The Clancy Effect? Mom Hears Daughter Screaming 'Stop Daddy!' on Call With Husband, Can't Get There Before Cops Make 3 Gruesome Finds
A father was found dead in Bali last month. So were his two children. Police said he killed them, then himself, after his wife heard their little girl on the phone screaming for him to stop.
Damien John Shaw, 56, a former maritime worker in Fremantle, Australia, was found on Sept. 13 inside a bungalow at the Arca complex in Legian, Kuta, with his son Archie, 6, and daughter Laura, 4, according to a report from The West Australian.
Indonesian police said the evidence points to a murder-suicide.
Australia Father And Children Die In Suspected Murder Suicide
An Australian father and his two young children have died in Bali in a case police are investigating as a murder suicide. Damien John Shaw, 56, was found dead inside the family’s Kuta bungalow alongside his six year old son and four year old daughter after the children’s mother, who was in Jakarta, became alarmed during a phone call and contacted a neighbour for help.
Police later reviewed CCTV from the property and said there was no indication of another person being involved. The family had lived in Bali for years, while their marriage had reportedly become strained. A family home that once looked ordinary was suddenly at the centre of a tragedy nobody saw coming.
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The children’s mother was in Jakarta. She had left Bali a few days earlier to visit her parents. She was on the phone with Shaw that morning when she heard Laura crying and begging, “Stop, Daddy.”
She could not get him back on the line. She called the bungalow manager and begged for a welfare check. Staff and neighbors got no answer at the door, so they forced it open.
Police found three bodies. Denpasar Police Chief Leonardo Simatupang said CCTV and witness accounts indicate Shaw attacked the children before taking his own life. Officers said he tilted the CCTV camera downward before hanging himself.
The wife declined a full autopsy. Police said the footage and Shaw’s history were enough for them to close the criminal file because the only suspect is dead.
Custody of the bodies went to her, with the Australian consulate involved.
One week later, another Australian expat who knew Shaw spoke to Perth Now, an Australian news outlet, saying that just a week before the murders, Shaw had talked to him about money, his marriage, and his mental state.
The friend said that Shaw “wanted to kill himself, he had had enough,” that Shaw “was angry and frustrated,” and that he had warned Shaw not to do anything rash or silly.
Nine.com.au reported that people around the family described Shaw as arrogant and hard on the kids at school, even as he handled drop-offs and lunches.
Shaw and his wife had a shaky marriage since 2022, when they nearly divorced.
Western Australia Premier Roger Cook called it a horrific situation and said the murder-suicide label had not been confirmed in Perth, even as Bali police treated it as such.
There is no public evidence Shaw had been following the Lindsay Clancy case before appearing to murder his children and commit suicide. But the case has been covered extensively in international media.
When society turns a killer parent into a cause, it sends a dangerous signal. Excusing or folding a family massacre into a broader narrative provides an opening for other unstable people.
They don’t need a manifesto. They just need the precedent.
This case may be unrelated to Clancy’s. It may be that Shaw’s collapse was only debt, rage, and untreated sickness. It may also be that a society that treats some family murders as politics teaches the worst that the script is available to them, too.
The decent response here is to say the obvious without flinching. A father who murders his children has committed an abomination. Sympathy for mental illness does not rewrite that. Neither does a culture that picks favorites among the dead.
“Stop, Daddy” should have been enough to silence any debate about the nature of this evil.
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