Lilie James was smiling and happy in the moments before Paul Thijssen used a hammer to murder his ex-girlfriend in a school gymnasium toilet, a coronial inquest examining their deaths has been told.
James’s body was found in the bathroom at St Andrew’s Cathedral school in Sydney on 25 October 2023 after she’d been to water polo training with students.
Police immediately began a search for 23-year-old Thijssen, who had been in a brief relationship with James that had ended days before the water polo coach’s death. His body was found in the ocean below cliffs in Sydney’s eastern suburbs days later.
The inquest on Wednesday heard Thijssen was found naked. James suffered 25 blunt force injuries to her neck and head. She had broken bones and abrasions on her hands and arms consistent with defensive injuries. There was no evidence of sexual assault.
The counsel assisting the New South Wales coroner, Jennifer Single SC, said the attack was “overkill”.
“The nature and the extent of the assault represents overkill – that is, the use of violence was far beyond what was necessary to cause death,” she said. The court heard the assault was not protracted.
Chilling footage viewed on day two of the inquest showed Thijssen meticulously planning the attack – including locking the doors to the gym and practising the assault several times.
He was shown entering the bathroom with the hammer in his right hand, then exiting and trying again, this time with the hammer in his left hand, seemingly attempting to choose how he would stage the attack.
“No matter how many times you see that footage, it is not easy to watch,” Single told the court.
The footage shows Thijssen – who worked at the school as a sports coach and after-hours coordinator – waiting in the gym staffroom for hours before James returned from water polo training with students on a bus.
He is twice seen checking that her car had remained in the car park near the school and that he had not missed her return.
Thijssen is also seen using a school master key to lock automatic doors to prevent cleaners being able to access the gym so his attack would not be disturbed.
James returned from training at 7.11pm with Single stating she was “smiling and interacting with Paul”.
“There was no indication as to what he was going to do,” Single said, her voice breaking.
James was due at a water polo match that night and had returned to the gym to change into her swimmers.
She is seen entering the staffroom and then heading to the bathroom with her swimmers. She is seen acknowledging a sign saying one of the bathrooms was being cleaned and heading into the bathroom next door.
Thijssen had placed the sign there earlier to ensure James entered the bathroom of his choosing.
With James in the bathroom, Thijssen is seen returning to the staffroom and picking up his backpack. He walks over to the bathroom with the hammer in his right hand.
He stands outside the bathroom for two minutes – seemingly listening to what is happening inside. He is then seen lunging forward and into the toilet.
Thijssen exited the bathroom over an hour later – with Single stating it was unclear why he spent so much time there.
During that time, messages were sent from James’s phone to her father, which stated: “Don’t ask why, or call, please come to the school now and pick me up.”
Her father attempted to call James’s phone several times and messaged to ask what was wrong. There was no response. A later message sent from her phone said: “All good just came [sic] trouble.”
Single said investigators believed Thijssen sent those messages to James’s father “to ensure that someone located her body before the students, including the primary school students, arrived the next day”.
But she added that making contact with James’s father in this way caused him and James’s family to “suffer” as they “tried desperately to get in touch with Lilie”.
“Paul knew that they would not be able to get in touch with her,” she said.
CCTV footage showed Thijssen subsequently leaving the school and heading towards the car park where he had left a car he had rented from GoGet, a car-sharing service.
He was seen running for the first time that night as he returned to his car, having spent most of the night calmly pacing between the gym staffroom and the bathroom.
Data from GoGet showed he then drove to Diamond Bay Reserve in Vaucluse in Sydney’s east.
He stayed in the car, where he wired $9,100 to each of his two flatmates, with the note “six months rent”.
Thijssen also exchanged Snapchat messages and photos with a friend who later said the 23-year-old looked “blank” with “no expression”.
At 11.45pm that night, Thijssen made a triple zero call informing the operator there was a “body” at the school.
Quizzed about when he saw the body, Thijssen said he didn’t remember. He said he would “rather not disclose” his name and told the operator “someone should just go in there before people arrive in the morning”.
Dr Katie Seidler, a clinical forensic psychologist giving expert testimony, said that at a “foundational level, this was a man who couldn’t cope with how he was feeling”.
“And he neutralised a threat to that by murdering another person.”
She, alongside Dr Danny Sullivan, a forensic psychiatrist who also provided expert testimony, painted a picture of Thijssen as being unable to handle James’s rejection – which threatened his carefully constructed public image.
“I don’t see signs of mental disorder,” Sullivan said. “He had formed a hatred of Miss James based on the fact that she had rejected him – and he punished her by killing her.”
Thijssen was raised in the Netherlands and had initially come to Australia with his parents between 2015 and 2017. He became sports captain and prefect at St Andrew’s.
He had returned several times to Australia before the attack, with the court hearing that when another former girlfriend attempted to break things off with Thijssen, he had stalked and intimidated her, hacked into her Snapchat account and punched a tree above her head.
The court heard on Tuesday that Thijssen stalked and meticulously planned James’s murder after tensions between the two escalated amid the breakdown of their relationship.
The inquest continues.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
