Family tragedy ... the father of raped and murdered woman Anita Cobby has died after years of helping the families of other homicide victims.
Anita Cobby`s father dies
Anita raped, murdered in 1986
Became known as nation`s "worst murder"
The father of raped and murdered New South Wales woman Anita Cobby has died after years of helping the families of other homicide victims.
Garry Lynch died yesterday at a nursing home in Sydney`s west after a long battle with dementia.
His friend Peter Rolfe said Mr Lynch, 90, had his family at his side at the time of his passing.
Mr Lynch started the Homicide Victims Support Group in 1993 - seven years after the horrific death of his 26-year-old daughter Anita.
Ms Cobby, a nurse and beauty pageant winner, was abducted by a group of five men while walking home from Blacktown train station on the evening of February 2, 1986.
Her body was found two days later in a paddock and her father had the task of identifying her.
Witnesses who saw the men drag Ms Cobby into a stolen car and a later tip-off led police to making arrests 22 days after her murder.
Leslie Murphy, then aged 22, his two brothers Gary and Michael, then 28 and 33, Michael Murdoch, then 19, and John Travers, then 18, were found guilty of murdering Ms Cobby.
A media frenzy and public outcry led to calls for the re-introduction of the death penalty but the men were jailed for life.
Mr Lynch and the rest of the family endured the public spotlight, which intensified when reports came that Ms Cobby`s killers might apply for reduction in their sentence.
Mr Lynch and his wife Grace were already counselling family members of homicide victims before they started their support organisation.
In 1992, they met Peter and Christine Simpson, following the murder of the Simpsons` daughter Ebony.
The Simpsons complained that there was no organisation to help the victim`s families, prompting the Lynches to start the Homicide Victims Support Group.
Peter Rolfe met Mr Lynch in 1995 after his best friend and business partner was murdered in Sydney.
"We became very close friends over the next four or five years,`` Mr Rolfe said.
He attended support group meetings which, Mr Rolfe said, catered to more than 300 families in the early years.
"We were able to commiserate with each other with what we were going through,`` Mr Rolfe said.
Mr Lynch was also a member of the Serious Offenders Review Council, which advises the Parole Authority and the NSW Supreme Court about the parole of serious offenders.
"He was just out there to help people,`` Mr Rolfe said.
"Basically, that`s all he wanted to do. Just to get out and help people who had been through what he and Grace had been through.
"He was such a lovely, basic, down-to-earth sort of guy. You could ring him at any time of the day or night.``
I find it disturbing that Anita Cobby is commonly referred to as a "beauty queen" in the media. I do not know exactly why; perhaps there is something demeaning about it, or something that suggests that her death means more than that of, for example, someone who is not a beauty queen, or otherwise "exceptional". In any case, she was first and foremost a human being and it seems irrelevant to mention that she was also a "beauty queen" - whatever that is.
Posted by: Andrew 4:33am today
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