Australian man discovers 'disturbing letter' hidden behind a sketch he found at an op-shop

A sketch of an Indigenous man that hung on the wall of a family's home for years was hiding a disturbing secret about the murder of two young children.

A Reddit user recently shared a photo of a drawing - depicting an unidentified Aboriginal man with long hair, a beard and traditional face paint - which their brother had bought from an op-shop for a few hundred dollars.

The portrait had been hanging in their dining room for a year or more before they recently took it down for renovations.

It was then they discovered a handwritten letter from March 1996 that had been attached to the back of the frame.

The letter detailed the horrendous crimes committed by child murderer Dexter Wilkinson and his wife Kathleen Lister in the rural town of Bell in Queensland.

It's understood neither the drawing nor the man pictured had any relation to the letter, which was penned by a woman named Germaine Blair-Quigg.

Ms Blair-Quigg appears to have been a campaigner for tougher sentences for serious violent offences.

She would often write letters to newspapers complaining about lenient sentences, and the letter seems to be a draft version as it contains corrections and marginalia.

Reddit users surmised Ms Blair-Quigg's letter was intended for a journalist, complaining about the light sentence handed down to Lister.

'What she and her partner did to those two children was monstrous and far beyond my comprehension,' Ms Blair-Quigg wrote.

'Before I came to Australia I was told about the covert side of Australian society the wife bashing/syndrome; the child cruelty; the statistics on rape; the alcoholism: the deeply ingrained racism; the inherent weakness of character masquerading as camaraderie. 

'And I was sceptical. I chose to believe that the gentle larrikins who had tamed that vast sun-burnt land had to be basically a good people. Matter-of-fact, down-to-earth, good. And kind.' 

The horrific case the letter details

The Supreme Court of Queensland heard that Lister had been living with Wilkinson for a year before he killed two of her children, Jimmy, 11, and Kimberley, nine, just before Christmas in 1994.

Wilkinson was not Jimmy and Kimberley's father and was described as being an 'extremely violent, mentally unstable man' who physically abused everyone in the home, especially the children, according to court documents.

Wilkinson violently assaulted Jimmy on December 22, 1994, throwing him around the house, which made him hit his head on the floor, causing him to lose consciousness.

Jimmy was put to bed and was not given medical treatment, dying from his injuries the next day.

Lister had claimed she went into town to get medical assistance for Jimmy but was told not to do so by Wilkinson, and instead returned with booze and cigarettes. 

That night, Lister helped her husband bury Jimmy in a grave.

Kimberley was killed just one day later.

Wilkinson had ordered Kimberley to complete a task in the backyard, but he told her she was doing it too slowly and started to yell at her.

He then threw Kimberley across the ground near a concrete path and kicked her in the stomach.

She died almost immediately.

'Lister wiped Kimberley's face and tried to revive her, but there was no pulse and no response,' the court heard.

'Wilkinson said, "Leave the f**king b***h where she is, she got what she deserved. She should have been the one to go first." According to Lister, Wilkinson hated Kimberley and called her "the devil's child".'

Lister and Wilkinson buried Kimberley in the grave on Christmas morning, later having guests to the house and seemingly acting like everything was fine, telling them the children were away with their biological father.

Some of those guests even slept in the bed bunks belonging to the children.

'Two or three days later, odour emanated from the graves, particularly the shallower grave in which Kimberley's body was buried,' the court heard.

'Wilkinson decided that the bodies would have to be burned and he, his father and Lister set about exhuming and burying them.'

Even while the children's bodies were burning, Wilkinson ordered Lister to fetch him beers from the house.

Jimmy had a crack on his skull and Kimberley's body was already 'partly decayed' by the time they were set alight. Wilkinson was also understood to have cut Kimberley's legs off before dumping her in a drum bin.

The crimes only came to light when Lister accidentally let them slip while speaking to a friend in February, 1995.

It was right after Wilkinson, who was never held accountable for his crimes, was fatally killed in a car crash.

The friend reported what had happened to the children to the local pastor who then spoke with Lister who later came clean to police.

The judge found Lister had 'assisted [Wilkinson] over an extended period and in substantial ways to escape punishment knowing that he had committed two killings'.

'You made no attempt whatsoever to leave him and report the matter after the children died. 

'You continued to cover up in every respect with him until the stage when he could never have been apprehended because of his death and indeed some time afterwards. 

'The inference is that it would probably have continued if he was not killed.'

The judge noted Lister had been dominated by Wilkinson and had shown remorse for her crimes.

Lister was jailed after being found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter and an accessory after the fact to murder.

Lister, who would now be aged 75, was sentenced to two years over the manslaughter offence and nine for the murder offence, which were ordered to be served concurrently following a trial in 1996.

Her sentence was backdated to March, 1995, and she was to be eligible for parole after serving two-and-a-half-years from that date, before the Attorney-General successfully appealed against it in 1996.

Her prison sentence was backdated to March, 1995, and the Attorney-General ruled she would need to serve five years before she was eligible for parole.

Lister's current whereabouts are unknown.