‘He will kill again’, murder victim Tania Westbrook’s mum warns
Stephen Chowis murdered his wife Tania with a candlestick but the victim’s mother says a letter he wrote from jail reveals he’s not sorry for brutally killing their daughter — as he faces the parole board later this year.
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The mother of a murder victim is pleading for the man who fatally bashed her daughter to be kept behind bars over fears he could attack and possibly kill another woman.
Lynn Westbrook, 72, says Stephen John Albert Chowis is incapable of controlling his anger and would be a danger to any new partner upon his release into the community.
Chowis murdered his wife, Tania, 36, at their Kilkenny home on April 30, 2005, and is eligible for parole having served his minimum 14-year prison sentence.
But Mrs Westbrook says a letter written by Chowis from his jail cell shows a lack of genuine remorse for brutally killing her daughter.
“If he gets released I know this man is going to bash another woman. That is my biggest fear,” Mrs Westbrook told the Sunday Mail.
“If that woman decides to leave him like Tania wanted to I think he would kill that person too because he can’t stand to lose control.
“I don’t want anyone going through what I have been with him. I often have tears for my daughter and what he’s done and I don’t understand it.
“Tania was a brave lady who suffered so much. He cannot hurt her any more. Safe in the arms of Jesus.”
Chowis strangled and bashed Tania with a candlestick holder in the front bedroom of their Regency Rd home. He then tried to take his own life.
Sentencing judge Justice Margaret Nyland said the deaths of two of the couple’s children, one of whom was a stillborn, had caused problems in their 18-year marriage.
“These problems were exacerbated as the result of the discovery … that the Women’s and Children’s Hospital had inappropriately retained body parts from the two deceased children, that being without your permission or prior knowledge,’’ she said.
Ms Nyland was referring to revelations, in 2001, that hundreds of body parts taken from dead children had been kept for medical research without the permission of their parents.
Almost 1000 child and adult specimens were stored at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Many of the organs and tissue samples were from children’s bodies between 1957 and 1990.
Justice Nyland described the murder as a “misplaced act of compassion”, adding that Chowis was in a highly emotional state when he killed his wife.
“Over a long period of time, your wife talked about killing herself and she raised this on a number of occasions in the week preceding her eventual death,” she said.
But Mrs Westbrook strongly denied Tania ever suggested to Chowis that she wanted to die.
“She did not want to be bashed to death. She did not want to be murdered. She did not want to die. Stephen is just using that as an excuse for what he has done,” Mrs Westbrook said.
“Tania was able to get through (the body parts scandal) but he didn’t allow her. He wanted her to be so down and so tortured and I couldn’t understand that.”
In a legal first, Justice Margaret Nyland continued a suppression on the identity of the couple and their two teenage children even after Chowis confessed to the crime.
That decision prompted intense public debate led by Mrs Westbrook, who called for the order to be overturned to ensure murderers could not be “protected or hide behind the system”.
Justice Nyland finally lifted the controversial order seven years later, in October 2012, during a legislated periodic review of suppressions.
Mrs Westbrook and her husband, Clive Westbrook, last year wrote letters to Chowis, asking him why he murdered Tania and if he was sorry for what he had done.
In his reply on August 7, 2018, Chowis said he did not believe anyone would fully understand or appreciate the devastating effect of the hospital body parts scandal.
He wrote that he felt the couple had not received any support during their horrendous ordeal.
“It was at this point that I capitulated when Tania asked me yet again a question she had asked me so many times,” Chowis wrote.
“The result of my capitulation was gut-wrenching and heartbreaking for so many. Tania was dead and so many others are hurting to this day.
“There are no words to truly express the remorse I feel, to display the empathy and sorrow I carry with me for Tania and you both.
“I do not look to shirk and lessen my culpability. I alone am responsible for I have failed my family in so many ways.
“There is and will always remain with me a sadness and hollowness as I trudge through the rest of my existence.”
Mr Westbrook, 65, who is Tania’s stepfather, said he believed Chowis was claiming deep regret to win favour with the Parole Board.
Chowis will face the board again in November.
“He is using Tania as an excuse to say ‘I had to do it anyway because Tania asked me to’. He couldn’t care less,” Mr Westbrook said.
Parole Board chairwoman Frances Nelson QC said: “I don’t comment in advance of the Parole Board making a decision.”
Originally published as ‘He will kill again’, murder victim Tania Westbrook’s mum warns