Source : Perth Now news
Warning: Distressing content.
“I truly believe he will hurt me and he will not stop contacting me. I live in fear for my life … my family and my animals.”
Terrified, Molly Ticehurst wrote this note on March 4, 2024, after her former partner, Daniel Billings, allegedly raped her and wielded a knife while threatening to kill her.
She told a friend, “If I end up dead he 100% did it” later that evening.
The young mum was scared Billings would kill her if she reported him to police, having said to her own mother in January that he had allegedly told her he would “come through the window and kill her”.
By April, Billings allegedly told her he would “get to you if that is the last thing I do” and he would “come in the middle of the night and cut your head off”.
Ms Ticehurst repeatedly pleaded with Billings to leave her alone, asking him in a series of text messages how he expected her to trust him and if he really thought he still had a chance with her.
“It was hard enough trusting you after knowing you killed our dog and I had to lie to people about it,” she said.
“So please, for the last time. Leave me alone.”
She finally worked up the courage to seek help and made a series of domestic violence and sexual assault allegations to police on April 5, 2024. Weeks later, she was dead.
Her allegations to police enraged Billings, with the then-29-year-old telling a friend he had “never felt so angry” and “If I’m going to do the time, I may as well do the crime”.
He denied the accusations but admitted to killing their dachshund puppy with a hammer the year prior.
The court was unable to make a finding on the sexual assault allegations as the only witness, Ms Ticehurst, was murdered, meaning the charges could not proceed.
However Justice Natalie Adams was satisfied Billings murdered the young mother in an act of “retribution” for going to the police.
Killer’s chilling videos
Billings was released on bail the day after his arrest and an apprehended domestic violence order (ADVO) was made preventing Billings from approaching or contacting her, trying to find her, or going within 10km of her home.
Fearing for her safety, Ms Ticehurst fled Forbes for a week and had her mother stay at her home on another occasion.
On April 20, Billings asked a friend to drive past Ms Ticehurst’s home to see if she was still there, but they told him “don’t be stupid”.
The next day, Billings rambled for more than an hour in a series of chilling videos about how he is “not a f**kin woman beater or rapist” and that “if I’m going to be punished either way then OK … I’m gonna go crazy”.
“(I’m) going to go right off the f**king rails,” Billings says.
Murderer acted like ‘grim reaper’
The “final straw” was police apparently throwing his boxing singlet — which he described as his “proudest achievement” — in the dirt, according to a letter Billings penned to his friends and family on the day he murdered Ms Ticehurst.
“That is when I’ve started getting thoughts in my head – ‘Oh maybe I’ll just f**king drive over there and she reckons I was going to go through the f**king window and cut her head off,’ or something, maybe I might do that,” Billings also said in one of his disturbing videos.
Singing along to Johnny Cash’s When The Man Comes Around, Billings did exactly that: he drove to Ms Ticehurst’s Forbes home, broke in through her window, and murdered her by repeatedly stabbing her.
The brutal attack unfolded in just 59 seconds.
“He was driven by anger, revenge, and extreme hatred of Ms Ticehurst, in the context of the previous controlling behaviour during the breakdown of the relationship,” Justice Adams said during Billings’ sentencing on Friday.
“It must have been absolutely terrifying for Ms Ticehurst to die knowing that her worst fears had been realised.”
Justice Adams found Billings formed the intention to kill Ms Ticehurst at least by the time he set out on his journey to Forbes, with Crown Prosecutor Lee Carr SC earlier calling the Johnny Cash singalong “prophetic”.
“That is prophetic if I could use that expression … The grim reaper is another one that comes to mind,” Mr Carr said.
Ms Ticehurst’s father, Tony, delivered a powerful message to his daughter’s killer during a sentence hearing in Orange last week.
“I hope that every night, Molly’s screams keep you awake and the hairs on your arm stands up in the terror,” Mr Ticehurst told Billings.
He previously expressed his hope that Billings would remain behind bars “forever” and that “no sentence will ever be long enough”.
Billings will be eligible for release on parole in 2044 after Justice Adams on Friday sentenced him to 28 years’ jail with a non-parole period of 20 years.
The sentence took into account Billings’ remorse, early guilty plea, prospects of rehabilitation and hardship in custody.
Justice Adams found his depressive illness was one of a number of factors that contributed to the murder, but was unable to find Billings suffered from an abnormal state of mind at the time of the killing.
Mum ‘should never have been a headline’
One woman was killed every 11 days by an intimate partner between 2024 and 2025, with fed-up Australians spilling out into the streets and demanding the scourge of DV be stamped out in a series of nationwide rallies.
The murder of Ms Ticehurst quickly became a flashpoint in law reform and garnered major attention after it was revealed Billings had been granted bail by a local court registrar two weeks before he went on to kill the young mother.
In an emotional statement read to the Orange Local Court last week, Melissa Shaw said her cousin never should have made the news.
“Molly should never have been a headline, she should be home with her family making us all laugh and cry,” Ms Shaw said.
“But instead we are here two years on, still enduring the worst pain imaginable, and that is never going to change.”
Registrars have now been stripped of the ability to make bail decisions, and the onus now lies on accused DV abusers to prove why they should be released on bail as per the reforms coined “Molly’s Law”.
Coercive control was made a criminal offence in July 2024, and tougher penalties were brought in for breaching ADVOs months later as part of a suite of changes.
Heartbroken, Mr Ticehurst asked: “Why does the law wait for a murder before something is done to make people safe?”
“She lost her life because she let the wrong person into her life. When she realised this, she tried to remove him from her life. That is why she lost her life,” he said last week.
“Molly’s Law has now been introduced, and I will forever be proud to be her dad. I know this law will save lives and protect women, but I still ask myself why it took Molly’s life for this to happen.”
Interventions still too late
No To Violence general manager Chris Lacey said the responsibility is too often put on women to change their lives, with Ms Ticehurst reportedly meant to receive help to secure her home from the state’s Staying Home Leaving Violence Scheme.
“It is a heartbreaking story,” Mr Lacey said.
“Too often we’re asking women to upturn their lives and leave the family home and move into crisis accommodation … when as a community I think we really need to be looking for accountability to rest with the person who’s perpetrating the violence and asking them to change their behaviour, rather than asking the victim of their behaviour to change what they’re doing.”
A review of Ms Ticehurst’s interactions with NSW government and DV services is due to be released later this year.
In the meantime, there are increasing calls for investment into systems aimed at recognising and targeting patterns of violence before they escalate, with the Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Commission’s (DFSVC) 2026 Yearly Report to Parliament finding interventions are still happening too late.
“We must expand our focus to begin work earlier – earlier in children’s lives, and earlier when we see patterns of violence emerging. We must take every possible opportunity to intervene and make our communities safer – not wait until the crisis has occurred and the harm is done,” DFSVC commissioner Micaela Cronin said on Wednesday.
Mr Lacey echoed a similar sentiment, telling NewsWire current systems need to become better at identifying and disrupting problematic behaviours before crises.
“We need to move away from viewing these cases as isolated incidents, because we see again and again how these escalating behaviours end up with tragic consequences,” Mr Lacey said.
Domestic Violence NSW deputy chief executive Pia Birac said law reform was “only one part of shifting a structural and social problem”.
“Any changes to legislation must be balanced with great and targeted investment to prevent violence and support those experiencing it,” Ms Birac said.
“This is long-term work. Until every victim-survivor can access the support they need, when they need it, our work continues.”
Young mum had ‘big heart’, ‘so much love’
Part of Mr Ticehurst died with his daughter, with her father speaking of how her life was incomplete in an emotional statement to the court.
“She had such a big heart and had so much love to give, which she did through her job in childcare,” he said.
“She couldn’t walk down the street or shopping without being recognised by kids who would call out ‘Look Mum, it’s Molly’.”
Birthdays and Christmas are no longer celebrations of life for her family, with Mr Ticehurst saying every day feels like “waking into a nightmare”.
“I sit and think about what Molly is missing – what she should be doing, and how much life she still had ahead of her,” he said.
“Molly, you will always be my big girl. You will always be loved. There is no time limit on grief.
“I will grieve the loss of you for the rest of my life.”
Domestic Violence Helpline
