John Edwards: mad dad’s licence to kill

John Edwards should have been unable to get near his kids with a gun.

People gather outside the house in Sydney’s West Pennant Hills where John Edwards murdered his teenage children. Picture: Flavio Brancaleone

When depraved killer John Edwards gunned down his two teenage children at their home in Sydney’s affluent West Pennant Hills last week, he left a community searching for answers.

The first is how a man described as a “deranged animal” could have been allowed access to guns.

The case has also raised questions about information-sharing between the courts, child welfare departments and police.

Last Thursday, lawyer Olga Edwards, 36, returned home from work about 5.30pm to the unimaginable horror of learning her children, Jack, 15 and Jennifer, 13, had been riddled with bullets as they huddled together in a bedroom. Their father had returned to his nearby Normanhurst home and turned the gun on himself.

Edwards had been able to buy a gun even though Olga — his fourth wife — was in hiding from him, and he had agreed to have no contact with their children following a long-running dispute.

The 68-year-old financial planner had left behind a string of failed relationships and children who wanted nothing to do with him.

Police investigators have told The Australian a clear personality profile is emerging of a man who was so extremely “narcissistic” he had meticulously planned the murder of his two youngest children for at least a year.

Edwards wrote final letters to his four ex-wives, a former partner and six surviving children in what police believe offers a chilling insight into what drove him to kill Jack and Jennifer. He left the letters with a friend, who later passed them unopened to the police.

“In all his relationships he always believed only he was perfect; it was his wives and partners who were doing the wrong thing,” one senior police source reveals.

Forensic psychiatrist Michael Diamond says Edwards’s behaviour had all the hallmarks of a ­“malignant narcissist” who felt “monstrously outraged” after a trail of broken marriages, and yet another wife had left him.

John Edwards.

“This was the ultimate way to punish the wife that he hates. Do something she can never recover from,” Diamond says.

Police say Olga Edwards had long been concerned about her husband’s “aggressive” behaviour towards her. And from about the time of Jack’s 10th birthday, ­Edwards “started directing that aggression towards Jack”.

The pair had been involved in a legal dispute that began in April 2016.

In February, Edwards agreed Olga should have sole parental ­responsibility for the children, and the children would live with her. No provision was made for him to have any contact with them.

The Australian understands this occurred following a psychological assessment. It is understood both children had made it clear they did not want anything to do with their father.

To date, NSW police have said they did not have any information relating to domestic violence perpetrated by Edwards against Olga, but this could be a matter for the coroner to examine.

If a person states on a court form that a child is at risk of abuse, that is automatically referred to the relevant state or territory child welfare department — but not to police. It is generally up to child welfare officials to refer cases to police — for example, to investigate possible child sexual abuse.

Olga Edwards.

Former Family Court chief justice Diana Bryant, who retired last October, says it is now worth considering whether police should also be routinely notified of abuse allegations for assessing whether a person is eligible for a gun licence. In each state and territory, it is police who are responsible for ­issuing firearms licences.

“This case makes it clear that they should (be notified for that purpose),” she says.

The court is the right body to notify police of potential risk, ­rather than a psychologist who has assessed the parents, she adds.

“You could have a requirement that if it is apparent from the file that (a person) was likely to be a danger to the children or a threat of danger, that the police are ­routinely advised for the purpose of not letting people have a gun ­licence,” Bryant says.

As part of their dispute, it is understood Edwards and Olga had each completed forms raising the risk of abuse to their children.

It is understood that on at least one of her forms, Olga had ticked that police had been notified of abuse or a risk of abuse.

Jack Edwards.

If police had been notified that Edwards posed a threat to his children, it raises even more disturbing questions about why he was issued with a gun licence.

According to Olga’s lawyer David Brown — who is also her employer — Olga had never ­applied for an apprehended violence order against her estranged spouse. It is not clear why.

Brown yesterday refused to comment on the dispute, but said it was only after the murder-­suicide that she learned her estranged husband had started the process of getting a gun licence late last year.

He says Edwards had been so determined to murder his children, he does not believe any authority could have stopped him.

“This man is a deranged animal,” he says. “Only an animal could do what he did to his own children.”

Family law expert Patrick Parkinson says women who are frightened of their former partners often quite rightly fear taking out an AVO against them because “it would only inflame them further”.

If Olga had done so, Edwards would have been automatically prevented from acquiring a gun. In NSW, a person cannot apply for a firearms licence until 10 years after the date a final AVO ends.

Perversely, police have told The Australian that Edwards had applied to take out an AVO against his wife last year, but this was rejected by the courts.

In about December, he began the process of applying for a gun ­licence, something police say he had been unsuccessful in doing over the past 10 years because of a previous AVO from his third wife.

Jennifer Edwards.

Edwards had reportedly been issued a ­so-called “commissioner’s permit” to allow him to pursue firearms training, despite being ­rejected by two Sydney shooting clubs because they did not find him to be of “good character”.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the commissioner’s permit reassured officials at the St Marys Indoor Shooting Centre that Edwards could legally undergo handgun training — the first step to getting a handgun licence and then a permit in NSW — ­despite his answers on a declaration form raising flags in the ­system.

This will be another matter for the coroner to examine.

Judges and lawyers have long despaired about the difficulty of information sharing between state and federal courts and authorities, which would enable good decisions to be made.

This is because in our fractured federal system, state children’s courts are responsible for making decisions about child welfare, local state magistrates’ courts make ­decisions about family violence ­orders and the federal family law courts make orders relating to child custody.

Then there are the state child welfare departments that investigate abuse and neglect. And the police.

Each court and authority has a separate computer system and ­information that is not easily ­accessed by anyone else — meaning crucial red flags are missed.

Coincidentally, senior representatives from these bodies met in Canberra on Tuesday and yesterday to discuss how they can better share information, as part of a Council of Australian Government initiative to tackle family ­violence and improve interaction between the various systems.

This week’s meeting had been arranged well before the horrific shootings, but John Edwards ­featured in the discussions.

The pace of reform has been painstakingly slow.

The reference group was first set up in December 2016 (one of seven different groups) but officials are still at the early stages of figuring out what information should be shared — bogged down in issues such as privacy law and due process for perpetrators — and how to do so.

They agreed to report to ­attorneys-general later this year, including on whether it would be possible to create a centralised ­database of court orders and other relevant information.

Victoria Legal Aid’s executive director of family, youth and children’s law, Nicole Rich, is frustrated it has taken so long for agencies to share information as basic as whether court orders are in place. She accepts it might take several years for IT issues to be resolved to create a central database.

“But surely we could have a manual way of sharing information in the meantime?” she says.

“There’s got to be some way to make it work because it’s just not OK to have so many people dying in these situations. Barely a week goes by in Australia where we don’t have these horrible incidents occurring.

“To me it’s a national emergency and we should be putting a huge priority focus and resources into ensuring that at the very least, the basic information that needs to be shared is shared, and that the professionals working in the system know how to access that information and … what to do with it when they get it.”

Too much information, however, is not necessarily a good thing. In some cases, where there is a family dispute, the information can be overwhelming.

Since the Federal Circuit Court made it mandatory to file a notice of risk in every parenting dispute, there has been a huge jump in the number referred to child welfare departments.

There were 20,618 notices of risk filed in the Federal Circuit Court in 2016-17, and of those 8883 (or 43 per cent) were referred to a child welfare agency, according to its annual report.

This was a “considerable increase” from the 5811 notices of risk filed in 2013-14 (the financial year before the new mandatory ­requirement).

The Australian has been told some state welfare agencies find these notices of risk helpful, but others complain they simply drag them away from other more pressing cases.

Bryant says the Family Court looked at introducing a similar mandatory form but decided against it.

In the Family Court, a notice is only filed when allegations of child abuse or risk are made. In 2016-17, 653 notices were filed (representing 23.8 per cent of cases), and all were referred to the relevant child welfare agency.

She says it is helpful for judges if forms are filed in every case, ­because it helps them triage cases in overloaded court lists.

But the Family Court decided against the requirement, she says, because it was worried it would lead to too many allegations that would swamp the agencies, causing them to “start taking things a bit less seriously”.

She says it is necessary to assess whether the Federal Circuit Court’s requirement is working.

Bryant says it is impossible to predict which parents are going to snap and kill their children.

“People don’t come into a court with a sign painted on their forehead saying ‘I’m going to kill my kids’,” she says.

“There are many, many violent men who don’t harm their children. You can’t assume that everyone is going to, but obviously there are risk factors. The risk assessments are getting more and more sophisticated and there are lots of factors if you do a proper risk ­assessment that will raise red flags. For example, attempted suffocation or choking is a pretty big red flag that things are escalating to a very unhealthy degree.”

Parkinson this week warned that Australia’s child protection agencies had been so overwhelmed by “child at risk” notifications from warring parents that children in serious danger were getting buried in the system

Parkinson, dean of the Law School, University of Queensland, says the challenge for child protection agencies and judges is trying to identify which cases pose “a real and present danger” to children.

“The number of risk notifications to child protection authorities is very high — ranging from smacking a child to very serious abuse,” he says.

“What happens is that the most serious cases get drowned in the cacophony of complaints. If everything is urgent, nothing is urgent.”

Parkinson says child protection agencies across the country are forced to triage risk notices but don’t have the resources to assess every case that needs to be passed on to police.

“We’ve made a mistake in the legislation, we’ve cast the net too high,” he said.

A Family Court and Federal Circuit Court spokeswoman said the courts acknowledged concerns about restrictions that limited the ability of police, state departments and the courts to share information and “understand it is a significant issue”.

She said through the COAG process they were committed to improving the interaction ­between the various agencies and the heads of jurisdiction were ­“always open to considering better ways in which the courts can work with state and territory agencies, including the police, to improve the safety and welfare of children and families at risk”.