Doctor's children fight to reopen inquest into her mysterious knife-in-chest death
The children of a prominent doctor found dead with a knife in her chest are fighting to reopen the inquest into her death, saying crucial evidence was missed.
The children of a prominent doctor found dead in her bed say the tragedy still haunts them, as they fight for a coroner to reopen an inquest into how she died.
Anastasia Sasonow was living a few hundred metres from her mother Dr Karen Mahlo when she was found dead in her Moffat Beach home on the Sunshine Coast.
WATCH CHAPTER 1 – THE MOFFAT BEACH MYSTERY IN THE PLAYER ABOVE
On the morning her mother died Anastasia woke to be told her mother’s ex-partner John Hehir had found her lying face up in her bed with a knife in her chest about 5am, on May 28, 2008.
The pair had split weeks earlier and had an argument outside her home the day before Dr Mahlo was found, as she handed over the keys and registration to a once jointly owned BMW motorcycle.
Anastasia and her brother Ben are fighting for an inquest into their mother’s death to be reopened, convinced she met with foul play.
They say that despite their mother battling depression, which included self-harm attempts, they don’t believe she took her own life, as a coroner ruled in 2014.
“Please reopen it,” Ms Sasonow told The Courier-Mail.
“There are just so many parts of the story that don’t make sense.
“Everything screams foul play and I know that we hoping to reopen the inquest, the coroner’s findings and get maybe an open finding.
“But I think … for mum’s sake it would be best if the whole thing was reinvestigated by someone who cared.
“There’s so many questions. There’s so many questions still there. There’s probably evidence.”
Two printed suicide notes were left after Dr Mahlo’s death, one to Ben and Anastasia and another to Mr Hehir.
The siblings said they hadn’t paid attention to the notes at the time, but now questioned their authenticity.
“She was highly educated too, none of this language is (hers),” Ben said.
Dr Mahlo had been stood down as the executive director of medical services at Nambour Hospital, but Anastasia said her mother had spoken about planning to return to work.
On the day Dr Mahlo was found dead, Anastasia said police knocked on her door with Mr Hehir.
“The police said ‘we’ve got some bad news’ and started telling me what happened and I just burst out crying,” she said.
“And John came and hugged me and I just kind of let him hug me for about four seconds and then something just snapped in me and I just said, ‘get away from me’.”
The night before, Anastasia had been out with her mother, having drinks, after she had handed over the motorcycle to Mr Hehir.
She said her mother had been unhappy after the argument but then after spending the night with her was in a good mood.
“We were walking home laughing, and I was like ‘OK mum I’ll see you tomorrow’ and she walked back to her house … and that was the last time I saw her,” she said.
Dr Mahlo had missed so many milestones including the birth of Anastasia’s daughter.
“There’s so many times that I just wish she was there,” Anastasia said.
“It’s like as soon as they start talking like my throat closes up so I can’t talk about it.”
Ben spoke to his mother the night before she was found dead and he said she was in great spirits and told him she had given Mr Hehir the motorbike.
“She sounded relieved, very relieved, I hadn’t heard her sound that happy in a while,” he said.
“I just remember her sounding so relieved like it was just like she’d come out the other end or something.
“Because obviously we’d been I’d been up there quite a lot over the recent times, especially while she was trying to get rid of John.”
Ben said he believes cold case investigators should re-examine his mother’s death.
“Nothing ever really made sense, it didn’t make sense from the start and it certainly doesn’t make sense now,” he said.
“The main problem with the inquest – aside from the fact that we thought it was a very silly decision in the end – they were relying on just a lot of missing evidence when they were trying to make the decisions,
“There just wasn’t enough groundwork that had been done. There wasn’t enough evidence that was documented.
“A lot of the things that we found out and we knew after that point couldn’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt because they hadn’t investigated it properly and documented it properly at the time.
“So while I definitely support an inquest being reopened, I also think that they need to go back and have a hard look at the case and do some proper investigation work
Dr Mahlo’s brothers Wade and Brett Mahlo have also called for their sister’s death to be reinvestigated.
Wade said it was frustrating police missed evidence and were told almost immediately about her self harm attempts.
“She’s had some problems before and they were just focused on that and tunnel visioned on it … they just didn’t go to the length they should have,” he said.
”Certainly they would have done differently today.”
Brett described the investigation as “very shoddy”.
“I can sort of understand why they didn’t (stay longer) because it was obviously suicide in their minds, but the thing was not handled really well from the police side of things,” he said.
“Nothing should have been touched in the house, computers should have been accessed and printers should have been accessed and a lot of stuff wasn’t done,” he said.
