[This is an ABC podcast]

 

Magistrate: State your name and date of birth for the record please.

Tara Costigan: It's Tara Maria Costigan, it's the 19th of the eighth, 1986.

Magistrate: And you're bringing an application for an interim domestic violence order this morning against Marcus Rappel, is that correct?

Tara Costigan: Yes.

Alice Brennan: Hi there, I'm Alice Brennan, and you're listening to Background Briefing.

This week's story begins on a Friday morning, February 2015. ABC court reporter Elizabeth Byrne is leaving the ACT Magistrates Court.

Elizabeth Byrne: I look back and I see a woman with long blonde hair walking through security with her tiny baby. I noticed her I think because the baby was so young.

Magistrate: And tell me why you're bringing this application today.

Tara Costigan: Because I'm constantly getting abusive messages and there's been a lot of verbal abuse throughout our relationship and I'm fearful that he could come to my house at any time and be abusive.

Alice Brennan: So this is the first time you've seen Tara Costigan?

Elizabeth Byrne: Yes, and little do I know it at the time, but I'll get to know this case really, really well over the next three years. She's at the court seeking an interim domestic violence order.

Alice Brennan: Susan McDonald, you've also followed this case very closely and you've worked together with Elizabeth Byrne to tell Tara Costigan's story. What happened after Elizabeth saw Tara at the courthouse that day?

Susan McDonald: Tara applies for the DVO...

Magistrate: You are seeking to have your daughter placed on the order, what are your concerns for her?

Susan McDonald: This is just seven days after giving birth to her baby.

Tara Costigan: That he could just take her away.

Alice Brennan: And the following day she was dead?

Susan McDonald: That's right, Marcus Rappel, her ex-partner, killed her with an axe, and this was while she was cradling their baby.

Alice Brennan: So this was the first act of actual physical violence by Rappel against Tara. It came at the end of a relationship that family and friends had recognised as being full of controlling behaviour, intimidation, threats, shouting, text messages.

Elizabeth Byrne: Yes, that's right, and no one in either family expected that verbal aggression would turn so quickly into lethal physical aggression.

Susan McDonald: But here's the thing, we found out that it's actually a common pattern in domestic violence murders. And speciality domestic violence workers are trained to look out for these signs.

Alice Brennan: So it's possible that Tara just might not have had access to the right people at the right time?

Susan McDonald: Well, we wanted to investigate what Tara's death tells us about domestic violence, and in particular the way that coercive and controlling behaviour can escalate to end in murder, and whether we're any better at responding to that kind of thing now in the ACT.

Elizabeth Byrne: And just a warning, some of this material will be confronting and upsetting.

Alice Brennan: If raises any issues for you, remember you can always call 1800 Respect, they're a domestic and family violence counselling service ready to take your calls 24/7, that number is 1800 737 732.

Maria Costigan: So I'll get another photo of her out, I've got plenty of photos of her. This is the Tara that we know, that cheekiness, and this one here. Tara would always be hanging off my mum, always.

Elizabeth Byrne: Tara Costigan didn't have a conventional start to life. Her father died when she was seven years old, she was estranged from her mother and she was mostly raised by her grandmother.

Maria Costigan: There was just something about her, everyone loved her

Elizabeth Byrne: Her aunt, Maria Costigan, was more like a mother to Tara. Tara had many half-siblings and a large extended family.

Maria Costigan: She was very attractive, bubbly, and she always had kids hanging off her.

Susan McDonald: She became a mum at 16, and took her parenting very seriously.

Maria Costigan: As soon as she became pregnant with her first son she changed, she changed completely, she just became that...had that mothering instinct and she stopped doing all those things that she was doing as a teenager.

Susan McDonald: She worked shifts as a carer to ensure her two boys had every opportunity; swimming, dancing and football.

Maria Costigan: For a long time she had three jobs, she gave the boys the best of the best, she was very independent.

Elizabeth Byrne: And then she met Marcus Rappel.

Maria Costigan: She was just in awe of him, she absolutely adored him. She just fell for him hook, line and sinker. Whenever they were there she was always on his lap, they just clung together and, you know, he came across as a really nice guy and everyone liked him.

Sister: When he met Tara it was sort of like a breath of fresh air for him, and I thought wow she's really good for him and he seemed really happy again and thought, wow, he can start a new life again.

Elizabeth Byrne: So obviously you all really liked Tara?

All: Yes...

Elizabeth Byrne: Marcus Rappel came from a loving family; his two sisters and his mother. They're speaking to Background Briefing and this is their first ever media interview. We won't be naming them.

Mother: Marcus loved the family environment and he was very good with her boys, he would take them to sporting things, teach them fishing and canoeing...oh they went to the snow and had a nice time there. He was happy to be involved with them, that was what he craved, his family.

Susan McDonald: When Tara fell pregnant, the couple were delighted. There's a photo from Facebook of Tara and Marcus kissing. There are balloons and a pink sign above them, saying 'It's a girl'. They look really happy. Rappel is tanned and strong, from his work as a bricklayer.

Sister 1: I think it started out really well, I think it was pretty passionate as well.

Sister 2: You could always tell with Marcus because he was always a hand-holder or, you know, he'd always sort of…you know, he was quite an attentive boyfriend, you know, he showed his love publicly.

Elizabeth Byrne: But behind closed doors, all was not as it seemed. The couple began to fight, and Marcus Rappel's behaviour deteriorated into a pattern of verbal rages. What started as a great love descended into violence and ultimately death.

Susan McDonald: How it came to that end raises questions about how authorities handle domestic violence, whether the systems are set up to deal with situations like Tara's, where the violence is largely emotional and verbal.

Elizabeth Byrne: And how is danger assessed in a situation like this? Could anything have saved Tara Costigan?

Susan McDonald: Okay, so we're heading out to Tara's old house in Tuggeranong. Not this one, the next one…

Elizabeth Byrne: Yeah, starting to look familiar now…

Well, it's been a long time since I've been in this street, it's all very quiet today. It's such a pretty area, I'd forgotten that when I was here last time, obviously because of why I was here.

Susan McDonald: We've been looking at this case quite closely for a while now, is it as shocking, as brutal as what it was back then?

Elizabeth Byrne: I think it's more so, the more I find out about what happened to Tara, what was going on in the lead-up to it, the more horrible it is.

Susan McDonald: How's it different to what it was like on the day that you were here?

Elizabeth Byrne: Well, then it was all cordoned off by police tape and there was a big police truck here and lots of police around, and going in and out of Tara's house there were a lot of forensic officers.

Responder: Ambulance Emergency. What address?

Rikki Schmidt: Duggan Street, my sister's been hit in the neck with an axe…

Responder: Can you repeat for me, tell me when you've done that.

Rikki Schmidt: [Unclear] Oh my God! She's gonna die! Can you please hurry up?

Responder: You need to pull yourself together and help your sister.

Elizabeth Byrne: Just three hours before this phone call, Marcus Rappel had picked up Tara's interim DVO from the Canberra City Police Station. The order was the catalyst for a chain of events which sent him into a blind rage. He drove to Bunnings and bought an axe for $85, then drove to Tara's house, but he didn't go in straight away. CCTV footage shows his white work ute lapping the block 11 times.

Susan McDonald: Rappel's sister called him in the car as he circled.

Sister 1: It was just angry screaming, out of control, really not being able to understand. I'm like, 'Calm down, we'll sort it out.' 'You can't!' Scream, scream, scream, you know, it was just…and I could hear his car revving and I thought he's going to drive into a tree, that's all I could think of was he was going to drive over a cliff or into a tree or something like that, and I think I was just trying to calm him down and I couldn't.

Elizabeth Byrne: And you've said the phone went quiet?

Sister 1: The phone...I could hear the car still running but no Marcus and I thought, oh my god, he's had a stroke, that's how badly he was screaming. I actually thought he's had a stroke or a heart attack or something because he just disappeared, but the phone was still going, so I literally think that he's just dropped the phone and just left the car.

Elizabeth Byrne: And then you rang Tara's number?

Sister 1: And then I rang Tara's number and I said... I didn't get her, which concerned me because she always answered her phone, she always had her phone nearby, and so of course my heart started pounding and I just started freaking out thinking, oh my god, lock your door, Marc is just really, really angry, and he was angry with her for the DVO. I couldn't stop him, I couldn't reason with him and I couldn't talk him down from his anger.

Susan McDonald: Rappel left the car, took his axe, and smashed Tara's front door.

Rikki Schmidt: I heard a smash of a window or something and I thought it might have been the boys kicking a ball, put it through the window and they would get in trouble for it, but once I walked out it wasn't until I seen the boys running towards me, screaming…

Elizabeth Byrne: Tara's sister Rikki was living with her, helping out with the newborn.

Rikki told ABC 7:30 reporter Madeleine Morris she saw Rappel chasing Tara down the hall.

Rikki Schmidt: I seen Marcus behind her. I didn't see what he had until she was right next to me, so I reached out to grab her to pull her forward because she had her daughter in her arms, and I didn't want her to get hurt, so I pulled Tara forward, and I thought I was quick enough. And as I had my arms near Tara he swung and hit us both, and that's what happened to my finger, and that's when Tara had got the injury to her neck. It wasn't until I seen what he had and his face was when everything went really dark.

Madeleine Morris: Everything went really dark?

Rikki Schmidt: Yep, I didn't...until I seen his face I knew that he was a completely different person, I didn't know that person.

Madeleine Morris: And what was his face like?

Rikki Schmidt: Pure evil…it looked like he wanted to hurt her.

Susan McDonald: Marcus swung the axe twice. The second blow severed Tara's spine, cutting the vertebral artery at the base of her neck.

Responder: How did it happen?

Rikki Schmidt: Can you just can you please hurry up, my sister's...

Responder: This is all part of the process that everyone has to go through when they call us, can you please explain to me how it happened.

Rikki Schmidt: No, please, we don't have time…[unclear] axe....

Responder: You said she's awake and talking and breathing normally?

Susan McDonald: Within minutes of being struck Tara was dead, murdered by Marcus Rappel in front of her two boys aged 9 and 11, all while she was cradling their new baby.

Rikki Schmidt: I told her that her boys were fine and that they were safe and that she didn't have to worry about them cause I'd look after them, and I told her that they loved her and that I did too, and it was a few seconds after that she mumbled something but I couldn't work out what it was, and then it was probably not even a minute after that that she took her last breath.

Newsreader: Canberra Police are investigating a suspected murder in Tuggeranong's south. Officers were called to a disturbance at a home in Calwell just before five o'clock this afternoon. They found the body of a woman inside and arrested a man who was also at the house in Duggan Street.

Elizabeth Byrne: As news of Tara's murder spread, people were shocked and angry. Her death was even mentioned in federal parliament.

Tanya Plibersek: Tara hoped that the company of her family, the provisions of the law, the resources of her government would protect her. They did not.

Susan McDonald: And people started asking the obvious question: how did this happen? Marcus Rappel had been verbally abusive and controlling, but he'd never actually beaten her.

Elizabeth Byrne: There were no bruises to hide or injuries, but this was still domestic violence, and both families had noticed it. Tara's sister Rikki saw the escalation of Rappel's behaviour.

Rikki Schmidt: One fight he was cracking his knuckles and he said along the lines of, 'If you don't stop talking, that'll be the last thing you do.' That was one. And after that he's said a few other things and just started biting at her, just...

Madeleine Morris: So he threatened to kill her?

Rikki Schmidt: Not necessarily, not in them words. He threatened to hit her once, but I've never heard that he was going to kill her, never, not once have I heard that.

Susan McDonald: Tara's aunt Maria Costigan started being concerned about the relationship six weeks into it. She welcomed Background Briefing into her home for her first interview since Tara's death.

Maria Costigan: She said, 'When he's good, he's great,' which I think is quite a common thing that people will say. He did dote on her, he did do a lot of wonderful things, but he was insanely jealous, insanely jealous, and that created a lot of problems.

Susan McDonald: Why do you think she stuck around and stuck by him?

Maria Costigan: I think Tara hated being by herself and she loved to be loved, and when he was his loving self, he provided her with everything that she needed. And she thought maybe if he got a little bit of help with his night-time rages, that maybe she could help him, maybe she could make him better. But I think he got worse. He just was an angry, paranoid person.

Elizabeth Byrne: Maria explained to us what those 'night-time rages' involved.

Maria Costigan: I remember the eldest boy saying at one stage, 'I put the pillow over my head but I could still hear them, I put the blanket over my head and I could still hear them.' They fought, arguing non-stop. He was forever accusing her of being a liar. His paranoia I think escalated over time and the arguments became more and more heated. There was no physical abuse, it was definitely emotional, but I think he just became emotionally controlling of her and then started isolating her from her friends first and then isolating her from her family.

Susan McDonald: How did that play out?

Maria Costigan: So towards the end of November, December, the year before she passed away, I received this long text from Tara telling me that I was undermining her authority as a parent and that she wasn't going to have anything more to do with me. I was gobsmacked. I couldn't believe it, and then suddenly she just cut all communication to myself. I'd done nothing wrong, as far as I was concerned. And after I received that message I had little contact with her for about two months. It was horrible, it was horrible being isolated from her, it was like one of my children cutting me off, you could just not imagine it.

Elizabeth Byrne: At this time Rappel was also struggling with drug abuse. He'd been using steroids and then ice. This escalated his rages. Tara turned to his family for help.

Sister 1: I think from Tara's point of view she wanted us to help him because she couldn't help him, she really wanted to help him.

Sister 2: She wanted him to get help and she said, 'I love the guy I fell in love with but I don't like who he is at the moment,' and we're like, yeah well, neither do we.

Susan McDonald: Was he an angry person before he started taking drugs?

Sister 2: I don't think he was an overly angry person. He probably got really cranky about stuff occasionally but he got over it, and he didn't sort of act out physically I wouldn't say, like…he never hit anybody.

Susan McDonald: But the rages continued. Tara and Marcus split up and he moved out. He hooked up with his old girlfriend, the mother of his first child, and he got her pregnant again.

Meanwhile, Tara was about to have his child too. She feared for her family's safety and she was heavily pregnant, she decided to her local police station and then the court, seeking advice about taking out a Domestic Violence Order. But she went into labour while she was organising the paperwork.

After the birth, Rappel was still hostile towards Tara's family, and sent this text to her grandmother:

'JINGLE BELLS, NANNA SMELLS, MARCUS FLEW AWAY. FORGOT TO STICK HIS COCK IN A SOCK AND NOW ONE'S ON THE WAY, YOU CONNIVING OLD BAT.'

Elizabeth Byrne: So things were still ugly…

Susan McDonald: They were, and it was this text which helped Tara decide she needed to take some kind action to protect her family.

Elizabeth Byrne: And despite all of this, she made it clear she didn't intend to shut him out, and she had his interests at heart. We know this because of a series of texts she sent to him.

Susan McDonald: That's right, like this one:

'I will be going tomorrow to put a temporary DVO in place until you get yourself some help. This will not mean you cannot see [your daughter] but it will mean when you see her it will be a controlled environment. Once you get help and sort yourself out, I will be happy to lift it.'

Elizabeth Byrne: But Rappel never did sort himself out. In fact, the week he killed Tara he had taken steroids.

Susan McDonald: And Tara's fears were validated by the court when she filed the DVO.

Magistrate: There appears from the evidence before me to be significant emotional violence towards Ms Costigan during the period of her relationship with the respondent, and this has continued post her relationship.

Elizabeth Byrne: But Rappel was convinced Tara was conspiring against him.

Sister 1: He was absolutely stuck on it that this stemmed from women taking his children away from him, telling lies to take his children away, I think in his head that was the crux of how all this fell apart.

Susan McDonald: Even at his sentencing two years after he killed Tara, Rappel was still raging, blaming the whole thing on that DVO.

[Audio: Marcus shouting in court]

Man: …on the part of the deceased to return your property.

Marcus Rappel: Not my property, my daughter, it was my daughter!

Man: If you cannot be quiet I'll have you removed…

Susan McDonald: Rappel had to be moved to another courtroom because of this angry outburst.

Marcus Rappel: He's called me a fuckin' liar! At least I'll have my say. Rights for fathers!

Elizabeth Byrne: He pleaded guilty to murdering Tara Costigan and was sentenced to 32 years and two months in prison.

Okay, so we're off to see Shane Drumgold, the prosecutor. He's been very busy the last few years, and he's got a hobby that he uses to let off steam after some of the harder cases, which is boxing.

Shane Drumgold pieced together the case against Marcus Rappel.

You've had quite a few of the more serious murders and horrible cases over the last few years, does this help you to deal with it?

Shane Drumgold: Oh look, it's a fantastic stress release, it really is, just something different, it's remarkably mindful, so a lot of the clutter in your head declutters and a lot of things sort of makes sense after a session.

Elizabeth Byrne: Shane Drumgold went through a year of Tara's text messages to form a picture of what was going on.

Shane Drumgold: There was certainly no evidence that she was anything other than a loving, caring mother of two children and then of three children and they dominated her thought processes. All of the evidence made it clear that that was her dominant focus.

Elizabeth Byrne: The texts were also a window into the couple's relationship, and Rappel's paranoia.

Shane Drumgold: I think if you were advising someone who found themself in a bad relationship with potential harm consequences and you advised them what to do...what Tara did from that point could really form a textbook on what to do. She did everything that you should do, at the time you should do it, and at the same time remaining compassionate. And I think what struck home to people is if the combined resources of our community couldn't keep her safe, that's worthy of us looking at this situation, that's worthy of us looking at the resources that might be available to somebody who might not be as rational and logical as Tara or who might not be as intelligent as Tara.

Susan McDonald: So, Elizabeth, Shane got me thinking about the steps that Tara took to get help. I spoke to a contact who mentioned Tara had been seeing a counsellor. Did that come up in court at all?

Elizabeth Byrne: Well, Susan, I didn't notice it at the time, but when I went back through the court documents I did find a reference and there's a text message that Tara sent Marcus, it says:

'Yes I said I would put a DVO on you as well if you came near me. It is what I have been advised to do by a social worker at the hospital because you scare the hell out of me.'

Susan McDonald: So she was getting professional advice. But we don't know exactly what was said, or whether there was any sort of risk assessment?

Elizabeth Byrne: And that's where it gets tricky, to get to the bottom of whether she got the right advice. But it's clear Tara did expect Rappel to get very upset, and that's because his ex-partner who had his first child had taken out an earlier DVO, and he'd always been open about how that made him feel, which was very, very angry.

Susan McDonald: Okay, and do you think that the existence of the earlier DVO might have made a difference to the advice Tara received?

Elizabeth Byrne: It's impossible to say, but it may well have in the hands of a specialist domestic violence adviser.

Susan McDonald: We now know there were actually two frontline workers, both of them urged Tara to take out a DVO, but she didn't end up seeing a specialist domestic violence counsellor, as far as we know.

Elizabeth Byrne: The second frontline worker was a police officer at Tara's local station. Her Aunt Maria was with her.

Maria Costigan: He told her that there was fairly good history and ongoing domestic violence, even though it had not escalated to physical, she definitely had enough information to get a DVO and that she needed to do it because she needed some peace in her life before having a baby. That's what sealed it for her, the fact that he advised her for her own safety and for the safety of the boys and her unborn child, at that stage, that she really needs to do it. Because it was something she desperately didn't want to do.

Susan McDonald: Why didn't she want to do it?

Maria Costigan: She just didn't want to hurt him. He'd had a DVO on him before, she didn't want to upset him. She just wanted to make him happy, but it didn't matter what she did, it didn't make him happy anyhow. But she desperately didn't want to do it.

Susan McDonald: And the police officer did ask Tara how she thought Marcus Rappel might react.

Maria Costigan: Yeah, he did ask that question and she really wasn't a hundred percent sure how he would react. She didn't believe that he would react physically. She believed that he would be very, very verbal, and I think she was concerned that there could be a small amount of physical-ness but not to the extent that it was. I think she was more concerned regarding the texting and the emailing more than anything else.

Elizabeth Byrne: But this information in the hands of a specially trained domestic violence worker could have made all the difference.

Canberra's Domestic Violence Crisis Service received 26,000 calls to its hotline last year. It's staggering when you think that's in a city of around 400,000 people.

Mirjana Wilson: Every time that crisis line rings you brace yourself for what is it that's going to be on the other end of that.

Elizabeth Byrne: But the Service's executive director Mirjana Wilson says back in 2015, Tara's case wasn't on their books.

Susan McDonald: We know that Tara was seeing a counsellor of some sort, was she engaged with the system?

Mirjana Wilson: Not to our knowledge, not to our knowledge.

Elizabeth Byrne: Mirjana Wilson says if Tara had been engaged in the system, the danger in Marcus Rappel's abuse might have been recognised.

Mirjana Wilson: I do really strongly believe in that you cannot suggest to someone that they take action against a person who is their abuser without having that next conversation which is; what's it going to be like when you tell him? In her case she's told him upfront, he knew it was coming, he clearly escalated, I mean we've seen all of that play out now. I think that we probably would have, if we had had that conversation, would have suggested that if she was able to identify that there was some clear safety concerns around how he might react, she may not even know that, that we would have offered for her to be somewhere else in that intervening time

Elizabeth Byrne: But Tara's Aunt Maria's not convinced.

Maria Costigan: Yeah, I'm not sure whether she would have actually chosen to do that because I don't believe that she thought she was in the danger that she was actually in. I don't think any of us ever thought that it would ever have come to that, never.

Susan McDonald: And that's the problem.

A 2016 review into family violence deaths in the ACT found many of the people killed hadn't actually experienced physical abuse in the lead-up to their deaths. Even if it's not common knowledge, this escalation is well recognised by specialist domestic violence counsellors; the possibility that coercive and controlling behaviours, not necessarily physical, could turn lethal. That same review also found that most victims had contact with some sort of health professional, even if it had nothing to do with the abuse itself. That means an opportunity to intervene is just often missed.

Jo Wood: I'm Jo Wood, I'm the ACT's first Coordinator-General for Family Safety.

Elizabeth Byrne: Jo Wood's been meeting workers from areas like housing, justice, community services and health to pinpoint what's wrong with the system and how to fix it.

Her office was created after a cluster of domestic violence murders in 2015, including Tara's. These cases threw the ACT government into action. Emotional, psychological and economic abuse is now explicitly defined as family violence in the law.

Jo Wood's office receives funding from a $30 a year levy charged to ACT ratepayers, kind of like the federal government's Medicare levy.

Susan McDonald: For many victims, frontline workers in places like the hospital are the first point of contact. Do you think the new system, the way you envisage it, the changes that you see, would that have helped Tara?

Jo Wood: Where people seek help in the first instance may not be the family violence crisis service, so we need a whole range of different professionals across our system to have a really good understanding of domestic and family violence. So we have been developing a whole-of-government training strategy, looking at the ACT government frontline workforce, and we in our insights-gathering did hear from a number of people who did seek help from a health professional. In some cases they got someone that understood the issue and could connect them with the right kind of expert support, but in other cases they didn't get that kind of response.

Susan McDonald: Policy makers as high up as the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recognise that training those most likely to come in contact with victims first is a key priority. At the moment family violence training is patchy. The ACT government has dedicated three-quarters of a million dollars for new training for frontline staff 18 months ago, but so far nothing's been spent.

Jo Wood: We are developing a whole-of-government strategy because we do really want this to be embedded and build capability that will continued into the future, so that strategy is currently in development and that training will be rolled out this calendar year.

Susan McDonald: So people like hospital social workers, they will be getting that training?

Jo Wood: Yes, those kind of workers will be a high priority for early training.

Elizabeth Byrne: It's all too late for Tara. The question remains; would anything have kept her safe?

Mirjana Wilson: Maybe not, because the bit that is really difficult here is that no victim can control some other person's behaviour.

Shane Drumgold: Marcus Rappel could have stopped Marcus Rappel. There's certainly nothing that Tara Costigan could have done to stop Marcus Rappel.

Susan McDonald: Rappel's family is still struggling to make sense of how he became an axe murderer.

Sister 2: I don't think he knows.

Mother: He doesn't know…why it happened.

Sister 2: I don't really think he knows, I think he just snapped, he just had a…

Sister 1: I think he had a psychotic break.

Elizabeth Byrne: Have you talked to him about this in jail?

Sister 1: Oh yeah absolutely.

Sister 2: He's gutted for the boys.

Mother: He's devastated.

Sister 2: He's like, 'I can't believe I've taken their mother away,' that's his biggest, if he could bring her back and go…

Sister 1: All the kids. He's said on numerous occasions, 'There's only one person that should have died that day and that was me.'

Mother: We do not make excuses for what he did.

Sister 2: There are no excuses for what happened.

Mother: It should have never have happened. We don't condone it, we're all mortified and so is he. And our lives…

Sister 2: There are no excuses, but there definitely are reasons and there definitely are things that contribute to these situations, and we don't want to see this happen to someone else.

Susan McDonald: Meanwhile, the Costigan family has turned their tragedy into a campaign to help others.

Elizabeth Byrne: Hi Nathan, I'm Elizabeth Byrne from the ABC, how are you?

Nathan Costigan: Yeah, good, how are you?

Elizabeth Byrne: Nice to see you.

Nathan Costigan: You too.

Elizabeth Byrne: I see you've got the truck here from the Tara Costigan Foundation?

Nathan Costigan: Yes, sure do, it gets its weekend work every now and again when we come and help some of our clients out.

Elizabeth Byrne: Tara's cousin Nathan helped set up a foundation in her name. It provides a caseworker to help victims rebuild their lives.

Nathan Costigan: For some of them it's a garden, for others we try and find emergency accommodation for their pets, clothes for their kids. Some days we need to take someone to court, another day we'll take her out to lunch and just sit down and have a chat and say, hey, what is it that we can do to help you?

Elizabeth Byrne: Nathan's a footy player with tattoos. He helps clients with gardening, but he really focuses on helping children.

Nathan Costigan: These are the kids that we're trying to break the cycle, there's nothing more exciting than seeing a kid smiling at a park or getting good grades at school or playing really good footy because we gave them the opportunity.

Elizabeth Byrne: Did you know much about domestic violence before you embarked on this?

Nathan Costigan: Pretty much nothing. I remember reading the Rosie Batty article in the newspaper and much like my reaction to Tara's murder, I thought that doesn't happen in real life, humans aren't capable of doing such disgusting things. But I was wrong.

Elizabeth Byrne: On reflection do you still feel angry with him?

Nathan Costigan: Some days I wish that we had the death penalty and we could just hang him and we wouldn't have to worry about him in 35 years coming out of jail and trying to hurt someone else in the family. And then the other side of me thinks, well, let's get some reform in, let's try and make him into a good person.

Elizabeth Byrne: Rappel's mother and sisters have settled into a grim routine, taking the long drive out to Canberra's jail to visit him regularly.

Susan McDonald: Tara Costigan's daughter is three now, and her sons are 12 and 14. They're all living with relatives and by all accounts doing well.

Elizabeth Byrne: Marcus Rappel will be eligible for parole in 2041.

Susan McDonald: Background Briefing's sound engineer this week is Isabella Tropiano, our sound producer is Leila Shunnar.

Elizabeth Byrne: Production by Brendan King, and our series producer Jess O'Callaghan.

Susan McDonald: Our executive producer is Alice Brennan.

Elizabeth Byrne: This program's been a co-production by ABC Canberra and Background Briefing. I'm Elizabeth Byrne.

Susan McDonald: And I'm Susan McDonald.

© Australian Broadcasting Corporation