Domestic violence deaths in Australia - The Canberra Times  Christine Flatley  - Feb 2020

The death of a mother and her three children has highlighted the spate of domestic murder-suicides.

A mother and her three children are dead after being doused in petrol and set alight by their dad, who also died, in Brisbane. Their deaths have highlighted ongoing domestic violence and family murder-suicides in Australia.

VICTORIA

* Robert Farqurharson drove his three sons into a dam, drowning them, on Father's Day in 2005.

* Akon Guode killed three of her children and tried to kill another when she drove them into a lake in Melbourne in 2015.

* Arthur Freeman threw his daughter off the Westgate Bridge in 2009.

* Luke Batty was murdered by his father in 2014.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

* Mara Lee Harvey, her three young children and their grandmother were killed in 2018 by her husband Anthony who was jailed for life.

* Peter Miles, 61, is believed to have killed his wife Cynda, their daughter Katrina, 35, and her four children at their Forever Dreaming Farm in Osmington in 2018 before taking his own life.

* Teancum Vernon Petersen-Crofts, 20, has been charged with murdering his mother, Michelle Petersen, and his sister and brother Bella, 15 and Rua, eight, in Perth in 2018.

* Barbara-Anne Wyrzykowski killed her five children in 1999 by gassing them to death in the family's van.

NEW SOUTH WALES

* Kim Hunt, 41, and her children Fletcher, 10, Mia, eight, and Phoebe, six, were shot dead on their farm in Lockhart, southern NSW, in 2015 by her husband Geoff who took his own life.

* Fernando Manrique gassed himself, his wife Maria Lutz, 43, and their two children, Elisa and Martin, inside their family home in Sydney in 2016.

* Jack Edwards, 15, and his sister Jennifer, 13, were shot dead in 2018 in their Sydney home by their father John who fatally shot himself.

QUEENSLAND

* Charmaine McLeod and her four young children died in 2019 in a head-on car crash police say was likely a murder-suicide.

* Cairns mother Raina Thaiday killed seven of her children and a niece in 2014. She will never face trial after the Mental Health Court found she was of unsound mind at the time.

* School teacher Jason Lees, 40, threw his two-year-old son over the safety rail of the Story Bridge before also jumping

SOUTH AUSTRALIA

* Damien Little drove his two sons to the Port Lincoln pier, shot them and then drove into the ocean in 2016.

* Sabrina Lekaj was killed by her father in 2019.

* Adelaide AFL coach Phil Walsh was stabbed to death by his son in 2015

* Santosh Gautam was allegedly stabbed to death by his wife in 2019

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