‘THE PAIN N LEAVES ME’

A MOTHER REMEMBERS HER CHILDREN KILLED IN A TRIPLE MURDER

It’s been 15 years since she lost her three children in a triple murder that shocked the nation, but for Cindy Gambino, the pain still feels raw. “I cried nearly all day on the anniversary,” the heartbroken mum tells New Idea. “I remember everything from that day, every little moment. It will never go

away.”

Cindy’s children Jai, 10, Tyler, 7, and Bailey, 2, were travelling in a car with their dad, Cindy’s ex Robert Farquharson, when he deliberately drove into a farm dam outside of Winchelsea in south-west Victoria on September 4, 2005.

As the car submerged, Farquharson, 36, escaped the vehicle, leaving the children inside to drown.

Farquharson told police he had had a coughing fit and blacked out, but five years and two trials later, in 2010 he was convicted of the three murders and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The prosecution said he killed the children as an act of vengeance because he “hated his wife” for leaving him and for finding happiness with another man.

“I do wonder what they would’ve been like today,” says Cindy, now 49. “Jai would have been 26, I think he would have become a firefighter. Tyler was great academically and at sport – a real all-rounder. And Bailey was just so young. They were beautiful boys.”

At the time of the murders, Cindy and Farquharson had been separated for a year and Cindy was living in Winchelsea with her boyfriend, Stephen Moules, a father-of-three who ran a concreting business.

On the Father’s Day of September 4, Farquharson took the kids for an access visit. On his way back to Cindy’s at around 7:15pm, his car veered off the Princes Highway, crashed through a wire fence and plunged into the rectangular dam.

During his second trial (his first conviction in 2007 was quashed on appeal), Farquharson testified that he didn’t try to rescue his children because he first thought he had crashed into a ditch or drain.

But two mates who were driving by and picked up a soaking wet Farquharson on the side of the road, testified that he declined the use of a mobile phone to call triple zero, and said, “I’ve got to tell Cindy that I’ve just killed the kids.”

“Rob rocked up on my doorstep saying the kids are in the water,” says Cindy. “It was just horrific. I was so distraught at the hospital they had to stick a needle in me to sedate me.”

Cindy contemplated taking

her own life following her unimaginable loss. “But I didn’t want my mum and dad feeling the same way as me,” she explains.

At first, Cindy believed Farquharson’s account that he passed out from a coughing fit. each day, Cindy tries to focus on the positives of her life, including her two “beautiful” children that she had with Stephen after the tragedy – Hezekiah, 13, and Isaiah, 10.

“They’re amazing, very intelligent,” she says proudly.