Slain woman Maud Steenbeek’s last words to brother caught on Skype
A Melbourne yoga teacher was on a Skype call to her brother before she was killed in a violent and horrific way, a court has heard.
A Melbourne yoga teacher was on a Skype call to her brother when a stranger in the grips of a psychotic episode broke into her house and bashed her to death.
Maud Steenbeek was at her Heidelberg West home speaking to her brother in the Netherlands when she told him to “hold on” in January last year.
The call cut out but before the connection dropped her brother heard her yell “get out” or “get the f**k out”.
Her young neighbour Xochil Quetzal O’Neill had broken in and brutally bashed her with a wooden Samoan paddle which he found inside her home.
The 61-year-old died from severe head injuries. She also had a broken wrist, arm and broken ribs as a result of the horrific assault.
At the time of Ms Steenbeek‘s death she was fighting an aggressive form of cancer.
After the call dropped out Ms Steenbeek’s brother phoned her sons and one rushed to the scene in a desperate bid to help his mother.
From outside the property Adam Zecevic saw his mum lying on the bedroom floor with the intruder on top of her.
He let his dog loose from the shed and the pair ran into the home and confronted the intruder who was “ranting about God”.
They fought and Mr Zecevic’s dog was able to drag Mr O’Neill out of the home by his head.
At a special hearing on Monday, Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth found the attacker was not guilty of Ms Steenbeek’s murder by reason of mental impairment.
It was revealed O’Neill had been acting “extremely bizarrely” at the time he broke into the woman’s home.
Other neighbours saw him rolling on the ground, trying to climb into storm drains and “foaming from the mouth”.
“I’ve been poisoned,’ O’Neill told people on the street.
One man called Triple-0 twice ahead of the fatal bashing, once at 7.34pm and another eight minutes later because of his increasingly concerning antics.
But police didn’t arrive until 8.13pm, after the shocking assault.
Psychiatrists told the court on Monday the man had no memory of what happened because of brain damage as a result of the confrontation.
However they found he was “acutely psychotic” at the time and he was in a disturbed mental state.
Mr O’Neill will remain in prison until a further hearing in August.
He is expected to be sent to a secure psychiatric facility once a bed becomes available.
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