Blackmailer Siti Kamal jailed for three years
A heartless woman who took advantage of a dying baby to blackmail her parents for $1000 is now getting “everything she deserved”, the mother of the tragic 11-month-old girl says.
Police & Courts
Don't miss out on the headlines from Police & Courts. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A heartless woman who blackmailed a grieving couple as they cradled their dying daughter in their arms has been jailed for three years.
Siti Nurhidayah Kamal, 25, exploited Jay and Dee Windross after she falsely claimed to have their lost phone which contained hundreds of precious photos and videos of their terminally ill 11-month-old girl, Amiyah.
The Malaysian national sent Mr Windross a barrage of Whatsapp messages on April 23 last year, threatening to delete the photos if he did not transfer her $1000.
County Court judge Liz Gaynor condemned the “cruelty” of Kamal’s actions towards the Windross family who were already experiencing immense suffering.
“You were entirely aware they were attending to their dying daughter,” Judge Gaynor said.
“Your efforts to obtain this money continued even after you learned of Amiyah’s death.
“The offending also involved trickery as you never had the phone.”
READ JUDGE GAYNOR’S FULL SENTENCING REMARKS HERE
Judge Gaynor said there was no evidence Kamal was in the desperate and dire financial situation she had claimed as her excuse for committing such “grave” offending just months after arriving in Australia.
Mr Windross had made a public plea for help to find his wife’s phone after she accidentally left it in a toilet cubicle at Chadstone Shopping Centre on April 20.
Three days later, as doctors told the couple there was nothing more they could do for little Amiyah and they prepared to say goodbye, Kamal gave them a glimmer of hope when messaging to say she had the phone.
“My baby is in her last minutes,” Mr Windross wrote back. “Can we discuss this tomorrow, she’s about to leave us.”
But Kamal persisted, sending 92 messages to Mr Windross in under 24 hours.
At 2.26am on April 24, she wrote: “Please I’m begging you I don’t want to sell and erase all of your memory. I promise you I’m an honest person.”
Twenty-one minutes earlier, Amiyah had died.
Still coming to the terms with their loss, the Windross’s said they were “happy with the sentence, saying Kamal was “getting everything she deserved”.
Ms Windross said Kamal would have the luxury of being able to return home to Malaysia to her family.
“The fact she’s deported and she gets to see her own children and Jay and I will never see Amiyah ever again, I think that’s disgusting,” Ms Windross said.
But Ms Windross said she wanted to shift the focus off Kamal and onto her daughter and the health professionals at Monash Children’s Hospital who did everything they could to keep her alive.
Amiyah died from an undiagnosed neurological illness, in which medical experts continue to investigate.
“I want Amiyah to be remembered as an undiagnosed child, as a unicorn,” Ms Windross said. “I want the focus to be on mitochondrial diseases — that’s the suspected disease Amiyah died of.”
And to the person who did steal her phone, Ms Windross had one simple message: “If you still have my phone, give it back.”
“All you have taken from me and Jay is every single memory I have of my daughter.”
She urged the person to hand it in to a police station with no questions asked.
Kamal, who pleaded guilty to one count of blackmail, will be eligible for parole after serving two years. She will be deported on her release from custody.
READ MORE:
GRIEVING COUPLE FACE BLACKMAILER IN COURT