Mary Pershall's Daughter Killed A Man [re-release]

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I got a call from a policeman, which wasn't unusual but he said, are you close with your daughter? And I said yes, and he said she's been involved in the slot with the elderly man there and he's passed away.

From the mom and mea podcast network. I'm mea Friedman and you're listening to no filter coundid conversations that count. Mary Poschell picked up the phone one ordinary day in twenty fifteen, and she had no idea that her life would never be the same after that phone call. It was a sunny afternoon in Melbourne when she answered the family landline, and on the other end was a police officer who informed Mary that her youngest daughter, Anna, who was twenty eight at the time, was in custody for

She was three years and one day old. Because this is one of our plans that actually worked out. We decided three years would be a good gap, and it was an absolutely gorgeous baby. I mean, that's partly why I named the book Gorgeous Girl. She was a beautiful little kid, and as a little child, she was so enchanting.

Why do you think she couldn't make friends.

I think she just didn't not have a conversation, didn't know how to relate to other people.

Was she close to her sister? Was she play with Katie?

Yeah, but Katie was so different from her. Katie always wanted to grow up really fast, be independent, totally into reality. Katie never went through that phase where our kids can't distinguish reality from fantasy, whereas Anna just stayed in it. So it seemed like they were using us apart rather than only three years. And I think very quickly Katie took on a protective role because we all wanted to protect Anna from pain.

How did she feel about the fact that she couldn't make friends?

She hated it. That was the heartbreaking part. Like if she hadn't cared, that wouldn't have been as bad, but she, you know, she was just she felt horrible, especially in those I don't know if it's I doubt if it still happens these days, But in those days, girls used to bring actual paper invitations to their birthday parties, and she would never get one. You know, she'd come home

Sometimes these things are really easy to see in hindsight.

That's right, you look back.

Were there certain things looking back now that were red flags to you?

Oh? Definitely. It's so complicated by you know, the way. I was raised as a very religious person, so we in my family we believed that people went on living after they were that they had another life afterwards. That was very much part of my life growing up because my mother was super religious. So when Anna started hearing from people from the other side quote, it didn't seem

And she said to you that they were ghosts. Yeah, And did they scare her or comfort her?

Oh? They scared her a lot, especially as she got older, and as most kids begin to grow out of that phase. I think if being scared of monsters under the bed, they just got worse for her. And you know, she would say that there's something whispering in my ear. She didn't think of it as being inside her head, so she just said, you know, there's often she would say, I hear whispering, you know that, And she was really scared.

As a mother, I think one of the hardest things is to see your child suffering. And they say, you're only ever as happy as your least happy child. So how would you comfort her when she would cry to you about not having friends, or being left out at school or being scared.

Just try to make her happy at home. I bought her a lot of pets because that made her happy momentarily, and actually, looking back now, I also wonder if that set her up for addiction, because that kind of instant gratification, Like I didn't know what well. We gave her heaps of advice like try this, try that with kids, you know, smile or go up to them, you know, and ask about them. Don't always talk about yourself and what's in

Now, sometimes you would make her brownies in the middle of the night to do that. I get that it's very confronting seeing your child in pain, and you'll do anything to try to take that pain away. Yeah.

I used to say, you know, the heartbreak for them is worse than for yourself. And I felt like my heart broke for her so many times. It was like felt like scar to you. In the end.

She developed anarex here as a teenager. Yeah, and at first you didn't really really lies, did.

You, no, Because I had this idea that anorexia happened with girls we thought in those days who were overweight and wanted to change their body image. But she was skinny, so I didn't sort of connect that. When she started eating less, she said it was because she didn't want to get pimples, and she thought eliminating fat from her diet would stop her getting a bad complexion. And I thought so too at the time, because I've been told that as a teenager, if you eat fat, you get pimples.

And what was the what was the tipping point when you realized, hang on, she's really sick.

Well partly because Katie said to me, have you seen Anna naked? And I'm like, no, she doesn't let me see her naked for a long time. And Katie said, she just up and to see her come out of the shower, and she said she looks like a skeleton mum because she wore a lot of layers. So you didn't realize. And then I really looked at her and I thought, oh, yeah, she is very skinny. I was grieving for my mother at that time. Not to make excuses,

So she was admitted to hospital and connected to a heart monitor because her weight was so low. What were they worried about?

It was at night that she was connected. Her heart could stop because she was so compromised.

So deeply malmourished. Yeah, So she emerged from hospital, she recovered from anorexia, and she went to UNI and there was almost a golden period in Anna's life. Let's tell me about those years.

Well, she went to a senior secondary college in your life and twelve and she actually made some friends, which is like wonderful and then your heart, Yeah, yeah, I did. And then she went to UNI to study psychology at Swinburne University, and she met this wonderful man, a boy. He was a couple of years older than her. He wasn't at UNI, but she met him through a pool party and they were so in love and that was

There's a beautiful photo of her and Andrew in the book, and you write that it pains you almost to look at it because you can see the potential of which way her life could have gone.

That's right. What were your hopes for her, Duran, Well, she I hope she'd get a career and she could have actually worked for Andrew's mother's company and been a part of that whole family enterprise, which is in medical technology, a growth industry. Apart from that, we just hoped she'd get a career in psychology. She'd always dreamt of being a forensic psychologist. And she's so intelligent and so articulate. Her vocabulary is amazing. She only has to hear a

There were a few signs around that time when she was living with Andrew and his mum that perhaps she was struggling with what it meant to be an adult. What were some of the things that sort of were in the back of your mind as concerns.

Well, she couldn't learn to drive, for one thing, that was looking back. I think that's a real insight into her mind.

When you say she couldn't she refused to, or she was didn't understand.

She could operate the car perfectly, and it was a manual, she had no trouble with that, But say she would come to an intersection. She had such a poor sense of where she was in physical skills, Yeah, always, And when she tried to drive, she couldn't remember what lane to go in if she turned in an intersection. Well, she couldn't. She couldn't seem to remember to look at the speeder at the same time that she was driving.

So at home she was kind of buffeted from the world by you and to Andrew Andrew's house, and he and his mom sort of took care of her, buffeted her from the world, and she was you know, she did well at UNI, and she completed her degree, which is no small thing, and the boundaries of that.

Clearly suited her exactly.

And then what happened after UNI.

Well, Andrew bought them a house, which was great. You know, he got a better car. It was all sort of progressing in the way that young people's lives do. And Andrew loved her so much he wanted her to see her succeed, so they got this little house. But once she was there, as he said, without the comforts and support of Andrew's mother, she just couldn't cope. And I didn't realize that she was beginning to drink during the day.

Was she being treated for mental health issues during this time, Like, after she'd recovered from anorexia, was she still hearing voices? Was she on any medication? Had you received any sort of diagnosis.

No, we didn't have a diagnosis beyond anorexia. She wasn't outpatient at the Children's until she was eighteen, so she was being treated for both. I mean, she was being monitored supervised for both her physical health and she had a counselor every week. After that. She did take herself to a psychiatrist during university, which I didn't know that person, but she I thought that was great that she did that,

What were the symptoms that she was treating, Like, was it depression, was it anxiety?

Was it depression? Anxiety? She didn't talk about voices during that time, but once she started smoking up and then she went on to synthetic weed.

Tell me about synthetic weed, because you talk about that and then quite you know, in a dark human way, how you became involved in buying that for her. Tell me about synthetic weed, because I've never heard of it before.

It's called synthetic weed in the States. They have a lot of different names for it, like skunk and K two. But it's not actually marijuana. It's a cannabinoid, yeah, sprayed onto dried herbs. So just like chemicals. Yeah, it's chemicals on dried herbs and.

To mimic the effect of marijuana.

Yeah, but it's worse. It's quite damaging. They can be damaging chemicals. From what I understand, most of them come from China, and if the government outlaws one of the chemicals, they just changed the composition slightly so that it's it's a little bit different. But it's not the same as marijuana, even though they call it that. They call it synthetic marijuana or synthetic cannabis. People literally, I believe, literally don't

Which is something that can happen from particularly around marijuana or cannabis or let alone synthetic weed. And you say that you're writing the book, that you think that's really when her brain sort of broke open, and I think the real damage.

Yeah, I think she hadn't always had a propensity for mental illness, but I think it was definitely exacerbated by the use of drugs, especially synthetic weed, and then later when she dabbled with ice. But she was never a nice addict, she did use it and it was very damaging.

What was her behavior like during during these years, I mean you must have been terribly worried. You write about how she started to ride the trains and meet people. How was that playing out? Oh?

It was terrible. I mean that's when a lot of I had to use a lot of my own mental health techniques to learn tools. I did go to a psychologist from my own mental health and she helped me with some tools, Like I said, how can I stop and worrying about Anna constantly? You know, it's just taking up every minute of yeah, oh, my brain. And she said she gave me a good technique. She used to just try and limit the worry to one hour a day.

And what would you do during that hour? You just sit down and go okay. Well.

It just was a good technique because sometimes I forgot to worry. And also I had work that I loved. I tootored children from grade three up to VCU level. So that was a big mental health technique for me because I did everything I could possibly think of to help Anna. And beyond that, I thought, well, if I can't help her, at least I can help the next generation in some way.

During those years, it's like you went slowly from worrying about well, what she going to do next, and how she going to get a license and how she going to get a job, to worrying about her physical safety and that she would die how did you get to that point?

Because she well, for one thing, she said she wanted to die, A part of her wanted to die. She's in early twenties then, so that was really I mean, that's a horrible thing for a mother to hear. And also she was just so reckless with her life. She she looked young, people thought she was a teenager. So she get dressed up in these little girly clothes from Kmart they barely covered her bottom and got on the train in order to meet men because she wanted That

I love how you just drop that into conversation. You know, she just became unconscious a lot. How did she become unconscious because she would drink herself into.

She would take a cocktail of alcohol, synthetic weed and the sarahqual which I mentioned before, which is an edgio psychotic but also a very powerful sedative. She would take that and then she would just pass out, pass out. Literally, you couldn't wake her up.

There's pictures with this odd picture, a heartbreaking picture in the book where you say, you know, for months and months, I think maybe even years, she would just pass out sporadically on the couch and she'd have the cat lying on top of her. At least then I imagine she was safe under your roof and you could see her. Yeah, it must have been more worrying when you didn't know where she.

Was well exactly because she was off with some guy and she was unconscious in his bed. You know, she could she could easily well, I thought she could easily just stop breathing because I did ask a doctor. I said, without combination of sarah qul and alcohol and weed, could could that kill her? And the doctor said yes, it couldn't repress respiration to the point where she'll stop breathing.

Now, the sort of the situation you describe, it sounds like she was sort of very passive, but then things took a turn. Tell me about the time in the kitchen where she grabbed a knife and you saw her violence for the first time.

Well, it was when her dad confronted her. By that time, she was She didn't leave the house because she decided that she wanted to get better. So she made this packed with herself that she was going to give up weed,

Of police shooting to lead help people.

But in the end they came in It was great.

In the end. Tell me about the policewoman that came, Well, there was a policeman and a police woman, but they came in and by that time, as soon as Anna heard the car, she immediately settled down and became a good little girl.

But the police said, you know, you did exactly the right thing.

Mary.

You should have called you needed to call us. And she said she had a background of psychology, the police woman, and she said, this girl needs to be in a hospital long term, and then she needs to rehab. And she said, well, we'll take her to the Northern Hospital and they'll put her in the psych ward and she can be under the adult mental health protection And I remember still remembered her. She said to me, if she's medicated well, gets into good nutrition and sleep, she can

Oh really, because I just thought, oh, my goodness, good days. How low is the bar? That's how low it had got to right where good a few good days sounded like yeah, Nirvana to you.

So we took her in our car with the police behind us, and I was sitting in the back seat with her and the police woman said, you know, just give me a call if anything happens. And here we go, going seventy kilometers an hour at Pascal of our road and tries to jump out of the car, and so then we go, E are you so the car the police car pulls up and says you have to get out and come with us now. And later the police

But she tried to kill herself twice in the space of just a couple of hours with the knife and then by jumping out of the car.

Yeah, and it was horrible. I was just that the gatekeeper who we got to seat while I call her the gatekeeper, she said, you know, she doesn't qualify to go into the psych ward. She doesn't meet the criteria.

She's not sick enough.

I guess, so and I was just like, I was just devastated because we were exhausted. It's not like this girl slept at night. Usually, you know, we'd be up in the middle of the night trying to keep her from doing whatever she planned to do to herself or run off or yeah, I just just a few days in the psych ward would be great, just to give us a rest, just to give give us some respite. But she just said take her home, and that was horrible.

And what do they say?

Bye?

Is that when you first really became aware of the deficiencies in the public health system for dealing with people who had mental illness?

Well, I think that sort of hope that I had when the police woman talked to me and the crash into like, well, she's our responsibility. It was just like a terrible feeling because we didn't know what to do with her. And I had tried everything. I mean, I'm

What can you do? Yeah, you know, her behavior sort of escalated after this, and you talk about taking her to McDonald's and she wanted a couple of meals and what happened then.

Well, that was one of the scariest bits of her life. When she had met up. She'd met a guy on the train who introduced her to Ice, which she really liked, but he was abusing her and she called me up. This is is previous to the McDonald's incident. You know, she was saying, you know, this guy's got me captive and what can I do? And oh, I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but she escaped from him

And she had cigarette burns all over yeah from him.

Yeah, and well several cigarette burns. Anyway, So me and Katie and John and Tom that's Katie's partner, were desperately trying to keep her from going. I rang the police and I said, can I keep her here? You know, I was in tears. I was desperate, like she's going to run off and go with this person who's going to abuse her, kill her maybe, And they said, well

Were you and Katie, your eldest daughter and your husband? Were you ever scared for your own lives?

I wasn't personally, but looking back, I think maybe we should have been, because she got to that point where she thought that John and I were not her parents anymore. She thought we were too evil twins, doppelgangers, whatever you call that phenomenon where a person thinks that the person that their loved one still looks like their loved one, but it's not really them anymore. So she was in psychasis, that's what she thought about us, and she would ring hers.

So through all of this, how do you go on living a life because life goes on and you've got another daughter, and she has a partner, and you and your husband have a marriage, and yet you are in this constant state of crisis.

Well, in the end, we just we just couldn't when And it just came to her head one weekend when we had she was supposed to go and she'd gone into detoc several times for ten days at a time. She was scheduled to go into another round of detocs. And because she had so few friendships girls, that's how she used detocs. Actually, she would go in and that's how she would meet some friends, so called friends. The best thing they did was give us ten days of respite.

That's a private program that you pay for.

No, it's the government. Well it's the government one. Yeah, But she took herself off that weekend because she had learned that if you get really, really blattile before you go into detox, then they give you the maximum amount of value when you arrive. So she went off with this guy and she just disappeared and we didn't know where she was, and that was really disappointing because we wanted her to get into detox and this rehab program.

Tell me about Black Sunday.

Well, I got a call from a policeman, which wasn't unusual, but yeah, he said, he said, are you close with your daughter? And I said yes, And he said, you realize she was living with some men and I said yes, and he said the elderly man has She's been involved in an assault with the elderly man there and he's passed away, and my mind just like went to pieces. Then I was just screaming, and john came in and said what's wrong, and I said, you know, she's she's killed. Johnny.

He was the man who one of the men that she was living with in his house. He was much older than her, and he was troubled in his own way, but was a kind person who tried to take care of her. His family don't want you to talk about too much about him, so we'll sort of skip to the next part. When did you next see your daughter after that?

Well, it took about two weeks for me to be able to communicate with her at all, apart from the one phone call that you are allowed to make. That that is true from the television shows. She was allowed to make one phone call to me. She chose to make it to me. What did she say, Well, she said, they've charged me with murder. And I already knew from the policeman several hours before, basically that she had done this.

And was she.

Yes, she's and we haven't talked much about it at all. We keep that separate. But she did say to me at one stage, I felt like I was possessed and she was just so sick at that stage. Yeah, she was very unwell mentally when it happened.

She was sentenced to seventeen years from jail with thirteen years non parole, and she's served two of those years.

Coming up to three. In November, it'll be three years, so she has ten before her earliest release date.

How she doing in jail great.

I mean, she still has some problems because she's still Anna, but she's better than she ever has been in her since she started Kindred because she's got what we wanted, good nutrition, sleep, medication given to her at certain times of the day, and as she said in one of her letters to me, and I'm not lonely without all the adult responsibilities to think of, like she's got. She doesn't have to think of housing, she doesn't even have to think of getting her scripts or her worrying about

So she's found purpose.

Yeah, and yeah, she's doing very well though. How's her mental health much better? Partly because of the routines, the regular medication. And she told me that it took a year for her mind to clear, even though you know, she was still good during that first year, she said, for her mind to really become clear and feel like she's totally mentally healthy, it took a year. But yeah, she's good now.

And what's your relationship like with her now? Do you feel less scared for her?

Yes, it's great. Now that she's in prison, I still worry about when she gets out, and I hope that. Actually Katie and I both want to become involved in advocacy because I think it's so important just for supports around prisoners in general. But we intend to concentrate on women having support when they get out. I mean we have literally I've literally seen women on the side of the road outside the prison who've just been released. I mean,

Is she I imagine because of the nature of her crime, she's in a maximum security prison.

Yeah. There's only one prison basically in Victoria, and that's a maximum security one. There's a minimum security at Tean Gower, but from my understanding, that's fairly small and it's designed for people either at the end of their sentence or I think that's basically what it is, but I don't know for sure. I'm not an expert on that, but yeah, it's a maximum security prison.

How often do you visit her and what are those visits like.

We look forward to them. I visit her. This is a typical week. I visit her on Friday for two hours and just just me and her. Sometimes I take a friend along, but often it's just her and me, and the hours go really quickly. We just sit really close to each other in this cafe and hold hands and talk about our week. I go through my week

So when you talk about how she's doing well on the inside and the boundaries that are in place, the fact that she has no access to drugs and alcohol, the fact that she's relieved of a lot of the responsibilities that go with living in the world, is this the kind of care that you dreamed that she could get on the outside without having to commit a horrible crime.

Yes, I guess that's the point I should make, is that it was a terrible way for her to receive help. I mean, she a good man with his life, and one of the things we'd like to do is get a conversation started around what do we do now that there's no institutions for mentally ill people. I mean, there are places for them in psych wards. But Anna I believe,

Yeah, it's like committing someone. The idea of having someone involuntarily committed big because once they're over eighteen, the responsibility is on the family, and yet you have no power. Do you have no say in what happens to that person? You just have to clean up the pieces.

That's right. And we so wish that that could have happened before she committed a crime. And she's not the only young woman like that out at the prison. So please, let's think about that as a society. Let's not have the prison be the place that mops up these people with mental illnesses after they've committed a crime. Let's do something about it before.

Thank you for listening to No Filter. You can buy Mary's book, It's called Gorgeous Girl, at any good bookstore or at Apple dot co forward slash Mama Maya and Mary once it made known that all proceeds of the book are going to a charity that helps women in trauma. And keep your ears out too for next week's conversation where I talk to Anna's older sister, Mary's other daughter Katie, whose life was changed in her own extraordinary way by her sister's crime. And if you want to read an