CY Walsh told a family friend he would stab his father, Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh, and “rip his heart out” just 36 hours before killing him, court documents reveal.
Witness statements released to The Advertiser show Walsh stabbed his father 20 times with a six-inch blade while in the grip of undiagnosed, untreated schizophrenia.
Among those interviewed by police were senior figures in the AFL including Kane Cornes, Rory Sloane and former Port Adelaide general manager Rob Snowdon.
The statements allege Walsh was a habitual user of hallucinogenic and psychotropic drugs who, while under their influence, believed his father did not love him because he did not play football.
One drug, witnesses claim, was the South American hallucinogen ayahuasca, which Walsh consumed on his own and during Amazonian “ceremonies” with a group called “the Community”.
They say Walsh boasted of having “won the game” and “transcended himself” after making his violent threat, and while police and his parents were searching for him.
Witnesses further claim the deadly attack followed a brawl between Cy and Phil Walsh, in the streets of Perth, a year earlier that saw the young man committed to a secure mental health facility.
In her statement, family friend Sharon Watt says she has known Walsh all his life but became fearful for his mental state when he visited on Wednesday, July 1, 2015.
“He said ‘I’m gonna get a knife and I’m gonna stab him’ … he was making a stabbing motion with his right arm, bringing it from about head-height down … about three or four times,”
Mrs Watt says in her statement.
“He said ‘I just wanna get him and stab him and cut his heart out’.”
Walsh, 27, was originally charged with murdering his father in their Somerton Park home in the early hours of Friday, July 3, 2015.
On Thursday, he was found not guilty by reason of mental incompetence, and ordered to spend the rest of his life under medical care and supervision.
The case against him is outlined in thousands of pages of witness statements and expert reports, released to The Advertiser by the Adelaide Magistrates Court.
The documents state the chain of events that culminated in the killing began with his visit to Mrs Watt, wife of Phil Walsh’s long-time friend Graeme Watt, at about 2pm on July 1.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
In her statement, Mrs Watt says Walsh asked to speak with her privately and said his father had told him he “would never be good enough to play AFL”.
When she asked him to calm down, and offered him a cup of tea, Walsh responded by saying he wanted to stab his father.
He asked Mrs Watt not to mention their conversation to anyone but, when she said she would have to call his mother, Meredith, Walsh left her home.
In her statement, Meredith said Mrs Watt called her to say Cy “had taken something, that he looked like he was off his tree, that manic sort of look, that bizarre look on his face”.
“He actually said something crazy to her about his father, about how he wanted to rip his father’s heart out,” she says.
Meredith says she tried to contact her son and received text messages saying “I know the truth” and “I need a few days to myself”.
According to the documents, Walsh called his friend Stephen Trobbiani and asked if he could stay at his house because he had “had an argument” with his father.
In his statement, Mr Trobbiani agreed Walsh could stay at the house, which he shared with his brothers and sister, for as long as he needed.
Mr Trobbiani’s sister, Laura, says Walsh spent some of that time drafting a six-line text message poem to his father, and asked her to look at it.
“It didn’t make much sense to me, it seemed a bit strange,” she says in her statement.
“The only line I remember was something along the lines of ‘without Phil Walsh, the Crows will fall’.
“I got the impression he was complimenting his dad but it was a bit antagonistic at the same time.”
The full text of the message reads:
It is your duty to pump up your troops,
It is your duty to win,
But honesty is key
War needs to be a thrill
War can be fun
War should not focus on brutality
If Phil Walsh should fall
The Crows will experience many years of darkness
I cannot forgive your sins
There is a master in Peru who can
Please focus on hope
And remember to put your family before yourself.
When his father responded to the text, Cy replied: “Are the people around you yes men? Are they snakes? Or are they men of honesty?”
Meanwhile, Meredith asked Mrs Watt and her husband to come over and help prompt Phil Walsh to “talk to her about issues with Cy”.
In his statement, Mr Watt says it was a conversation he did not feel comfortable having with his old friend.
“It was a cold environment … I told Phil we were just here to help but he wasn’t interested in talking and said ‘there’s not much you can do’,” he says.
“I asked him how he coaches football and deals with all these issues at the same time … he looked down and shrugged.”
THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2015
The next day — Thursday, July 2 — Cy Walsh made an entry in the calendar of his mobile phone.
“You might find my presence an incredible test, please don’t be hard on yourself if you didn’t pass,” he wrote.
“Soon someone will call your name... my contribution is a small offering of prayer, backed up by the human emotion of pure rage.”
On his blog, he posted a photo of a shirtless, sword-wielding man.
“Incredible... what is the magic?” he wrote above the photo.
“It appears that the Father and Son will find true forgiveness.
“I cannot be sure, but it feels unfathomable.”
Mr Trobbiani went to work and, at 9.22am, received text messages from Walsh saying “mum incoming with the g men at me” and “help help help”.
Meredith says she and Mrs Watt went to Mr Trobbiani’s home because Walsh had sent the “bizarre” poem to his father.
“It was something about a man in Peru that we all needed to go and see, and the Crows as well,” she says.
“I said to Phil ‘look, I’m going to go around and you know the best scenario would be if you called an ambulance and they restrained him and we got him.”
She says she and Mrs Watt drove to Mr Trobbiani’s house and found Walsh “quite manic and off his face, even though he said he had no drugs”.
He said ‘oh, you’re not sending in the G-men, you know you don’t hospitalise me, don’t cage me up’,” she says.
“He was agitated and waving his arms … I said to Sharon ‘let’s go’ because he was trying to intimidate us.”
Mrs Watt says Walsh “suddenly got excited, hyped up” when they spoke to him, saying he had “been given the gift of creativity”.
When she tried to call 000, however, Walsh ran toward her and pushed her, causing her to stumble, before running away.
Meredith and Mrs Watt attended Glenelg Police Station and filed a missing person report, which was investigated by Senior Constable Tyson Mobbs.
In his statement, Snr Cst Mobbs says he spoke to Walsh on his mobile phone but the young man hung up on him.
He then asked his supervisor for permission to attempt “triangulation of the mobile telephone” but was told “the situation does not meet the criteria” for such a procedure.
Meredith called Mr Trobbiani, asking for his help.
Mr Trobbiani says he told Meredith he did not believe “committing” Walsh was the best option, and that he believed his drug use had “done some permanent damage” and “changed his personality”.
He agreed to help but would not promise to call Meredith if he spoke to her son, saying he did not want to lie to his friend and wanted to support him.
Sometime during the day, Walsh spoke with his high school friend Paul Kramberger.
“He seemed calm and very spaced out,” Mr Kramberger says in his statement.
“He said ‘I think I’ve won the game … I’ve won the game, I’ve transcended myself’.”
Phil Walsh, meanwhile, was making calls of his own.
In his statement, former Port Adelaide Football Club general manager Rob Snowdon says he spoke with the coach the day before his death.
“Phil asked me if he could bounce some ideas off me, and I also had ideas I wanted to talk to him about,” he says.
“He said he also wanted to talk to me about Cy, but he didn’t go into detail … I didn’t get the impression that it was anything serious as Phil sounded normal.”
Meredith says she was contacted by her husband, who said he had spoken to and located their son in Glenelg — she went straight to meet him.
“I told him ‘you know you’re being really bizarre’ and he said ‘look, I will go in and be assessed for a week if that’s what you want me to do’,” she says.
“(He said) ‘you know I won’t take any drugs and I will give you what I’ve got’.
“He was totally normal and I suppose that may be the disease or the illness or whatever.”
Meredith and Cy Walsh went back to the police station and cancelled the missing persons report, at which time Senior Constable Phillip Downs questioned them.
“I asked if she was going to take him to the Flinders Medical Centre and she replied no, they would have a family discussion and make a decision then,” he says in his statement.
“I asked the male (Cy Walsh) if he was all right, he replied ‘yes’ and was smiling … I asked him again and he again replied that he was all right and (was) still smiling.”
Meredith’s sister, Jenny Finch, says she received a call when the family got home.
“She was saying that he (Cy Walsh) had not been himself lately and was very agitated … she said he went missing and the police were involved,” she says in her statement.
“She said she thought he had a mental problem and needed help … she said she spoke to Cy, who said he was going to get help.”
Meredith describes a joyous, healing family reunion taking place that evening.
Phil walked in the door and they just hugged each other and told each other they loved each other … Cy told dad he was sorry, she says.
However, she says their conversation “went a bit strange” over dinner.
“Cy said ‘everything will be okay, dad … with everything that has happened in Greece, the world has reset’,” she says.
“(He said) ‘But what you need to do, because it’s going to happen here, we need to buy lots of gold and get lots of cash out of the ATMs, then we will be OK’.”
“Phil sort of dismissed this and said ‘OK’ and walked over to the couch and sat down … he said ‘OK look, mate, just come and sit down with me’.
“He (Cy Walsh) went a bit strange again about that and said ‘no, no, no, no, no, no’.”
In the minutes that followed, both men left the house — Cy Walsh called Mr Trobbiani and asked to be picked up.
“He said that his dad was a member of a multi-faceted organisation … Cy has voiced similar conspiracy theories to me on other occasions,” he says.
“By this stage I was a little more concerned about Cy’s mental state as becoming a little more irrational.”
As they drove, Walsh began to make claims about his father.
“He sounded agitated, saying the Adelaide Football Club had found out that some of Phil’s ideas had come from Cy, and now they were searching for who came up with the original ideas,” he says.
“The conversation didn’t make much sense and Cy was rambling a bit.
“I got the impression that Cy thought he was the genius behind his dad’s coaching ideas … he also said that the AFL is run by the Illuminati.”
Phil Walsh travelled to Graeme Watt’s home, arriving at about 6.30pm.
In his statement, Mr Watt says that was uncharacteristic of his old friend — as was his choice of attire.
“He was wearing his full Crows outfit, which he would never wear unless he was on his way to or from work,” he says.
“Phil said he ‘just needed to get out’ of the house and that Cy was agitated with him, he didn’t say why.”
Mr Watt says Phil Walsh recounted the dinner conversation and also showed him the text message poem, which referenced the injuries the coach had sustained when hit by a bus in Peru in 2012.
“(It said) that they had to go back to get things healed and once they did, Phil would be the messiah of the Crows,” he says.
FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2015
In her statement, Meredith says her husband returned from Mr Watt’s house and the couple went to bed.
She says she woke about 2am to the sound of “rattling” and “assumed it was Cy” having forgotten his key to the house.
Meredith says she opened the door to let him in but he did not enter, instead walking around to the back of their house — she thought that “was strange”.
“I said ‘what are you doing, what have you got?’ … I didn’t recognise what it was in his hand as he was coming toward me,” she says.
“He just pushed through me, straight for his father … he started running into the house and I saw the knife.”
Meredith says she chased Walsh into the house screaming “Cy’s got a knife” to warn her husband.
“Phil responded, he screamed out something but I don’t know what it was,” she says.
“I followed him (Cy) into the bedroom, I was in there, and he started stabbing Phil … Phil was in the bed, trying to get up, when Cy first stabbed.
“I know they fought for a while and Cy just started stabbing Phil … I don’t think Cy said anything … and Phil sort of got up and tried to defend himself.”
Meredith says that, when Walsh came close to her, she tried to restrain him but he slashed at her with the knife and inflicted a 10-12cm wound to the back of her leg.
She says her son fled the scene and she called 000, performing CPR on her husband until ambulance officers and police arrived.
A post-mortem examination would later conclude Phil Walsh had sustained 20 wounds.
At the scene, police found “a wooden-handled hunting knife with a six-inch blade” that “had blood on it”.
One officer recalls Meredith showing her a SA Police card detailing the missing persons report and commenting “they should have taken him earlier”.
As police began searching for Walsh, taxi driver Shubham Khaneja had finished both his shift and a workout at a 24-hour gym on Jetty Rd, Glenelg North.
In his statement, Mr Khaneja says a man approached him in the car park and, in a panicked voice, asked: “Can you take me to the police station?”
“I saw that he was covered in blood … I saw it on his own hands and his own shirt,” he says.
“He was showing me the blood on his hands and so I asked him about it … I asked ‘are you all right, whose blood is that?’ and he said ‘I had some trouble with my father’.”
Mr Khaneja says he did not give the man — who he subsequently identified as Walsh — a ride.
Walsh was arrested 15 minutes later on First Avenue at Glenelg East, telling officers “yeah, yeah, it’s me” as he surrendered peacefully.
In his record of interview, Walsh tells police he “has not had much sleep”, has “had some pills” and questions whether he needs to have his stomach pumped.
Told that he is being charged with attempted murder, he replies: “Attempted, he’s okay.”
However, he is later informed Phil Walsh has died and begins to cry.
“Ah no, no no no, don’t, oh f---, f---, f---, oh you motherf---er, you died,” he says.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my f---ing God, did you say I killed my father? Why would you joke about that?”
An officer says they are not joking, and Walsh responds: “I’m hearing voices.”
As police spoke with Walsh, news of his father’s death began to reach the media and public.
One of the first people to call Meredith was Port Adelaide legend Kane Cornes.
“She confirmed that Phil had passed away and said that Cy had a psychotic episode,” he says in his statement.
“I’d never had much to do with Cy … I would see him occasionally when I was visiting but wouldn’t really interact with him.”
Following his arrest, Walsh was conveyed to the Flinders Medical Centre and underwent psychiatric assessment by Dr Paul Cammell.
In his statement, Dr Cammell describes Walsh as being “agitated” with a bandaged forehead due to “banging his head deliberately against a wall”.
“It was clear he was floridly psychotic … this was evidenced by the fact he exhibited bizarre posturing (and) was behaviourally disorganised,” he says.
He says Walsh displayed pronounced thought disorder and delusions of control, including beliefs that “remote computers and spiritual energies” were “controlling his brain”.
Walsh was remanded into the custody of James Nash House, a secure forensic mental health facility, and sedated.
In her statement, Meredith says she had “suspected for a while” her son had “some sort of paranoia, personality disorder or schizophrenia”.
“When he has these paranoid feelings or emotions, the venom that comes out of his mouth toward his father is horrendous, and for no reason,” she says.
“I don’t know where that comes from.”