Evil killer’s sick dress rehearsals revealed – as CCTV caught him acting out how he’d hammer his ex-girlfriend to death before unleashing his frenzied attack

Twisted killer Paul Thijssen made payments to X-rated site OnlyFans before he was caught on CCTV doing dry runs of the trap he laid to murder beloved school water polo coach Lilie James. 

Chilling CCTV footage shows a ‘cool and calm’ Thijssen setting up the ambush to kill Ms James in a school bathroom in the hours leading up to her brutal murder. 

Video captured inside the staff level of Sydney’s St Andrew’s Cathedral School shows Thijssen, 23, repeatedly going to two different bathrooms near the school gym, ‘bathroom one’ and ‘bathroom three’.

On three occasions, he could be seen rehearsing his entry, forcing the door open.

He did this twice with his right hand and on the third, with his left hand, a inquest into the murder has heard, to practise as if he had a hammer in his right hand.

In the most calculated of all his moves, just before 5pm and only about two hours before he committed the murder, Thijssen went to the bathrooms carrying a yellow ‘cleaning in progress’ sign.

The inquest into Ms James’s death was told this was because by then Thijssen had chosen the larger, disabled bathroom, called ‘bathroom one’, as the place he would commit the murder.

By placing the sign outside bathroom three, Ms James would be forced to use that room later that evening. 

CCTV footage was also shown of Thijssen buying a hammer and duct tape from the Mitre Ten hardware store near the school two days before the murder.

An inquest into the deaths of murdered water polo coach Lilie James and her ex-boyfriend has commenced 18 months after their deaths

Two days after Ms James was murdered the body of 24-year-old hockey coach Paul Thijssen, with whom she had had been in a brief relationship, was found at Vaucluse

The inquest heard of the countdown to the murder in Ms James’s final days when unbeknownst to her, Thijssen was stalking the 21-year-old outside her home, hiring a GoGet car on seven occasions between October 21, 2023 and the day of her death, October 25.

Thijssen drove them to the street where she lived with her family to take photos without Ms James knowing.

He also set up a fake Snapchat account in the name of another woman he had been seeing at the same time, who knew nothing about Ms James, in order to pretend he was being stalked so that Ms James might become jealous. 

On two occasions after being with her in the last week of her life, Thijssen made payments to OnlyFans, the pay-for-view sex site. 

The inquest into the 21-year-old water polo coach’s death heard that Ms James had suffered ‘blunt force blows to the head’.

Describing the attack as ‘overkill’, counsel assisting the inquest, Jennifer Single said: ‘It was not a momentary loss of control. It was premeditated.’

Videos of Thijssen’s ‘murder rehearsals’ in areas outside the school’s bathroom will be shown at the inquest, which opened on Tuesday.

The inquest also played CCTV footage in which Thijssen cornered and shoved Ms James against a wall not far from where he would kill her the following week. 

Ms James’ parents, Peta and Jamie, are pictured arriving at the NSW inquest on Tuesday

In the video, which has no sound, Thijssen grabbed her shoulder and waved his arms in an agitated manner at her as she stood with her arms folded against her chest.

Around five minutes into their heated discussion, he pushed her with both hands against a wall, effectively blocking her exit.

Colleagues in the staff room, who knew the pair had been involved in a sexual relationship, saw Ms James become angry and leave the room and then they heard raised voices.

Immediately before the fight, Thijssen had sent Ms James a message saying ‘this what I don’t want, this is relationship s***’. 

After the argument, Ms James told her friend Marisa that she’d had a fight with Thijssen during which he told her he ‘only hung out with her because he was sleeping with her’. 

Thijssen and Ms James had became friends after she broke up with her boyfriend Lachlan.

By early to mid-September it was clear to other staff at the school they were in a sexual relationship.

In the early stages, Thijssen told friends that he and Ms James ‘had amazing sexual chemistry and she was shocked at how good the sex was’.

Ms James was found dead inside a gymnasium bathroom at St Andrew’s Cathedral School in the Sydney CBD on October 25, 2023. Students are pictured outside the school

But the inquest heard that on Friday October 20, 2023, the day after Ms James and Thijssen’s clash at the school, she went to a friends’ 21st birthday party with Lachlan and other friends.

While Ms James sat with Lachlan on the couch at the party, occasionally kissing, Thijssen was at a pizza restaurant with friends, keeping tabs on her location via Snapchat while becoming agitated, and was clearly ‘uneasy’ and ‘stressed’.

Counsel Assisting Ms Single said that at the birthday party, Ms James had told Lachlan that she ‘didn’t feel safe with [Thijssen] and a bit weirded out by him’ and said she ‘wanted to cut things off with him and make a complete break, not stay a friends with benefits type thing’.

Ms Single said Lachlan would later amend this to say he might have suggested that Ms James was ‘weirded out’, but that Lachlan and Ms James had both made plans to meet up the following Wednesday, October 25 after she finished coaching water polo.

Ms Single said that outside the 21st party, Thijssen had arrived to pick up Ms James and another friend and had waited outside the party for an hour until the friend, Angelina, went inside to collect her.

The court heard that while Angelina said she hadn’t know what Ms James was doing inside the party, another friend Jules had told Thijssen that Ms James was inside and ‘together’ with Lachlan.

When Ms James came out from the party she went home to Thijssen’s place in the Sydney suburb of Kensington and stayed there the night, but ‘slept on the couch’.

Lachlan’s planned meet up with Ms James the following Wednesday would never eventuate because that was the evening Thijssen murdered her with a hammer in the staff bathroom.

The inquest is also investigating the death of Thijssen, who the court heard was a compulsive liar who forged documents and stalked and threatened another girlfriend before Ms James.

A young woman identified only as Freya had a relationship with Thijssen which began in March 2021 but ended when he began stalking her social media accounts and turning up unannounced outside her work and home.

In December 2021, after returning to Australia from his native Netherlands, Thijssen went straight to see Freya. They went to church and afterwards visited a park, where he punched a tree close to her head.  

When asked why he did it, Thijssen said: ‘Because I can’t punch the one thing I want to.’

Days later, when Freya was at home and came downstairs at 6.25am, she looked outside a window and saw Thijssen in the laneway looking anxious, scared and angry.

Freya’s father Mark later told Thijssen to have no further contact with his daughter or they would take out an AVO against him.

The inquest also heard Thijssen’s lies about his studies and work.

He told everyone including his parents that he was studying a Masters of Teaching at Sydney University.

A white coffin containing the body of Ms James was carried into the Danebank Anglican School for Girls on Friday 17 November, 2023

‘He was tight with money and blamed it on spending large sums on university study. None of this was true,’ Ms Single told the court. There was no record he was studying anywhere.

She also listed the forged documents that Thijssen made in his application for a third working holiday visa, which included a reference and payslips which purported to show his work at St Andrew’s.

He pretended he had worked as a ‘farmhand’ at Kirrikee, the school’s outdoor education facility in the Southern Highlands.

The visa application was successful but when he murdered Ms James, Thijssen was running out of options because his visa was due to expire in February 2024 and he would have to leave Australia.

There was no option to apply for a fourth working visa, and his lie about studying for a Masters of Teaching was about to be exposed because he hadn’t studied and therefore wouldn’t be graduating.

Police discovered Ms James’ ‘unrecognisable’ body inside a gymnasium bathroom at the school on October 25, 2023. She had suffered serious head injuries.

The couple had agreed to meet to exchange belongings that evening after Ms James broke off their relationship.  

Earlier, her father had received a text from Ms James’ phone requesting to be picked up from the school later that evening. 

St Andrews has since demolished the bathroom where Ms James’ body was found 

After her body was discovered, homicide detectives launched an immediate search for Thijssen along the coastline at Diamond Bay, Vaucluse and overlying cliffs. 

Thijssen’s backpack was found in a rubbish bin on a street overlooking the bay at about 5pm that evening.

A hammer was discovered inside the backpack. 

Police retrieved Thijssen’s body about midday on Friday, October 27 after a tradesman spotted it wedged in rocks below the cliffs.

The inquiry is also expected to consider whether Thijssen’s death was self-inflicted and whether it could have been prevented.    

It is also likely to study the role of technology in modern relationships, coercive control and the public’s perception of what that means and what it looks like.

Daily Mail Australia previously revealed St Andrew’s Cathedral School would play no official role as an ‘interested party’ at the coronial inquiry. 

Principal Dr Julie McGonigle referred to the upcoming inquest in a Head of School newsletter late last year.

A year after their daughter’s death, Peta and Jamie James told 60 Minutes they had not yet made Lilie’s bed since the last time she slept in it

Dr McGonigle wrote that ‘at this stage, the State Coroner does not consider St Andrew’s Cathedral School to have sufficient interest in this matter to be considered an interested party, pursuant to the Coroners Act’.

The school confirmed at the time of Ms James’ death it knew of the relationship after both staff members from its sports department had made them aware of it. 

Relationships were allowed between staff members, providing they followed protocol and notified the school. 

In the wake of tragedy, the school made plans to create a permanent reminder of Ms James’ life in the form of a memorial or award which celebrated her memory. 

The James family said in a statement: ‘We are devastated and heartbroken by the loss of our beautiful Lilie James. 

‘She was vibrant, outgoing and very much loved by her friends and family.’

The school has demolished the bathroom where Ms James’ body was found.

It has since created a memorial of a framed wreath made from the ribbons attached to the mountains of flowers left outside the school.

On the first anniversary of Ms James’ death, students were given black armbands to wear in her memory at sporting events. 

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