John Edwards kept a machete under the bed he shared with his wife
Monster dad John Edwards kept his wife in a state of terror night and day, even sleeping with a large machete under the bed they shared, an inquest was told on Thursday.
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- Killer dad stalked estranged wife at yoga class
- Family lawyer dismissed killer dad John Edwards as ‘slightly annoying’
Monster dad John Edwards kept a large machete under the bed he shared with his wife Olga, an inquest was told on Thursday.
One of the things Olga, who committed suicide six months after Edwards shot their two children dead, would like the inquest to know from beyond the grave was that she should have been told when her violent and estranged husband was granted a gun licence, her family court barrister Peter Fowler told the inquest yesterday.
“I have little doubt in my mind that things would have been very different,” an emotional Mr Fowler told the inquest into the deaths of Jack and Jennifer Edwards.
Mr Fowler, who represented Olga in proceedings where she was granted custody of the pair, said that had she known about the gun, she would have moved the children further away for their safety.
He revealed Olga’s fears about the machete under the bed, and also how Edwards once menacingly turned up at a shopping centre where Jennifer and her mother were selling cupcakes to raise money for the RSPCA.
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Mr Fowler said every year she lived with Edwards, he reminded Olga on the anniversary of the death of one of his children from a previous relationship that he would threaten to kill that child’s mother because “she had taken the children away from me”.
Edwards and Olga had separated two years before he shot dead Jack, 15, and Jennifer, 13, in July 2018 and then killed himself. He obtained his gun licence in late 2017.
The inquest was also told that when Edwards, 67, picked up his guns from the pistol club the day before murdering his children in July 2018 that he broke the door of his locker.
He had slammed the door so hard it wouldn’t close and had to be wedged shut with a screwdriver.
But the staff at St Mary’s Pistol Club had no power to stop him taking out two of his five pistols, the new commander of the state’s firearms registry said yesterday.
The reason he had given the club for owning the guns was “sports shooting”.
According to an employee he was visibly flustered, slamming the door to his gun locker so hard it jammed and had to be fixed with a screwdriver.
But Mr Bell said there was no law allowing the club to halt Edwards or any other person from accessing their registered guns, even if they were obviously agitated.
“When the firearms don’t belong to the club, the club has no authority to restrict access to those firearms covered by legislation,” he said.
Mr Bell added it would be difficult to regulate this, for instance by requiring people give a reason when taking out their firearms.
“What’s to stop him telling them that anyway and then going and doing what he did?” he said.
As well, he suggested that placing more stringent requirements on gun club storage may lead more people to store guns at home.
But he added any change that enhances public safety “would help”.
Mr Bell said the registry receives 300 applications every week for gun licences, most of them for recreational shooting.
He called for every gun owner to be fingerprinted.
“We do it for security guards. We do it for locksmiths. But we don’t do it for firearms licences.”
The law dictates someone must be a “fit and proper person” to be a gun owner.
But Mr Bell said when he arrived at the registry in 2018 “a majority” of staff were confused about what that actually meant and had no policy to look at.
“In the absence of that guidance I found that most of the staff struggled with that application of the provision,” he said.
He agreed it was a “heartland” aspect of the job, but could not say how something so fundamental went unaddressed until as recently as 2017.
Before Edwards was granted a licence, a clerk considered his police database report, which contained a long history of domestic violence incidents.
“This was not a line ball call about whether John Edwards was fit and proper, this should have been as easy decision, correct?” asked counsel assisting the coroner Kate Richardson SC.
“It would have been for me, yes,” he replied.
The inquest continues.
Firearms registry supervisor backs giving killer dad gun licence
A senior supervisor in the firearms registry has backed giving killer dad John Edwards a gun licence and said she would do it again based on the same information.
The supervisor, whose identity has been suppressed, admitted she had never reviewed how her team of seven — who approved Edwards’ gun permit and licence — had made their decisions despite them still working in the registry and granting licences today.
The supervisor, a former police officer, said the registry had been “traumatised” by Edwards shooting dead his two children Jack, 15, and Jennifer, 13, but said: “I probably would have granted the licence as well”.
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In July 2018, just over a year after he obtained his gun licence, Edwards, 67, followed Jennifer home from school to the West Pennant Hills home where she was hiding from her dad with her brother and their mum, Olga, who had separated from Edwards in March 2016.
Edwards shot his two children dead and then returned to his Normanhurst home and killed himself.
Olga Edwards, 37, committed suicide six months later.
The supervisor agreed there had been “ambiguity” about the processes in the NSW Firearms Registry in 2017 that led to Edwards getting his so-called Commissioner’s Permit in 2017, which allowed him to train at a gun club before applying for a licence.
She said she thought the two clerks who reviewed his application for a permit had looked at his entire criminal history in the police COPS database.
However the clerks have given evidence that they only thought they had to look at why Edwards had been refused a licence in 2010.
He was refused a licence in 2010 because he had lied that he had no AVO against him for the required 10 years, when in fact one was taken out against him in 2003.
The two clerks said they only made sure that the 2003 AVO had expired — despite another 15 events on his criminal history, including alleged assault, stalking, intimidation and hitting Jack and Jennifer.
The firearms registry supervisor said she could not be sure that Edwards had lied in 2010 — he may just have been mistaken about the timing.
He was never referred to the police in 2010 for prosecution for making a false declaration.
How someone with such a criminal history of violence got a firearms licence is one of the central questions being investigated by the inquest at the Coroners Court at Lidcombe.
The supervisor told the inquest on Wednesday that she had expected the clerks to have run through Edwards’ whole criminal history before recommending a gun permit but agreed there was a “real ambiguity” about what was required.
The clerks were given no formal training in the 600-plus pieces of legislation they had to take into account, but they were “buddied up” with more senior staff to learn the ropes, she said.
After training at St Marys Pistol Club, Edwards was given a licence in June 2017.
The supervisor said that based on what she knew then, she would still have granted him a licence.
She said that was because the reasoning they used in 2017 to determine whether to grant a licence “had some flaws in it”.
She said the last AVO against him had been in 2003.
The inquest has heard the other 15 incidents recorded were allegations, with one AVO against an older daughter in 2011 being interim until the woman moved overseas.
The supervisor also backed her staff member, who had not picked up the phone and rung the Kuringai Pistol Club when the club emailed the registry to discuss Edwards after he said he was moving to another gun club.
Had they done so, they would have discovered that Edwards had been aggressive towards pistol club officers and that they had refused him membership based on his personality and behaviour.
The supervisor denied his behaviour should have rung alarm bells, on the basis that it was a sporting body and she was a member of a sporting body and she thought that sometimes people just did not get along with each other.
The inquest before State Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan continues.