The Woman So Obsessed With Killers She Became One

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So when a young man like Aaron Page Sweetman um goes missing as he did um it becomes big news.

um the way he went missing um from um the car park of a of a local shopping center.

Um and police were um onto it, you know, very very quickly.

So, uh we we were aware that that that Aaron had gone missing.

Um we were aware that they were um looking for um vehicles and then certain individuals.

Um and then it emerged that um his remains um tragically had been found um at at a house that wasn’t his own.

So you you put all those factors together even before um we knew the names of the um of the accused um that strikes you as as pretty bizarre, pretty horrible um and you know a very significant crime.

But then um from there uh when the accusations arise and the charges are laid and you see these two individuals in court for the first time, that’s your job then as a crime repor uh court reporter to follow follow it through.

Um which is which is what you do.

You go to all the the pre-trial hearings to see where this might go, whether there might be a plea, whether there might be charges downgraded.

In this case, obviously that wasn’t the case.

Both the uh both the charged individuals pleaded not guilty.

So, we went to a trial.

Um, and then your job is to go to the trial every day and report as fairly and accurately um as you can as to what you hear and see in court.

And and and this case in um more than most others in in my career, there was something truly shocking pretty much every day of the trial from from day one.

Um the accusations and then the background of the um the individuals which we’d heard a little bit about in the buildup.

um and done a little bit of research, but you’ve got to be careful obviously because you know innocent until proven guilty and anything you might put out in the in the in the uh in the public sphere in via the media or social media in these times um potential jurors can read that and potential jurors could be um swayed one way the other and then once it’s once it’s said before a jury then you’re then you’re okay to then you’re okay to print and publish.

Um, and as I said, once once we got into the um the nitty-gritty of this trial, it really was something that um that you you sometimes you found yourself hard to believe that you having to write some of the material and and and broadcast some of the material you were, but that those were the facts that as they were outlined in court.

So, so yeah, it was it was one that we we followed very closely from day one right up until the verdict and then um uh and then beyond because it was there were things happened even after the sentencing that um were truly shocking.

>> Well, we’ll get you to step us through the court case in a bit, but you mentioned finding out some of the background on the women who were involved in this crime and >> one of those in particular um Gemma.

Can we talk a little bit about her childhood? Was there anything within her upbringing uh that might have given us some signs about where life would eventually take her? >> Yeah.

So, this is uh Gemma Lily.

um she was uh 16 when she moved to Australia from the UK, but um subsequent um to the um the the the murder that she was convicted of um it emerged that she had been um very detached as a as a even as a young child.

um awkward um lonely um and had interests that worried her her her close family and and close friends.

She would she had always had an interest in uh in the darker side of of culture.

um she’d grown up um in in a in a nuclear family in in the UK, but once she got to those later teenage years, the the the issues around her personality and her very close family struggling to cope with those um precipitated her moving to to Australia um to to live with um other family members um originally and then and then she moved on um she got a job.

Um she she made some friends here, but her whole um persona, even from a young age, appeared to revolve around um horror.

I’ll put it that way.

The macab um horror fiction, horror culture.

Um she once um said in some of her writings that that um the character Freddy Krueger, who I’m sure all your listeners will remember from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, um was her a father figure.

She felt like he was a father figure to her growing up.

She was obsessed with him or that character, sorry, um later in life.

And as these um interests hardened within her um she then took to writing herself.

She fancied herself as a as a writer, a novelist.

Um and she started commit to commit these fantasies.

She was having these this this this obsession with um with um darkness and torture and weapons and and and and horror fiction.

um she started commit those thoughts to to the page.

Um they started out as just sort of notes in a diary almost scribblings, but then she um concocted this world um and this character um that um she she placed basically at the center of her identity.

So there was some um swapping of those or mixing or melding of those.

This character in her head was called SOS.

Um taken from um Son of Sam, who was a notorious serial killer in the in in in America in in the late 20th century.

Um and she took on that persona herself first by writing about it as the central theme of this book that she was writing called Play Zone.

But then it it it bled over, if you pardon the term, it melded over into her.

So, she had a tattoo of several tattoos um depicting this SOS character on her body.

Even the motorbike that she rode in in Western Australia in Perth, the the registration number was one SOS one.

So, she obviously as she got grew out of her teens and into her early 20s saw herself as this SOS character.

And this SOS character was a serial killer um who would um torture and murder victims himself.

But then more um centrally to the story that that emerges in real life, he had followers that would also do his bidding, do his killing for him.

Um she referred to those as maggots in the book.

Um and so this became her identity.

This became her central identity.

Um so she had tattoos and then as we’ll go on to explain the house that she ended up living in um and ended up killing in was a shrine to this type of material um including um assigned photograph by the actor that played Freddy Krueger.

Um Chucky Doll which was the central character in another 80s horror film.

Um and obviously most disturbingly um her obsession with um torture um methods which were found written and and and detailed in the house and also a a weapons cash particularly of knives um that um anyone who would have seen would have been um shocked and disturbed by.

So, she was an individual that almost seemed, and I know it seems hard to say, but almost seemed destined to kill because that’s what she wanted to do.

That’s what she’d fantasized doing.

That’s what she’d written about doing, and ultimately that’s what she ended up doing.

But Tim, people write horror stories.

People watch horror movies.

People make horror movies, recreate awful, torturous things on screens for us to call entertainment and enjoy.

>> What is it about Gemma’s fascination with this genre that makes it become a reality for her? Was there ever a mention of her having a mental health issue? Was there ever times when that behavior did start to stray over into the real world before the murder of Aaron? >> Yeah.

>> Was there behaviors that were concerning in the real world that people worried that maybe this horror genre and this fantasy fiction world she’d created was bleeding into her real life? >> Yeah.

Well, there were there certainly were worries amongst the very close family in the UK.

Um, I spoke um anonymously, I might add, to to one of those people who contacted me during and after the trial via email to say, “Look, this we were we were we warned people or we tried to warn people in the UK that that this wasn’t just a phase.

We didn’t think this this was just the your normal teenage sort of um hyperfixation on on whatever it might have been.

We we thought that this went deeper with her.

And then when she got to Western Australia, um, which was, I think, or it’s fair to say, was designed to be a circuit breaker for her, try and get her out of her own head or the environment that she’d grown up in or the friends that she had or the family situation that she was in and try and, you know, give her something else.

Um, what what when she got here, I mean, she appeared, I mean, from the outside, you would say, relatively normal.

She she had friends.

Um she uh had a job um stacking shelves at a local supermarket.

Um and at one point she even did get married, but that was for convenience because um she had visa issues and would have had to go back to the UK.

So she’d befriended a man, a gay man um and they got married.

But even then uh the marriage ceremony which her family did attend come to UK some family did come from the UK to attend it was odd it was it was it was themed was there was Freddy Krueger memorabilia at that wedding.

So, as you say, yeah, every we we I’m sure 95% of the population have at some point um you know, ingested a Stephen King novel or watched a horror movie or um you know, sort of you know, listened to death metal or whatever it might be and you know and not become us.

But with her with Gemma um from very early on people were saying this is this this this is this is becoming her identity.

This is how she feels like she exists in the world.

This is what makes her who she is.

And there’s there’s obviously a psychology behind that.

And the psychology was explored somewhat during the trial, but more during the sentencing um in terms of um the potentiality of her having some psychopathic traits there.

Um and it it was eventually agreed that there was some um psychopathy there.

Um because the elements of her that took on that SOS character then obviously drilled so far deep into her that she she basically carried through with it and then after she’d done it was was referring to herself as SOS and was having her um partner in crime um Trudy Lennon refer to her as SOS as well.

So um the the traits that eventually exploded in in Western Australia had been there for a long time um and people had been worried about them um for a long time.

>> You mentioned her marriage there, Marriage of Convenience.

Yeah.

>> The man that she married, >> she ended up giving him a serial killer nickname, right? >> Yes.

Strangely.

Um, so this was a chap that she’d u met through friends and she nicknamed him Gayy as in John Wayne Gasey who’s another notorious serial killer from the US.

>> He’s the clown killer, right? >> The clown killer.

Correct.

Yes.

Um and she well not only was Freddy Krueger her father figure but these these serial killers son of Sam Gasey um and others she not only um had an interest in but she um obsessed over I think it’s probably fair to say she wrote about them she listed them she diarized them she lied she did sort of books about them and once she got to Western Australia and and had really sort of um double down into her writing.

She actually wrote um semi-serious researched articles about um serial killers and had them published um on in in in various sort of um publications, online magazines that um that centered around this stuff.

um including one about the the Port Arthur massacre and the uh the individual that carried out that that horrific crime.

So she sur she she just constantly surrounded herself um with with this stuff.

But you know to to the point as you say where she she gave the man that she married and was obviously friends with um but not um sexually involved with because um he wasn’t that way inclined and she described actually she described herself as asexual as well.

Um, she gave him the nickname of one of these killers because she thought a it was funny and b that he he had some physical traits that reminded of of of that particular that particular murder.

Yeah.

>> Tim, you spoke to some of Gemma’s work colleagues who worked with her back in the day.

>> When you work with people closely, especially, you know, when you’re stacking shelves at, you know, the supermarket, you get to know each other pretty well.

you’re working sometimes, you know, by yourselves at night in places.

Did they see anything that made them think that she was capable of doing what she eventually did? >> Yeah.

So we heard we heard from them during during during the trial and then you know subsequently I did reach out to a couple of them after the trial just to just to try and get a fuller picture even though we had you know a lot of material already and they struck me as they I mean they were just normal West Australians right they were and they were just uh living their lives going to work and you know um having relationships with your colleagues as as you as you normally would.

And hindsight’s a wonderful thing, right? I I got the impression that um before this this happened, they thought she was they thought she was strange.

They thought she was a little bit offkilter, but I got the impression I don’t think they thought this woman is, you know, destined to kill someone, let alone in the circumstances that she went on to do.

But when it comes to a trial, well, so you and then you hear about the circumstances and it comes to a trial and you’re proofed and the prosecutors ask you certain questions, right? It you then get the impression, oh, well, they always knew, so why didn’t they speak up? But, um, I I got the impression that that, as I say, they they they she was she was she was weird.

She was she, you know, she was she was always talking about this this darkness, this horror material.

She had the tattoos.

She had the, you know, the hair, the piercings.

She wore dark clothing, but as as you’ve said before, like thousands of thousands of young men and women do that and don’t go on to do what what Gemma Lily did.

So, um yeah, impression I got was they thought she was strange, but they never thought they had a a killer in their break room.

Um and and you know until it until it broke and then they they they realized, oh gosh, um we were sitting next to this person, working next to this person, you know, having conversations with this person, um not realizing that at all the time she was, you know, she was she was planning or or certainly fantasizing about um about eventually um committing one of the the crimes that really shook Western Australia um to its core.

for this I mean in the last 20 years >> at the time of Aaron’s murder >> in the leadup to that we’re talking about a time where you know Instagram was brand new in 2016 social media wasn’t really a huge part of our lives yet but you know the internet still existed and and there were opportunities to join you know forums and chat rooms and things >> was she involved in any communities online that could have given us an idea of where her motivations for this were coming from >> um not overly.

Um but from quite early from around about 2011 from memory, she was spruing um this this book and this character that that she was that she was um in the midst of creating.

Um as I say, the book the book was um called um Play Zone.

It was written under a pseudonym.

Um and she was very proud of it.

She was very she was very proud of it.

She would tell people about it.

She would give people um hard copies of it, anyone who showed any interest.

Um and then on a she created a Facebook page around um the book for, you know, ostensibly for marketing purposes.

Um and she would post about it.

And then um slowly as as we um dug into her social media profile a little more um there were some very you know sort of bizarre and disturbing um photographs that she’d she that she’d fashioned and taken obviously stylized herself that became um sort of the book art.

There was one that um depicted a young man um on his knees in a sort of um Dexter like room that was covered in tarpollins and things with the with this with this metal mask.

um um this mask it turned out that had been made for Gemma by her father um a as a sort of strange sort of gift or uh you know acknowledgment that you know yeah okay you’re you’re into this stuff so you know maybe I could you know share this interest somehow.

Um but she went on to use this mask in in the in the fan art um of of of this book.

Um and and those pictures were there, you know, if you’ve chosen to see them or if you were friends with her on Facebook.

She didn’t have many, but she did have some um that were there there to see.

So again, even her online personality was inshed um with this with this SOS character with her, you know, pride and obsession with the book um and the the central theme of her life basically, which was killing someone, how to kill someone, um how to torture someone, and how to do that um you know, with what weapons to to do that with.

So yeah um that was again once once we started digging into this story and this personality a little deeper um that was illuminative as well.

>> Do we know when things changed from being this obsession with horror and creating this book and this character to giving herself that goal that’s mentioned throughout the trial of wanting to kill someone before she turns 25? Like do we have an understanding of when that became a thing for her? >> Well, personally, having covered the trial, followed the followed the story and written about it after, I really feel that it was when she met Trudy Lennon, who was her became her best friend, became her muse, became her confidant, um, and ultimately became her accomplice.

Trudy Lennon was um older, much older in her in her 40s.

Um divorced um not really enjoying her life.

Um she had been a participant in the um BDSM scene um in Perth for some years as a submissive.

Um, so she was someone who sexually enjoyed being dominated and uh through um Trudy’s son, I I if I remember correctly, they they met.

So you’ve got these two personalities, right? You’ve got you’ve got Gemma who is even though she’s lonely and she’s weird and she’s um uh you know on the fringes, let’s let’s call it, she was also articulate, confident, um attractive um and was had a had a had a belief in herself even though that was a very sick belief um that she was she was she was going to do this thing, right? But I believe that she felt that she couldn’t do it alone.

And that jump if you jump back to the the central or one of the central themes of her book was that she needed someone.

She SOS had these followers, these these um you know these sickopaths that would do his bidding for him and do his killing for him and and and honored him and and worshiped him.

And in Trudy Lennon, that’s what Gemma found.

She found someone that was willing to be dominated because she knew she’d be dominated sexually previously and that was part of her psychology.

So, she could be and was willing to be dominated.

And as we went through the trial and the the text messages between these two women were revealed, that was that was very much their um their relationship.

Dom sub.

And Trudy Lennon in Finding Gemma Lily found someone that she could talk to, that she could hang out with, that she could feel important with, um, that she could converse with, but it wasn’t a male, right? Because Trudy Lennon’s um, persona and life up until that point has been had been a literal submissive and not a very happy one.

um in a in a series of heterosexual relationships.

Now, there was a there was a subtext that that that that Gemma and Trudy were lovers.

That was never really explored because it didn’t really have to be in terms of the crime that they committed because the relationship, their relationship in terms of the physical acts that they ended up doing together and planning together and then discussing together afterwards was it was clear that they were as close as two people could be even if they weren’t sharing a bed.

So I I believe having having gone through the trial that that that that the moment that Gemma found Trudy and realize that Trudy will do basically anything I ask of her within reason and without reason as it came to be.

That was when it went from a fantasy to a re from from fantasy to reality for her because she had a maggot, right? She had she she she dreamt up this this scenario in her head and then suddenly it was it was playing out in real life.

She had someone living with her um you know hanging out with her doing her bidding reading like read really reading her book giving her notes giving her suggestions and all the while it was building this confidence in in Lily that right I’m ready to do this now.

She’d set herself that timeline.

I think that was a bit of dramatist persona.

I think that was just her building herself up.

But whatever it was, it came to be.

Um, and it came to be because they um crossed paths and then they um emboldened each other um to to do it.

And really tragically, it was through Trudy Lennon um and her son that they came into contact with Aaron who was then for one of a better I mean he was targeted.

He was he was he was targeted because of of who he was.

And that that really is a piece of this story that is is desperately desperately sad.

We’ll speak about Aaron in a moment, but you mentioned the text messages between Trudy and Gemma and there were quite a few of them and they were quite central to the court case.

Can you talk us through what these women were saying to each other? >> Yeah.

So again, it it revolved around this SOS character, right? So that’s that’s how uh Lenon was was addressing Lily Gemma um in these in these text messages um and uh and and Trudy was given a you know a persona as well.

They were they were egging each other on.

So yeah, it’s this um dominant submissive relationship um that um was was able to be um um illustrated geographically in court literally by with graphics of the of the text messages.

So uh for instance um at one point Lenon to Lily texts, I will fear you but respect you.

I see you as my dominant.

That’s that that just lays it out in in less than 20 words, right? Um, Lily to Lenon, 100% perfect.

It would seem you truly understand my SOS role.

And then Lily to Lennon again, my mind is the darkest being you will ever be laying your life in the hands of.

And if you read Lily’s book, I I wouldn’t recommend it.

It’s terrible in terms of just spelling errors and plot development and characters and everything, but it’s also 200 odd pages of literally a window into Lily’s mind as we now know.

Um that that that type of um that type of language is is you know just strewn all over the pages there.

Um, so just just those three and there were there were dozens and dozens of these text messages back and forth.

Um, really just, you know, confirming to each other what their roles were.

Um, but also emboldening each other to to to to build up um to the day um where they um where they went to that shopping center and um and and and got Aaron into their car.

Um, and then as we’ll probably go on to discuss, there were text messages after the crime that they committed.

Um, that, you know, uh, showed that they weren’t regretful of what they’d done at all.

In fact, they were they Lily was was was elated at what she’d done because she’d done what she always wanted to do.

Along with the um messages to each other about each other and emboldening each other, there were also, you know, quite graphic messages about the act that or or or the act that they were building up to or certainly that Lily wanted them both to build up to.

Um this message that I’m about to read out was very similar to some of the passages in the book, but this was actually written to to Lenon.

She wrote wrote to her, “I feel as though I cannot rest until the blood or the flesh of a screaming pleading victim is gushing out and pooling on the floor.

” Now, that that’s horrifying enough, but as as we got into the trial, there was a photograph that was tended by the prosecutors after they’d been into um the the the house where the um Lily’s house where the the crime was committed.

And echoing that um cover art for the book, there was a room that had been um basically blocked off in the house, a tiled floor and it had um blue tar taroline all the way around it.

um floors and ceiling.

Um Allah, you know, Dexter tiled floor, covered walls, and two other items that that were photographed which were chilling.

And and the photographs online if anyone is is interested in seeing it.

In one corner corner was a toolbox, one of those tall red toolboxes with drawers in and on the other was a a hospital gurnie for one of a better word.

Um this is where ultimately police um deduced that Aaron’s body was kept after uh after he was killed.

Um and then it was later moved and and buried in the crudely buried but buried nonetheless in the in the backyard of the Lily home.

And that uh that text message pleading victim is gushing and pooling on the floor.

Um you can only read that as uh you know as a as a as a foretaste of of of what was to come unfortunately um because it’s it’s it’s so close to the to the physical evidence that the the police later found.

So these two women are living together at this stage, right? So they are in the same home.

They’ve prepared this home for their potential victim >> who is Aaron Paige Sweetman.

How does he come into the picture? You mentioned that they met him through Trudy’s son, but how did they manage to lure him into their home? >> Yeah.

So the the the the physical connection is as I say through Trudy’s son.

Aaron Pyman was was um as his name suggests a very sweet young man but he was also a very vulnerable young man.

Um he came from um um let’s say difficult um family circumstances.

Um there was uh there was um animosity there um between um his his mom um and his dad and his and his stepmom.

Um he had um learning difficulties.

Um he had um some diagnosed um neurode divergence.

Um but he was also um interested in um technology and computers and and gaming as as as many many um young teenage men are.

Um and and he had friends, he had interests, he was um he was independent um as as far as he could be.

Um, and but it was through Lenon and through a friendship with Lenon’s son, who was younger than Aaron, but nevertheless, they were friends, that um, Trudy knew him um, and eventually had his contact details.

She contacted Aaron to ask him whether he would come to their home to um download and upload some software, some gaming software.

Um and Aaron being Aaron with the interests he had and the um the the naivity let’s say he had, he agreed to do this.

Um, and so they arranged to meet at a shopping center quite close to Lily’s home.

They met there.

CCTV captures them meeting there.

Um, and completely innocently thinking that all he’s doing is is doing a a favor for a friend’s mom.

He gets in uh Gemma’s car and and they drive they drive away.

Um and they end up at Lily’s home where Aaron is doing exactly what he’d been asked to do.

He was in a chair in um a side bedroom um uploading and downloading some software onto Trudy’s computer.

Um but at that point, Trudy Lennon knew exactly what was going to happen because it had been discussed in in in great detail between her and Lily.

So she stood back but not far enough that she couldn’t see what was happening.

Galiley came up behind Aaron as he sat in the chair with um a garot with with thin wire and choked Aaron with that um quite severely but not severely enough to actually um end Aaron’s life.

um she did that with um a knife that one of the knives that she collected and um um proudly displayed it in her home.

Um she stabbed Aaron multiple times.

Aaron fell forward onto the floor of that room.

Um and they watched that young man bleed to death in their home.

Uh the circumstance as we understand it then was they moved the body to that room that we spoke about, that hidden room.

They cut the piece of the carpet out underneath the window where Aaron had bled most and and got rid of that.

And then they for two or three days just went about um their their their daily lives.

um the while all the while um congratulating each other um verbally but also um via via text message um which I I found some of the hardest material to hear because they not only ended this young man’s life they destroyed um the utterly destroyed the families of of of his you know his close relatives his friends, but then they reveled in it.

They they they congratulated themselves.

They they, you know, emboldened each other with, you know, how good we are and how brilliant we are and we got away with it, etc.

, etc.

, thinking cruy that because Aaron was living away from home and vulnerable and, you know, that no one would miss him, which is almost the crulest part of all, right? that that they’d erased this young man or so they thought and they people would just forget him.

But that wasn’t the case at all.

Um as we discussed right at the start and he was Aaron was um declared missing by his family almost immediately maybe two days less than 72 hours after his death anyway.

Um and police immediately started looking for him.

They uh looked into his background.

They looked into his connections and they looked into his phone records as police obviously do these days and the last phone call or one of the last phone calls that he’d received was from Trudy Lennon’s phone.

So they tracked Lennon down uh find out where she was living to that house.

Um and what they found there not only was the paraphernalia of of murder and horror but they also found physical evidence of it.

Right.

that one that piece of carpet cut out.

But the the most striking thing that they found when they got to the house was a very recently very shoddly constructed patio which had obviously been some something had been laid on this grass patch um cement and then on top of that had been laid some pretty horrible looking um 30×30 tiles.

So they had a missing man, young man.

They had a phone call to this woman.

They had this house which literally was signed Elm Street because that’s what um Lily had had put on the back porch was, you know, Elm Street.

And then they had this this um weird um DIY project.

And when they put all the police put put all that together, they they they came to a very quick and and and horrible conclusion.

And so they dug this patio, for one of a better word, up.

They found concrete underneath.

They dug that up.

And then they found disturbed earth.

And when they redisturbed that earth, they found um a white sheet.

Um and inside that was was Aaron Piet’s um body.

Was that the way they disposed of his whole body? I know there was some discussion and there’s CCTV footage of these two women at local hardware stores collecting up lots of supplies.

>> Yep.

>> To commit the murder, but also to get rid of his body.

Was it true that they’d tried other ways to dissolve his body before ending up burying him in the backyard? >> Yeah.

Um, unfortunately that is part of this story and part of their planning was they went to a Bunnings store in the days before Aaron went missing.

CCTV of it and in that CCTV you can see um Gemmaly at the till.

Um, and behind her, Trudy Lennon with one of those long flatb blade trolley.

And um, on that trolley was a significant amount of acid which they purchased.

When police later went through that house forensically in in um in an annex, I believe either behind the house or attached to the house, they found um an old oven with a an old pot and there was some meat in there, but this this this meat, this raw meat hadn’t been cooked.

it had been um submerged in acid.

And the logical conclusion, the one that was put as a as a theory before the jury was that this was those two testing what was possible, what would happen if you put a piece of of raw meat into this acid into a pot.

the remains of it, the remnants of it were there.

Um, so it hadn’t it hadn’t worked completely because you can still see um what it was a pot some acid and a piece of meat.

So, you know, presumably these two had had done that test, thought better of it or realized it was harder than they thought it was going to be and it wasn’t as easy as the movies make it seem.

Um and so they came up with another plan um which was the one that they ended up going through with um and was the one that uh you know ultimately was uh the jury saw um and accepted was um the way that Aaron’s body had been um disposed of.

The one thing I didn’t mention, um, when they, um, found Aaron in the sheet, they also found that his face had been, um, enveloped with, um, plastic cling film for some for some reason because um, the pathology suggested that the the stab wounds that Aaron suffered would have been fatal.

So what that was about, who knows? Um but it was a final indignity that was um uh that was inflicted on Aaron before um before he was so, you know, crudely disposed of.

>> How cooperative were Gemma and Trudy in the aftermath of police finding Aaron’s body buried in the backyard? Did they assist police in their investigation? Did they try and lead them astray? What were they like? >> This was fascinating.

Another part another fascinating part of this case because Lily had always wanted to do this, right? She’d written about it.

She fantasized about it.

She diorized it.

She, you know, thought about different ways.

But when it came to it, when it came to it, she denied it.

She denied murdering Aaron Pitch.

She blamed Trudy Lennon.

And the uh the two interviews or the the multiple interviews with the two women were um some amazing police work, I have to say, because not only did they unpick this relationship pretty quickly, they then used this relationship to get to the truth, they knew it was more than likely that Lily had done their deed.

because she was Gemma Lily and they and they had all the material on her but they knew that Lennon must have helped her.

So they were really interested to to what that when then when when Lily got into the interview room, she blamed Lemon and she said, “Oh, I watched and I couldn’t stop, etc.

, etc.

” They used that non-confession or that um uh that blame that Lily was was was heaping on Lenon in Lennon’s interviews um to break her down because initially she was like, “Oh, I didn’t know I didn’t know what was happening.

I didn’t know it was going to happen.

It was complete shock to me, etc.

, etc.

” But then slowly and surely they broke this this this this submissive woman down to the point where they came to the the the the truth as as the facts and the evidence would would would had it have it been.

And ultimately uh Lenon said, “No, I didn’t actually kill Aaron.

It was Trudy.

” And so, irony of ironies, we get to a court case and we have what’s colloially known in in legal terms as a cutthroat defense, which is they’re blaming each other to try and absolve blame from each other.

And that’s that’s how it that’s how it played out.

The the whole trial was that they they they denied they downplayed they um denuded their own roles while you know um pointing at or amplifying or you know not exaggerating but certainly um emphasizing the role of the other person.

Um so were they cooperative? You could say yes, they were because ultimately that all that all that, you know, cross-pollinating evidence and testimony led the jury to the to the verdicts that they got to.

But they didn’t ultimately confess.

They had to be found guilty.

They had to um put Aaron’s family and the state and the lawyers and the judge and the witnesses through that um ordeal of a trial.

And it was an ordeal.

It was a long trial.

It was a graphic trial.

It was an emotional trial.

Aaron’s family had to give evidence.

Lily’s friends had to give evidence.

Pathologists and police had to give evidence.

And that’s that’s, you know, that’s that’s a big thing to do when a young man is is is dead and and and and in such graphic ways.

So, um yeah, it was this the psychology of that was and and the and the the psychology of it was interesting, but the um the the the the way that the police the detectives came at at this case was also really really fascinating.

And ultimately, I mean, you have to praise the work that they did and the interviews that they did because they they got to the truth in the end.

Tim, how did Gemma’s family handle this? Because they’ve obviously at one stage tried their best to help her by sending her out to Australia, hoping to interrupt these dark thoughts and fantasies and life that she was living.

I understand that Gemma spoke to her dad about it, denied that she did it, so she continued to deny even to those closest to her.

But how did her family handle her being accused of murder? M so um her family in the UK um and those close to her in the UK uh certainly the ones that I um communicated with uh some of them said well this is just this was just always going to happen.

Richard Lily, who was Gemma’s father, Louis Jem’s father, categorically 100% says she didn’t do it.

Said she didn’t do it.

He came to the UK, came from the UK, sorry, to Australia, was attended the trial.

um spoke to us at a certain level.

Us I mean the media who were covering this trial was obviously didn’t like the way the trial was panning out in terms of evidence but also coverage.

Um I I certainly got the impression he was he felt that we were unfairly, you know, um casting his daughter as as this monster.

Um and he stuck to that and he and he and he has stuck to that.

He did interviews following the the the conviction um where he again said she she just couldn’t have done this.

This isn’t her.

But I after the trial I tracked down a chap called Roland Hulka who was um very close friend of Richard Lily um back in the UK who ultimately Gemma stayed with when she first moved here.

So that’s how close um Richard and and Roland were.

Um and I I went to Roland’s house and and he was hugely hospitable and we had a cup of tea and had a long chat and he said two things.

He said one Gemma was um was wasn’t too bad when she first got to Australia in terms of her, you know, dark obsessions, but then he could see her slipping back into that.

um she was getting, you know, darker clothing, darker music, more tattoos and and etc.

And eventually he wasn’t comfortable with her living with him.

So he moved or she moved out into the house eventually with um she was arrested.

But he also said that Richard in his eyes as a close friend was always a um um overprotective and maybe uh not realistic in in in in his assessment of Gemma’s mental health, mental state, um interests, etc.

So he he he said it to me, “Look, I I I had conversations with Richard about Gemma while she was here.

I said, I’m worried about her.

I don’t think she’s well.

I think you need to do something or come here or do you know I’m just informing you and Richard went n she’s fine.

I I I truly believe she’s fine.

So um yeah again an interesting dynamic a split if you like between the father who was you know always hugely supportive to the point of I would say delusion and then other members of the family and other people close to Gemma said yeah um now that this has happened I can understand or I can I can see why >> did it take the jury long to make a decision after being shown all that evidence, the text messages, the testimony they’ve given, all the interviews that they’d given blaming each other and all of those experts that stepped up.

What did the jury think of all of that? >> Two and a half hours was how long the jury were out, which in a when when you’re deliberating over not one just but but two people on a on a murder charge, um that’s that’s that’s not long at all.

Um but um as you say, I mean it was it was as as as graphic as it was, it was also as obvious as it as it came to be, right, as what had happened.

Um and again, I will go back to to the detective work, the police work in this case.

Um I I worked quite closely with one of the detectives that worked on this case in other cases.

um and um he was one of the interviewing officers actually and I know how much this case affected um the serious crime squad in in in Western Australian police because just because of everything right the the the victim, the family circumstances, the way he was killed, the way he was disposed of, the way these two then conducted themselves in court.

um this was a trial in more than one um sense of the word, but you know, it didn’t it didn’t take the jury long.

Um and it didn’t um it for for good reason and for the right reasons and and they they you know, I can say this now.

I’m not a court reporter anymore.

They it was the right decision.

It was obviously the right decision because that’s that’s the that that was the truth of what happened.

But I will also give some insight into the the effects of that these trials can have.

So what I I I knew both the um lawyers who were um tasked with defending Trudy Lennon and and uh and Gemma Lily and certainly I know the the the lawyer that defended Gemma Lily was deeply deeply affected by this trial.

There’s a misnomer out there, right? The defense lawyers, they just rock up and take the money and, you know, lie for a living and all this type of thing.

But, you know, without them, the justice system wouldn’t work because every defendant, it needs a defense lawyer, right? And and and when you’re on such a serious charge as murder, you need a very experienced defense lawyer.

And Gemma Lily had one of the most experienced in Perth at that time.

And um I’ve spoken to him since about this trial and he he he it was it is deeply deeply affected him as well um just because of not only the material that he had to deal with but the person he was having to deal with as well and having to defend and having to try and uh advise in a legal sense.

Um, so yeah, it’s it’s it’s it’s one of those cases when you when you when you wrap it all up that is just so it’s so bizarre um that that that this this could this could happen in Perth.

And we say it we’ve said it a lot about crimes in Perth.

Sometimes Perth can seem uh a different world and a different country to the rest of Australia.

And and in some ways it is because every so often a a a criminal case will pop up that is so, you know, notorious you think, how the hell could that happen? And then on top of that, how could that h how the hell could that happen in Perth because, you know, we’re the beach side of paradise that everyone comes to to to have fun and come away with a tan, right? But there’s there’s there’s there’s some dark there’s some dark undercurrents in this city that sometimes come to the surface and this was one of them.

>> I understand too, aside from the jury not taking a hell of a long time to make their decision that the judge handed down quite a significant sentence too.

>> Yeah.

Well, the most significant sentence you can you can ever hand down is life.

And life is mandatory for murder in Western Australia.

So that’s what these two women uh got and that’s what these two women are serving.

But in our system, as in others in Australia and around the world, a judge also has to set a minimum uh term for the minimum amount of time a murderer has to serve before they can be um eligible for parole.

In this case, it was 28 years each for Lily and Lenon.

So, the judge uh ruled that they were equally culpable of this crime um and they should serve the same.

So 28 years, which at the time um that they were sentenced was one of the longest minimum terms ever um set um for any murder in Western Australia.

Um but particularly for um female killers.

We’ve had we’ve had at least one notorious one of those in in Western Australia as well.

But two of them working together, living together, in a relationship together, they they are extremely rare.

um as was this case um and it warranted an extremely rare sentence which is what they got.

>> It’s now been 10 years since Aaron Paige Sweetman’s murder >> and there was a great outpouring of grief in the community after his death.

Something that Trudy and Gemma didn’t count on because they figured he would just be invisible seeing is that he was on the spectrum.

Um, do we know what life has been like for Trudy and for Gemma whilst behind bars? How are they treated in prison? >> Well, firstly, there was um I have to say sort of revulsion at what they’ve done and and the way they’ve done it and how they conducted themselves during the trial.

It made headlines back in the UK for certain.

Um it made uh there were sort of TV interviews with um Aaron’s mom and dad um but also with Lily’s father as well.

Um since then, uh life hasn’t been that um easy for Trudy Lennon at least.

When while she’s in custody, she’s been attacked twice.

once very seriously by um another prisoner who poured boiling water over her while they were waiting in a queue for medication.

She suffered um thirdderee burns to um her head, the back of her neck, her shoulders, her back, her buttocks.

Um and that person who committed that crime was very open as to why they’d done it.

um they didn’t like in fact detested what Lenon had done.

Um and they wanted her to pay an extra price.

Now obviously vigilanteism in prison is is is frowned upon very seriously by the authorities as it should be.

Justice had been served.

She had been sentenced and she didn’t deserve to be attacked.

The person who did the attack got nearly five years I think for for that attack.

But again, the public when I wrote that story and followed that trial and followed that sentencing that the the overwhelming messages I got were not sympathetic towards Judy Lennon.

So that goes to show the level of of um as I say revulsion that that still exists in the the public domain for her.

Come to Lily.

Um she’s a slightly more interesting um life in prison so far.

um a former colleague of mine, Kate Campbell, um wrote had impeccable, still does, impeccable, um prison contacts, and she uh was reliably informed and then in fact corroborated that generally um had been placed in a prison away from the main prison population unlike Lenon because she was on another level or the prison authorities I should say felt she was on another level again in terms of her risk of being of what her fate might might have been in prison.

And so they placed her in a in a in a special unit.

Um, also housed in that unit was a lady called Melanie Atwood, who again was another one of my um former trials and cases.

Melanie Atwood was a a lady who um had farright leanings, let’s let’s so we say, and and and fell into a relationship with a a neo-Nazi.

That neo-Nazi um felt so strongly that Melanie Atwood should be with him and not her current partner that she murdered Melanie Atwood’s partner with Melanie Atwood’s um knowledge.

In fact, Melanie Atwood was quite happy for her partner to die so he she could be with this neo-Nazi chap.

Um, in prison, Melanie Atwood, it would appear, and Gemma Lily had struck up a relationship.

They were cellmates first, then they became intimate.

Um, and it made it no secret at all in the prison system that they were a couple until it became public knowledge through Kate’s um, reporting and um, and Gemma Lily was then moved away from Melanie Atwood’s um, orbit.

Um, haven’t heard much from Gemma Lily since then, I would assume because she’s trying to keep her head down.

I’m hyped she’s trying to keep her head down.

Um, I hope she’s reflecting on the life she’s lived up to now because she’s still a young woman.

Um, and the possibility that she might get parole in in some distant future and she might do something with it if she was ever granted it.

that that will be ultimately be up to the prison system and then ultimately up to our attorney general here in Western Australia who has to sign off on any um parole um applications for serious criminals like Lily.

And uh it’ll be an interesting day when that piece of paper comes across whomever attorney general might be sitting in that position in in in 20 odd years or so.

Tim, thank you so much for taking us through this case as wildly unhinged as it is and uh and for keeping us up to date on where it stands now.

>> Pleasure.

Um just one last thing.

Um I had a lot of or significant contact with Aaron’s family um during the trial and during actually appeals as well that that that did eventuate but obviously fail.

Um they were amazing people.

Uh I still are.

Um Aaron’s father in particular was an absolute tower of strength.

He was dealing with the loss of his son.

He was dealing with health issues for his his wife.

Um and also um you know the the the fallout inevitable emotional fallout of this that happens in any family.

But anytime we asked to speak to them, they were gentle.

They answered our questions.

Um, and I often um, well, particularly this week when you’ve contacted me and asked me to talk about this case and going back and reading about it, um, I I I had and have nothing but admiration for for Aaron’s family.

And so uh um I hope this this podcast doesn’t bring up anything um too traumatic for them.

But if if they are listening and if it does um just um please um take that you were absolutely amazing during the trial.

you endured something that no family should and um myself and I’m sure um every West Australian who remembers this case would also remember your um your um kindness and yeah endurance and um yeah we think of