Family of murdered mother Toni Tiki pleads for help to catch killer

I took the piece of cardboard and placed it on the grassy hill.

Sitting on it like a sled for my mother, Toni, I held on tight as we raced down the slope in the pouring rain. We collapsed in a laughing heap at the bottom.

That was mom – loving, young and fun.

My mother was born in Greytown, New Zealand and moved to Australia with my grandmother Brenda at the age of 14.

My mother was 18 when I was born and four years later my brother Michael and my stepfather Paul had a child.

Michael and I were close and I loved it when mum took us to Maroubra beach for a picnic.

At home we made fairytale bread together and sprinkled it with chocolate sprinkles.

As always, we made a big fuss about Mom’s 26th birthday on December 8, 1995, and she took me, then eight, to Sydney Tower for something to eat.

Smiling for the camera, both of us wearing red lipstick, I felt on top of the world.

My mother’s face was on all the newspapers.

On New Year’s Eve, Mum went to a party at the local South Maroubra Surf Life Saving Club with some friends. Paul and Mum were living apart at the time and Michael was with his dad, so Mum’s friend Karen* kept an eye on me.

But as I waited for a kiss from Mom on New Year’s Day, she was nowhere to be found. As the hours passed and Mom didn’t return, Karen became concerned.

“Where is mommy?” I cried, but no one had an answer.

Over the next few days, adults spoke in hushed voices and police came to the house.

At the end of the week, Paul told me and Michael, then three, ‘Mom’s not coming back. She’s dead.’

As I sobbed with Michael, it all seemed like nothing. How could Mom just disappear?

As I sat in the church at her funeral, holding Michael sobbing, I couldn’t believe that Mom was in the coffin.

My mother’s face was on all the newspapers.

A few weeks later I was watching Australia’s Most Wanted on TV in horror and saw Mom’s face.

I discovered she had been murdered and found half-dressed and with head injuries in the bushes near the surf club.

The report said she left the club with a male friend who returned to the party after leaving mom to walk home alone. She never returned to us.

I lived with Michael with my stepfather and then moved in with my grandmother Brenda, almost 600 kilometers north of Inverell.

Being separated from Michael was horrible, and it became even harder when Grandma took me to Idaho, USA, across the world in September 2001, at the age of twelve.

I missed Michael terribly, but unfortunately we lost sight of each other.

Of course I owed it to my mother to live a good life. At the age of 22, in 2010, I had my beautiful son Aiden and in 2011, I enrolled in nursing school.

After a breakup with Aiden’s father, I met Wes, then 29, the following year and fell in love. He had lost his wife and had two children: Alexis, then six, and Blake, four.

Having lost my mother, I knew how they felt and showered them with love.

In Wes I had found the family I had been longing for, so we got married and had our beautiful girl Ainsley in 2013. I gave her her mother’s middle name, Margaret.

In my dreams I saw my mother smiling at me.

When I turned 26, it was difficult for me to know that I was the same age as my mother when she died.

In my dreams I saw my mother smiling at me.

The loss of my mother and the unanswered questions about her brutal death lingered. I felt sad that my children had lost their grandmother.

I often wondered how Michael was doing and in 2016 I was scrolling through Facebook when I found him.

I’ve always thought about you, I sent him a message.

When I returned to Australia that year, I hugged Michael, then 23, tightly. “I missed you so much,” he said.

When I met my uncle Grant, my mother’s big brother, he told me that every year on my mother’s birthday he called the police, but they said there were no new leads.

Back home in the United States, I had resigned myself to the fact that we might never know what happened to Mom.

But out of the blue, in April, I got a call from detectives. Police were offering a new $1 million reward for information about Mom’s murder.

When I got on the plane to Australia while Wes stayed with the kids, I was picked up at the airport by detectives. “You look just like your mother,” one of them said.

It was very emotional talking to reporters on the call in May.

“Mom’s murder has left a huge hole in our hearts,” Michael said through tears.

“We are robbed… robbed of her presence to navigate this life,” I said.

Police explained that Mom’s body was not found on a main road, but on a track that was most likely only used by locals or people with local knowledge.

They added that they were convinced the mother’s attack was sexually motivated and that they were investigating previous sex crimes in the area.

As I walked with Michael, Uncle Grant and his wife Jill along the path in South Maroubra, past the surf club, to the bush where mother was murdered, it broke my heart to think she would die alone.

But I have hope for the future and am grateful that Mom is not forgotten.

Nearly thirty years after Mom’s murder, it is so sad that violence against women still continues.

But there is someone who knows what happened to my mother. ●

Contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.