Kendehl, daughter of Salt Creek backpacker kidnapper Roman Heinze, speaks out after years of silence over infamous case
The only daughter of infamous backpacker kidnapper Roman Heinze has spoken out for the first time, trying to make sense of her conflicted feelings.
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Two photos define Kendehl’s relationship with her father – one an image she adores, the other a portrait she despises.
In the first she, her father and her oldest brother, Josh, embrace on the side of a road during a family trip to Germany in 1997.
In the second, taken sometime prior to 2016, Kendehl’s father glares into the camera as he points a small handgun directly at the photographer.
“I still – to this day, every time I see that photo – cringe … I called him a monster, on Facebook, when he posted that,” Kendehl told The Advertiser.
“I told him ‘you need to take that down, you look like a monster’, but he thought it was funny.”
The vast gulf between the photos symbolises Kendehl’s greatest struggle – reconciling the man who raised her with the crimes for which he has been jailed.
Kendehl’s father is Roman Heinze, convicted of kidnapping two foreign backpackers on a remote South Australian beach, known worldwide as “the Salt Creek monster”.
The photo she hates has been on newspaper front pages, websites and television broadcasts around the globe, cementing his face in infamy.
The “monster” moniker is one Heinze himself has embraced, using it to sign the art he creates in prison and sends to the daughter he called “my only sunshine”.
But while he pushes for a High Court appeal, Kendehl has been forced to endure the public’s anger with her father – including death threats, physical violence and sexual assault.
And recently Heinze has “switched”, she said, declaring she is another of his enemies, threatening her life and telling her to “watch her back”.
“It’s complicated, it’s hard … so much of me hates my dad but, at the same time, you still always love your dad,” Kendehl said.
“He’s very clever, he’s very convincing, he’s a bully, he doesn’t like to be wrong … I just don’t understand why he did it and, when I ask him, he says ‘I did nothing wrong’.
“He feels no pain, he has no remorse … the signatures on his art are daunting, I feel like asking ‘what are you trying to prove, what message are you trying to get out?”
AN ISOLATED BEACH
In February 2016, Heinze responded to a Gumtree ad posted by a backpacker from Brazil, agreeing to take her and a German companion to Melbourne.
On an isolated beach at Salt Creek, he attacked the Brazilian from behind, tied her up with pre-cut lengths of rope, sliced off her bikini with a knife and sexually assaulted her.
When the German tried to come to her companion’s aid, Heinze repeatedly struck her in the head with a hammer and ran her down with his four-wheel drive.
By working together, the duo outsmarted and outlasted Heinze – the German even climbed up onto Heinze’s four-wheel drive to stop him running her down.
The women were rescued by nearby fishermen and video footage of their “citizen’s arrest” of Heinze went immediately viral.
Kendehl, now 36, was having coffee at a friend’s house when news of the arrest broke.
“My son saw the television and was saying ‘that’s opa (grandpa)’ and I was saying ‘no, it’s just someone that looks like him’,” she said.
“Then the next day I was at the petrol station and I saw the photo in the newspaper.
“I have a photo of myself as a four-year-old and my dad on that beach at Salt Creek, standing at the very spot where he was pulled down and arrested.
“I have happy memories of going there, and then to see this happened there, I just couldn’t understand it … what was his motive?”
A FATHER’S SUNSHINE
Heinze’s arrest came during a period of strain in his once-happy relationship with Kendehl.
“My parents split when I was 18 months old, and I used to see dad every second weekend … he used to call me his ‘only sunshine’,” she said.
“He was fun to be around … he was a chef and he mentored me, he taught me how to cook, we would all go camping and fishing.
“I had an upbringing where he was such a family person and a hard worker, even though he had some issues.
“Before he was arrested, dad said he was trying to find someone my age to be with … I was 25 … that’s when things started getting strange.
“He had heavy depression, anger and alcohol problems, lots of debt, he was never happy … he was saying that people his age weren’t suited to him.”
Despite their close bond, Kendehl broke contact with Heinze in January 2016 due to his worrying demeanour.
“I didn’t want my kids being brought up around that … I kind of woke up to seeing why he and my mum split in the first place,” she said.
Just one month later, the events at Salt Creek unfolded – despite the charges, Kendehl remained in contact with her father throughout his prosecution.
“I wasn’t 100 per cent supportive of him, I was trying to be there for him because he had no one else,” she said.
“I was trying to be a good daughter so that he had some sort of contact with the outside world, a little bit of comfort knowing he had someone to speak to.
“I used to go see him, which was really hard, and then my brother Josh died in 2017.”
She said Josh’s passing, and the subsequent death of her grandfather, revealed a different side to Heinze.
“When Josh died, my dad was more interested in getting out of prison than he was about his own son,” she said.
“Then when his dad, my grandfather, died he was more interested in getting his passport sent to him in prison.
“He didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself, he was very self-centred.”
A DAUGHTER’S PAIN
Kendehl’s support for Heinze, albeit conditional, cost her dearly.
“I have received death threats and people have judged me, just for being my father’s daughter,” she said.
“I have been sexually assaulted, I have been king-hit, I have been left with trauma and struggling to find support from anyone.
“Only recently have I been able to afford a private psychologist who’s told me I have post-traumatic stress from what I’ve been through.
“But they’ve also told me the main issue is my father.”
In March 2017, a Supreme Court jury found Heinze guilty of crimes including aggravated kidnapping, sexual and physical assault, and endangering life.
The court also heard his offending began in 2014, and the duo were two of 14 foreign backpackers he contacted through the Gumtree website’s ride-sharing section.
Justice Trish Kelly said he had indecently assaulted women in September and December 2014, and then tried to take a Japanese backpacker to Salt Creek.
After she revealed she had posted photos of him and his vehicle on the internet, he cut their trip short.
Justice Kelly said that incident fuelled Heinze’s “disgusting” internet searches for rape and bondage-themed “extreme” pornography.
His “escalating predatory behaviour”, she said, resulted in the crimes at Salt Creek – which she dubbed “utterly depraved, inhuman, primitive” and “sex-obsessed”.
She jailed Heinze for 22 years, ordering he serve a 17-year term before he could apply for parole.
Heinze, now 68, has maintained his innocence throughout, filing lawsuits to seek access to evidence including his impounded vehicle.
His goal, courts have heard, is to raise sufficient funds and data to mount a High Court challenge.
Asked whether she believed her father was guilty of the offences, Kendehl replied: “Not all of them.”
She said she feels there are inconsistencies in the evidence, and in the accounts of the two backpackers, that have not been satisfactorily resolved.
“To this day, I remain unsure as to whether or not he did what happened at Salt Creek,” she said.
“A lot of me feels ‘yeah, he should be in jail’, but maybe I’m just undecided from reading so much transcript, from talking to him and knowing his character as my dad.
“Maybe it’s from being ‘his only sunshine’.”
SEEKING CLOSURE
After the trial, Kendehl continued to visit her father in prison and communicate with him, even as his relationships with her other siblings curdled into vindictive lawsuits.
She took notes of many of their conversations, thinking it would assist with his legal aspirations.
Heinze, meanwhile, sent her dozens of pieces of art he created, each one dated and signed “the Salt Creek Monster” or “Monsta”.
Several of them, she said, reflected his love of fishing while others – including one depicting Yatala Labour Prison inmates as zombies – were “more open to interpretation”.
Their relationship soured again, perhaps for the final time, in early 2023.
“Dad can look like a nice-as-pie person, but it doesn’t take much for him to switch,” she said.
“He’s threatened me, directly, since his trial … he’s not allowed to send me letters from prison anymore.”
Kendehl said that, despite her name and address being “red-flagged” in the prison postal system, Heinze’s letters continued to reach her.
“He’s been sending letters marked as being to my (younger) brother but, inside the envelope, they’re for me,” she said.
“They say he’s going to come after me after he gets out, that he’s going to get his possessions and his money and any estate he has left.
“He says I’ve never been there for him and that I need to watch my back.”
Kendehl said she felt prison staff had failed to properly check Heinze’s letters for “emotional abuse and death threats”, which placed her and potentially others at risk.
She is now using her notes and her father’s art to write a book about her experiences as “a monster’s only sunshine”.
Her goal, she said, is to try to make some sense of her life – and to honour the life and legacy of her brother Josh.
“I’ve been trying to sort all this out in my head for a while and I still can’t understand it, what his motive was,” she said.
“I was going through articles, all of the stories in The Advertiser, and a friend pushed me to write a book.
“I’m doing it as a mixture of getting the record straight and letting a daughter’s voice be heard.
“I am my father’s daughter, but I’m not my father and I’m not his saviour – I can’t help him.
“I’m trying to make sense out of my own life, trying to get closure and trying to heal.”
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