Coral's mother blames drugs for death of her daughter

By BRIDGET CARTER

Eight-year-old Storm Burrows still feels for the murderer of his little sister Coral-Ellen, says his mother, Jeanna Cremen.

He even wanted to give Steve Williams a Christmas present, she says, because her son feels "everyone deserves a Christmas. Even if he took our Coral".

Jeanna says before Williams became the killer of her "baby" Coral-Ellen, she saw him as a gentle, kind-hearted, intelligent father - a role model and caring parent to her three children.

Williams cooked dinner while she looked after the children. When he cracked his jokes, he made the whole family laugh.

Coral-Ellen would cuddle him and sit on his knee and clearly adored Williams.

He taught her to spell and constantly helped her and big brother Storm with their homework.

But Williams developed an ugly, disturbing addiction to the drug pure methamphetamine three weeks before he killed Coral-Ellen.

Jeanna, who asked to be called by her first name, said it was the addiction and his association with drug dealers in Featherston that caused him to go on to murder her 6-year-old daughter.

"Drugs is what killed my baby," she said, adding that she learned of Williams' addiction only after Coral-Ellen's murder.

From her Featherston home yesterday, Jeanna spoke to the Weekend Herald about Williams, the man she once loved, and who this week was sentenced to life imprisonment with a 15-year non-parole term.

Jeanna said she listened carefully to the sentencing on Thursday and thought the judge who sentenced Williams was very understanding.

Justice John Wild had told Jeanna that she was in no way to blame for what had happened to Coral-Ellen, saying there was "nothing to warn you that anything like this might happen".

But she says it does not matter what sentence Williams was given, because nothing is going to bring back her baby girl.

Jeanna says she knows Williams is remorseful for what he has done, but she does not want to speak to him.

The whole thing has been "pretty heart-breaking really," says Jeanna, but she is now trying to move on, taking things day by day.

She spends hours in the big vegetable garden at her parents' house, but most of her time is spent looking after Luke, her son with Williams.

At Christmastime, she spent three weeks with her other son, Storm, now living with his dad, Ron Burrows, who is fighting for full custody of the boy.

During the holidays, Jeanna, Storm and the family went fishing, built a swimming hole, and Jeanna taught him how to play chess.

Her feelings for Williams have changed. She says he was a very clever, manipulative person, and drugs made him lose his cool.

"I loved Steve, but I no longer love him."

While Jeanna's feelings have changed, Williams sits in jail longing for her. His mother, Robyn, told the Weekend Herald her son still loved his former partner dearly.

Jeanna met Williams while riding horses at a local race track shortly after Ron Burrows, Coral-Ellen's father, left in September 1997.

The pair were friends for almost five years before they began a relationship in early 2002. Shortly afterwards he moved in with her at Woodward St, where they lived together for 15 months.

Things went well until the last few weeks before Coral-Ellen was murdered in September last year.

Williams had taken drugs before, but there had never been problems, and at one stage he planned to leave town and get a job away from the local drug scene.

Jeanna also admits to having tried P once, but did not like it and did not take it again.

She says she believes now that Williams became hooked on drugs in August last year when she went into hospital to give birth to Luke.

Days after Luke was born, Williams smashed up their car.

At the time, she had no idea Williams was on P - he was sleeping, cooking dinner, driving the children to school.

But he was secretly smoking it in the shower or the toilet.

When Jeanna came out of hospital, a man started coming to the house, intimidating the family.

She says she did not know it at the time, but Williams owed the man money for P.

One of the last happy memories was the night before Coral-Ellen was killed, when Williams was at home minding the children and he pricked his finger changing Luke's cloth nappy.

Coral-Ellen got the disposable nappy off her teddy bear to help.

She showed him how to put it on Luke, while Williams jokingly pretended to put it on backwards.

The next morning, when Williams was still supposedly high on P, Jeanna says, he was "a happy clown".

Williams told Storm and Coral-Ellen to kiss her goodbye before they went to school.

Coral complained about Storm getting the front seat, so Williams promised Coral the front seat on the way home.

When Jeanna discovered that afternoon that Coral-Ellen had not been at school, she confronted Williams.

"I said to him: 'Now she went through that gate, didn't she?'

"He said, 'Yes'."

Never, in the early stages of Coral-Ellen's disappearance, did she doubt Williams was telling the truth.

"I wasn't thinking about Steve, I was thinking about Coral," she says.

"I trusted him."

Williams had joined the search for Coral-Ellen.

For two nights then, Jeanna says, he lay on his bed sobbing and saying, "I don't know where she is".

Then the evidence began to point to Williams.

"I thought, 'How can he hurt my baby?'," she says.

"To know someone you provided for and trusted would do such a heinous thing."

As far as she is concerned, Luke does not have a father, but one day he may want to see him.

Echoing the words of Justice Wild during the sentencing of Williams, Jeanna says she hopes the horrible tragedy, which she would not wish on her worst enemy, will warn people away from the dangers of the drug P.

"I just want people to be aware," she says.

"Half the time I didn't know he was on it. He was still eating, sleeping and looking after the children.

"It is a very, very addictive drug."

Herald Feature: The P epidemic