Family tells of heartbreak at losing North Hobart shopkeeper Voula Delios

The family of tragic North Hobart shopkeeper Voula Delios has spoken about how she was such a kind hearted and loving person who took an interest in customers.

Flowers outside the shop where Voula Delios was fatally stabbed. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

VOULA Delios was the heart of her family and her death has left her loved ones heartbroken and angry, the coroner investigating the death of the North Hobart shopkeeper has heard.

Mrs Delios, 68, was working alone in her family grocery shop on July 23, 2016 when Daryl Royston Wayne Cook stabbed her multiple times to the neck.

A Supreme Court jury last year found Cook, a diagnosed schizophrenic, not guilty of murder on the ground he was insane at the time.

Coroner Simon Cooper yesterday heard the final evidence in the inquest into Mrs Delios’s death.

Mrs Delios’s daughter Maria Hall and eldest son Mike Delios both spoke of the heartbreak they have felt since their mother’s death, and counsel assisting the coroner Jane Ansell read a statement from Mrs Delios’s sister Rosa Warner.

Mike Delios with his mother Voula in the North Hobart shop in 2003.

“I feel very angry at the system that failed to protect my innocent sister,” Ms Warner wrote.

“Voula’s last moments on this earth were spent in absolute terror.”

Ms Warner said Cook, who had been released from prison the day before he killed Mrs Delios, “would have seemed like a monster” to Mrs Delios.

“It breaks my heart into a million pieces,” Ms Warner wrote.

Mrs Delios’s own mother died about two months ago, aged 94. She never knew her daughter had been killed.

“We would ring Mum and pretend to be Voula. We just wanted to protect her,” Ms Warner said.

She said these phone calls would “break my own heart just a little bit more each time”.

“My sister was such a kind hearted and loving person … She would take an interest in the lives of her customers.”

Ms Warner said she had been worried about her sister, whom she telephoned every day and had “begged her” to sell the shop.

“Finally she was putting plans in place and we were planning to travel. Then she was murdered,” Ms Warner said.

Voula Delios’s eldest son Mike Delios and daughter Maria Hall gave evidence on the final day of the inquest into Mrs Delios'’s death. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

Mrs Delios’s daughter Maria Hall said she would never come to terms with her mother’s death or that someone as sweet as her Mum could be brutally murdered.

“Mum was the heart of the family … so loving and kind,” she said.

“I miss her so much.”

Ms Hall said her two children were also struggling to come to terms with their grandmother’s death and often woke in the night crying.

“Mum loved to chat and so did I, dropping into the shop each morning for a cuppa with Mum and then with my kids after school,” she said.

“I’m so frightened that I’ll forget her face or the sound of her voice.”

Voula Delios’s daughter Maria Hall, left, and sister Rosa Warner.

Ms Hall said whenever she felt happiness, the memory of a police car covering what she knew was her mother’s body would come back to her.

“I cry thinking about how frightened my mum must have been,” she said.

“He was just released from prison when he destroyed my family.”

Mike Delios said the death of his “beautiful” mother haunted him every day.

“I am completely crippled by the grief,” Mr Delios said.

Mr Delios told the Coroner the former prisons director who authorised for Cook to be released early on remission should have been called to give evidence at the inquest and was “responsible”.

Speaking outside the Hobart Magistrates Court, Mr Delios said Cook was not given the treatment he needed for his mental illness while he was in prison.

“They knew he was mentally unstable, he was violent and what they should have done was provided extra care to help him and what they did was released him out into the public and this is the outcome,” he said.

QUESTIONS OVER COOK’S RELEASE FROM PRISON

INQUEST TOLD OF KILLER’S VIOLENT THREATS IN JAIL

“If it wasn’t my mother it would have been someone else’s mother, child … This should never have happened.”

For a school project, Mrs Delios’s granddaughter — Ms Hall’s daughter — had to write a letter to someone who inspired her.

She wrote the letter two her grandmother and Ms Hall read it to the court yesterday.

“I want to thank you for being a good role model to me,” the girl wrote.

She wrote that her grandmother was kind hearted and cared about others.

“When I’m in an event, I think about you and you make me less nervous … I really want to be like you, helping others,” she wrote

The inquest into Mrs Delios’s death has examined the management of Cook while he was in jail, the circumstances of his release, why he was granted remissions from his jail sentence, his interactions with Community Corrections, and interactions between Risdon Prison and the Wilfred Lopes forensic mental health centre.

Coroner Simon Cooper has adjourned the inquest for closing submissions to be filed.

He will release his findings at a later date