Paul Thijssen hated Lilie James. He hated that she had rejected him, that he could not control her, that she threatened the perfectly curated image of himself he wanted to project. And so he killed her with a hammer in the bathroom of the sports centre at St Andrew’s Cathedral school, where they both worked. He stepped through his meticulous, brutal plan calmly, never appearing frazzled or manic. She was only 21 years old.
And then, as detailed this week at the coronial inquest into both deaths, 23-year-old Thijssen travelled to Vaucluse, in Sydney’s east, and took his own life.
