WA shooting: Peter Miles and wife Cynda battled with former son-in-law

Peter Miles was once a friend to his son-in-law Aaron Cockman. Then he and wife Cynda got involved in an epic fight.

Peter Miles (centre) is believed to have shot his wife, daughter and grandchildren in their beds.

Gunman Peter Miles was once a friend to his son-in-law Aaron Cockman — he used to take him to his workplace, a farm school in the wine and food region of Margaret River, south of Perth, where the teacher and the carpenter stood side by side butchering sheep ­carcasses.

In recent years, Mr Cockman says Mr Miles and his former mother-in-law, Mr Miles’s wife Cynda, worked against him.

He says they were invested in an epic fight to ensure their grandchildren — the three boys and a girl their daughter Katrina had with Mr Cockman between 2005 and 2010 — no longer saw him.

“A lot of things that Kat did, I’m pretty sure wasn’t her. Kat’s mum said to me once, ‘You’ll see, Kat will make sure you and your parents never see those kids again’,” he said yesterday. “That was at the start when I first got cut off from my kids. And I’m thinking,‘ Woah, how the hell did I get on the wrong side of these people?’ ”

The ugly story of a failed marriage, a dispute over children, claims of abuse and sides chosen has become public because Mr Miles is thought responsible for the deadliest mass shooting since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

“He (Peter) was so close to my kids, so close to my kids,” Mr Cockman said.

Aaron Cockman said he was once very close to his former father-in-law. Picture: Colin Murty The Australian

On Friday, Katrina, 35, and her children — Taye, 13, Rylan, 12, Ayre, 10, and eight-year-old Kayden — were found dead in the converted shed they lived in on the property owned by Peter and Cynda Miles. The older children were found in their beds, while Kayden and his mother were found in the same bed in Katrina’s room.

The body of Cynda, 58, was found in the living room of the family home nearby, while the body of Peter, 61, was found on a chair on the veranda of the home, with a rifle between his legs.

Mr Cockman said he wanted the police to tell him how his children were found. “The guy that went through and saw the kids ... He said, ‘Aaron I’m telling you straight up, they looked all peaceful’,” Mr Cockman said.

Yesterday he described how he finally won back his right to see his children — “I’m an awesome dad” — although an April 23 Facebook post by Katrina Miles suggests considerable tension between him and his former wife.

Ms Miles had claimed Mr Cockman had persisted in parking outside the small rural holding in Osmington where they lived.

Mr Cockman said Mr and Mrs Miles were responsible for his losing ­access to his children.

“In the last couple of months that anger was starting to build up to the point where I was starting to think, ‘That’s all right, they’ll keep. I’ll get them back some day’. Peter and Cynda, that is ... But this is not how I wanted to get back at them. This is a whole new level. But that anger towards them now is ­completely gone”

Anger had given way to “tremendous sadness”. “I still love who Peter was,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Peter, I wouldn’t have Katrina, I wouldn’t have the kids. He gave them to me and now he’s taken them away.”

Mr Cockman was supported by relatives yesterday as he spoke about his “beautiful children”.

He said the last time he saw them was two weeks ago, when he took them to see the film Avengers in the seaside town of Busselton.

West Australian police commissioner Chris Dawson has described the investigation into the seven deaths as complex. He declined to reveal what Mr Miles might have said in a call to 000 on Friday morning, after he is thought to have shot the family.

Nor will police say whether he left a note.

Mr Cockman is left to grieve for the children he says he had only recently been able to spend time with again. “I used to drive around town just, just hoping to see them somewhere and every now and then I would and that would keep me going for a few weeks,” he said.

He said being subjected to supervised visits with his children turned out to be a good thing.

“The best thing was supervised visits because at the end of every supervised visit, you had to have a report done and those reports show that I was an awesome dad,” he said

Mr Cockman said he sometimes thought about what life would be like for his kids — all of whom were autistic — as they grew older.

“I couldn’t wait for them to leave the farm situation and start being their own independent ­people. That would have been good to see that,” he said.