New Life Turned To Domestic Horror

Illawarra Mercury

Tuesday July 1, 2008

By LES KENNEDY, HARRIET ALEXANDER and ANDREW DRUMMOND

A GRANDFATHER was arrested last night after he allegedly killed his wife and two grandchildren in an axe rampage that also left his daughter, a police officer, with serious head injuries.

Senior Constable Shelly Walsh, 31, ran to a neighbours about 2pm in Cowra yesterday, bleeding from her head and screaming: "Dad's just killed Mum and the two kids."

Her father, 69-year-old John Walsh, fled the Central West town in his car, but police caught him in the Riverina town of Hay at 8.15pm after an hour-long stake-out, when he dared to leave a motel to buy milk.

Snr Const Walsh had feared he was heading to Newcastle to kill her estranged husband, also a police officer.

The slaughter comes just four days after Gary Poxon killed himself and his three children, using exhaust fumes, at Pericoe, near Eden.

Mr Walsh was suspected of killing his wife, Mabel, and his grandchildren, a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.

"Let's understand here, this man is a suspect in a triple murder and so anyone who has gone to that length is certainly a risk," NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said last night, before the arrest in Hay.

After the break-up of her marriage, Snr Const Walsh took her two children from Newcastle to care for her elderly parents in Cowra four years ago. She drove daily to work at Parkes police station, where she worked as the Lachlan Local Area Command crime prevention officer.

She was off-duty at the time of the attacks yesterday. She ran to her neighbours in Brougham St, bleeding heavily from an axe wound to her head.

Neighbour Vince Anderson said he and his wife locked his door behind Snr Const Walsh, fearing the axeman would try to enter their home as he tried to call police and ambulance.

"The daughter ran from her place, screaming and knocking on the door to get into (the) house and Cheryl opened the door and let her in and locked all the house up," Mr Anderson said.

"She said that they're all dead in there, and she's got to ring the police and she got on the phone.

"She had a big gash in the side of the head where he hit her too."

Mr Anderson also said: "I didn't really know them. They kept pretty quiet to themselves."

Another neighbour, Terry Lovett, said: "The daughter was covered in blood and had a huge gash to the side of (her) head."

Police had released photographs of Mr Walsh and asked people to watch out for a silver Toyota Avalon sedan.

Police did not know what triggered the rampage, but one police source said of Snr Const Walsh: "Despite her serious head wound she was conscious and talking to officers."

They dismissed a report that a third child was involved in the relationship. But they confirmed that Snr Const Walsh's two children were to a serving police officer stationed in Newcastle.

Police would not reveal the identity of Snr Const Walsh's estranged husband or his rank, but said he had been informed of the deaths of his children and given a police guard.

Snr Const Walsh, who joined the police in 1997, was flown from Cowra by helicopter to Orange Base Hospital in a serious but stable condition. She underwent surgery. She was expected to be transported overnight to Sydney's Westmead Hospital by road ambulance for further treatment, as bad weather made the journey unsuitable by aircraft.

Police had been staking out a motel in Hay for about an hour before they arrested Mr Walsh.

Mr Lovett described his elderly neighbours as a quiet, retired couple who moved to town about 10 years ago from Sydney.

"Then a few years ago his son committed suicide ... and then after that, we did notice a bit of change in him. He was a bit quiet and didn't socialise much.

"The only thing I can imagine there is that I got the impression that he may have felt a bit burdened by looking after his grandkids."

He said Snr Const Walsh "used to just drop the kids off to the grandparents place when she was going to work, and the grandparents used to just look after the kids for her".

The Walsh family murders stunned the small Cowra community, which has long been haunted by the unsolved axe killings of girlfriends Kathy Holmes, 28, and Georgina Watmore, 24, whose hacked bodies were found inside their home in 1987.

Mr Scipione said the Cowra killings had a "tremendous effect" on the police force. "This is perhaps one of the worst days in the history of the police," Mr Scipione admitted.

"Our sympathy goes to the family, not just the officers that work down in that area, but the ... mother of those children and to their own family.

"The father has been contacted and certainly we're concerned about his welfare because he's lost two children today and that's a tragedy that's beyond words."

The curtains were drawn at the modest weatherboard Walsh house, opposite the Cowra Croquet Club. Dozens of officers had earlier descended on the quiet street wearing bullet-proof vests with their guns drawn.

© 2008 Illawarra Mercury

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