Mother confronts son’s killer after decades of pain
Kat Wong |
When Julie Szabo allowed her son to go to his first sleepover, she did not know he would never come home.
More than 27 years later, the guilt she carries from that decision continues to torment her mind.
Arthur Haines had been sleeping over on the top floor of a friend’s house in Sydney’s inner south, on April 9, 1998.
“It was going to be the first night he had not slept under the same roof as me,” Ms Szabo wrote in a victim impact statement read to the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday.
“I said ‘yes’ … I think about that decision a lot.
“I gave him the biggest hug, we both said we loved each other, I didn’t know at the time it would be one of our last hugs.
“The guilt I carry is so heavy.”
That night, a neighbourhood dispute turned ugly.
Gregory John Walker, then 30, threw a Molotov cocktail into the kitchen of the Waterloo home.
Within minutes, flames and smoke had begun consuming the house and heating the floor beneath Arthur’s feet.
The teenager, trapped in the third-floor bedroom, had no choice but to jump.
When he landed, his body was smouldering, having sustained severe burns on up to 65 per cent of his body.
Arthur died in hospital 11 weeks later.
Walker was forced to confront his victim’s family for the first time in almost three decades as Ms Szabo’s words reverberated through Darlinghurst Courthouse.
He looked straight ahead for most of the statement, until its final line.
“I will never forget what you have done to my son,” Ms Szabo’s statement said.
“If it were not for you, my son would still be here today.”
The mother looked over at Walker, and the arsonist glanced back.
Arthur’s case went unsolved for more than two decades, until a third investigation – which offered a $1 million award for information – led to Walker’s arrest in 2022.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in October.
“On paper, justice has been served,” Ms Szabo’s statement said.
“But as a mother whose son died so tragically, there will never be justice.”
While she outlined the depth and breadth of her pain, she said it was nothing compared to what Arthur had suffered.
The teenager spent two months in hospital fighting for his life, stuck on a ventilator before eventually succumbing to his injuries.
Every Easter, Ms Szabo’s pain worsens, and every Christmas – Arthur’s favourite time of year – the signs of his absence grow clearer.
She has tried to cope by growing a garden in the home they used to share.
Lemons, pomegranates, dragon fruit, blood orange, passionfruit and more line the perimeter while a bleeding heart vine grows outside her window.
“(It) is a representation of my own heart”, she said,
Walker faces another charge of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm after he punched a neighbour and bit off part of his ear in April 1998.
“If you think that was a big fire, wait until you see my next one,” Walker told the man in a separate interaction about a week after the fire.
In 2014, he told a witness that if he had “known there was a kid there, I wouldn’t have gone through with it”.
Walker faces up to 25 years in prison.
AAP
