Mass killer Joel Cauchi dated an 18-year-old girl when he was more than twice her age at 37 – and the young woman has now given a chilling insight into their relationship.
Josephine Everson first met Cauchi, a surfer and online English tutor, in mid 2019, around the time of her 18th birthday.
Five years later, Ms Everson was horrified to see her ex-boyfriend gunned down by police after his murderous rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction.
Cauchi fatally stabbed five women and a man and injured 12 more during the crazed killing spree on Saturday before he was shot dead by lone female police Inspector Amy Scott.
But in 2019, Ms Everson and Cauchi met for the first time through a dating website in their Queensland home town of Toowoomba, 125km west of Brisbane.
Josephine Everson (pictured) began dating Joel Cauchi around her 18th birthday in 2019, despite their almost 20-year age difference
Cauchi (pictured) was shot dead by a lone policewoman after stabbing six innocent shoppers to death and injuring at least a dozen more, including a nine-month-old baby girl
Despite their almost 20-year age gap, the pair met for coffee at Northpoint Shopping Centre and immediately hit it off.
They continued dating for about five months, during which time Ms Everson said Cauchi would take her on day trips to interesting spots around the region.
The couple trekked to the top of the Toowoomba Range and took another excursion to a place outside nearby Highfields ‘with pumpkins on the fence’.
‘He was a fun and kind person,’ she told the ABC on Wednesday.
Ms Everson wept as she admitted not knowing Cauchi suffered from schizophrenia, with which he was diagnosed at age 17.
‘He always had this big smile on his face. He was a joyful person,’ she said.
The pair bonded over their love of photography, with Cauchi teaching Ms Everson how to use her camera properly.
She added he was ‘always respectful’ throughout their relationship and had met her parents.
However, their relationship deteriorated when Cauchi moved to Brisbane in October 2019, which is when his parents said he began to come off his anti-psychotic drugs.
The couple tried to keep in contact but eventually ended things because of the distance between them.
Cauchi’s concerned parents, Michele and Andrew Cauchi, desperately tried to reach the 40-year-old in the lead-up to the Westfield Bondi Junction attack.
After losing contact with their son, they ended up contacting his bank just to find out if he was alive and had been using his account.
A moment of relief came just five weeks before the attack when Cauchi sent his parents a selfie from Sydney’s eastern suburbs coastline.
‘Mum, I just want to show you how beautiful Coogee Beach [is],’ he wrote.
But the next time the couple saw their son was on television as news of the Westfield stabbings spread.
Cauchi (pictured) was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 17 years old and was unmedicated at the time of the Westfield Bondi Junction stabbing
Ms Cauchi (pictured) received a selfie of her son at Coogee Beach five weeks before the attack
‘I walked in and my wife said, “It looks like Joel.” I said, “It does a bit,” but he had his head down,’ Mr Cauchi said.
Several other former romantic partners of Cauchi’s have come forward since the Bondi stabbing.
One Brisbane woman, who claims she met Cauchi on Tinder in 2020, said she got the impression Cauchi was simply looking to connect with people.
A Gold Coast woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told Daily Mail Australia about her brief relationship with the knifeman.
The woman said she barely recognised the killer from the man she met on the Badoo dating app in April 2020.
‘I struck up a conversation with him for a while then I had a few drinks with him at his house in Brisbane. He lived there with flatmates,’ she said.
‘He was a lovely guy when I met him, definitely quiet and reserved. I’m just very shocked at what has happened.
‘It’s hard to believe he has killed these innocent people.’
She described Cauchi as a ‘true gentleman’ but admitted they only met in person once as he wasn’t her type.
Despite this, the pair continued their relationship into 2021.
‘He was a very nice guy. Well spoken. I only saw him once but we did text for a good year after that,’ she said.
‘He came across a little too nerdy for me, to be honest, but we still kept in touch. I live on the Gold Coast and he lived in Brisbane at the time.’
A Brisbane woman, who claims she met Cauchi on Tinder in 2020, said she got the impression Cauchi was simply looking to connect with people (pictured, messages from their chat)
A Gold Coast woman (pictured) described Cauchi as acting like a ‘true gentleman’ during their brief relationship
Despite Cauchi’s father previously telling Daily Mail Australia the 40-year-old lived a ‘backpacker’ lifestyle, which involved rotating between sleeping in his car and cheap hostels, the Gold Coast woman didn’t recalled Cauchi having an interest in travel.
‘He never mentioned travelling 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 due to his odd behaviour.
‘We went to church together. I went on 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 moving away. I’m in shock.’
Another person, claiming to be in the knifeman’s ‘close circle of friends’ during high school in Toowoomba, in south-east Queensland, gave some background to Cauchi’s reported strange behaviour.
‘He was one of those ones at school that was shy, always a bit on the weird side, but whenever he did something it was always full tilt,’ they wrote.
‘In hindsight he probably didn’t regulate that well.
‘Dropped off the radar after school but to my knowledge he didn’t maintain any friendships with his circle of school mates.’
They believe Cauchi was suffering a mental health episode at the time of Saturday’s Westfield attack which is 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 gone off his medication, which had triggered his psychosis.
‘It might seem like misplaced empathy but the Joel that I knew would have not been himself, not in command of his actions while he attacked those people,’ the friend wrote.
‘If there’s a lesson, it’s that mental illness is a b***h and we shouldn’t muck around with it.
‘We shouldn’t be too tough to get help ourselves when we need to, and when people reach out to us for connection we should see it for what it is and not ignore them.
‘Joel’s surely not the only one struggling.’
They also shared their sympathy for the loved ones of the six shoppers who were killed and the injured.
‘I know that it’s no comfort for the victims, the whole thing is a bloody tragedy for them and their families, for Joel and his family, and for everyone connected with the event who doesn’t feel as safe to go shopping there now,’ they wrote.
NSW Police do not believe the stabbing was an incident of terrorism, instead pointing to Cauchi’s (pictured) history of mental illness
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.
The attack is still under police investigation and will be subject to a coronial inquest.
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