Emma Partridge - Widow of Walcha

A True Story of Love, Lies and Murder in a Small Country Town

The Widow of Walcha

Emma Partridge

For authenticity, all sources including text messages, some internet searches, Facebook conversations, police interviews, transcripts and statements have been reproduced in their original form, including spelling and grammatical errors. The names of several people have been changed to protect privacy. The accounts of some key witnesses who gave evidence during the NSW Supreme Court trial have not been included in this book, either for legal reasons or to prevent their further suffering.

Trigger warning: Please be advised that this book contains multiple references to suicide, which may distress some readers. The author has not used the phrase committed suicide to avoid the potential negative implications of such usage, unless unavoidable in direct quotes. For more information, go to:

Lifeline: 13 11 14 lifeline.org.au

Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467 suicidecallbackservice.org.au

Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636 beyondblue.org.au

SANE Australia: 1800 18 7263 saneforums.org

As flocks of sheep huddle beneath trees in a sprawling paddock dusted with frost, blue and red lights flash, illuminating the homestead at Pandora. Its just after 2 am on 2 August 2017; paramedics Colin Crossman and Marion Schaap are first on the scene, responding to a report that grazier Mathew Dunbar is dead. They arrive to find Natasha Beth Darcy doing vigorous chest compressions on the 42-year-old farmer, guided by a triple-0 operator on speaker phone.

Mathew is lying in bed, unresponsive. To the right of his head, a plastic shopping bag is strewn, while a brown gas cylinder more than a metre tall, the kind used to blow up helium balloons stands next to his bedside table.

Mathew is dressed only in boxer shorts. He isnt breathing and has no pulse. Above the bed where he lies is a wall decal that says Sweet Dreams in large cursive font surrounded by black butterfly stickers.

Although there are no signs of life, Mathew is still warm, prompting Natasha to ask the paramedics, Thats a good sign, isnt it?

Mathew is moved onto the carpet at the foot of the bed before Colin takes over doing compressions, but its no use. Mathew is pronounced dead at 2.44 am.

Sergeant Anthony Smith, from the local Walcha police, arrives on the scene. A short time later, and with the heaviest of hearts, he declares Pandora a crime scene.

Im alone, lying in bed in the dark, when I see what she looks like for the first time.

Oh my God, I whisper, fingers zooming in on the photo my sister Tess has just texted me.

Its a woman wearing a gold heart-shaped pendant, lying back in a canvas hammock as she poses for a selfie. Her wild stare is penetrating, her dark hazel eyes boring through the lens. My phone beeps again. Its Tess, sending through another photo. This time, the woman is in a white lace top; her head is thrown back mid-laugh and she clutches a bunch of roses. Its haunting.

Can you believe shes still living in the town?! Tess writes.

The day before, Tess had called me. She and her husband Tom had just hosted lunch at their home in Newcastle for some of his relatives. During the afternoon, his family explained that there had been a suspicious death of a well-known farmer where they lived in the small town of Walcha, which lies east of Tamworth on the edge of NSWs Northern Tablelands.

Word has it, hed been found with a plastic bag over his head, hooked up to a tank of helium. Most of the town believed the farmers girlfriend played a role in his death but, two months on, she was still living free in town, going about her business like nothing had happened.

In the weeks leading up to the farmers death, his girlfriend had apparently made several attempts to purchase powerful ram sedatives, which quickly raised the suspicions of the local vet because the woman had no legal use for them. The small community of Walcha had lost one of their own, and there was widespread worry a black widow from out of town was living among them. No one knew what to do or how to approach her. Many wanted to know why she hadnt been arrested, and why she was still living out on the farmers property with her three children.

Apparently, says Tess, shes already been to jail for trying to kill her ex-husband. Hes a paramedic in Walcha, too, and hes the one who found the farmer dead.

Sounding like a fellow journalist, Tess tells me I should head to Walcha to try and find out whats going on and where the police investigation is up to.

They reckon its been made out to look like a suicide, but nobody believes it, she says.

Im intrigued, but its all sounding too strange to be true. Not long after we hang up, I find myself googling the womans name on the internet and nosediving down a rabbit hole. There are dozens of articles and photographs about her.

Woman sentenced over Walcha house fire, the headline of a local paper reads. Jail time for false evidence, says another, followed by Big spender stabbed in jail and Woman guilty of fraud.

Her past is chequered, theres no doubt about it, but that doesnt automatically mean shes a killer. I wonder if shes a murderer or the victim of the towns rumour mill.

Ive been a crime and court reporter for more than a decade, so Ive reported on a lot of stories that seem hard to believe. During my time at The Sydney Morning Herald, I covered unimaginable and horrific crimes. One of the most harrowing was the murder of Stephanie Scott, the bright and bubbly schoolteacher killed by a cleaner on school grounds, just days before she was due to marry the love of her life in Leeton, a small town in the states Riverina.

Just an hour south of Leeton, Id spent more than a week in the town of Lockhart, after farmer Geoff Hunt shot and killed his wife and two young children on their family property. He then walked into a dam and shot himself dead. While some labelled him a monster and others a good bloke, the horrific deaths of an entire family tragically highlighted the lack of mental health services available to people on the land. I remember sitting in the back of a helicopter hovering over the property, when Id noticed tyre tracks snaking through a bright yellow canola field in front of the homestead. The tracks stopped at a ute parked next to a dam. I pressed my face against the glass to get a closer look, then wished I hadnt. We flew over just as police divers pulled Geoff Hunts body from the water.

A few years later, I was in another small township, Lake Cathie, just south of Port Macquarie on NSWs Mid North Coast, trying to swallow the sick rising in my throat. As I watched on, police emptied a septic tank during their search for missing three-year-old William Tyrrell.

Bad things happen everywhere, but when they happen in small towns, where everyone knows everyone, the sense of loss and shock seems to hit harder.

Even when you see, hear and write about the unthinkable, its still difficult to imagine how anyone gets to the point where death is the only option. I often wonder, what has happened to this person? What has gone so wrong? What events have they been through in the lead-up to them making the decision to take someone elses life?