John Cobby breaks his silence after wife's murder
Anita Cobby's sadistic murder was the crime no Australian dared to believe.
Yet one man, husband John, was forced to endure a truly unimaginable experience - and now, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of one of Australia's most shocking crimes, he has spoken out for the first time.
She was a community darling, a registered nurse, a loving daughter and a NSW state pageant winner.
On February 2 1996, 26-year-old Anita Cobby arrived at Blacktown train station in Sydney.
She usually called her father to come collect her but the public phone wasn’t working on that fateful day.
There were no taxis, so Anita decided to walk. And so began a family’s nightmare as their beloved daughter went missing.
Neighbours described a blood-curdling scream before she was dragged into a car, where she was beaten, repeatedly raped and tortured, with her fingers broken and bones dislocated, before her throat was slit and her body dumped in a farmer's field.
Just hours after the discovery of her body, husband John was ordered into Blacktown police station and accused of killing his wife.
“I told them ‘Yep, I did it, I must of did it’,” he told The Daily Telegraph, as he recalled breaking down inside the police interview room.
The pair had been married for four years before being separated six weeks before she was killed. Just a week before her murder the couple had decided to get back together, the reason Anita was still wearing her wedding ring the day she died.
“They threw it down on the table in a plastic bag ... it still had Anita’s blood on it," Mr Cobby recalled after asking police for her ring in the police interview room.
Immediately after his wife's funeral, John fled to the United States - only returning when it was revealed that the crime was carried out by not one, but five men.
"I just couldn’t handle all the publicity," Mr Cobby said.
"I blamed myself for her dying and still do. I should have been with her.
“I rang her on the Sunday morning and I asked if she wanted to be picked up from work but she told me she had already organised going to dinner with some friends and to stay with her parents."
That was the night she died.
Brothers Garry, Michael and Les Murphy along with John Travers and Michael Murdoch were arrested and jailed. None of them will ever be released unless they are dying or incapacitated to a point they could not commit a crime.
The animal savagery of the brutal murder angered the nation and left the community so deeply shocked that they called for the death penalty.
After leaving Australia for England to escape, Mr Cobby returned under a new identity.
“I was so paranoid people would recognise me or blame me that I would shave my head, dye it — anything to try and hide," he told The Daily Telegraph.
He has only recently changed his name back to Cobby and following the death of Anita's parents Garry and Grace Lynch is vowing to ensure her killers are never released.
Mr Cobby is now living alone in Sydney and has two children, working as a psychiatric nurse.
News break – January 29
