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