Speaker 1: Approach production. I'm quite pleased with the outcome, and I
Speaker 1: think others have member. I haven't spoken him yet, but
Speaker 1: I believe the other members of the family would be
Speaker 1: certain opinion. Well, you couldn't get a better brother than he.
Speaker 2: Was.
Speaker 3: Truly a really a gentleman.
Speaker 2: I don't think he ever had an.
Speaker 1: Argument with anybody. Every in his life.
Speaker 2: He has always helped anybody wherever he could, always drige
Speaker 2: you lifely.
Speaker 1: We support one another, We're there for one another as
Speaker 1: a family, and we just have to know now and
Speaker 1: be glad that it's all over. That's Robert Whitwell's brother
Speaker 1: outside the court after Britney was sentenced to life imprisonment
Speaker 1: for his murder. How the court case unfolded and the
Speaker 1: things the family learned about Britney's double life was shocking.
Speaker 1: The arrest of Britney happened without the family knowing. Ryan
Speaker 1: was at home, his mum was staying with family back
Speaker 1: in South Australia, and his dad was at the family home.
Speaker 1: Detectives from Queensland and South Australia are deployed to everyone's
Speaker 1: house all at once. They get everyone on a conference
Speaker 1: call and then tell them Brittany murdered Robert.
Speaker 4: She was picked up this morning, and she's already in
Speaker 4: custody and she will most likely be in the watchhouse tonight.
Speaker 4: And then Extra died. It to Adelaide the next day,
Speaker 4: and as I was telling me this, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I thought we were here to talk about my grandfather,
Speaker 4: and now you're saying that my sister's been arrested and
Speaker 4: for murder. And I just immediately remembered going into a
Speaker 4: bit of a state of shock, and I just went,
Speaker 4: she's been framed. I literally said, she's been framed. My
Speaker 4: mom is dead, silent, my dad is going, what the fuck?
Speaker 4: And then they said it's if she's been arrested for
Speaker 4: murder your grandfather's death.
Speaker 3: And I just remember my.
Speaker 4: Mom completely bursting into hysterics like I could. I can
Speaker 4: literally still hear her scream, and it just I just
Speaker 4: I remember just.
Speaker 3: Everything felt like I was underwater.
Speaker 4: You had this just echo, we like your brain has
Speaker 4: just shut down like ten speeds, and I just it was.
Speaker 3: Like an outer body experience.
Speaker 4: And I just remember bursting into tears, still thinking she's
Speaker 4: been framed, and I immediately go to you've got the
Speaker 4: wrong person. It's the other family member, and they ignore that,
Speaker 4: and then the police that are with us are comforting us.
Speaker 3: What did your dad say?
Speaker 4: He went into a state of numbness. I immediately when
Speaker 4: that happened, I said to Adam, we need to go
Speaker 4: to my dad's now, which is like fifty minutes away
Speaker 4: from my house, and he's yeah, okay, And so he
Speaker 4: drove fast over there. Already at that point, his brother,
Speaker 4: my uncle, was there. The police had called him because
Speaker 4: my dad was by himself, and my dad just sat
Speaker 4: on the lounge in like a canatonic state, like. I
Speaker 4: was asking him questions and he couldn't really answer. The
Speaker 4: only thing he kept saying was Shelby and Brittany were
Speaker 4: just here for dinner, like two nights go.
Speaker 1: Like most good police work, the net closes in quickly.
Speaker 1: They only make an arrest when they've got enough evidence
Speaker 1: to get a conviction. So while police were telling the
Speaker 1: family it might be something or someone else, they were
Speaker 1: looking into everyone. No doubt, everyone is a person of
Speaker 1: interest until they become a suspect. That, of course, is
Speaker 1: not known to Ryan and his family, and they have
Speaker 1: no idea that police are looking to Brittany as the
Speaker 1: murder of Robert. What was the evidence that police landed
Speaker 1: on to get Brittany?
Speaker 3: The anonymous call was the first part.
Speaker 1: What was that anonymous call to crime stoppers?
Speaker 3: To crime stoppers, I want a report coming that.
Speaker 4: But my flatmate, it was the housemate that made the
Speaker 4: call that ended up coming out that she had overheard
Speaker 4: her talking about this. They were able to use the
Speaker 4: fact that they used the holding Captiva, it was seen
Speaker 4: on highway cameras. They used of my phone pings and
Speaker 4: the text message send points, so whenever they sent a
Speaker 4: text message it was.
Speaker 3: Like the location.
Speaker 4: They were able to then look at her phone bill
Speaker 4: and see exactly the location of where the phone calls
Speaker 4: were made from.
Speaker 1: How do you find out that information? Does that happen
Speaker 1: in court or is that in the brief of evidence
Speaker 1: as the trial takes place. Because at the start, I
Speaker 1: guess you're thinking she's been framed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she didn't do this.
Speaker 1: My sister would not kill my granddad. Yeah, she loved
Speaker 1: my granddad.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So on that night, obviously we know nothing. They leave,
Speaker 4: I go to my dad's. The police are still there.
Speaker 4: They're not really saying much, just make sure that he's okay,
Speaker 4: and then the next day, I remember.
Speaker 3: It's all over TV that.
Speaker 4: Robert Whitwell was murdered, but they weren't talking about who
Speaker 4: it was. Yeah, and then I get a call actually
Speaker 4: from the advertiser in Adelaide, going, we've been sent information
Speaker 4: that your sister has allegedly murdered your grandfather. Do you
Speaker 4: want to comment? And I think I told them to
Speaker 4: fuck off. And at that point I had news reporters
Speaker 4: turn up at the front door. They wanted comments. We
Speaker 4: jumped in the car, actually drove to my ex partner's
Speaker 4: family's house. They were calling his parents to try and
Speaker 4: get in contact with me. And then at that point
Speaker 4: it hits the news that it's Brittany and that's when
Speaker 4: I started to find out some of the stuff.
Speaker 1: So you're not finding this out from the police, you're
Speaker 1: finding this out from the media.
Speaker 3: Or from the media. So I had friends that knew
Speaker 3: before I did, and.
Speaker 1: The media goes into a frenzy. We know this right
Speaker 1: the moment something like this happens, this is a big story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a story that really happens in Australia very often. No,
Speaker 1: certainly not a granddaughter murdering the grandfather for money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're hounded, and your mum's hounded, and anyone with
Speaker 1: your surname, which is an easy surname to find.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty recognizable.
Speaker 1: It just goes on the hunt. Yeah, looks at your Facebook,
Speaker 1: her Facebook.
Speaker 3: Ye, takes whatever they want whatever photos.
Speaker 1: Has a feel invasive. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I actually until that scenario had happened, I didn't understand
Speaker 4: the gravity of what social media can do in many ways,
Speaker 4: feeling so violated that you don't even own your photos anymore.
Speaker 4: When they go up online, they use whatever whenever old
Speaker 4: statuses which we all have those cringey twenty ten updates
Speaker 4: that they deep dive in and use.
Speaker 1: But friends of yours that they then go and contact.
Speaker 1: We know, I know all this because that's how we
Speaker 1: found you. Yeah, we did the same years later. We
Speaker 1: didn't know each other. We just reached out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, so the same. Yeah, they go through friends.
Speaker 4: They asked friends where I might be called workplaces, turn
Speaker 4: up at workplaces.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's I don't know.
Speaker 4: It just.
Speaker 2: I don't think your brain even wants to believe what
Speaker 2: you're hearing. It does take time to process it all,
Speaker 2: and yes, it just does take time to you go
Speaker 2: through grief, you go through, you disbelief. I needed to
Speaker 2: find proof of what they were accusing my daughter of
Speaker 2: because I didn't think she was capable of anything. And
Speaker 2: I'm saying, well, where's the proof. I need proof, not
Speaker 2: just that you've seen a car here there, and that
Speaker 2: I need proof.
Speaker 1: What was the moment for you that it turned from
Speaker 1: my sister's been framed to my sister's a murderer.
Speaker 3: Actually, it was.
Speaker 4: This message that I got from my best friend at
Speaker 4: the time, Rachelle. She sent me this article and went
Speaker 4: is this true? And I remember looking at it and
Speaker 4: just going, it's real. It happened, and I was on
Speaker 4: the Gold Coast at this time, and I just remember
Speaker 4: looking at it, going, she's done it. And the article
Speaker 4: specifically was the first one that was released where my
Speaker 4: sister had confirmed everything and the words came out of
Speaker 4: her mouth that she did it.
Speaker 3: And that's when it really hit.
Speaker 2: I ended up having a phone bill that came in
Speaker 2: and I had my phone bill and I had Britney's
Speaker 2: phone bill, all on the same plan, and it was
Speaker 2: all itemized, and it wasn't until I went in to
Speaker 2: that last phone bill and I could see she was
Speaker 2: in Adelaide and Sydney and Townsville and mckae And that
Speaker 2: was my proof. I could see now what the police
Speaker 2: was saying, that they had tracked to her car on
Speaker 2: different cameras and things like that in different but that
Speaker 2: was my proof when I actually saw the phone, the
Speaker 2: itemized phone bill.
Speaker 1: What do you do then, how do you feel at
Speaker 1: that moment where you found the proof yourself. The police
Speaker 1: have said it was your daughter, It's obviously that's a
Speaker 1: hard thing to believe. But when you see it for yourself,
Speaker 1: what's that feeling like?
Speaker 2: I think that just it starts to thinking like, wow,
Speaker 2: what what the police are saying is true? And because
Speaker 2: you're in denial at first, and then it's wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know the prostitution and all this that we
Speaker 2: didn't know, and the police knew what, you know, what
Speaker 2: her movements were just before that happened, and it just
Speaker 2: becomes real. It just becomes big. It's like a slap
Speaker 2: in the face. This is reality. This is what happened,
Speaker 2: and they are telling me the truth. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk to Brittany when she was when she had
Speaker 2: already been arrested, and she wouldn't she wouldn't speak to me,
Speaker 2: so I've never spoken to her since this happened, which
Speaker 2: is really sad.
Speaker 4: I think the moment she confessed and agreed to confess
Speaker 4: was that they had already arrested Shelby. I actually think
Speaker 4: Shelby was the first one that they had. Shelby pretty
Speaker 4: much agreed to cooperate and gave them access to.
Speaker 3: Everything essentially text message.
Speaker 4: Text messages, phone calls, photos.
Speaker 1: The bag. Yeah, the contents of what was in the
Speaker 1: bag because.
Speaker 3: Their Facebook messenger posts, which.
Speaker 1: Makes the police very easy, Yeah, to get into it.
Speaker 1: It's important to say that Shelby wasn't convicted of anything
Speaker 1: to do with your granddad's murder. She was convicted of trespass.
Speaker 3: And accessory is aggravated dress pass.
Speaker 1: That's right. She was not attached in any way to
Speaker 1: the murder of your granddad.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 1: Two questions. Firstly, has your mum when your sister confesses
Speaker 1: to killing your granddad.
Speaker 3: Not good?
Speaker 4: I think out of all of us, mum took at
Speaker 4: the hardest, which her father and her daughter killed him.
Speaker 4: Just that sentence alone shouldn't even be strung together.
Speaker 3: It's just not normal.
Speaker 4: She essentially turned into a vegetable is the best way
Speaker 4: I could describe it.
Speaker 3: It was like her brain was.
Speaker 4: A bucket of water and the more you added in,
Speaker 4: the rest just spilled out. And she just couldn't She
Speaker 4: couldn't take on any of the information. And I think
Speaker 4: the saving grace a bit was that she was in Wallaroo,
Speaker 4: which is a remote sort of sea town in South Australia,
Speaker 4: so no one knew where she was in terms of
Speaker 4: the media and all of that, so she was able
Speaker 4: to really deal with it there.
Speaker 2: I blame myself in the way of, you know, why
Speaker 2: didn't I pick up on things, and why didn't I
Speaker 2: know what she was doing? And why did I work
Speaker 2: full time? Well, why didn't I stay at home like
Speaker 2: I did raising Ryan. I was stay at home mum.
Speaker 2: Why wasn't I there for her? I think that's the
Speaker 2: whole thing that she got away with so much because
Speaker 2: I worked full time and I commuted every day, so
Speaker 2: my commute to work was between two and three hours
Speaker 2: a day on top of you know where and seven
Speaker 2: eight hours a day, so there were long days and
Speaker 2: she was at home, you know, and going to school
Speaker 2: and things like that. But she had a lot of
Speaker 2: spare time where we weren't actually keeping an eye on
Speaker 2: her every every hour.
Speaker 1: But you now know that it wasn't your fault. You
Speaker 1: couldn't have changed what happened. What happened happened, and what
Speaker 1: Britney did isn't a result of anything that you did.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I have in my mind one day
Speaker 2: we will speak again and she will fill in the
Speaker 2: blanks for me the things that we don't know. And
Speaker 2: that's what I have in my mind. But I still do,
Speaker 2: not so much to blame myself, but I just think,
Speaker 2: why wasn't I there, and why didn't I know? And
Speaker 2: why could she talk to me? But that's hard.
Speaker 4: My mum had a very big job as the executive
Speaker 4: assistant for the Transport Minister and essentially had to go
Speaker 4: on permanently because the stress and anxiety of just basic
Speaker 4: things she couldn't get through.
Speaker 2: You know, I did resign from my government job because
Speaker 2: I just didn't want to go back to that corporate
Speaker 2: world and been on the train every day and that
Speaker 2: just and people, just the people that I used to
Speaker 2: work with. You know, it's like, wow, it's on the news,
Speaker 2: and wow, I work with her, But they just don't
Speaker 2: have empathy and it's just on the news and wow,
Speaker 2: and then you know in five minutes time, they're thinking,
Speaker 2: aren't you over this yet? And you know the reality is,
Speaker 2: with the police involved and all that process, it goes
Speaker 2: on for a long time. So yeah, I had two
Speaker 2: months off work in the beginning, and then I tried
Speaker 2: to go back to work, but there was just still
Speaker 2: too much going on and the police still ringing me
Speaker 2: and updating me and telling me new facts that I
Speaker 2: didn't know, and you know, it's such a shock every
Speaker 2: time you learn something new, and yeah, it takes a
Speaker 2: while for it to actually just thinkingto your head. So
Speaker 2: that I could not go back to work, so I
Speaker 2: ended up resigning.
Speaker 3: I'll give you an example.
Speaker 4: Will be at the house and there will just be
Speaker 4: a bird chirping, and it is so elevated in her
Speaker 4: head that noise it will set her off. And this
Speaker 4: is what I mean by just in a catatotic state.
Speaker 4: She then moved into being suicidal, thinking about wanting to
Speaker 4: end it. And the one thing that she has said
Speaker 4: to me is that the only reason why I didn't
Speaker 4: was because of me, that I don't want to leave
Speaker 4: my son behind and that that's not fair.
Speaker 3: But That's how she was for a long time. And
Speaker 3: your dad.
Speaker 4: I think my dad did the blow key thing and
Speaker 4: just chose to believe it didn't happen and not talk
Speaker 4: about it, just hide, essentially to the point that there
Speaker 4: was one time where he got on a plane and
Speaker 4: went to Germany did some business over there for a while,
Speaker 4: just to I think, get away from it all.
Speaker 1: Because Brittany was closest to your dad than your mom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they were very close.
Speaker 1: Are you able to speak to Brittany after she's charged.
Speaker 3: We're allowed to, but she didn't want to.
Speaker 4: She did speak to my dad, and I think that
Speaker 4: was a few weeks after it all happened, but.
Speaker 3: She did not want to speak to me, and she
Speaker 3: did not want to speak to my mom.
Speaker 4: Would she said, I think at that point when she
Speaker 4: was in jail, she's pretty heavily medicated. When she was
Speaker 4: speaking to Dad, she just asked him how he was.
Speaker 4: My sister was like, my dad said, like, why did
Speaker 4: you do it? She wouldn't really answer. He actually drove,
Speaker 4: I think again, to deal with everything. He took time
Speaker 4: off work and went fishing and drove from Brisbane to
Speaker 4: Adelaide to do fishing and go see her in jail.
Speaker 4: My dad said she just wasn't all there when he
Speaker 4: went and saw her.
Speaker 1: How does this sort of thing affect the family unit.
Speaker 4: It's quite destructive from any family member. When any person
Speaker 4: whenever it's a situation like what we have here, where
Speaker 4: it's my mom's daughter and my mom's dad, but then
Speaker 4: it's my dad's daughter and not his parents, you immediately
Speaker 4: get this sense of divide. And my dad was very
Speaker 4: much my daughter's in jail, and he still wants to
Speaker 4: look out for her. But then my mom is my
Speaker 4: daughter killed my dad, and I'm done. There's just no
Speaker 4: coming back from that. And so I think they were
Speaker 4: very much in two minds about how to deal with
Speaker 4: the situation, and it just never it just it only
Speaker 4: grew and got worse, and so they filed for divorce.
Speaker 1: So, during this horrible thing that happened, your parents are
Speaker 1: still together. Yeah, successful business, mum's got a great job.
Speaker 1: What they think is a nice family unit. This thing
Speaker 1: that your sister did is murder that your sister committed,
Speaker 1: pulled your family.
Speaker 3: Apart, completely sent it all different ways. It's a sense
Speaker 3: of blame.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, this wouldn't have happened if she hadn't done this,
Speaker 4: maybe you could speculate that my parents would have grown
Speaker 4: apart later down the track ten twenty years. But the
Speaker 4: pain of going through something like that and my dad
Speaker 4: still wanting to talk to her and my mom not
Speaker 4: you just it's too heavy that that's a side. It's
Speaker 4: not like your Oh that's my football team, and I
Speaker 4: prefer this football team. This is something that is just
Speaker 4: fundamentally soul destroying.
Speaker 1: Was there a sense of anyone blaming themselves for Britney's behavior?
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, I think did you. There was a lot
Speaker 4: that I said that what could I have done to
Speaker 4: stop this? And I think back about I knew deep
Speaker 4: down in my gut that Brittany was going down a
Speaker 4: really bad path, and that's why I asked her to
Speaker 4: move in with me. And I still feel that I
Speaker 4: should have been harder and forced her to do therapy
Speaker 4: or get a proper job and not resort to this
Speaker 4: sort of life that has led her to this path.
Speaker 4: And yeah, there was a lot of blame on myself
Speaker 4: from that perspective, and then my mom as well. My
Speaker 4: mom was saying what did she do as a mother?
Speaker 4: What did she miss as a mother? Like how could
Speaker 4: this have been prevented? Did she work too much? Should
Speaker 4: she have been home more? Those sorts of those sort
Speaker 4: of things. So yeah, I think we all had a
Speaker 4: sense of blame.
Speaker 2: Other than Royan, I pretty much lost my whole family all,
Speaker 2: you know, within a year anyway, and that just pulled
Speaker 2: the rugs from underneath me, and I just wild for
Speaker 2: a while. But now I'm happy where I am now.
Speaker 2: Roan and I are very quiet, and I just have
Speaker 2: a tiny little fit. Have nicknamed.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of My Sister the Murderer, your
Speaker 1: sister's in court in that first do you make eye
Speaker 1: contact with it?
Speaker 4: I tried very hard, just I was sort of looking
Speaker 4: for some sort of sense of remorse. I guess accountability.
Speaker 4: We were sat down. We were at the back row actually,
Speaker 4: and to directly to my right and down I can
Speaker 4: see the dock, and I saw them lead Brittany out.
Speaker 3: It is not possible to adequately summarize the enormity of
Speaker 3: the distress and profound anguish that these members of the
Speaker 3: Whitwell and Dwyer families.
Speaker 4: And some victim impact statements were read, and to hear them,
Speaker 4: I guess the fact of what she actually had said
Speaker 4: in those text messages up doing it and going through
Speaker 4: with it. You know, I remember hearing her mom just
Speaker 4: sort of have a bit of a shrill, I guess
Speaker 4: is the way I would describe it, Like not a scream,
Speaker 4: not really weeping, but just like hearing it.
Speaker 3: It was like she just got stabbed herself.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's quite awful.
Speaker 1: The victim impact statement. Your mum read one and you
Speaker 1: also read one. Do you have that with you? Would
Speaker 1: you read it first?