Every Parent’s Nightmare

The Murder of Little Sofia

A family goes out one afternoon to their local shopping centre. The little girl, aged eight, leaves them for just a few minutes to go to the toilet. She is snatched away, murdered and raped in less than 10 minutes. This scenario sounds like it could be the plot for an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit or Criminal Minds but it actually happened in suburban Perth on a weekday in 2006.

The little girl was Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu. She had gone to the Livingston Marketplace shopping centre in suburban Canning Vale on 26 June with her uncle, 14-year-old brother and 11-year-old sister.

Canning Vale is located 20 kilometres south of the Perth CBD and is full of new houses and young families. The shopping centre is typical of so many in the suburban heartlands of Australia – in fact, if you didn’t know where you were, you could be anywhere. The shopping facility is bright and busy. Many people would have believed, until that day, it was a safe environment for families.

Sofia needed to go to the toilet and with her family close by, walked away for what should have been a few minutes. It is an age-appropriate act of independence – a child going to the toilet by themself while their family hovers, waiting for them to come back. But for the Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu family, evil lurked that day and their precious Sofia was killed in a random, opportunistic attack by a deeply disturbed and dangerous young man.

Dante Wyndham Arthurs, 21, an employee at one of the businesses at the shopping centre, spied the diminutive Sofia wandering back from the female toilets, grabbed her and dragged her into the disabled toilet cubicle. Sofia was tragically just steps away from the safe arms of her siblings and uncle.

What happened in that time between 4 p.m. and 4.10 p.m. on that Winter Monday terrified parents and shocked Western Australia. Who could imagine that this could happen in the afternoon at a busy suburban shopping centre? Certainly not Sofia’s family who, after a few minutes, became worried that she had not returned. Her brother Gabriel quickly searched the female and male toilets for signs of his little sister. Maybe she’d had to wait for a cubicle? Or seen someone she knew?

Gabriel told police he knocked on the door of the disabled cubicle, as it was locked, but there was no answer. Gabriel returned to his uncle and sister and they all searched for Sofia. Gabriel, retracing his footsteps, saw a man exit the disabled toilet and run past him. Gabriel then discovered his little sister’s naked body in the cubicle. He chased the man for a few metres but then in his confusion and shock, ran back to be with his sister.

The cause of Sofia’s death was later revealed to be strangulation and her petite legs and arms had been fractured by severe twisting, no doubt sustained in the frenzied attack that lasted just minutes and cost the happy schoolgirl her life.

In an interview with reporter Hamish Fitzsimmons for ABC’s 7.30 Report in 2007, then WA police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan described Sofia’s injuries as ‘shocking, including broken bones’ and added, ‘It’s a very disturbing crime … one of the worst that I’ve ever seen.’

Forensic evidence led police to Arthurs, who was arrested at his home, not far from the shopping centre, at 4 a.m. the next day. Arthurs told his lawyer and medical experts that he had no clear recollection of what he did to Sofia but that he recalled seeing his hands around ‘a throat’. He also told them he panicked when he saw that Sofia had stopped breathing. At Arthurs’ sentencing hearing that year, forensic psychologist Greg Dear told the court Arthurs had Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. People diagnosed with Asperger’s usually find it difficult to have insight into their own and other’s thoughts and feelings, and have poor social skills.

Arthurs was charged with wilful murder, sexual penetration of a child and deprivation of liberty. The Director of the WA Department of Public Prosecutions controversially dropped the charge of wilful murder and sexual assault and Arthurs pleaded guilty to the charge of murder, to which he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 7 November 2007. Under WA law, a victim must be alive at the time of a sexual attack for charges to be laid and it could not be determined whether Sofia had been dead or alive when Arthurs raped her. The case was, at one point, in some doubt because the police interview with Arthurs was declared inadmissible because the police were deemed to have been too aggressive while questioning the young man. However, the forensic evidence was strong enough for the case to proceed without the video evidence.

Arthurs must serve 13 years before he is eligible for parole – something that police and experts believe, and hope, is highly unlikely. On sentencing Arthurs, by this stage 23, Justice John McKechnie told him, ‘I find you have a dangerous sexual motivation towards young girls that manifests itself in violent situations with young girls.’

Justice McKechnie also said, ‘There are some crimes, which are so evil, they shock the public conscience; one such is the abduction and murder of a child, accompanied by sexual interference.’

Justice McKechnie also made mention of the huge impact Sofia’s murder had on her family, the community and the peace of mind of parents around Australia. ‘There are few domestic scenes more commonplace than the needs of children to go to the toilet when shopping with adults. Your actions have made every parent feel less safe, less trusting, more worried,’ he told Arthurs.

Arthurs’ Asperger’s syndrome was mentioned in some detail during his sentencing. Justice McKechnie noted that none of the clinicians who saw Arthurs made a diagnosis of paedophilia and they observed that he had a low interest in sex and sexual matters. Justice McKechnie said, ‘Clearly Asperger’s syndrome puts your offending in context and provides to a degree an explanation for it … when your whole history is considered, it is not Asperger’s syndrome but your sexual interest in young girls that motivated you for this crime and caused it.’

Western Australia was the only state left in the country whose homicide laws made a distinction between the two offences of wilful murder and murder. Homicide laws in WA were overhauled in 2008 and the offence of wilful murder was abolished. The charge of wilful murder was more serious but, as in the case of Arthurs, having the two offence categories meant that those who had been charged with killing someone could argue whether it was murder or wilful murder and potentially get a lighter sentence.

Sofia’s family were reported to have been upset with the downgrading of Arthurs’ charges to murder. Spokesman for the family, parish priest Father Bryan Rosling, told the 7.30 Report’s Hamish Fitzsimmons that they were ‘relieved in the sense that they don’t have to be involved with the ordeal of a long trial and that their son, Gabriel, who is only 15, will be spared having to be a witness’.

After Arthurs pleaded guilty to Sofia’s murder, facts emerged about his past dealings with the law that showed that her murder could have been prevented. In 2003, Arthurs had been charged with the indecent assault of an eight-year-old girl in a Canning Vale park. It was alleged that Arthurs, then 18, grabbed the little girl from behind and dragged her off towards trees. However, the girl bit Arthurs and escaped.

In a decision that had ramifications that no-one could predict, police failed to forensically test blood-spattered shorts that Arthurs had worn. Problems were also found with the manner that police interviewed Arthurs about the attack. A review of the evidence in this case (the evidence did not include the shorts) caused the Director of Public Prosecutions to drop the case. After Sofia’s murder, forensic testing linked Arthurs to the 2003 attack and he confessed to it in return for indemnity from prosecution.

There was outcry from the public when they learned that Arthurs had tried to rape before. The Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) investigated the handling of the 2003 case and found no misconduct on the part of officers. However CCC investigator Len Roberts-Smith, QC, in a letter to then police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan, said the decision to not forensically test the shorts was an ‘honest error’ and that no misconduct charges would be made against the police officers involved. The investigation also found that although the police officers who did the interview with Arthurs had not engaged in misconduct under the Corruption and Crime Commission Act, they had not followed police regulations.

In a 2007 radio interview for ABC’s PM, Karl O’Callaghan vigorously defended his members’ handling of Dante Arthurs, telling reporter David Weber that ‘it’s not a mistake and it’s not a blunder’ when Weber put to him that it was embarrassing for police. O’Callaghan told the reporter that it was very unlikely that if that 2003 case had gone forward, Dante Arthurs would have spent any time in jail. ‘It’s pure speculation to suggest that nothing further would have happened if he’d been prosecuted,’ O’Callaghan said.

In an exclusive news story printed just days after Arthurs was sentenced, Perth’s Sunday Times reported that Arthurs was stalking up to a dozen young girls before he murdered Sofia. Reporter Cortlan Bennett interviewed the parents of two sisters whom Arthurs had in his perverted sights. The parents of the girls were reportedly visited by police days after Arthurs’ 2006 arrest and told their daughters’ names were on a list found in the child killer’s possessions. Prosecutor Sam Vandongen told the court at Arthurs’ sentencing that a bag of documents with the details and phone numbers of young girls, photos and female clothing in child sizes was found during the raid on his Canning Vale home. Disturbingly, the article ‘Twelve girls on monster’s hit list’ described that the bag also contained ‘gloves, handcuffs, packing tape, a rope and a small knife’.

That wasn’t the end to the controversy over Dante Arthurs and whether he could have been stopped before he murdered Sofia. Before Arthurs went to court, a rumour spread like wildfire throughout WA in the weeks after Sofia’s death. The rumour became so persistent and widespread from being shared through email and internet message boards that there were fears that it could stop Arthurs receiving a fair trial. Even Australia’s then federal justice minister, Senator Chris Ellison, put out a statement in 2007 to officially deny the rumour.

The rumour was that Arthurs’ true identity was that of one of two young men who, when they were 10, abducted two-year-old James Bulger from a Liverpool shopping centre in 1993 and killed him. It was the crime that shocked Great Britain and the rumours are believed to have come from speculation that one of the boys was given a new identity and relocated to Australia after his release from prison in 2001. Arthurs was born in Perth in 1984 but that did not stop the speculation that travelled the world, via WA, that he was in fact, one of Britain’s most reviled killers.

Another reason the rumour had ‘legs’ was that in 2001 Arthurs had returned to Australia with his family after living for a number of years in Surrey, England. The family of Sofia were outraged, as were the public, when it was revealed that Arthurs had been interviewed by detectives from Surrey Police over an incident where he tried to abduct a female child. Even the WA Police said that they were not told of this incident by their British counterparts until after Arthurs had been charged over Sofia’s murder. An article from Britain’s most famous tabloid The Sun entitled ‘Brit cops free perv to kill girl’ said Arthurs was suspected of grabbing a young girl from behind in the village of Bookham, Surrey. The girl managed to struggle free. Arthurs’ home was searched and he was questioned but the identity parade that could have revealed him as the dangerous sexual predator that he is was reportedly postponed a number of times, and he was able to leave the country without any problem. As Arthurs was not convicted of a crime in England, Australian Police had no warning that a predator had landed in the country.

The police officers involved paid the price for their incompetence. ‘An officer who was overseeing the identification suite at the time has since resigned from the force and another officer was given words of advice as a result of a disciplinary inquiry,’ The Times quoted a Surrey Police spokeswoman. Sofia’s father said through a spokesman that he felt his daughter’s death could have been avoided had Australian authorities been alerted about Arthurs.

The community outpouring of grief over the murder was overwhelming for the family. Sofia’s family did not speak at her funeral but expressed themselves in a letter that was handed to mourners. The family are devout Catholics and were in deep shock over their daughter’s death. Sofia’s father had been on a business trip in Hong Kong when his little girl was murdered and he raced home to be with his family in the days after the shocking crime. Statements at the time came from the family through their priest Father Bryan Rosling.

Father Rosling said at the funeral that a ‘terrible evil’ had been visited upon Sofia and her family. The crime sent waves of revulsion through the state. Parents would not let their children out of their sight. Sofia’s funeral was on 3 July, at Yangebup’s Mater Christi church, where the family worshipped and Sofia attended the adjoining Catholic school. A website set up for the family, so that they could thank all the people who sent them letters, cards and flowers, is a heartbreaking read. Children, many who were Sofia’s classmates, expressed their sadness and love for the family in their childlike, misspelled fashion, that leaves no doubt that this crime left a permanent scar of the community. ‘You have the best angel in the wolde [sic]’, ‘I hope you are felling much better. We are finding it hard to because Sofia is such a little angle [sic] in our hearts.’

Over 450 people, rallied together by the Canning Vale Christian community in the days after the tragedy, gathered at the shopping centre in a show of care and prayer for Sofia and her family. A box of hundreds of paper hearts with handwritten notes was presented to her devastated parents. Amid the media glare and Australia-wide attention that was showered upon them, the family maintained their silence but were deeply touched by the gestures of love, prayers and support that were given to them.

The WA State Government launched the Public Sex Offender Register on 15 October 2012. The website, an Australian-first, is an online database of known sex offenders who are living in the community. It’s little too late for Sofia, but her parents have spoken of their hope that the register will save the lives of other children. In 2011, then WA police minister Rob Johnson met with the family and parish priest to explain the register. Mr Rodriguez told the West Australian in the days before the launch of the register that his daughter may have been saved if the legal systems in Britain and WA had worked better. ‘We don’t want any family to suffer like us,’ he said in the 13 October news report.

Another tragic twist to Sofia’s murder – as if there weren’t enough gut-wrenching facts – is that she and her family were set to officially become Australian citizens at a ceremony less than a week after her death. Sofia’s family went ahead with the ceremony for their daughter, which was held on 10 November 2007 at her primary school and in front of all her school friends, teachers and the school community.

The family were presented with a certificate specially created for Sofia and signed by the then immigration minister Senator Amanda Vanstone. It read: ‘In respectful memory of Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu. A beautiful child who would have been a fine Australian citizen.’