Elisha Rose’s dark secret: ‘My father was a multiple murderer’
LAWYER Elisha Rose has finally unburdened herself of a terrible, dark secret - her father was a contract killer who cold-bloodedly murdered five victims.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
LAWYER Elisha Rose has finally unburdened herself of a terrible, dark secret - her father was a contract killer who cold-bloodedly murdered five victims.
Elisha has lived with the infamy of her father Lindsey’s monstrous deeds since she was 13 years old.
Sentenced in 1998 to five consecutive life sentences and ordered never to be released, he murdered five people in a 10-year period in the 1980s and 1990s.
But as his daughter tells the ABC’s Australian Story tonight, rather than being consumed by trauma, Elisha is determined to atone for her father’s crimes.
“In 1984 when I was four months old, my father, Lindsey Rose, killed his first two victims,” she tells the program.
“In 1987 he killed his third victim. In 1994 he killed his fourth and fifth victim.”
Two years later and a few months shy of her 13th birthday, she was walking home from school to find two men sitting at a table next to her mother with the family’s old photo albums.
“I soon learned the men were detectives. They had flown from Sydney to visit us in Perth.
“
“They asked questions in rapid fire, likely wanting to see my genuine and unfettered reactions. I had only seen my father a couple of times since we left Sydney in January 1993, three years earlier.
“Later I learnt my father was accused of murder as I knelt on the mat in our lounge room, watching the Sydney evening news that was aired late at night in Perth.
“Most of all I remember being in utter disbelief, in truly life-changing shock.”
Elisha would later enter witness protection after threats to her life as the full extent of her father’s crimes came to light.
Lindsey Rose was a former paramedic, and saved many lives at Sydney’s Granville train disaster in 1977.
Some 20 years later, he pleaded guilty to the murder of five people and a host of associated crimes earning him a never-to-be-released life sentence.
His victims were Bill Cavanagh, Carmelita Lee, Reynette Holford, Fatma Ozonal and Kerrie Pang.
“My father’s actions have created horrific trauma, loss and grief to their families and that will be intergenerational trauma for those families,” Elisha told the ABC.
“I felt an immeasurable weight on my shoulders and like I owed a debt to society far beyond the usual karmic balance one must try to keep even.
“I visited my father and exchanged letters with him, read books on forensic psychology, attended counselling and eventually completed a Masters in Criminal Justice.
"The only thing that made sense to me for a long time was that my father had created an imbalance in this world by killing innocent people; my duty was to balance the scales. No matter that the debt was not mine, I knew I had to right his wrongs.
“I haven’t seen my father since April 2009. That visit to Sydney to see him at the Goulburn Supermax was marked with the intense high of being admitted to The Supreme Court of NSW and the heartbreaking low of realising that I could never accept my father’s excuses for his actions.”
Back in Perth, Elisha has establish herself as a young litigation lawyer, fulfilling a deep-seated need to give back to the community.
And now that a book about her father’s crimes has finally been published, she agreed for the first time to talk publicly about her father to “finally unburden myself of a secret I have carried for nearly 20 years.
Elisha tells her story on Australian Story’s Balancing the Scales at 8:00pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.