The Daily Telegraph published exclusive crime scene photos yesterday, along with police footage of the murderer’s chilling confession, revealing the true extent of the horrific crime.

Although the monster who killed Ebony was caught and behind bars, more heartbreaking pain was to follow for the Simpson family.

Ebony’s dad, Peter Simpson says, “Even today as I look at photos of my precious girl, I stand and shake my head. Who could do that to such a lovely girl? What sort of person are you? To carry that out and then have absolutely no remorse and be unapologetic, even after 25 years there has been no remorse, no apology,” says Peter.

“It was just like he was just putting the garbage out. It just disgusts me.”

The pain is just as raw for Ebony’s mother Christine. “This man raped and murdered my girl. He is a paedophile. I thought the legal system would step in, but no, it doesn’t. I believed you get locked up for life, but it’s not like that.”

Reflecting on the murder trial in July 1993, Christine says she is still angry.

“At the court for the sentencing in Darlinghurst, they said he would get 14-20 years. I said that is not acceptable.

“You can give him the death penalty, lock him up for the rest of his life or I can get a hitman and blow him away. And I wasn’t joking. And I am still not joking.”

But more pain was to come after the sentencing when the family discovered there was nobody to reach out to, nowhere for victims to go.

“We tried to get counselling but no one wanted to take us on because I guess it’s just too hard. How are you going to counsel a family like us? Are they going to tell us it’s all right? It will be OK? If we just do this and that, it will be fine?

“It was eventually a grief counsellor who introduced us to Anita Cobby’s parents, Garry and Grace Lynch, and along with four others from Glebe Coroner’s Court, we got together and that’s how the Homicide Victims Support Group was formed,” says Christine.

She explains why this group was so vitally important, not only to her family but to other homicide victims’ families.

“At the sentencing, Garforth said to his wife, ‘I’ll see you in 14 years’. I thought over my dead body.”

Ebony’s father Peter Simpson stood outside court after the sentencing and told the media, Ebony got a death sentence, my family got a life sentence and Garforth got bed and breakfast.”

Christine believes, Garforth was positive that he would be let out.

“He knew the system, he had been in it — the system — all his life. He knew he’d got 14 years and probably be out in eight. So that’s how confident he was; he had played the system over the years.”

It has been reported previously that Garforth was suspected in the unsolved 1979 murder of West Australian teenager Felicia Maria Wilson, 19, of Perth.

Miss Wilson, a former beauty pageant queen, was stripped naked and slashed before her killer smashed her skull with a 27kg block of limestone as she walked home from work.

Western Australia detectives received information from NSW police about a man who reportedly had nightmares about Miss Wilson.

By 1994, NSW police had further information about Miss Wilson’s death that linked Garforth, who lived in the area at the time, to the unsolved crime. The investigation is ongoing.

“Garforth had a long criminal history and the judges should have put him in jail a long time before he got to Ebony. Had they done that, perhaps my daughter would still be alive,” says Peter. “He was a standover man, a thief and a bully.”

Records show Garforth had been charged with 76 offences and had been convicted on 41 occasions when he and his family moved from Western Australia to Picton.

Then St Vincent de Paul relocated him from Picton to Bargo. Garforth had lived 3km from Ebony’s home for only five weeks.

“I am angry, you bet I am. Some of the support groups expect me to get on with my life, but how can I? I’m damned if that paedophile is ever going to be let out or let near children ever again,” says Christine.

She continues, “I asked community services about how they monitor paedophiles and they told me that they know their whereabouts. But how?

“They told me if they don’t turn up for work, then they know how to track them down. Spare me, by then it is too late. They don’t keep any eye on them, they are not monitored,” warns Christine.

“We keep making excuses for these people. When you talk to people in the system, they just don’t get it.

“I think they believe that you go to court and then you just get back on with your life. But it’s not like that. There seems to be a lot of rehabilitation for the perpetrators of crime, but not rehabilitation for the victims,” says Christine.

While incarcerated, Garforth claimed victim compensation for an alleged bashing, saying he lost partial hearing in one ear.

He was successful initially, but the decision was overturned and the money he was awarded from the government as compensation was sent to charity.

Additionally in 2015, Garforth applied and successfully won new freedoms in jail. These freedoms would have allowed him access to work and rehabilitation courses.

At the time, an advocacy group for people in Australian prisons called Justice Action supported Garforth’s new privileges in jail, saying in a statement, “It’s a shame for the family to still hold onto such anger towards the man after such a long period, after 23 years.

“It’s a good thing for him and a good thing for the community. It’s absolutely essential that Corrective Services does focus on moving him into a lighter less security place (sic). It’s to their benefit, everybody’s benefit, that he can then move on and get some measure of freedom and improvement.

“It’s a really sad thing to have lost their child but to link it to the man, to the offender, is a shame. They should at some stage, clear the air, move on with their lives, and let him move on with his life as well,” the statement concluded.

Corrective Services Minister David Elliott was furious at the Serious Offenders Review Council’s decision, which was rubber-stamped by Corrective Services boss Peter Severin.

He announced the next day that he would reverse the council’s decision and looked to strip away any existing privileges that Garforth enjoyed at Goulburn jail.

“He crossed the line what is acceptable in society and when you cross those lines, they are precious lines with children, you can’t come back into society. You’ve already isolated yourself, “You are not worthy of living in here, around children or women or anything else, so keep him where he is, it’s the safest place for him,” said Minister Elliot.

OUT OF BAD THINGS GOOD THINGS COME

“At the time, I took all my anger and turned it into something positive,” says Christine.

“I set up Ebony House, the first recovery centre in the world for homicide victims. So I burnt up all my angry energy and put it into this. I made a lot of changes; they were very powerful back then.”

Detective Sergeant Rod Grant who was involved in the police investigation, says it was a case like nothing he had ever seen before.

“There is no worse fear than having your child abducted, and so it had the attention of the entire country. It is a rare crime, but we were about to find out first-hand that rare things bond people.

“The Simpson family was going through the worst time in the world and no one knew what to say or do.

“One of the greatest achievements of the Simpsons was a place where families of victims of crime could retreat from the world at a time of their greatest crisis. Ebony and Ivory Houses were donated by the NSW government and they were opened by Premier Bob Carr on 8 September, 1995.

“The achievements of the Simpsons and the Homicide Victims Support Group didn’t stop there, and to date have been nothing but amazing.

“They have given many presentations to detectives and other interest groups. In 1994, they managed to have unsworn statements from the dock abolished; in 1995, they secured the enactment of the Mandatory Life Sentences Act and, in 1995, they successfully campaigned for a change in legislation so that convicted prisoners could not receive compensation for being victims of crime.”

“What Garforth did was cold, callous and cruel to the extreme. In my eyes he is just a thing. I don’t think he is capable of emotions,” says Peter.

Christine explains how she was driven to keep going. “I don’t think you can make great changes if you haven’t felt the pain, it’s the pain that drives you. You can feel empathy, try to understand, but you can’t feel that power of wanting change unless it has happened to you.

“I have learnt to put the pain and anger somewhere. I have built a nice life. I have put my life back together pretty well but there is part of my heart that is broken and I can’t fix it. And no matter how many years go by, I can’t fix it.

“I am angry about it. I am angry about what happened to my daughter, I don’t want people to tell me not to be angry. I damn well am angry.

“A man took my daughter’s life and ruined our family. It’s a stupid system that says you should forgive and not be angry, I think it’s absurd. If I wasn’t angry and upset I wouldn’t be a mother, would I?

“I can see Ebony as plain as anything. She’s still nine. I can see her hair, I can see everything about her and I can hear her voice. I can’t forgive the person who took that away from our family.”