Mothers Who Murder (10 page)

In the days that followed the tragic death of two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth, a spontaneous shrine of cards, flowers and balloons was established at Mandurama Reserve, at Ambarvale in Sydney’s west, near where his body had been found. The local community later held a ceremony to commemorate Dean, attended by 2000 people who prayed and left floating candles on the duck pond in his memory. This image will forever be associated with the ‘angel in the lake’.

When Dean’s body was recovered from a pond in Ambarvale in October 2007, the country reeled in shock. There seems little doubt that his mother, Rachel Pfitzner, choked him to death before putting his lifeless body in a suitcase, which she watched sink in the water before turning her back and walking away.

Pfitzner, aged twenty-six at the time of the incident, was found guilty of murder in 2009 and was sentenced to twenty-five years and six months in prison. She will serve a minimum term of just over nineteen years, and so will remain in Sydney’s Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre until at least 2029, at which time she will be forty-eight years old.
Within the ranks of violent offenders in Australia’s toughest women’s prison, child killers are among the most despised. Pfitzner will, for her own safety, spend twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours alone in her cell in the protection unit. She has many hours to contemplate her crime.

Rachel admitted murdering her son and there is no evidence to suggest that anyone else was involved, including Dean’s father, Paul Shillingsworth. The ‘who’ and the ‘how’ are fairly clear, but the ‘why’ remains open. ‘Rage’ was given as the motive when Rachel appeared in court, but that does not explain the build-up to the final murderous act.

We will go back to the beginning, this time to ask why a mother would do something so abhorrent. I’ve heard her called evil, but rarely are things that simple. While nothing can make what she did acceptable, was there something in Rachel’s history that can at least offer some possible reasons as to why – what criminologists call ‘mitigating circumstances’? I also wonder whether there was anything that could have been done to help Dean before it was too late. Are there any lessons that can be learnt from this tragedy?

Information for this case largely comes from the court transcripts
¹
and the subsequent New South Wales Ombudsman report into Dean’s death,
²
which are freely available, as well as newspaper articles. There are few websites dedicated to Dean’s story as no heated appeals have been heard, and unfortunately this case is not particularly unusual in a number of aspects. Women kill their children.

BACKGROUND

Pfitzner’s story may give us some clues as to why this may have happened. Born in 1981, her childhood appears
stable enough although Rachel claims her father abused her. Growing up in Blacktown, a suburb in western Sydney, she was the eldest of seven children. Her relationship with her parents appears to have been quite tempestuous, with frequent arguments, and Rachel would lose her temper and smash up her bedroom in anger. While she was growing up Pfitzner felt that her siblings got more attention than she did, and that her family was not supportive towards her. Her father, separated from his wife of nineteen years, has acknowledged that his relationship with his daughter had been strained, although he has not commented on the claims of abuse.

Rachel’s education was limited, although at school she had excelled at art and Aboriginal studies. She felt frustrated and isolated in class and tried to concentrate, but she didn’t understand what was going on. She also fell asleep in class, which didn’t help her keep up with her classmates, probably increasing her feelings of ineptitude. Her apparent victim mentality stretched to her feelings about her teachers, who she thought were too hard on her.

In her teens she struggled to be accepted by her peers, and at sixteen she left school and fell in with a rough crowd. According to her brother, some of her ‘friends’ used to put cigarettes out on her skin. This was okay with Rachel – at least they accepted her. In addition to this physical abuse, some of her boyfriends are said to have been violent. We should keep this in mind as we look at Rachel’s later treatment of Dean. Her parents separated when Rachel was seventeen, which she claims she was blamed for. At that time she left and lived in various youth refuges. She fell pregnant at nineteen following a brief relationship, which ended when her partner learnt of her pregnancy. In August
2000 she gave birth to a baby daughter, identified in the court documents only as ‘T’.

After T’s birth in 2000, Pfitzner and the child moved a number of times, and by December 2001 they were living in refuge accommodation. Between 2001 and 2004, prior to Dean’s birth, DoCS (the Department of Community Services) received a total of twelve ‘risk of harm’ reports about Pfitzner’s first child, the first five of which related to unexplained bruises when she was six months old. Other reports related to incidents of domestic violence between Pfitzner and adult males, witnessed by the little girl. At age three years, T allegedly walked one or two kilometres alone from her home to the home of a relative, where she reported that she had been hit and kicked by Pfitzner’s partner. The police were called and reported to DoCS that both Pfitzner and the unnamed male had been drinking heavily. In 2004 the child allegedly witnessed the sexual assault of an adolescent family member. DoCS caseworkers had no direct contact with either mother or child concerning any of these reports. However, on two occasions phone calls were made to other agencies by Helpline staff. At the time these ‘at harm risk’ reports were made, records indicate that Pfitzner went through periods of heavy drug and alcohol use, and had contact with the police – the child, T, was clearly in danger.

At the age of twenty-one, now with a young daughter, Rachel found accommodation in Tamworth in New South Wales, living with Ann Coffey. While sharing Ann’s home, Rachel met Ann’s son, Paul Shillingsworth, who was in prison at the time of their initial meeting. Paul was charming, Rachel vulnerable, and they flirted. Pfitzner was not put off by the fact that Paul had been in prison
and once Paul was released and had returned to live with his mother in early 2004, Pfitzner and Shillingsworth started a relationship.

Paul James Shillingsworth had Aboriginal heritage, and he had shown an early talent for traditional dance. He was good enough that he performed in a professional troupe with his brothers. But, like Rachel and many others, as a teenager he lost his way. Paul’s mother, Ann, says he was a good boy who discovered alcohol, after which he was in and out of jail. The relationship between Rachel and Paul was described in the court documents as ‘stormy’, featuring regular arguments, some of which led to episodes of domestic violence, fuelled by Rachel’s alleged drug addiction and Paul’s alleged drinking. Rachel thought she could handle him and believed they had a future together. Add into this toxic mix that Pfitzner had used cannabis on and off since she was seventeen and as a teenager had sniffed solvents for about a year; she also admitted to occasionally using heroin and amphetamine, but claims she was not addicted. She also abused alcohol at times, particularly as a teenager and during her relationship with Paul. On 25 February 2005, Dean was born into this scenario.

Even before Dean took his first breath people were concerned for his safety, as DoCS were alerted by an ‘at risk’ warning once before his birth and nine times after his birth between 2005 and 2006. His older sister T was the subject of another eleven reports. The initial concerns prior to Dean’s birth related to issues around domestic violence and an unsafe home environment for both children. None of these resulted in the department conducting a comprehensive risk assessment for the family. The early report
remained ‘unallocated’ due to ‘current competing priorities’, which, according to the New South Wales Ombudsman’s report,
³
means that there were apparently more urgent cases to attend to with the resources available.

The problems continued, even in hospital, with more reports being made against Pfitzner’s male partner, Shillingsworth, for abusive behaviour while on visits to the maternity ward following Dean’s birth. Pfitzner left hospital without any baby provisions. Again, ‘competing priorities’ prevented these incidents being investigated.

The court documents detail some of Pfitzner’s criminal history, such as it was. She had a criminal record for assaulting a police officer in 2005, as well as resisting arrest, damaging property and making false accusations to the police; for each of these charges she was placed on a twelve-month good behaviour bond. Some of Pfitzner’s offences were dealt with in the Children’s Court due to her age at the time of the incident. By September 2005 Paul Shillingsworth was in prison again and the family was living in a refuge. They remained homeless for a number of months, moving between various temporary or emergency housing facilities.

In early 2006 Shillingsworth was released from prison and the family was reunited, moving in with family and friends. Things had reached breaking point for the couple in February 2006, when Dean’s eldest sibling T complained about something a Mr Campbell had done to her. The details of what that was remain unclear but the allegation appears to be assault. The result was that Rachel Pfitzner and Paul Shillingsworth seriously assaulted Mr Campbell, for which they were charged and remanded in custody. As both of his parents were in prison, Dean was taken by
DoCS to live with Ann Coffey, Paul’s mother, in Sydney. Rachel Pfitzner was released after two days, but Paul Shillingsworth remained in custody. This episode appears to delineate the end of Paul and Rachel’s relationship.

Things remained rocky for the family, and Rachel now took her children to live in a refuge in Armidale, a rural city in the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, around 500 kilometres north-west of Sydney. Thereafter, there seemed to be an informal understanding between Rachel and Ann Coffey, whereby Ann would take Dean for a few days at a time. However, the relations between the two were strained, and the court documents quote Pfitzner as saying to Ms Coffey’s partner, Edmund Caban, that she would ‘kill Dean before he goes back with Ann’, although Rachel denies saying this. Regardless, Ann still cared for Dean on and off, and actually had full-time custody during the latter part of 2006 and into 2007.

Health records show that in March 2006 Pfitzner sought help with drug, alcohol and anger management problems. DoCS provided financial assistance, although Pfitzner failed to attend scheduled appointments and her health file was closed. At some point between April and May 2006, T went to live with her biological father. Also in May, DoCS received a report that Pfitzner had taken up with her ex-partner (whose name is not listed in the court documents), a known heroin user. This report was also closed, as the person making the statement did not know where Pfitzner was living. A short time later, Dean’s relatives forcibly removed Dean from Pfitzner’s care and he went to live with his paternal grandmother, Ann Coffey. Apparently Dean’s relatives took this action as they too had heard that she had resumed her relationship with
her ex, and it was rumoured that both adults were using heroin.

By mid-2006 Rachel had started a new relationship with Clifford Connors, although the two were not initially living together as de facto parents to the two children. In July, Pfitzner was arrested for larceny and sentenced to 100 hours community service. She was arrested again in August, this time for an outstanding warrant for failing to report as per her bail conditions. At the time of her arrest, neither child was in her care, but she was pregnant with her third child. Pfitzner was sent to Mulawa Correctional Centre, being released in October 2006. In the months following her release, Pfitzner met regularly with a probation and parole officer, as it is the Probation and Parole Service’s job to minimise the risk of reoffending. It was jointly agreed between Pfitzner and her parole officer that counselling for her personal issues, including her anger problems, would help. So a service plan was developed.

In October 2006 Pfitzner was sentenced to eighteen months in prison with a non-parole period of six months for maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm in company (that is, Paul’s company) for the attack on Campbell in February 2006. Pfitzner and Shillingsworth asked that DoCS place the children with family members and their request was granted. This was the first time that department staff had direct person-to-person contact with Pfitzner and her children. Yet again, no comprehensive risk assessment was completed into Campbell’s alleged assault on T. Instead, the actions of Pfitzner and Shillingsworth were noted as being ‘protective’. Some weeks later, Pfitzner was released on bail. Execution of this sentence was suspended and instead Pfitzner was put on a good behaviour bond,
which she was still on at the time of Dean’s death. This was an aggravating factor that was taken into account by the judge when she was sentenced for Dean’s murder, disentitling her to leniency.

In January 2007 Pfitzner resumed care of T, and in the same month was placed on the good behaviour bond for the offences she committed in 2005. At this time it looks as if Pfitzner was really trying to get her life on track. After her release from prison she approached a number of other services, the aim being to help stabilise her life so she could resume caring for her other child, Dean. One of these was a family support service in Sydney. The main focus of this type of support service is to help strengthen families through advice and practical assistance, as well as advocacy and referrals where needed. The family was allocated a support worker, who began working with Pfitzner in November 2006 until January 2007, when a different caseworker took over until Dean’s death in October of that year. The issues the service provided over time extended to include pregnancy and court assistance, as well as help with the family’s housing problems. The service wrote a letter in support of Pfitzner’s request for housing, and helped her obtain the professional services of a psychologist, in accordance with the plan devised with Pfitzner’s parole officer, to help with anger and depression problems. Pfitzner also initiated Family Law proceedings in relation to recovering Dean, who was still living with Ann Coffey.