Australian police said a young man has been charged with the murder of five family members including three toddlers after their bodies were found in a suburban home in a grizzling mass killing that has shocked the country. / AFP PHOTO
PERTH, Australia (AFP) — A 24-year-old man has been accused of killing his wife, three toddlers and mother-in-law with a blunt instrument and knives at their suburban family home, where he remained for several days before turning himself in, Australian police said Monday.
Police charged Anthony Robert Harvey with the murders of his two-year-old twins Alice and Beatrix, his three-year-old daughter Charlotte and his 41-year-old wife Mara in the southwestern city of Perth.
Harvey, who lived in the home, is also alleged to have killed his mother-in-law Beverly Quinn, 73, at the same address the next day.
Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson told reporters no firearms were used in the attacks which police believe were carried out with several weapons including “a blunt instrument and knives.”
Police found the bodies of the five victims at the unassuming detached family home after Harvey walked into a police station in a remote mining area some 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) north of the city on Sunday — a week after their deaths.
He is believed to have remained at the house for “some days” before heading north.
A Facebook profile believed to be Mara Quinn’s showed her cradling a newborn in her arms, with a man reported to be Harvey beside her, and stated that she was engaged in August 2014.
A real estate listing showed a modest three-bedroom house and a standalone garage.
“She was pretty unlucky in love before she met him,” a friend told Fairfax Media. “So (when they got together) it was like ‘yay, now she gets to start a family’.”
A neighbour earlier told the ABC he had returned from a holiday to “silence in the street”.
“We noticed that the house next door was pretty quiet, which was unusual,” Richard Fairbrother, who lives next door to the family’s house, said.
“We could hear and see the kids playing in the backyard quite often.”
Other neighbours spoke of a shocked community that had been close, calm and peaceful.
Mass killings are rare in Australia, but this appears to be the third such family tragedy to hit Western Australia state in recent months.
In July a man allegedly killed his mother and two siblings. A grandfather shot dead his wife, daughter and her four children in murder-suicide in May.
Harvey is expected to return to court on September 19.
© Agence France-Presse