A brilliant mother afflicted with dementia. A devoted daughter, charged with murder

Barbara Eckersley was so distressed by her mother Mary’s suffering that she sought to relieve it with sedatives. Last month, the court collectively held its breath when she stood trial for murder.

- GENEVIEVE GANNON

Scientist and grandmother Mary White was 92 years old when she died in her nursing home bed one cold winter’s night in 2018. From the outside, the talented palaeobotanist’s death appeared to be a natural end to a full and productive life. The curls of her youth had long been white, and her final moments were watched over by her loving daughter, Barbara Eckersley. But when her doctor was asked to sign the death certificate, he refused. Something wasn’t right.

Mary had lived actively on her Falls Forest eco-property on the mid-north coast of NSW until she was well into her 80s, when a heart attack and then a series of small, destructive strokes blunted her brilliant mind and left her paralysed down one side of her body. She was a charming, charismatic scientist and the author of intricate botanical books before vascular dementia robbed her of the power to communicate. By the end, her son-in-law Richard Eckersley says, she could no longer make herself understood. And she needed to be spoon-fed, which Barbara did. As hard as it was to see the mother she loved and admired incapacitated, Barbara came to the Warrigal nursing home in the Southern Highlands almost every day to sit by Mary’s side.

Yet, when Mary White’s heart stopped, her doctor was alarmed. Mary was not an end of life patient. As Mary’s family made preparations for her funeral, Dr Indran Rajendra called the coroner and ordered an autopsy. His instincts were correct. “Toxic to fatal” levels of the barbiturate pentobarbitone, known as ‘green dream’, were detected in Mary’s blood.

Mother-daughter bond