Disturbing new footage from the inquest into the death of Lilie James shows her one-time partner Paul Thijssen rehearsing her murder.
The murder took place on the night of October 25, 2023, at St Andrew’s Cathedral School.
In the CCTV videos released by the NSW Coroner’s Court, one shows Thijssen buying a Mitre 10 hammer and making a practice swing with it, while another shows him practising to barge through the school bathroom door.
James had just ended a five-week relationship with Thijssen before he bashed her to death with a hammer.
In the Mitre 10 footage, Thijssen is seen practicing swings with different hammers, but the one he bought did not become the murder weapon, instead opting for a rubber-handled hammer from his sharehouse toolkit.
The court also released an image of Thijssen standing outside the bathroom door moments before the attack.
While the footage of Thijssen barging into the bathroom for the final time was not made public, the image shows a yellow cleaning sign, used to corral James into the unlockable disabled bathroom.
In the days after Thijssen bought the hammer, footage also captured him following James at a train station in Allawah.
He drove a GoGet hire car, a silver Toyota Yaris, and waited for an hour at the station until his victim got off.
It was the fifth of seven instances of Thijssen stalking James, the inquest revealed.
The other six cases involved Thijssen driving directly to her home, making note of coming and going cars, and taking photos of her property on a secondary phone.
The audio of his Triple-0 call made hours after the brutal killing was also published.
During the call, he told the emergency operator there was a body in the school’s sports department.
He told the operator it was a female and that he did not know who it was.
When asked for his name, he said: “I’d rather not disclose”.
After he hung up, emergency dispatch tried to ring Thijssen three more times before arriving at Diamond Bay in Vaucluse at 12.02am on October 26, just three minutes after he had approached the cliff.
Thijssen and James worked together at the St Andrew’s school as sports coaches and had a five-week relationship.
After James made it clear she wanted to end the relationship, forensic psychologist Katie Seidler suggested Thijssen began “frantic efforts to avoid abandonment”.
“This was not a man who was out of control,” Dr Seidler said. “I think he was very afraid that his carefully constructed public narrative was going to fall apart.
“I think he really struggled with the idea of how people would view him if Ms James rejected him and ended the relationship, and potentially spoke about that with other people who might make comments.
“I think he really struggled to cope with … a stain on his perfectly constructed and ultimately fake reputation.”
