Edwards murder inquest: Evil dad’s suicide note after killing kids
A monstrous father who killed his two teenage children after a bitter custody dispute with their mother left a final chilling insult for her after his evil act – a suicide note blaming her for the murders.
Police & Courts
Don't miss out on the headlines from Police & Courts. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Monster father John Edwards left a sick suicide note blaming his wife Olga for him killing their two children, Jack and Jennifer.
The three-page letter found by police on a USB stick on the bedside table next to his body started: “Olga you may scream out what has John done when the reality is what has Olga done.”
It ended: “None of this had to happen had you been a halfway normal person.”
The reality was that it was Edwards who was far from normal.
His previous partners have told the inquest into the murder suicide how he controlled their money and their looks, making them grow their hair long and wear “mini” dresses and lipstick. Sometimes he would not talk to them for weeks. He threatened to kill two and gave one rat poison.
One woman fled over the garden wall with her children to escape while was in the shower. His first wife said he “was not particularly good looking but he was charming and would bewitch you, then he turned.”
He had eight children from six previous relationships who have described how he took his belt out of the belt loops on his pants and thrashed them with it or hit them with a cattle whip. One said the loneliest times in his life were when he had to have a custody visit with his father and another said it had been like being in a prison.
The cruel suicide note was saved onto the USB at 2.16pm on July 5, 2018, less than an hour before Edwards left his Normanhurst home in a hire car to drive to Pennant Hills Railway Station and follow Jennifer, 13, home.
Download our app and stay up to date anywhere, anytime
He shot dead Jennifer and Jack, 15, with a gun he had collected from St Marys Pistol Club the day before. Then Edwards, 67, went home and shot himself in the head after placing a T-shirt bearing the words “World’s Greatest Daddy” across a chest of drawers so police would see it. Olga, 37, committed suicide six months later.
A statement to the inquest by investigating officer Detective Sergeant Tara Phillips said Edwards had a propensity for violence and a history of psychological and physical assaults against the women in his life and his children.
He became consumed with maintaining a relationship with Jack and Jennifer after he split with Olga in March 2016, but they wanted nothing to do with him.
When he believed Jack and Jennifer were being disobedient, he would do what Olga described as the “finger treatment”, bending their fingers backwards and squashing them until it hurt. He told her it he had learned that in the special forces.
He was never in the special forces, nor was he an “Aboriginal chieftain” as he told one woman he persuaded to move from the US to Sydney before abandoning her.
LIFELINE 13 11 14