Shandee’s Story:‘It was really creepy … I think it’s him’

Shannah Blackburn was home on the Gold Coast when she learned her sister had been murdered on a Mackay street.

Shannah Blackburn at the exact place her sister Shandee’s body was found after her murder on the corner of Juliet and Boddington streets in Mackay. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Shannah Blackburn was home on the Gold Coast when she learned through a 5am phone call from her mother that her sister, eight years younger than her, had been murdered on a Mackay street as she walked home from work.

“You can’t even fathom that it’s happened,” she says.

“And then the more we then found out, how bad her injuries were, it was even more mind-blowing why someone would want to go to the extent that they did.”

Shannah flew straight to the regional city, on Queensland’s central coast, and steeled herself to view her sister’s body.

There was still blood in 23-year-old Shandee’s hair.

“And I remember seeing her hands, because she’d had false nails on, and so many of them just looked like they were torn off,” she said.

“I just thought, oh God, I hope this just means like she fought and whoever it was, you know, there’s DNA there ... at least thank God for that. We found out later that it was probably her just trying to drag herself across the bitumen to get home.”

Shannah was speaking for Shandee’s Story, the new investigative podcast series by The Australian’s national chief corres­pondent Hedley Thomas, re-examining the unsolved murder of February 2013.

In the second episode, Sweating Bullets, Shannah and her mother, Vicki, tell of their un­expected and involuntary feeling of suspicion when they were hugged by Shandee’s former boyfriend at a midnight vigil.

Two nights after Shandee’s ­vicious stabbing, family and friends gathered outside Vicki’s Boddington St townhouse.

Shannah and Shandee on holiday together. Picture: Supplied

Shandee’s ex-boyfriend, John Peros – who would later be charged with her murder – approached Vicki and Shannah and said “Sorry” in an offer of condolence for their loss.

“I just felt it wasn’t genuine. It was really creepy. I just felt very uncomfortable,” Vicki said.

“I just walked inside and said ‘I think it might be him. I think it’s him.’ That’s just the feeling that came over me.”

Shannah said she had no idea at the time who killed her younger sister, but there was “just something in my gut that I didn’t like when he hugged us … It just felt wrong.”

Peros has always denied involvement in Shandee’s murder and was found not guilty of the crime by a jury in less than two hours.

Central Coroner David O’Connell in 2020 found Peros did in fact kill Shandee, but did not find new and compelling evidence that could lead to him being charged again under double jeopardy laws.

Just hours before the vigil, with Shandee’s body still in a hospital morgue, Peros had described her to police as a “very, very manipulative piece of shit”.

In her first police statement, Shannah said Peros was “a bit odd” and regularly argued with Shandee.

The vigil led Shannah to provide a second statement to police, in which she also detailed a message she had received from a friend of Shandee, Steven Phillips.

“Hey I remember Shandee saying something about her ex,” the message read.

“Used to say he could have her wiped out any time he wanted. I used to think she was just talking crap but you may want to tell the cops to hit him up.”

Shandee’s Story details other instances where Shandee told of threats by Peros to kill her.

In a text message exchange with friend Jarrod Hau after breaking up with Peros, Shandee had written: “The last convo we had he threatened (again) to have me killed.”

Also after the break-up, Shandee wrote to friend and nightclub manager Arnold Di Carlo asking for help to find a Gold Coast bar job

“She told me that she really needs to leave Mackay,” Di Carlo told police.

“When I asked why, Shandee said ‘I have been arguing with my ex-partner to the point that he wants to kill me’.

“I said to her ‘Nah, you’re just at that point where you’re arguing too much, don’t worry about it’.

“Then I remember Shandee saying, ‘No Arnie, he really wants to kill me, he wants to kill me’. When she said it, I could sense the seriousness in her voice.”

Anyone with information about the murder of Shandee Blackburn can contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at: [e-mail]