Another woman, legally still married to Ronald Lyons, said she understands the situation murdered woman, Samantha Kelly, found herself in and knows how afraid she must have been.
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But Ballarat woman, Katrina Lyons hasn’t spoken out about her own ordeal, because she lives in fear and believed, up until Thursday’s jury verdict was returned sending Ronald Lyons to jail, that he would come after her.
Katrina, currently “in hiding” says she has been “on the run” for years because of the “stuff she’s seen” and knows about.
Katrina married Ronald Lyons when they were both aged in their 20s. She is still legally married to him.
“I would go to try to find him, to try and get a divorce and every time I did, the fear was so overwhelming, my body would go into shut down and I would nearly die ….,” she said.
Katrina says she met Ronald at church. “I was naive and from the bush, already been through one disastrous relationship and growing up. I was overweight and not the most good-looking person so I had a low self esteem, … and I didn’t have a very normal childhood neither.”
During the time they were together, Ronald and Katrina had three sons and she is beyond bereft that those children were exposed to the sordid horror of the house and life revealed through the court case, following the murder of Ballarat woman Samantha Kelly.
“I had to look at all those photos of the house they were living in …. those children were living in, not one bed .... I can’t even face looking at it (the media coverage) on TV.”
It is unclear when Katrina’s children went to live with Ronald Lyons and Christine, but according to Katrina, the boys did not have beds to sleep in and at least one of the boys was “dressed as a girl” because Christine desperately wanted a daughter.
In January 2016, Peter Arthur murdered Samantha Kelly by repeatedly striking her to the head with a hammer, and then buried her body in a dry creek bed.
Christine Lyons never had children but that didn’t stop her from wanting to be a mother.
Inside the house in Bendigo, Christine was the maternal figure to Ronald Lyons’ three sons and, previously, two teenage girls who stayed over. Some neighbours even called her ‘‘Ma’’.
Samantha, 39, had a bungalow to herself behind the larger home in Wesley Street, Kangaroo Flat but, a Supreme Court trial heard, towards the end of 2015 she felt the only reason the household let her stay, was for her children.
The Lyonses both pleaded not guilty to both charges.
On Thursday, a Supreme Court jury found Christine, 47, guilty of murdering Samantha, and of attempted murder over a failed plot to kill Samantha by drugging her.
You get tired of people not listening, not believing what’s really happened.
- Katrina Lyons
Ronald, 45, was found not guilty of Samantha’s murder, but guilty of attempted murder and assisting the offender.
Katrina Lyons said she met Ronald through his sister and they were together about seven years, and were married after the second child was born.
“There was a lot of pressure (on us). He’d been in a car accident and he couldn’t do a lot and was in a lot of pain. Very grumpy ... “
Katrina said it was hard living with Ronald because “he was never happy, and very depressed, but he did come to church with me and he was doing really well at one point.”
Katrina said about 2003 they were attending a church in Ballarat, but that Ronald wasn’t accepted. “I said to the Pastor, ‘out of 350 people, four men have spoken to my husband’. Is it because he’s black, unemployed or both? ...”
“I think that was the catalyst,” she said, as to how later events would start, because he “got in touch with his cousin, Arthur and his [Ronald’s] cousin, Peter Arthur, was married to Christine.”
Katrina said Ronald was always abusive. “Emotionally and then physically … all the time. There was a real hardness (in him). He even bashed me in hospital … it’s all in the records.”
“You get tired of people not listening, not believing what’s really happened. I was starting to think none of this was real, that I was crazy. The look on the woman’s face (a service provider) when I told her what was happening ...”
It is true that Katrina comes across as very confused, arguably unbalanced; but there’s a toughness, an intelligence and, at times a vulnerability, that even the best actress would find hard to replicate.
“Christine targeted Samantha because of her family (children), because she’d got away with it before … she got my kids.”
“ … I have been bullied all my life. I just want to go and do one of the anti-violence programs and learn how to deprogramme.
“When I was living with Ronald, it just did my head in. No was ‘yes’, ‘yes’ was ‘no’. “
“I had people say they were afraid that he was going to kill me,” she said. “My kids were always afraid, so afraid.”
“I have been frightened to come to Ballarat. I don’t trust anyone.”
On 12 June 2018, knowing that the jury would begin to deliberate, Katrina said: “Oh, they’ve (Ronald and Christine) got to be locked up and then ... I can have them charged with what was done to me.”
“I want to get the information to show people that when you are trying to deal with domestic abuse and things like this, it’s a physical thing.”
“What I am saying is that I was a very intelligent woman, but with the complex post-traumatic stress disorder I’ve got, I can’t get past a fortnight without something happening and when you are a victim of abuse, it just keeps going. I am tired, I am really tired,” she said.
Katrina cites a list of health problems she says is a result of the abuse and lack of medical attention when it was needed, including a prolapsed uterus and bowel issues.
Katrina agrees that Christine and Ronald knew each other as teenagers in Kerang, a country town 230 kilometres north of Ballarat. They were once in a relationship and shared the same surname because she had once been married to his cousin.
But by 2015, hristine was in a relationship with Peter Arthur.
The couple moved in with Ronald in Kangaroo Flat, Bendigo into a dysfunctional, squalid household. Adults and children slept where there was space, Peter made school lunches for Ronald’s sons, and Christine, despite her own intellectual disability, was the central figure.
Christine’s desire for children never waned and, prosecutors argued, she masterminded a plan to kill Samantha to take custody of her children.
Peter and Ronald went along because both were devoted to seeing Christine happy. In January 2016, Samantha Kelly was killed.
For Katrina, amidst the confusion is a woman with a destroyed spirit.
Her favourite show is The West Wing and she has a head of dreams about what she could have achieved in a life without violence.