Shandee’s Story: Murder victim visited psychic about jealous boyfriend

A year before her murder, Shandee Blackburn visited a psychic about her jealous boyfriend – and recorded it.

Shandee Blackburn with John Peros, who would be charged with her murder but acquitted by a jury in less than two hours.

Murder victim Shandee Blackburn recorded on her mobile phone a session with a psychic in which she disclosed that her boyfriend and later accused killer, John Peros, was consumed by jealousy.

Blackburn spoke to the older woman, who promoted herself as a clairvoyant in the coastal Queensland community of Mackay, about her tumultuous on-again off-again relationship with Peros, asking: “Is it worth pursuing?”

Peros was seven years older than Blackburn, a lean, fit amateur boxer and diesel fitter with a growing property portfolio.

With Peros waiting outside the room during the spiritual “reading” in early 2012, a year before Blackburn’s murder, the psychic told her that her boyfriend had to stop bringing up the past.

Shandee’s recording of her visit to a psychic is revealed in the second episode of Shandee’s Story, out Friday for subscribers of The Australian.

“We’ve talked about it. He said he knows he has to, he just doesn’t know how to stop, to get it out of his head,” Blackburn said.

The recording is revealed in The Australian’s new podcast ­series Shandee’s Story investigating the 2013 unsolved murder of the 23-year-old as she walked home after a night shift at Mac­kay’s Harrup Park Country Club.

A jury acquitted Peros of Blackburn’s murder in 2017 but the state’s central coroner, David O’Connell, last year found he did kill her.

Peros denies involvement.

Blackburn’s recording with the psychic discusses issues deeply personal to her. In it, she says in a gentle voice she had never cheated on Peros and never would, but he was hung up on her past relationships.

She started dating Peros in mid-2011. By year’s end, they had broken up, and Peros travelled overseas without her. He would later tell police he had told Blackburn he didn’t want a serious relationship and he would be “playing up” in ­Thailand.

On his return to Australia in early 2012, they tried again.

The psychic asked Blackburn what Peros had been doing in Thailand. “Same thing men … all men, go there for,” she said.

The psychic was a woman with a colourful turn of phrase who did not hesitate to offer relationship advice during the reading. “They’re only prostitutes, don’t worry about it,” she said. “He’ll pay for it, you know. It’s not free. It’s no big coup to his ego. They’re funny bastards, aren’t they?”

Blackburn confirmed, when asked, that Peros had called while overseas. “He told me he missed me and wanted to give things a go,” she said.

Separately, Blackburn’s sister Shannah would tell police Peros went to Thailand for the sole purpose of having sex with prostitutes. Shandee had been upset about it, Shannah Blackburn said.

The clairvoyant had some extra advice. “Darling, if you don’t find fault with him, he’ll have no reason to f..k another woman.

“All men screw around out of revenge. It’s a revenge. For finding fault with them. Don’t find fault and there’s no need for them to get revenge on us, is there?

“It’s the ultimate revenge to a nagging woman.”

During the session, Blackburn said a friend wouldn’t set foot in her room because she felt a bad presence. “I never felt anything. But lately, the last six or seven months, I’ve been having awful, awful, horrible dreams,” she said.

“I can’t sleep through the night. I’ll wake up three or four times a night and I actually felt someone in my room once … sitting on my bed. I woke up once being shaken.”

The psychic told her to meditate and use sandalwood oil on her pillowcase and to chant a specific mantra that “removes ghosts”. She had one warning about the relationship: “The guilt you’re getting projected on you could make it go bad.”

Blackburn and Peros subsequently broke up for good and she was in a new relationship when she was savagely stabbed on a public street and left for dead.

Peros declined to comment.

Shandee’s Story is an investigation by national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas. The second episode, Sweating Bullets, is released on Friday to The Australian’s subscribers.

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