True Colours: Lauren Huxley and her family from tragedy to triumph

By Lisa Davies

Now in paperback, TRUE COLOURS is destined to capture a new audience. The violent attack that left Lauren Huxley clinging to life made headlines around the country. This is the inspiring story of how she turned tragedy into triumph.
'If there's one thing I've learned it's that the pleasure in life is doing what other people say you can't.' - LAUREN HUXLEY It was a shocking crime that made headlines around Australia. An innocent young woman, violently attacked in her family home by a total stranger and left to die. Beaten repeatedly and soaked with petrol as her home burned, Lauren Huxley's life was hanging by a thread. Lauren's battle to survive caused an outpouring of public love and support. the crime was so horrific, so senseless, anyone who read about the attack couldn't help thinking: how could I bear someone I loved to go through this? For her father Patrick, mother Christine and sister Simone it was like being plunged into hell. Doctors gave Lauren only a five percent chance of survival. Her injuries were among the worst they had ever seen, so horrific that she was barely recognisable. But those insurmountable odds counted for little against the Huxley family's determination, courage and love. together, they started to rebuild their shattered lives ... and Lauren started coming back. this is their extraordinary story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730400608

Lisa Davies

Lisa Davies is the senior court reporter for The Daily Telegraph in Sydney. She was the first journalist to interview the family at Lauren’s hospital bedside just four days after the attack that changed their lives. She has remained close to the family and wrote this story with their cooperation. She lives in Sydney

Book preview

1

‘Where’s Lauren?’

EMERGING FROM HER fortnightly naturopath appointment on Wednesday, 9 November 2005, Christine Huxley took stock of her day. She had been so busy serving customers at the Commonwealth Bank that she hadn’t had a chance to telephone her daughter, Lauren, to see how her TAFE presentation had gone. Lauren, aged 18, had been a bit nervous. The day before they had gone shopping and bought her a new pair of black trousers and decided she would wear her older sister Simone’s crisp white shirt—a professional look for the presentation. Lauren had been applying herself very seriously to her marketing course in recent weeks, but that was no surprise. She had always been a good student. She seemed to be enjoying her classes, and had made some new friends to complement her large group of school friends. It was exciting to see her younger daughter grow into a confident young woman. There wasn’t really much risk Lauren hadn’t done well, Christine thought, and anyway she’d be home soon enough and could hear all about it.

As she started to back out of the clinic car park, her naturopath ran out looking a bit panicked, and stopped her.

‘Your friend Sharon just called, she says it’s urgent and wants you to call her,’ she explained.

‘Oh, I’m only five minutes from home,’ Christine replied dismissively, ‘I’ll call her when I get there. It can’t be that urgent.’

Her thoughts had turned to dinner by the time she turned into Moxhams Road, the peaceful suburban street in Northmead, in Sydney’s northwest, where she had lived for more than 20 years.

As she drew closer to the family’s modest home, she furrowed her brow. What was up ahead, some kind of roadblock? I wonder what’s going on, she thought. There was a public school across the road from their house which meant it could be quite busy around 3 pm, but it was much later than that now—it was almost 5.30 pm.

Then Christine’s stomach lurched. There were ambulances and fire trucks outside her house—and it was on fire. But what seized her with dread as she flung herself out of the car and sprinted towards her front gate was just one thought: Where’s Lauren?

A FEW SUBURBS away, 21-year-old hairdresser Simone Huxley heard her mobile phone ringing out the back of the salon. She ignored it; she was cutting a young boy’s hair and focusing on finishing the job. When she checked the phone a few minutes later, she saw she’d missed two calls—one from a number she didn’t recognise, and one from her father.

Simone got calls from strangers a lot—clients who had referred friends to her for haircuts—so she didn’t think much of it. She sent a text message to the unknown number, saying: ‘Sorry I missed your call, who is this?’

A text came back immediately. ‘It’s Kathy, your next-door neighbour. Call me back, it’s urgent.’

Oh no, Simone thought, maybe someone has broken into the house. What made her think that, she didn’t know, except that Kathy was always home and their street was so neighbourly that it was just the sort of thing she would have called her for.

Before she could return the call, her phone rang again and this time it was her father, Patrick Huxley.

‘Head home, the house is on fire,’ he said.

‘What?’ Simone screamed. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

Grabbing her bag, she raced out of the salon. Then her father asked: ‘Do you know where Lauren is? I’ve tried her mobile, it’s not answering.’

Simone didn’t know where her sister was. As she bolted to her car, she tried Lauren’s number herself. No reply. She tried again; it rang out a second time. In a blur of rising panic, something niggled at the back of her mind—Lauren should have been at home.

PAT HUXLEY WAS finishing up at a Penrith job site just before 5 pm when his mobile phone rang. He was tired; a carpenter by trade, he had started his day 12 hours earlier and was ready to clock off. He was excited too, because it was his last day at work for two weeks: Pat, Christine and the girls were going to have a little holiday. They were going to head up the coast, as they always did. Pat loved the ritual of packing up the car, leaving the rat race behind for the beach, usually at Forster or Coffs Harbour, nothing to do but swim and relax with his family. They’d have plenty to chat about on this particular trip, too. Lauren was now contemplating going on to uni after TAFE, Simone was about to start planning for her first overseas trip, and he and Christine needed to talk to the girls further about the idea of moving house. That would be a big decision, and they’d have to make it as a family, but right now, on this sweltering November afternoon, the thought of moving to a bigger place, with a pool…

His phone was still ringing and he picked it up distractedly, answering with his usual brief ‘hello’. He was surprised to hear one of his neighbours, Joyce, on the other end. Without any preamble, she said: ‘Your house is on fire, Pat.’

Good god, he thought, and told Joyce: ‘Call the fire brigade. I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

He and one of his workmates, George White, had been sharing the driving to Penrith from their homes in adjacent suburbs, so they set off immediately. At that time of the day, the trip would take close to an hour. Trying not to panic or drive too quickly, he called his wife’s mobile phone first, but it was switched off. George then dialled Christine’s work number for him, only to be informed that she had left for the day.

Pat didn’t really keep track of what the women in his family got up to after work or study, whether it was the gym, beauty appointments, or catching up with friends. By the time he got home, Lauren and Christine were usually there, or close to it, Simone not far behind them. His daughters were independent young women now and they came and went as they pleased.

Knowing his younger daughter was usually the first home on a weekday afternoon, he tried Lauren’s mobile phone. It rang out. He tried again and again, but still nothing.

He got through to Simone as he sped towards their home, but she didn’t know where Lauren was either.

As he hung up, a cold fear spread through his chest. Something wasn’t right.

How on earth had their home caught fire? And what had happened to his little girl?

2

‘I think there’s a body in the garage’

RESPONDING TO A call to a house fire, Constable Danny Eid pulled his police car up outside the weatherboard house in Moxhams Road at about 10 minutes before 5 pm. There was already a crowd of 20 or 30 onlookers watching the spectacle. Thick black smoke billowed through the roof tiles, but the constable couldn’t see any flames. There were a couple of fire brigade officers in the cement driveway that ran up the side of the house towards a detached garage, and as Eid approached them, he saw another couple of officers in a small alcove at the side of the house putting on breathing equipment to join others already inside, fighting the fire with hoses from within. Peering in the windows, Eid saw that heavy black smoke blanketed the kitchen area. He asked one of the fire brigade officers if there was anyone inside. ‘No,’ came the reply. ‘We’ve done a check of the house and no one is home. It appears that it’s a run-of-the-mill kitchen fire.’

On his way to conduct his own inspection of the back of the property, Eid was stopped by another fire brigade officer who emerged from the house holding a ringing mobile phone. ‘This was inside,’ the officer said, but as he handed it to Eid it stopped ringing.

He resumed his course towards the back of the house, and there noticed that a gate in a small fence which ran from a covered decking area to the wall of the detached garage was open. Further round the back he saw that a glass-panelled French door leading from the deck into the house was also open, as was another door further along that appeared to lead to a laundry. Near to the doors were symbols of normal suburban life—pot plants, a portable clothes horse with garments left to dry. Entering the well-maintained backyard, Eid took in a pergola area, attached to the garage, where he saw a table and chairs, a barbeque and some clothes folded in a basket. He saw a covered spa, too, and a clothesline with garments still on it. There was something about the scene that made his heart skip faster. It looks like someone has been home, he thought. Were they interrupted while they were doing the laundry? he wondered. You don’t just take washing off the line and leave it there—well, his own wife wouldn’t, at least.

As he scanned the area once more, he noticed that a window in the garage wall was being propped open by a black stereo speaker. Curiosity and suspicion pricked. He decided to check it out, and headed towards the garage door. Before he even stepped inside, Eid could smell a strong odour of petrol; a few steps into the dim space and the smell was overwhelming. He heard two dogs barking angrily before he saw them, but as he moved in their direction they retreated further into the garage. He followed.

AS SENIOR CONSTABLE Alison Beeche drove the police truck into Moxhams Road, she too saw the thick, dark smoke pouring from the roof of the small suburban house, and when she pulled up her first move was to approach the fire brigade officers in the driveway. They’d placed a ladder up against the wall where the home’s kitchen appeared to be, and as Beeche neared she could see that there was quite extensive fire damage in the roof area above the kitchen and in the kitchen itself. She too asked one of the officers if there was anyone in the house, and just as she was told that the place had been cleared, her colleague Constable Danny Eid suddenly came running up from the backyard.

‘I think there’s a body in the garage, I’m getting a torch,’ he said sharply. Brow furrowed in concern, as he ran he thought that it might only be a mannequin, but he couldn’t be sure.

Immediately concerned now too, Beeche made her way swiftly down the driveway towards the garage. Scooting through the small fence into the backyard, she spotted the open side door of the garage, but when she got there and peered inside, she understood why Constable Eid was fetching the torch—it was almost pitch black in there. The roll-a-door at the front was closed and she was struck by an extremely powerful smell of petrol. She could just make out the shapes of bits and pieces of household furniture, boxes and bags—ordinary garage paraphernalia—inside the doorway, but as she peered further in she could see what appeared to be a female figure lying on the floor. Was it just a mannequin? Or a woman?

Constable Eid dashed back with the torch. As he flicked it on, the two officers saw that this was indeed the body of a woman, which from where they stood was only visible from the chest down. Senior Constable Beeche saw that the woman’s right lower arm appeared bound by a black electrical cord, and there was another grey-coloured cord lying across her stomach, which was not attached to anything. She lay perfectly straight with her arms by her side, and at first glance seemed to be completely naked. Two small white dogs, Maltese-Shih tzu, one on either side of the woman’s body, were growling at the two police officers. The body was surrounded by pools of liquid—which, given the overpowering smell, they presumed was petrol. In those first few seconds as they assessed the scene, Beeche heard something—a moan and a gurgling sound coming from the throat of the woman as she tried to breathe.

As they approached the body, the police were confronted with a terrifying sight as the woman’s upper body came into view. This was clearly a young woman, and a hot-pink horizontally striped singlet partly covered her breasts. Her head was pressed firmly against a brown wooden box and her face appeared swollen, bruised and covered in blood. Her hair was also completely covered in fresh blood; it was so saturated they couldn’t tell what colour it was. Adding to the horror of the scene was extensive ‘blood splatter’ covering the box beside her head and on the items around her body. A closer inspection would later reveal that blood stained the wall up to a metre and a half high.

Knowing the young woman needed urgent medical attention, Beeche pulled out her police radio but no one could receive her call; the signal was not strong enough. While Eid stayed with the woman, Beeche ran back up the driveway towards the road to try to get better reception but as her pleas for an ambulance were being broadcast, she saw a rapid response vehicle arrive. As paramedic David Rigby jumped off the motorcycle, Beeche relayed the condition of the woman to him. The sense of urgency wasn’t lost on him; he knew immediately that this young woman was fighting for her life.

In such circumstances, certain procedures have to be followed and, as the most senior officer present at the scene, Beeche began issuing orders. She yelled to another constable to start a crime scene log, and he immediately took up a position at the southern end of the driveway. It would be his job to prevent any unauthorised persons from contaminating the scene. From now on, it was vital that everything possible be preserved. Beeche then called out to the nearest fire brigade officer to be careful and to inform his colleagues that the house was now a crime scene. She also demanded another police officer find her a camera.

Following paramedic Rigby back down the driveway, Beeche returned to the garage and urged Constable Eid to open the garage door because the stench of petrol was so overwhelming. The door was stuck but after a few strong pulls he finally prised it open and the foul air began to disperse.

A camera had been found and it was now thrust into her hands. Quickly she began taking pictures of the young woman as they had found her. Shortly the woman would have to be transported to hospital and it would be imperative for any investigation that the precise place where she was found be recorded. As she did that, Constable Eid began placing rags and other bits of material he had found in the garage around the young woman to absorb the petrol.

After a few moments, Beeche looked to her right out of the roll-a-door and saw an elderly woman and a man with blond hair leaning over the side fence. Presuming they were neighbours, she asked them if they knew the people who lived in the house. They did, they said, and while Beeche didn’t have the time at that moment to question them further, she learned that two young women lived in the house with their parents, Pat and Christine Huxley.

Meanwhile, Rigby was working fast to treat the young woman. His initial clinical observation was that this was a teenage female and she was in a critical condition. She was making some sporadic groaning noises and breathing but her skin was a ghastly white/grey colour. It was obvious to the paramedic that she had sustained massive head injuries. He could see what appeared to be large open lacerations running from the front and side of her head towards the back of her skull.

He carefully put an oxygen mask onto the young woman’s face so as not to disturb the head injuries or her neck. He knew, too, that it was vital the patient got intravenous fluids as soon as possible. She had lost a huge amount of blood and her blood pressure was dangerously low. After one failed attempt to find a vein on her right arm, made more difficult for Rigby because petrol had seeped through his trousers and was now burning the skin on his knees, he managed to insert a cannula into the young woman’s left arm and attached a bag of saline fluid. He wanted to ensure this fluid was administered ‘flat out’—continuously—until her blood type could be determined and a transfusion begun, and so he asked Senior Constable Beeche to hold the bag and constantly but gently squeeze it.

As Beeche was doing that, she took the opportunity to survey the garage more carefully and noted a Victa grass catcher and a red petrol cap on the floor nearby—the sort of screw cap you would find on a jerry can. She glanced at Constable Eid; he was still trying to catch and remove the barking dogs. They had been hampering Rigby’s efforts to treat the injured teenager by trying to keep close to her. Whatever these dogs had seen, their protective instincts were in overdrive.

Soon after more paramedics arrived and they began to put the injured girl on a backboard for transportation to an ambulance, which had now arrived. As they did so, Senior Constable Beeche crouched to see if there were any visible injuries to the back of her body. There were no marks apart from an area on her right buttock cheek where the skin was red raw and peeling. It looked as though her skin had burnt off, perhaps a chemical burn, from the petrol, Beeche thought. She was still holding the intravenous bag as the girl was rushed up the driveway into the waiting ambulance, where other paramedics took over, before the vehicle sped off with sirens blaring towards Westmead Hospital.

SPRINTING TOWARDS THE front of her house, Christine Huxley didn’t even try to still the feeling of panic coursing through her body. The first person she saw was her neighbour Kathy, who stated the obvious: ‘Your house is on fire.’

Knowing something was dreadfully wrong, Christine didn’t care about the house.

‘Where’s Lauren?’ she asked, terrified of the answer.

‘Someone has been taken to hospital, but I don’t know who it was,’ Kathy replied, trying desperately to keep her own voice calm. She had a hunch, but the thought was unbearable.

With that statement, Christine’s knees gave way and she lurched towards the lawn in front of her home. Kathy, along with another of their neighbours, Joyce, and friend Lorraine, caught her before she fell, while several others stood by helplessly. It was a close-knit street and their sympathy for Christine was immediate and heartfelt, their faces etched with disbelieving stares that something like this was happening right there in Moxhams Road. All they could do for Christine was hold her hand, rub her back and try to soothe her with their own hopes that ‘it will be all right’.

A stranger’s voice then broke through the sound of Christine’s sobbing.

‘I’m Ally Beeche.’ The senior constable introduced herself without the formality of her rank, trying to use the soft and kindly tones of one mother to another. Her many years in the force had not made this task any easier. ‘The fire has been contained,’ she explained. ‘We’ve located a young female in the garage. She’s alive but appears to have been assaulted. She’s been taken to Westmead Hospital.’

Christine, still supported by Kathy and Lorraine, began to shake violently, and she screamed: ‘What—who—what do you mean assaulted?’

The policewoman asked if Christine knew anyone who would want to harm her daughter or her family. Was there an ex-boyfriend or anyone who had threatened the family in recent times?

‘No, no, no one,’ Christine screamed repeatedly. But there was one thing she didn’t know: ‘Is it Simone or Lauren?’

The officer knew so little about the young woman she had seen possibly taking her last breaths, she could only answer truthfully: ‘I don’t know.’

‘Does she have blonde hair?’

Beeche could not reply that the girl’s hair colour had been disguised by massive amounts of blood, but another detail popped into her mind that she barely knew she had taken note of: ‘She has a toe ring.’

Christine cried out in agony: ‘Oh, my god, it’s Lauren. No, no, Lauren.’

As she did, her knees buckled and she would have collapsed again without the aid of Kathy and Lorraine.

Beeche wrote ‘Lauren’ in her notebook. Finally the victim had a name. Lauren Huxley.

She asked the stricken mother what her daughter’s birth date was and she managed to say it was 24 December 1986—Christmas Eve. She also said her own name was Christine, and Kathy added that her husband’s name was Pat.

Senior Constable Beeche said she would arrange for Christine to be taken to the hospital and within minutes an ambulance officer had bundled her, Kathy and Lorraine into his vehicle and they were gone.

Before Beeche had a chance to catch her breath, Pat Huxley arrived at the scene. He had received three more calls on the way home from neighbours and local friends, all telling him that his house was on fire. After dropping George off en route, he’d made it home—or as close to home as he could get with the fire trucks and police cars blocking the road—just before 6 pm. Pat walked disbelievingly towards his smouldering house, thinking, ‘God, the damage is bad.’ Before he could really take in any conversation with his neighbours, Beeche approached him. She introduced herself and relayed the information about his daughter, Lauren, grateful she could at least spare him any confusion about the identity of the young woman. Pat couldn’t process the information; it seemed unreal, but tears immediately began to fall. The next few moments passed in a haze; there were friends around him but they were faceless voices he struggled to understand.

Moments later, Simone ran down the street. She had been forced to park about nine houses away, and as she ran she asked anyone in a uniform: ‘What happened, what happened?’ Despite her distress, Simone remembers being amazed to see so many uniforms—fire fighters, police and white-gloved forensic officers—littering the front yard of her house. There’s even firemen on the roof, she thought, but the absence of ambulance officers seemed conspicuous to her: has anyone been hurt? Spotting her father, Simone started moving in his direction but was intercepted after a few steps by Senior Constable Beeche. The policewoman repeated the information about Lauren for the third time. Thankfully, it seemed this would be the last time. Simone asked how her sister had been assaulted but did not hear the response. Never having had any experience with criminal terms like assault, Simone initially thought the word meant her sister had been stabbed with a knife and Lauren’s beauty immediately came to mind. ‘No, not her face!’ she screamed, and as she did her legs seemed no longer able to hold her weight.

One of those who helped her to stand was her ex-boyfriend, Tim O’Connor. On the way home from the salon, Simone had called Tim, who remained a close friend and who was also like a brother to Lauren. She told him the house was on fire and he had offered to meet her there. Simone and Tim, who trained as a body builder, had dated on and off for about two years before agreeing to break off the romance altogether in February of 2005. The Huxleys treated him like the son they never had. Tim had stayed at the Huxley home only the night before and they had all sat around on the lounge watching Dancing With The Stars while Lauren had practised her TAFE presentation in her bedroom.

Tim had arrived at the house before Simone and had already been spoken to by police. Senior Constable Beeche’s notes record that he was wearing a sleeveless black top, cream-coloured shorts, and describe him as having wavy black hair with a muscular body. His contact details were also noted, as were those of Lorraine’s teenage son Luke, who was also friendly with both Huxley girls. Senior Constable Beeche had seen Luke, an athletic-looking man wearing a dark-blue singlet and a pair of knee-length cream shorts, standing tearfully on the footpath outside the Huxleys’ house. She was effectively keeping an audit of anyone who might ultimately be able to assist with the police investigation. Both of these strong young men had perfectly good reason to be there, but it wasn’t Beeche’s job to make assumptions about anything or anyone. She was after facts only.

With all of Lauren’s relatives and close friends on their way to the hospital, Beeche relayed the afternoon’s events to more senior police who had now arrived. There was a hive of activity around her. Floodlights were being set up, road diversions were in place and fire brigade investigators had arrived with a dog trained to detect blaze accelerants, like petrol. New South Wales police crime scene officers were also in attendance and the delicate task of painstakingly combing the house for clues would now begin in earnest.

3

‘She was unrecognisable, her long

blonde hair barely visible through the

blood and bandages’

IN THE FOYER of Westmead Hospital’s Emergency Unit, Christine and Pat Huxley waited for news of their daughter’s condition. In complete shock, suspended in a waking nightmare, they had no idea what had happened to Lauren and nobody would tell them anything. The only thing they were told was that Lauren had been assaulted and that she would be okay. Okay? If she was okay, then why couldn’t they see her? What was going on?

All the way to the hospital, Christine had been hyperventilating and she couldn’t understand why the trip was taking so long. She needed to be near her little girl. Road works prevented their quick passage through the streets to Westmead and the journey that should have taken about five minutes took closer to half an hour. Why wouldn’t they put