‘We knew what dad did at home, but no one listened to us’
Jane* reflects on that fateful morning 13 years ago when she learnt the devastating news: her father had assaulted her mother with a kitchen knife as she stepped off the bus on her way back home, killing her in a pool of blood.
“Had I been there, maybe he would not have killed her. Maybe he would have felt sorry for me…. I could have been with her,” says Jane, now aged 25.
On that day, Jane, aged 10 and her sister, 11, asked their mother if one of them could join her at work that day.
Shortly before their father assaulted their mother with a butchers’ knife, he ran into their then 12-year-old brother, who was on his way to his aunt, and asked if their mother had gone to work that day.
“He was my father. He asked and I said ‘yes’,” the brother, Mike*, now 26, says.
His youngest sister Debbie*, now 23, adds: “We never imagined our father would go to that extent.”
Jane, Debbie and Mike speak. Video: Karl Andrew Micallef
The three siblings have an impenetrable bond galvanised by the traumatic experience they shared. Catherine Agius was killed on July 13, 2009, when she was stabbed on a bus stop in Tarxien as she returned home from work.
Their father, Roger Agius, pleaded guilty to...