit of an escape. I just drank and drank and drank.

He said he probably had about 10 bongs of marijuana and drank 24 glasses of wine to Daisy’s seven – that he had just drunk himself ‘stupid’.

Gill: I had a video to watch, so I went from the kitchen – I’m not 100 per cent sure what time, I’d say about 10.30 to 11ish – to start watching this video. I was in a real intoxicated daze, so I could barely watch the video…

And I was sitting on the couch with Lewis at one stage and he started crying and it certainly amused me that you couldn’t hear him because he was muffled. He was already slight, part of the way into the couch. I don’t know, as I say, I was intoxicated, and I am not 100 per cent sure of the order or whatever but I – and this horrifies me – have bitten him and bitten him hard … on the hip there…

Just seeing exposed skin … I used to give him zerberts, which is [Gill blows a zerbert on his arm] on his belly … I know I would have started off like that and then I have just bitten him. To me it’s a disgrace, to anybody that’s just a disgrace. Daisy’s bitten him out of fun and I have bitten him out of fun and left no marks but I know I gave him a decent, reasonably decent bite. I could do it on myself, if you want to see.

Detective Jon Woodyatt: No, that’ll be fine. Why did you bite Lewis?

Gill: I have no idea. I really don’t know why. To me, that’s just shocking. It’s an appalling thing to do. It’s off!

Det Woodyatt: What did Lewis do after you bit him?

Gill: Probably cried.

Det Woodyatt: Do you recall what he did?

Gill: No. Yeah, actually he may have kicked me and that’s why I got on to giving him a Chinese burn on the leg.

Det Woodyatt: After you’ve bitten him. Did you take a look at what you had done?

Gill: I did, actually, ’cause I knew I’d left a decent mark on him.

Det Woodyatt: Why did you start rubbing the area where you’d bitten Lewis?

Gill: [Going to bite his own arm] I just do this for my own satisfaction.

Det Woodyatt: Hang on. I don’t want you to hurt yourself…

Gill: The mark. See the mark?

Det Woodyatt: There’s no need for you to injure yourself.

Gill: No. I’m not hurting myself. That hasn’t hurt. That didn’t hurt me. That’s lesser than what I would have done to Lewis. I didn’t want to – I had no goal – in harming that boy. [Breaks down weeping] There’s nothing to gain. I had everything to lose. There’s nothing for me to gain in telling you this. I’ve got everything to lose. I just want to tell the truth as I know it. [Cries again]

Det Woodyatt: Well, just try and calm down a bit. Are you happy to go on?

Gill: Yeah.

Det Woodyatt: Are you sure?

Gill: [Weeps] I’m just scared of what I have done. I am shocked at what I’ve done. I don’t know why I’ve done what I’ve done. As I say, there was a [bite] mark there … I was shittin’: ‘Oh! Got to get rid of that.’ I don’t know if it was gonna bruise … I’ve got a thing when I’m drunk [weeps] of just tensing up. I don’t know if I have grabbed him and held him. [Breaks down and weeps]…

Det Woodyatt: Do you think that biting Lewis in that way, you did cause him pain?

Gill: Minor pain. Minor pain. Except, I have thought about it since … He was a delicate child. He was a two-year-old for God’s sake. [Breaks down weeping] And he was delicate. I’m shocked and I frightened myself … I may have ruptured something inside. That’s my thinking now…

Det Woodyatt: Why did you hit the area [of the bite]?

Gill: … I don’t know if I was mad, angry, sad – what – but … I knew I’d caused him some harm, some sort of pain – slight, major or otherwise – in that spot … I’d rather have a bruise there than a bite mark. Bite’s just strange. It’s just strange … I’m trying to cover something up.

Det Woodyatt: How hard were you hitting him?

Gill: I don’t know. He was a two-year-old. I don’t normally hit the boy hard … I do not know.

Det Woodyatt: Can I ask you what you were trying to achieve by hitting where you’d bitten him?

Gill: I’ll repeat myself for about 18, I don’t know how many times. But that night and leading up to that night – Saturday the 10th – he’s pissed me off, he’d pissed his mum off, he’d pissed us off. On thinking – I don’t know – but I’m thinking – [pause] I’ve lost it … I intended to hurt the little sh … in some way … I intended to hurt Lewis. I would rather hurt him in one spot than hurt him all over…

I intended to hurt him – hurt, but not maim, injure, kill … I was, yeah: ‘Little shit’; ‘Cockroach’; ‘What do you think you’re doing, turd?’ I was just flicking him but, on the grog, I can’t say how hard it was. I’d done a week’s worth of extensive workout with weights and things and I’m a reasonably solid, heavy bloke so it may be harder [Gill hits the table] than what I’m showing at the moment.

While admitting he hurt Lewis, Gill strenuously denied inflicting the massive head injuries doctors believed killed the child.

Gill: I believe there’s injuries to Lewis’s head that may have caused his death. I honestly don’t believe I’ve hit Lewis in the head because he used to do quite a lot of damage to himself. He’d bang his head and he’s crunched his head and he certainly hit it on floors and walls and things. So, as from knowing myself, I don’t believe I would have hit him in the head. I don’t believe that because he already had lumps on his head from bruises and things. I used to call him ‘Lumpy Head’…

Det Woodyatt: Is it possible you could have hit him in other areas apart from the hip?

Gill: It’s possible but I did not know. I do not know. Honestly, I do not know.

Det Woodyatt: What was Lewis doing when you were hitting him?

Gill: I do not know. Crying. Muffled crying.

Det Woodyatt: Did that worry you?

Gill: I know it did enough for me to stop and go to bed when I went to bed.

Gill admitted twisting the toddler’s leg in a ‘Chinese burn’ after Lewis ‘in distress during whatever I was doing’ kicked him. He said he grabbed the boy’s leg with two hands and twisted it, and that Lewis must have been ‘very fragile’ with bones ‘like chalk’ for what he had done to have snapped his leg.

Gill: I thought it was superficial … I’ve heard legs break. I’ve felt broken bones. I had no idea if I’d broken a bone.

Det Woodyatt: What did Lewis do after you gave him a Chinese burn?

Gill: I really don’t know his reactions. I know he was crying and he may have been crying from start to finish, just crying. That’s it.

Det Woodyatt: How loud was his crying?

Gill: Not loud enough to wake his mum up. He was muffled. I didn’t do that. I know he was muffled already.

Det Woodyatt: At what stage did you go to bed?

Gill: … When I felt he’d had enough. I intended to harm him in a way – ‘harm’ is a harsh word. I intended to hurt Lewis because he hurt us throughout the week with just his actions, his reactions – his behaviour, his misbehaviour.

Again, Gill’s extraordinary and cruel immaturity spilled out.

Gill: I intended to hurt him physically. I copped fuckin’ heaps when I was a kid. I copped bashings, beltings, thrown across the room. I got all sorts of stuff. I intended to make him know – this is just come to me, I haven’t thought about this: I intended to let him know who’s boss ’cause he was a little shit.

He, he was demanding. He was terribly demanding: demand, demand, demand. Just cry, sook, try to get his own way and usually Daisy would give up and give him his own way.

Det Woodyatt: Whose child is Lewis?

Gill: Daisy’s. I will not say the father’s name because he had nothing to do with her and I intended to be a stand-in father. I honestly wanted to make us a family unit…

It was Daisy’s job to discipline Lewis. At times, I would – and she wouldn’t mind – yell at him when he’s going to grab something that he shouldn’t … I wasn’t rough … I’m great with kids and I don’t want to hurt them. Yeah, I wasn’t overly rough with him at any stage.

Det Woodyatt: Before that …

Gill: Up, up until that night. I know I have done something wrong and I can’t help it.

Det Woodyatt: Before you went over to that couch, had Lewis done anything to warrant you disciplining him?

Gill: … He probably started crying … I really do not know except for the fact that he was being a cunt – I’ll say that. He was being a cunt that week and I just wanted him not to be such a prick to his mum and not be such a prick – I don’t care about me but he was hurting his mum that week. She was in tears at stages through that week. We had big discussions about it. We’d rung the father, at some stage, to pick him up and he said: ‘We’ll organise it tomorrow’…

Det Woodyatt: When you went to bed, did you wake up Daisy at all?

Gill: It was about the only night since I have been with Daisy I haven’t had sex with her. I know consciously, subconsciously – whatever it is – I knew I’d done something terrible. Same with the things I’d done – I don’t know if I did it consciously, subconsciously. I don’t know. I went to sleep. She was bombed that night. She’s had a big week and it was a shit of a day. She was bombed; I didn’t want to wake her up.

This answer seemed to sum up the conundrum of Gill. He admitted knowing he had done something terrible – even if only at a subconscious level – but seemed to think a good indication of his revulsion at what he had done was that he did not have sex with the child’s mother.

Det Woodyatt: What was Lewis doing when you left him to go to bed?

Gill: Lying on the couch. Dunno if he was awake, asleep, crying. I don’t know. I do not know.

Det Woodyatt: Did it concern you, how he was?

Gill: I knew I’d hurt him more than I aimed to. I knew that.

Det Woodyatt: When you went to bed, did you go straight to sleep?

Gill: I think I sat up for about five minutes – at most.

Det Woodyatt: What did you do in that time?

Gill: Showed some concern for my actions ’cause I knew they were … beyond what I aimed to do.

Det Woodyatt: What concern did you show?

Gill: Worry in the head.

Det Woodyatt: Did you do anything to try and help Lewis?

Gill: Well … I knew he was breathing … I stayed up a while concerned that: ‘Shit, I’ve hurt this kid.’ Him being my girl’s [son], I had thoughts in my head: ‘Oh shit, you know should I wake Daze and maybe check him out?’ I laid there and just worried. I didn’t hear much noise out of him, so I just went to sleep. And that’s it, that’s as far as I know.

What does one make of someone who says he was worried about a toddler he had just hurt more than he ‘aimed to’, but that he worried for ‘at most’ five minutes and then went to sleep because he didn’t hear much noise from his victim?

Det Woodyatt: How did you check [the next morning] that he was breathing?

Gill: Could hear him. I went past. I felt his head. It was cold but that didn’t worry me because it was a cold night and I could hear him breathing. I, I had no thoughts whatsoever that the actions I’d taken had hurt him to the extent of death. So, he may be cold, but it’s not a problem. He were breathing. I thought: ‘You beauty. He’s, he’s OK. I’ll talk to Daisy in the morning about what I’ve done, or whatever.’ Up comes the morning, the boy’s blue: I can’t believe it. I don’t know what to do except be there for Daisy. I’ve looked after her. I have no intentions of hurting her. I love Daisy and I did want to love Lewis. I had all the intentions of making a family life with the two of them.

Det Woodyatt: Did you tell Daisy what you’d done to Lewis that night?

Gill: … She has no idea. She has not a single clue … Nobody except for you guys have any idea. It’s burning me up … I can’t believe what’s happened. I can’t believe I’m the cause of somebody’s death…

Det Woodyatt: Was Daisy present when you inflicted these injuries?

Gill: As far as I know she was asleep.

Det Woodyatt: As far as you know, did she have any knowledge as to what you were doing?

Gill: No, none whatsoever. I, I broke down at the funeral because all I wanted to do was tell everybody that I was sure it was my actions that had led to that boy’s demise.

Gill said that when Daisy found her son dead, he wasn’t certain his actions had killed the boy.

Gill: I wasn’t 100 per cent sure because of the way he was in the couch. He was pretty much in there when I left him. I thought he’d suffocated … I’ve never seen a dead figure, body – whatever – before. I thought Lewis had suffocated. I really did. And that stressed me out to no end because I’m sure I’d seen him earlier breathing … when I got up … muffled but breathing. My thoughts actually in the morning were: If he’s died of suffocation throughout the night, I could have stopped that from happening. I could have pulled him out of that part of the couch.

Gill explained why he had not told police the whole truth in the first interview.

Gill: I wanted to deny it for my sake that I have done this stuff because I can’t believe I’ve done it. It’s shocking. It’s appalling. It’s horrific. There’s that reason but also Daisy doesn’t really have anybody … I love her and I want the best for her. I had to be there for her for a while at least until she could have some sort of support. She’s living with my family at the moment. I know the law will stand in my way [but] … I wanted to look after Daisy for the rest of my days. I owe her now. I owe her so much. I remember before that ’cause she helped me get my life happy again. [crying] I was happy. It’s a lose, lose situation for me.

I’ve got so much to offer this world. I’ve got so much to live for. I’ve got things going so well. I had up until, you know … I wanted to try and move on and I would have had to live with me killing a child for the rest of my days.

But why did he go to the couch Lewis was sleeping on at all?

Gill: Just restlessness. I probably went over there just to say, ‘Good night’ to Lewis and … in a drunken stupor it certainly amused me that you could hardly hear him. He was crying as he usually does but he was muffled and it seemed … I love that kid. I was trying to make a future with Daisy and Lewis.

When asked the question again, Gill repeated he was ‘probably’ just going to say, ‘Good night’ but then he came up with another extraordinary outburst.

Gill: I honestly loved that – he gave me the shits. The kid gave me the shits but I loved the life we were having and there’s a no-win situation in me killing that kid. I got scared. My girlfriend which I still love and I’ll probably lose because of this, these actions…

Det Woodyatt: Why didn’t you just say, ‘Good night’ and go to bed?

Gill: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

When asked if he wanted to say anything about being charged with Lewis Blackley’s murder, Gill said: ‘Yes. As far as I’m concerned, as far as I knew, murder was something that you think of, and this child’s death is because I wasn’t thinking … To me murder is when you pre-plan, you got the notion: ‘I’m gonna kill this person, whatever.’

• • •

In March 2003, a Supreme Court jury in Geelong was asked to decide whether Gill had murdered his little mate. It heard and saw not only evidence but some peculiar antics from Gill and Ms De Los Reyes. Frequently Gill smiled at and mouthed, ‘I love you’ to Ms De Los Reyes … and she smiled back at him. She smiled back at the man who admitted to hurting her baby boy; who told police Lewis was being ‘a shit’, ‘a cockroach’; who was on trial for murdering her son. The mutual smiling and mouthing of sweet nothings across the courtroom continued even after Gill’s barrister in his opening address tried to cast suspicion on Ms De Los Reyes. Mr Silbert told the jury that Gill had made ‘extremist attempts to exculpate her of any involvement in the death of Lewis’. The pair even made eyes at each other – like a couple of teenagers – while the jury looked at heart-wrenching pictures of Lewis’s body. During breaks in the trial, Ms De Los Reyes chatted with Gill in the dock. Once she showed him her newly polished nails and asked him what he thought. Daisy’s evidence and performance on the witness stand was also extraordinary.

Mr Silbert: You were very much in love with Haemon Gill?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

Mr Silbert: You still are?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

Mr Silbert: He is very much in love with you?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

Mr Silbert: You were very much concerned that the relationship would continue?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

Mr Silbert: You wanted it to go on?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

Mr Silbert: You still want it to go on?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

Mr Silbert: You continue to visit Haemon Gill in jail?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes…

Mr Silbert: You have said that you believe he should not have been charged?

Prosecutor Michele Williams: What’s the relevance of that, Your Honour? Quite frankly, it’s outrageous.

Mr Silbert: As to her state of mind only, Your Honour.

Justice John Coldrey: I think that it may open other matters; I will allow it.

Mr Silbert: You have said to various people that he should not have been charged?

Ms De Los Reyes: No, not to murder.

Mr Silbert: You have said to people that he is innocent?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

Mr Silbert: You still think that?

Ms De Los Reyes: Yes.

She agreed that Gill had told her he had given Lewis a Chinese burn.

Ms De Los Reyes: He did say that but he said that he has done it softly. I suppose he didn’t realise how much strength he gave to that … He told me he didn’t think he had hurt him. He was just playing around that night.

Daisy said her son and Gill had been fond of each other but she agreed that Haemon would occasionally get a little jealous when Lewis took too much of her attention. She said Lewis would often bang his head when having a tantrum and that he had banged his head several times on the day before she found him dead.

Ms De Los Reyes: Head injuries … stupid kid.

She said that on the last day of her son’s life she had slapped him a couple of times on his face after becoming fed up with his continual crying. She agreed that Lewis had been an unplanned baby and that she once told Haemon she wished she had never had him. Ms De Los Reyes agreed she had been taking monthly injections after having a few mental breakdowns, but denied they were to control paranoid schizophrenia.

While confirming that she had attacked Vaughan Blackley with a knife after telling him to close his eyes and kneel down, Ms De Los Reyes smiled. She smiled again when asked whether she had tried to ‘glass’ another former boyfriend with a broken beer glass.

Ms De Los Reyes: No, it wasn’t a broken beer glass.

Mr Silbert: What was it?

Ms De Los Reyes: It was a glass with beer in it.

Mr Silbert: It was the stub of a glass with beer in it, I put it to you?

Ms De Los Reyes: No, it was not a stubby. It’s just a pot.

Mr Silbert: Did you actually break that glass?

Ms De Los Reyes: [Grinning broadly] Yes.

Mr Silbert: You did break the glass?

Ms De Los Reyes: [Still grinning] Yes. I didn’t break it. It breaked on his face.

Maternal and child health nurse Julene Barnes said that when she saw Lewis Blackley three weeks before he died, he appeared to be a very happy, cheeky little boy keen to be out playing with his friends. She said a small bruise on his forehead was a normal bruise for an active toddler and had not noticed any other bruises on him in eight visits. Ms Barnes said she considered Ms De Los Reyes a ‘caring and interested mother’.

Forensic pathologist Dr Matthew Lynch said he believed Lewis died from one of five recently inflicted injuries to his head that had been hit with ‘mild to moderate’ force. He also found a recent bruise to the boy’s right hip, that his right leg had been broken shortly before he died, a recent bruise on his left thigh, and some ‘old’ bruises around his body.

The trial came down to whether it was reasonably possible that Lewis had unwittingly killed himself by banging his head in a tantrum earlier that day, or whether his frustrated mother’s slaps combined with what Gill had done to him could have unintentionally injured him so badly that he died. Could Lewis have been fatally injured before a drunken, stoned, childish, jealous and frustrated Gill twisted his little mate’s leg until it broke? Could Gill have failed to notice that the toddler he was hurting so badly was already mortally injured – was dying? This would only have been possible if Lewis was having a ‘lucid interval’. In most cases, children are knocked immediately unconscious when they get a fatal blow to the head but, very occasionally, the swelling of the brain will cause them to have a ‘lucid interval’ – to seem all right for a short time – before dying.

Dr Lynch said he did not think that Lewis could have had a lucid interval after his fatal head injury, but he said he was not an expert and a neurosurgeon should be asked.

The senior neurosurgeon at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, Geoffrey Klug, hit the defence case for a proverbial six. Mr Klug said it was highly likely Lewis would have been knocked unconscious by the blow that killed him. He said even if the boy had had some sort of a lucid interval, it was very unlikely he would have been able to talk normally or feed himself. Mr Klug said he believed Lewis’s fatal injury would have been caused by more than one ‘severe’ blow. He said he did not believe those blows could have been inflicted by a tantrum, or by a video cassette being tapped on his head, or even by him being tossed over a man’s shoulder onto a bed. The killer blow or blows, he said, would have been akin to Lewis falling out of a window, or over a stair banister and hitting his head on a hard surface – or being hit with a brick.

Gill’s antics continued, even as his trial drew to its close. He interrupted the prosecutor’s final address, calling out from the dock: ‘I can’t listen to her. She’s lying, she’s blatantly lying.’

In his closing address, Mr Silbert acknowledged that what his client had done to Lewis on the night before he was found dead was despicable, but he said that did not mean Gill had inflicted the fatal blow or that he had intended to kill or even to really seriously injure his little mate.

But on 14 March 2003 – after deliberating for three hours and sleeping on their decision overnight – the seven men and five women on the jury declared Gill a child murderer. As the verdict was announced, Gill took his hands out of his pockets, rested them on the dock and shouted: ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ The newly convicted murderer’s father broke down weeping. His mother stared straight ahead. Daisy wasn’t there.

• • •

Six months later, things were very different when the case moved to Melbourne for Gill’s pre-sentence plea-hearing.

Gill had morphed from a pretty-boy, floppy-haired yuppy look to a muscle-bound, close-cropped, pony-tailed tough. Was this a reversion to the real Gill, a dropping of a facade put on for the jury; was it a tough facade to make it easier to cope in jail; or was this ‘chameleon’ Gill, once again being easily influenced by those around him?

The other big change was that Daisy no longer loved the man who had admitted cruelly hurting her baby, who had been found guilty of murdering her toddler son. In her victim impact statement, Ms De Los Reyes wrote that because of Gill’s ‘evilness’ and betrayal, she had come to distrust men.

Gill’s new barrister, David Brustman, called for the sentence not to be ‘crushing’, saying his client had ‘very much loved’ Lewis. He said Gill had only had four hours’ sleep in the 72 hours before Lewis’s death, that the boy had been killed after ‘nerves became frayed’ during a frustrating day and that the killing had not been planned. He also handed up nine glowing character references in which Gill was described as soft and charming, loving, caring, polite, well-mannered, pleasant, fun-loving and artistically talented. Mr Brustman said that while in jail, Gill had painted the portraits of many inmates’ loved ones.

Prosecutor Michele Williams called for a long prison term, saying the murder was a serious example of the murder of a two-year-old and that Gill had expressed no real remorse.

Outside the court, as he was being led away in chains, Gill looked at me and pleaded: ‘Write the truth: I’m not a murderer.’ I did not reply and certainly didn’t feel any pity. I just watched him being led away, looking plaintively back at me: a child–man still playing a childish game despite facing a very adult punishment for a very bad crime.

A month later, in sentencing Gill, then 30, Justice Coldrey said he accepted that the killing of Lewis had been unplanned and that Gill had been shocked by what he had done. He said Gill had fatally hurt Lewis in an extraordinarily immature explosion of violence fuelled by frustration, alcohol and drugs.

Justice Coldrey: You, as a grown adult, wanted to show a two-year-old who was boss … A further distorted train of thought which emerges was that you were, in effect, punishing Lewis out of concern for the distress he was causing your partner, Daisy.

He noted that a psychologist believed Gill had had a childlike dependency on Daisy, that he had tried to stop Lewis crying to protect his relationship with her and that Gill felt he was competing with Lewis for his mother’s affection.

Justice Coldrey: Whatever the motivation for your behaviour, it represents a grave abuse of the position of power and control that you held over this young child. Instead of the care and protection to which Lewis Blackley was entitled, he received aggression and violence and pain and suffering. On any view, your conduct constituted a grave breach of trust…

I have no doubt that you regret the death of Lewis Blackley, but your primary concern is the destruction of your relationship with Daisy De Los Reyes and your own situation of incarceration. Indeed, despite comments you made to police … you refuse to accept responsibility for Lewis’s death. Consequently, your state of mind falls well short of genuine remorse.

The judge said Ms De Los Reyes’s change of heart towards Gill since the trial showed she had gradually accepted ‘the reality of what befell her child at your hands’. He said Lewis’s death had also traumatised the boy’s father and his grandmother, Kathleen Thompson.

Justice Coldrey: Mr Blackley is faced with feelings of depression and – on such occasions as birthdays, Christmas, Father’s Days and long weekends when he and Lewis were together – that depression is exacerbated. Additionally, there are understandable feelings of guilt at not being able to be with Lewis at the time. Mr Blackley writes that he has gone from being an outgoing and gregarious person to a person with minimal social interaction with the everyday world and one who had been undergoing psychological counselling…

Like her son, Mrs Thompson has ceased to be an outgoing person and is struggling to get on with her life and find some happiness.

During Justice Coldrey’s sentencing remarks – like a naughty schoolboy having to listen to a boring lesson – Gill muttered to himself, looked up at the ceiling, shook his head and gazed at those in the court; sometimes quizzically, sometimes blankly, sometimes plaintively, sometimes defiantly. When the judge talked of him losing the love of Ms De Los Reyes, he bowed his head and wiped away a tear. He wept when he heard of the suffering of Lewis’s grandparents and shook his head furiously when the judge said he still failed to accept full responsibility for the boy’s death. Finally, however, he was still when Justice Coldrey came to announce his sentence.

Justice Coldrey: Mr Gill, I have determined that you should be imprisoned for a period of 19 years. I fix a period of 14 years before you become eligible for parole … Remove the prisoner.

Still Gill was still. Finally, perhaps, grim reality was sinking in.

Afterwards, on the steps of the court, Lewis’s dad struggled to hold back tears as he declared the man who killed his son: ‘Just a scumbag.’

Mr Blackley: Lock him up and throw away the key … Lewis would be four now and doing all the stuff four-year-olds do … There will always be dates, anniversaries and reminders of what should have been.

Mrs Thompson said she and her husband, Don, had flown from their home in Dunedin, New Zealand to see the trial and sentencing of the man who had hurt her happy grandson so badly he died. She said she still woke in the middle of the night thinking about Lewis’s agonising death; she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since her grandson’s death.

Mrs Thompson: Sometimes, I feel as though I am wearing a mask to the world. I don’t think I will ever be the same again.

Nearly a year and a half later – when Lewis should have been preparing to go to school – his murderer’s appeal was heard.

One of the reasons Gill’s lawyers claimed his trial was unfair was that Mr Klug had been allowed to give evidence. Justice Coldrey had let the prosecution call Mr Klug after Dr Lynch told the court he was not an expert on ‘lucid intervals’. Normally the prosecution is not allowed to add witnesses during a trial – accused people have a right to know everything about the prosecution case before their trial so they have every chance to mount a successful defence. The problem was that the only witness asked to deal with the crucial issue of whether Lewis could have had a ‘lucid interval’ before he died – Dr Lynch – had said he wasn’t expert enough to answer the question. Justice Coldrey’s solution was to let the prosecution call Mr Klug but to adjourn the trial for a week to give the defence a chance to quiz him before the jury got to hear what he had to say – so they knew what he was going to say and could, if necessary, try to find a way to counter his evidence. At the appeal, the defence said the judge should have aborted the trial, saying the delay would have made it hard for the jurors to remember all the evidence to properly decide the case.

The appeal court was also told Gill’s trial had been unfair because the judge had failed to emphasise enough to the jurors that they had to be convinced that Lewis had not inflicted his own fatal injury in a tantrum; the judge should have warned the jury that Ms De Los Reyes’s schizophrenia might make her an unreliable witness; and the jury had not been warned strongly enough against assuming that because Gill had inflicted some of Lewis’s injuries, he had inflicted the fatal one.

Gill’s lawyers also claimed his sentence was much too harsh for someone who had killed after temporarily losing his self-control.

In April 2005 – three years and nearly four months after Lewis was killed – the Victorian Court of Appeal roundly rejected Gill’s appeal.

The three judges accepted that Mr Klug’s evidence would have been devastating to Gill’s hopes of being acquitted – particularly the surgeon’s denial that Lewis could have inflicted the fatal injury on himself and that it was very unlikely the fatally wounded boy could have had a lucid interval. They denied, however, that it had been unfair of the judge to let him give evidence, pointing out that Gill’s lawyer had introduced the ‘lucid interval’ issue in cross-examining Dr Lynch. They also said the issues in the trial were relatively simple so the short adjournment would not have made it hard for the jury to properly consider the evidence.

They denied that the judge should have warned the jury about the reliability of Ms De Los Reyes’s evidence, pointing out that her evidence was substantially the same as Gill’s.

The appeal did not even come close to succeeding.

Justice Stephen Charles: There was ample evidence to support the verdict. It seems to me that the Crown case was a very strong one. The evidence of Mr Klug was damning to the applicant, whose statements in his second record of interview could also be taken by the jury as a complete admission to his having struck the blows to Lewis’s head which led to his death.

As for Gill’s sentence, sometimes appeal judges will say that a sentence was stern, that they might have given a lighter one if they had been the trial judge but then note that they can only change sentences they consider are ‘manifestly’ unfair. The opposite was true here.

Justice Charles: The applicant … used a very substantial amount of force in the infliction of the fatal injury and had grossly abused a position of trust and his position of power and control over a young child. In my view, the sentence was plainly within range. Furthermore, the nonparole period is very short and, indeed, lenient.

Gill had not only lost his appeal, he had come very close to getting more time in jail.