‘Scary on every level’: Dead dam couple’s bizarre life, suicide plans revealed

The alarming life of a couple who was found decomposing in a dam near Kingaroy has been revealed with a former friend saying they talked of committing suicide and the man acted like a ‘cult’ leader.

A woman has given an insight to the alarming life of a man whose body was found in a dam near Kingaroy and his partner.

Police yesterday said a man who was found by a kayaker in Gordonbrook Dam at the weekend was 51-year-old Darryl Smith, who also went by the name Matthew Goldman.

Mr Smith was found tethered to a woman, who has not been formally identified but is believed to be his wife.

A fortune teller, who briefly worked for the “spiritually fanatical” Goldmans at a shop they operated in Kingaroy has revealed she googled the couple two weeks ago just to make sure “they were still alive”.

“Two weeks ago - I was googling them, I was googling everything about them because I wanted to see if they were still alive,” she said.

The fortune teller said she “distanced” herself from the Goldmans (Darryl Smith and his wife) in December “within a month of knowing them”.

“The first day I went into the shop to work for them they were telling me about their plans and how they were just about to commit suicide before the shop, a ‘gift from god’,” she said.

“I just remember thinking that’s pretty heavy stuff to be telling someone you just met and also someone so spiritual.”

“I did one reading for a client at the shop and noticed they were living out the back, their energy was frenetic and the more I knew them the worse it got.”

The woman likened her interactions with Mr Goldman to Reverend Jones, an apocalyptic cult, saying “it was that kind of frenetic spirituality.”

“Each time I would hang out with them my gut instinct just told me this was a dangerous man,” she said.

“I didn’t tell them for a few weeks but then I had to put it in writing because they were kind of grooming me in a way.”

The Gordonbrook Dam, north of Kingaroy, where two bodies were found. Picture: Dominic Elsome

The woman claimed the Goldmans confided in her about how they had “sold everything” and “bought a box of pills through the mail.”

The woman believed Mr Goldman was the “frontrunner”, “the talker” and although the couple had been together for 20 years it was a “really sick relationship.”

“All the signs were there - the narcissism, the gaslighting - they said they had been together for over 20 years but I’ve never seen a woman look at a man like that unless they were in a cult,” she said.

“He really did all the talking for both of them and being a feminist I thought there’s something not right here, I looked at how she was with him, she was incredibly passive and then they got talking about spirituality, fortune telling, carding reading but when they took me out the back – I thought it was going to be quite a professional meeting but then straight away they started talking about how they were blessed and how they had nearly committed suicide.”

“They were scary on every level - mentally, emotionally, and physically.”

CCTV footage of Darryl Smith before his death.

Just three months after the fortune teller met the Goldmans she decided to block them on her phone and social media.

“Matthew told me about (his wife’s) life, how tragic it was and he had rescued her, I just kept saying ‘look I don’t want to hear this’,” she said.

The woman said the shop was a “hangout for broken people.”

“Matthew would tell me about how he was going to transform everyone’s lives but when I walked into the shop a few times there were always the people you know are broken – that kind of upset because I knew they were manipulating these people and trying to sell them stuff,” she said.

A message from Darryl Smith, 51, whose body was found in a dam near Kingaroy.

The woman said when she found out the couple had died she felt “validated” that she had managed to “escape them”.

“I’m happy they are together because in all honestly one of them was going to do something stupid, I’m glad they are at peace - it was Folie a deux (madness of two),” she said.

“It was going to happen, they told everyone, they wanted to do it before, but what shocked me is the first time in my life that I have known anyone to commit suicide that was the shock factor, it wasn’t shocking when I knew it was them.”