Shandee’s Story podcast: Timeline of events in the case of Shandee Blackburn
A look at the key events in the life and case of Shandee Blackburn.
June 11, 1989: Shandee Renee Blackburn is born in Brisbane and moves with her parents to grow up in the sugar and mining town of Mackay in tropical central Queensland. Shandee’s parents separate when she is young and she grows up with her mother Vicki and sister Shannah at Slade Point, and then in Boddington Street. Shandee has a bubbly and outgoing personality. Her friends remember her mischievous smile and lilting laugh.
June, 2011: In mid-2011 Shandee Blackburn connects with John Peros through Facebook. Shandee is now 22 years old. John is 29. They start to message each other and are eventually introduced by a mutual friend, Jarrod Hau, at the Envy Nightclub in Mackay. Jarrod warns them to have fun and not get too serious in the relationship because he believes John won’t manage it well.
Late December, 2011: John and Shandee break up. Shandee activates a new iPhone 3. John leaves without Shandee for a holiday to Thailand, with the intention of having sex and spending the new year period over there.
January 2012: John and Shandee reunite after his return from Thailand. Text messages show serious trust issues in their relationship. Vitriolic and crude remarks about Shandee’s role in previous relationships, John’s perception of her sexual activity, and his criticisms of her weight, are raised in a number of these messages.
March 31, 2012: Shandee moves to the Gold Coast after John breaks up with her a second time. Shandee’s family say she was pressured into moving by John, who remains adamant that it was Shandee’s idea to leave Mackay. Despite the breakup, John offers Shandee financial support for the first four weeks of her move, and they remain in regular contact with frequent angry message exchanges.
April 2012: John visits Shandee on the Gold Coast. Their weekend together quickly goes awry as they argue in a nightclub. Text messages from around this period show a highly dysfunctional relationship. John threatens Shandee, saying ‘you’d be in a coma if you were a guy’, in one message. Shandee begs John to stop telling her to kill herself.
March-October 2012: John seeks mental health advice from medical professionals, including his General Practitioner and two psychiatrists. He sees a psychologist over the course of many months. He talks at length about trust issues in his relationships and a troubled childhood. Shandee and John exchange more text messages in this period however they have a major argument mid-year and John stops replying to messages towards the end of May.
June-August 2012: Shandee is finding it difficult to make enough money from her job selling charity donation packages to support herself. She’s behind with rent and living money. A friend introduces her to a nightclub called Toy Box where Shandee works for a short time as a stripper.
October 2012: Shandee returns to Mackay after finding it difficult to get work and pay her rent on the Gold Coast. She moves in with her mother Vicki and Vicki’s partner Paul Beardmore on Boddington Street and finds work as a waitress at the Harrup Park Country Club’s coffee shop.
November 2012: Shandee starts dating a chef at the Harrup Park Country Club, Arron Macklin. By all accounts they are besotted with each other and a good couple. Arron sometimes gives Shandee rides to and from work on his motorbike. Arron’s good friend later tells police that Arron told him he wanted to propose marriage to Shandee on a road-trip they had planned in America in late 2013.
December 2012: Shandee and Arron pass by the Trax convenience store on the corner of Evan and Juliet Street while riding on Arron’s motorcycle. Shandee tells Arron that she sees an ex-boyfriend as they drive past and that he was a boxer. It was almost certainly John Peros. Shandee and Arron were wearing helmets at the time.
December, 2012: The Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services laboratory implements a new computer program for DNA profiling called STRmix, and a new DNA profiling kit called PowerPlex 21.
January 26, 2013: Australia Day 2013. John Peros spends the afternoon and evening with friends Nicole Hutchinson, Sharlene Perry, Liam Aleman, and Liam’s girlfriend Melissa Oliver. They visit the Austral Hotel in town and then hop between pubs. They become heavily intoxicated, except for John who friends say drinks only moderately. They continue drinking at Sharlene’s house until early the next morning. While at Sharlene’s, the topic of past relationships is raised. According to Nicole, Sharlene and Liam, John brings up Shandee in this conversation, telling them that he hates her. Liam vividly recalls John saying he wanted to stab Shandee.
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Events on the night of Shandee’s murder
February 8, 2013 – 11:58pm: Shandee finishes her shift as a waitress in the coffee shop at the Harrup Park Country Club. She is seen on CCTV exiting the foyer of the building and starting her walk home. Her boyfriend Arron Macklin who would sometimes give her a lift home has had a night off work and fallen asleep after drinking and watching TV at his parents’ house. Shandee decides to walk the 1.2 kilometres to her mum Vicki’s house in Boddington Street.
February 9, 2013
– 12:06:40am: A CCTV camera at Mercy College captures Shandee walking home along Juliet Street. She is alone.
– 12:08:00am: A Toyota Hilux drives up Twelfth Lane near Boddington Street. It passes cameras at the United Petroleum Service Station and the Outlaws Motorcycle Clubhouse. The vehicle will later be identified as the same make and model as John Peros’s car. But its number plate is not visible. Police will use this footage to identify at least 13 common features between this vehicle and Peros’s including what they believe is a rust mark and a missing wheel flare.
– 12:09:16am: A mysterious vehicle drives into the section of Sydney Street that runs behind the Girl Guides hut. Police allege it will sit idly in this empty street at midnight for just over six minutes, leaving after Shandee is assaulted. Shortly after this vehicle enters, a figure is seen moving in the bushes of the Girl Guides hut. Police allege it is John’s vehicle.
– 12:12:49am: Shandee walks past a CCTV camera at a local residential premise on her walk home. She must cross a grassy paddock to get to the corner of Boddington Street, near her home. A figure moves in the bushes of the Girl Guides hut on the corner.
– 12:14:00am: A grainy figure leaves the bushes of the Girl Guides hut and is captured running hard across Sydney Street towards the grassy paddock and Shandee as she walks home. Mercifully, the brutal attack that follows - there are 23 stab and slash wounds to Shandee’s body in total - is not captured on CCTV footage.
– 12:14:27am: Taxi driver Jaspreet Pandher rounds Boddington Street and witnesses what appears to him to be an altercation and a struggle over a handbag. As he performs a U-turn further up the street he sees a person running hard across the paddock, away from the scene.
– 12:14:39am: The running figure re-emerges on CCTV footage 33 seconds after they disappear from view, running towards the bottom end of Sydney Street.
– 12:15:30am: Just over forty seconds later a vehicle resembling a utility ute exits the street behind the Girl Guides Hut and turns left onto Evan Street.
– 12:16am: Ringo Tapim, who lives on Boddington Street in a flat overlooking the murder scene, hears Shandee’s desperate coughing moments after she is attacked. He dials 000 and rushes to her side.
– 12:20:46am – 02:30:19am: Multiple CCTV cameras capture a vehicle closely resembling John Peros’s car leave town and drive north along the Bruce Highway. They will capture an identical vehicle returning to Mackay at about 2:30am.
– 12:26am: Paramedics arrive at the scene and attempt to perform heart massage, but there are too many wounds to Shandee’s body. Police Sergeant Peter Cowan arrives and activates his voice recorder. He reports to base that: “This is going to turn into a murder – she’s not going to make it.”
– 12:48am: Shandee is rushed to hospital but can’t be saved. She is reported deceased at 12:50am.
– 4:32am: Plains Clothes Constable Belinda Gregg, Detective Sergeant Anthony Cowan and a number of other police officers visit Shandee’s mother Vicki down the road. A digital recording captures the haunting moment officers inform Vicki her daughter has been assaulted and has died just down the street.
– 5:36am: Police visit Shandee’s boyfriend Arron Macklin and inform him that his girlfriend has just been assaulted and has passed away. Officers initially treat Arron as a person of interest; however, as the police investigation progresses detectives will rule him out.
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February 10, 2013: Police visit Shandee Blackburn’s former boyfriend John Peros, after struggling to find him for the previous 36 hours due to several false leads. John remembers the events of day-time February 8 well, but he tells police he cannot remember what he did for certain on the night Shandee died. Police ask John to give a statement. They notice he appears very nervous. He refuses to give a sample of his DNA however police pick up one of his discarded self-rolled cigarettes to obtain his DNA.
February 24, 2013: Police detectives visit John Peros’s psychologist Jeff Poots with a search warrant. They seize the psychologist’s notes from his sessions with John. They discover that John had visited Poots throughout 2012 for depression and had spoken about his relationship breakup with Shandee and the trust issues it brought out in him.
February 25, 2013: The first re-enactment police organise with John Peros’s Toyota Hilux. Police drive John’s vehicle along the same route a vehicle similar to his drives on the evening Shandee died. They want to compare the vehicles to find any difference between them. There are none, according to police.
February 28, 2013: The forensic laboratory testing samples in Shandee’s case reports: “No DNA detected” from a tape lift on Shandee’s forearm taken by a police scientific officer shortly after her murder. The lab will later rework this sample and send an updated result to police.
March 1, 2013: Police execute a search warrant on John Peros’s flat in Evan Street. John is hesitant to comply. His laptop cannot be found.
March 2013: John’s friends Nicole Hutchinson, Sharlene Perry and Liam Aleman give statements to police. They allege that on Australia Day – two weeks before Shandee was murdered – John said that he hated Shandee. Sharlene adds that she thinks John said: “she would be better off dead”, but says that her memory of the specific phrase he used isn’t precise. Liam Aleman tells police that he vividly remembers John saying he hated Shandee and wanted to stab her.
March 16, 2013: The American rock band KISS play in Mackay. Shandee was named after the band’s iconic song ‘Shandi’. Frontman Paul Stanley plays a tribute to Shandee.
March 30, 2013: Police execute a search warrant on John Peros’s flat in Evan Street for a second time. His laptop is seized and a forensic computer analysis reveals searches for spy equipment.
April 23, 2013: Jamie Lewis, a local garbage truck driver, tells police that in late February he saw a handbag very similar to Shandee’s in the rubbish dump along with a new pair of brown work boots and contacted police. Jamie received no reply, eventually hearing from detectives in late April. The description Jamie gives of the handbag is strikingly similar to Shandee’s handbag, which was missing from the murder scene. Too much rubbish has passed through the dump to recover the bag.
Late April, 2013: Detectives learn of rumours circulating around a young man with a reputation for drug use, carrying knives and a violent criminal history. (William Daniel denies any involvement in Shandee’s murder.) William’s friend, 17-year-old Levii Blackman, initially tells detectives that on the night Shandee was killed, William Daniel said to him: “Someone got murdered up there … I did it.” Levii is uncertain if William was telling the truth or joking about the statements he made outside the flats where they were living, not far from the murder scene. He adds that William and his friend who was with him at the time, Norman Dorante, had no blood on them and didn’t appear to be carrying any weapons.
Police talk to William Daniel’s girlfriend Keiarra Tass. She confirms William lived with her at the time in a flat just around the corner from where Shandee was murdered. She tells police that multiple knives are missing from her knife block and that William sometimes carried kitchen knives – and a meat cleaver – for protection. She tells police William was with her on the evening Shandee was assaulted and maintains that William has nothing to do with Shandee’s murder.
May 2, 2013: Police take a statement from William Daniel’s mother, Priscilla Seden, who says she was living with William and his partner Keiarra Tass in James Street at the time of Shandee’s murder. A cleaner working two jobs and a single mother, Priscilla says that on the night of Shandee’s murder she came home from work around midnight and found William and Keiarra asleep in bed.
May 15, 2013: Police visit William Daniel’s cousin and friend Norman Dorante in custody in the Rockhampton watch-house. He refuses to give a statement and says he knows nothing about the murder.
May 23, 2013: Police detectives Lisa Elkins and Scott Furlong visit William Daniel in Wyong, New South Wales. He denies any involvement in Shandee’s murder. He tells them that on the evening Shandee was attacked he watched the Indigenous All Stars Rugby League on TV and then went fishing with his girlfriend Keiarra Tass. He denies carrying knives and being addicted to methamphetamine, claims which are contradicted by multiple witnesses.
May 24, 2013: Detectives Lisa Elkins and Scott Furlong visit John’s mother Maria and sister Poppy at their waterfront home in Sydney. Poppy and Maria tell detectives that John had never mentioned Shandee by name and had not been home since Christmas. Retired detective Scott Furlong says John’s family were welcoming but could not shed light on anything new and did not provide statements.
May 28, 2013: Police speak to Keiarra Tass for a second time. They inform her that her recollection of being with William Daniel on the night of the All Stars Rugby League match – the night she believes is the date of Shandee’s murder – is incorrect. The All Stars match was the night after Shandee’s murder. Keiarra tells police William was definitely with her on the night of Shandee’s murder – that she picked him up from his cousin’s house, that he was drunk, and they went to sleep together.
July, 2013: Police visit William Daniel’s former partner Telitah in Broome, Western Australia. William had visited her in April shortly before rumours of his involvement in Shandee’s murder reached police. He did not return immediately to Mackay, instead travelling to Wyong in New South Wales. Telitah says that William spoke to her about the rumours about his involvement in Shandee’s murder, and that he firmly denied having any involvement.
August, 2013: Police visit William Daniel again, this time in Mackay. He’s unable to give a verifiable explanation of his whereabouts on the night of Shandee’s murder. He asks whether the police have any DNA.
August 2013: Shandee’s former flatmate Steve Phillips makes a statement to police saying that before her death Shandee told him that John Peros had said he could easily have her killed.
August 22, 2013: Cane farmer Justin Vella finds a knife on his family’s farm on the road to Seaforth north of Mackay. Justin and his father are cutting plants on their farm when they find a knife under a heavy rock. The knife’s handle has been snapped off and Justin says the blade is stained with blood. Justin is suspicious of the blade’s concealment under a rock not far from the road and he contacts police, who visit the family property and seize the blade as evidence. The knife tests presumptively positive for blood; however, the forensic lab later reports: “No DNA Detected.”
September 4, 2013: Detectives question the forensic laboratory handling samples in Shandee’s case about their inability to obtain the DNA profile of a second contributor from a sample taken from underneath Shandee’s fingernail. Detectives note the response is: “that bacteria may have an effect on the ability to obtain a DNA profile.” It’s an explanation that forensic biologist Dr. Kirsty Wright says is ‘ludicrous’ and an ‘impossibility’.
February 13, 2014: Police execute a forensic procedure order on John Peros and notify him that he must comply. They take John to the police station, extract DNA samples, fingerprint him and photograph him.
February 19, 2014: Detectives visit Michael and Maria Coles, close friends of Peros who say that John has cut off all contact with them and is suspicious of everybody. Mick says that John is “losing it” under the intense pressure of the police investigation.
February 21, 2014: Police visit John’s flat in Mackay and notify him that his firearms licence has been revoked and he must hand over his weapons. John is hesitant to comply. He reveals an intricate security system in his flat involving magnets and hidden wall compartments to reach his safe key.
March 13, 2014: John Peros’s friend Cameron Maltby tells police that in conversations in 2012, after John and Shandee’s break-up, John expressed resentment and wished Shandee harm. He didn’t think anything of these comments in the context of the relationship breakup. Cameron recalls strange comments that John made after Shandee’s murder including thanking Cameron for leaving his fingerprints on a Glock pistol John owned.
July, 2014: The forensic lab testing samples in Shandee’s case reports that their original finding of: “No DNA Detected” from a tape lift of Shandee’s forearm is incorrect. The lab reports that the sample from Shandee’s forearm now provides a DNA mixture which could not be interpreted.
September 4, 2014: John Peros is put in an interview room at police headquarters in Brisbane and a video showing the CCTV footage of a vehicle looking identical to his on the night of the murder is played. John refuses to look at it. He is arrested and charged with the murder and robbery of Shandee Blackburn.
February 15, 2016: A Committal Hearing is held prior to John Peros’s Supreme Court murder trial. Tensions are high between John’s new defence barrister Craig Eberhardt and William Daniel. Levii Blackman denies for the first time ever seeing William and Norman on the night of Shandee’s murder and claims police threatened him with ‘black magic’.
March 20, 2017: John Peros’s Supreme Court trial for the murder of Shandee Blackburn begins. It will span a total of 12 days and a jury will return with a verdict of ‘not guilty’.
April, 2017: Vicki Blackburn writes to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions weeks after the trial finishes. She believes the trial was unfair to Shandee, key evidence was not presented properly and some evidence was not presented at all.
July 1, 2019: The first day of a coronial inquest initiated by Central Coroner David O’Connell. William Daniel and John Peros become main persons of interest at the inquest, which looks at a comprehensive range of evidence and expert opinion, much of which was not allowed at John Peros’s Supreme Court trial two years prior.
November 25, 2021: At a press conference in Brisbane, investigative journalist Hedley Thomas and respected forensic biologist Dr Kirsty Wright reveal stunning errors and failures by Queensland’s government-run forensics laboratory in Shandee’s case and call for the samples to be retested, and the lab investigated. Vicki and Shannah Blackburn and criminal lawyer Kristy Bell also speak to the media at the conference, which is aired on national television that evening.
February 9, 2022: Nine years to the day after Shandee’s slaying, The Australian newspaper reports that Coroner David O’Connell has formally reopened coronial investigations into Shandee’s death after DNA failures revealed in the podcast forced Queensland’s attorney-general to request the coroner take action. Mr O’Connell says he has yet to decide to reopen the inquest, but his own coronial investigations will continue. The announcement gives renewed hope to Shandee’s family.
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Events will be added to the timeline as they are discussed in the podcast episodes each week. For more about the podcast, visit shandee.com.au
Anyone with information about the murder of Shandee Blackburn can contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at: shandee@theaustralian.com.au