Hannah Clarke inquest: Hannah’s loved ones to reveal marriage hell before her tragic death
The inquest into the death of Hannah Clarke has been told of a chilling “note” found on her estranged husband’s phone before he killed her and her three children, in which he said “I have told the kids that you loved them. They will miss you I’m sure.”
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The inquest into the death of Hannah Clarke has been told of a chilling “note” found on her estranged husband Rowan Baxter’s phone before he killed her and her three children, in which he said “I have told the kids that you loved them. They will miss you I’m sure.”
Meanwhile, Hannah’s best friend has told how she told cops Baxter would kill Hannah, just days before he eventually did, but was told there was nothing they could do about it.
The inquest heard a chilling “note” had been found on the phone of Rowan Baxter, Hannah’s estranged husband, written on January 26 and edited through to February 6.
Parts of it were read aloud to the court.
“I’m finishing your game. I don’t want to play anymore. This was never ever my intention,” he wrote.
“You can’t f*ck with someone’s life like this and expect them to just take it.
“I can tell you no more Hannah, no more …
“I’m not going to take it anymore Hannah.
“Do you know how hard it is to go to bed every night without your children? I wish you had have just tried.
“I have told the kids that you loved them. They will miss you I’m sure.
“You destroyed my life and I cannot move on. I hope all this was worth it for you and your family.
“Now that you have no one to apparently control it, you’re a strong girl. You’ll be fine.”
The court heard the note was signed: “Ro, Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey.”
As other family members and some of Hannah’s closest friends share their recollections of her frightening marriage breakdown, on the fourth day of an inquest into her murder, Hannah’s best friend has told how she warned police he would kill her just days before he eventually did.
Nicole Brooks said she went to Carina police station on February 13 – days before the murders – to tell the police she believed Baxter would kill Hannah and the children.
She said she did this because Hannah had been telling her that she believed Baxter would kill her.
“I relayed that at the police station – (I said) he’s going to take them out,” Ms Brooks said.
She said the police told her: “We can’t really do anything until he does something.”
She said she responded by saying: “What if you don’t get a second chance?”
Hannah’s mother, Sue, has fondly remembered her daughter and grandchildren as she told the inquest what happened during her encounters with their eventual killer and how she would “seethe” at his treatment of her daughter.
In a heartfelt statement, Sue Clarke touched on her love for her daughter and grandchildren and how, despite her initial negative first impressions, he “won us over” before things turned dramatically sour.
The inquest is examining the circumstances that led to the horrific domestic violence murders of Hannah and her children, Aaliyah, 6, Laianah, 4 and Trey, 3 on February 19, 2020.
Hannah and the children were killed after she was ambushed by her estranged husband, Rowan Baxter, after he ambushed her by jumping into her car as she drove the children to school.
He doused them with petrol from a jerry can and set them alight before stabbing himself in the abdomen, piercing his heart.
The inquest has heard Baxter stalked Hannah after she left him, planting a recording device in her home, attempting to secure CCTV from businesses near her gym and asking friends to spy on her.
He also followed her around the shopping centre where she worked and demanded that her manager fire her from her position.
Hannah died after receiving severe burns to 97 per cent of her body.
‘I KNOW IN MY HEART HE’S GOING TO KILL ME’
Lynne Kershaw became friends with Hannah after joining their gym in Mansfield, and continued training under Hannah and Baxter when they moved to Capalaba in 2019.
She said it was about then that she noticed a change in Baxter’s behaviour.
“Rowan had always been moody,” she said.
“But when we moved to Capalaba, I noticed things that were probably a little more disturbing.
“He was muttering to himself constantly.”
Ms Kershaw, a Chinese medicine practitioner, said she told him one day she should get him “on her table” to treat him.
“He said, you don’t want to get inside my head, it’s a very messy place,” she said.
Ms Kershaw said Baxter would yell at Hannah at the gym and make her stop her workout to take care of the children.
She said he would become angry if Hannah did better than him at a workout.
“He never praised her,” she said.
“He withheld training from her … he did not want for her to be better.”
Ms Kershaw said at the end of December 2019 Hannah confided in her about Baxter abducting Laianah.
“We had quite a long conversation about what had been happening in those last couple of days,” she said.
“She hadn’t been able to get hold of him.”
Ms Kershaw said Hannah had worked out that Baxter had taken Laianah to Pottsville but was terrified for her wellbeing.
“She was very, very frightened. Very, very concerned about Laianah’s, not physical safety, but emotional safety,” she said.
“She knew that she was going to be frightened just being away from her mum for so long.”
Ms Kershaw said during the time that Hannah’s marriage was breaking down, Hannah told her Baxter’s behaviour was escalating but “I’m just tying to keep my head down and keep it together”.
She said Hannah said she was making plans to move home with her parents but she wanted to do it “discretely”.
The inquest heard Ms Kershaw told police eight things that Hannah told her Baxter subjected her to.
They included:
Going through her phone and monitoring her social media
Hiding a mobile phone in her car to record her conversations
She suspected he had hidden a recording device in her home
She was told what she was and wasn’t allowed to wear
She was told who she could and couldn’t see
Baxter had accused her of having an affair and had been looking at her phone and tracking her messages
He had driven a wedge between Hannah and her brother and best friend
Baxter had told Hannah that if his ex-partner had left him and taken his son, he would have taken the boy and killed him
Ms Kershaw said Hannah told her that Baxter would drink on Friday nights and demand sex.
He would threaten to kill himself if she said no and would take off in his car, drunk, with a hose.
She said after Hannah left Baxter, they went together to CrossFit Brisbane for a training session.
Ms Kershaw said she believed Baxter, who had his first access visit with the children, drove past her house and spotted Hannah’s car there and worked out where she was.
She said Hannah then got a FaceTime call from Aaliyah, who had been “coached” to ask where she was.
Ms Kershaw said in November 2019, both Hannah and Baxter were due to compete in a Crossfit competition but Baxter pulled out and became angry when Hannah didn’t follow suit.
On the day of the games, Baxter told Hannah she would have to go to their gym and run the classes that morning in a bid to distract her from focusing on the competition.
When she got home, Baxter and the children were gone and he was not answering her calls or messages.
Ms Kershaw said Hannah told her she was “freaking out, terrified and vomiting” she was so concerned about her kids.
She later noticed the kids’ beach bags were gone and realised they must have gone to the beach and she then left for the Crossfit competition.
Hannah later that day told Ms Kershaw: “These are the f**ked up games my husband plays”.
“She said he’s doing this to sabotage me. He won’t return my phone calls.
“I said I don’t know what kind of a person would do this. Somebody who loves you wouldn’t do this.”
Ms Kershaw said Baxter repeatedly told Hannah: “I can’t believe you’re still competing”.
“When he pulled out at last minute he expected her to pull out,” she said.
Ms Kershaw said Aaliyah had idolised elite Crossfit athlete Tia-Clair Toomey who was competing at the same event and Hannah had promised she would take her along to watch.
“Aaliyah was in awe of Tia-Clair and desperately wanted to see her and Hannah promised she would take her,” Ms Kershaw said.
Hannah told her that before the event, Baxter cruelly said Aaliyah would not be allowed to go because she’d been poorly behaved but Hannah was adamant she would take her.
Hannah went home to get Aaliyah to bring her back.
“When I saw her she told me she said they had a massive big screaming fight and he told her she wasn’t to go,” Ms Kershaw said.
Hannah told her Baxter grabbed her during the argument and when she returned, she had red marks on her arms.
“She said she got them from the rings because they’d been doing ring muscle … but those marks weren’t on her when she left the event earlier in the day,” she said.
Ms Kershaw said Hannah told her several times she feared Baxter would kill her.
“She said ‘I know in my heart he’s going to kill me’,” she said.
“When you hear something like that from someone you care about your automatic response is to say don’t be silly, that’s not going to happen.
“But she said at least three times ‘I know in my heart he’s going to kill me’.”
She said on the Valentine’s Day Baxter took chocolates to school for the children, against Hannah’s wishes and in violation of a court order, Hannah found out he had only taken them for Laianah.
“She was very angry, she was heartbroken for Alliyah because it compounded the favouritism he had displayed to Laianah over Alliyah,” she said.
Ms Kershaw said she thought Hannah had ended up getting chocolates for her eldest daughter too so that she was not left out.
The night before Baxter killed his family, Ms Kershaw said she got messages from Hannah who said Baxter had been crying during a Facetime call with the children.
Hannah said despite everything he had done, she felt bad for Baxter and Ms Kershaw told her it was normal to feel that way towards someone she had been in love with and had been such a big part of her life.
Ms Kershaw had given Lainanah craniosacral therapy to help her with ongoing sleeping difficulties due to recurring nightmares.
“She told me that her nightmares were about daddy killing mummy,” she said.
Ms Kershaw said that was: “long before Hannah left” Baxter.
“It’s not unusual for children of that age to have dreams about losing a parent,” she said.
“…(but) I was concerned about the level of fear that I felt in her system.
“I couldn’t understand why there was so much fear in her system when they appeared to be a happy family.”
MUM KNEW HANNAH FEARED FOR HER LIFE
Mrs Clarke told the inquest Hannah feared for her life before she was killed. She said Hannah came to her and asked: “mum, should I have a will?”.
When she asked what prompted the question, Hannah told her mum: “When he kills me, he’ll be in jail and what happens to the children”.
Mrs Clarke said when Hannah went to police to report Baxter’s behaviour in early December 2019, she spoke to a female constable who was “incredibly supportive”.
She said when Hannah returned from the meeting, she said: “mum now I understand this is domestic violence”.
“Yeah it was almost like it made sense to her,” Mrs Clarke said.
“It wasn’t just her mum saying stuff.”
Mrs Clarke said over the period from December, Hannah gained more awareness of the violent nature of the relationship.
Mrs Clarke said the night before the murders, Baxter had been on FaceTime with the children and was crying.
She said Baxter would cry and say that Hannah was the one with “mental problems”.
“(He’d say) see, she’s got problems, you don’t understand you just stick up for her because she’s your daughter,” Mrs Clarke said.
She said that night the children were getting bored because Baxter wasn’t talking – he was just on the screen crying.
Mrs Clarke said Aaliyah often did not want to go with her father for visits.
“He would yell at her and get annoyed and shove her into the car,” she said.
Deputy State Coroner Jane Bentley said the evidence showed Baxter told “everyone who would listen” how much he loved his children.
“It’s inconceivable to any right minded person that you’d do something like this to the children you love,” Ms Bentley said.
“Can you offer insight to how this came about? Did he love them?”
Mrs Clarke said: “I don’t think he actually knew how to love.”
“Not how we understand love,” she said.
“I think his form of love is as a possession.”
Mrs Clarke said Baxter appeared to love “the lifestyle” and the image of the family unit.
“He loved that they were a nice looking family and he thought people envied them,” she said.
Mrs Clarke said when in public somewhere like a coffee shop, Baxter would offer to change one of their children’s dirty nappies, even though he would not do it at home, because he wanted people to tell him he was a good dad.
FOND MEMORIES OF THREE LOVELY GRANDCHILDREN
Sue Clarke, Hannah’s mother, was asked to tell the inquest about each of the children.
She said Aaliyah was “articulate and bright”, was ahead of her years in reading and would read stories to the younger children.
“Amazing,” an emotional Mrs Clarke said.
“A good kid. A strong child.”
She said Baxter wasn’t “fussed” about Aaliyah because she stood up to him.
Mrs Clarke said Laianah was the middle child who they called “Little Middle”.
“She would do silly things to make the others laugh,” she said.
“She was the little dynamo.”
Trey, she said, was the “apple of his mother’s eye” and a “mummy’s boy”.
“I think he would have done well with sports,” she said.
Ms Clarke told the inquest she wears a necklace that they’d given Hannah for her 30th birthday.
She said it has the children’s names engraved on it and once had Hannah and Rowan’s names on it too.
She said Hannah had Rowan’s name removed after leaving him.
She said Hannah was wearing the necklace when she was attacked and it was blackened by the fire.
“I put it on anyway,” she said, explaining it was given to her at the hospital.
“By the time Hannah passed, it was back clear gold.
“It was freaky. So I wear it ever since.”
Mrs Clarke said when she first met Baxter, he was living with his wife and child.
“When she first met him I didn’t like him,” she said.
“He was older and living with his partner which she was told and led to believe purely for his child.
“But he won us over.”
‘HE TREATED ME TERRIBLY, HE DISLIKED ME IMMENSELY’
Mrs Clarke said for the first few years, Baxter was “lovely” to her, right up until after their first child Aaliyah was born.
“He would belittle me in front of people at the gym, he would call me names, he would say nobody asked you to be here,” she said.
Mrs Clarke said things declined further when Laianah was born.
Baxter would use the children as pawns and would not allow them to sleep over at their grandparents’ house.
She said she did not know what changed, but guessed he maybe he grew weary of keeping up the “facade” or felt as though he owed Mrs Clarke and her husband Lloyd after they invested to help him open a gym.
“He treated me terribly, he disliked me immensely,” she said.
“He’d tell me there’s no reason for you to be at the gym.”
Mrs Clarke recalled one occasion when Baxter was supporting her during an exercise at the gym and he dropped her, causing her to split open her face.
“He laughed at me and told me to harden up, that it happens all the time if you play football,” she said.
“As it was pointed out to him, I’ve never played football and I’m a girly girl.”
She said Baxter continued laughing until Mr Clarke and other gym members pointed out it was inappropriate.
“He lacked empathy with everybody,” she said.
Mrs Clarke said if Hannah did something Baxter classed as “misbehaving”, he would not let Mrs Clarke look after the children because he knew it hurt both Mrs Clarke and Hannah.
“If I spoke out I would get phone calls in tears,” she said.
“Please mum apologise. She’d be so distraught that I’d have to ring and apologise.”
Mrs Clarke said she would “seethe” at Baxter’s treatment of her daughter but it was safer for Hannah if they said nothing.
She said Baxter would refer to women as fat pigs.
She said Baxter would “have to win” in running races against his tiny children and would point out that he’d beaten them after.
Mrs Clarke said Baxter was proficient at turning on the tears, especially after Hannah left him.
“He actually came over to our house … and was distraught, crying, he was worried about their relationship and wanted to do better,” she said.
“He almost had convinced me that he wanted to change.
“He was crying, his nose was running, very upset.
“He said that he would try to get help.
“And again after Hannah left him, he rang me crying.”
She said on one occasion, when Hannah had taken the children for a sleepover with Baxter, she asked her parents to come and help her when he wouldn’t let them leave.
“He wanted her to cook dinner and do other things,” she said.
Mrs Clarke said she sent Hannah a text asking her if everything was OK when she didn’t arrive home for dinner.
She replied that it wasn’t and asked them to “get over here”.
She said when she and Lloyd arrived, Baxter was crying and didn’t want to let the children go.
“It was never him, he was never a problem,” she said.
Mrs Clarke said on another occasion, he called her in a panic because he’d thrown a cushion at Aaliyah and knocked her into a doorframe, splitting her head open.
He’d called Mrs Clarke after he couldn’t get hold of Hannah.
“So I raced over there and calmed them all down,” she said.
“Hannah got home and took Aaliyah to the hospital.”
She said she and Lloyd would often help Hannah and Baxter financially because he was not good with money.
She said they paid their rent when they got behind and even the car registration after Baxter was pulled over for driving an unregistered vehicle.
Mrs Clarke said he had blamed Hannah for it, despite not giving her the bill to pay.
She said even after Hannah and Baxter separated, she offered to help with the children for their sake but Baxter never took her up on that.
“I did offer that when they separated I was more than happy to be there if he did need me to pick up the kids on these days or be there,” she said.
“To make it easier for the children.”
After kidnapping Laianah on Boxing Day 2019, Baxter told Hannah she would have to instruct the classes at their gym, despite her saying she wanted nothing more to do with the business.
“The first weekend after she left him she actually had to go to the gym and pretend everything was fine,” Mrs Clarke said.
When she later posted on the gym’s social media that she was leaving the business and thanking the members for their support, Baxter called and abused her and shut the entire business down.
He posted online that the gym was shut and that members should contact Hannah about their memberships.
Mrs Clarke said Baxter “never” took responsibility for his own actions.
She said the financial support of Hannah and her children fell to her and Lloyd.
“Did you have a sense Baxter’s inability to earn money caused him stress, troubles,” counsel assisting the coroner Jacoba Brasch QC asked.
“Yes, he was very lazy,” Mrs Clarke said.
“He didn’t like to work a full day of work but he was always very envious of people who did work or had lovely houses and went on holidays.
“He was very envious but he would never work himself. He would put them down and bad mouth them to other people.”
Mrs Clarke said Hannah believed Baxter was spying on her, listening in on her phone calls and anything she said in her car.
She said on one weekend in November, Baxter took the children after becoming angry that he’d been replaced at a CrossFit competition.
She said Hannah had arrived home at 7am to find them gone and when she tried calling Baxter, his phone was turned off.
She said Hannah had called her brother’s wife who lived on the Gold Coast to see if she could check Currumbin Creek for them.
But Hannah’s brother Nat answered the phone instead.
“That evening, when Rowan got home he said to her, I can’t believe you called your brother,” Mrs Clarke said.
“He must have heard her say Nat.”
She said Hannah had spoken to her about being spied on.
“(She’d say) don’t speak in here mum, in the lounge room, he listens in here,” Mrs Clarke said.
“She kept getting me to go out into the backyard.”
Mrs Clarke said Hannah was always terrified Baxter would take the children and not bring them back.
“She was always walking on eggshells and trying to toe the line as to not upset him so this wouldn’t happen,” she said.
On another occasion, Baxter snuck into Mrs and Mr Clarke’s house while Hannah was living there with the children.
The girls would later tell Mrs Clarke that they’d seen their father put his finger to his lips as if to tell them “shh”.
“Hannah … felt, like a shiver, and he was standing there staring at her,” Mrs Clarke said.
“She had a burner phone … he demanded to know whose phone it was. She just said it was (Mrs Clarke’s) and he just didn’t believe her.”
Mrs Clarke said she, Hannah and Mr Clarke had a vote on whether Baxter should be able to come to visit the family for Christmas Day in 2019.
Mrs Clarke said she did not want Baxter there was but “outvoted”.
“I said no he was definitely not coming in my house,” she said.
Mrs Clarke said Hannah was adamant that as their father, Baxter should be able to see the children.
“Even though she was apprehensive him having them she did feel he was entitled to see his children,” she said.
The court heard Baxter was invited to come to the house for two hours on Christmas Day but he ended up arriving at 4.45am and did not leave until 5pm.
“He was on his best behaviour,” she said.
“He went out of his way … to play with all the children.”
Mrs Clarke said while the younger two children loved Baxter, the eldest Aaliyah “was frightened of him”.
“She’d seen so much,” she said.
“He would yell at Hannah and storm out and Aaliyah would slam the door and say ‘and don’t come back’.”
Mrs Clarke said Aaliyah would speak up on behalf of her mother, telling Baxter things like Hannah had apologised so why don’t you talk to her.
“And she’d be in trouble for coming into adult business,” she said.
“He disliked her out of his three children because she was strong and would stand up.”
The court heard when the relationship ended, Baxter did not want Hannah’s name taken off the lease of the home where they had lived and she had to go to QCAT to have them intervene and remove her from the lease which happened on February 17, 2020.
‘I’M THEIR FATHER AND I DON’T THINK I’LL BRING THEM BACK’
On December 21, 2019, Baxter had taken the children to the beach and Hannah asked that they be home by 4pm because they were going to visit Lloyd’s elderly mother at Kingaroy early the next morning.
When they weren’t home by 4pm, Hannah called Baxter to ask where they were and he claimed the traffic was bad.
Mrs Clarke said Hannah checked online and found there was no traffic so she called Baxter back and asked what was going on.
Baxter then turned off his phone so Hannah could not contact him.
“(Later) he did ring her and he said ‘I’m their father and I don’t think I’ll bring them back. I can keep them. I’m taking them away’,” Mrs Clarke said.
“She pleaded and she begged with him.”
Baxter later agreed to give the children back if she met him at a service station near her house.
When she arrived, Baxter wanted her to get in the car so she took his keys and put them in her car so he could not drive off with her inside.
Mrs Clarke said on Boxing Day 2019, Hannah agreed to meet Baxter at Bulimba to let the kids use skateboards they’d received for Christmas.
She said she offered to go with Hannah who refused because she was concerned it would “antagonise” him.
Mrs Clarke said the outing went well but as they walked back to their cars, Baxter became angry when Hannah said he could not take the children home and he ran off with Laianah.
She said her big sister Aaliyah was screaming: “please daddy drop her, please daddy”.
Baxter took the little girl for three days, leaving Hannah, Lloyd, Sue and her siblings “distraught”.
Mrs Clarke said in another incident on Australia Day 2020, Baxter had the children and Hannah got a call from Aaliyah who was panicking.
“Mum we’re in the car, we’re driving around, I don’t know what daddy’s doing,” Aaliyah told her.
Mrs Clarke said Hannah tried to remain calm and reassured Aaliyah she would be okay and have a good time with her father.
After she told her that, Aaliyah said Baxter began driving towards home.
“When he realised Hannah wasn’t going to get agitated he started driving them home,” Mrs Clarke said.
The court heard Hannah had had a lot of contact with a Constable Kent, who she had gone to report Baxter’s frightening behaviour.
Mrs Clarke said the officer was very good at explaining what kind of behaviour constituted domestic violence.
Hannah told the officer that Baxter forced her to have sex every day.
Mrs Clarke said Constable Kent had told Hannah that what Baxter was doing to her was rape and she could take out a domestic violence order.
“Hannah actually felt validated that someone was listening to her,” she said.
Mrs Clarke said Laianah was traumatised after she was returned by police after Baxter abducted her.
“She was very quiet and subdued,” Mrs Clarke said.
“She was in Hannah’s arms … she climbed out of Hannah’s arms and into my arms and just buried her head.”
Mrs Clarke said she didn’t want her mother for at least half a day and didn’t want to be comforted by the other children.
“Aaliyah was angry, very angry. The whole time she was angry that Laianah was taken,” Mrs Clarke said.
“She was so angry that she was just little fists. It was very upsetting to see.”
She said she was there the day Baxter breached the DVO by assaulting Hannah.
Mrs Clarke said Baxter was dropping Trey back to them and had deliberately left photographs of Hannah in her underwear on the back seat.
She said she watched from the window as Hannah started grabbing the photographs and screwing them up. She saw Baxter grab and twist Hannah’s wrist and push her up against the car.
She said she ran outside and yelled at him: “You’re in breach – get out of here, I will call the police.”
In response, he called Mrs Clarke a “moll”.
The inquest heard Hannah was not allowed to wear shorts or the colour pink and that Baxter had set up a joint Facebook account early in their relationship.
On one occasion he injured a heavily pregnant Hannah by slamming a gate into her leg.
On another occasion he smashed her watch during an argument.
Mrs Clarke said Baxter made repeated threats to kill himself.
She said Hannah had to get a second, secret phone in order to call her family.
After Hannah left, he took Laianah’s comfort toy, a little Sloth, and refused to give it back.
“We had to buy her another,” Mrs Clarke said.
A TEARFUL MOTHER’S FOND MEMORIES OF ‘BUBBLY’ HANNAH
Asked to tell the inquest about her daughter, a tearful Mrs Clarke said she wanted people to know Hannah would have done anything to save her children.
“Bright, bubbly … full of empathy,” she said.
“Someone would turn up at the gym and even though she was going through terrible things, she was always be concerned about them … it was never about her.
“She wasn’t perfect … nobody is perfect.
“But she was a beautiful soul, she really was.”
Mrs Clarke said she wanted people to know that Hannah was strong and loved her children.
“(She) would have done anything, would have fought anyone to save them.”
Mrs Clarke said she’d got the house ready for Hannah and the children several months before Hannah actually left Baxter.
“She had no money really to go anywhere,” Mrs Clarke said, agreeing Hannah did not have financial independence.
She said Hannah was frightened Baxter might hurt the children in some way to get back at her.
Mrs Clarke agreed that Baxter’s stunt with the photographs on the back seat of the car was to “manipulate” her in relation to their custody dispute.
She said he had agreed to having the children 30 per cent of the time – even signing an agreement – but then changed his mind.
Mrs Clarke said he’d told Hannah he would use photographs of her in lingerie to damage her reputation in court.
“He wanted her to drop the DVO,” she said.
‘HE WAS DISGUSTING’: BEST FRIEND NOTICED CONTROLLING BEHAVIOUR EARLY ON
Hannah’s best friend Nicole Brooks said the controlling behaviour began early on in the relationship.
She recalled when they first started dating, she and Hannah went on a cruise and Baxter “wasn’t happy about it” and did not want her to go.
Ms Brooks said when they docked at the first port, Hannah called Baxter who was “aloof” and “bratty” and hung up on her when he heard the two friends giggling.
She said as the relationship progressed, Hannah did more of what Baxter said.
“She was smart and really strong, she didn’t get weaker, he just called the shots and she did it,” Ms Brooks said.
“It was just easier he made things too difficult.”
Ms Brooks said Baxter made derogatory comments about Hannah and other women and had even called female gym members “pigs” on the business Facebook page.
“It was just insane,” she said.
“Everybody that read it was just like what on earth.”
She said Baxter was “horrible” when Hannah had post-natal depression and refused to allow her to see a doctor or get help, telling her it was a waste of money.
Ms Brooks said Baxter’s expectations of Hannah never changed even when the children were born and weren’t sleeping, and she was a “super mum” getting up early to run gym classes and take care of the kids.
Ms Brooks laughed when asked if Baxter’s description of himself as the “primary caregiver” of the children was accurate.
She said he would analyse how many people had “liked” Hannah’s Facebook posts and get jealous about her popularity.
Ms Brooks said Baxter was very rough with the children and would sometimes hurt them while “playing” with them.
She said he would bizarrely post videos on Facebook of him being rough with the children.
On one occasion, she said Baxter put the children into an ice bath and posted it on Facebook, despite the experience traumatising a two-year-old Trey.
“Rowan held him … right up to his neck in there. And Trey was frantic. His eyes were bulging in his head with fear.
“And he thought that was funny enough to post.”
Ms Brooks said she once bought a pair of Nike shorts for Hannah that Hannah’s fitness idol wore.
“You know I’m not going to be able to wear that,” she said Hannah told her.
The inquest has previously heard Baxter would not let Hannah wear shorts.
She said Baxter tried to take over organising a birthday party for Hannah and then abruptly cancelled it when Ms Brooks said Hannah didn’t want the party to be held at the gym.
Ms Brooks said Baxter would post horrible comments about Hannah on the gym’s Facebook page, disputing her posts about her fitness achievements.
“He was disgusting,” she said.
“It was outrageous. He was awful.”
Ms Brooks said Hannah “always” only ever wanted what was best for her children and she had encouraged Hannah to leave and helped her escape the relationship.
She said after an altercation with Baxter, Hannah sent her a photo of her wrist.
Ms Brooks said even an hour after the attack, the links of her gold bracelet were still embedded in her skin.
“She told me that he grabbed her arm and she said he was trying to break my wrist,” Ms Brooks said.
“She said there’s no doubt in my mind he was trying to break my arm.”
Ms Brooks said Baxter continued to post negative things about Hannah after she left him.
She said she would sign into Facebook on her mum’s account to monitor this because Baxter had blocked all of Hannah’s friends.
Ms Brooks said Hannah would get messages and texts from people telling her to go back to Baxter, or to give him the kids.
“There was a phone call that she received from a lady Sarah at the gym. (Sarah) said that Rowan had called her (and said) ‘he just tried to bully me for a solid 30 minutes to make a statement in support of him and negatively against you in court. I told him no … he won’t let it go’.”
Ms Brooks said Baxter told Hannah: “I’ve got 12 of your friends coming to my defence.”
She said Hannah had laughed and said: “I don’t have 12 friends.”
Ms Brooks said she went to Carina police station on February 13 – days before the murders – to tell the police that she believed Baxter would kill Hannah and the children.
She said she did this because Hannah had been telling her that she believed Baxter would kill her.
“I relayed that at the police station – (I said) he’s going to take them out,” Ms Brooks said.
She said the police told her: “We can’t really do anything until he does something.”
She said she responded by saying: “What if you don’t get a second chance?”
After the separation, she said Hannah temporarily stopped going to her favourite coffee shop because Baxter would go there when he knew she would be and “it really scared her”.
When she finally went back, the cafe workers asked where she had been and she admitted she did not want to see Baxter.
The staff kindly offered to message her when he arrived and left so she could still come to the shop.
On Valentine’s Day 2020, Hannah got a message from Baxter saying he had gifts for his daughters and he would meet them at school to hand them over.
Hannah told him he was not allowed due to the protection orders.
Ms Brooks said when Hannah got to school, Baxter was not there. But the children arrived home with Valentine’s chocolates and cards in their bags.
Ms Brooks revealed her last conversation with Hannah came on the afternoon before she was killed.
Hannah said Baxter had Facetimed the children and was sobbing the entire time.
“It made the kids really uncomfortable,” she said.
“She said it wasn’t a normal sob. She said I actually felt bad for him.
“(She said) I don’t like seeing people hurting and I just said that I’m proud of you for being a person who doesn’t get a kick out of seeing somebody else suffering. I said he’s never given you that level of consideration.”
Ms Brooks said her best friend “kindly said ‘things could have been so different’.”
ELDEST DAUGHTER ‘KNEW HE WAS A BAD GUY’
Ms Brooks said Hannah’s eldest daughter Aaliyah did not want to spend time with Baxter and the “heavy worry” was obvious in the little girl.
“She was the wisest six-year-old you’ve ever met in your life,’ she said.
“She was so clued in. She knew he was a bad guy.”
Ms Brooks said when Hannah left Baxter, little Aaliyah did not want to visit her father.
“She was terrified of him and didn’t want to go,” she said.
“(She’d say): ‘why are you making me mummy, why are you making me go’.”
Ms Brooks said Hannah never said a bad word about Baxter in front of their children, telling them they would have a good time with their dad and that they could take a new toy or book.
She said Aaliyah was so concerned that Hannah ended up buying her a GPS watch that had texting capabilities and told the little girl she wouldn’t text her in case Baxter saw but that she could message her whenever she needed.
“She said if you’re ever worried, you lock yourself in the toilet and you can message me whenever you want,” Ms Brooks said.
The court heard Baxter tried to force a wedge between Hannah and sources of support, including her family and friends, including Ms Brooks.
Asked whether she was every concerned for her own safety, she said she didn’t think Baxter was smart enough to be able to track her down.
“I didn’t give him enough credit because he had less than average intelligence in my opinion,” she said.
“I didn’t think he was smart enough to get to me.”
LAWYER FRIEND OBSERVED BAXTER’S ‘VICTIM’MENTALITY
Tanya Anderson, a lawyer, got to know Baxter and Hannah after joining their gym.
She said she became friends with Hannah and took her “mums and bubs” class.
“She was one of the most beautiful people that I’ve ever met,” she said.
“She would give you all the time in the world. She was a beautiful mother.”
She said Baxter was an “intense” trainer who would humiliate gym goers if they couldn’t do an exercise.
Ms Anderson said she began noticing Baxter speaking and acting aggressively towards Hannah at the gym.
“He would just come up and criticise her if she hadn’t started the class on time,” she said.
“It was sort of quite hush, hush and grabbed (her) by the arm and pulled her to the side.”
Ms Anderson said she went home and told her husband that Baxter was “a real arsehole” to Hannah.
She said on one occasion, Hannah wore a pair of green Lycra shorts to the gym and later told Ms Anderson she would not be able to wear them again.
“She mentioned that she wasn’t allowed to wear those shorts anymore because Rowan thought she was flaunting and showing off her legs,” Ms Anderson said.
Ms Anderson said Hannah also told her that Rowan would cancel outings they’d promised the children to punish her if he thought she wasn’t obeying him.
“It would be mum’s fault, Hannah’s fault, that we’re not doing this,” she said.
The inquest heard that in 2017, Ms Anderson saw bruises on Hannah’s arm and that Hannah told her Baxter had grabbed her during an argument and pushed her down on the bed.
Ms Anderson said when Hannah left Baxter, he told her husband that Hannah had “run off with another guy”.
“He very much made himself out to be a victim,” she said.
She told the court that she ran into Baxter at Carindale during this time and he told her he had booked an appointment for the following day with a “men’s help service”.
The court was told it was actually a men’s legal service and that Baxter had only wanted to know about his legal rights.
FRIEND’S CONCERN FOR HANNAH AFTER MEETING ‘INTIMIDATING’ BAXTER
Kylie Buss met Baxter in 2008 when she was training at a gym and he came over and began criticising her workout, telling her it was wrong.
“It was quite intimidating at the time,” she said.
Ms Buss said Baxter would put her down, saying she wasn’t trying hard enough or push herself and that she needed to do better.
“I’ve trained a lot over the years and I’ve never experienced that,” she said.
Ms Buss said years later, in 2011, Baxter and Hannah moved in across the road from her at Morningside.
Around that time, Baxter told Ms Buss that he had “anger issues” and revealed he’d spent time in jail in New Zealand after bashing someone in a road rage incident.
She agreed she was concerned about Hannah who was much younger than Baxter.
“With Rowan having the personality he did, and Hannah was just so sweet and young I just believed he was using that age difference as a form of control,” she said.
“He was very mature, a lot older, and she doesn’t know any different because she hadn’t had a prior relationship with someone she’s lived with.”
Ms Buss and Hannah became close and she revealed Baxter made her have sex every day.
“Yes and he would say ‘that’s why men cheat if you don’t get it here you’re going to go somewhere else and get it’,” she said.
The court heard Ms Buss and her partner had a home gym and they eventually allowed Baxter to use it for free with his personal training clients so he could save money for his wedding to Hannah.
However the court earlier heard the wedding was paid for by Hannah’s parents.
Ms Buss said Baxter took advantage of their kindness and began using the gym for himself early in the day and late at night with loud music, waking their young son.
She said they eventually asked him to stop using the gym and the day after he left, they found the gym’s glass doors had been smashed.
During the time they lived next door, Hannah gave birth to their first two children.
Ms Buss said Baxter would criticise Hannah’s body and she was back in the gym shortly after having the children to “get back in shape”.
“He said a few things in front of me and I set him straight but behind closed door would tell her she was fat and needed to lose weight,” she said.
“There was a lot of pressure placed on her.”
Ms Buss said she thought she lost contact with Hannah between 2015 and 2019 because she would stand up to Baxter.
She believed Baxter isolated Hannah from her for that reason.
“He’d got what he needed out of me, so he was moving on to the next person,” she said.
Then, on October 16, 2019, she got a text out of the blue from Hannah asking if they could talk.
She said they ended up talking for a couple of hours.
Ms Buss said Hannah told her “that she was unhappy and that Rowan was getting out of control”.
“Somehow he’s been listening to my phone calls,” she said Hannah told her.
Ms Buss said Baxter would take Hannah’s phone to see who she’d been talking to, that he forced her to have sex every day, that he would sulk if he didn’t get his way and that Hannah was worried that the children had seen them arguing.
“It was impacting on the children,” Ms Buss said.
The inquest heard Baxter mentioned Ms Buss the day after their first conversation, making them both think he had somehow listened in on their call.
“She was concerned for my safety as well,” Ms Buss said.
She said Hannah told her she’d found a phone hidden in her car and believed Baxter had planted it there.
Hannah also told Ms Buss that Baxter had told her about his plans to hurt a previous partner when she left him.
The inquest heard Baxter bragged about taking a rope, tape and a knife to his ex-partner’s home and that he’d driven there to hurt her.
“We discussed it, we weren’t sure if it was him trying to scare her or if it was the truth that he had done that.”
She said Baxter’s behaviour was escalating because he had “lost control” of his family.
FELLOW PARENT LEARNED LATE OF BAXTER’S ABUSE
Varvara Meli met Hannah at the start of 2019 when their daughters became classmates at school.
The pair would regularly see each other at school pick up and drop off
“She was always a beautiful person to talk to, always friendly, we always had a good chat and the kids would run off and play together,” Ms Meli said.
She said she only met Baxter twice and she “did not get a nice view” of him.
Ms Meli said she did not realise anything was wrong in Hannah’s marriage until early 2020 when she arrived at school looking very happy and not wearing her usual gym attire.
“She was dressed in normal (clothes) and looked happier, brighter,” Ms Meli said
“To a point where I thought ‘okay what’s going on’.”
Ms Meli said Hannah then revealed Baxter has been sexually and emotionally abusing her and she had left him.
She spoke about an occasion on January 30, 2020, when Hannah asked if Ms Meli would keep an eye out for Aaliyah that afternoon because Baxter would be picking her up from school and the little girl was unhappy about it.
Ms Meli said the following morning after Baxter dropped Aaliyah off at school, the little girl came to her and asked if she could “call mummy”.
“Of course I gave her my phone so she could call her,” she said.
Ms Meli said before she died, Hannah had told her about a family trip to SeaWorld that the children had loved.
“She was looking forward to getting back into her Crossfit and making new friends in the gym and getting back into things she loved to do for herself,” she said.
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