RACHEL PFITZNER
Rachel Pfitzner pleaded guilty to murder of her son Dean Shillingsworth.
After killing her two-year-old son, Rachel Pfitzner wrapped his body in plastic, stuffed it in a suitcase and wheeled it in a pram to a pond in Ambarvale in Sydney’s southwest.
When she threw the suitcase containing Dean Shillingsworth into the pond, Pfitzner watched it sink before she turned her back and walked away.
A group of schoolchildren were the first people to discover the suitcase floating in the pond six days after Pfitzner disposed of him in October 2007.
When questioned
initially by police, the NSW Supreme Court heard Pfitzner lied about Dean’s
whereabouts and claimed she abandoned him at the Campbelltown Department of
Community Services office.
Dean Shillingsworth’s naked body was found inside a suitcase in a pond in Ambarvale.
Her story later changed and she claimed his death was an accident, telling police “I shook him … He stopped breathing and I tried resuscitation … I’ve got to live with this for the rest of my life but the media are portraying it as if it is real evil”.
In a secretly recorded conversation Pfitzner had with her mother after her arrest, she said “he never got suffocated … I choked him”.
During an interview with a psychiatrist Pfitzner said “I told him to go out and play … he wouldn’t listen … then I lost it … I grabbed him by the shirt and jumper which had a hood and shook him … the next thing I remember he was frothing at the mouth”.
As he sentenced Pfitzner and outlined her shocking treatment of Dean, Justice Robert Hulme said the cause of death was asphyxiation.
“She became resentful of his presence and was critical of his behaviour,” Justice Hulme said of Pfitzner.
“She sometimes banished him from the house, forcing him to stay outside in the cold. Neighbours described Dean being locked out of the house and hitting the doors while crying and trying to get back inside. He was repeatedly heard to cry out, ‘Mummy mummy I am sorry
“Dean was often hungry and would forage for food but she punished him for doing so. Dean would seek the offender’s affection but this would cause her to become angry as she thought he was being overly clingy.”
Pfitzner was sentenced to at least 19 years behind bars for murdering Dean.