An Australian expat in Bali was found dead with his two young kids in an apparent murder-suicide after a haunting final phone call with his wife — in which his daughter was heard screaming “stop daddy.”
Damien John Shaw, 56, strangled his 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter before hanging himself in their bungalow in Kuta on September 13, police said.
His wife — who had been traveling 600 miles away in Jakarta — called a neighbor to check on her family after she heard her terrified daughter crying and saying “stop daddy,” according to The West Australian.
Residents of the tropical paradise found Shaw hanging from a rope with the bodies of his kids stacked on top of each other.
CCTV footage revealed a horrifying sequence of events: The son screams from inside the bungalow while the terrified daughter runs outside before Shaw drags her back in, police said in statements relayed by Bali Eyewitness News.
“Kuta Police have spoken with the victim’s wife, but progress was limited as she remains in deep shock and grief,” Denpasar city police official I Gede Adi Saputra Jaya told reporters.
The couple’s marriage had been on the rocks for years, and Shaw’s wife had left to her parents’ house two weeks before the deaths, she told police.
Neighbors in Shaw’s home town of Perth — where the family previously lived — described them as a “private” but peaceful family, according to the Australian.
Yet Shaw’s life was fraught with heartbreak: He lost his father at 15, then a brother, and his mother recently died of an illness, sources close to the family said.
“He was very private but never caused any trouble, we always exchanged pleasantries,” a neighbor told the Australian.
Shaw had attempted suicide around a month before the tragedy; his wife intervened, but the family did not seek psychiatric treatment police said.
