‘Brittle narcissist’: Lilie James killer feared break-up stain on ‘fake reputation’
Paul Thijssen feared ‘a stain on his perfectly constructed and ultimately fake reputation’ and brutally murdered Lilie James after days of stalking and preparation, an inquest has heard.
“Brittle narcissist” Paul Thijssen feared “a stain on his perfectly constructed and ultimately fake reputation” and brutally murdered Lilie James after days of stalking and preparation.
A coronial inquest was given forensic briefings on the pair’s final hours. The recount showed how the murder-suicide was carried out and the speed with which investigators sprung into action, while a psychiatrist and psychologist pointed to the difficulties in ascribing any specific psychological disorder to Thijssen.
On Wednesday, the court was shown CCTV footage of Thijssen running around the grounds of St Andrew’s Cathedral School in the Sydney CBD where both he and James worked as sports coaches. In his final hours he constructed the murder site, practised his attack and shepherded James into it.
It was the culmination of days of stalking.
7.14pm, October 25
On Wednesday morning, Jennifer Single SC, appearing as independent counsel assisting the coroner, recounted the last 75 minutes before Lily’s murder.
In CCTV footage, Thijssen begins preparing the murder scene by placing a poster over a transparent doorway at eye level.
Ten minutes later he checks the carpark, seemingly to make sure James – who was returning with a school bus of children – had not left straight from the bus to her car.
Fourteen minutes later, he readjusts the cleaning sign outside the bathroom he had blocked Lilie from; where previously he had strolled through the school grounds, he now rushes with a clip. With the bag containing the murder weapon slung over his shoulder, he again approaches the bathroom where he will kill Lilie and rehearses barging in.
This time he does so with the hammer. He moves it into his left hand and pushes into the bathroom with his right.
He then leaves the bathroom and stares direct into the camera. He rehearses again, alternating the hammer into his right hand and pushing into the room with his left.
After this, he again picks up pace, running between rooms as he retrieves a master key to block partial access to the staff area.
At the same time, James was returning from coaching.
Ms Single said the students recalled talking to her about their “favourite music”. She waited with the students as their parents and guardians picked them up.
She goes back into the school, the footage shows, and Thijssen meets her halfway to the staffroom shortly after 7pm.
They smile and joke as he lets her swipes her through the now-locked door. It is the same doorway he had shoved and cornered her in during an argument six days earlier.
At 7.12pm James, dressed in white sneakers and a dark jumper, walks towards the bathroom with her backpack slung over her right shoulder and fidgets with the swimsuit she is changing into.
Thijssen points out the cleaning sign in front of the other bathroom, corralling her into the doorway he has practised barging through.
For two minutes as she changes, he stands outside with the hammer in his right hand. He lets it swing idly, stares into the CCTV camera and then drops his head.
At 7.14pm, he pushes through into the bathroom, opting to keep the hammer in his right hand and charging far more calmly than his “dry runs”. That was where the video ended.
James’ parents – Peta and Jamie – remained in the courtroom throughout.
“No matter how many times you see that footage it is not easy to watch,” Ms Single said, her voice breaking.
“Your honour will see how Lilie was smiling and interacting with Paul. There was no indication of what he was going to do.”
Ms Single then abruptly requested a break, which NSW Coroner Teresa O’Sullivan granted.
Post mortem
James’ post mortem attributed her death to “multiple blunt force injuries on the head and neck”. Her body had 25 injuries from the shoulders up, which could each have been caused by multiple blows.
The marks on her body were circular, semicircular or V-shaped, corresponding to the claw and face of a hammer head.
She had nine lacerations on the back of her head, and defensive injuries on her arms and hands. There was no evidence of sexual assault.
A diagram illustrating the resting place of her body upon discovery, and the blood that had pooled from it, was created based on blood pattern analysis and presented to the court.
In it, a rectangle of blood has bloomed out from James’ head, which lay next to the toilet. Blood collected around her hands and in a sharp smear diagonally left from the toilet at an angle parallel to her body.
“The use of violence went far beyond what would be necessary to cause death,” Ms Single said.
Leaving for Vaucluse
After murdering James, Thijssen stayed in the bathroom with her body for one hour and 12 minutes.
Ms Single was unsure why he did this as the attack was “not protracted”. There were 12 other people in the school during this time.
Halfway through this, 36 minutes after he entered the bathroom, a pair of cleaners entered the sports area outside, having requested access from security. They vacuumed for 10 minutes then left.
At 8.23pm, Jamie James received a text from Lilie James’ phone reading: “don’t ask why or call please come to the school now and pick me up”.
Ms Single said no one but Thijssen could have sent the text. He would still have been in the bathroom with Lilie’s body as he messaged her father.
Jamie replies “Are you okay” and checked her location on Find My Phone.
At 8.26pm, Thijssen left the bathroom, moving the ‘cleaning in progress’ sign to outside the bathroom in which her body lay as he left. At 8.27pm he texted Jamie: “all good just came (sic) trouble”.
Jamie: “Can you pick up the phone please”.
CCTV shows Thijssen walking quickly and stiffly as he leaves. Jamie tries to call multiple times during Thijssen’s exit, unaware that Lilie’s phone is not with her.
“It is unknown why Paul chose to send those messages to Jamie. It was possibly consistent with the later call to ensure that someone located Lilie before the students, including the primary school students, arrived the next day,” Ms Single said.
“Making contact with Jamie in this way caused Jamie, Peta and Max (Lilie’s brother), to suffer as they tried desperately to get in touch with their Lilie.”
Investigators were left puzzled by how Thijssen managed to leave the bathroom without being “covered in blood”. There was little evidence of “clean up” and he exited in the same clothes he entered with.
Thijssen is seen on CCTV running down a commercial street – now wearing a grey cap – before reaching his car and driving away at 8.35pm. A friend who was expecting to catch up with Paul gets to the carpark at 8.39pm, missing him by minutes.
He drove straight to Vaucluse, and made small talk with a colleague via Snapchat. They sent each other pictures of their faces. The colleague recalled Thijssen being expressionless or “blank”, according to Ms Single.
At 9.52pm, bank records show he sent $9100 to each of his housemates, with a caption describing the transfer as “six months rent”. A little under an hour and a half later he walked into the Diamond Bay Reserve, towards the cliff face.
By this stage, Peta James was calling Lilie James’ friends. Thijssen would have been bombarded with calls and messages from either phone as he travelled.
“Little worried mate, hope you’re okay,” one friend messaged Thijssen. “Hello?”
At 11.40pm, Thijssen called triple-zero, alerting them to James’ body. He spoke with the operator for three and a half minutes, refusing to give them his name. CCTV from 11.59pm gives the last look at Thijssen alive as he walks down a concrete footpath and crosses a road.
At the exact same moment, 11.59pm, police entered the bathroom at St Andrew’s and found James’ corpse.
Searching
Jamie arrived at St Andrew’s at 9.15pm, spending hours searching the grounds and carpark for Lilie.
In his call to the police which was played to the court, Thijssen sounded calm but quiet.
Thijssen: “Hi (operator), I would like to report a body in St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney CBD.”
Operator: “Sorry you’d like to report?”
Thijssen: “A body’s near there.”
Operator: “Sorry, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
Thijssen: “So, there is a body, that, in St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney CBD.”
Operator: “When were you there?”
Thijssen: “Um, I don’t remember.”
Operator: “Sorry?”
Thijssen: “I don’t remember.”
Operator: “How long ago were you there?”
Thijssen: “Couple of hours.”
Operator: “Is it male or female?”
Thijssen: “A female.”
Operator: “Sorry?”
Thijssen: “Female.”
Operator: “Female. Do you know who it is?”
Thijssen: “No.”
Operator: “What’s your name?”
Thijssen: “I’d rather not disclose.”
Operator: “Are you in a house or on the street?”
Thijssen: “Neither. I think someone should just go there before people arrive in the morning. Thank you.”
Police began triangulating the call as they dispatched officers to St Andrew’s. They tried to ring Thijssen three more times and arrived at Diamond Bay at 12.02am on October 26, three minutes after he had left towards the cliff.
Back at St Andrew’s, security guards escorted police to the gym.
“What I’m about to say is necessary but distressing,” Ms Single said.
“Due to the extensive injuries to her face, the presence of fake tan on her legs, and the amount of blood in her hair, Lilie was unrecognisable.
“The police believed that they were looking at a body with dark, almost black, hair and of Asian appearance. As a result, they initially formed a view that Paul may have been in company (of Thijssen).”
It was not until the school reviewed CCTV footage that they realised it was James who was dead in the bathroom.
Police soon found Thijssen’s discarded backpack and belongings in Vaucluse.
A search began, complicated by the poor weather.
Though his body was eventually dredged up, police divers have never found his clothes, the hammer or either of their phones.
His post mortem found the cause of death to be “multiple blunt force injuries”.
His corpse has suffered some decomposition and “marine predation” before it was found. There were fractures to his skull, spine and other bones.
His blood alcohol recorded 0.04, though this could have been produced inside the body after his death.
Warning signs
Experts struggled to assign any specific psychological disorder to Thijssen, having to construct his personality from the testimony of lay witnesses.
“This was not a man who was out of control,” forensic psychologist Katie Seidler said.
“I think he was very afraid that his carefully constructed public narrative was going to fall apart.
“I think he really struggled with the idea of how people would view him if Ms James rejected him and ended the relationship, and potentially spoke about that with other people who might make comments. And I think he really struggled to cope with … a stain on his perfectly constructed and ultimately fake reputation.”
Dr Seidler and forensic psychiatrist Danny Sullivan agreed the murder was an act of gendered violence and he displayed narcissistic traits, though not necessarily to a diagnosable degree.
Neither thought there was a point where someone could realistically have intervened, given how secretive Thijssen was, describing him as a “highly overcontrolled individual”.
He displayed “frantic efforts to avoid abandonment” across both his relationships with his ex-girlfriend Freya and James and acted “paternalistic” or “superior” to teach them how to behave.
His compulsive lying was “defensive” and characteristic of a “brittle narcissist” whose “last resort thinking” likely pushed him to graduate from homicidal and suicidal ideation into action, they said.
Even James’ murder by “overkill” was not necessarily an indication of overwhelming emotion in his criminal actions, but rather something “quite calculated, and done so that there was no possibility she was alive”.
“He was really seeking to make sure that outcome was achieved, as opposed to the lack of control,” Dr Seidler said.
“At the end of the day, if we don’t stop men from doing this to women, it won’t stop. I think that men need to learn it’s not okay for them to do this to women, to do this to anyone, but to do this to women, and I think that men need help to understand masculinity, relationships, gender, sexuality and femininity, and to start to make some different choices about how they engage with women in their relationships.
“If we don’t treat the perpetrators, (if) we don’t help these men, it will not stop, and so I think my hypothesis is that at its foundation level, this is a man who couldn’t cope with how he’s feeling, and he neutralised a threat to that by murdering another person in a way that is just utterly unacceptable.”
Dr Sullivan reached a similar conclusion.
“We don’t see clear signs of mental disorder here, it can only be taken that he had formed a hatred of Ms James based upon the fact that she had rejected him and he punished her by killing her,” he said.
Earlier findings
On Tuesday, video and hire car logs showed how he would stake out the James family home and take photos to catalogue the cars coming and going from her family home.
In one video from just days before the murder-suicide, Thijssen is seen strolling into a Mitre 10 where he buys a roll of duct tape before trying different hammers, testing their weight in his hand and miming an overhead swing.
This sat in contrast with footage from October 25, 2023 where Thijssen, James and a mutual friend walk into a costume shop, amicably preparing for a Halloween party.
James checks out a red devil’s pitchfork; Thijssen buys a white cane.
Just hours later he would bash James to death.
“Paul stalked Lilie. Paul carefully planned his attack, and … in the hours before the attack, he rehearsed the attack, making a number of dry runs,” Ms Single said.
“The preparation was calculated. It was not a momentary loss of control.
“It was a premeditated killing.”
On Thursday the inquiry will conclude with the testimony of expert witnesses including eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant, along with statements from the James family.
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