‘Tears still warm’ one year on from Tullamarine suspected murder-suicide - The Australian - ANGELICA SNOWDEN @ang3snowden JAN 14, 2022
The bodies of Katie Perinovic, 42, and daughters Claire, 7, and Anna, 5, and son
Matthew, 3, were found in their Tullamarine house. Pictured with dad, Tomislav
Floorboards are being sanded in the house on a bend of Burgess St in Tullamarine.
A knock on the open door goes unanswered over the sound of the loud machine. It feels like the only noise being made in the suburb in Melbourne’s northern fringes.
A year ago – on January 14, 2021 – the house was the scene of a national tragedy.
Katie Perinovic and her three children, Claire, 7, Anna, 5, and Matthew, 3 were found dead. Her husband Tomislav was left behind, devastated.
But the tragedy has sparked a debate about the untold toll of depression in the community and the adequacy of treatment available to those struggling with it.
Victoria Police homicide squad Detective Acting Sergeant Luke Farrell told a directions hearing in February last year that the focus of his investigation was on the mental health treatment Ms Perinovic, 42, had received.
READ MORE: Horror details of Tullamarine tragedy |Happiness to horror: mum’s fatal act
This is likely to be a focus of an inquest into the deaths by Victoria’s Coroner, Audrey Jamieson.
Ms Perinovic was remembered by neighbours as a “beautiful, protective woman”.
But a year on, neighbours on the suburban street say they still have questions about what happened to the family. But they don’t expect to have them answered.
Ms Perinovic stopped working full-time as a physiotherapist in 2020. She tried to return part-time but it didn’t work out.
From March 2020 and throughout the pandemic, her mental state appeared to deteriorate and she seemed to withdraw.
Police on the scene in January.
It’s something her neighbour Steve Groves observed, and something on which he has been reflecting in the past year. “We know that she was so concerned about the coronavirus in 2020, so protective of her kids,” he says.
“Thinking back, the times I was with Katie a couple of months prior, just in playgrounds, and thinking things were a little bit odd but you never really said anything.
“When I look at the videos that we have of them at our house with the kids and parties and (Katie is) dancing, she’s laughing, and she was so protective of the kids.”
Katie Perinovic was always trusted with Mr Groves’s two young girls. She never spoke ill of her own kids or raised her voice at them, he says.
Mr Groves and his wife, Marie, used to be friendly with Katie Perinovic – more so than with her husband – and haven’t heard from him.
Airport West local parish priest Peter Hoang has a close relationship with Mr Perinovic, who he says recently attended mass.
“His tears are still warm. I shared a lot of things with him and I believe that every time we have a chat, his pain is eased,” he says.
“I contacted Tom very often to support him. I even invited him to have a meal with me.
“I tried my best to help him overcome his pain and loss. It is not easy for him when the pain is still very deep in his head, heart and life.”
Other neighbours who did not want to be named say Mr Perinovic is now in a “good place” and has returned to work.
“No one will ever know what happened – that’s gone with her,” they say.
Mary D’Amico prays at the front of the home in Burgess St Tullamarine.
Katie Perinovic probably didn’t reveal her state of mind to her family or friends, Monash University’s professor of social work and filicide researcher Thea Brown says.
It’s known she was being treated by Northwestern Mental Health, and while the details have not been publicly reported, Professor Brown says depression is a risk factor in cases of parents who kill their children. “There is never just one factor that (is) part of the picture. If somebody was stressed and wasn’t having a lot of sleep, particularly if they had young children, then that would very likely be a factor,” she says.
“Depression can also cause stress and a lack of sleep.
“Data collected show people who have that frame of mind did not tell anyone clearly what was on their mind. They may indicate something is wrong … may ask for help, but not articulate it.”
Professor Brown, who led a 10-year retrospective study on filicide deaths in Victoria, says clinicians who treat mothers in particular for depression don’t concentrate enough on the risks for young children.
Previous studies have shown between 10 and 12 per cent of people who killed their children and suffered from mental illness had psychosis too, Professor Brown says.
Forensic personnel at the scene.
Amid the coverage of Katie Perinovic’s death, she says she was contacted by some eight women who expressed a similar state of mind. She says she hopes open discussion on filicide can prevent further deaths. “It is not as simple problem of ‘I think I might kill my children, I need help’,” she says.
“There’s an awful lot of barriers for the person expressing that because they are very ashamed and feel very guilty.”
According to online records, the three-bedroom home sold for more than $700,000 in September last year. A young family, who decorated the front of the house with Christmas decorations in December, live there now.
At St Christopher’s, where Anna was to join Claire for school, a remembrance table was set up in a classroom where students could “pray and offer their thoughts for Katica and (her) children”, a Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne spokeswoman says.
It’s understood a small funeral was held for Katie Perinovic and her three children by invitation only, months after their deaths.
Mr Perinovic declined to comment for this story, but thanked the community for its support through a church spokeswoman.