A husband’s story: remembering Anita
After hearing a chilling radio news bulletin, John’s life imploded
Driving up the coast, I was on my way to see my sister Gaynor for her birthday.
The sun was shining and my wife Anita was due to join us the next day.
I met Anita five years earlier when we both worked as nurses.
With her bouncy tumbling curls and beaming smile, I was instantly smitten.
To my joy she agreed to a date, and a year after meeting we got married.
I’m such a lucky man,
I thought as she walked down the aisle.
But after a few years of wedded bliss, it became obvious that Anita was unhappy, so we decided to live apart for a while.
Anita temporarily moved in with her parents, Garry and Peg, and I lived with my mum, Terri.
After just six weeks apart, we agreed that we were still madly in love and planned to look for a rental.
The tension between us had eased and we were in constant contact again.
But as I drove up to Gaynor’s, I couldn’t shake an anxious feeling.
When I’d last spoken to her, Anita had said she was going for dinner with friends after work and then heading straight home.
But that night she hadn’t come home and her parents had reported it to police.
They’d called me to see if I knew where Anita was and I’d rushed around to help.
With still no sign the next day, I wondered if Anita had already gone ahead to Gaynor’s.
The pair were firm friends, so maybe she’d spontaneously booked a day off work.
As I continued driving with the radio on, a news bulletin came through that made my blood run cold.
The naked body of a young woman has been found in a paddock at Prospect in western Sydney, said the announcer.
I knew it was Anita. Swerving to the side of the highway, I found an emergency phone and begged the operator to put me through to Anita’s parents.
All I remember is a woman’s voice
– either Peg or Anita’s sister, Kathryn, urgently declaring, ‘You’ve got to get back here, John.’
Driving there in a blur, when I arrived the news
I had been dreading was confirmed.
Anita had been murdered. As her husband, I was the prime suspect.
Police took me to the station for interrogation while I tried to get my head around the fact that I’d just lost my wife.
With a solid alibi, I was soon let go.
But who would murder my beautiful Anita?
Turning to booze to numb the pain, Anita’s funeral six days later was a complete haze.
‘Please don’t take her away!’ I remember screaming.
The grief had possessed me.
The day after the funeral, as Anita’s murder made headlines, my family sent me to Michigan, US,
Screaming, the grief had possessed me
to stay with my old school mate, Steven. Wanting to push Anita’s horrific death to the back of my mind, I refused to read or listen to any news. I didn’t want to know the full details of what had happened.
Four months later, I returned to Sydney and tried to get my life back on track, but I was a broken man.
I ran away again, this time working in the UK to avoid the Australian media.
It wasn’t until the end of 1986 that I returned.
I still had regular nightmares about Anita and the guilt ate me up.
I should have been there to protect her, I thought.
For years, booze was my escape and most nights I would hit the bottle to block out the pain.
Gaynor, who’d been my rock, tried to keep me busy.
It was through her I met Elizabeth. We married in December 1989 and had two children, Aerin and Daniel.
But despite my attempts at getting life back on track, I was still in a deep depression and I drank my life away.
In 2005, we split and I moved out.
I led a simple life in Bronte, NSW. Only the unconditional love of my children kept me going.
In April 2015, it dawned on me that I couldn’t live like that anymore.
Throughout the investigation and trial of Anita’s death, I’d managed to avoid hearing what happened. But three years ago, when a documentary about Anita’s murder aired, I ended up watching it.
I learned that on the way home from dinner, my wife had been grabbed by five men.
They took her to a paddock, where she was raped and murdered. It was heartbreaking and
I felt sick to my stomach.
Now, I drink a lot less. I still blame myself, and not a day goes by when I don’t miss her. Remembering Anita Cobby: The Case, The Husband, The Aftermath – 30 years on by Mark Morri, published by Penguin, RRP $22.99