Almost three years to the day since young mother Mackenzie Anderson was killed inside her Newcastle home, her ex-boyfriend today told a court he was guilty of her murder.
9News captured footage of Tyrone Thompson for the first time since he was arrested for the domestic violence murder.
Thompson was seen briefly as he was escorted in through the back of the NSW Supreme Court.
Minutes later he admitted to murdering Anderson.
Thompson was two weeks out of jail and on parole for a previous domestic attack on Mackenzie when he stabbed her 78 times inside her Mayfield home in 2022, leaving her one-year-old son without a mother.
Anderson had previously documented her injuries to encourage others to speak out and was supposed to be protected by an apprehended violence order.
“A piece of paper is not going to do anything, an AVO doesn’t help, an AVO, my daughter still got killed with one,” Anderson’s mother Tabitha Acret said.
Acret says the system failed her daughter and lawmakers need to do more.
“I’d like to see ankle monitoring bracelets on them, so that we know that if they are in the vicinity of the house where they’re not meant to go, that it’s alerted to someone, and they shouldn’t even be allowed in that suburb,” she said.
She continues to campaign for change in honour of her daughter.
“We want her remembered as someone that was really loved because we really, really loved her.
“That’s never going away and that hole is never going to leave us.
“Women shouldn’t die every week because we’re not protecting them.”
Thompson, 25, will face a sentencing hearing in Newcastle at the end of the month.
