‘You have THREE WEEKS to live’
When Shayne’s mum found love, it was the start of a nightmare
Shayne Probert, 32, Glen Eagle, Qld
My stomach twisted in knots as I dialled. Pick up, I thought, willing my mum, Doreen to answer.
When I’d woken at 6.30am to get my girls, Alyssia, eight, and Amelia, four, ready, I’d a missed call from local police.
Seeing it, I instantly knew something had happened to Mum. Now she wasn’t answering my calls or texts.
What has he done to her?
I thought, fear coursing through my body.
Growing up, Mum was always the life of the party.
She’d had her girls – me and my sister Tabitha, now 34, – when she was pretty young, so we’d basically all grown up together.
We’d turn the radio up and spend hours dancing around the living room, singing Alanis Morissette and Bon Jovi songs at the top of our lungs.
With her infectious laugh, we joked you could hear Mum before she walked in the room.
A true gypsy at heart, she decided to stay in one spot so Tabitha and I could stay at the same school. Then, when I turned 18, Mum travelled around Australia moving from state to state and picking up work.
When I married my husband, Nick, now 34, Mum was thrilled.
‘I couldn’t have picked a more perfect man for you,’ she beamed.
And after we welcomed our daughters, and Tabitha and her husband Mark, 34, had Hannah, now four, Mum relished being a grandma.
‘It’s a love I didn’t know existed,’ she said.
So she started making plans to move from WA back to Queensland to be closer to them.
During one of our weekly FaceTime sessions in January 2019, we were chatting when I noticed a man in the background. ‘Who’s that?’ I laughed. ‘Oh, this is Gary!’ Mum beamed.
She explained she’d known Gary Hely when she was a teenager and they’d reconnected on Facebook recently and hit it off.
I was so happy for her. Things moved quickly and by April they were engaged.
They moved home to Queensland a month later.
For the rst few weeks, they stayed with us.
Alyssia and Amelia were ecstatic to have Grandma D living with them. They also quickly got to know Gary, who showered them with gifts and was super helpful around the house.
He’s great, I thought.
But it wasn’t long before Mum and Gary started ghting.
It’s probably just the strain of living somewhere new, I gured.
Gary would give Mum the silent treatment until she smoothed things over, but
Things moved quickly and they were soon engaged
then another disagreement would happen.
Still, he was always so generous and friendly that we tried to look past it.
They moved into their own apartment and, as time went on, the girls loved regular dinners with Grandma D and Gary, who they called GG. I was thrilled to see Mum happy.
But by August 2020, their arguments had worsened and they split. Gary hadn’t taken the news well and threatened suicide, so Mum had called police.
Desperate to get Mum back, Gary started counselling and went on medication.
‘I will make your mum love me again,’ he told me, promising he’d changed.
They got back together but the ghts continued, so they split again in January 2021. Mum didn’t have the heart to kick Gary out, and he was on the lease, so he lived in the spare room while he found a new place.
But one day when she was at work, Gary sent Mum a photo he’d secretly taken of her sleeping. Creeped out, she started pushing her chest of drawers up against the door at night.
In early February, I met Mum at the shops, and she made a terrifying admission.
‘He told me to enjoy my last three weeks,’ she said.
‘He said I wouldn’t know when or how it might happen, that I might get bashed or T-boned.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
‘You’re not going back to that house,’ I said defiantly.
Mum moved in with a friend for a few days and called police again to make a report, while Gary took his things and left. She also took out a Domestic Violence Order (DVO), but Gary kept breaching it.
On Valentine’s Day, he left owers on her car.
There was also a large sign put up at the end of the street saying, I will always love you. It had to be Gary.
Mum made a full report to police, but because she wasn’t physically harmed, it was classi ed as low-risk.
Another night, she walked out onto her back patio and there was a rose on her table. Her front door was also unlocked.
I was terri ed for her safety, but Mum continued to update police and reassured us she was okay.
She also changed her locks, her phone number and her phone registration – taking every precaution.
But now, the morning of February 22, Mum wasn’t answering her phone.
What had happened? Before I could even call police back, they arrived on my doorstep.
‘There’s been a re at your Mum’s address,’ they told me, explaining they were trying to locate her.
‘She’s not here,’ I sobbed, my mind racing.
She was meant to start work early that day, but always answered her phone.
‘Is her car there?’ I asked the officers.
I met Mum and she made a terrifying admission
‘Yes,’ they told me.
‘Then she’s inside,’ I wept. In the meantime, I made frantic calls to Tabitha and our grandma Glenda, who both live four hours away, to update them.
Speaking with Mum’s friends, they hadn’t heard from her and she hadn’t shown up for work.
It wasn’t until 7.30pm that police confirmed the news we already knew in our hearts. Two bodies had been found inside the burnt-out unit.
It would be months before DNA would confirm it, but Mum and Gary were gone, and I knew Gary was responsible.
Days passed in a blur of grief. While Amelia was too little to understand, we sat Alyssia down and gently broke the news.
‘GG has done a terrible thing to Grandma and she’s in the stars now,’ we said.
Speaking at Mum’s funeral, I was still in disbelief. She was just 49.
‘As a little girl I always aspired to grow up and be a mum just like you,’ I said.
‘I am not sure how I am meant to move past this, but I do know that you raised me to be strong, independent and erce. So I will continue to live, I will continue to love, but most of all
I will continue to ght for you and the justice you deserve.’
Finally, in March 2022, an inquest into Mum’s death was held.
The court heard how Mum had spoken to 16 different police of cers and called them to her home multiple times in the weeks leading up to her death.
I cried as bodycam footage was shown from when two police had visited her a week earlier.
‘I’ve had all my locks changed, bolts put on, changed my rego, changed my phone number, which he’s now got,’ Mum told them. ‘I just want my life back, I want to feel safe, I want to go to work…
I’m over crying.’
The court also heard that on the night of February 21, Mum had called triple-0 again, saying Gary was outside her house, and she’d seen a shadow.
Two police of cers attended and knocked on the door, but when no-one answered they left.
During the inquest, one of the officers told the court he was learning domestic violence training ‘on the go’, and Mum’s complaint had been classified as lower urgency than another DV complaint they attended that night.
I couldn’t believe it.
He’d told Mum she had three weeks to live. How could that not be serious?
A few hours later, Mum was dead.
A forensic pathologist concluded she had died from a combination of the re Gary, 49, started and an injury to her spleen.
Now, we are waiting for the coronial inquest ndings. And, while nothing will ever bring Mum back, we want adequate domestic violence training for all Queensland police, and specialised units so victims can speak to the same case worker every time they report a DVO breach.
The worst thing imaginable happened to Mum, but we want her to be remembered for the strong, independent, loving person she was.
While our grief is still unbearable, we always try to dance around the house with our girls and smother them in kisses, because that’s what Grandma D would’ve done if she was here.
She was stolen from us too soon, but she will never be forgotten.
She was strong, independent and loving