Parents mourn loss of second daughter

Photo / Getty Images

SYDNEY - The final act in a searing family tragedy has been played out with the death in prison of a mentally ill woman who killed her younger sister after rows about internet access and a hair straightener.

Kathleen Worrall, 22, who suffered from a rare, mood-altering hormonal disorder, tucked three knives into her dressing gown belt and attacked Susan, 18, as she came out of the bathroom of their Sydney home, stabbing her more than 50 times.

She had bought one of the knives at Kmart, and researched on the internet how best to kill her sister quickly: sever her carotid artery.

Sentenced in June to six years in jail after pleading guilty to manslaughter, Worrall was found dead in the cell of her prison northwest of Sydney on Sunday morning.

It is believed she died of natural causes.

Her parents, John and Maureen, were on their way to visit her, and the news was broken to them by the prison governor when they arrived.

The Crown accepted Worrall's guilty plea on the grounds she was suffering from "an abnormality of the mind" - the result of stopping taking medication for her condition, congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

Born with the condition, which leads to the production of excess testosterone, she had grown self-conscious about the weight gain caused by the hormone replacement drugs. In a letter to the court, Worrall - at the time of the killing an arts student at the Australian National University - described herself and Susan as the best of friends, and "like two halves of a whole".

But a few days before the fatal attack in 2008 the sisters came to blows over a hair straightener.

Worrall told a friend she was going to murder Susan, a high school student, then changed her mind - then changed it back again after discovering her sibling had changed the password on the family computer.

In a reflection of her mental turmoil, she telephoned her father straight after the attack, telling him: "Daddy, I've stabbed Susan, I've got blood all over me." Then, after she was arrested, she told a friend: "I'm glad the bitch is dead."

Justice Elizabeth Fullerton accepted that, essentially, she loved her sister and was deeply remorseful.

Her parents were said yesterday to be devastated by the death of their remaining daughter.