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To his two-year-old daughter Yazmina, Ramazan Acar must have looked like the devil. Crazed, drunk and armed with a large ornate knife, the spiteful father had nothing but sinister intentions as he approached his little girl while she played outside his car in a suburban reserve. Yazmina had done nothing to enrage or provoke her dad. No. She was as innocent and naïve as the day was long. Ramazan Acar—the bricklaying son of a hard-working and respected Turkish father—was being fuelled by the pure loathing of another: his former girlfriend Rachelle D’Argent. In his resentful, alcohol-soaked brain, Rachelle was nothing but a bitch. A slut. Of that he was convinced. So convinced, in fact, he’d once carved that description into a wooden pillar next to Rachelle’s front door for all to see. Rachelle was the mother of his child; the mother who had left him and was denying him access to his precious daughter. So precious was little Yazmina that Acar was about to sacrifice her for the most selfish of reasons. To put it simply, he was going to murder his daughter to torment Rachelle for the rest of her life. Yazmina, or Mimi as her mum affectionately called her, was the pawn in Acar’s sick and twisted game of revenge.

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Too young to die: Murder victim Yazmina Acar is carried in her tiny coffin.

According to the experts, Ramazan Acar was no dill. Not stupid in the true sense of the word. He had an above-average IQ of 106. But, as Supreme Court judge Justice Elizabeth Curtain would accept, he was an immature young man with anger-management problems and ‘very fixed views’. A history of drug use—including substances like cannabis, speed and ice—only exacerbated what a psychiatrist would diagnose as Acar’s ‘mixed personality disorder with borderline antisocial and narcissistic traits’. Ramazan Acar was a bloke who could not accept rejection; could not accept being told ‘no’.

Born 24 February 1987, Acar dropped out of Fawkner Secondary College after Year 9 and pottered around as a panelbeater, painter and tiler. He and Rachelle had known each other since their mid-teens.

‘I first met Ramzy when I was fifteen or sixteen years old at an underage Metro, which was an underage nightclub in the city,’ Rachelle said in a police statement.

We did not have any friends or family in common, we just met there and he continually pestered me there all night until I gave him my phone number. We started off just talking to each other for around three months and then we started a relationship … For the first eight months of our relationship, it was perfect.

But trouble soon brewed in paradise. About eight months later, according to Rachelle’s statement, Acar punched her to the floor at a billiards club ‘because I was playing pool with other guys’.

‘I woke up and he was trying to kick and spit on me and his brother and a mate were trying to pull him away,’ Rachelle told police.

I did not tell my mother about this, or report it to the police … A few days later we spoke about this and he apologised and told me that he is not like that and it is not him. I forgave him and our relationship continued.

Needless to say, their de facto relationship was destined to be a turbulent and volatile time marked, as Justice Curtain would say, by Acar’s ‘jealousy, possessiveness, violence and, it appears, drug use’. Acar’s true colours again rose to the surface in January 2006 while he and Rachelle were living with her father. At a barbecue, according to Rachelle, ‘Ramzy drank too much alcohol too quickly and became drunk and aggressive.’ Armed with two steak knives, Acar stabbed himself.

‘Everyone ended up out in the street,’ Rachelle said in a statement. ‘He grabbed me and held the knife to my throat and said something like, “If I am going you are coming with me.”’

Police stormed the home and showered Acar with capsicum spray. He ran off and was later arrested.

Upon his release from custody, his family returned from Griffith, New South Wales, where they had been residing and working on a farm. In late 2006, the Acar clan moved back to Victoria and settled into a home in the northern suburbs. (A magistrate would later hand Acar a three-month suspended jail term for unlawful assault, making a threat to kill, threatening to inflict serious injury and criminal damage for the knife incident.)

‘They would spend nights together, weekends together, but would live separately at their respective parents’ premises,’ Acar’s barrister, Gavin Meredith, would tell the Victorian Supreme Court. ‘He was working as a bricklayer—not a qualified bricklayer—but working in the industry. Ultimately, he and Rachelle commenced to live together in or about July of 2007.’

By that stage, Rachelle was pregnant.

‘This was not a planned pregnancy,’ she told police.

When I told Ramzy that I was pregnant he was shocked and couldn’t believe it. He thought that I was joking. He is five months younger than I am, so he would have been nineteen at the time. He said to me that he was too young to be a father. After a couple of phone calls with him, he came around to the idea. I will say that he was working and saving money. He came to my medical appointments with me and came shopping for baby clothes and other stuff. At the eighteen week ultrasound we found out that I was pregnant with a little girl. I was so happy when I found out. Ramzy said that he thought it was going to be a little boy, but he was over the moon that he was going to have a little girl. When I was pregnant we lived apart, however, once I reached seven months he moved in with me and my mum in Narre Warren.

Ramzy and I went to the pre-natal classes and he seemed to be loving it. In the class he was like the clown. He loved it; he couldn’t wait to be a dad. He was always interested in what they were showing—like how to bath the baby and stuff.

Their daughter, Yazmina Micheline Acar, was born via an emergency caesarean on 23 November. ‘I did not see my baby at birth as during the procedure she swallowed meconium and did not breathe,’ Rachelle explained in a statement. ‘She was resuscitated and rushed by ambulance to the Royal Women’s Hospital. She commenced breathing unaided after twenty-four hours.’ The little girl was a survivor.

‘Yazmina, or Mimi as we used to call her, was and still is my everything,’ Rachelle wrote in a victim impact statement after her daughter’s death. ‘She was my reason for getting up every morning.’

In June 2008, Acar went to jail for three months after committing serious driving offences in breach of his suspended unlawful knife assault and death-threat sentence. On his release he returned to live with Rachelle.

‘Two weeks after Ramzy was released we held our engagement party at mum’s house,’ Rachelle told police. ‘Ramzy had proposed to me before Mimi was born— when I was eight months pregnant. I had accepted straight away. I wanted to marry him, even though we had had our troubles.’ The couple split around January 2009, with Acar moving back in with his family.

‘This was because he hit me again,’ Rachelle said in her police statement. ‘Mimi was crying and he got pissed off with it.’

Acar underwent some counselling and Rachelle resumed her relationship with him, ironically so as not to deprive her daughter of a father figure. ‘I grew up without really having a dad and I did not want this to happen to my daughter,’ she explained to police. ‘We were living with our respective parents during the week and Mimi was living with me. I would drive to [Acar’s parents’ house] on the weekends and we would spend the weekends together.’

In June that year the two started living together yet again, with Acar participating in a male family violence program this time. One of the program workers found Acar to be ‘a young man with very strong views that will require ongoing work in the area of change’. But it appeared to Rachelle that there was no change.

‘It was hell,’ she said in her statement.

I was just a housewife. I cooked, cleaned and laid his shoes out for him. All he did was eat, shower and go out. I have been asked why I stayed with him, and one reason is that I was bloody scared, but also the smile on my little girl’s face when she saw her dad come home from work was priceless. I don’t have memories of my dad and I did not want that for her.

In November 2009 Acar was convicted of recklessly causing injury to Rachelle by hitting her. For that offence he received another suspended sentence—a two-month term suspended for twelve months. When their lease ended in July 2010, the couple split again, Acar moving back in with his parents and Rachelle into her own unit in the outer south-eastern suburb of Hallam. According to Gavin Meredith, Acar was hitting the drugs at that stage.

‘There was a period where his amphetamine usage became fairly heavy, his [bricklaying] work sporadic,’ Meredith told the Supreme Court.

Acar visted Rachelle and Yazmina once every weekend.

‘And then he would start coming during the week and he would be fried,’ Rachelle told police.

By this I mean that he was obviously taking drugs. I confronted him about using drugs and he denied it. One other day he turned up to my home with flowers and chocolates. He never in eight and a half years bought me flowers and chocolates and when I spoke to him he was just off his head. Again he denied it. He was constantly frustrated and yelling at me over trivial little things and getting angry because Mimi was crying. He would sit up all night just watching TV.

Rachelle told police that during one of Acar’s visits she found a crack pipe and what she believed to be drugs in his bumbag. She said it was in August 2010 when she ‘stood up to him’.

One rule I always had is that he doesn’t bring drugs into my home. This was my home now. I paid all of the bills. I told him that it was over and he could just get his stuff and get out. I recall that we were watching the footy on TV at the time. He didn’t say anything. It was like he did not believe I had spoken to him like this. He picked up his wallet and his keys and went into the room where Mimi was playing. He kissed his daughter and then he went outside, got into his car and drove away.

The following month Acar appeared to try to clean up his act. Rachelle had changed her phone number and Acar had no access to his daughter. According to a relationship counsellor, Acar was ‘wanting to commence family dispute resolution and indicated that he wanted to sort himself out, clean himself up, go through the appropriate legal channels and re-establish access for his child’. Acar expressed interest in a family dispute resolution program operated by the Family Relationships Centre at Broadmeadows, but he failed to attend one session. Centrelink referred him to a psychologist named Peter Stanislawski. According to Justice Curtain:

That referral had identified what was said to be three barriers to your [Acar] employment, noted as follows: your limited employment history, your social isolation and anger. It appears that you attended four sessions and the discussions concerned your cannabis use and dependence, which Mr Stanislawski said you appeared to be motivated to address. You told Mr Stanislawski that you regretted being violent towards your ex-partner and that you wanted to be a good father to your daughter.

Acar continued to try to contact Rachelle in an effort to resume a relationship with his daughter.

‘[Acar] was denied permission by Rachelle to have access to his daughter,’ Crown prosecutor Peter Rose, SC, told the Victorian Supreme Court.

In November, Acar contacted Rachelle through her mother.

‘Eventually Rachelle returned his phone calls and he indicated he believed he was likely to go to jail in the near future as a result of driving offences and he claimed he wanted to see his daughter before this occurred,’ Rose told the court.

Rachelle agreed to let Acar see the child. ‘He wanted to see Mimi before he got locked up,’ she explained in her police statement.

Mother and daughter met him at the Fountain Gate Shopping Centre: a busy public place where nothing violent or untoward was likely to occur. They walked around the plaza; Acar gave his daughter shoulder rides and bought her presents. It ended as a good day out.

‘He looked actually refreshed,’ Rachelle told police.

I can tell when Ramzy’s been on stuff however he had a new look about him. He was clean and fresh, he had money in his pocket. He was carrying Mimi on his shoulders and was playing. He bought her things. I thought maybe he was getting better. We talked about him seeing Mimi and I said that he could see her every fortnight. He said to me that he loved me but he knew that we could not be together, as it was too complicated for us. He was so polite and grateful for me letting him see Mimi that day. It was a real shock.

After a forty-three-minute phone call on 13 November, Rachelle allowed Yazmina to spend the night at Acar’s family home.

‘He begged me and told me that he would look after her and that his mum would be there and help with the food and everything,’ Rachelle recalled. ‘I told him that it was something very big that he was asking of me but I said, “Well, how about next weekend?” He was so grateful and surprised. It was a whole different Ramzy that I was seeing.’

In a show of public joy, Acar posted several pleasant messages on his Facebook page. He was dearly looking forward to the sleepover, he posted. ‘He had all toys and stuff for her,’ Rachelle said. ‘It was again a whole different Ramzy, or so I thought.’

The night went well. Acar and his family enjoyed their time with little Yazmina. The stay ended all too quickly and the next day it was time to wave the little girl goodbye. Acar dropped Yazmina back to Rachelle on the Sunday afternoon, and then went to a park and smoked dope.

‘He began ruminating about the fact that he’d have to give his daughter back,’ Meredith told the Supreme Court.

That he did want to continue to see his daughter and then would he be able to see her, and so on. He also indicates that he became aware of the fact that Rachelle, he believed, had commenced seeing another man and he didn’t necessarily view that in a negative sense but indicates that he commenced to have feelings that he would probably or potentially be squeezed out of his daughter’s life—that Rachelle was moving on with hers.

Acar started calling Rachelle several times a day. Rachelle tried to pull his reins in a bit, telling him that he could call—but not as frequently as he was. Around this time, Acar met a new girl. We shall call her Talia. He took her out for drinks on the Monday night. Went to work and smoked cannabis on the Tuesday before paying Talia a visit at her mother’s place of work. Talia told him he was becoming a little overbearing and was rushing their relationship. She told him to slow down and back off a bit. Acar took the advice badly. Meredith described the situation: ‘She noticed a discernible change in his demeanour once she said that to him. He left and sent her a text in Turkish: “You were my last breath, but I’m not shit. You’ve burnt my heart.”’

Meredith went on: ‘That is a window, it seems, into the way he was feeling at that point in time and he instructs, Your Honour, that he felt overwhelmed, that he felt like crying, that he felt worthless.’

After that disappointment, Acar drove to a bottle shop and bought a six-pack of Scotch and Coke, which he guzzled down. He smoked some dope. Cut himself with his knife. Relatives had to drag him home before he instigated an ugly confrontation with cops at the Broadmeadows police station. Meredith again: ‘He felt that the best thing for him was either to get himself locked up or get himself shot by the police.’ That night he stayed in his younger brother’s garage. In the early hours of 17 November Acar went to work but did little on site that day. That afternoon he bought some grog and cut himself again. He travelled to Fawkner Cemetery and sat by his grandmother’s gravesite, as well as that of a fallen friend.

‘He says he was crying,’ Meredith told the Supreme Court. ‘Was speaking to his grandmother and his friend. He got more to drink.’

That afternoon, at around one o’clock, Acar sent Rachelle a text: ‘RIP Ramazan Kerem Acar 1987–2010’. It was to be the first of a barrage. At 2.02 pm he sent another: ‘U wanted 2 convert ma kid. Do it. U wanted 2 lock me up. I did it. U wanted 2 b independent. Do it. U wana take full custdy. Do it. U wana 2 kill me. I’ll do it. Wat eva makes u happy.’ About an hour and a half later, Acar was seen driving erratically along the Monash Freeway near the Heatherton Road exit, which was only a couple of kilometres from Rachelle’s home. He was abusive to other drivers. He fired off his next text at 3.37 pm: ‘Can I talk 2 mim.

’ Rachelle was obviously concerned about the tone of Acar’s messages. She responded via text, explaining that Yazmina was at creche and that she would be arriving home in about twenty minutes. At the same time, Acar texted: ‘Hurry I need 2 talk 2 u plz babe.’

Rachelle pulled into her driveway at 4.15 pm. Acar was parked out the front.

‘He had a Toyota Hilux, like a 4WD—an old one all battered and bashed,’ Rachelle explained to police. ‘Ramzy was sitting in the driver’s seat.’

She asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

Acar replied, ‘I’m just here to see Mimi.’

Rachelle noticed a large knife in his lap.

‘It was about thirty centimetres long. It was thick and it had like a sharp pointy end along one side of it. Along the blade it had holes in it.’

Rachelle asked him why he had it.

Acar replied, ‘I’ve had enough of life.’

Flaunting the blade and with superficial cuts on his arms, Acar told Rachelle that he didn’t ‘have the guts to do it’. He said he wanted to see his daughter. It appeared that he had been drinking. Rachelle and her friend left and picked Yazmina up from the creche. At 4.40 pm, Acar sent Rachelle another text, asking where she was. She responded by telling him that she was on her way back. Upon their arrival home, Yazmina appeared elated to see her dad, running towards him yelling, ‘Bubba! Bubba!’ (her nickname for her father).

‘My kid ran up … she ran to my car with a big smile,’ Acar would later tell detectives. ‘She was happy to see me, and I put her in my car and she was playing in my car and she was just scribbling with pens and stuff … with mum standing next to the car just watching over us ’coz I don’t think she trusted me.’

At about 6.15 pm a friend of Rachelle’s—a woman by the name of Sonia-Rita Mardirossian—arrived at the home. Rachelle told Acar that his time with Yazmina was up. He asked if he could take Yazmina for a quick spin down the shops to buy her a chocolate—a Kinder Surprise to be exact.

The nearest milk bar was about a minute away by car from Rachelle’s house.

‘Do you trust me?’ Acar asked Rachelle.

‘Yeah,’ she replied.

‘I wouldn’t take her away from you like you took her from me,’ Acar said.

This moment will no doubt haunt Rachelle D’Argent for the rest of her life—the moment she allowed Acar to drive off with their daughter. She was acting in good faith.

‘She had stars in her eyes when she ran up to him,’ Rachelle told police of her daughter.

That’s why I let her go with him. I did it for Mimi. He made a point of saying he would bring her straight back and even offered for me to keep hold of his phone while they were away. I told him to take his phone in case of an emergency and once they had been to the milk bar, to bring Mimi straight back. I think every child deserves to have their mum and their dad. During Mimi’s whole life, Ramzy had never been violent at all towards her. He got frustrated with her crying and took it out on me, but was never aggressive to her.

That evening outside her home was the last time Rachelle would see her darling little daughter alive— although she would get to speak to her over the phone.

In her victim impact statement, Rachelle would later ask: ‘How do I even begin to write about the horror of losing my child: someone more precious to me than life itself?’

Acar told detectives he was surprised that Rachelle allowed him to drive off with their daughter.

‘All she had to do was call the cops and like, nothing would have happened—fucking idiot,’ he said in his police record of interview.

The night before this I was going to hand myself into the cops ’coz I was cutting myself. I was just fed up, man: just fed up with everything. Nothing goes my way. I didn’t know why she let me go.

He would also admit to the fact that the promise of a chocolate was a lie.

I really wanted to take my kid with me. I just wanted to take her … I asked Rachelle ‘Do you want anything from the shops?’ just to make her believe me, so she thinks I’m really going there ’coz I’m not—so she thinks that I’m not lying.

Nearing 6.30 pm, Acar told Rachelle over the phone that their daughter had asked for McDonald’s and that he had taken her to the Fountain Gate restaurant.

‘Get the food and bring her back,’ Rachelle ordered.

‘Yeah, no worries,’ Acar replied calmly. ‘We’ll be back soon. We’re just grabbing the Maccas.’

A short time later, Rachelle rang Acar from Mardirossian’s phone. Mardirossian took the phone and warned Acar that the police would be alerted if he did not bring Yazmina back. Acar told her where to go, and hung up. At 6.50 pm Rachelle rang back. Acar said: ‘How does it feel not to have your child when I did not have mine for three months?’ He then pretended he was joking and promised to bring Yazmina home.

‘Ramzy, stop joking around,’ Rachelle pleaded. ‘Just bring her back man.’

There was still no sign of them by 7 pm. Rachelle, panicking now, rang back. Using his daughter as collateral, Acar demanded she go to the Narre Warren police station and withdraw previous statements she had made against him.

Justice Curtain: ‘This she refused to do, and you told her that you would do her no favours.’ Infuriated, Acar hung up in Rachelle’s ear. Rachelle called back some fifteen minutes later. Acar told her: ‘Payback’s a bitch. How does it feel?’ Rachelle begged for Yazmina’s return.

Acar replied: ‘Guess what baby, you’re not getting her back. I loved you Rachelle and look what you’ve made me do.’ Holding all the power, Acar gave her two options— he could kill their daughter by driving at high speed into on-coming traffic or cut her throat with his knife. Acar told her: ‘I loved you more than her and that’s why I’m doing this.’

What had become an apparent kidnapping was reported to police. In the meantime, Acar was upping the ante on his Facebook page. ‘Bout 2 kill ma kid,’ he posted. He then sent a text to Rachelle: ‘It’s ova I did it’. Two minutes later Acar was back on Facebook: ‘Pay bk u slut’.

A distraught Rachelle responded with a desperate text: ‘Ramzy please just bring Yazmina back. We can work things out, just bring our daughter back.’

At 8.21 pm, in the presence of a police officer, Rachelle rang Acar. Acar said: ‘I’m going to kill her.’ Rachelle pleaded with him. Acar replied: ‘It’s too late, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. Do you have any last words for her?’ As a cruel taunting gesture he put Yazmina on the phone to speak to her mum.

‘I love you,’ the little girl said.

‘I love you too,’ Rachelle replied.

They were the last words ever exchanged between mother and daughter.

After more communication via Facebook, Acar spoke to Rachelle over the phone for more than eight minutes. During the conversation he confirmed that he had murdered his daughter.

‘I’ve killed her,’ he said. ‘She’s just lying there next to me in her leggings, her top covered in blood, and her guts are hanging out.’

A disbelieving Rachelle told him not to be stupid, and pleaded with him to tell her where Yazmina was.

‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ he said.

All I need to know is should I dump the body somewhere and how much time do you think I’m going to get for this? I killed my daughter man, I killed her. I killed her to get back at you. I don’t care. Even if I go behind bars I know that you are suffering. I’ve killed her. I swear to God I killed her. You know those shows on Foxtel that you watch on the crime channel with the psycho people? I feel like one of them now.

By that stage, Acar was at his parents’ Meadow Heights home, where he stayed in his car. After an argument with a relative, he drove off. His newest flame, Talia, had been apprised of the situation and joined the text fest, asking Acar about Yazmina’s location. ‘Dead,’ he said in a reply text.

Acar met up with Talia at the Campbellfield McDonald’s store around 10 pm. He confirmed that his daughter was dead before trying to change his story. Prosecutor Peter Rose told the Supreme Court:

Acar told [Talia] that he’d done something and he couldn’t leave his vehicle where they were, and he told her to follow him. They drove in convoy to the Merri Creek Concourse at Campbellfield. This is an area of light industrial premises. Whilst [Talia] remained in her vehicle, the prisoner set fire to his own vehicle.

Acar then told Talia to drive him away. At 10.24 pm, Acar rang his mother, repeating ‘It’s all over. It’s finished.’ When asked about Yazmina’s whereabouts, he said: ‘She’s in safe hands.’ His mother begged him to return his daughter home.

Sixteen minutes later, Acar sent another text to Rachelle. ‘I h8t u.’ He then rang her and told her he was going to hand himself in at the Broadmeadows police station. He told a petrified Rachelle that Yazmina was in heaven.

‘You’ve got a copper sitting right next to you, don’t you?’ Acar then said knowingly. ‘Say hello to the copper.’

Texts to Rachelle then followed. ‘She’s in heaven I feel lyk shit.’

At 11.20 pm, he posted on his Facebook page, ‘I lv u mimi’.

Special Operations Group police intercepted Talia’s car with Acar on board at about 11.30 pm. (Talia, who told police she believed Acar was just seeking attention, would not be charged with any crime.) Detective Sergeant David Butler asked Acar if he knew why police had arrested him. He replied that he did.

BUTLER: Why do you think that is?

ACAR: Because I’ve done something really bad.

BUTLER: What do you mean by that?

ACAR: I killed my daughter.

He told police he’d dumped Yazmina’s body at Shannon Rise at Greenvale, near a display home. On the way to locate the body, Acar told police he had stabbed the toddler multiple times in Providence Road, Greenvale, not far from the airport. He said he had dumped her around 8 pm, ‘when the sun was going down’, and that he had thrown the knife away at a different place. As police searched for Yazmina, with the help of their Alsatians, Acar was left sitting in the back seat of a canine unit vehicle, one police dog barking in the cage. Weeping and babbling, Acar turned to a young police constable.

‘Just put me in a room to rot,’ Acar said. ‘That dog’s psycho, you should put me in there with him. I deserve a belting. Can you give me a belting? Can you guys give me a hiding please. I want to die now.’

And then he changed his tune. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘I want to live so I could suffer the pain for it. Ah, this is scary. What the fuck did I do? Why?’

He went on to ask the constable: ‘Am I going to be on the news? My face and all?’

Acar then expressed concerns for his own safety in jail.

ACAR: Is this murder?

CONSTABLE: What do you think?

ACAR: Yes, but I was drunk when it happened. I can’t believe it … How long do you think I’ll get? Do you reckon it may be life?

According to Justice Curtain: ‘This was the beginning of the realisation of the enormity of what you had done.’

It was 1.37 am on Thursday, 18 November, when police found Yazmina Micheline Acar’s tiny stabbed body dumped in scrubland at the Greenvale Reservoir Reserve. The little girl had been six days short of her third birthday.

Prosecutor Rose:

She was lying on her right side, fully clothed, with multiple stab wounds to her chest and abdomen, which had exposed her organs … A number of crime scenes were established and eventually a large ‘fantasy’ style knife was located in the scrub.

Rachelle: ‘I will never forget the night sitting at the police station and receiving the news of my daughter’s passing. My ears went blocked, I could barely see nor breathe, and my whole body went numb.

’ A forensic medical officer deemed Acar unfit for interview and he was allowed to sleep for six hours. During his eventual record of interview, he told investigators he had thrown the knife away to try to hide it because he was embarrassed by the size of the blade compared to the size of his little girl.

‘I just got it and threw it,’ he stated. ‘I didn’t want youse to see it because the size of the knife and the size of my daughter: the knife’s bigger than her. It’s a fucking embarrassment.’

He remarked that he’d wanted to kill himself but didn’t ‘have the balls’ to do it. He also spoke of Rachelle. ‘She took that kid away from me and I went through hell, man,’ he bleated. ‘She won’t understand what I went through like I wanted her to feel it.’

Rachelle’s world had spiralled into despair.

After the news of Mimi’s death the next five days were hell. Not only did I barely know any details of what had happened, but every time I switched on the news, horrific headlines would appear and the story would come on and I stared in disbelief that that was my child.

Two days before Yazmina’s third birthday her mother, grandmother, and two hundred relatives and friends congregated where the toddler had been dumped. Those gathered released pink balloons and sang ‘Happy Birthday’.

‘She is still with us,’ a resolute Rachelle told the media. ‘She was looking forward to her Dora [the Explorer] cake and to her balloons—and she got it. She would have wanted us to be smiling and dancing because that is what she would have been doing.’

Four days later, Rachelle stood outside the Our Lady of Help Christians Catholic Church in Narre Warren, hugging a framed photo of her dead daughter and the little girl’s favourite teddy bear. Father John Allen had told those present that Yazmina’s death was a ‘tragedy beyond comprehension’. A family friend told the service that Mimi was no doubt laughing and dancing in heaven, and probably bossing the angels around, as well.

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Yazmina’s mum, Rachelle D’Argent, holds on tight to the last memories.

After he was charged with murder, and before he was to plead guilty, Acar spent the majority of his time at the Metropolitan Remand Centre where he was classified as a protection prisoner. As media coverage of his crime intensified, so too did the heat in jail. Defence barrister Meredith explained:

Apparently there is a box within the unit whereby prisoners can put request forms to see different people, and so on. His picture had been cut out from the newspaper, and it had in effect written on it that the dog was to be taken out of the unit. There was a reference to one of his texts about pay back being a bitch and in effect the view was taken by him, and presumably by the prison authorities, that his life was in jeopardy and he couldn’t remain there.

For his own safety, the child killer was transferred to Port Phillip Prison where, at the time of his Supreme Court plea hearing in June 2011, he was housed in special protection.

‘He finds his position within the prison very difficult, given that there has been the degree of media coverage,’ Meredith told the plea hearing.

Given what occurred at the other unit, [he] feels effectively that he is a marked man within the system and so, to that extent, presents as being concerned, fearful, worrying about what ultimately might happen to him within the prison setting and … in combination with him ruminating over what he’s done … he is finding the going pretty tough.

Meredith told the hearing that Acar had engraved tear drops on the skin under his eyes whilst in prison as some form of self-punishment: prison-style self-flagellation.

‘He felt it was appropriate that he should carry [them] for the rest of his life as some form of remorse and repentance for what he had done,’ Meredith told Justice Curtain.

CURTAIN: What, he’s had tear drops tattooed under his eyes?

MEREDITH: He got the phosphorous end of match sticks and set about engraving those shapes under his eyes … He also on his stomach has engraved by the same method the initials of his daughter.

A brave Rachelle D’Argent read her own victim impact statement to the court during Acar’s plea hearing. Unlike others who had gone before her in different murder cases, she managed to read it in its entirety before breaking down. Sometimes, understandably, grieving relatives find the task of voicing their impact statements too traumatic an experience.

‘My name is Rachelle D’Argent, and I am the mother of Yazmina—Mimi—D’Argent,’ she began.

I was horrified the night that I found out my one and only daughter Mimi had been taken away from me, neither for a few minutes nor a few hours—but for life … Since Mimi’s death I have felt so many emotions. The first few weeks I cried every day. I yelled and I screamed, begging everyone to please bring her back to me. Then it turned to frustration. I realised that all the crying and shouting in the world could never bring my Mimi back to me.

She finished:

I will never be able to take her for a first haircut, for a first day of school or having her lose her first tooth— so many firsts that I have been robbed of. Yazmina Micheline D’Argent will always be my daughter, my love, my life, my everything and even though I can’t see her, I know she’s watching over me every day and giving me strength and courage to get through everything. It was always and always will be mummy and Mimi for life.

Rachelle’s mother Micheline D’Argent—Yazmina’s maternal grandmother—wanted her impact statement read out on her behalf. She had written:

Yazmina was my life. I miss her so much … We spent so much time together as she was always at my house. Since her birth, I used to sing a French song for her every night and by the age of two she was singing the song by heart. Rachelle recorded it for me and I always listen to it and that breaks my heart.

I have her pictures everywhere in my house and I’ll talk to her all the time pretending she’s around me … I can’t cope. I have visions of her all the time … Now I hate this house. I’m so hurt. I can see her in every corner. I will say my life is over, but I have to be strong for my daughter Rachelle.

Micheline said she spent an hour every week sitting at Yazmina’s grave.

‘I talk to her and always bring a little toy for her,’ she wrote.

Acar had told consultant psychiatrist Dr Danny Sullivan that when he decided to kill Yazmina, she was outside the car playing. He described the murder as a slow-motion event, remembered a feeling of rage and noted a worried look in his daughter’s eyes.

Sullivan told the plea hearing that he believed anger played a significant part in the murder. ‘I think that his inability to find more constructive ways of manifesting his anger or of addressing his anger were germane to the offence,’ Sullivan said, as if that was some sort of revelation.

Rose cross-examined Sullivan, confirming Acar was not hiding behind mental impairment or psychosis an excuse.

ROSE: Dr Sullivan, do you say that this man had no sign of significant cognitive impairment?

SULLIVAN: Yes, that’s correct.

ROSE: And there was no indication of psychotic illness or psychotic symptoms apparent at the time of the offence?

SULLIVAN: Yes, that’s correct.

ROSE: And this man was capable of understanding that to stab his child multiple times was wrong?

SULLIVAN: Yes.

ROSE: His situation was that he was consumed, was he not, with a hatred for his ex-partner?

SULLIVAN: Yes, it would appear so.

ROSE: And that he was consumed with hatred for his ex-partner and sought to punish her—all of those are statements you made?

SULLIVAN: Yes.

ROSE: And that’s the overwhelming picture here, isn’t it—a man who had just become so consumed with punishing his ex-partner that everything else falls by the wayside.

SULLIVAN: Yes, that’s my perception.

In his final submission, Rose told Justice Curtain:

This was an angry young man who was consumed by hatred for his former partner and who wanted to punish her and that, all consuming, has overtaken any thought for the welfare of his child and we say this is quite horrific. This is the man who is the father of the child, who is charged with the responsibility of looking after that child, and we say this is one of the most horrific type of killings you can have … And [then there is] his description of the worried look of the child: the fact that the child is playing and then he comes out of the car with a knife … He has got to understand the consequences of his actions and the horrific consequences that they are.

Meredith asked for a minimum term, citing his client’s young age, early plea and remorse.

Curtain questioned the issue of remorse. ‘You’d be hard pressed, really, to find any remorse in [his] record of interview,’ Her Honour stated.

Meredith also mentioned this as a sentencing factor: ‘At lockdown of a night he finds it very difficult because that’s when his thoughts go to what he’s done and indicates that the hours are very long throughout the passage of the nights when he’s in his cell.’ (As if that wasn’t the aim of jail time.)

Curtain made mention of several matters. Of Acar allowing Yazmina to speak to her distraught mother on the telephone, Her Honour said:

It is a callous and ruthless act—ruthless is probably not the right word for it—but it certainly bespeaks that he really at that time really understood the nature of what he was doing in that he knew not only was he about to kill his daughter but that this was the last time the child’s mother was ever able to speak to her. It shows a callousness. It is quite breathtaking, really.

She also made mention of the fact Acar was serving a suspended sentence for assaulting Rachelle at the time of the killing, saying ‘That effected no deterrence upon him.’

Curtain sentenced Acar to life in jail with a thirty-three-year minimum term.

‘I am satisfied that what was impairing your judgment at the time was your hatred and your desire for revenge in the context of you having consumed alcohol,’ Curtain said.

Certainly I accept the evidence that you are an immature young man with very fixed views. You have had problems with anger and, indeed, you seek emotional release from self harming and I accept that in the days leading up to this offence you had been drinking heavily, at times smoking cannabis, and appeared to be suffering a degree of emotional turmoil.

Curtain agreed that Yazmina’s death was a ‘chilling and horrific murder’.

‘More than that,’ she said,

the victim was your infant daughter and she was killed by the one man in the world whose duty it was to love, nurture and protect her. As such, your conduct was a fundamental breach of the trust that reposes between parent and child; a fundamental breach of a parent’s most fundamental obligation. Further, you committed this murder for the worst possible motives: revenge and spite. You killed your daughter to get back at her mother. You used your daughter, an innocent victim, as the instrument of your overarching desire to inflict pain on your former partner.

Acar sought leave to appeal against the length of his sentence, on the grounds both the head sentence and minimum term were manifestly excessive. His application was refused.

‘This was a brutal and callous murder which, in my view, should be characterised as one of the worst cases of its kind,’ Justice Mark Weinberg said in his Court of Appeal judgment. ‘It was aggravated by the applicant’s behaviour towards Ms D’Argent, which was both cruel and sadistic.’

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Ramazan Acar tries to hide his face outside the Victorian Supreme Court.

Outside court after the judgment, a relieved Rachelle said justice had been seen to be done. Her victim impact statement said it all.

There is not a day that goes by where I don’t think of my daughter and wish she was still here by my side. I miss her face, I miss her smile, I miss her voice, I miss her laugh, I miss her smell, I miss her hair, I miss her cheekiness, I miss her getting ready for childcare, I miss giving her a bath, I miss singing and dancing with her, I miss her lying next to me at night and her playing with my fingers so she could fall asleep. But most importantly I miss her running up to me and jumping into my arms and hugging me while she tells me that she loves me.

While Yazmina’s grandmother, Micheline, was not there for the ruling, the last words of her victim impact statement hung in the minds of all.

‘My last dream of her?’ Micheline had written. ‘She was crying and told me, “Grandma … I’m so cold. Come and get me.”’