Domestic violence: Katie Haley’s murder ‘tarnished’ her family forever

Six days before his daughter was found dead, Boyd Unwin spoke to her killer in a conversation he will remember for the rest of his life. WARNING: Distressing

In Australia, on average, one woman is murdered each week by her current or former partner.

Three years ago, 29-year-old mother-of-two Katie Haley became one of those women. In fact, in 2018, she was one of 63 women killed that year.

Bubbly and energetic, you always knew Katie was in the room. The sort of person who wore her heart on her sleeve – but who also had an incredible resolve and strength. She “had this ideal of having the house and the kids and the dog and all the trimmings”, her father, Boyd Unwin, told news.com.au.

When she met Shane Robertson after a series of bad relationships, Mr Unwin said that he and his wife, along with Katie’s siblings, thought she’d found someone to share those ideals with.

“We thought, ‘She’s found herself a good bloke and they seem happy’,” Mr Unwin said.

It seemed good right up until the moment – when Katie’s second child was born – that it wasn’t.

On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner.

Almost 10 women a day are hospitalised for assault injuries at the hands of a spouse or domestic partner.

Every day in May, as part of Domestic and Family Violence Month, news.com.au will tell the stories behind these shocking statistics.

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Katie Haley was bubbly, energetic and wore her heart on her sleeve. Picture: Supplied

Pictured with her partner of four years, Shane Robertson. Picture: Supplied

“It just seemed to be that he had his nose put out of joint because he wasn’t either the focus of attention or he wasn’t getting enough attention,” Mr Unwin – who shares Katie’s story in a new three-part documentary series exploring Australia’s domestic abuse crisis on SBS, See What You Made Me Do – said.

“But she was exhausted. She had a brand new baby, you know, you’ve got a lot going on, and dealing with everything else and then trying to help them get ahead by going back to work and everything. But it was like someone had stolen his thunder.”

It was a strange thing to see, Mr Unwin explained, but never something that his family – or Katie – “saw leading to what it led to”.

“I truly believe she didn’t see it coming, or never would’ve thought this would happen, because I don’t think she’d be that blasé. She was leaving and that was that, and … that was the biggest problem for us, that we didn’t see it,” he said.

“When you look back, you saw the relationship deteriorating but you didn’t see her changing that much other than her happiness.”

Robertson began stalking Katie’s social media accounts – creating fake Facebook profiles to try and find out information about her, convinced that she was cheating on him, even though she wasn’t.

“He just seemed to be constantly calling, wanting to know where she was, turning up wherever she just happened to be – whether with her Nanna or with my wife – when he wasn’t anywhere near there,” Mr Unwin said, adding that it “just got worse and worse”.

Six days before Katie’s death, Mr Unwin spoke to Robertson, who by that point, he said, “was very stressed”.

“He just seemed to have lost control of reasoning. I spoke to him about being paranoid, I spoke to him about what he thought she was doing, and how she couldn’t when she was just exhausted from working and being a mother of a toddler,” Mr Unwin said.

“And it’s just bizarre how off the rails it seemed to be coming from his end.”

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Shane seemed to be constantly calling, wanting to know where she was, turning up wherever she was just happened to be. Picture: SBS

Katie with her sister, Bianca Unwin. Picture: Supplied

Katie’s father, Boyd Unwin. Picture: Jackson Finter

Around midnight on March 9, Mr Unwin and his wife got a call from the police about Robertson’s ex-partner, after which they tried to get in touch with him and Katie, “just to let them know the police were looking for the ex-partner”.

“And we couldn’t get hold of any of them. So we tried messaging, calling, Facebooking, I called his phone, but yeah, we couldn’t get in touch with him,” he said.

What they didn’t know then – and would find out close to three hours later, after a police media release about the body of a 29-year-old woman and then a trip to Katie’s house – was that Robertson had beaten their daughter to death with a barbell, while the couple’s child slept nearby.

“For an hour and a half before it, you have a gut feeling,” Mr Unwin said.

“You’re sitting there, you drive down there feeling like, ‘No’. And you just push it away and you go, ‘No, no’. And the more you couldn’t get (in touch with) them, and the more you couldn’t get an answer, you’re just building up inside the anxiety and everything else.

“And then to walk into your son’s room and go, ‘Look, we’ve got to get in the car, we think Shane’s killed Katie’ – it’s not a conversation that you generally have with your son at two o’clock in the morning. And you jump in the car and you drive down there and obviously you speed and … it is just surreal.”

After the initial shock of arriving and finding out that it was Katie, the family’s mind immediately switched to their grandchild – who Mr Unwin and his wife now have full custody of and are raising in Melbourne.

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What’s still hard to grapple with, even three years on, he said, is that, unlike someone dying from an illness or in an accident, there “is absolutely no reason for this to have happened”.

“It was one person and one person only’s choice to take someone’s life. He made that choice, no one else got a say in it,” Mr Unwin said.

“There is not one part of us that hasn’t been affected … And it’s not just a matter of losing a daughter. It’s not seeing our (other) grandchild as much. It’s not being there as much as we want to be for them.

“It’s knowing that our children now look at relationships differently, and the fact that we now worry about more things than we used to … It’s what you constantly live with now. You’ve been tarnished forever, and you won’t get over it.”

He hopes, with See What You Made Me Do, that people see that this can happen to anyone – but also that men start to get more involved.

“It’s not helpful saying, ‘Not all men kill’ or ‘Not all men are abusive’, or people coming out with, ‘Women kill too’. It’s not helpful. It’s not a competition,” Mr Unwin said.

“We’re not saying that all men do this … but men need to stand up because women have been trying to for so long and you’re never going to get the results you want if only half the population’s chasing it. The victims have got to come first and the attitudes have to change.”

Robertson was sentenced to 24 years behind bars in 2019.

See What You Made Me Do premieres 8:30pm on Wednesday, May 5 on SBS, NITV and SBS On Demand.

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