‘It's a really nice knife': Bondi Junction killer's voice heard for first time
The voice and words of Bondi Junction Westfield mass killer Joel Cauchi have been heard in public for the first time, a year since he took six lives and was shot dead by a heroic police officer.
The recordings, made 15 months before the stabbing attack, captured a 'missed opportunity' to intervene in Cauchi's psychological deterioration, despite the desperate attempts of his loving mother and police to get him help.
The 40 year-old was living with schizophrenia and unmedicated for years before he walked into Bondi Junction Westfield armed with a USMC Ka-Bar knife and began stabbing innocent shoppers in April 2024.
A coronial inquest into the mass casualty event has reconvened for a second week of hearings focusing on interactions Cauchi had with police in his home state of Queensland.
Body-worn videos captured by QPS officers are the very first public record of Cauchi speaking in his own words.
Queensland Police Senior Constable Matthew McDonald and his partner Constable Hope Porter were called to the Cauchi family home in Toowoomba at dusk in January 2023.
Body-worn video from both officers, played in the inquest, began with a fidgety Cauchi in a purple LA Lakers jersey on the nature strip outside the weatherboard house.
Cauchi had called the police himself, saying his father had taken away his 'military collectibles', including a USMC Ka-Bar knife.
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