My sense of dread before I found Alex Tapp

A country vet practice owner arrives at a motel to find out why her promising new employee hasn’t showed up to work.

Kristen Todhunter, at Newcastle Equine Centre, was one of the last people to see Alexandra Tapp alive. Picture: Britta Campion

A feeling of dread welled up within Kristen Todhunter long before she reached the motel room door.

“The hallways were derelict, and the lights were flickering on and off,” she says. “It’s like a terrible movie where you just know something bad is going to happen. And it was just not something we expected.”

Ms Todhunter had arrived at the motel a little after 9am, concerned that a prospective new employee trialling at the equine veterinary practice she owns and operates in Newcastle, on the NSW mid-north coast, had failed to show up to work that day.

She was concerned the potential new staff member, Alexandra Tapp, may have had an accident and needed help.

Ms Todhunter reflects on that morning as part of an extensive interview about the 32-year-old in episode 5 The Australian’s investigative podcast My Sister’s Secrets, which is exploring the events leading up to the troubled young woman’s untimely death.

Alex had impressed at the Newcastle Equine Centre, based out of the city’s racecourse grounds, for much of the week after replying to a job ad desperately seeking qualified and experienced horse veterinarians.

Ms Todhunter says equality equine vets are in such high demand globally that they can almost name their own price – so she had paid for Alex to travel to Newcastle and put her up in a motel for the week to see if she would fit in with her team.

“She had emailed us and she looked great – she was lovely, she was experienced and it was a no-brainer because to have an Australian equine veterinarian apply for a job is unusual just because there are short supplies,” she says. “If someone has one, they keep them.

“So we were like, ‘Well, would you like to come and have a trial week?’ ‘That’d be great.’ It all flowed really well. I booked her accommodation and picked her up from the train station. Nothing seemed to be a problem.”

Alex arrived for her first shift at the practice on a cool winter Monday morning in June 2020 and other staff members and clients quickly warmed to her.

The motel in Newcastle were Alexandra Tapp died. Picture: Britta Campion

By that Thursday evening, Ms Todhunter had resolved to offer the young vet a full-time position.

Then, on Friday, disaster struck.

“I got to work as per normal,” she says. “All the vets get in around 8am and they do some rounds and treatments and things like that before they go off on their separate ways for the days. And she didn’t show up.

“So I rang her and didn’t get her … and I left a message. Then I made a few phone calls and it got to be nine o’clock and I started to get worried.”

Concerned, Ms Todhunter resolved to head around to Alex’s motel with another staff member to check if she was all right.

“We went over to the place that I had rented for her on the foreshore,” she remembers.

“I had all the details to get in the room because I had booked it for her, so I knew the passcode and the key code to the room.

“When we got there, it was on the first floor and the light overhead was flickering. It was just kind of weird. It was like a B grade movie, you know, where the light’s flickering? And I was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, I hope the room’s all right, because I’ll feel guilty if I’ve booked her into some bad accommodation.’

“We knocked on the door, no answer. So I put in the code and we went in. Her clothes were there. Her stuff was there and her computer.”

They searched through the motel room for any indication of where Alex might be before making their way to the separate bedroom at the back of the suite.

“We both go in together and turn around and she’s in the bed,” Ms Todhunter says. “She’s dead.

“She was in the bed, had the covers partially over her, but her legs were exposed. I guess what strikes me the most is that every vein in her leg was standing out blue. It was just very prominent.

“Without even looking at her face, you could tell that she had passed away. Her phone was just centimetres from her hand. It had fallen out of her outstretched hand”

As one of the last people to see Alex alive, Ms Todhunter provides crucial details about the last week of her short life along with intimate details about the cause of her death and the contentious phone call she believes may have prompted it.

“I do wonder if that phone call and her thoughts going on in her head, like trying to make a fresh start and it always following her around, if that was the last straw?” she says. “I wonder about that a lot.”

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• My Sister’s Secrets is the new investigative podcast from The Australian. Episode 5 is available now in the podcasts section of our app or at mysisterssecrets.com.au
• Get the app at the App Store or Google Play
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