Child Killer

Gemma Killeen

The ‘selfies’ of Gemma Gaye Killeen show a pretty, young woman with not much to worry about apart from having a good time. Australia is full of these young people who document their lives through ‘selfies’ – photos of a person, taken by that person – on social media showing the best side of otherwise pedestrian suburban existences where life is lived for the weekends. The idea is to have the most attractive self-portrait possible, especially for the profile photo of a Facebook or My Space account. A photo of Killeen shows her with a subtle tan, blonde-streaked hair and peeking midriff as she smiles in her bathroom mirror. But at the time the photo was taken 22-year-old Killeen was no longer as carefree as her photos suggested – she was the mother of an infant son.

Te Reringa Kayden Ashley Wetere, known as Kayden, was a bright, active little boy, who was born in early 2009. Killeen became pregnant with Kayden when she was just 19 and her relationship with the baby’s father, Eddie Wetere, was precarious at best.

Like many young, single mothers, Killeen found the harsh realities of motherhood impinged on her ability to live the life she had enjoyed with Eddie Wetere and her friends. The on-off couple struggled to shift gear into parenthood when all their friends were carefree and able to party on the weekends. While the photos Killeen shared on her Facebook account showed her doting on little Kayden, the picture-perfect facade – so easy to construct over the internet – was disturbingly false.

On 25 November 2010, the day that was stretched out for Killeen, a part-time assistant accountant, was full of chores as well as some treats, including sunbathing and a manicure. An afternoon shopping trip to Hillarys Boat Harbour in Perth was also planned so that Killeen could buy a new dress. The night before had been fiery between Killeen and Eddie and, yet again, the battle about which of them would care for Kayden while the other went out was the source of the tension. Killeen had turned up at Eddie’s house at 2 a.m. that morning after a night out.

Killeen had slept in the spare room – the couple were not officially together at this time – after arguing with Eddie, who had been caring for his son while Killeen was out partying. It was becoming ever clear to Killeen that her relationship with her son’s father was becoming irreparable and that the chance for them be together in a committed romantic relationship was slipping from her grasp. This situation was making her increasingly desperate and she was being starved for the attention that she craved.

Mr Wetere left his home for work before 7 a.m. after kissing his baby son goodbye. He would never hold Kayden in his arms again.

Killeen and Kayden enjoyed a leisurely day. People who saw Killeen that day all recounted that she had been in a good mood. However, her mood changed rapidly when she tried to get in contact with Eddie. At 5.26 p.m., Killeen texted Eddie ‘hello’, which went unanswered just as several texts since 5 p.m. that day had not been responded to. Killeen wasn’t getting any attention from Eddie and though no-one can confirm what was going through her mind at that moment, it prompted the most unfathomable action a mother could ever do.

Killeen drove her Holden Nova to the north-side car park of Hillarys Boat Harbour. The harbour, a mix of restaurants, shops, bars and boat-related services, is a recreation drawcard for both visitors and Perth locals. It is a particular favourite with families and Killeen and her son would have drawn no particular attention.

However, instead of enjoying a paddle or play with little Kayden, Killeen took Kayden out of his pusher and placed her toddler at the rocky water’s edge, sometime between 5.35 p.m. and 5.43 p.m. Quickly, she returned to her car and drove to the other side of the harbour – the south-side car park. She then frantically started to call people, including her mother and Eddie Wetere, to tearfully tell them that Kayden was missing. They rushed to the scene to help Killeen find the boy. The panic a parent feels in the moments that their child is out of eyesight is sickening and strangers, as well as Eddie and Killeen’s mother, desperately searched for Kayden.

Killeen also went into a newsagency and told an assistant that her baby had been taken from his pram. Witnesses, including a security guard to whom Killeen also spoke about her ‘missing child’, said that the young mum gave the appearance of being upset.

Police raced to the scene after Killeen’s 000 call to say that her toddler had vanished. When police arrived, Killeen led them to believe that Kayden had somehow unstrapped himself from his stroller and wandered off.

It seems false abduction stories are used around the world by women desperate for attention, though most don’t end as tragically as Killeen’s tale.

In 2012, a British mother of five was jailed for six months after falsely claiming her two-year-old daughter had been snatched from her backyard. Janine Wiles, 24, claimed she saw a masked man walking off with her daughter but she ran after him and managed to grab the child from his arms. Her claims saw police spend two weeks, at a cost of £50 000, hunting for a child abductor and they arrested two men before the young mum admitted she had made the whole story up because she was depressed about the breakup with her partner.

Again in 2012, a teen mum from Illinois, USA, told police that her three-week-old baby girl had been abducted from the back of her car, but the newborn was found, alive, in a ditch on the side of a country road 12 hours later. In this case, the baby’s father was very much present and was shocked by his partner’s actions. In March 2013, Kendra Meaker, 19, was sentenced to three and a half years’ jail.

Kayden, described as a ‘happy chappie’ by friends of Killeen, was found unconscious at 6.25 p.m. by a couple who initially thought he was a doll floating in the water.

According to witness evidence, a group of about 10 people tried to save Kayden. One woman cradled Kayden’s head as a man did CPR on him for 12 minutes before an ambulance arrived. This couple’s efforts were described as ‘valiant’ by a judge later in court. One of the group, apprentice chef Zaym Chapman, then aged 17, told the court that he would ‘never forget watching a 22-month-old die’.

Each year in Australia, around 27 children are killed by one or both parents. The act, known as filicide, is committed in almost equal proportions by mothers and fathers, according to data from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s National Homicide Monitoring Program. Dr Deborah Kirkwood wrote a discussion paper for the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria about parents who kill their children and found that the prospect or experience of separation was a key factor in filicide by both men and women. Dr Kirkwood found that mothers are more likely to kill newborns, to kill to save children from imagined or real suffering and to also have a mental illness.

Killeen’s reasons for murdering her son are less clear. She was neither diagnosed with a mental illness nor found to be delusional at the time of the killing. Her Department of Public Prosecutions lawyer told Justice Stephen Hall that Killeen displayed a ‘lack of consequential thinking’. She was angry at Mr Wetere for ignoring her and she believed he had started a relationship with another woman. In her mind that day she wondered if he would help her more and be more interested in Kayden if he was scared into it.

When police officers told Killeen that her son had been found, she asked if he had drowned. This raised suspicions from the officers because they had not mentioned to Killeen where Kayden had been located. However, Killeen kept to her fake story and even sent text messages to her friends telling them that her son had been abducted and found in the water. Within hours of learning her son had died, she posted a message on her Facebook page, and then responded to messages left on the site for the next few hours.

During police interviews, Killeen continued to stick to her tale but quickly had to spin another line when she was shown CCTV footage of her exact movements earlier that evening. The footage showed her walking towards the water with Kayden and then returning to her car alone. It did not capture what exactly she had done with Kayden. Killeen eventually confessed – she had left Kayden on an impulse and her abduction story was flimsy. She pleaded guilty to her little boy’s murder and spared both families the emotional drain and trauma of a trial.

At Killeen’s sentencing hearing on 11 May 2012, Mr Justice Stephen Hall said it was an unusual case of murder. Mr Justice Hall took into account that Killeen said she did not mean to kill Kayden (though she conceded that she knew her son could not swim when she placed him by the water). He said, ‘When asked by the police what you thought would happen by placing him in that position, you said that you did not know. When asked for an explanation, you said that you had wanted things to go back the way they had previously been with you and Eddie Wetere.’

Killeen’s defence claimed that she lied to police because she realised that she was responsible for the death of Kayden and struggled to accept her actions on the day. But the prosecution said that Killeen’s actions up until Kayden’s death had been planned.

A psychiatrist’s report on Killeen’s state of mind that led to her fateful actions said she ‘displayed unplanned behaviour primarily motivated by a combination of stress over the demands of parenting and anger secondary to the stress of an allegedly sexually abusive relationship with the child’s father’.

Mr Justice Hall had strong words for Killeen. Mainly, there was a sense of disbelief that a mother could commit such an act. He called her actions ‘selfish and to some extent, vindictive’:

Even if you had made an impulsive decision to do something so terrible, even if your judgment was momentarily clouded by anger, it was in those moments that you remained in the car park that you had a chance to change the course of events. It is at such a time that one would expect the love of a mother for her child and the desire to protect her child from danger to rise up and overwhelm any other feelings. That did not happen. Rather, you got into your car and drove away. That you could do so, leaving behind your 22-month-old child in such danger, beggars belief.

Killeen was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 13 years. She will be eligible for parole in 2023 when she is 34 – still young enough to have another child.