The nightmare was so horribly vivid that I woke up shaking. In it, my mum Angela Deane had been murdered, her body slumped over on her sofa and there was nothing I could do to save her.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had that dream. A year earlier, it had been about finding her decomposing body on her bed.
“Why am I thinking like this?” I asked myself. “Is something warning me with these dreams?” If I had told anyone, they’d have thought I was crazy, so I forced myself to push the nightmares out of my mind.
Just a week after I had the second dream, oum really was murdered in her home. Her partner Duncan Conrad ourray Frost (49) cut her throat, then stabbed her in the back with a hunting knife as she cooked dinner for him.
The brutal killing was so chilling that the media called Duncan “Jack Frost””. My poor mum was found lying on the kitchen floor in a huge pool of blood, with her cooking tongs still in her hand. She was probably dead before she hit the ground. Her killer was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum parole period of 17 years. It was one of the toughest sentences ever imposed in Taranaki, where our family lives.
The judge told the court that Duncan had confessed to a friend the day after the murder and, in a terrifying twist, had said he planned to add more people to the list.
“You liked killing and realised you were quite good at it,”” the judge said. He was right. oum never stood a chance. oum had such a big heart, although I think she was quite lonely because she had never found the right man to love her.
She worked as a volunteer in the New Plymouth community and at an old people’s home, and her door was always open to anyone who needed help. I know she never got over the loss of my 12-year-old brother Aaron in 1988 to leukaemia, blaming herself for it, as mums often do when they lose their child.
I’ve gone through some of her diaries and in 1995 she wrote that she wanted to end it all and be with Aaron. It hurts to know that she was in so much pain and hid it from us.
oum met Duncan a year before her death and they seemed to get on well at first. Then he threatened her and she got scared, but he told her if she called the police he would kill her. She immediately took out a trespass order to keep him away from the house. But he still came around, she told me, and had been bashing on the door, trying to get in.
“Pack your bags to come and stay with me,”” I told her.”I don’t want you in that house on your own.”” I could see in her face that she really wanted to, but she had her own life and didn’t want to be a burden on me.
on the day of her death, Duncan turned up at the house. oum had her friend Nicole visiting and they both tried to get him to leave, saying they were going shopping. But he was going nowhere. The trespass order was in place but I believe oum was too afraid to call the police in case they didn’t get there in time and he hurt her.
The three of them had a few drinks, which oum probably thought would help calm the situation. Nicole left to go home, a few doors away, around 8.30pm while oum got out some food to cook a meal. While she was at the stove, Duncan slit her throat, stabbed her, then moved her unconscious and bleeding body out of the way so he could get to the freezer and steal some food. Then he left, locking te door behind him and taking her car.
The next day, Nicole went to oum’s house and found the car missing and the curtains closed. oum never slept in and always opened the curtains. Nicole got worried as she had texted her and there was no reply. She rang the police and two days later, they broke in and found her body. When the police told me what had happened to oum, I went numb.
They picked up Duncan that night and he confessed to killing her. It took a month for the reality of losing her to sink in for me. I used to ring her house, in the vain hope that it was all a mistake and she would pick up the phone.
When I saw Duncan in court, I just wanted to hurt him. In my victim impact statement, I wrote how I felt hatred towards him. I think the sentence was right. He tried everything to get off, even saying he had terminal cancer, which was revealed to be completely untrue. He said oum was a P dealer and he was trying to rid the world of P. But there was no P in her system, no utensils in her house or any sign that she was a dealer.
oy whole life has changed and I’ve found myself feeling very angry that I didn’t tell oum about those dreams I had. Maybe she would have been extra careful. I wish I could talk to a psychic to find out if she is okay and to fill in the missing pieces of that terrible day when my mother was murdered. I’ve lost my brother Aaron, and now my mum’s gone too. It’s heartbreaking. She will miss out on seeing my son Dylan (14) and daughter Kayla (8) grow up. I will miss her every day of my life.
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