“Their dad and the police deserve better”: fight for justice for a murdered policeman
“Their dad and the police deserve better”
Nothing could have prepared Donna Anderson for the loss of her husband, one of the country’s most respected policemen, when he was murdered in 2012. Yet, as Donna tells Daniela
Ongaro, she never expected she’d still be battling for justice on behalf of her dead husband four years later.
Standing with his back to the wall on the rear veranda of the squalid rural home, Detective Inspector Bryson Anderson called out through the kitchen window, calmly introducing himself to the highly agitated man barricaded inside with his mother. “F**k off”,” Mitchell Barbieri, 19, screamed back.
A fierce dispute between neighbours had evolved into a deadly stand-off as Mitchell and his mother Fiona, 47, holed up inside their Oakville home, outside Sydney, yelled and shrieked at police, and refused to open the door.
Bryson, seizing the moment, turned to the officer beside him and said, “We’re going in”. Suddenly, two large, snarling dogs burst from the house, bounding towards the officers, who downed them with capsicum spray.
Then, from the open doorway, Mitchell appeared. He lunged forward, stabbing Bryson in the cheek before plunging the 15cm hunting knife deep into his chest, penetrating his lung. Critically injured, Bryson tried valiantly to sit up, attempting to help his fellow officers as they struggled to subdue Mitchell and his screaming mother, who had attacked them with a sledgehammer. Yet even in the heroic act of reaching out, Bryson Anderson was already dying.
Less than 20 kilometres away, his wife, Donna, was with her youngest son, Cain, heading to North Richmond Oval for the regular Under-11 cricket team’s training. In the car, singing along to Christmas carols, they were oblivious to breaking news reports.
Sitting on the steps of the pavilion watching play, Donna spied a couple of blue uniforms and realised Bryson’s boss, Superintendent David Jones, was walking towards her with another officer and her eldest son, Darcy. Thinking they had called in to say “G’day” and watch a spot of cricket, she stood up, smiling, to greet them.
“He told me Bryson had been killed at work and I said, ‘No, he hasn’t’,” she says, tearfully recalling that appalling moment on December 6, 2012.
Today, Donna Anderson, 49, still grapples with the loss of her best friend of 26 years and raising their three children, Olivia, now 19, Darcy, 17, and Cain, 14, alone. Yet, putting aside her grief, Donna is steeled by a determination to see justice prevail for her husband.
Despite pleading guilty and being jailed for a maximum 35 years for murder, Mitchell Barbieri could be free by 2027, after the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal quashed his sentence and slashed 11 years from his non-parole period.
With her children, family, friends and a large support group of police,