August 25, 2019 • 34 mins
Heartbroken and in disbelief, Margaret's loved ones are tortured by the finding she took her own life. Her father is forever haunted by having to clean up the crime scene, while her husband feels let down by the justice system.
Credits:
Presenter / Investigative Crime Journalist - Paula Doneman
Producer / Writer - Sally Eeles
Sound Design - Marc Wright
TV reporter - Mackenzie Ravn
Graphics - Jason Blandford
With thanks to:
The team at 7 News Brisbane, Annette Caltabiano, Georgia Done, Letitia Wallace, Susan Bush, Alex Wright Media, The Daily Mercury and Mackay City Council Library.
Music Credits:
Theme: The Clock is Ticking by Dark Orb Music
https://soundcloud.com/dark_orb_music
Music from https://filmmusic.io
"Bittersweet" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Music from https://filmmusic.io
"Heartbreaking" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Music from https://filmmusic.io
"Truth in the Stones" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Desert Sky by Silent Partner is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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Don’t Die on Me - Myuu http://www.thedarkpiano.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
In nineteen seventy eight, a young mom dies violently in
a small Queensland town. Suicide or murder? What happened to
Margaret Kirstenfeld? Someone knows? This is Pendulum episode six.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm Paula Donovan. In a space of a few short days,
Margaret's family had been rocked to its care.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
A baby girl aged seven months escaped death when her
mother was brutally knifed by a mystery killer at Serena.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The pendulum had swung wildly after revelations of a horrific murder,
and now it swung again towards suicide.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Three days, yeah, three day, three days of murder.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
I remember listening to the news and that notice came through.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
That was now.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Police believe injuries which caused the death of a woman
at Serena on Friday night may have been self inflicted.
If the idea that twenty one year old Margaret had
been brutally killed traumatized her loved ones, then the thought
that the young mum had taken her own life in
such a violent way truly tortured them.
Speaker 7 (01:52):
So you learn through the media again.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I'm speaking with Margaret's sister, Debbie and her mother Bunty.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
I can't remember how exactly the rest of this got
tied until, but I remember the impact of the same
newsreader who put it out the first time then followed
up three days.
Speaker 7 (02:13):
Later with them, what was your reaction to something that
really took you to the other end of the spectrum?
Speaker 5 (02:22):
There these of the day she looked.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
At, so the news that Margaret, the decision that the
findings that Margaret had taken her own life as opposed
to someone else taking her life.
Speaker 8 (02:41):
I couldn't see you're doing her own life. Ever happened
and you will. I can't see you're doing that.
Speaker 9 (02:51):
Did it happened to somebody doing it?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So you didn't.
Speaker 10 (02:57):
You didn't believe that those findings were right. And your husband,
I think he's much.
Speaker 8 (03:07):
To say, not that he talked much about You couldn't
see her doing it.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Even now, Bunty blocks out the harshest memories. I left
the room briefly during our interview record sorry, Bunty. While
I was gone, this is what she said to my producer, Annette.
Speaker 11 (03:31):
Oh good to remember that. You just can't just seem
to have blocked it out. I think I just got
to think about it. And a girl dad beat off
a shock about it, but anyway gotta be done.
Speaker 12 (03:48):
I guess yeah. I think things in life are not
necessarily easy, are they?
Speaker 8 (03:55):
And I would have to be a little girl.
Speaker 11 (04:04):
Anything that is happening only yeah.
Speaker 12 (04:07):
Yeah, it's sometimes seems just there's no sense to them. No,
no wonder, you just have to pick up and move
on and get knocked down again. Thank you, good sailing ship.
Speaker 13 (04:28):
So H.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
For Margaret's husband, Malcolm, suicide was unthinkable.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
I think everybody was pretty well dumb founded on me really,
unless she was in a really bad state of mind
at that stage. I really couldn't see doing that and
leaving like a newborn baby in the other room. I
just couldn't see her doing that really well.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That was actually one of my questions, whether you think
she would try to take your own life with with
you know, with baby Lesliani meet his from her.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Yeah, I find it very hardly believe myself.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
He also felt very much let down by the justice system,
and that was.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Another thing that annoyed me. I'd got a letter from
a letter from him to say that they were going
to read the autopsies that out of the Serena Courthouse
and they gave me the date and the time and everything,
and I drove all the way from Underwely too. They
get a time off work, three or four days off
work to go up for it, and I told him
that I was there, and they didn't even have the
(05:30):
deiciency to come out in the vanda and let me
know that it was going on. I went in and
I should I win my for the autopsy is going to
be read from my wife, and they should, it's already
been done. They didn't even come out and tell me.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So when you say read the autopsy out, was that
what they were referring to as the coronial inquest? Or
was that?
Speaker 6 (05:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So you did go, you did drive up to the inquest,
but no one told you it was on.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
Yeah, I found it there and I told him that
I was there and what I was there for. And
they said, oh, you go just go out there and
wait from the from the landing or veranda or whatever
it was. I said, okay, I said, I will let
you know when it's going to be And I waited
and waited and waited and waited, and nobody came here.
So eventually I went in. I said, no, mate, I'm
(06:17):
here for the interest, and he said, oh, yeah, that
that's already gone. It's already been done.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I did see on the correla in question and said
nine next if Ken attended, well, I was there. So
the answer is that you were looking for you didn't
get to hear.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
No, I didn't get to hear anything.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Do you feel like you've been kept in the dark?
Speaker 6 (06:42):
You know, I think the investigation myself was wasn't really
you know, done properly. I think they probably you know
it heard, you know, like Serena's a small town too,
and you know, in the first the police found out,
you know that maybe that she was sleeping about. You know,
they probably thought, you know, you know, it's just an
open shutcase of she'd doneled herself, you.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Know, the suggestion that she well basically killed herself. I mean,
the cause of death was a knife win in to
the throat, but their pathologist examination had found that the
injuries herself inflicted. Would a pregnancy for Margaret, would that
be something that you would think would drive her over
(07:24):
the edge.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
No, that's probably probably something that I really can't answering.
I'm not a psychiatrist or something like that, you know,
as I said, I don't really know at such stage.
I've been away for a week. I don't really know
what sort of state of mind that she was in
at that time. You know, I know I had been
(07:47):
told by a couple of people there was a few
visitors had gone there knowing that I wasn't fair and whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Do you mean now visited?
Speaker 6 (08:00):
Yeah, there was one black apparently that she had seen before.
But whether that had anything to do with it or not,
I don't know. But I don't really know who name
either was never ever told. But knowing her that she
wanted to children, I don't really think that you know
that she would have would have done it herself.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Did you think Margaret was living a double life?
Speaker 6 (08:27):
I don't know about a double life. That's really hard
to answer. Yeah. I think most people have two sides
to them.
Speaker 11 (08:35):
You know.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
I know a lot of people that E were going
out facing in the home face, you know. But I
don't know about two sides to her.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
The suicide theory didn't stack up for Debbie either.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
At the time I needed to grasp onto it. The reality.
Speaker 14 (08:57):
Would she choose to leave the children just for me?
The part that doesn't add up is Leslie's in the
next room. She's seven months old. She's in the next
room sleeping, and you're going to kill yourself, not knowing
what's going to happen to that child. Who's going to
find her? When are they going to find her? Where
are the subtropics? I mean, like, that doesn't make sense
to you. If she had part leslie somewhere with somebody
(09:23):
and then come back and do that, I haven't think.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
I think that's been the biggest stumbling point for me.
Speaker 14 (09:30):
Even when I was telling myself what she must have done,
that one I never had a reasoning to get to.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
You must imagine how trying her self abort as it
was suggested that the wounds internally in her well in
her vagina could have been could have been self inflicted.
Would you see her doing something like that?
Speaker 5 (09:54):
I can't really see that.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
H Once the police investigations had been completed at Margaret
and Malcolm's Serena home and an autopsy world suicide, the
property had to be made Liverpool again. It was up
to Margaret's loved ones to clean up the bloody mess
(10:19):
that remained. After several days in the North Queensland tropical heat,
Malcolm left Jan Dowie and traveled back to the house
in Serena with his best mate and father in law, David.
Speaker 6 (10:36):
You know, it came a to air surprise that she
was found out on the front lawn, because that was
never never said at any stage was my idea. I
thought that she had been filled inside the house. They
had finished with everything in the house, and we had
to start cleaning, cleaning the house because the people we
had rented the place off one of the house seen
(10:59):
before we left.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And that that was left to you to do. And
Margaret's family.
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Yeah, my father in law and my brother in law, and.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
We had to do all that, had to cope with
that hard.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
It's just something we had to do. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
When I was interviewing Margaret's sister and her brother Brian,
they both mentioned that David will At, Margaret's father, really
struggled with that what was what he was confronted with
in that scene in the house, and that he often
talked of his daughter's blood running down his arms when
he when he picked up the mattress, talking about cleaning
(11:39):
up his daughter's blood. It was something that really haunted
him and that he talked about a lot with them.
Did you see how it impacted on David.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
I think it was a shop where all of us
went up there. You know the house was a mess,
and you know there were stuff everywhere and whatever. Yeah,
it wasn't aside you liked walk into every day, I
can assure you.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Malcolm also collected his baby daughter, Leslie, who had been
cared for at the local hospital. You must have been
terrified for your daughter, Leslie. I mean she she was
only asleep in the next room meet us from where
her mother, her mother's dead body was found.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
And when we got there, she had been taken out
for arsenal. So i'm I had to go out to
the hospital and pick her up.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
The sight of the bloodied Serena home impacted heavily on
Margaret's father, David. Debbie says her dad could never erase
the images from his mind. So your father, who was
the gatekeeper of all the information about your sister's death
and demise, didn't talk to your mother but confided in yourself.
Speaker 13 (12:52):
He wouldn't be drinking, which was fairly standard, but he's
drinking increased with very much, and I mean there's a
day him to drink.
Speaker 5 (13:04):
So he loved to talk, but he would get drinking, and.
Speaker 14 (13:09):
He'd sit go and sit on back step, and I
to go and step on him, and we'd sit down,
and then he'd start just walking through, step by step
of what he saw and what.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
He'd heard and what he'd been told. He would do.
Speaker 14 (13:23):
The actions of what he thought he was portraying. So
he would talk about how she tried two different knives,
and I actually thought it was a third knife, but
when I'm reading the scissors, I actually said that with
one point as well, she used three different.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Knives and made a mess of it. Watched it as
she watched up there.
Speaker 14 (13:44):
So then she used a knife on her neck that
it wasn't deep enough, and she got she got a
different knife and used another one, and then in his words,
were so she's gone, well, I've made such a mess
of it and she's taken them.
Speaker 11 (14:00):
Was the word.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Why did you think your father needed to process things
like that to to sort of.
Speaker 14 (14:07):
Describe I really believed it was making himself believe it
because he didn't have an alternative when you would walk
through things like what he saw in.
Speaker 15 (14:17):
The house when he found it, when they cleaned up
the house, right through to Nattie buckets with maggots and
the food that was wrotten in the bridge, and.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
The house had been laft for a few days, and
the north queint saying heat, I'm not surprised to hear that.
Speaker 14 (14:32):
So that and it was him and then never went
with him who took the mattress out to the dunk.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
He would talk about the folding it in, the blood
running out his arm. That was my daughter's blood.
Speaker 10 (14:42):
Office, you want to have a break. I want to
take a minute, just take a dip.
Speaker 14 (14:57):
See okay, con I don't know why I had to
do it. And I guess while he was doing that,
because I mean, I spent many years listening today and
just talk could be drunk talking, drunk talk every night.
Speaker 6 (15:16):
M hmm.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
It's it's like, well, at least it's not talking to
my mind. That sort of felt like, I'll take this point.
Speaker 10 (15:27):
It's a big responsibility when you're an I T and
you lost your sister.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Yeah, so you grew up fast.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did you get time to actually process and grave yourself
with your sister's death?
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Look, I have to say probably not m hm, because
really it's.
Speaker 10 (15:51):
All hands on deck.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 14 (15:55):
And as much as they had did realize that birthday,
a funeral.
Speaker 11 (16:00):
On the birthday.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That was the other thing.
Speaker 10 (16:02):
Yeah, I was going to ask you, yeah.
Speaker 14 (16:03):
To do that and try not to have him feel
guilty that he did it.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You know, when did he realize that he that he
had buried his other daughter on your birthday? Your sister.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Realized what he done?
Speaker 14 (16:18):
Something muster topic because I went, well, I'm not telling him,
so yeah that was That was so people who didn't
know us, we're getting birthday birthday cards and thereat cards,
and the birthdays haven't been quite the same since.
Speaker 8 (16:35):
Even then. Even now, I don't like.
Speaker 14 (16:37):
Having a birthday.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
I'll do it at a good time and I won't
say a game ordering about it. But it just doesn't
tell me m.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Margaret's brother Brian, was only fourteen when she died. Like Debbie,
he too became a sounding board for his grieving father.
Speaker 16 (17:06):
Probably protected a bit generous from the truth that Rea
in the case she actually found a fear for his indwn.
Speaker 9 (17:16):
I got to fanus be on it. I might have.
I'll learn a lot.
Speaker 16 (17:21):
More from that, because I think a lott of you,
little boy, and he can.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Fight it in Unfortunately, the audio quality of this interview
is not great. With me. But Brian also remembers his
father telling him of the horror he encountered when he
went to clean up Margaret's bedroom in Serena.
Speaker 8 (17:38):
Would you say if.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You can share that with me?
Speaker 9 (17:41):
Oh?
Speaker 17 (17:42):
Yeah, a few things really stuck any of his own doors,
and blood and blowed up with hands and mattress were
considered pangel blood broken the matter, mov and just wipe
it up with engine.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Why do they have to go and clean it up?
I suppose there was no crime in cleaning services or
that was it.
Speaker 9 (18:02):
The pay somebody? Yeah, so the whole asset to be
scrubbed and made team for the lays.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
It's been terrible for your father and Malcolm too. I
imagine if it was Malcolm there.
Speaker 9 (18:13):
Too, Damn Malcolm, Dad, and as long ones, who's that
his friend malcolms used black one? Danny?
Speaker 6 (18:23):
All right?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
What else did your dad have to say?
Speaker 16 (18:26):
Yeah, let's share our fand out a bit again the
knowledge and you basically squab didn't he.
Speaker 9 (18:33):
Just told them showing up there, well that's what was
told him for so s that.
Speaker 18 (18:39):
Yeah, she had two attempts for two different knives or something,
and both manson kids the table and She's fand out
in the front of your eye and with only a
few handprints of blood basically.
Speaker 9 (18:49):
Through the whole airs except for the mattress. I need
to father them, want to use me for the release
starting somebody to talk to him.
Speaker 7 (18:56):
So what do you think happened on that night? Last
every night? Did you know she was living with a
knife under a pillar? Do you remember learning about Margaret's death?
Speaker 9 (19:11):
Do you recall weird morning?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
In the time I have known the Willets, I have
never met Margaret's father, David. He died in nineteen ninety two,
never turning to his wife's support because he felt she
wouldn't cope. The family fractioned under the weight of what
IF's in guilt. A few months before David died, they
finally had a round table discussion. Deb said the issues
(19:43):
surrounding Margaret's death weren't hidden, they just weren't talked about.
Brian has only recently started talking about his memories. How
the news of her death and then subsequent news that
she had taken her own life, how did that play
out for you?
Speaker 5 (19:59):
And be in a small.
Speaker 18 (20:03):
They may have been the talks and stuff with your
sister KOs and they were interested in sixteen years or
forward with what I believe that's it. Yeah, I actually.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
Happened working on to his Mrigan.
Speaker 16 (20:24):
And in Asia just walk the past and.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
I had a funny thing. The trouble teacher was.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
The family is discovered just how much Margaret used to
confide in her little brother. Did any of your family
know that Margaret had been sleeping with a knife under
her pillow? I'm not sure where that just had started
after your family had left, but she had made mention
to some of those people who testified at the coronial
inquest that she had been sleeping with a knife under
a pillow, and.
Speaker 14 (21:00):
From Brian, I don't so, I don't know whether it
was something she'd heard later or whether that was something
he knew at that time, because Brian had those conversations
with her while he was there, which we've only just
talked about probably in the last few years. So yeah,
I k you were very young, very very young at
that point in time as well. Dad always relied on
(21:21):
him to do stuff for him that he couldn't do himself.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
I needed I needed a driving lessons, so we got
a fourteen year old boy to try to teach me
the reverse part. I just declined.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The offer was that because your dad just wasn't coping.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
Or pretty much.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Margaret and her dad had had a rocky relationship at times.
They shared the same strong will and stubbornness and when
no one to speak their minds.
Speaker 19 (21:54):
I think he was pretty stern with her. I think
they both had you.
Speaker 11 (22:01):
She be all right.
Speaker 19 (22:03):
I just like every kids when they get to a
certain stage, they want and that she was in that stage.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Although there were some memorable classes between dad and daughter,
and he would never forget them.
Speaker 14 (22:16):
There was going to push some buttons. But Margaret and
bad together it was almost commical to watch because she
could push his buttons.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
How would she push his buttons?
Speaker 14 (22:25):
I she'd want something and he'd say no, and she'd say,
well that's not good enough, and he'd end up yelling,
and she ended up yelling.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
It would be on for young and old, and one.
Speaker 14 (22:37):
Of the things that he most regretted in his life,
which she constantly went always on our backstep discussions.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
He brings this up. He remember one fight where he
told her, you're going.
Speaker 14 (22:50):
To make me a grandfather before I'm forty, and if
you do, you need your throat.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
That once thing that he kept going back to in
every conversation that we ever had and whether that was
what rong shorts by and absolutely short that he struggled
to come to.
Speaker 11 (23:15):
Terms with you.
Speaker 7 (23:17):
Did she make him a grandfather before she did with
Colin and Lesley?
Speaker 14 (23:22):
Yeah, So these were things that he would put and
paint into the picture to convince.
Speaker 10 (23:31):
Me that that she'd done that she killed herself.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
When you actually looked at the current and stuff and
pathology of that, there's no way.
Speaker 10 (23:42):
Do you know whether she was right or left handed?
By the way she's right handed.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
That person looked at left handed stuff idea.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
David also harbored Guild over the death of another child,
his and Bunty's six week old son, Greg, who died
in a truck crash.
Speaker 14 (24:00):
And Dad carried a lot of guilt over that when
that death, so he was I don't know the full circumstances,
but was Mum and Dad in the track with the
day when David was driving, So I don't, I don't.
Obviously Dad was never charged or anything like that, so
he couldn't have been at fault, but there's been an
accident in the description.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
So yeah, So they had their share with.
Speaker 14 (24:23):
A last.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
He was angry with Margaret's husband, Malcolm as well. Did
you think the marriage was in trouble early or before
they were married? Was a relationship in track?
Speaker 19 (24:37):
I think that might have been all right. No, my
husband didn't want them to want her to go up
there with you?
Speaker 14 (24:42):
You know that?
Speaker 10 (24:44):
Do you know why?
Speaker 11 (24:46):
I don't think he liked Malcolm, So he probably knew
more than what I did.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Do you know what it was about Malcolm that that
your husband didn't like?
Speaker 11 (25:00):
Did Margaret know that nothing?
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Dad?
Speaker 11 (25:08):
I think she did.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
After Margaret's death, Malcolm and his two young children, Colin
and Leslie, moved back to jan Dowie. They initially moved
in with Bunty and David and Brian, Judith and Susan.
So from the night of February ten, when you lost
Margaret and your children lost their mother, what was life
like from that point on for you and Colin and Leslie?
Speaker 6 (25:33):
It was a struggle because I had no work. I
virtually all I did most days was just get drunk
and so that I could try and forget about everything.
Until I realized that brother in law, or make kind
of said sister, you just can't be doing this every day,
you've got to get back to work. Eventually got a
(25:55):
job that yeah, and it was out at one doll
That was the closest place I get any work at
that stage. So I was coming back some forwards to
one go On and I was away from his two
young kids again as well, so that didn't come Ye,
made life fairly difficult.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
How do you think your kids coped well.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
At that stage? At that age, they probably you didn't
really know what was going on. I don't think, you know,
they seemed happy enough. They had some to My parents
and Margaret's parents were sort of looking out for them
pretty well. You know, when I came home, I jumped
him up and take him around my mom's foot from
for the weekend or whatever things I just said, noble hectic.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Debbie spent her days off coming home and helping out
looking after her nephew and niece and younger sisters.
Speaker 14 (26:57):
Yeah, a lot of that time, and that was coming
back here on stair days mhm. Because Doggy was doing
the training. I w used to compare a bit more
than most kids age. Occasionally we get mistaken for me
being the mum of the younger two.
Speaker 10 (27:17):
Very really, the.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Whole community pitched in. Friends, neighbors and acquaintances were all supportive,
Yes they.
Speaker 20 (27:27):
Were, and family and friends and people would pop in
withing soon there were people here all the time, people
who she hadn't seen since a sure her brideway came
to the wake and she's the first person to realize.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
That it was my birthday. And she came being present,
and she did it really discreet any well? Yep, that
were people everywhere.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
There was also letters of condolence from far and wide,
from friends old and new.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Dear mister and missus will. I don't know if you
remember me or not, but I'm the girl.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
This one came from Margaret's friend Sue.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I heard about what happened on the news. I was
really upset. I've only just settled down to write this,
and I know how upset you or must be. If
in any way I can help, don't hesitate to ask.
I don't just mean now or a week from now,
but anytime at all. I hope there is something I
can do for you. Maybe it isn't my place or
(28:25):
the time to say anything, but I don't believe Margaret's suicided,
but I would like you to please let me know
what you think also, who will be looking after the kids.
Please don't think I want you to rush and answer back.
Take your time, but please write to me. I'd been
planning to see Margaret this year. I know all the
girls from the hostel will feel the same as I do.
(28:48):
I feel as if a part of me is gone. Well,
what can I say except I'm sorry your friend Sue.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
But for Bunty carrying on was hard. She was only
pulled out of her slump by the responsibility of having
Margaret's babies, Colin and Leslie to care for.
Speaker 9 (29:17):
Just had to cope with the kids.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
Probably the way in it and you see thin some
kid around your legs or falling on your dress.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Just kept your game.
Speaker 10 (29:33):
How do you think your mum's travel through this.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Look?
Speaker 14 (29:37):
I think mum has blocked a lot of stuff out.
That's how she coped with it in the first place.
She spent a couple of days where she was completely flat.
And it's around the time that it was suicide, that
type of that declaration of it being suicide.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
She just took to the band and stayed down.
Speaker 14 (29:58):
I think that the doctors might have bombed around onto
the Alain or something. At the time there's a good
two days where she hardly moved at all. And understand this,
I remember being almost dragged inside the church just to
be able to cope, to hold it.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
So and when she talked about it, doesn't remember that
much of it.
Speaker 14 (30:21):
I don't doubt that when she got past that locking
things and the day leslie right back, she got out
of the bed and she never went back to it
because that was it was like I can take some
part of my chart. And so she was able to
get up and really start living again.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
In those few days because she had to.
Speaker 14 (30:46):
She had to, and without that, she didn't know how
to get up. Because there were people around that, we
were all minding the kids, we were all doing what
needed to be done. There was no way that she
was coping in this few days, and like how that
would it.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
One of the things that haunted Bunty was how sad
Margaret had looked when the family left Serena around a
week after her twenty first birthday. It was the last
time Bunty saw her daughter alive.
Speaker 6 (31:26):
She was so.
Speaker 14 (31:27):
Blaming herself that they left without notice from Serena. And
I remember her saying to me, and we had our
discussion here one night, trying to help Leslie and Colin
and Susan to actually understand some of.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
What had happened. And she said then that she still
remember the look on Margaret's face and then just crying.
She was worried about her.
Speaker 14 (31:47):
I know today she's been saying that she she was okay,
but I remember very clearly when I'm saying that she
remembered to look on Margaret's face when they were leaving
and she got so give a ticket she left, and
would she say, be alive at that start? So that's
that was the type of thinking ten years ago. And
(32:08):
I would say that she's probably trying to lock it
away again, that we've brought that up, that she needs
to walk through that again. M h.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Next time I pendulum. So we're on our way to
Margaret's gravesite. Margaret's babies grow up.
Speaker 14 (32:49):
Because you know, I look at her children and it's
not been easy for them.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
It's not been easy for them.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
We speak with her daughter, Leslie.
Speaker 14 (32:59):
That might be any Tom has ever mentioned them to me,
one of those you too much like you're blotting mother comments.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
If you have information about the Margaret Kirstenfeld case, please
let us know, email us at Pendulum podcast at gmail
dot com, or go to seven news dot com dot
AU Forward Slash Pendulum presenter and executive producer Paula Donovan,
(33:57):
Writer and producer Sally Eels. Sound design Mark Wright Graphics
Jason Blandford, Transcripts Susan Bush. Our theme music is the
Clock Is Ticking by Dark All music. See our show
(34:20):
notes for full music credits. With thanks to seven Years
Brisbane
In nineteen seventy eight, a young mom dies violently in
a small Queensland town. Suicide or murder? What happened to
Margaret Kirstenfeld? Someone knows? This is Pendulum episode six.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm Paula Donovan. In a space of a few short days,
Margaret's family had been rocked to its care.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
A baby girl aged seven months escaped death when her
mother was brutally knifed by a mystery killer at Serena.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The pendulum had swung wildly after revelations of a horrific murder,
and now it swung again towards suicide.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Three days, yeah, three day, three days of murder.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
I remember listening to the news and that notice came through.
Speaker 6 (01:24):
That was now.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Police believe injuries which caused the death of a woman
at Serena on Friday night may have been self inflicted.
If the idea that twenty one year old Margaret had
been brutally killed traumatized her loved ones, then the thought
that the young mum had taken her own life in
such a violent way truly tortured them.
Speaker 7 (01:52):
So you learn through the media again.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I'm speaking with Margaret's sister, Debbie and her mother Bunty.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
I can't remember how exactly the rest of this got
tied until, but I remember the impact of the same
newsreader who put it out the first time then followed
up three days.
Speaker 7 (02:13):
Later with them, what was your reaction to something that
really took you to the other end of the spectrum?
Speaker 5 (02:22):
There these of the day she looked.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
At, so the news that Margaret, the decision that the
findings that Margaret had taken her own life as opposed
to someone else taking her life.
Speaker 8 (02:41):
I couldn't see you're doing her own life. Ever happened
and you will. I can't see you're doing that.
Speaker 9 (02:51):
Did it happened to somebody doing it?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So you didn't.
Speaker 10 (02:57):
You didn't believe that those findings were right. And your husband,
I think he's much.
Speaker 8 (03:07):
To say, not that he talked much about You couldn't
see her doing it.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Even now, Bunty blocks out the harshest memories. I left
the room briefly during our interview record sorry, Bunty. While
I was gone, this is what she said to my producer, Annette.
Speaker 11 (03:31):
Oh good to remember that. You just can't just seem
to have blocked it out. I think I just got
to think about it. And a girl dad beat off
a shock about it, but anyway gotta be done.
Speaker 12 (03:48):
I guess yeah. I think things in life are not
necessarily easy, are they?
Speaker 8 (03:55):
And I would have to be a little girl.
Speaker 11 (04:04):
Anything that is happening only yeah.
Speaker 12 (04:07):
Yeah, it's sometimes seems just there's no sense to them. No,
no wonder, you just have to pick up and move
on and get knocked down again. Thank you, good sailing ship.
Speaker 13 (04:28):
So H.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
For Margaret's husband, Malcolm, suicide was unthinkable.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
I think everybody was pretty well dumb founded on me really,
unless she was in a really bad state of mind
at that stage. I really couldn't see doing that and
leaving like a newborn baby in the other room. I
just couldn't see her doing that really well.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That was actually one of my questions, whether you think
she would try to take your own life with with
you know, with baby Lesliani meet his from her.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
Yeah, I find it very hardly believe myself.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
He also felt very much let down by the justice system,
and that was.
Speaker 6 (05:09):
Another thing that annoyed me. I'd got a letter from
a letter from him to say that they were going
to read the autopsies that out of the Serena Courthouse
and they gave me the date and the time and everything,
and I drove all the way from Underwely too. They
get a time off work, three or four days off
work to go up for it, and I told him
that I was there, and they didn't even have the
(05:30):
deiciency to come out in the vanda and let me
know that it was going on. I went in and
I should I win my for the autopsy is going to
be read from my wife, and they should, it's already
been done. They didn't even come out and tell me.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
So when you say read the autopsy out, was that
what they were referring to as the coronial inquest? Or
was that?
Speaker 6 (05:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So you did go, you did drive up to the inquest,
but no one told you it was on.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
Yeah, I found it there and I told him that
I was there and what I was there for. And
they said, oh, you go just go out there and
wait from the from the landing or veranda or whatever
it was. I said, okay, I said, I will let
you know when it's going to be And I waited
and waited and waited and waited, and nobody came here.
So eventually I went in. I said, no, mate, I'm
(06:17):
here for the interest, and he said, oh, yeah, that
that's already gone. It's already been done.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I did see on the correla in question and said
nine next if Ken attended, well, I was there. So
the answer is that you were looking for you didn't
get to hear.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
No, I didn't get to hear anything.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Do you feel like you've been kept in the dark?
Speaker 6 (06:42):
You know, I think the investigation myself was wasn't really
you know, done properly. I think they probably you know
it heard, you know, like Serena's a small town too,
and you know, in the first the police found out,
you know that maybe that she was sleeping about. You know,
they probably thought, you know, you know, it's just an
open shutcase of she'd doneled herself, you.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Know, the suggestion that she well basically killed herself. I mean,
the cause of death was a knife win in to
the throat, but their pathologist examination had found that the
injuries herself inflicted. Would a pregnancy for Margaret, would that
be something that you would think would drive her over
(07:24):
the edge.
Speaker 6 (07:26):
No, that's probably probably something that I really can't answering.
I'm not a psychiatrist or something like that, you know,
as I said, I don't really know at such stage.
I've been away for a week. I don't really know
what sort of state of mind that she was in
at that time. You know, I know I had been
(07:47):
told by a couple of people there was a few
visitors had gone there knowing that I wasn't fair and whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Do you mean now visited?
Speaker 6 (08:00):
Yeah, there was one black apparently that she had seen before.
But whether that had anything to do with it or not,
I don't know. But I don't really know who name
either was never ever told. But knowing her that she
wanted to children, I don't really think that you know
that she would have would have done it herself.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Did you think Margaret was living a double life?
Speaker 6 (08:27):
I don't know about a double life. That's really hard
to answer. Yeah. I think most people have two sides
to them.
Speaker 11 (08:35):
You know.
Speaker 6 (08:35):
I know a lot of people that E were going
out facing in the home face, you know. But I
don't know about two sides to her.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
The suicide theory didn't stack up for Debbie either.
Speaker 5 (08:51):
At the time I needed to grasp onto it. The reality.
Speaker 14 (08:57):
Would she choose to leave the children just for me?
The part that doesn't add up is Leslie's in the
next room. She's seven months old. She's in the next
room sleeping, and you're going to kill yourself, not knowing
what's going to happen to that child. Who's going to
find her? When are they going to find her? Where
are the subtropics? I mean, like, that doesn't make sense
to you. If she had part leslie somewhere with somebody
(09:23):
and then come back and do that, I haven't think.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
I think that's been the biggest stumbling point for me.
Speaker 14 (09:30):
Even when I was telling myself what she must have done,
that one I never had a reasoning to get to.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
You must imagine how trying her self abort as it
was suggested that the wounds internally in her well in
her vagina could have been could have been self inflicted.
Would you see her doing something like that?
Speaker 5 (09:54):
I can't really see that.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
H Once the police investigations had been completed at Margaret
and Malcolm's Serena home and an autopsy world suicide, the
property had to be made Liverpool again. It was up
to Margaret's loved ones to clean up the bloody mess
(10:19):
that remained. After several days in the North Queensland tropical heat,
Malcolm left Jan Dowie and traveled back to the house
in Serena with his best mate and father in law, David.
Speaker 6 (10:36):
You know, it came a to air surprise that she
was found out on the front lawn, because that was
never never said at any stage was my idea. I
thought that she had been filled inside the house. They
had finished with everything in the house, and we had
to start cleaning, cleaning the house because the people we
had rented the place off one of the house seen
(10:59):
before we left.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And that that was left to you to do. And
Margaret's family.
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Yeah, my father in law and my brother in law, and.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
We had to do all that, had to cope with
that hard.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
It's just something we had to do. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
When I was interviewing Margaret's sister and her brother Brian,
they both mentioned that David will At, Margaret's father, really
struggled with that what was what he was confronted with
in that scene in the house, and that he often
talked of his daughter's blood running down his arms when
he when he picked up the mattress, talking about cleaning
(11:39):
up his daughter's blood. It was something that really haunted
him and that he talked about a lot with them.
Did you see how it impacted on David.
Speaker 6 (11:48):
I think it was a shop where all of us
went up there. You know the house was a mess,
and you know there were stuff everywhere and whatever. Yeah,
it wasn't aside you liked walk into every day, I
can assure you.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Malcolm also collected his baby daughter, Leslie, who had been
cared for at the local hospital. You must have been
terrified for your daughter, Leslie. I mean she she was
only asleep in the next room meet us from where
her mother, her mother's dead body was found.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
And when we got there, she had been taken out
for arsenal. So i'm I had to go out to
the hospital and pick her up.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
The sight of the bloodied Serena home impacted heavily on
Margaret's father, David. Debbie says her dad could never erase
the images from his mind. So your father, who was
the gatekeeper of all the information about your sister's death
and demise, didn't talk to your mother but confided in yourself.
Speaker 13 (12:52):
He wouldn't be drinking, which was fairly standard, but he's
drinking increased with very much, and I mean there's a
day him to drink.
Speaker 5 (13:04):
So he loved to talk, but he would get drinking, and.
Speaker 14 (13:09):
He'd sit go and sit on back step, and I
to go and step on him, and we'd sit down,
and then he'd start just walking through, step by step
of what he saw and what.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
He'd heard and what he'd been told. He would do.
Speaker 14 (13:23):
The actions of what he thought he was portraying. So
he would talk about how she tried two different knives,
and I actually thought it was a third knife, but
when I'm reading the scissors, I actually said that with
one point as well, she used three different.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Knives and made a mess of it. Watched it as
she watched up there.
Speaker 14 (13:44):
So then she used a knife on her neck that
it wasn't deep enough, and she got she got a
different knife and used another one, and then in his words,
were so she's gone, well, I've made such a mess
of it and she's taken them.
Speaker 11 (14:00):
Was the word.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Why did you think your father needed to process things
like that to to sort of.
Speaker 14 (14:07):
Describe I really believed it was making himself believe it
because he didn't have an alternative when you would walk
through things like what he saw in.
Speaker 15 (14:17):
The house when he found it, when they cleaned up
the house, right through to Nattie buckets with maggots and
the food that was wrotten in the bridge, and.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
The house had been laft for a few days, and
the north queint saying heat, I'm not surprised to hear that.
Speaker 14 (14:32):
So that and it was him and then never went
with him who took the mattress out to the dunk.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
He would talk about the folding it in, the blood
running out his arm. That was my daughter's blood.
Speaker 10 (14:42):
Office, you want to have a break. I want to
take a minute, just take a dip.
Speaker 14 (14:57):
See okay, con I don't know why I had to
do it. And I guess while he was doing that,
because I mean, I spent many years listening today and
just talk could be drunk talking, drunk talk every night.
Speaker 6 (15:16):
M hmm.
Speaker 5 (15:18):
It's it's like, well, at least it's not talking to
my mind. That sort of felt like, I'll take this point.
Speaker 10 (15:27):
It's a big responsibility when you're an I T and
you lost your sister.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Yeah, so you grew up fast.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Did you get time to actually process and grave yourself
with your sister's death?
Speaker 5 (15:44):
Look, I have to say probably not m hm, because
really it's.
Speaker 10 (15:51):
All hands on deck.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 14 (15:55):
And as much as they had did realize that birthday,
a funeral.
Speaker 11 (16:00):
On the birthday.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That was the other thing.
Speaker 10 (16:02):
Yeah, I was going to ask you, yeah.
Speaker 14 (16:03):
To do that and try not to have him feel
guilty that he did it.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You know, when did he realize that he that he
had buried his other daughter on your birthday? Your sister.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Realized what he done?
Speaker 14 (16:18):
Something muster topic because I went, well, I'm not telling him,
so yeah that was That was so people who didn't
know us, we're getting birthday birthday cards and thereat cards,
and the birthdays haven't been quite the same since.
Speaker 8 (16:35):
Even then. Even now, I don't like.
Speaker 14 (16:37):
Having a birthday.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
I'll do it at a good time and I won't
say a game ordering about it. But it just doesn't
tell me m.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Margaret's brother Brian, was only fourteen when she died. Like Debbie,
he too became a sounding board for his grieving father.
Speaker 16 (17:06):
Probably protected a bit generous from the truth that Rea
in the case she actually found a fear for his indwn.
Speaker 9 (17:16):
I got to fanus be on it. I might have.
I'll learn a lot.
Speaker 16 (17:21):
More from that, because I think a lott of you,
little boy, and he can.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Fight it in Unfortunately, the audio quality of this interview
is not great. With me. But Brian also remembers his
father telling him of the horror he encountered when he
went to clean up Margaret's bedroom in Serena.
Speaker 8 (17:38):
Would you say if.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You can share that with me?
Speaker 9 (17:41):
Oh?
Speaker 17 (17:42):
Yeah, a few things really stuck any of his own doors,
and blood and blowed up with hands and mattress were
considered pangel blood broken the matter, mov and just wipe
it up with engine.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Why do they have to go and clean it up?
I suppose there was no crime in cleaning services or
that was it.
Speaker 9 (18:02):
The pay somebody? Yeah, so the whole asset to be
scrubbed and made team for the lays.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
It's been terrible for your father and Malcolm too. I
imagine if it was Malcolm there.
Speaker 9 (18:13):
Too, Damn Malcolm, Dad, and as long ones, who's that
his friend malcolms used black one? Danny?
Speaker 6 (18:23):
All right?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
What else did your dad have to say?
Speaker 16 (18:26):
Yeah, let's share our fand out a bit again the
knowledge and you basically squab didn't he.
Speaker 9 (18:33):
Just told them showing up there, well that's what was
told him for so s that.
Speaker 18 (18:39):
Yeah, she had two attempts for two different knives or something,
and both manson kids the table and She's fand out
in the front of your eye and with only a
few handprints of blood basically.
Speaker 9 (18:49):
Through the whole airs except for the mattress. I need
to father them, want to use me for the release
starting somebody to talk to him.
Speaker 7 (18:56):
So what do you think happened on that night? Last
every night? Did you know she was living with a
knife under a pillar? Do you remember learning about Margaret's death?
Speaker 9 (19:11):
Do you recall weird morning?
Speaker 2 (19:22):
In the time I have known the Willets, I have
never met Margaret's father, David. He died in nineteen ninety two,
never turning to his wife's support because he felt she
wouldn't cope. The family fractioned under the weight of what
IF's in guilt. A few months before David died, they
finally had a round table discussion. Deb said the issues
(19:43):
surrounding Margaret's death weren't hidden, they just weren't talked about.
Brian has only recently started talking about his memories. How
the news of her death and then subsequent news that
she had taken her own life, how did that play
out for you?
Speaker 5 (19:59):
And be in a small.
Speaker 18 (20:03):
They may have been the talks and stuff with your
sister KOs and they were interested in sixteen years or
forward with what I believe that's it. Yeah, I actually.
Speaker 9 (20:19):
Happened working on to his Mrigan.
Speaker 16 (20:24):
And in Asia just walk the past and.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
I had a funny thing. The trouble teacher was.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
The family is discovered just how much Margaret used to
confide in her little brother. Did any of your family
know that Margaret had been sleeping with a knife under
her pillow? I'm not sure where that just had started
after your family had left, but she had made mention
to some of those people who testified at the coronial
inquest that she had been sleeping with a knife under
a pillow, and.
Speaker 14 (21:00):
From Brian, I don't so, I don't know whether it
was something she'd heard later or whether that was something
he knew at that time, because Brian had those conversations
with her while he was there, which we've only just
talked about probably in the last few years. So yeah,
I k you were very young, very very young at
that point in time as well. Dad always relied on
(21:21):
him to do stuff for him that he couldn't do himself.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
I needed I needed a driving lessons, so we got
a fourteen year old boy to try to teach me
the reverse part. I just declined.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
The offer was that because your dad just wasn't coping.
Speaker 8 (21:43):
Or pretty much.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Margaret and her dad had had a rocky relationship at times.
They shared the same strong will and stubbornness and when
no one to speak their minds.
Speaker 19 (21:54):
I think he was pretty stern with her. I think
they both had you.
Speaker 11 (22:01):
She be all right.
Speaker 19 (22:03):
I just like every kids when they get to a
certain stage, they want and that she was in that stage.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Although there were some memorable classes between dad and daughter,
and he would never forget them.
Speaker 14 (22:16):
There was going to push some buttons. But Margaret and
bad together it was almost commical to watch because she
could push his buttons.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
How would she push his buttons?
Speaker 14 (22:25):
I she'd want something and he'd say no, and she'd say,
well that's not good enough, and he'd end up yelling,
and she ended up yelling.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
It would be on for young and old, and one.
Speaker 14 (22:37):
Of the things that he most regretted in his life,
which she constantly went always on our backstep discussions.
Speaker 5 (22:45):
He brings this up. He remember one fight where he
told her, you're going.
Speaker 14 (22:50):
To make me a grandfather before I'm forty, and if
you do, you need your throat.
Speaker 5 (22:59):
That once thing that he kept going back to in
every conversation that we ever had and whether that was
what rong shorts by and absolutely short that he struggled
to come to.
Speaker 11 (23:15):
Terms with you.
Speaker 7 (23:17):
Did she make him a grandfather before she did with
Colin and Lesley?
Speaker 14 (23:22):
Yeah, So these were things that he would put and
paint into the picture to convince.
Speaker 10 (23:31):
Me that that she'd done that she killed herself.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
When you actually looked at the current and stuff and
pathology of that, there's no way.
Speaker 10 (23:42):
Do you know whether she was right or left handed?
By the way she's right handed.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
That person looked at left handed stuff idea.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
David also harbored Guild over the death of another child,
his and Bunty's six week old son, Greg, who died
in a truck crash.
Speaker 14 (24:00):
And Dad carried a lot of guilt over that when
that death, so he was I don't know the full circumstances,
but was Mum and Dad in the track with the
day when David was driving, So I don't, I don't.
Obviously Dad was never charged or anything like that, so
he couldn't have been at fault, but there's been an
accident in the description.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
So yeah, So they had their share with.
Speaker 14 (24:23):
A last.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
He was angry with Margaret's husband, Malcolm as well. Did
you think the marriage was in trouble early or before
they were married? Was a relationship in track?
Speaker 19 (24:37):
I think that might have been all right. No, my
husband didn't want them to want her to go up
there with you?
Speaker 14 (24:42):
You know that?
Speaker 10 (24:44):
Do you know why?
Speaker 11 (24:46):
I don't think he liked Malcolm, So he probably knew
more than what I did.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Do you know what it was about Malcolm that that
your husband didn't like?
Speaker 11 (25:00):
Did Margaret know that nothing?
Speaker 5 (25:07):
Dad?
Speaker 11 (25:08):
I think she did.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
After Margaret's death, Malcolm and his two young children, Colin
and Leslie, moved back to jan Dowie. They initially moved
in with Bunty and David and Brian, Judith and Susan.
So from the night of February ten, when you lost
Margaret and your children lost their mother, what was life
like from that point on for you and Colin and Leslie?
Speaker 6 (25:33):
It was a struggle because I had no work. I
virtually all I did most days was just get drunk
and so that I could try and forget about everything.
Until I realized that brother in law, or make kind
of said sister, you just can't be doing this every day,
you've got to get back to work. Eventually got a
(25:55):
job that yeah, and it was out at one doll
That was the closest place I get any work at
that stage. So I was coming back some forwards to
one go On and I was away from his two
young kids again as well, so that didn't come Ye,
made life fairly difficult.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
How do you think your kids coped well.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
At that stage? At that age, they probably you didn't
really know what was going on. I don't think, you know,
they seemed happy enough. They had some to My parents
and Margaret's parents were sort of looking out for them
pretty well. You know, when I came home, I jumped
him up and take him around my mom's foot from
for the weekend or whatever things I just said, noble hectic.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Debbie spent her days off coming home and helping out
looking after her nephew and niece and younger sisters.
Speaker 14 (26:57):
Yeah, a lot of that time, and that was coming
back here on stair days mhm. Because Doggy was doing
the training. I w used to compare a bit more
than most kids age. Occasionally we get mistaken for me
being the mum of the younger two.
Speaker 10 (27:17):
Very really, the.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Whole community pitched in. Friends, neighbors and acquaintances were all supportive,
Yes they.
Speaker 20 (27:27):
Were, and family and friends and people would pop in
withing soon there were people here all the time, people
who she hadn't seen since a sure her brideway came
to the wake and she's the first person to realize.
Speaker 5 (27:42):
That it was my birthday. And she came being present,
and she did it really discreet any well? Yep, that
were people everywhere.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
There was also letters of condolence from far and wide,
from friends old and new.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Dear mister and missus will. I don't know if you
remember me or not, but I'm the girl.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
This one came from Margaret's friend Sue.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I heard about what happened on the news. I was
really upset. I've only just settled down to write this,
and I know how upset you or must be. If
in any way I can help, don't hesitate to ask.
I don't just mean now or a week from now,
but anytime at all. I hope there is something I
can do for you. Maybe it isn't my place or
(28:25):
the time to say anything, but I don't believe Margaret's suicided,
but I would like you to please let me know
what you think also, who will be looking after the kids.
Please don't think I want you to rush and answer back.
Take your time, but please write to me. I'd been
planning to see Margaret this year. I know all the
girls from the hostel will feel the same as I do.
(28:48):
I feel as if a part of me is gone. Well,
what can I say except I'm sorry your friend Sue.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
But for Bunty carrying on was hard. She was only
pulled out of her slump by the responsibility of having
Margaret's babies, Colin and Leslie to care for.
Speaker 9 (29:17):
Just had to cope with the kids.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
Probably the way in it and you see thin some
kid around your legs or falling on your dress.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Just kept your game.
Speaker 10 (29:33):
How do you think your mum's travel through this.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Look?
Speaker 14 (29:37):
I think mum has blocked a lot of stuff out.
That's how she coped with it in the first place.
She spent a couple of days where she was completely flat.
And it's around the time that it was suicide, that
type of that declaration of it being suicide.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
She just took to the band and stayed down.
Speaker 14 (29:58):
I think that the doctors might have bombed around onto
the Alain or something. At the time there's a good
two days where she hardly moved at all. And understand this,
I remember being almost dragged inside the church just to
be able to cope, to hold it.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
So and when she talked about it, doesn't remember that
much of it.
Speaker 14 (30:21):
I don't doubt that when she got past that locking
things and the day leslie right back, she got out
of the bed and she never went back to it
because that was it was like I can take some
part of my chart. And so she was able to
get up and really start living again.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
In those few days because she had to.
Speaker 14 (30:46):
She had to, and without that, she didn't know how
to get up. Because there were people around that, we
were all minding the kids, we were all doing what
needed to be done. There was no way that she
was coping in this few days, and like how that
would it.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
One of the things that haunted Bunty was how sad
Margaret had looked when the family left Serena around a
week after her twenty first birthday. It was the last
time Bunty saw her daughter alive.
Speaker 6 (31:26):
She was so.
Speaker 14 (31:27):
Blaming herself that they left without notice from Serena. And
I remember her saying to me, and we had our
discussion here one night, trying to help Leslie and Colin
and Susan to actually understand some of.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
What had happened. And she said then that she still
remember the look on Margaret's face and then just crying.
She was worried about her.
Speaker 14 (31:47):
I know today she's been saying that she she was okay,
but I remember very clearly when I'm saying that she
remembered to look on Margaret's face when they were leaving
and she got so give a ticket she left, and
would she say, be alive at that start? So that's
that was the type of thinking ten years ago. And
(32:08):
I would say that she's probably trying to lock it
away again, that we've brought that up, that she needs
to walk through that again. M h.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Next time I pendulum. So we're on our way to
Margaret's gravesite. Margaret's babies grow up.
Speaker 14 (32:49):
Because you know, I look at her children and it's
not been easy for them.
Speaker 5 (32:52):
It's not been easy for them.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
We speak with her daughter, Leslie.
Speaker 14 (32:59):
That might be any Tom has ever mentioned them to me,
one of those you too much like you're blotting mother comments.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
If you have information about the Margaret Kirstenfeld case, please
let us know, email us at Pendulum podcast at gmail
dot com, or go to seven news dot com dot
AU Forward Slash Pendulum presenter and executive producer Paula Donovan,
(33:57):
Writer and producer Sally Eels. Sound design Mark Wright Graphics
Jason Blandford, Transcripts Susan Bush. Our theme music is the
Clock Is Ticking by Dark All music. See our show
(34:20):
notes for full music credits. With thanks to seven Years
Brisbane
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