SINGH FAMILY MURDERS: 'I'VE NEVER LOST HOPE'

Shirley has found a way to cope with an unthinkable loss

- Emma Levett

Shirley Singh has survived what many would argue is the unsurvivable. In April 2003, three of her four children were brutally murdered in their Brisbane family home and three years ago, her only surviving daughter died suddenly from an aneurysm.

“When I got that phone call about Archana it was shock, just like when I got the call about my three children. I didn’t know what to do. I kept thinking, is this for real?” Shirley tells Woman’s Day. “At the hospital I held her and cried all night. I stayed with her in case she woke up but she’d already gone.”

But while Shirley’s life has been punctuated by the deepest of grief and trauma, she doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her. On the contrary, she wants her story to give others strength, courage and hope, and it’s for this reason she’s co-written a book about her journey.

“Never lose hope,” she says. “I do cry and sometimes I break – I am a human being – but most of the time I live on my happy memories and I have hope that I will meet my children again one day.”

Shirley’s nightmare began in 2001 when her eldest daughter Neelma started dating Massimo “Max” Sica, a man with a criminal rap sheet that included burning down a police station.