THE MAKING OF A MURDERESS

Six months after being jailed for murdering her ex-boyfriend, Robyn Lindholm was charged with murder again. Genevieve Gannon asks: is this killer the deadliest woman in Australia?

- Genevieve Gannon

The Supreme Court of Victoria, in Melbourne, is not a place for romance, but as she sat in handcuffs before a judge, Robyn Lindholm sent meaningful looks towards her lover. Hunched and rough-faced, Torsten Trabert, also in chains, sat just a few feet away, on the other side of an armed guard. The love-struck brute flirted back, seemingly oblivious to the sombre proceedings going on around him.

It was the closest the couple had been since they were arrested two years earlier after homicide police chased them through one of Melbourne’s inner suburbs. The dog squad finally tracked them to a drain where they were hiding in water up to their necks. Lindholm, a blonde former stripper, eventually admitted to ordering the murder of her ex, and Trabert, a truck driver, was found guilty of inflicting the fatal blow.

As they awaited their jail sentences, they knew it was the last time they would see each other for years, possibly forever. Trabert, or “Toots” as he called himself in the soppy letters he wrote from jail, seemed happy just to be near Lindholm. Given what we now know about Lindholm’s record of slaying her lovers, he was perhaps safer locked away.

The trial heard how Lindholm had asked a succession of boyfriends to kill her ex, Wayne Amey. She made the request of Kyle Elliot, then Aaron Ardley and finally Trabert. Aaron had agreed to do it, telling the trial that Lindholm had him under a “spell”. But he was injured and it was Trabert who finally carried out the deed in December 2013. Lindholm’s lawyer, John Kelly, asked for leniency because she was remorseful. But Justice Lex Lasry didn’t buy it. “I am sure that you are ashamed and embarrassed,” the judge said. “But the real question is whether you genuinely regret what you have done. I frankly do not see any sign of that.”