My Husband Murdered My Daughter

Marlene Will Never Forgive Herself for What Happened to Her Precious Girl

- Emma Levett

It’s a nightmare scenario. Your child is dying in front of you but you can’t move, you can’t help them. Waking up and realising  it was just a terrible dream brings immense relief, but tragically for Marlene Locke, there is no such relief.

Her nightmare really happened – Marlene saw her daughter murdered in front of her as she was restrained by her husband Raymond Mead, so she couldn’t even say goodbye.

‘I will never get that vision out of my head,’ the Brisbane mum tells New Idea tearfully.

‘She was begging me to help her. I knew she was slipping away, but he [Mead] was holding me and he had the knife in his hand. I couldn’t get to her.’

Marlene had been married to Mead for six years when the brutal stabbing occurred on February 16, 2014.

At the start of their relationship, Marlene, 45, says Mead was a ‘gentleman’, but after their wedding, things quickly spiralled into a terrifying cycle of domestic violence. ‘I was trapped,’ she says.

‘He controlled everything, and at the end, I was more scared to leave him than stay. He always said I could run but I couldn’t hide, and I was never sure how far his uncontrollable rages would take him.’

The couple also had two young children together, but it was Marlene’s 23-year-old daughter Sherelle, from a previous relationship, who drove Mead mad.