Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizePaul Thijssen was 21 when he began a relationship with a woman three years his junior, who he’d known since she was in junior high school. Outwardly, at first, it might have felt sweetly romantic; he joined her church, he spent time with her family, and at their four-month anniversary she made him “vouchers” of things they could do together, tied with a ribbon.But there were things that didn’t feel right. Early on, Thijssen asked her to share her iPhone location with him, and would “blow up” if she turned it off. He spent time at her house when she wasn’t there, would sit outside her workplace in his car, and got upset if she didn’t pick up her phone quickly every time he checked on her. Her parents grew worried.During a trip back home to Holland, he pressured her to visit. But by then she was finding him “suffocating,” an inquest into Thijssen’s murder of a 21-year-old sports coach, Lilie James, and his subsequent suicide heard this week. The young woman “felt Paul was trying to pressure her and control her”. Nine months later, in December 2021, she removed him from her social media profile picture.Thijssen, who was still in Holland, was furious. He got a visa that day, jumped on a plane, turned up at her church in Sydney, and when she told him she did not want to see him any more, punched a tree close to her head because, he said, “I can’t punch the one thing I want to.”Over the next two days, he was twice spotted peering into her house. When her father told him to stay away, Thijssen appeared “incredibly beside himself, pacing, anxious, scared, angry and ashamed,” the inquest heard. He acquiesced, and backed off. It’s only now, under the unflinching gaze of a coronial inquest, that his actions were given the labels they deserve; coercive control, technology-facilitated abuse, and stalking.They were harbingers of far worse to come.Thijssen returned to Sydney in 2023, on the pretext – later found to be a lie – that he was studying a master’s of education. He got a casual coaching job at St Andrew’s Cathedral School, where he had been a prefect and sports captain a few years earlier. James – whom her mother described as a “beautiful, independent, intelligent, kind [and] loyal” young university student from Sydney’s south – was working there too.It wasn’t until the middle of the year that their professional relationship grew into something more. By August, they were seeing each other, although James told a friend that it was “not so serious”, given she’d recently broken up with a boyfriend. Thijssen was also flirting with a woman he knew from hockey, a flirtation that lasted until the weekend before his death. She never knew about James.Thijssen told friends he wanted to sleep with Lilie, but didn’t want her as a girlfriend. They didn’t quite believe him. One said, “he was smiling, giddy, and wanted to talk about her”. They’d talk on the phone for an hour or more. One day in early October, they spent a relaxed afternoon together at the cliffs of Diamond Bay Reserve in Vaucluse.Psychology experts later told the court that Thijssen’s feigned disinterest may have been an attempt to manipulate other people’s perceptions of him, by appearing to have the upper hand in the relationship. Dr Katie Seidler, a clinical and forensic psychologist who has worked with sexual and violent offenders in NSW Corrective Services, suspected he was papering over a sense of profound inadequacy by “projecting an image of perfection, and having it all together, and being the great guy that was competent in everything … I think he was really driven by the desire to control the public narrative and was afraid what people would think of him if a different narrative came out.”James’ mother described her as “beautiful, independent, intelligent, kind [and] loyal”.In early October, Thijssen went to Bali. When he returned, his control over the relationship began to slip. While he was away, James spent some time with another man; she told Thijssen about it when he returned. He told her he’d slept with someone else, although there’s no evidence (experts said it was probably a lie to save face). They talked it out, James told friends, and resolved to casually but exclusively keep sleeping together until the end of term.“He gave me good advice,” James told a friend. “He didn’t think I was a bad person. I’m young and still figuring out how to make good choices … I still feel shit though.”Anna Butler, chair of the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network, said James appeared to be trying to distance herself, and Thijssen’s paternalistic lecture, combined with setting a time frame for their exclusive but casual relationship, was an attempt to re-exert control. “Lilie was trying to extricate herself from the relationship, and he manipulated her into continuing,” she told the inquest.On Thursday, October 19 in 2023 – less than a week before he killed her – they appeared to argue. Thijssen sent James a message saying, “This is what I don’t want, this relationship shit.” A CCTV camera captured an argument near the sports centre, in which he puts his hands on James’ shoulders, and later seems to push her backwards. She folds her arms defensively. They were interrupted by a student walking past (the student was edited out of the footage played to court).That night, Paul made the first of several payments he was to make to OnlyFans over the next few days. Investigators do not know what he watched.On the Friday night before she died, James was invited to a friend’s 21st party; Thijssen knew her ex would be there, and asked a mutual friend to ensure nothing happened between them. At a dinner with St Andrew’s friends, he “was stressing and checking Lilie’s location on Snapchat”, said a friend. “To me, Paul seemed a bit uneasy about her being there. I kept saying ‘you like her more than what you say if you are worried and checking on her’.”Experts say friends misinterpreted Paul Thijssen’s need to control James as showing care towards someone he loved.Credit: LinkedInTheir friends’ misinterpretation of controlling behaviour as care and concern was highlighted by domestic violence experts at the inquest. “It’s assuming that [behaviour] was coming from a place of kindness, a place of love,” said Associate Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, an expert on intimate partner homicide at Monash University. “It points to the significant need for educational awareness among young people that this can be … sinister.”James did spend time with her ex at the party. She told him that “she didn’t feel safe with [Thijssen] and was a bit ‘weirded out’ by him”, the inquest was told. They planned to talk further on Wednesday, but never got the chance.Thijssen went to pick James up at around 11pm and waited outside the party for about an hour. A different friend told him that James and her former boyfriend had spent time together. Thijssen drove James and another woman home, and “appeared annoyed, sour and very quiet”. James stayed at his place, but spent the night on his couch.The next day, he told friends she no longer wanted a sexual relationship but would confirm on Monday, possibly because he’d pressed her to reconsider. He felt she was choosing her ex over him, even though, a friend recalls, “he was implying that Lilie’s ex-boyfriend wasn’t very nice to her.“ James told friends Thijssen “didn’t seem to understand” that she wanted to break up, and “suggested they be friends with benefits, but she had tried to explain that she didn’t want to continue any sort of relationship”.At that point, counsel assisting the coroner, Jennifer Single SC, told the inquest, “the evidence indicates that Paul started exhibiting extremely concerning behaviour”. It was, said Butler, “a real tipping point, a significant loss of control for Paul”.It was around then that Thijssen appears to have resolved to kill her.Between Saturday, October 21, and the following Tuesday, Thijssen drove to James’ house in a rented GoGet car and sat outside it seven times. There’s no indication he ever tried to contact her. He took photos and notes of cars in the street, such as who appeared to own them.On Sunday, October 22, he asked a mutual friend if there were any services to give relationship advice. Domestic violence experts told the inquest that if he had followed through – if there were such a service, if his friends had known about it – it may have represented the one opportunity for intervention that could have stopped his deadly plan.On Monday, Thijssen acted as if there was nothing wrong. At about 12.40pm, he accompanied James and a mutual friend to Woolworths to buy lunch. At 2.08pm, he went to a nearby hardware store, where he was filmed choosing heavy-duty duct tape, then picking up and testing the weight of hammers, before settling on a fibreglass-handle claw model (he did not end up using that hammer in the murder).On Tuesday, Thijssen drove to Allawah train station, the stop closest to James’ house, and watched her leave the station at 6.18pm, before driving to her house and sitting outside. He then went to Diamond Bay Reserve, where he walked to the cliffs and called James, apparently apologising to her for some harsh words earlier.On Wednesday, the day of the murder, Thijssen accompanied James and a colleague to a costume store soon after midday, where they both bought things for Halloween. Footage shows James holding a red devil’s pitchfork. They were, said the friend, interacting normally.Yet at 1.30pm, Thijssen walked to a set of bathrooms next to the sports area; one disabled, one child’s, one adult. Footage shows him lunging towards the disabled and adult bathroom doors, in what Single described to the court as a dry run. He tries different hands, different positions. He visits those bathrooms three separate times over the course of the afternoon.Soon after 3pm, Thijssen accompanied James and a colleague to Priceline, where CCTV shows her smiling and relaxed. James left on a school bus to a water polo game at 3.30pm, but would be back later to change for her own match.At that point, Thijssen’s preparations began in earnest. He went home to fetch his flatmate’s hammer, the one police believe he used. After other staff left, he returned to the bathrooms with a backpack, and put a cleaning sign in front of the adult bathroom to ensure James used the disabled one, which had no lock. At 7.11pm, Thijssen met James in the school foyer and walked with her to the staffroom, where she fetched a swimming costume before choosing the disabled toilet to get changed.Still of CCTV vision showing Paul Thijssen outside the bathroom when Lilie James is inside.She entered at 7.12pm. “Your honour may have noticed how Lilie was smiling and interacting with Paul [before she went inside],” Single told the inquest. “There was little or no indication as to what he was going to do.” He waited outside the door for two minutes, fidgeting with the hammer, before lunging inside. The attack was so brutal, police who arrived several hours later – alerted by a triple zero call about a body, made by Thijssen – did not recognise her.The inquest was told the attack “would have resulted in Lilie’s becoming incapacitated quickly and was not protracted”. Still, Thijssen stayed there for an hour and 12 minutes.He did not seem emotionally dysregulated. He did not pace the room. There seemed to be no blood on his clothes as he left. He calmly texted James’ father from her phone, asking him to pick her up. “That does not suggest to me that he was in any way, shape or form highly distressed or dysregulated emotionally,” said Seidler. The brutality of the attack may have been deliberate, rather than the result of a loss of control. “The alternative hypothesis was it was quite calculated and done so there was no possibility that she was still alive,” said Seidler.Thijssen drove to Diamond Bay reserve. As he sat in the car, one of his St Andrew’s friends sent him a message about a uni quiz, and a snapshot of her face. He sent a picture back. “He looked a bit blank,” she said. “He did not look like he was worried or was in trouble or anything.” At 11.15pm, he walked towards the reserve with his backpack. At 11.48pm, he rang triple zero to alert them to a body at St Andrew’s. He returned to his car for a few moments, CCTV shows, then disappeared.He is believed to have jumped from the cliff in the moments before or after midnight.LoadingPolice rushed there, and missed him by three minutes. They found his backpack, some clothes, and the handmade vouchers from his former girlfriend. He had kept them for two years.James’ family will never know why Thijssen killed her. He didn’t leave any hints, and much of the pair’s correspondence went with him over the cliff. His parents said his life had derailed in the years before his death, but would not say why. It’s been left to experts in domestic violence and criminal psychology to guess at reasons. They agree that there was little that could have been done; he didn’t hint at his plans to anyone, and neither James nor anyone around her knew of his worrying past.The experts point to Thijssen’s overriding need for control, both of James and – perhaps more powerfully – of the role she unwittingly played in the way he wanted the world to see him. “At its foundational level, this is a man who couldn’t cope with how he was feeling, and he neutralised that threat by killing another person,” said Seidler. Danny Sullivan, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, agreed. “It can only be taken that he had formed a hatred of Ms James based upon the fact that she had rejected him, and he punished her by killing her.” Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
