The mother of a teenage girl who was brutally murdered and hid her body in a cricket bag pleads with authorities to keep the killer behind bars, as a chilling song he wrote after the horrific act was revealed.
William Matheson is serving 25 years in prison after he brutally strangled his ex-girlfriend Lyndsay van Blanken with zip ties in November 2003 – who was only 18 at the time.
Lyndsay’s mother, Cynthia van Blanken, believes the killer will ‘do it again’ if released and the thought that he may soon be in the community makes her ‘sick’.
“If they release him next week, they’re responsible for what’s happening and that’s not good,” she told A Current Affair.
Matheson is on parole and if he succeeds, he will live in the community for the last six years of his sentence, albeit under strict conditions.
Lyndsay van Blanken – who was just 18 at the time – was brutally murdered in November 2003 by her ex-boyfriend
Seven weeks after Lyndsay disappeared, her body was found in a cricket bag in a storage unit under a block of flats in Queens Park, Sydney’s east.
The evidence against Matheson quickly began to pile up and it was discovered that the killer even wrote a disturbing song after killing his ex-partner.
The text said, ‘Just the other day. I saw you die. Close your eyes, where you go is where I’ll be. See you there. Eternity’.
Lyndsay met Matheson when she was just 16 when he performed at her mother’s wedding as a cellist.
Ms van Blanken said Matheson quickly became controlling and she soon became concerned about changes in her daughter’s behaviour.
“He definitely controlled her to a point where she spoke the same way he did,” she said
Lyndsay split up with Matheson, met someone else and got engaged, but Matheson became jealous and reportedly started stalking her and sending abusive texts.
William Matheson was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of Lyndsay van Blanken
Matheson placed Mrs Van Blanken’s body in a cricket bag
Ms Van Blanken said her daughter was ‘petrified’ and Matheson followed her ‘everywhere’.
On 24 November 2003, Lyndsay was seen arguing with Matheson outside her workplace in Bondi before catching a train home.
Matheson waited at the train station and Lyndsay was never seen again.
Ms Van Blanken said she began to think the worst when her daughter failed to show up on Christmas Day, so she begged the public for information.
The breakthrough in the case came when Lyndsay’s corpse was found in the cricket bag and it was discovered that she had been tortured and killed.
The court ruled that Matheson had pulled the zip ties around Lyndsay’s throat and strangled her.
Matheson was found with scratches on his body and admitted to seeing Lyndsay the day she went missing, but claimed the scratches were from his cat and rats.
Lyndsay’s mother Cynthia van Blanken pleads with authorities to keep her daughter’s killer behind bars
Lyndsay van Blanken was only 18 when she was murdered
Mrs Van Blanken believes that ‘he has calculated everything’.
‘Everything. (The) surgical gloves, diving boots, no footprints, no handprints. He had it all figured out,” she said.
Matheson was sentenced to 27 years in prison, which came as a relief to Lyndsay’s mother, but she now begs him to stay behind bars.
“He actually served the equivalent of my daughter’s age, which isn’t fair,” she said.
If he is not released this time, Mrs. van Blanken will continue to fight to keep him locked up.
“I’m going to fight for it until the last minute,” she said.