87 Clovelly Road where Anthony Waterlow stabbed to death his sister and father in a psychotic frenzy. Picture: News Limited Source: News Limited
THEY tried to warn doctors of the terrible danger they were in.
That the madness, the death threats and the festering hatred was spiralling out of control.
But in the end, Nick Waterlow and his daughter Chloe couldn't stop the son and brother they loved from killing them.
On a warm Spring evening in 2009, an enraged Anthony Waterlow turned down a tree-lined street in Sydney's eastern suburbs and burst through the door of 87 Clovelly Road, Randwick and stabbed them to death in a psychotic and bloodied frenzy.
Nick Waterlow and daughter Chloe. Picture: Supplied Source: News Limited
As 68-year-old Nick Waterlow cried out his last words - "I love you" - his son plunged a kitchen knife into his father then turned on his younger sister.
Then he took off, leaving a trail of bloodied footprints, two bodies and a child's screams disturbing the otherwise tranquil neighbourhood.
A bloodied footprint leading away from the front door of 87 Clovelly Road, Randwick. Picture: News Limited Source: News Limited
In the aftermath, as police hunted the deranged 42-year-old, questions were asked as to why hospitals had refused pleas from Waterlow's father to commit his son - a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic - to permanent psychiatric care.
Today the NSW Deputy State Coroner recommended changes be made to the NSW Mental Health Act regarding the scheduling of mentally-ill patients to consider "the protection of others from serious emotional harm".
World-renowned art curator Nick Waterlow with an exhibition in 2001. Picture: News Limited Source: News Limited
"In determining whether to schedule a mentally-ill patient the term 'for the person's own protection from serious harm', should be understood to include the harm caused by the mental illness itself," ruled Magistrate P.A. MacMahon.
The first signs of trouble with Anthony Waterlow emerged around 1999, after the death of his mother and when he was in his early 30s.
Anthony and Chloe Waterlow and younger brother, Luke, had enjoyed a privileged childhood on Sydney's North Shore, attending exclusive private schools funded by their father's career as a world renowned art curator.
Anthony Waterlow as a schoolboy at Aloysius College in 1981. Picture: Supplied. Source: Supplied
The children were good-looking and, like their father, artistic.
Anthony was a friendly and engaging teenager, a keen school debater and on the tennis team.
His sister, who was five years younger, worked for ABC Radio where former colleagues remember her as "bubbly, funny and warm".
She co-authored cookbooks and married businessman Ben Heuston and they had three children.
Neighbours of the Clovelly Road house where they lived described Chloe as "a lovely soul'' who doted on her children.
Anthony had gone on to study as a Bachelor of Film, Video and Intermedia student at Sydney's College of Fine Arts, where fellow students remember him as confident and friendly.
But as the years rolled by, friends noticed a shadow falling over Anthony.
Before his illness shrouded his mind, Anthony Waterlow was engaging and friendly. Picture: Supplied Source: News Limited
By 2003 schizophrenic delusions were beginning to fester in his mind.
A female friend later said she had watched him deteriorate, seeing "a definite change in him about eight years" before the killings.
"[He was] a lot more withdrawn," she said, "like he'd lost that confidence he had years ago."
Anthony began seeing psychiatrists, and threatening people.
His paranoia and his hatred centred on his father and sister.
He told a former landlord, Gaye Bell, he was being "photographed through the pinholes of his venetian blinds'' and hearing Chloe's voice telling him she would "never forgive'' him.
"Throughout the time I have known Anthony, his hatred to blame for what was happening to him focused on Nick and Chloe,'' Ms Bell said in a subsequent court statement.
Anthony believed his family were responsible for a "worldwide'' game where people tried to control him.
Between 2004 and 2007, Anthony agreed to his family's requests to be psychiatrically assessed.
He told one psychiatrist he believed his relatives wanted him to kill himself.
Anthony believed his father and sister Chloe (above) were conspiring to have him die. Picture: Supplied Source: NewsLocal
He refused to take the medication prescribed for his paranoid schizophrenia.
A year before his son completely unravelled, Nick Waterlow tried to get him permanently committed to a psychiatric institution.
Gaye Bell also tried to have him scheduled after he accused her of conspiring with his family.
He threatened to kill her, saying, "You think you're so wonderful ... I'm going to snap your neck. I'm going to film you, keep you here and film you confessing everything you have done to me".
A referring doctor wrote Anthony Waterlow was "likely to be psychotic and a danger to himself and others''.
But health services refused to take him: Anthony didn't meet the criteria for involuntary hospitalisation under the Mental Health Act.
Anthony Waterlow was suffering serious psychiatric delusions by 2003. Picture: Supplied Source: News Limited
Besieged by violent thoughts and voices in his head, he was taking drugs and alternatively aggressive and withdrawn.
Nick Waterlow did not discuss his son's illness, but in 2006 he backed an exhibition "For Matthew And Others: Journeys With Schizophrenia" to highlight the plight of sufferers.
By late 2009, Anthony was living in a decrepit, rubbish-filled room in a run-down boarding house.
The voices in his head had intensified.
"He felt his family had devised a game of harassment that would eventually lead to his death and everyone could play to try to make him commit suicide,'' a psychiatrist's report later said.
In the weeks before the killings, a barmaid remembers Anthony regularly visiting to drink alone and play the Lord of The Rings pinball machine.
At 4.45pm Anthony Waterlow left this squalid bedsit (above) to kill his father and sister. Picture: News Limited Source: News Limited
Another bartender described a "fragile" man who kept to himself and played the poker machines, at one point saying it didn't matter if he lost money because "he was used to people hurting him".
At 4.45pm on Monday, November 4, 2009, Waterlow left his squalid bedsit for his sister's house.
Inside 87 Clovelly Road, Nick Waterlow was visiting his daughter while Chloe's husband was in Britain on a work trip.
Anthony stormed into the house brandishing a 34cm kitchen knife. Nick and Chloe Waterlow rushed at Anthony to stop him. Anthony lunged forward, stabbing his father.
He then turned the knife to his sister, Chloe, who pleaded, "No, don't - stop''. Soaked in blood, Anthony ran from the house.
A friend of Chloe Waterlow prays outside the murder house, still a crime scene, shortly after her employer's death. Picture: News Limited Source: News Limited
Neighbours heard his footsteps pounding down Clovelly Road.
In the UK, Chloe's husband was informed his father-in-law and wife had been slashed to death.
As he prepared for the trip home, police were studying CCTV images of a dishevelled, wild-looking man on the run.
CCTV footage of Anthony Waterlow on the run. Picture: Supplied Source: News Limited
The art world was in mourning for the "gentle ... supportive" man and "genius", Nick Waterlow.
Eighteen months later, a sombre Anthony Waterlow faced Justice Peter Hidden in a judge-only trial in the NSW Supreme Court.
As he enter pleas of not guilty due to mental illness, sobs came from the public gallery, which was filled with his extended family and friends, including actress Rachel Griffiths.
Calm and in control from taking anti-psychotic medication while in Long Bay prison forensic hospital, he expressed his remorse.
Anthony Waterlow in custody after his arrest. Picture: News Limited. Source: News Limited
"I wanted to say that since I have been treated with the right medication, symptoms of schizophrenia have slowly gone away,'' he said.
"This is a good thing, but it is also a terrible thing because it makes me aware of the awful reality of what I have actually done.
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would kill Chloe and Dad, but I did, it was me and that is what I have got to live with.
The late Nick Waterlow, a 'gentle genius' whose last words to his psychotic son were 'I love you. Picture: Supplied Source: News Limited
"If I could give my life to bring them back I would.
"I miss my family incredibly and I am totally shattered by what I have done. I am so, so sorry and I will be for the rest of my life.''
In April 2011, Justice Hidden found Anthony Waterlow not guilty of murdering his sister and father on the grounds of mental illness. Anthony continues to be detained in a NSW forensic hospital.
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