Artwork hung in family’s home for years was secretly hiding disturbing letter about child murders – World News

Artwork that sat hanging in a family’s home for years was secretly hiding a disturbing secret – a stomach-turning letter about child murders.

The sketch, of an unidentified long-haired Aboriginal man with a beard, had been hanging on a dining room wall after being bought from a junk shop for a few hundred dollars. An image was shared by a Reddit user claiming a handwritten letter from March 1996 was found on the back of the frame.

It detailed gruesome crimes by child murderer Dexter Wilkinson and his wife Kathleen Lister in Bell, Queensland. But the drawing nor the man in the picture had not relation to the letter written by Germaine Blair-Quigg.

She was a campaigner for tougher sentences for serious violent offences and would often complain about lenient sentences to newspapers. The communication appears to be a draft version containing corrections. Reddit users believed it was intended to be sent to a journalist after a light sentence was given to Lister.

Ms Blair-Quigg wrote: “What she and her partner did to those two children was monstrous and far beyond my comprehension. Before I came to Australia I was told about the covert side of Australian society the wife bashing/syndrome; the child cruelty; the statistics on rape; the alcoholism: the deeply ingrained racism; the inherent weakness of character masquerading as camaraderie.

“And I was sceptical. I chose to believe that the gentle larrikins who had tamed that vast sun-burnt land had to be basically a good people. Matter-of-fact, down-to-earth, good. And kind.”

Lister had been living with Wilkinson for a year before he killed two of her children, Jimmy, 11, and Kimberley, nine, just before Christmas in 1994 the Supreme Court of Queensland heard.

Wilkinson, was not the children’s father, but was an “extremely violent, mentally unstable man” who carried out physically abuse on everyone in the home, but especially the children, court documents show. He “violently assaulted” Jimmy in December 1994, resulting in him hitting his head on the floor and making him unconscious,. He was put to bed without medical treatment and died from his injuries the next day.

Lister had claimed she had sought medical assistance in town for Jimmy but was told not to do so by Wilkinson and returned with alcohol and cigarettes. She aided Wilkinson to bury Jimmy before Kimberley was killed a day later. Wilkinson had demanded Kimberley complete a task in the backyard, but she was ‘too slow’ and began yelling at her. He then threw her across the ground and kicked her in the stomach. She reportedly died almost immediately.

The court heard: “Lister wiped Kimberley’s face and tried to revive her, but there was no pulse and no response. Wilkinson said, ‘Leave the f***ing b***h where she is, she got what she deserved. She should have been the one to go first.”

Wilkinson is sad by Lister to have hated Kimberley and called her “the devil’s child”.’ The crimes only came to light when Lister was speaking to a friend in February 1995 and let the details slip out. Wilkinson, was never held accountable for his crimes, but was later killed in a car crash.

The judge found Lister had ‘assisted [Wilkinson] over in substantial ways to escape punishment knowing that he had committed two killings’. He said: “You made no attempt whatsoever to leave him and report the matter after the children died. You continued to cover up in every respect with him until the stage when he could never have been apprehended because of his death and indeed some time afterwards. The inference is that it would probably have continued if he was not killed.”

Lister, who showed no remorse, was sent to prison after being found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter and an accessory after the fact to murder. She was sentenced to two years for the manslaughter offence and nine for the murder charge which were to be servedafter a trial in 1996.

The Attorney-General ruled she would need to serve five years before being eligible for parole. Her current whereabouts are unknown.