Fond memories of a feisty friend

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Vonne McGlynn’s murderer Angelika Gavare will spend more than three decades behind bars.



Friends of Vonne McGlynn

Vonne McGlynn’s neighbours and surrogate family Roger and Sharyn Zadow with Therese Molloy and Rebekah Regan. Picture: Higgs Greg
Source: The Advertiser




THEY called her the European wasp – not because she was a pest but because, the moment you lit the barbecue, Vonne McGlynn would appear in your backyard.


Smiling, armed with a plate of meat and a bottle of wine, Ms McGlynn would engage friends in conversation about their lives, work and children.

She would offer no information about herself, however, nor would she tolerate fools or gossip.

Yesterday, Ms McGlynn’s dearest friends – Therese Molloy, Rebekah Regan and Roger and Sharyn Zadow – chose to remember her life, not her gruesome death.

It was the first time they could do so in almost three years, having watched Angelika Gavare receive a life sentence for Ms McGlynn’s murder.

“I’m going to have fond memories of my friend, and I’m going to spend my time remembering those good times,” Mrs Molloy said.

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Vonne McGlynn






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“All of us, as friends and neighbours, will get together to share those memories … Vonne is still a part of our lives.”

The bonds of friendship were forged by proximity.

The Molloys and Zadows were Ms McGlynn’s neighbours on Somerfield Ave, Reynella. She adopted them as family and their children as her “surrogate grandkids”, displaying their photos around her home.

“Vonne was there for our whole lives,” Mr Zadow said. “She saw us get married, saw our children born and shared meals with us all the time.”

The Molloys moved away but remained in touch, sharing birthdays and Christmas dinners with Ms McGlynn.

When Ms McGlynn and Ms Molloy had coffee, they would invite Mrs Zadow to join them.

The group shared what they called a “boomerang bottle” of wine that passed from house-to-house and was refilled when empty.

Ms McGlynn’s disappearance, in December 2008, came as a shock. “The whole thing just came out of left-field,” Mr Zadow said. “One minute we were speaking to Vonne and, the next minute, something was wrong and she had disappeared.

“People wondered if she’d gone into a nursing home but we knew she was hell-bent on staying in her own place – and that she’d not do anything without telling us.”

When police discovered Ms McGlynn had been attacked in her home, killed and dismembered, the tight-knit group went into shock.

“We had older people coming to our door crying and seeking comfort,” Mr Zadow said.

He is convinced Ms McGlynn would have fought Gavare with all her might.

He said she once chased two teenagers away from their street because she “didn’t like” the way they were hanging around.

“She was a wonderful, feisty lady,” he said.

Mrs Molloy said the pensioner had a broken arm at the time of the murder, but that would not have stopped her.

“I know my friend well, and I think she would have put up a fight with Gavare,” she said. “She would have confronted her … been fearless and thought she could protect herself.”

The families supported police investigations and attended court to testify against Gavare.

“It’s quite confronting that someone can show no remorse, no human empathy, no humanity,” Mrs Molloy said of the killer.

“Without a doubt, she is a monster.”

Mr Zadow had his own names for Gavare.

“She’s a shark, she’s a killer, she’s stone,” he said.

“What I couldn’t get over was the way she’d just look at you, emotionless, in court.”

Gavare has never revealed what she did with Ms McGlynn’s head and hands – and her silence haunts Mrs Molloy. “She’s decided to withhold some of Vonne’s remains, and that’s not good enough,” she said.

“But I’m going to try and find some forgiveness for that murderer, because that’s what my faith teaches me.

“I even feel a little sorry for her, as a human being, because her decisions and actions have brought her such a dreadful outcome.”

 

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