I sit on a park bench in the shade of a gum tree and watch my 15-month-old daughter hunt for lawn beetles. She learned to walk a few months back. Now, arms out for balance, she totters around happily. She lacks the dexterity to harm the insects. When she finds them, she squats down and points at them, cackling with delight.
It is a wonderful time. Nothing could ruin this moment.
I marvel, as I do most days, at the overwhelming love I have for this beautiful little person in my life. I still cannot believe I am a father. At 35 years of age, I still feel like a kid myself. 
I love being a dad. It is not easy. It is the hardest thing I have ever done. It is also the best thing I have ever done. It is scary, too. I cannot imagine life without her. I cannot comprehend what life would be like if something terrible happened to her. It was the same when I visited the infamous Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. I simply could not process the horrors the victims were subjected to. I could be aware of their suffering, but I could not experience it. I pray I never need to experience such terrible things.
My daughter giggles at a beetle and chews on a piece of grass. As I watch her, I catch sight of the small bronze plaque fixed to the backrest of the bench I am sitting on. It reads:
In loving memory of Mara, Beverly, Charlotte, Alice, and Beatrix
I frown. It is not often a park bench is a memorial for an entire family. Not only that, but those names are familiar. Then it hits me like a mallet to my head.
On 3rd September 2018, Anthony Robert Harvey, 25, murdered his wife, Mara, 41 and their three children, Charlotte, 3, and twins Alice and Beatrix, 2. When she arrived the following day, he killed his mother-in-law, Beverly, 73.
Harvey continued to live in the house for several days afterwards, the corpses of his family covered in blankets and decorated with letters saying he was sorry and he loved them. During this time, he sold Mara’s jewelry and drained her bank accounts of $38, 000. Not that he did much with the money he acquired. After several days he travelled out of Perth to visit his father on a rural property in the Pilbara where he confessed his crimes to him. Shortly afterwards, he turned himself into law enforcement.
Harvey’s crime is one of the most horrific to have ever occurred in Western Australia. He received the harshest penalty of any criminal in the state, that of being incarcerated for life.
Adding insult to injury, the murders were utterly pointless. Living in Western Australia, Harvey had access to numerous supports available for struggling parents and families. He could have divorced his wife; there was no need to murder his family. Nothing to be gained in doing so. As the judge who sentenced Harvey remarked, when detailing how the unsuspecting family members we slain in their home “This is the place they should have been safest…they should have been able to trust their father to protect them…that’s the most fundamental duty any parent has.”
All of this came back to me as I sat on the bench supervising my daughter. It was a hell of a recollection. A horror story close to home, literally and figuratively: the murders occurred within several kilometers of our house, a fortnight after we had purchased it.
What has any of this got to do with writing?
Some time ago I had written a short story about it. I never quite got around to finishing it, because I did not know where I would submit it.
My story is creative fiction. It is not a gory recounting or a work of splatter house, it is a character study of Harvey himself.
I wondered, would it be like for him to have lived in the house for several days with the corpses of his loved ones?
I did not linger on the methods of the murders. The story is about the narrator, Harvey, spending time in the house with his family. The twist-in-the-tail is the reader only finds out Harvey’s family are dead in the final sentence.
I might finish it. We will see.
Infanticide, matricide, and gratuitous rape are excluded from most horror magazines and anthologies. These themes are certainly horror; there is no argument there. However, they are too unpleasant for most audiences. Unless a writer handles these themes very carefully, they will be rejected.
As a character study that does not detail the killings, my short story may work. On the other hand, the real story is so upsetting, I do not feel like finishing it. If it never goes further than my collection of unfinished drafts, it is fine by me.
Recalling all this information on a sunny afternoon while spending time with my little baby is a horror story itself. Perhaps I could write a story about not being able to write a story about the massacre. This premise is interesting. It is detached from the horrific events of the Bedford massacre that it would likely appeal to a broader horror audience. Who knows, I might even write an article exploring how to approach taboo topics in horror?
- About the Author
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Ben Matthews is a physiotherapist and horror author. His work has been published in print in IFWG Publishing’s Killer Creatures Horror Stories with Bite, and Spawn 2: More Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies, for which he won the Aurealis Award for Best Short Horror Story, 2024.
His work has also been published online at Tales from the Crosstimbers, Whisperhouse Press, and The NoSleep Podcast.
He lives in Western Australia with his amazing wife, who thinks horror stories are silly, and his young daughter. When he is not working or crawling around on the floor pretending to be a gorilla, he’s reading or drawing. You can follow him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bjcmatthews or check out his website: https://bjcmatthews.wixsite.com/ben-matthews-author