Westfield Bondi Junction stabbing: Crazed shopping centre killer Joel Cauchi dated teenager half his age as she reveals details of their five-month affair

Mass murderer Joel Cauchi had a relationship with an 18-year-old girl when he was more than twice her age at 37. The young woman now gives a chilling insight into their relationship.

Josephine Everson first met Cauchi, a surfer and online English teacher, in mid-2019, around the time of her 18th birthday.

Five years later, Ms Everson was shocked to see her ex-boyfriend shot by police after his murderous rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday.

He fatally stabbed five women and a man and injured 12 more in the frenzied killing spree before he was shot dead by lone female police inspector Amy Scott.

But in 2019, Ms Everson and Cauchi first met through a dating website in their hometown of Toowoomba in Queensland, 125km west of Brisbane.

Despite their nearly twenty-year age difference, they met for coffee at the Northpoint Shopping Center and hit it off immediately.

They continued dating for about five months, during which time Ms. Everson said he would take her to interesting places in the region on a series of day trips.

The odd couple headed to the top of the Toowoomba Range and took another excursion to a spot outside nearby Highfields ‘with pumpkins on the fence’.

“He was a fun and kind person,” she told the ABC on Wednesday.

Ms Everson cried as she admitted she did not know Cauchi suffered from schizophrenia, which he was diagnosed with at the age of 17.

‘He always had a big smile on his face. He was a happy person,” she said.

The pair bonded over their love of photography, with Cauchi teaching Ms Everson how to properly use her camera.

She added that he was “always respectful” during their relationship and had met her parents.

However, their relationship deteriorated when Cauchi moved to Brisbane in October 2019, at which time his parents said he began tapering off his antipsychotic medication.

The couple tried to keep in touch but eventually ended the relationship due to the distance between them.

Cauchi’s terrified parents, Michele and Andrew Cauchi, desperately tried to reach the 40-year-old ahead of the attack at Westfield Bondi Junction.

After losing contact with their son, they eventually contacted his bank to find out if he was still alive and had used his account.

Just five weeks before the attack, a moment of relief came when Cauchi sent the couple a selfie from the eastern shoreline of Sydney’s suburbs.

‘Mum, I just want to show you how beautiful Coogee Beach is [is],’ He wrote.

But the next time the couple saw their son, it was on television as news of the Westfield stabbing spread.

“I walked in and my wife said, ‘It looks like Joel.’ “I said, ‘It’s a bit,’ but he kept his head down,” Mr. Cauchi said.

Since the Bondi stabbing, several other former romantic partners of Cauchi have come forward.

A Brisbane woman who claims she met Cauchi on Tinder in 2020 said she got the impression Cauchi was just looking to connect with people.

A Gold Coast woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told Daily Mail Australia about her brief relationship with the crazy knifeman.

The woman said she barely recognized the brutal killer – who stabbed a nine-month-old girl in her stroller – from the man she met on the Badoo dating app in April 2020.

“I spoke to him for a while and then had a few drinks with him at his house in Brisbane. He lived there with roommates,” she said.

‘He was a nice man when I met him, decidedly quiet and reserved. I’m just very shocked by what happened.

“It’s hard to believe he killed these innocent people.”

She described Cauchi as a “true gentleman” but admitted they had only met in person once because he was not her type.

Despite this, the couple continued their relationship into 2021.

‘He was a very nice guy. Well spoken. “I only saw him once, but we texted for a year after that,” she said.

‘To be honest, he seemed a bit too nerdy to me, but we still kept in touch. I live on the Gold Coast and he lived in Brisbane at the time.”

Despite Cauchi’s father previously telling Daily Mail Australia that the 40-year-old led a “backpacker” lifestyle, alternating between sleeping in his car and cheap hostels, the Gold Coast woman did not recall Cauchi having an interest in traveling .

‘He never said he would travel to me. That’s why I was surprised he was in Bondi,” she said.

Another woman who claims to have dated Cauchi said she stopped seeing him because of his strange behavior.

‘We went to church together. “I had a few coffee dates with him, but he had compulsions,” she said.

‘It was a bit weird so I stopped messaging him, then he said he was leaving. I’m in shock.’

Another person, who claimed to be part of the knifeman’s “close circle of friends” during high school in Toowoomba, southeast Queensland, provided some background on Cauchi’s reported strange behavior.

“He was one of those boys at school who was shy, always a little on the weird side, but when he did something it was always full out,” they wrote.

‘In retrospect, he probably didn’t handle things very well.

‘Disappeared from the radar after school, but as far as I know he did not maintain any friendships with his circle of schoolmates.’

They believe Cauchi was suffering from mental illness at the time of Saturday’s attack on Westfield, a theory shared by police and echoed by his distraught parents.

Cauchi was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager and his parents said he had stopped taking his medication, which had caused his psychosis.

“It may seem like misplaced empathy, but the Joel I knew would not have been himself, would not have been in charge of his actions as he attacked those people,” the friend wrote.

“If there’s a lesson, it’s that mental illness is terrible and we shouldn’t mess with it.

‘We shouldn’t be too hard on getting help ourselves when we need it, and when people reach out to us for connection, we should see it for what it is and not ignore them.

“Joel is certainly not the only one having a hard time.”

They also shared their condolences with the loved ones of the six shoppers who were killed and injured.

“I know it’s no comfort to the victims, the whole thing is a bloody tragedy for them and their families, for Joel and his family, and for everyone involved in the event who now doesn’t feel safe being there.” to go shopping. ‘ They wrote.

The six people killed in Saturday’s rampage have been identified as mother Ashlee Good, 38, advertising heiress Dawn Singleton, 25, architect Jade Young, 47, artist Pikria Darchia, 55, security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, and Chinese student Yixuan Cheng, 27. .

NSW Police do not believe the stabbing was a terrorism incident, instead pointing to Cauchi’s history of mental illness.

The attack is still being investigated by police and will be subject to a corona investigation.