Andrew Cauchi father of Bondi shopping mall killer Joel Cauchi, inset, at his home in Toowoomba. Photo / Patrick Hamilton for Daily Mail Australia
Andrew Cauchi father of Bondi shopping mall killer Joel Cauchi, inset, at his home in Toowoomba. Photo / Patrick Hamilton for Daily Mail Australia
The grieving parents of mass murderer Joel Cauchi have detailed the last interactions they had with their son before he killed six people in a mass stabbing incident at Westfield Bondi Junction, Sydney last week.
Parents Andrew and Michele Cauchi had been worried about their son’s wellbeing after they hadn’t had contact for a number of months.
The Cauchis told ABC after a long period without contact, they contacted their 40-year-old son’s bank to make sure he was still alive.
“I don’t want to know what’s in his account. I just want to know my son’s still alive. Is he still using his account?” she told ABC.
Later that day, Joel reached out to his parents, sending them a video message which alleviated their fears something was wrong.
“Mum, I just want to show you how beautiful Coogee Beach [is],” he wrote, along with a video selfie of himself at the Sydney beach.
The message put them at ease. They knew he was in Sydney and was alive. But little did they know their schizophrenic son was actually teetering on the edge.
The next time they would see their son, more than five weeks after his video message to them, was on the TV screen committing mass murder.
Knife-wielding attacker named as Joel Cauchi on an escalator at the Westfield Bondi Junction in Sydney.
As the footage played on their television, Andrew Cauchi said to his wife, “It looks like Joel. It does a bit’, but he had his head down.
“So I watched and watched and watched.”
The distraught couple then contacted police revealing they believed it was their son.
Cauchi’s mental health issues revealed
Joel’s parents also opened up about their son’s mental health battles, including that he had stopped taking medication after 18 years of treatment in 2019 after moving to Brisbane.
“When he came off [the medication], it was like it had all lifted from him and he wanted to have a life,” she said.
“After living at home until he was 35, he went to Brisbane, so he wasn’t with his doctor anymore.”
His father told ABC Joel’s decision to take himself off medication was meant to just be a “trial” and that his son felt embarrassment about his mental health struggles, saying he didn’t want to know that he had a mental illness.
Damien Guerot used a bollard to fend off Joel Cauchi in the midst of the Bondi mall stabbing attack.
“He was embarrassed when I said anything about it and he bolted off to Brisbane and he got a life.”
He moved between Brisbane, Toowoomba and the Gold Coast, occasionally sleeping rough in a hospital carpark.
Other details about his past included an instance in which he called police on his family after they took away his knives in 2020. He had also posted on social media asking to meet people who shoot guns.
In his last social media post hours before the massacre, Joel said he was going surfing at Bondi Beach and wanted to meet people there.
In 2023 when he moved back with his parents further issues arose when they wouldn’t let him him have his six US Army combat knives in the house.
“I said to Joel, ‘You can stay here as long as you like, but you are not going to have these in my house’ and so I took them off him, knowing that there was going to be pandemonium in my house but I was willing to put up with it,” Andrew said.
The six victims of Bondi's stabbing tragedy. Photo / NZME
Why Cauchi targeted women in his murder spree
His parents also revealed why their son may have targeted women during his killing spree on Saturday.
Andrew said his son was a “very sick boy” and revealed the killer targeted women during the attack out of frustration he could not get a girlfriend.
“I’m loving a monster,” Andrew Cauchi told Australian media. “To you, he’s a monster but to me, he was a very sick boy.”
