Murder-suicide killer’s second girlfriend’s chilling texts to victim
A man who killed his partner and then himself had a second girlfriend who tried to warn his victim in a series of chilling texts.
The second girlfriend of a murder-suicide killer tried to warn his eventual victim with through a series of text messages, a court heard on Friday.
The Coroners Court of Victoria inquest is investigating the circumstances of Charles Bisucci’s horror act on August 21, 2017, in which he killed his partner Marilyn Burdon and then himself after she said she didn’t want him.
He had never stopped seeing Karen Cattapan, who he lived with in a Strathmore home and dated since 2004.
Ms Cattapan texted Ms Burdon while he was dating both of them that “All I say is that he is a very dangerous man” and “Did you know that he tried to stab me … because of his anger”.
She told the court that, “Part of me was trying to warn her. But part of me still loved him.”
Ms Cattapan told the court she started dating Bisucci in 2004, the year his previous marriage ended.
She described the 69-year-old disbarred former solicitor as a womaniser and con artist, with changeable moods that would see him go from “poetic and wonderful” to “evil”.
He once pegged an orange at her eye and cut her with scissors while she was driving, she told the court.
When she asked him about money he threatened to spear her underwater, she said.
“He wasn’t normal,” she said.
“Even though I loved him I feared him at the same time.
“I was very submissive to him. I knew not to provoke him too much.”
She said Bisucci started dating Ms Burdon a few years before he took both their lives in 2017.
At first he claimed she was just a friend.
Then he told his girlfriend of more than a decade, “You’re going to have to share me”.
Ms Cattapan and Bisucci had lived together in a home he owned in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, which she said he sold around November 2016.
The $1 million sale only resulted in $60,000 leftover for him after he paid off a mountain of debts, she said.
He looked like he had money because of the way he dressed.
But he constantly struggled financially, she said.
“Whenever we went out for dinner he would make me pay,” she said. “He would not even buy me a coffee or a wine.”
She believed he saw the well-off Ms Burdon as “a way out”.
“I could never give him the financial status he wanted,” she said.
“She was going to provide for him; she was his financial future.”
But she said Ms Burdon never completely trusted him.
She never gave him a key to her home even after he moved in.
And even though she lent him money, she kept two of his luxury cars as collateral.
Ms Cattapan said she once sent Ms Burdon a message when she was drunk that said “He loves me, not you, b***h. He’s only using you for money.”
About a month before the murder-suicide, Ms Burdon kicked Bisucci out of her home.
Ms Cattapan said she had messaged the other woman again: “You made him lose everything. You will pay the price, smartass.”
She told the court she meant Ms Burdon would pay the price “the way I did”.
“I was just angry, I guess,” she said.
“I just saw Charles would use her like he used me — I didn’t think he would do anything like that.
“I thought, you’re going to suffer too.”
The court is investigating if the tragic death of the loved Kew grandmother could have been prevented.
Its scope includes how Bisucci had access to guns despite being banned from holding a gun license because of his family violence history.
The inquest continues.