Remembering Tayla and baby Murphy one year after alleged Rockhampton murders
On this day one year ago Rockhampton lost two shining lights when Tayla Black and her 11-week-old baby Murphy Margaret were found allegedly murdered in one of the state’s most suspected horrific DV cases. See how the community is healing.
Police & Courts
Don't miss out on the headlines from Police & Courts. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Off a busy Rockhampton thoroughfare frequented by harried mums and dads bustling their young children to primary school is a surprisingly quiet, almost peaceful street which ends with a rarely used local park.
The seven homes sitting on either side of the wide street, some so close neighbours could comfortably gossip through their windows, might even seem empty if not for the cars in the driveway and the neatly cropped green grass with sparse brown patches from the unseasonably cold weather.
But at the end of Bean St in Park Avenue, the silence and stillness that has settled upon number 7 is like an echo reverberating along the street. No one lives there anymore.
Each day the long, taut vines of a scarlet red bougainvillea continue to creep up the cream-coloured highset home.
They wind their way tightly around the stairs and over the screen door, as though the overgrown shrub consuming the front of the house is trying to physically seal away the unimaginable horrors that unfolded while they were closed one year ago.
It is the home where Rockhampton’s darling, Tayla Black, and her adored 11-week-old daughter Murphy Margaret, were allegedly murdered.
A blue plastic swing hanging from the branch of a sturdy tree, perhaps planted when the house was built in 1945, sits unmoving, unloved in the backyard with a variety of luscious green trees. Baby Murphy will never grow up to play on it.
Just a 10 minute walk from the home is a small primary school, St Joseph’s, where she might have been able to make friends, frantically throw her hand in the air to answer questions, or give her dirty little school joggers to Tayla when the day was finished for her mum to get the gritty playground sand from the crevices.
While the tributes of soft plush toys, heartfelt notes and fresh flowers placed carefully around the mailbox and tree outside the home are no longer there, a tiny bouquet of plastic pink and white flowers remains taped to the street sign. It serves as a memory of baby Murphy and Tayla, whose favourite colour was pink.
It did not take long for the beautiful pair, so in love with the unique bond only mothers and daughters share, to capture the town’s heart and be adopted as family and friends.
Tayla and her baby girl’s deaths, allegedly at the hands of husband and father Matthew James Cox, was an unfathomable tragedy the town, and even the state, has never seen.
Friend Sohie Edwards this week said she remembered seeing Tayla at just 12 weeks pregnant.
“We were at the yeppoon cinema waiting to see a movie and she told me she wanted to call her little girl Murphy Margaret,” she said.
On August 10, after the Rockhampton Southern Cross Austereo TV account manager attended Fortitude Valley Police Station police, officers in Rockhamption performed a welfare check on Tayla and Murphy Margaret, discovering a shocking scene.
Tayla and baby Murphy were allegedly murdered on August 8.
Mr Cox has been charged with two counts of murder. Mr Cox has not entered pleas and remains in custody at Brisbane Correctional Centre.
Tayla and Mr Cox met at Rockhampton Flight Centre in 2013, later dating in 2015 and becoming engaged in November 2018 with the wedding on the Gold Coast in May 2021.
While they then spent several years in Victoria, the couple returned to Rockhampton in April 2022, living with Tayla’s parents until purchasing their own home in December 2022.
They welcomed baby Murphy in early 2023.
At the time Health Minister Shannon Fentiman revealed that Mr Cox attended the Rockhampton Hospital mental health unit as an inpatient about a year before Murphy’s birth.
Anmaree and Gerry Black, had just left the country for a holiday when their daughter and 11-week-old grandchild were allegedly murdered by Mr Cox.
Police allege he travelled to Rockhampton Airport in his wife’s white MG, flew to Brisbane and on Thursday, August 10, walked into the police station at Fortitude Valley and told officers to go to the house on Bean St.
Despite being married and sharing the last name Cox, Rockhampton quickly rallied around the Blacks and followed their wishes in referring to her by her maiden name.
The mother and daughter were laid to rest together in a single white casket at the Rockhampton Baptist Church on August 25, the love they shared described as a “radiant light” that would forever illuminate the family’s memories.
In their tribute at the funeral, the Black family said they would think of Tayla and Murphy every day and hold them both in their hearts forever.
Their heartbreaking loss has sparked a movement she could never imagine, for Tayla and Murphy Margaret’s passing brought out the best in Rockhampton after the town banded together to support Tayla’s mum and dad following their passing and their creation of TBMMBEKIND in their honour.
Through their grief, Anmaree and Gerry Black started TBMMBEKIND, a movement designed to spread goodwill and keep alive the memory of their daughter and granddaughter.
Despite being torn from their loved ones so young, 30 for Tayla, and at 11 weeks for Murphy Margaret, they will make an impact more than many people will ever make on the world.
The Blacks shared their vision in a statement delivered at a Stop Violence Against Women rally in May this year, explaining they wanted to spread kindness in honour of their cherished girls, imploring everyone to “keep turning up, speaking up and challenging gender-based violence”.
“One life lost is too many. Let’s all come together and say their name: ‘Always was Tayla Black and always will be Murphy Margaret’.”
A woman who onced lived with Tayla, Tash Smith, has echoed the sentiments of so many - she is someone you could never forget.
“Her smile lit up the room. She was very honest and had a quick witted personality.”
Gerry and Anmaree and their support network are quietly working behind the scenes to create something positive from their unfathomable loss.
They regularly perform random acts of kindness, and work to give back to the community.
Most recently, they gave about 1000 donated books they had collated to various organisations to mark what would have been Murphy’s 1st birthday in May.
Growing up in Rockhampton, a charming Tayla was popular wherever she went, with many friends at St Ursula’s College in Yeppoon and as a repair co-ordinator at Campbell Construction Co in Berserker.
From an early age her parents had been told by teachers they were raising a “leader” not a follower.
Fond of the colour pink, animals (her family would jokingly call her “Tayla Attenborough”) and harbouring a hatred of onions, a night well spent for Tayla would include karaoke and “dodgy dancing”.
Her former high school teacher, Jacqui Baker, said this week Tayla was such a strong lady and stood up for what was right.
“A beautiful soul taken too soon,” she said.
While a former colleague, Kerri Wilson, described Tayla, witty and an “all around crack-up of a girl”.
Sports had been central to Tayla’s life.
She loved watching and tried her hand at most of them and was passionate about her Saints, so much so that when Murphy was born, a little outfit in team colours was waiting.
Their memory was honoured again on Saturday, July 20, by the Norths Chargers, the Rockhampton rugby league club with which the Black family has a long association.
Norths held the inaugural TBMMBEKIND Day at their home ground, with players wearing jerseys featuring the logo.
Norths’ supporter Alex Hopes still thinks about Tayla almost daily.
“I loved hanging out with her at Norths games back in the day,” he posted to social media.
“She was truly unique, and it hurts knowing I’ll never bump into her at footy again.”
The Blacks also shared their first birthday celebration for Murphy Margaret, a lovingly chosen yellow and green “wild one” jungle animal theme, with their social media family on TBMMBEKIND.
They also shared a picture of someone wearing a bracelet with the words ‘BE KIND’, and a moving video of the adorable girl.
Last year, the Rockhampton council made a rare decision to change the captivating riverbank lights that bring the town’s oldest, most stately buildings to life each evening, to pink, Tayla’s favourite colour.
That will now happen every year, the Blacks announced on TBMMBEKIND’s Facebook page.
The lights will be up between August 8, when Tayla and Murphy Margaret were allegedly murdered, to August 10, when they were found together at their Park Avenue home.
“We hope as many people as possible can take a stroll down the river bank over the next 3 nights to honour the memory of two very loved and very missed girls who were taken from their family and loved ones 12 months ago.”
“We miss our girls every day and the pain does not ease, our family mourn and grieve their loss every moment.
“Their light guides us in this dark time and honouring them is our mission .”
“Always was Tayla Black, Always will be Murphy Margaret.”
More Coverage
Originally published as Remembering Tayla and baby Murphy one year after alleged Rockhampton murders
Mum assaults servo worker, breaks necklace, in ugly altercation
What started with a married mother’s card declining at a Central Queensland service station turned physical when she attacked a worker who tried to record her number plate details.
‘Frightening experience’: Drunk dad attacks man with fence paling
A father of three will remain behind bars after he attacked a man in a Central Queensland town with a fence paling while drunk “in a random act of violence”.
‘Soft girl hands’: Young man jailed as trigger for nightclub bashing revealed
A young Central Queensland man has been jailed after a nightclub bashing which left his much older victim with serious head injuries including brain bleeding and a skull fracture.
‘Time you grew up’: Diesel fitter stole company car, caught with meth
A Central Queensland diesel fitter stole a company car and was not heard from for six weeks until police got involved, a court has heard.
Forensic evidence hold up in MP’s alleged rape investigation
More than four months after a Qld MP made a rape and drink spiking complaint to police, the investigation continues. But she says she is focusing on what is in her control - campaigning for the election.
‘So traumatised’: Cafe operator fined after neighbour dispute turns ugly
A woman operating a cafe near the site of a chemical explosion that blew a hole in the Bruce Hwy, had been “so traumatised” by an ongoing dispute with a man running a business next door, that she lost her cool and ended up in court.