After being sentenced to a Bali jail for four years Sara Connor has plenty of time to ponder what if?
WHAT if? It’s the question Sara Connor has asked herself many times in the past seven months and one that is set to plague her for the next four years.
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- Sara Connor learns her fate
- Connor’s prison hell
- Distraught Connor can’t sleep
- Aussies housed in Indonesian jails
WHAT if?
It’s the question Sara Connor has asked herself many times in the past seven months.
What if she hadn’t come to Bali for a romantic rendezvous with David Taylor? What if she hadn’t tried to intervene in a fight?
And most tellingly, what if David Taylor’s former wife had not reported to Immigration that the couple had separated, prompting authorities to revoke his Australian visa and forcing him to leave the country?
Renae Meadows, Taylor’s ex lover — upon discovering Sara’s and David’s relationship — informed Immigration the couple had separated, as she was obliged to do.
Taylor was given a limited time to leave the country. An Immigration lawyer suggested that he may be able to leave and apply for a tourist visa to return.
So he went to Bali — inviting Sara.
SLIDING DOORS
These sliding door moments now define the next four years of Sara Connor’s life.
Connor would still be making and selling homemade pasta in Byron Bay and working at the Arts Factory Lodge as a housekeeping manager, a job she had held in high esteem since 2012.
When Connor’s world came crashing down around her, the relationship with British DJ David Taylor was in its infancy.
Known as DJ Nutzo, Taylor had been living in Byron Bay for three-and-a-half to four years, working as a DJ and announcer on Byron’s community radio station Bay FM.
The couple met almost immediately at the Arts Factory, where Connor worked. Taylor was staying there but there was no immediate romance.
Connor at the time was married to Anthony “Twig” Connor and the couple had two children together.
Taylor was married to Australian woman Meadows.
Then about three years ago Connor and Twig split. It was amicable and they remained friends, sharing custody of the boys.
It was the end of a 14-year marriage and a love affair that began after they met in 1998 in London and married in 1999 at the Hackney Town Hall. Guests wore Hawaiian shirts. They later had another ceremony in Australia.
When they came back to Australia the couple bought a block of land near Yamba. Twig ran a pub in Yamba and Sara worked in an orphanage. The couple opened a coffee shop for someone and Sara taught Italian.
They lived in Australia for a while and then moved to Berlin for three years. Twig was offered a job in Berlin running a bar so the family packed up and went there and Twig later also worked in Prague.
On their return to Australia six years ago the couple settled in Byron. For three years the marriage lasted before the couple split. Italian by birth, Connor then decided to start a homemade pasta business, which at the time of her trip to Bali, was going well and she was putting all her energy into the business and bringing up her boys.
NEW LOVE
Far from being a midlife crisis, Connor simply fell in love.
She only became romantically involved with Taylor around the end of April last year after moving in the same circles and sharing common friends for several years. The couple was discrete and only close friends in Byron even knew they were an item until their Bali arrest. Friends say he was the first relationship Connor had since splitting with Twig three years earlier.
“Her relationship with David was discrete. She was single for three years after she broke up with her husband. She wasn’t a person who was dating people all the time. She didn’t have lots of relationships,” a friend said.
“When he had to leave the country it was very hard for Sara,” one friend said. “It was a love story. Both had the same personality, very positive.”
Not many people knew she was even in Bali with Taylor at the time. As for the catalyst that started the chain reaction for Connor: Renae Meadows. Friends say that Meadows is now in an emotional and confused state, asking herself — like Connor — what if? What if she hadn’t informed on her former husband.
Taylor’s DJ equipment and personal belongings are now stored in Byron. Connor’s boss at the Arts Factory Peggy O’Neill says Sara remains employed there. Where she would still be helping people out, offering a bed at her home for those with nowhere to stay and a shoulder for people to cry on. She would still be in the arms of her family and many friends who love her.
And most importantly she would still be watching her two young boys as they sleep in their beds, something she now misses dreadfully, patching up the cuts and scratches when they fall over, taking them to soccer and catching waves. She misses their smell, the shape of their ears.
This is what cuts the deepest and fills the 46-year- old with desperation — that she will not be around to see the two great loves of her life grow up. Her boys are nine and 11.
THE EX
Former husband Twig has no doubt Sara played no role whatsoever in the police officer’s death and has supported her since the day of her arrest.
“I have known her pretty much most of my adult life. There is no way she would swing at a cop. She loved life and her two boys too much to have been involved a crime like this,” Twigg said.
“I know this woman and I know how much she loves her kids and she puts her kids before anything in this world.
“As soon as we had children her whole world changed. She is a beautiful mother. That’s why it kills me to know she is stuck there without her boys.
“It breaks my heart to think that the kids aren’t going to have their mum around to watch them win this year’s soccer competition or to watch them get their first (surf) barrel,” Twig says, tears flowing.
He still loves her.
Friends also say that any form of violence is totally out character for Connor who they describe as a hardworking, caring and compassionate woman.
A book containing letters from 78 character witnesses, attesting to her community spirit, her constant offers to help those in need and her warmth, was handed to the Denpasar District Court as part of her defence.
The what if question is now set to plague her for a long time to come.
Originally published as After being sentenced to a Bali jail for four years Sara Connor has plenty of time to ponder what if?
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