Sarah Ohide, from South Plympton, SA, shares her story:
My sister Jackie looked like she was going to explode with excitement.
“Guess what?” She said.
Before I could hazard a guess, she’d blurted it out: “I’m pregnant! Can you believe it?”
My jaw dropped. She’d only been with her new boyfriend, Toby Awatere, for a few months.
I wasn’t keen on him either. He barely spoke and never made any effort with me.
I’d thought they were rushing into things when they’d moved in together after a couple of months, but now a baby on the way, too?
“Oh, well, I’m so happy for you,” I said, trying to force a smile. “But what about your studies?”
Jackie worked part-time in an aged care home while studying at uni to be a nurse.
“I can come back to them easily enough,” she said, still beaming.
My mum and siblings, John and Sunday, were surprised too, but we all agreed to be supportive.
In time, Jackie gave birth to a son, Arapeta. She was an amazing mum and Toby, to my surprise, was a doting dad.
A couple of years later, Jackie fell pregnant again.
Then one day she turned up on my doorstep sobbing.
“Toby and I had a fight,” she cried. “He pushed me.”
I was horrified. “Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”
She said she was fine and refused to talk about it.
When their son Tariq was born, they planned to move to Melbourne as it was easier for Toby to find construction work there.
We only lived 20 minutes apart in Adelaide and I hated that I wouldn’t be able to see her and the kids every day. So I spent as much time as I could with them before they left.
I rarely saw Toby, and when I did, he ignored me.
One afternoon, not long before Tariq turned three, I went round to help Jackie plan his birthday party.
Thankfully, she still hadn’t moved to Melbourne yet so I could still share these special moments.
Arapeta (left) and Tariq.
We planned a barbecue to celebrate, and I played with the boys on the trampoline until it was time to go home, then I hugged them goodbye.
“See you at the party!” I beamed.
A few days later, I gave Jackie a call, but there was no answer.
I thought it was odd that she didn’t call me back.
Next day, Sunday phoned me in hysterics. She was crying so hard she could barely speak.
But I did hear two words.
“Jackie’s dead!” she sobbed.
I started screaming.
My beautiful sister’s body had been found in a car parked on her driveway.
Toby was missing.
Thankfully, the boys were safe and being looked after at the hospital but that was all she knew.
My mind was racing trying to make sense of it. But even then, I knew who’d killed her.
I rang the police and offered to come and pick up the kids, but they said I’d have to wait until Toby had been found.
Toby Awatere.
But why? They needed their family now.
They wouldn’t answer any of my questions.
Finally a policeman called to say they’d arrested Toby and charged him with murder.
Only then did they tell us the boys had been asleep in the car and woken up to find their mum dead in the front seat. Arapeta had tried to wake Jackie, but when he couldn’t, he’d sounded the horn until a neighbour came running.
Those poor little boys. How would they ever get over something so horrendous?
That was why they’d kept the boys in hospital – they were so traumatised by what they had seen.
When I got to the ward, Arapeta’s little face was etched with fear and sadness. I hugged him and Tariq close.
“I tried to wake Mummy, but she was cold,” Arapeta cried.
I just held them. There were no words to make things better.
We held Jackie’s funeral. It was the saddest day of my life.
I couldn’t bring myself to say a final goodbye to her, so instead I wrote her a note.
We’ll raise the boys the way you wanted. They’ll always know who their mummy was.
I placed it inside her grave.
Jackie (left), our niece and me.
Afterwards we struggled on for the boys, who were living with my mum, trying to cope with our own grief too.
Toby admitted causing Jackie’s death, but denied murder. The whole family went to the Supreme Court in Adelaide for the trial.
We heard that Jackie and Toby had argued and she’d told him she no longer wanted to move to Melbourne.
In a rage, he’d strangled her in the bedroom.
In a letter Toby wrote while in jail, he said: I lost it. The f—ed up thing was… when I was choking her I was saying, ‘I love you’ but her kicking and struggling to breathe made me squeeze her throat even more with me saying ‘I love you’.
He claimed he was sleep-deprived and depressed, and therefore, it wasn’t murder.
It was never fully explained why the boys were asleep in the car, but my guess was that Jackie had been about to flee. I think she’d strapped them into the back, then gone back into the house which is when Toby killed her.
Why he dumped her body inside the vehicle is also a mystery – I’ll never understand why he’d put his own kids through the horror of finding their mum dead.
The jury didn’t buy Toby’s excuses. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 20 years.
Toby robbed my family of our precious Jackie, and the boys of their mummy. I’m dreading the day they will be old enough to fully understand that their dad killed their mum. Arapeta, now seven, is having counselling.
And we have all vowed to raise them the way Jackie wanted.
If you are struggling with grief, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. For support against domestic violence, contact 1800RESPECT – 1800 737 732
