Jemma Lilley & The Real Nightmare On Elm Street An Anthology of True Crime

By Jessi Gorman

Jemma Lilley had always been obsessed with serial killers. 

When she was just sixteen years old, the tattooed Brit penned a crude and disturbing novel – which she published online – describing scenes of violence, torture, and murder. Although Lilley was dyslexic, she was a determined writer, and eventually completed her story. 

Playzone, as the novel was called, featured a character named SOS, and featured passages like, "I feel I can't rest until the blood of a fresh, screaming, bleeding victim is gushing out and pooling on the floor." According to Lilley's former stepmother, Nina Lilley, the book was a "big problem." 

"At the beginning, I said, 'Fair enough, you want to write a horror story,' but I didn't like the contents of it," Nina said. "It was all about torture and very violent and no empathy for the victims." 

And Lilley's fascination didn't end there. She had dreams of someday becoming a serial killer, herself. She would boast that she knew exactly how to commit the perfect murder, and that she'd be able to get away with it. 

As Lilley's urge to kill grew stronger and stronger, she sought out a partner to help her carry out her devious plan. Finally, with the help of her obedient roommate Trudi Lenon, Lilley was able to live out her fantasy June 13, 2016. And, although she'd gloated after the fact that the police were "too dumb" to ever catch her, she was eventually found guilty of murder – just like her idols. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201841300

Book preview

JEMMA LILLEY AND THE REAL NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

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JESSI GORMAN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

JEMMA LILLEY

SAMANTHA SCOTT

SHEILA DAVALLOO

SHARON KINNE

ANNIE MONAHAN

VALENTINES DAY MURDERER

BARBARA STAGER

JAMILA M’BAREK

JUDY BUENOANO

INTERNET BLACK WIDOW

WENDI ANDRIANO

JEMMA LILLEY

Jemma Lilley had always been obsessed with serial killers.

When she was just sixteen years old, the tattooed Brit penned a crude and disturbing novel – which she published online – describing scenes of violence, torture, and murder. Although Lilley was dyslexic, she was a determined writer, and eventually completed her story.

Playzone, as the novel was called, featured a character named SOS, and featured passages like, I feel I can’t rest until the blood of a fresh, screaming, bleeding victim is gushing out and pooling on the floor. According to Lilley’s former stepmother, Nina Lilley, the book was a big problem.

At the beginning, I said, ‘Fair enough, you want to write a horror story,’ but I didn’t like the contents of it, Nina said. It was all about torture and very violent and no empathy for the victims.

And Lilley’s fascination didn’t end there. She had dreams of someday becoming a serial killer, herself. She would boast that she knew exactly how to commit the perfect murder, and that she’d be able to get away with it.

As Lilley’s urge to kill grew stronger and stronger, she sought out a partner to help her carry out her devious plan. Finally, with the help of her obedient roommate Trudi Lenon, Lilley was able to live out her fantasy June 13, 2016. And, although she’d gloated after the fact that the police were too dumb to ever catch her, she was eventually found guilty of murder – just like her idols.

Just 26 years old, Lilley strangled and stabbed an autistic 18 year old named Aaron Pajich to death at the home she shared with Lenon, in the Perth suburb of Orelia – a working class community located adjacent to an industrial strip. Together, they buried the body underneath a section of new tile slabs in their back garden.

A nightmare at Elm Street

The two women lived in a dwelling that could only be described as macabre. Dubbed Elm Street by the pair, the house was filled with memorabilia from horror films, including a creepy Chucky doll and a knife set, complete with bone saw.

Pajich was a friend of Lenon’s son, who was 13 years old, with a slight build and a trusting attitude – he had been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. After Lenon had dropped her children off at school that day, she invited Pajich into the terrifying home by asking if he’d come help her with the installation of some new computer software. When Lilley approached him from behind, Pajich was sitting at the computer and drinking a coffee. From behind, Lilley garrotted her victim with a wire – until it snapped in half – and then stabbed him three times, while Lenon held him down.

After the crime had been committed, Lenon cooked Lilley a steak and brought her some cannabis, and the two settled down to watch an episode of Game of Thrones. For someone as obsessed with murder as Lilley had been, the actual act the two killers committed was shockingly amateurish. Even their attempts to clean up were uninspired – blood and other incriminating DNA evidence was found all over the house. According to prosecutor James McTaggart, the situation police found when they visited the home of Lilley and Lenon one week after Pajich had been killed was more than just suspicious – it was frankly ridiculous.

When detectives searched the property, they found Lilley’s collection of knives – one of which may have been used to inflict the stab wounds – as well as a disturbing handwritten list describing various methods of torture, including things like force feeding, branding, foot roasting, Chinese water torture, and genital mutilation. Additionally, detectives found a blue pot on a table in the garage, containing what appeared to be meat dissolving in acid – a suspected experiment to see if Lilley and Lenon were able to melt flesh.

One square of carpet had been removed from the floor of Lilley’s bedroom, police noted, which might have been the spot where Pajich was killed – possibly, Lilley then cut out the piece of carpet in an attempt to dispose of the evidence.

Photographs were also taken of a secret room, which show walls completely covered in black plastic and blue tarpaulins. Police suspect this is the area where Pajich’s body was kept before he was buried. Within this room, detectives found a shopping cart that had been cut down to its base. What looked like human hair was discovered around one of the cart’s wheels, and possible blood stains were found on the trolley’s surface.

Finally, police pulled up the freshly-laid tiled slab behind the house to find Pajich’s body, fully clothed and wrapped up in a white drop sheet. His face had been covered with plastic cling wrap, and he had two stab wounds on his neck and a third to his chest. Defensive knife wounds, revealed during a post mortem examination, covered his hands – it appeared to police that Pajich had been trying desperately to fight off his vicious attacker.

Shortly after killing Pajich, Lilley began sending euphoric text messages to Lenon, describing her emotional state.

I am seeing things I haven’t seen before. I’m feeling things I haven’t felt before, she wrote. It’s incredibly empowering. Thank you.

Lenon had also contacted Lilley prior to the murder, expressing her excitement about what the pair had planned to do.

The first time it will be very controlled. Brutal, and SOS will be totally entranced by it, she wrote, adding that it was definitely time and that I am ready.

Police began investigating the property after Pajich’s family had reported him missing, and an investigation revealed Lenon had been the last person to call him the morning he’d disappeared. By capturing Lilley so quickly after the killing, police hoped to prevent her from killing again.

The court heard that Lilley had meticulously planned the murder, which she saw as a glamorous fantasy starring herself as the serial killer. Her ordinary day job working at a supermarket left her with plenty of time to feed her hidden obsessions – suffocation, whipping, scalping, and castration.

He was just feeding her problem.

As a child growing up in England, Nina recalled, Lilley was always fascinated with murder – particularly with serial killers, who got away with committing multiple homicides before finally getting caught. Nina said that even as a young girl, Lilley was frightening and sinister.

She was clever and bright, but you never knew what she was thinking, Nina said. I always felt on edge with her. I always felt unnerved by her.

Roland Hulka, a family friend who’d watched Lilley grow up, described her as a bright-eyed child with a passion for music and art. He’d taken her into his home, helped her move into and renovate a house of her own, and took on the role of father figure.

Here is a girl with outstanding talents and artistic qualities – drawing and tattooing and a very high IQ, he said. She used to call me her Australian father.

Hulka was raised in the British town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, a picturesque community with five medieval churches and honey-stone streets – such a perfect example of the ideal middle England that the town has been used as the filming location for period dramas like Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch. There, Hulka befriended another boy named Richard Lilley, who eventually married and had several children – including Jemma.

While Hulka eventually moved away, he and Richard kept in touch. In 1999, Hulka paid a visit to his hometown, and finally met his friend’s daughter.

She seemed quite a happy sort of girl, he recalled. She was playing the piano the first time I walked in the front room – there she was, tinkling away. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

But there was trouble brewing under the surface. Lilley had been diagnosed with both dyslexia and autism when she was just six years old – and, although her performance at school remained strong, she struggled with her home life. Her father, Richard, was always working, and her mother suffered from a variety of mental health issues, which resulted in reports of frequent psychological and physical abuse of her kids.

When the couple finally split up, Richard Lilley was awarded full custody.

Richard actually distanced Jemma from her mother, because of the trauma she had gone through, Hulka said. Richard put a cocoon around her – but I don’t think the motherly, female influence was there.

According to Nina, Lilley’s behaviour became more and more horrifying as she got older – while Nina was living with her then husband Richard and Lilley, her stepdaughter. Before she moved to Australia, Lilley had studied gaming design at Casterton Business and Enterprise College in Rutland.

Although she was pursuing a college degree, she was spending at least three hours a day working on a novel – an idea she’d had for a computer game. And it was the novel, Playzone, that bothered Nina the most. Lilley seemed to think people would want to read her novel, Nina said, and would frequently quote her own writing. Her ambition was to be a horror writer, but Nina felt she was taking her fantasies too far.

She always had an obsession with serial killers as a teenager, but she said it was a way of venting her frustration, Nina remembered.

And although she said she voiced her concerns to Lilley’s father, Richard, she didn’t feel he was taking them seriously. According to Nina, Richard even made Lilley a horrifying mask out of black lead, like the one her villainous character wore in her novel.

When he made it for her, I got really upset because he was just feeding her problem, said Nina. Even her college was concerned about the book and had said she should see somebody.

Eventually, Lilley’s obsessions became too much for Nina to handle, and destroyed the relationship between her and Lilley’s father. Nina left the family home.

I used to feel trapped when she was here – so I left, she said.

A stranger in a strange land

In 2010, Lilley moved, too – but she went all the way to Australia. Nina recalled Lilley’s behaviour growing increasingly deranged in the months leading up to the move, describing her former stepdaughter as a psychopath who was devoid of empathy.

I regret I wasn’t more forceful in getting her to get help – it seemed to escalate before she left for Australia, Nina admitted. She got so obsessed by the book that even preparing to go to another country got sidelined. She always found it amusing when people told her, ‘you need to see somebody.’

She had arrived in the country bearing a two-year visit visa, which was set to expire in 2012. Initially, she moved in with Roland Hulka – who barely recognized her as the young girl he’d met back in England.

She seemed a lot different when she came over, he said. She had lost that glow and that smile. It was daunting, and at one stage, a little bit creepy – she was a stranger in a strange land.

Hulka had also been introduced to Playzone, Lilley’s pet project. He found the novel just as disturbing as Nina had.

The interest in horror, and serial killers especially, was there, he said. She was proud of her book and expected everyone to have an interest in it. But I think it was of the devil.

In addition to her writing, Hulka said, Lilley took on two part-time jobs – working days at a tattoo parlor in the northern suburbs, and working nights stocking shelves at Woolworths. After eight months, he said, she moved out of his house and went to live with her supervisor, who lived with her brother – a gay man named Gordon Galbraith.

With the expiration date of her visa looming, Lilley made the decision to marry Galbraith at a Freddy Kruger-themed wedding. Lilley had affectionately referred to Galbraith as Gacy, because she said he reminded her of a serial killer named John Wayne Gacy, who had raped and murdered more than 30 teenage boys in the United States in the 1970s.

According to Lilley, the couple had no sexual contact, but the marriage opened the door for her to gain a permanent Australian residency. But Hulka said Lilley wasn’t interested in staying – after her marriage to Galbraith fell apart and he killed himself in 2014, she had hoped to return to her homeland.

She went across to England for a holiday, and didn’t want to come back to Australia, but her father pushed her to come back, Hulka said. I think, if there were different choices made ... none of this would have happened.

It was when Lilley returned to Australia that she purchased the house in Orelia, with Hulka’s financial support – as well as his assistance during the renovations and with the move. But there was a big part of her life that Lilley was keeping a secret from Hulka.

Galbraith had introduced Lilley to a friend of his, Trudi Lenon, in 2016 – the kind of older woman figure who had been absent from most of Lilley’s young life. The pair had become very close almost immediately – they met only months before they joined forces to kill Aaron Pajich.

Lenon, who had been engaged and was the mother of two boys, was struggling