On the day they were killed, Kim Hunt drove past a bright yellow canola paddock on Watch Hill farm to meet the school bus carrying her children, Fletcher, 10, Mia, eight, and Phoebe, six. The kids tumbled off the bus at 3.40pm, full of stories from the day, and had their afternoon tea. Kim sat with Fletcher, helping with his homework. As is often the way with children, his worries eventually rose to the surface. The kids at school had teased him about a footy match the day before – a game that his father had umpired. The accusation was his father Geoff had cheated as the umpire, favouring Fletcher. A number of kids at school had called them names. Kim played it down, as a parent does, trying to take the sting out of the taunt.
It was a Monday – 8 September 2014 – the day after Father’s Day. When Geoff finished his work day about 5pm, he planned to take the children into town to see his father. Kim was “cranky” according to Lorraine Bourke – one of the carers employed to help her after a terrible car accident left her with a brain injury which meant her emotions and conversations were “unfiltered”. Kim would not be going to see her in-laws but she helped Phoebe wrap chocolate for her grandfather.
Kim and Lorraine went to water a neighbour’s garden while Geoff and the children visited his parents Lynette and John Hunt. When he left, Lynette remarked “Geoffrey had no smiles today”.
“No,” said John. “He hasn’t smiled for a week.”
By the time Kim and Lorraine returned to Watch Hill, Geoff had fed the kids. Kim was still upset but Geoff didn’t react and Kim walked outside, followed by Lorraine, who tried to calm her down.
When the two women came inside, Geoff had bathed the kids, had them in their pyjamas and had made the school lunches for the morning. A warm, motherly woman, Lorraine tried to make light of the situation. She joked with Geoff that he was doing her out of a job and noted that he seemed “even quieter than his normal self”. When she asked Kim whether he was depressed, Kim said: “No, I’ve got the shits that he went out and played golf on Saturday and left the kids with me”.
As was their habit, the kids sat on the lounge to watch Home and Away until their bedtime at 7.30pm. Geoff lay on the lounge with them. Lorraine prepared to leave and suggested Kim take a bath to give her some time to herself. Phoebe, the youngest, rushed up to give Lorraine a cuddle and a kiss.
“Goodbye Lainie,” Geoff said from the lounge. “Thanks, see you tomorrow”.
It was the last time anybody saw the family alive. On 9 September, Bourke found Kim’s body outside the house. When the police arrived, they found the three children dead in their beds. All four had a single shotgun wound to the head. A note was left on the dining room table, which read: “I’m sorry, it’s all my fault, totally mine”. It was Geoff’s writing.
It took police another day to find his body in the dam down from the farmhouse. He had died from a single shotgun wound to the head. Self inflicted.
The shock of the familiar
When their family photo was flashed on the TV news, I was sitting in a farmhouse two hours away, opposite our own paddock of bright yellow canola. That Hunt family photo, characterised by the overexposed Australian sunlight on a farm verandah, felt so familiar. I know the warp and weft of a small town, all the threads that go to make up a life of community groups, sporting clubs, cake stalls, school P&Cs, dress up nights. Endless fundraisers for numerous good causes. Small town theories and chatter. And something of Kim’s farm life. I did my own run to a deserted paddock bus stop for many years. I know the red dust that rises with every car on the drive. The smell of spring grass turning to hay at this time of year. The sound of a diesel engine turning over. The long days when children are babies, which accelerate into a rush from one school event to another sports match as they grow. The stress of harvest, when husbands disappear to beat the weather and get the crop off. The idiosyncrasies of family farming.
For me, the fate of Kim and her children became a story which nagged at me – four more entries added to a domestic violence list and for what?
Several elements stood out. Immediately after the killings, Kim’s sister Jenny Geppert talked about her aching loss for her big sister and described Geoff as “incredibly generous and kind-hearted”. We learned he had stayed by Kim’s bed while she was in a medically-induced coma after the car accident. Likewise, Kim had shown her characteristic determination to recover way beyond what was first predicted, given her spinal and brain injuries. By all accounts, they were a devoted couple.
As the small country community of Lockhart tried to process what appeared to be a familicide, rumours spread that maybe Geoff was not responsible for all the deaths. It did not equate with the family man. The event was not talked about in terms of domestic violence apparently because the evidence suggested there was no long-term history of family violence. Yet if this happened outside a family setting, it would fit the definition of mass murder – the deaths of four or more at the hands of one. Instead, it was portrayed as just a sad, impulsive decision. Geoff was a “nice guy” until he was not.
“We don’t know,” said Geoff’s friend and Lockhart deputy mayor Roger Schirmer before the inquest.
“It may have been for love. It was just such a shock, they were such a good family, contributing to life. It taught me you really need reach out and put arm around person next to you.”
Surely, love does not kill.
The inquest
The canola was flowering again by the time the Hunt family inquest started last week in Wagga Wagga. Peggy Dwyer, the counsel assisting the coroner Michael Barnes, made the opening statement and from that time, the inquest in many ways became an examination of Kim Hunt. Even though she was one of the victims.
The coronial process, said Dwyer, was “not designed to apportion blame” but to learn the lessons to stop other tragedies.
We heard Kim was athletic, clever, “a firecracker” who loved Geoff and her kids. She was an intensive care nurse with a wicked sense of humour. She loved gardening, cooking and horse riding. She dreamed of a new house and an iris farm.
Geoff was “the scion of a prominent local grazing family”, the coroner said in his final report. “He was well liked in the area, charismatic, an excellent sportsman and a tertiary educated and skilful farmer. He was sociable and hard working.”
But from the carer Bourke: “I think Geoff is like a lot of blokes from the country, quiet and keep private matters private. I’m sure life was taking its toll on Geoff in many different ways.”
The couples had had their marriage difficulties before the accident in 2012. Amongst the flash points were financial pressures, which stemmed from the family farming partnership.
But after the car accident, Dwyer said Kim’s injuries included a severe brain injury and a physical impairment to her right side, forcing her to learn to write with her left hand. Kim spent six months in hospital, regaining memory, learning to walk and talk. The court heard the brain injury caused a personality change. Some evidence points to her mood flatlining, making her neither happy nor sad. Other evidence suggested she lost her ability to cope with Geoff and the kids. She grew easily tired, as well as easily enraged.
“It appears that the person who bore the brunt of that change in personality was her husband Geoff,” Dwyer told the court. “A number of witnesses saw Kim abuse him over seemingly minor matters”.
The court heard evidence that in 2013, Kim had had suicidal thoughts, telling a counsellor that she wished she had died in the car accident. Though Kim later denied such thoughts, police seized the guns in the household – required for farm use – in an intervention which upset Kim. Of her personality changes, her psychiatrist Dr Patricia Yungfer described her symptoms as “classic features associated with traumatic brain injury”.
Geoff was also struggling that year, breaking down in front of other family members on a number of occasions, expressing worries that he could not look after Kim properly with the onset of harvest, a period during which he worked 20 hours a day.
That first year after the accident was a long hard road as the whole family adjusted to Kim’s disability, with necessary adjustments to medication and everyone learning to live with carers in the house. A farm house is often isolated from the outside world and therefore interdependent - families live together 24/7. Kim found having non-related carers in the house difficult. One of the children suffered separation anxiety due to her mother’s long absence in hospital. Another displayed challenging behaviour associated with ADHD.
Yet 2014 appeared to improve for the family, with continued visits to counsellors as well as the regular family ups and downs. Kim saw Dr Yunger six days before her death, when she discharged Kim from active treatment, suggesting her mood was more stable. She could come back if there was another crisis.
Kim’s sister Jenny Geppert paints a far more positive picture of Kim improving and remaining active in her community. She gave regular talks to promote awareness or fundraise for brain injury and road safety. She went back to work as a nurse educator eight hours a week and outside work, regularly contributed to community events.
In late August 2014, Geppert saw her beloved older sister for the last time. Geoff and Kim were both happy - laughing, joking and cuddling the children. While the men discussed farming, Jenny said Kim talked about life and she was “so happy”.
“It was a day where NOT ONCE [sic] were there any signs of her brain injury, not one,” Geppert said in her family victim impact statement. “She was articulate and intelligent and kind as ever. She spoke eloquently and thoughtfully. The only evidence of her accident was a limp and her rigid right hand. I felt so happy for her.”
Of her family, Geppert was probably closest to her sister, her only sibling. She spoke eloquently of her family’s loss. She had once made Kim promise that she would never let anything happen to her. “Because I couldn’t imagine how I’d live my life without her. I wish she could have kept this promise.”
The verdict
The week of the inquest coincided with mental health week. On the 90 minute drive to the Wagga Court house every morning, through towns like Bethungra, Illabo and Junee, the ABC focuses on a theme “Mental As”, with stories around depression and other mental illnesses. I told a farmer friend about covering the Hunt case. He gestured to his wife, “you know that family in Lockhart. The black dog got him”.
In her closing submission, Dwyer summed it up thus.
“Your honour would have no difficulty in finding that this was a spontaneous act but that pressures had been building up for sometime,” she said.
In his own closing submission, Andrew Stone SC appearing for Kim’s family, disagreed with Dwyer. He rejected the suggestion pressure was building over time. After all, Kim had been discharged by her psychiatrist.
“There may have been a build up in Geoff’s mind, we will never know,” said Stone.
Stone underlined the view no one would know the final thing that triggered the murder-suicide or the exact events of the night. He suggested we cannot even surmise Geoff’s mental condition as there was no diagnosis. Which married person could say that they never had “the shits” with their spouse? After such an event, hindsight necessarily places extra weight on throw away lines which may have meant nothing, Stone said.
“The mind wants to come up with explanations for things,” Stone said.
The coroner took less than 24 hours to return with his finding. It was unequivocal.
Barnes found Geoffrey Francis Hunt shot his wife and three children dead before taking his own life in the dam. Barnes also addressed the terrible town rumours that Kim may have been responsible for the childrens deaths.
“I reject any suggestion that Kim Hunt killed the children, prompting Geoff to kill her, then himself,” he told the court.
Barnes also rejected the criticism that the court need not conduct the inquest, given the perpetrator was dead. The community and the younger generations of both families had a right to know whether anything could be done to avert such tragedies, he said.
“Massacres must not be swept under the carpet merely because they occur in the home of the deceased, at the hands of a family member,” Barnes said.
The question of why was more difficult to determine.
Barnes does not name any one factor but documents the various pressures within the family. Those included Kim’s disabilities and the financial pressures as a result of the family farm partnership which left Geoff asset rich but cash poor and Kim with no legal interest in the house.
Kim was as much a victim of her brain injury as Geoff had been, Barnes said. He came to the conclusion that no professional or health could have foreseen Geoff’s state of mind as he hid it so well.
“What Geoffrey Hunt did was inexcusable; the absolute worst of crimes. It wasn’t premeditated; it wasn’t motivated by malice or to cover up other wrongs but it was completely unnecessary.
“It was the result of an egocentric delusion that his wife and children would be better off dying than living without him. The financial resources and family supports that were available to the Hunt family would have readily facilitated a marital separation whereby Geoff could have continued to work the farm, Kim could have continued to work part time and both would have had extensive contact with the children they so deeply cared for.
“It is unfathomable why Geoff Hunt would not have actively explored those options before taking the outrageous actions he did.”
The airing of this final report will again inflict sadness and shock on the little town of Lockhart.
Superintendent Bob Noble is in charge of Wagga Local Area command. He coordinated the initial investigation before Sydney homicide detectives arrived. His media appearances were raw and betrayed the deep sadness felt by the community and local police officers who had to deal with the tragedy.
“Personally I found it quite upsetting – it gave me pause to consider many things in my own life, which is not a bad thing, and I am very proud of the work done by police in helping community through that, particularly the friends and family of the deceased,” Noble said.
“People chose to live in rural communities simply because there is a deeper investment in the people around you. That’s a double edged sword, when the bad thing happens, they knock you around that much more badly.”
Our canola is finished flowering now and the remaining Hunt family are no doubt well into harvest.
In her victim’s impact statement, Jenny Geppert described to the court how her own younger children miss their cousins Fletcher, Mia and Phoebe, particularly if they visit Watch Hill. Her whole household has changed and taken on a sombre tone.
Geppert’s daughter Ollie asked if she could grow angel wings to fly up and visit her cousins. She had to tell the little girl “you need to die to grow angel wings sweetheart”.
“Are Fletcher, Mia and Phoebe really dead Mummy?”
“Yes they’re dead Ollie.”
Geppert enunciated the lesson from this tragedy in her final statement.
“They are dead and gone forever”.
And for what? An egocentric delusion.
• Crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here.
