Fifteen years ago, the engineer, then student Jeffrey lan Gilham, lived with his family in a different leafy street in Woronora, a river frontage home in secluded surroundings.
On the Friday night of 27 August 1993, 23-year-old Jeffrey Gilham, asleep in the boatshed of the family home, says he awoke to the screams of his mother on the intercom from the house. Pulling on a pair of shorts, he ran up the steep steps, finding his 25-year-old brother Christopher in the lounge room, standing over their mother's body with a lit match.
There was a knife on the floor. 'T've just killed Mum and Dad,' said
Christopher calmly, before setting his mother alight.
Picking up the knife Jeffrey said he chased his brother downstairs.
Stabbed him sixteen times for killing his parents. Escaped from the burning house in the nick of time, to alert the neighbours.
The bodies of Stephen and Helen Gilham were severely burned.
Vital forensic evidence was lost forever. Christopher's body was not burned, but vital forensic evidence was lost again, this time by the police. Jeffrey was the only witness.
Pleading guilty to Christopher's manslaughter, Jeffrey copped a five-year good-behaviour bond. He inherited just under one million dollars and got on with his life. But all was not as it seemed ...
And he didn't count on his Uncle Tony who fought for fifteen years to bring his nephew to justice.
This is their story.