Swaying gum trees flank the property, which sits on a slope leading down to the Albert River, a flowing life source running through southeast Queensland.

It’s a still, tranquil place.

John Asquith spent several happy years here, with his partner Patricia Byers. A woman he called “Trish’ for short.

They’d spend weekends with their surf skis on the river, having barbecues on the deck.

Then she shot him in the head while he slept.

Miraculously, John survived.

But Byers’ previous de facto Carel Gottgens wasn’t so lucky. Police allege she murdered him in the upstairs bedroom, though his body has never been found.

“I’ve always maintained I know where the body is, but nobody has ever dug it up,” says John, 78, from his quaintly furnished home in a northern NSW retirement village.

When Asquith and Byers first met as colleagues in a Brisbane insurance agency, the pair quickly struck up a friendship and she invited him over to the Yatala house where she lived with Carel Gottgens.

John noticed the backyard was all dug up. He queried Byers and she told him she and Carel had planned to build a deck there but hadn’t got around to it.

Byers and John began having an affair.

Soon afterwards, Carel disappeared and Byers ordered a large six-by-six foot concrete slab to be installed over the sandpit in the backyard.

She tearily told John that Carel had left her for a woman in Thailand.

“Next minute the deck was being built, and it was around the same time that she’d rung me and told me that Carel had left and all he’d taken was his bed.

“And I thought, ‘geez, that’s rather odd. Why would someone take their bed?! Particularly when he owned the house’.”

But John had no reason to doubt the charismatic new woman in his life. After separating from his wife of 25 years and living alone in a bachelor pad at Mount Gravatt, he was suddenly in the throes of a sweeping love affair.

“I’ve got to admit it: I was in love with her. I wouldn’t have been with her if I didn’t think there was something for us.

“Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” he adds, bemused.

The deep gouge in his forehead, where Byers shot a bullet into his head at close range in the hope of receiving a substantial life insurance payout, acts as a daily reminder of the betrayal that befell him.

“People often say, ‘oh, what’s that? You had a skin cancer removed?’” says John.

“And I go, ‘no, gunshot.’ That’s good. That shocks them,” he grins.

John and Byers rose early on the morning of April 12, 1993. As daylight broke, they loaded Byers’ boat, the Misty Blue, with supplies for a romantic long weekend.

Steaks and sausages for the barbecue, fresh bread rolls, wine and beer and port for after dinner.

They launched the boat into the turquoise waters of Moreton Bay and as the day became balmy and the sky turned a brilliant blue, the Misty Blue puttered her way across the calm waters towards Peel Island.

“It was a beautiful day, crystal clear. I can still remember how clear the water was,” says John.

He wasn’t a boating man and was unconvinced about heading out for the Easter long weekend, but Byers offset his reservations.

They needed the relaxation time, quality time as a couple, she told him.

Since getting together, the couple had quit their jobs in insurance and opened a fish and chip shop, T.J’s Seafood and Takeaway, at Loganholme, and they were both exhausted from working seven days a week.

The water was still and they cruised along happily for several hours until early afternoon, when the engine cut out.

They each tried tinkering with the engine to no avail.

John suggested he take one of the surf skis and make his way over to the nearby island to ask for help but Byers told him he was wasting his time.

She told him they should settle in, watch the sun set and reassess the problem in the morning. Till this day, John still wonders if Byers made the engine malfunction deliberately.

“We had a few drinks and I cooked a barbecue and we sat up there. She was talking about alterations she was going to do to the boat — and it was nice,” he says

After dinner, they sat, drinking port as darkness fell over the empty expanse of water.

They showered and made love, then heady from the booze and content, John drifted off to sleep.

The last thing he remembers, Byers was reading a magazine beside him.

Bang.

The bullet exploded from the sawn off .22, bursting into his skull, to make a deep bloody wound in his forehead, barely missing his right eye.

Blood gushed down his face, running down over his chest and body.

The cabin was pitch-black and John was alone, disoriented, wondering what had happened.

He moved his fingers up to his head and felt a warm liquid oozing.

“All I could feel was this warm stuff, running down my face and I thought, ‘oh, gee, when I sat up I must have hit my head on something and cracked my head’,” he says.

His hands and legs began to tingle.

“I pulled out the sheet and I had blood all over me,” he recalls. “Eventually I got up and I started walking around and I saw the gun on the side of the boat. I heard her moaning and groaning up on the deck, so I crawled up the side of the boat.

“I think when she heard me up walking around she would have nearly pooped herself,” John chuckles.

“I heard this moan and it was up on the bow of the boat and I went up there and there she was, stark naked, lying on the bow of the boat.

“I said, ‘what’s up?’ and she said, ‘Oh, they hit me! They hit me!’

I didn’t know what she was talking about,” he says.

“Quick, cuddle me, I’m frozen,” Byers asked.

“I know you’re frozen but if I cuddle you you’re going to get blood all over you,” he told her.

“Well, just give me a little cuddle,” she insisted.

Now Byers was in a tricky situation.

John Asquith was supposed to be dead.

She’d taken out five fraudulent insurance policies on his life, set to earn her $250,000. Now he was up and walking around with a hole in his head.

Crown Prosecutor Paul Rutledge explains how everything went pear-shaped on Foxtel’s Crimes That Shook Australia.

“In reality what had happened was she and John Asquith had sexual intercourse, he went to sleep and then she shot him but the big mistake she made … well, first of all she shot him at close range, but she shot him with a sawn-off gun and the problem with that is that the muzzle velocity is a lot less than if she hasn’t sawn if off. And luckily for John Asquith he seems to have had a thick skull and the bullet did not penetrate his skull.”

Now, Byers had to tap-dance, fast. She needed a spectacular lie.

“She said pirates had come on board and shot me and then attacked her,” says Asquith.

But the Queensland coastline and the restful waters of Moreton Bay weren’t known for their pirate attacks and police instantly thought the story seemed off.

Later, when Byers was checked over at a doctor’s surgery in Dunwich after claiming the pirates attacked, doctors struggled to find a single bruise, cut or broken bone.

John told them he’d seen a gun on board but when police went back to search the Misty Blue, someone had got rid of the weapon.

Confused and bleary-eyed, John Asquith woke up on the operating table at Brisbane’s Princess Alexander Hospital.

A team of doctors had just finished operating, painstakingly removing each piece of shrapnel from his head, unsure whether he’d be left with permanent brain damage.

His ex-wife and boys, Kurt and Troy, rushed to the hospital.

When they arrived, Byers gathered her stepsons up in her arms.

Through tears, she told them their dad was going to be OK.

“She did look genuinely upset but that was probably more the shock of, ‘Oh s***, I’m in trouble now. How am I going to cover this up?’,” says Troy, now 40.

“Looking back, that was probably the hardest. The fact that she sat by his side for so long after it, and our side, that was worse than what she actually did in some ways.”

While Byers played the loving partner and held John’s hand during his six-week hospital stay, detectives were working behind the scenes to collect evidence.

The theory Byers may have had a financial motive for murder was proved correct when police found the five forged life insurance policies.

The first policy was taken out just shortly after they started their relationship; the last dated a month before the boat trip.

Each had a signature that appeared to be John Asquith’s but forensic handwriting analysis confirmed forgery.

Then a chance discovery by a group of young men fishing in the Albert River, not far from the Yatala home where Byers and John lived, produced a murder weapon.

The men found a rifle butt on the river bank.

When police divers were sent in, within about half-an-hour they returned with a rifle barrel they’d found stuck in the mud.

Now, police had to find a way to link Byers to the weapon.

Thankfully she’d made their task relatively easy.

Byers had altered the gun in the basement of the Yatala house using a vice. When police searched the house they found wood shavings from the gun which they could prove came from the same .22 Byers kept in the house. The same one that was used to shoot John Asquith.

Black and blue and covered in bandages, John Asquith lay recovering in his hospital bed.

Detectives told him they believed Byers was responsible for the attempt on his life but he couldn’t fathom it. He told detectives they were wrong, to leave her and stop questioning his beloved.

“I knew that I’d been shot but I didn’t want to admit it,” he says.

“It’s a silly thing to say but love can do strange things and I did love the woman, and I just couldn’t believe that she would do something like that.

“But then when I found out she’d taken insurance policies out on my life and all that sort of stuff, I said, ‘oh, OK. Right. So everything was for her gain?’”

Eventually, he confronted her.

“Look, the police are going to charge you with attempted murder,” he remembers telling her.

“Why did you do that to me? Why me?” she wailed.

“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it! They’re wrong. I’m not guilty.”

But as John soon came to accept, there were only two people on board, and he hadn’t shot himself in the head.

However, when the case went to trial at Brisbane Supreme Court in September, 1994, that was exactly the argument Byers made.

She pleaded not guilty, her lawyer arguing the couple had been involved in a joint conspiracy to fake John’s death and collect the insurance.

In perhaps one of the most outrageous moments in legal history, Byers cross-examined her victim, John Asquith.

She had used her time in prison, ahead of the court case, to study law and interrogated Asquith.

She called him an inferior lover and suggested he was struggling financially after his divorce, attacking his masculinity.

“If there was any way she could scam anything, she’d scam it,” says Asquith.

“She’s very, very, very clever. She can twist people around her little finger.”

But the star liar and manipulator had torrents of incriminating evidence to contend with.

She was found guilty.

But her charms weren’t lost altogether.

The judge sentenced her to 12 years for attempted murder but granted her parole after three on the basis that he thought it was unlikely she would offend again.

“Christ, she’s got him too,” John remembers thinking.

Meanwhile, police were already collecting evidence to prove Byers had committed the murder of her previous partner, Carel Gottgens.

The high-profile court case between Byers and Asquith had set wheels in motion when Gottgens’s daughters recognised Byers in the newspaper as their father’s partner.

They hadn’t heard from their father since 1989, which they found odd but Byers assured them he had moved to Thailand, abandoning her for another woman.

Suddenly, a sickening explanation began to form in their minds and they reported him as a missing person, four years after he was last seen alive.

“When we saw the article in the paper about the attempted murder of John Asquith we finally had some clue to go on about my father’s whereabouts. We just thought the worst had happened to him,” Carel’s daughter, Ella Celon said at the time.

When police began investigating they found Carel had mysteriously vanished in July, 1990.

All his money, credit cards and assets disappeared soon afterwards.

Police found the father-of-two had never boarded the flight he was supposed to have caught to Thailand.

He had booked a flight but it was cancelled, with a refund cheque for the amount made out to Byers.

Handwriting expert Gregory Marheine examined the cheque and found it was forged.

The plot thickened when Marheine also identified Byers that had forged several letters on Carel’s behalf and had written a note of resignation to his employer, Ross Roberts, to explain his absence.

The typewriter used to write the note was found at Byers’ house.

A series of cheques with forged signatures had been used to draw money from Carel’s account and Byers handwriting was identified on one particular cheque which directed a sum of $10,000 to be paid to Patricia Byers.

She transferred the deeds to the house at Glen Osmond Road, Yatala, formerly owned by Gottgens, to herself and his daughters would later have to fight the convicted murderer for their father’s home.

In 1999, Byers was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Carel Gottgens, with a non-parole period of 13 years.

On 28 June, Byers put in her fourth application for parole.

The board has yet to announce its judgment but there’s every chance after four failed attempts, the convicted killer could finally walk free.

She’s proven herself a master manipulator, capable of twisting prison officials to barrack on her behalf.

In documents obtained by News Corp Australia, Byers is described in glowing terms by the facilitator of a prison cosmetics course.

“Although I’ve only known Trish for a year, I believe wholeheartedly that she is a woman of her word. She is a leader who positively influences others around her, as well as possessing an attitude of humility in endeavouring to continue to personally grow and develop life principles,” writes one woman.

While Byers was held at Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre she became president of the Claytons Toastmasters Club, holding public speaking meetings for members.

A fellow ‘toastmaster’ also lodged a letter on Byers’ behalf to the prison.

“It has been clear to a great many people that her enthusiasm, encouragement, honesty and understanding has been responsible for the continual response and large numbers of other members at the fortnightly Claytons Toastmasters meetings.

None of this comes as a surprise to John.

“She has an incredible power to manipulate. She’d have those people wrapped around her little finger,” he says.

Twenty five years after Byers pulled the trigger, releasing the near fatal bullet into Asquith’s skull, she maintains her innocence.

Until 2016, she vehemently denied murdering Carel Gottgens, crying crocodile tears during the trial as she likened her situation to that of Lindy Chamberlain — the woman famously wrongfully convicted for killing her baby, Azaria.

Byers only admitted to Carel’s murder in an attempt to skirt around South Australia’s “no body, no parole” laws.

She has been imprisoned in the state since 2009, after making a transfer request from Brisbane to be closer to her son Alan Byers in Adelaide.

Seventeen years after Gottgens’ disappearance, Byers finally admitted to his murder. Detective Senior Constable Scott Chapman flew from Brisbane to South Australia to interview Byers.

“She presented as a lady in her late 60s, early 70s. She was quite frail and also softly spoken. She agreed to participate in the interview though did not agree to it being recorded at that time,” Detective Senior Constable Chapman told Crimes That Shook Australia.

Byers told police she hit Gottgens on the back of the head with a machete, after an argument had broken out between them while they were sharing a six-pack of beer by the Logan River — just down from the Beenleigh Rum Distillery.

According to Byers, Gottgens fell into the river and his body sunk, never to be seen again.

Detective Senior Sargeant Rosemary Walker worked on the investigation into Carel Gottgens’ disappearance. She instantly knew this version of events “didn’t make sense”.

“He was dropped at home on Tuesday night. He didn’t make the plane on the Friday afternoon. There was staining on the master bedroom floor which had been painted over. There were blood spots found on the wall of the master bedroom. There was a bed delivered that week. So the scenario doesn’t fit in with the facts,” Detective Senior Sargeant Walker said.

Police Prosecutor Paul Rutledge added he thought it was “unlikely” Byers had disposed of Gottgens body in the Logan River, as his remains would have been “quite easily discovered” in the narrow body of water.

“She was deemed to have not co-operated with police by giving a false version of events,” says Detective Senior Constable Scott Chapman.

In an explosive revelation, Alan Byers tells True Crime Australia his mother was lying to police about the whereabouts of Carel Gottgens’ body.

“If she did admit to it, well that’s just to lessen her time and what you don’t know is what I know,” says Alan.

Alan has been a long-term supporter of Byers.

For a while, he visited her almost every weekend but said they haven’t talked for almost a year.

“Now she’s in the maximum thing she’d prefer not to have visits because of the crap that she’s got to put up with, being stripsearched,” says Alan.

“We haven’t spoken for a while so I haven’t — I’ve got a letter sitting here that I’ve been looking at but bypassing it for the last few weeks and I haven’t read it yet,” says Alan.

However, he confirmed their relationship was “very close — in previous times, when she wasn’t in the clink”, and that for many years he schemed with his mother about how they could get her out of jail.

“It’s just that I’m very, very busy at the moment and I don’t get time to drop her a line and she can’t contact me because I’m only available on mobile and it’s difficult for her to call mobiles,” says Alan, who claims to be living in a remote part of South Australia.

Now in his late 40s, the former marine worker and father-of-two told True Crime Australia he was unemployed, “always on the move” and “living off berries and wild animals”.

He blamed his battle with depression, triggered by his mother’s imprisonment, for his current financial circumstances and nomadic lifestyle.

“I was sitting pretty, I dunno … you know when you go through depression? You go through depression (and) you suddenly realise, you wake up. I think I’ve had depression since she left, ever since that happened, for years.

“I’d prefer to be on my own, doing my own thing,” he adds.

Alan says living under the shadow of his mother’s shocking crimes has affected his life so much, so he felt he had to leave Brisbane.

Perhaps the most unnerving aspect of Byers impending release is that police suspect she may have been involved in other deaths but they have never been able to prove it.

Her first husband died while the couple were out shooting, according to Byers’ version of events.

Then she lost her eldest son in a terrible motorcycle accident in which he was decapitated.

Amazingly, Byers was riding the same motorcycle but survived. If her version of events is correct, Byers has been the victim of terrible misfortune.

For 25 years, John Asquith has lived with the trauma of Patricia Byers’ crime.

He still suffers from constant neck pain and has never returned to work since the attack.

The post-traumatic stress he was diagnosed with has played out in insomnia, debilitating anxiety, night sweats and trust issues in relationships.

For a long time he refused to talk about what happened to him but with the prospect of Byers’ release he is moved to speak.

“It’s had a pretty solid effect on my life, over the years, you know. It hasn’t been easy. I still have my ups and downs,” he says.

“I don’t do it as much now as I used to, but you wake up in the middle of the night, you sit up in bed, you re-live that moment and you’re just exhausted.

“Memories come back and hit you every so often. I think the thing was … the thing I can’t believe is that I was conned by an expert.”

During the court case, Byers told John she would “get” him and “his boys”.

“I’m happy to do whatever I can if it keeps her in there,” he adds.

“I feel she’s the type to seek revenge.”