He was her much-adored “little bro” she grew up with on the Gold Coast. She was his on-again, off-again girlfriend for years who Talitha had become close friends with.

“(At one stage) I was hanging out with them every weekend. Poor Bronson would be left alone because Shelsea and I were such great friends. We’d be like ‘Bye, we’re having a cigarette’ and he’d be going ‘Well this is fun’,” she recalled with a chuckle.

SHELSEA’S FAMILY DEMAND INQUEST, ANSWERS

INSIDE THE DEATHS OF BRONSON ELLERY AND SHELSEA SCHILLING

But speaking for the first time since that fatal day 18 months ago, the pain is still evident, surfacing frequently on her face with her eyes welling up just as often.

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Like Miss Schilling’s family, Talitha and her parents are still searching for final answers and a measure of closure they feel they don’t have yet.

“Our family is hurting but we feel hurt for hers too,” she said.

“We love her family and we support everything they are doing,” she said of the Schilling’s recent calls for an inquest and further grilling of people in the unit on the day of the deaths.

According to accounts from two of those witnesses, Talitha’s sibling – five years her junior – is accused of strangling and bashing 20-year-old Miss Schilling to death during an argument.

Witnesses Jasmine O’Neil and Christopher Paul Lowden are believed to have both gone into a bathroom before the argument became physical, according to accounts.

Soon after a third person arrived, Michael Warburton, comforting an inconsolable Ellery, 24, who is believed to have taken his own life with a hotshot of drugs, laying down beside a lifeless Miss Schilling.

In her wide-ranging first interview, Talitha - a 31-year-old beauty therapist and mum to a seven-year old boy - sheds new light on her brother’s background, circumstances leading up to the deaths and why she struggles to totally accept the witness accounts.

Among her insights are:

-Ellery eternally regretted his face tattoos which started in his experimental teens and he had repeatedly tried to laser them off;

-The “toxic” relationship between her brother and Miss Schilling, despite protest from both families, had resumed months before their deaths;

-Witness Jasmine O’Neil, at the unit that fateful day, this week shared directly with Talitha her version including Miss Schilling visiting the night before;

- Recurring descriptions of her brother changing into his suit to die don’t add up for Talitha – she swears he only had one and it was in her closet at her home at the time.

“But I can also believe it was an accident and he couldn’t live with himself. That is what we have been living with – we have to live with those two scenarios,” Talitha told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

“Both families have to live with whatever has happened. But we just want the truth so we can move on. I can’t sit there and look at my mum and how it affects her. There are two families who lost children that day, not just one.

“(But) I’m going to be honest with you - we started to lose Bronson the last couple of months. We started to realise he wasn’t being him. He was hanging out with people who none of us knew.”

GIFTED LITTLE BRO TO OUTCAST

Talitha recalls her brother’s gift growing up for music, banging drums along to Blink 182 at age four and also later teaching himself to play guitar and keyboards by ear.

As a teenager he would stay at home watching hit movies like American Pie, waiting up until she came back from parties to share in her excitement at going out.

He would lecture her about the evils of smoking and she ticks off his character traits as funny, calm and intelligent but a naughty kid who didn’t fit in with “schooling” at Benowa High.

He had aspirations of being a musician and making his parents proud: “He was a beautiful, good-looking person.”

But when he came home one day in his late teens with a neck tattoo, her aghast parents almost kicked him out. Soon after he turned up with bats inked on his face, she recalled.

“He was so young when he did it and didn’t realise how the world would judge him,” she said.

He didn’t drink or experiment with drugs growing up, but developed a tattoo “addiction”, she said.

“Bronson had that personality of ‘I’m going to have the most’. He had no idea how it would outcast him in his life. He always regretted them.

“I would lecture him, ‘What the f--- have you done to you face?’. He would be like ‘God, I don’t really know what I’ve done, I’m going to have to cover it, I know Talitha’.”

He tried laser treatment but felt it looked worse: “He went ‘Nah, it’s shit, I’m just going to put other (tattoos) over it.”

At about 22, instead of getting rid of his face tattoos he doubled down and completely covered himself.

“He was constantly, ever since he did that to his face, trying to get rid of it. He knew it outcast him in work, life, everything. He became a broken person.

“And it’s no excuse for whatever may have happened. But this person became outcast by society because he couldn’t go anywhere,” she said.

He missed family dinner outings including a grandparent’s 60th because the restaurant wouldn’t allow him in.

“Then I think he felt like he had to live up to what he looked like but it really wasn’t him. Because of what he ended up doing to his face, he felt he had to live up to that personality, and that’s the saddest thing.”

One thing led to another - all worse.

BIKIES

Dubbed ‘Lizard Man’ by police (a nickname which guts his family and crushes his mum), Talitha says he briefly fell in with Bandidos bikies but it was only for a matter of months.

“Bikies approached him and wanted this person who looked bad even though he wasn’t.

By his early 20s he was out of the clubs and got bashed to the point of ridiculousness – and that gave him his addiction to prescription medicine.

“He started changing, became reliant on prescription medication to numb being an outcast.

“People thought he was scary, but he wasn’t – he was more of a pussy than I was.”

HIDDEN RELATIONSHIP

Talitha became close to Miss Schilling but like the latter’s family, she felt Miss Schilling and her brother were better off staying away from each other.

She acknowledges at one point Miss Schilling had a Domestic Violence Order in place and her brother did jail time for repeatedly breaching it.

“(Shelsea) was concerned. In that moment we all were which is why as a family we tried to keep them apart too. They hid it from both families they were together because we knew they had a toxic relationship.”

She ran into the pair of them at a Parkway Drive concert five months prior to the deaths, and recalls Miss Schilling apologising for getting back together: “She kept saying ‘I’m sorry, you tried to protect me but I’ve chosen him’.

“Our family knew they got back together and hers didn’t which is why they have unanswered questions and are wondering why she was at his apartment. She was there because she had a key.

Remembering Shelsea Schilling

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“I love her and I miss her and she was one of my best friends.”

WITNESS CONFRONTATION

Talitha revealed she spoke for the first time earlier this week with Jasmine O’Neil. O’Neil was in her brother’s unit the day of the deaths, but only came forward to police days later.

Talitha claimed O’Neil told her Shelsea had turned up at the unit the night before the deaths.

“We were all doing coke. Shelsea showed up randomly the night before. Drunk and saying obnoxious stuff to wind Bronson up. So I went home,” a message from O’Neil seen by the Gold Coast Bulletin reads.

Talitha claims O’Neil also told her after Warburton turned up she ended up outside in a car.

O’Neil didn’t alert authorities or emergency services on the day or in the days afterwards, saying she was “scared”, Talitha claimed.

O’Neil clammed up and “blocked me” when she pressed for further information, Talitha claimed.

The official witness statements detail claims O’Neil and another occupant Christopher Paul Lowden, 21, left the room and cowered in a bathroom during a raging argument the next day between Miss Schilling and Ellery.

When they emerged, one felt for a pulse but Shelsea was dead. No police or emergency services were called.

Asked if she believed the version of the witnesses, Talitha said: “I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t want to believe that. I’m the sister of this person. Let’s get real, imagine if it was you.”

Certain things don’t seem right to her. She was aware in the weeks leading up to the deaths of her brother being unusually on edge and fearful.

She can’t reconcile recurring descriptions of him being found in a suit because she claims the only one he owned was hanging in her closet.

“He wasn’t wearing a suit,” she said.

Ellery’s friend Nick Blandthorn who first discovered the bodies days later had told her his recollection was of Ellery naked from the waist up, she said.

She added: “There were five people in that unit - two are dead and three locked the door and walked away. This is finally his side of the family speaking out. And it doesn’t make anything better - we all know it doesn’t. But there is another family hurting...and we hurt for her, we miss her too.

“Even if it is how it was portrayed, he’s still a human being, who was a loved person that was sorry…if that is how it is. He’s not a monster,” Talitha said.

“Please let it go to the courts and then we can all go suffer again. But then there is answers, everything we have all been asking for, and we will deal with it, work through it as a family.”

TO MY SON HE WAS JUST ‘UNCLE BRO’

One of the toughest moments for Talitha Ellery soon after the grisly deaths of her younger brother Bronson and her friend Shelsea Schilling was breaking the news to her son.

For her now seven-year-old child, the man with the full face tattoos and questionable past was simply “Uncle Bro” who often brought him gifts. Shelsea was one of his favourite babysitters.

“I had to tell my child and I didn’t know how to do it. I said ‘I’m really sorry but Bronson and Shelsea aren’t here anymore, they’re in heaven now’.”

Her son’s response was: “Does that mean Uncle Bro won’t bring me toys from Toyworld anymore? Does that mean Shelsea isn’t going to hang out with me anymore?”

“I don’t think anyone thinks about the fact there is a little person involved in this. He knew her for four years, Uncle Bro was in his life forever … a little child who doesn’t understand why two people who were in his life are now gone.”