A portrait of an Indigenous man that hung on the wall of a family’s home for years hid a disturbing secret about the murder of two young children.
A Reddit user recently shared a photo of a drawing, depicting an unidentified Aboriginal man with long hair, a beard and traditional face paint, that his brother had purchased at a trade shop for a few hundred dollars.
The portrait had been hanging in their dining room for a year or more before it was recently removed for renovation.
That’s when they discovered a handwritten letter from March 1996 that was taped to the back of the frame.
The letter details the horrendous crimes committed by child killer Dexter Wilkinson and his wife Kathleen Lister in the rural Queensland town of Bell.
It is understood that neither the drawing nor the man photographed had any connection with the letter, which was written by a woman called Germaine Blair-Quigg.
Mrs Blair-Quigg appears to have been an advocate for tougher sentences for serious violent crimes.
He often wrote letters to newspapers complaining about lenient sentences, and the letter appears to be a draft version, as it contains corrections and marginalia.
A sketch of an indigenous man that hung on the wall of a family’s home for years hid a dark and disturbing story of the murder of two young children.
On the back of the framed sketch was a letter from a woman complaining about the sentence handed down to Kathleen Lister. Lister was convicted of being an accessory to murder after her husband killed her two young children in 1994.
Reddit users assumed Blair-Quigg’s letter was addressed to a journalist and complained about the light sentence imposed on Lister.
“What she and her partner did to those two children was monstrous and far beyond my comprehension,” Blair-Quigg wrote.
‘Before coming to Australia I was told about the covert side of Australian society: the wife-bashing syndrome/syndrome; child cruelty; rape statistics; the alcoholism; deep-seated racism; the inherent weakness of character disguised as camaraderie.
And I was skeptical. I chose to believe that the gentle larrikins who had tamed that vast sun-scorched land had to be basically good people. Practical, down to earth, good. And kind.’
The horrible case detailed in the letter
The Queensland Supreme Court heard Lister had been living with Wilkinson for a year before he killed two of her children, Jimmy, 11, and Kimberley, nine, just before Christmas 1994.
Wilkinson was not Jimmy and Kimberley’s father and was described as an “extremely violent and mentally unstable man” who was physically abusive to everyone in the home, especially the children, according to court documents.
Wilkinson violently assaulted Jimmy on December 22, 1994, throwing him around the house, causing him to hit his head on the floor, causing him to lose consciousness.
Jimmy was put to bed and received no medical treatment, dying from his injuries the next day.
Lister had claimed that he went to the city to seek medical assistance for Jimmy, but Wilkinson told him not to and instead returned with alcohol and cigarettes.
That night, Lister helped her husband bury Jimmy in a grave.
Kimberley was murdered just a day later.
Wilkinson had ordered Kimberley to complete a task in the backyard, but he told her she was doing it too slowly and began yelling at her.
He then threw Kimberley to the ground near a cement path and kicked her in the stomach.
She died almost immediately.
“Lister cleaned Kimberley’s face and tried to revive her but there was no pulse or response,” the court heard.
‘Wilkinson said: “Leave this bloody bitch where she is, she got what she deserved. She should have been the one to go first.” According to Lister, Wilkinson hated Kimberley and called her “the devil’s daughter.”
Lister and Wilkinson buried Kimberley in a shallow grave on Christmas morning, then invited guests to the house and apparently acted as if everything was fine, telling them that the children were away with their biological father.
Kimberly and Jimmy (pictured above) were murdered by Dexter Wilkinson while their mother watched
Some of those guests even slept in the children’s bunk beds.
“Two or three days later the smell was emanating from the graves, especially the shallower grave in which Kimberley’s body was buried,” the court heard.
“Wilkinson decided the bodies would have to be burned and he, his father and Lister set about exhuming and burying them.”
Even as the children’s bodies burned, Wilkinson ordered Lister to bring beers to the house.
Jimmy had a crack in his skull and Kimberley’s body was already “partially decomposed” when he was set on fire. Wilkinson was also understood to have cut off Kimberley’s legs before throwing her into a rubbish bin.
The crimes only came to light when Lister accidentally let them slip while talking to a friend in February 1995.
It was just after Wilkinson, who was never held accountable for his crimes, was fatally killed in a car accident.
The friend reported what had happened to the children to the local pastor, who then spoke to Lister, who then confessed to police.
The judge found that Lister had “assisted [Wilkinson] for a prolonged period and substantially to escape punishment knowing that he had committed two murders.
You made no attempt to leave him and report the matter after the children died.
‘You continued to cover him up in every way up to the point where he could never have been arrested due to his death and, indeed, some time afterwards.
“The bottom line is he probably would have continued if he hadn’t been killed.”
The judge noted that Lister had been dominated by Wilkinson and had shown remorse for her crimes.
Lister was jailed after being found guilty of being an accessory to manslaughter and an accessory to murder.
Lister, who would now be 75 years old, was sentenced to two years for manslaughter and nine years for murder, which was ordered to be served simultaneously after a trial in 1996.
His prison sentence was backdated to March 1995, and the Attorney General ruled that he would have to serve five years before being eligible for parole.
Lister’s current whereabouts are unknown.