Paul Thijssen’s parents shut out their son’s murder of 21-year-old Lilie James
Esther and Stefan Thijssen have lived quiet lives abroad, and seemingly attempted to maintain distance, in the wake of the atrocities of their son.
WARNING: Distressing details
Esther and Stefan Thijssen scattered their 24-year-old Dutch son’s ashes in Australia without repatriation, have quietly lived their lives abroad ever since, and have seemingly attempted to maintain distance from the atrocities of their only child.
Paul Thijssen’s brutal murder of 21-year-old water polo coach Lilie James inside a Sydney CBD school sickened the nation after the young woman was beaten to death inside a gym bathroom at St Andrew’s Cathedral School with a hammer in October 2023.
Mr Thijssen’s body was pulled from a notorious suicide spot days after a manhunt.
His parents have since appeared to have largely withdrawn from anything to do with their son’s actions, with one expert labelling their situation since Ms James’ cruel slaying a “terribly confronting dynamic”.
The Thijssens live in ‘s-Hrtogenbosch, colloquially known as Den Bosch, which lies about 90km southeast of Amsterdam.
The family first arrived in Australia together in 2015 when his father, Stefan, moved to Sydney for work.
Their story bares a resemblance of the new Netflix series Adolescence, which centres on a 13-year-old schoolboy Jamie Miller, who is arrested for the murder of a female classmate.
Throughout the four-part series the fictional parents try to get back to normal life but the world is against them.
They question what they did wrong as parents and they are guilt-ridden about not seeing any signs.
Paul attended St Andrew’s for two years before graduating in 2017 and returning to the Netherlands. However, he would again return to Sydney to work in St Andrew’s sports department and live with a friend at a home in Kensington in Sydney’s east.
Thijssen’s parents both work in well-paid corporate jobs.
Esther runs her own communication business and is a member of a women’s entrepreneur network, Femmenet.
Stefan is an automation company executive manager, is the chairman of a local jazz festival, and is on the board of his local Rotary Club.
Stefan was also photographed getting a certificate after completing a history course about their home city.
Stefan and Esther have made no public statement, comment or interview about the actions of their only child in 2023 - nor are they attending a current inquest into the murder., though they did provide a statement to the inquest that was not read publicly.
Having seen many similar cases in the past, Criminal Psychologist Tim Watson-Munro told news.com.au that it’s not unusual for parents to respond in this manner if their child has been a perpetrator of a heinous crime.
“It’s too confronting,” he said, explaining that relatives of perpetrators often choose not to focus too closely on the reality.
“They are not the guilty party and my heart does go out to them. But for them to sit days of graphic material about their son’s behaviour, which was absolutely horrendous in nature, it would have a deleterious, because at the end of the day, they loved and lost their son.”
Mr Watson-Munro said often parents of perpetrators also want to avoid confronting their child’s victims and are embarrassed they didn’t see earlier signs.
“I think where murder is involved, it always comes as a shock to everyone,” he said.
“It is a terribly confronting dynamic.”
How Lilie’s killer ‘practised’ her murder
This all comes as an inquest for Ms James was held this week — in which chilling CCTV showed Ms James’ killer practising how he planned to burst into a bathroom to murder the beloved young coach and the lengths he went to in order to set a trap inside the Sydney school where he beat her to death with a hammer.
A coronial inquest heard about her death at the hands of Thijssen, who took his own life after the attack by jumping from Diamond Bay Reserve in Vaucluse.
Ms James, 21, a beloved water polo and netball coach, was killed inside a bathroom at St Andrew’s Cathedral School – the exclusive private school where she worked – in Sydney’s CBD on October 25, 2023.
The Coroner’s Court was told on Tuesday that Ms James was killed due to blunt force trauma to the head after being attacked by Thijssen with a hammer.
Her death and that of Thijssen were examined in an inquest before Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan.
Counsel assisting the coroner, Jennifer Single, said during opening statements on Tuesday that Ms James was in a brief relationship with Thijssen, a fellow sports coach at the school, before she broke it off just days before her death.
Ms Single told the court Thijssen had stalked Ms James before killing her and carefully planned his attack, including doing several dry runs.
“The preparation was calculated, it was not a momentary loss of control, it was a premeditated killing,” Ms Single said.
Footage played to the court on Tuesday showed Thijssen walking into the school on the day of the murder.
It showed him on three occasions practising quickly opening the door to the bathroom where he ultimately cornered and killed her.
Ms Single told the inquest the vision showed Thijssen “practising how he is going to enter the bathroom” during the attack.
The CCTV tracked Thijssen and his movements around the school on the afternoon of October 25, including placing a “cleaning in progress sign” outside one bathroom.
Ms Single told the court that Thijssen did this to coral Ms James into the bathroom he had selected for her murder.
“Your Honor, it is submitted that after practising entering both bathrooms, Paul had by this stage decided to attack Lilie in bathroom one,” Ms Single told the court.
“We submit that Paul placed the cleaning in progress sign outside of bathroom three to ensure Lilie did not use that bathroom, and to force her into the larger disabled bathroom where the attack in fact occurred.”
The court was told that in the six days leading up to the murder, Thijssen stalked Ms James on seven occasions – driving to her house in Sydney’s south in a hired car before returning home to Kensington.
On several occasions, he took photographs of cars which were parked outside her family home.
Photos shown to the court revealed that Thijssen captioned the photos with descriptions of the car.
On another occasion, CCTV captured him driving to Allawah train station, where he stayed for an hour, with further vision showing Ms James getting off at the same station.
Further vision played to the court also showed Thijssen buying a hammer and duct tape at a York St hardware store on Monday October 23, 2023.
The hammer was not used by him during the attack and was later found in a school store room.
The inquest, which ran for three days, examined the circumstances of their deaths as well as coercive control and unacceptable behaviour in relationships.
The court was told that police never recovered either Ms James or Thijssen’s phones because it’s believed he took them with him when he killed himself.
An iPhone 8 was found in his backpack but it was not the phone associated with his Australian number.
As well, it appeared that Ms James often communicated with her friends via Snapchat and therefore her messages, which disappear from the platform after a short period of time, could not be recovered.
The court was told that one of Thijssen’s ex-girlfriends had said their relationship left her feeling “suffocated”, “pressured” and “controlled”.
The court was told on Tuesday that he met the woman in Australia and when he returned to the Netherlands she changed her social media profile photos.
It prompted a flurry of attempts by Thijssen to contact the woman, which led her to block him, but he managed to break into her Snapchat account, which he had the password to.
That same day he arranged a visa to return to Australia and several days later he showed up at her church.
The court was told on one occasion he sat outside her work for hours.
She tried to break off their relationship while meeting in a park, during which he punched at leaves and branches on a tree.
Ms Single told the court on Tuesday that when the woman asked Thijssen why he was punching the tree, he said “because I can’t punch the one thing I want to”.
On a subsequent occasion, the woman’s mother saw him standing outside their house and the following day the woman saw Thijssen outside their house in the early morning, prompting her father to warn him to stay away.
The court was also told that he forged a letter of reference from St Andrew’s that was provided to the Department of Home Affairs when applying to extend his working holiday visa.
In the letter, which was later exposed as a forgery during the investigation into Ms James’s death, he exaggerated his role description and responsibilities at the school.
The court was told on Tuesday that as part of his job, Thijssen had a pass to roam around the school after hours and had access to “almost everything”.
The bathroom in which Ms James was killed had since been demolished.
The inquest was told that Ms James and Thijssen started seeing each other in mid-2023 and were initially described to friends as being “not serious”.
He had also told people he didn’t want her as a girlfriend because of her personality; however, they continued their casual relationship.
The court was on Tuesday played eight minutes of CCTV footage from Thursday, October 19 – less than a week before Thijssen killed Ms James – showing them having a heated argument on school grounds after hours.
In the video, Thijssen pushes Ms James and at one point puts his hand on her shoulder.
The court was told details of a party the following day at which Ms James arrived and left with her former boyfriend.
Ms Single told the court that at the party, Ms James told her ex, named Lachlan, that she “didn’t feel safe” around Thijssen and was “weirded out by him”.
Thijssen showed up at the party and waited outside for Ms James for several hours and asked her friends where she was.
After the party, she spent the night at Thijssen’s house but told friends she slept on the couch.
Ms James’s parents, Jamie and Peta, revealed last year they had received messages from their daughter’s phone on the night of her death, trying to lure them to the school.
A message sent to Ms James’s father about 8.30pm said: “Don’t ask why or call please come to the school now and pick me up.”
When he replied “Are you OK?”, he received the reply “come to school trouble”. When Mr James asked again, the reply was “yes, yes”.
The couple told 60 Minutes they believed the messages were from Ms James’s killer.
— with NewsWire
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