Secret life of father Stephen Playford accused of killing daughter in Brisbane

STEPHEN Playford has spent his life trying to be the smart-dressed intellectual his friends admired but he was living a lie. Now he is just known as a man suspected of murdering his daughter.

ACCUSED child murderer Stephen Playford was living a lie for years, keeping up appearances as a wealthy man who had risen to the top.

Flashing cash, he drove a nice car, lived in exclusive suburbs and enrolled his children in a private school.

But his closest allies have revealed he grappled with being an ordinary man, even once telling sobbing friends he had AIDS and was going overseas to spend his last months alive.

Playford, 52, was this week arrested, accused of killing his six-year-old daughter Sidney in their rented Kedron home in Brisbane’s inner north.

He allegedly fled his home in a Mercedes-Benz 4WD and was later found on the Gold Coast Hinterland.

With his girls enrolled in a private school, he had months earlier moved from his rented home in up-market Clayfield, letting neighbours believe he bought a house in nearby Kedron.

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An image of the father-of-two has emerged of a sharply-dressed, cold man who wanted people to believe he was wealthy and living a successful life.

Maria and Stephen Playford.

Stephen Playford.

“He was highly sensitive to how people perceived him,” a former close friend said.

“He wanted to be perceived as the high-flyer, the ultimate success, man with the money. The go-to man. He always wanted to play that part of ‘I’m successful’. But it was all show.

“He wanted to be a CEO earning a s---load of dough and living in a flashy suburb and a flashy car and a beautiful wife and family. He wanted to be the intellectual guru, the financial guru. And he wanted people to know that.”

Playford went to Waverley College in Sydney before going to the University of New South Wales where he gained a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in accounting and finance and systems.

“He had a very disruptive upbringing,” the friend said. “His parents weren’t living ­together.”

Stephen Playford in a school photo.

Known by students at school as “rat face”, he had just a handful of friends.

Although he had poor social skills he didn’t struggle to get work and after uni he worked at Hambros Bank in Sydney.

Playford wasn’t a drinker, didn’t take drugs and was never in fights.

“He was just cold and disconnected. He was quite bright, financially quite bright,” a former friend said.

“He was always flashing the cash. Very aloof, very know-it-all.

“At school … he was never accepted and I think by playing that intellectual, wealthy, smart-dressed man of the world, that would attract him to females and make other students in awe of him.

“He had to prove to someone, to himself, that he was the rich man, the powerful man, the smart man, the successful person.”

In the mid-1980s he gathered friends at a bar in Sydney, dressed in a long coat and white scarf.

“He then told us he had AIDs,” the friend said.

“He was sweating. We went out to dinner, we went out to the airport. All his friends were in tears. We thought it was the last time we would see him. He was going overseas to die.”

He returned within the year, admitting he lied about his illness.

“He said he tried to commit suicide,” the friend said of his time overseas.

He would later work in the mining sector, living in Charters Towers, west of Townsville, where he was hired as an accountant at a mining firm. He learnt Spanish and travelled to South America to work before he met the love of his life.

Playford flew home to Australia with his new family about eight years ago because his father was ill.

He hired a room at the up-market Park Hyatt at The Rocks in Sydney for 10 days.

He had brought a new wife with him, with a young child after initially saying he didn’t want children.

“When I saw him with his wife Maria and his six-month old baby he looked a picture of health and happiness.

“He genuinely looked happy, at peace, relaxed. Like he was in heaven. I thought this is where he had found happiness.”

Friends thought he felt belittled by his family and wasn’t happy in life, feeling he wasn’t going anywhere.

“It was like his parents never believed he had the capability,” a friend said.

“He said to me he didn’t like himself. He didn’t like who he was. He wanted to be something different.”

To help the family of Sidney Playford visit mycause.com.au/page/110831

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