Inner west ‘houses of horror’: Dark secrets of suburban Sydney
What lies behind the doors of these unassuming homes hides some of Sydney’s darkest secrets. From the disturbing “baby killers” to the depraved murder of a young woman, this is the darker side of suburbia in the inner west.
Inner West
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The inner west isn’t all coffee shops and man buns, surprisingly beneath the roasted beans and cultural diversity lies a dark underbelly that occasionally rears its head.
There’s been blood splattered crime scenes, bodies left in the street, depravity and the sheer horror of some crimes that rocked Sydney to its core which is still being felt to this day.
They can happen, and have done, in the most serene of locations.
There is no suggestion the current homeowners are involved in any wrongdoing.
NICOLE CARTWRIGHT
Just what happened to Nicole Cartwright at a Haberfield unit in March 2018 is enough to make anyone’s stomach turn.
A court heard earlier this year Dennis Pietrobon met up with Ms Cartwright after meeting on a dating app for a “puff and play” session.
What happened next, according to police, saw Pietrobon punch Ms Cartwright out cold, tape her hoodie over her head and then, two days after she died, dump her body in a Hunters Hill reserve.
The most terrifying part of the horrific ordeal was a member of the public almost caught Pietrobon moving the remains in a wheelie bin at the reserve.
Pietrobon died earlier this year while on remand for the murder of Ms Cartwright.
STEPHEN DOUGLAS
In one of the saddest cases in recent years, the quiet harbourside suburb of Balmain East descended into chaos in December 2019.
Streets were cordoned off all over the peninsula and distraught neighbours were coming to terms with what went on inside an unassuming Nicholson St unit.
What only a few inside the building knew, because they could hear it all play out, was that Peter Kemball had stabbed his care worker Stephen Douglas to death.
Kemball was found not guilty of murder on mental health grounds in the Supreme Court, where his judge-alone trial heard he suffered from a raft of mental health issues.
Court documents released last November detailed how Kemball thought his care worker was a hitman who had come to kill him before telling his father on the phone “I just killed my case worker”.
BABY FARMER KILLINGS
From the outside, the Makin’s Burren St home was quaint. Inside it was a house of horrors.
The Harbour City still has not recovered from the unimaginable things John and Sarah Makin did inside it in 1892.
The inner west home was one of several around Sydney rented by the “baby farming” couple, who would child mind children of women who couldn’t support them or had given birth out of wedlock.
But it was only when James Mahoney was working in the backyard of their Macdonaldtown home on October 10, 1892 that he made the gruesome discovery of the remains of two babies blocking a drain.
The couple, in total, had murdered 13 children it would eventually be revealed, in a sick plot to rid themselves of the children they were being paid to care for in order to take on more.
John Makin was hanged after being found guilty of murder while his wife Sarah served 19 years in jail before being released on a manslaughter charge.
Some have suggested the reason the suburb was wiped off the map and replaced with Erskineville in Sydney was due to the bloody reminder of the dozen babies killed by the Makins
The house still stands to this day.
MENGMEI LENG
The warped mind of Derrek Barrett has seen him jailed for 46 years.
The sadistic killer stabbed his niece Mengmei “Michelle” Leng 31 times inside the Campsie unit he shared with his aunt before driving her body 100km to the Central Coast and tossing her remains off a cliff in April 2016.
He has since been sentenced to 12 more years in jail after police uncovered a USB containing videos showing Barrett raping Ms Leng and horrifically abusing her just hours before her death.
He shockingly reported her missing himself and could be seen on CCTV at a petrol station on his way to dump her body off.
STRATHFIELD MASSACRE
A strange aura still surrounds Strathfield Plaza 30 years after Wade Frankum committed one of the most horrifying attacks in Australian history.
His 1991 shooting rampage saw seven people killed in a completely unprovoked fit of violence which later saw Frankum kill himself on the shopping centre’s roof.
Frankum, according to reports, arrived and drank several coffees at a cafe in the plaza before stabbing a teenage girl to death out of nowhere and firing in all directions inside the centre.
Inside his house of horrors in Strathfield police found a stash of violent movies and literature, including a copy of American Psycho.
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