Stealth mode: Shandee Blackburn’s ex-boyfriend John Peros went dark

Shandee Blackburn’s former boyfriend John Peros switched phones, started riding a motor­ised scooter and went silent on ­social media after her murder.

A newly obtained photo of Shandee Blackburn's former boyfriend, John Peros, taken in 2008 for his weapons licence.

Shandee Blackburn’s former boyfriend John Peros switched phones, started riding a motor­ised scooter and went silent on ­social media after her murder, telling a friend he was in “stealth mode”.

As detectives became increasingly suspicious of Peros, the case against him grew when his friend, Sharlene Perry, sat down with police a month after Blackburn was stabbed to death while ­walking home from work in ­February 2013.

Perry related events from Australia Day, January 26, two weeks before the murder, when she said Peros surprised her with his ­hatred for 23-year-old Blackburn.

Episode 4 of Shandee's Story details comments John Peros allegedly made about Shandee on Australia Day, 2013, two weeks before her murder, and how he told a friend he was in ‘stealth mode’.

“Somehow or other the conversation got around to relationships and John Peros raised the topic of Shandee,” she said. “He got fairly dark and said something like ‘I f..king hate that c..t’.

“Over the minute or so, he got really venomous about her and said things that made me sit up and take notice.”

Perry was one of three people who spoke to police about the outburst and became known in the case as the Australia Day witnesses. All of them liked Peros. He had broken up with Blackburn many months earlier.

Their accounts and the emergence of Peros as the prime suspect are detailed in a new episode of The Australian’s investigative podcast series, Shandee’s Story, examining the unsolved murder.

John Peros leaves the Mackay Court House during an inquest into Shandee’s murder.

The champion amateur boxer was acquitted of Blackburn’s murder in 2017 but a coroner last year found he did kill her.

He denies any involvement.

Peros and a group of friends had been to several pubs on Australia Day before settling in at Perry’s place. “During this conversation, I have it in the back of my head somewhere that he said something like ‘she would be better off dead’,” Perry said.

Perry’s nephew, Liam Aleman, was there and remembered Peros saying: “I hate her and I would love to stab the c..t.”

A third friend, Nicole Hutchinson, said Peros, known to her as Jupes, was emotional as he talked about his ex. “Jupes said something like ‘I hate that c..t’. I could hear there was hate inside him.”

Perry spoke to police again in April, a few days after Peros had dropped in at her home un­announced about 7pm mid-week.

During that visit, he told her people didn’t have to talk to police, Perry said. Peros added that his solicitor had warned him off social media and he was using a different phone so didn’t have anyone’s numbers.

It had already been noticed by Perry that Peros had stopped using Facebook after previously being active on the platform.

When she realised his white HiLux ute wasn’t parked out the front, he said he was riding a new scooter, which was parked three houses away.

“I said to him ‘Did you forget where my house was?’ He said ‘No, I am just in stealth mode at the moment’,” Perry said.

Detective Jon Kent told Peros to do what he was told.

Detectives Jon Kent from the local Criminal Investigation Branch and Scott Furlong from the homicide unit first visited Peros’s flat the day after Blackburn’s murder, persuading him to go to the station to make a statement.

They returned on March 1 with a search warrant and a digital recorder running. “You have to do what you’re told or you’re obstructing police,” Kent said.

The warrant authorised police to look for Blackburn’s missing handbag, black diary, driver’s ­licence and book about singer Cyndi Lauper, as well as Peros’s computer.

Homicide unit detective Scott Furlong asked Peros about his motorised scooter.

In a 76-minute search, nothing was found. A computer police had seen in the flat on their previous visit was no longer there.

Furlong returned at the end of the month with another search warrant and asked about the scooter. Peros said it just wasn’t fast enough.

Shandee’s Story is an investigation by national chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas. Episode 4, Stealth Mode, is available to The Australian’s subscribers.

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