The family of a young mum stabbed to death in a row over $50 have lashed out after her killer was set to be let out of jail for IVF treatment so she can have a baby behind bars.
Alicia Schiller, then aged 26, murdered mother-of-three Tyrelle Evertson-Mostert, 31, in a drug-fuelled rage in Geelong, Victoria, on November 9, 2014.
But Corrections Victoria has now given the green light for Schiller to be released from a Victorian maximum security prison to undergo IVF treatment.
If she becomes pregnant, she will be allowed to raise the child behind bars for its first five years before being handed over to the killer’s parents.
The move has disgusted the grandparents of Ms Evertson-Mostert’s children, who branded her release ‘bizarre’.
‘I’m just angry, you know, really angry,’ Yvonne Gentle, from Pearcedale, south of Melbourne, told Nine’s Today show.
‘This woman has committed a cold-blooded, calculated murder. She laid in wait for her, and this is what she did. She has done a diabolical crime.
‘She can have another chance when Tyrelle doesn’t get a second chance? It’s just wrong. The people in positions of power can make such stupid, uncaring, and ridiculous decisions.
Alicia Schiller is being allowed to get IVF to have a baby behind bars
‘She’s taken the rights of other people away. Isn’t this why you’re in jail? You’re in jail to pay for the crime? And what’s she getting? She’s getting good time out from the normal jail routine.
‘She’s going to be looked after, pampered, you know – and it goes on and on and on.’
‘The prison system or the government of our state says even a person in jail has rights. Well, not for a crime such as that.
‘If you’ve committed a crime such as that you do have rights. Your rights should be taken away from you.
‘Just because someone has a legal right doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.’
At her murder trial, the court heard Schiller had shown off a collection of box cutters, steak knives and pocket knives before the deadly attack.
She said she would ‘gut’ anyone who took money from her, the court was told, but Ms Evertson-Mostert was said to have borrowed $50 from her housemate’s room.
‘I don’t care if she took it or not, I’ll gut her,’ Schiller said before the attack, the court heard.
Her victim’s four year old son had been in the house when his mother was murdered, and still lives with the horror he witness.
‘It’s something that’s never going to leave him,’ added Ms Gentle.’To see something so brutal right in front of your eyes.
‘And it’s your own mother. It’s just unbelievable – I don’t know what someone could be thinking. I don’t know how someone could be so callous to do such a thing.’
The court heard Ms Evertson-Mostert had taken the money from her housemate’s room to buy drugs which she intended to sell – and was planning to replace the money.
Her older son, Tobias Evertsen-Mostert, who was 12 when his mum was murdered, has now branded his mum’s killer ‘an animal’ and told the Herald Sun he was heartbroken by the loss of his mum.
The court heard Ms Evertson-Mostert (pictured) had taken the money from her housemate’s room to buy drugs which she intended to sell
‘I was an orphan, when this bitch did this, my dad died a year earlier, so all my milestones as a kid, I had nobody to celebrate them, I had no parents,’ he said.
‘You left three kids motherless, you animal. You stabbed your friend. I stand strongly against this (the IVF treatment).’
On Wednesday, the Victorian Government insisted taxpayers would not be forced to pay for any of the staffing, security or transportation costs between the prison and the external IVF clinic.
But it refused to say if the treatment was successful, how much it would cost to care for the child in the specialist parent ward or if taxpayers would bear the costs.
Corrections Minister Enver Erdogan attempted to deflect responsibility, saying it was a court decision to allow Schiller to undergo treatment.
The minister said there were many questions that needed to be asked about the ‘appropriateness and necessary nature of this treatment’.
‘In terms of access to treatment, it’s a Supreme Court decision,’ he said.
‘But I think ethical questions about these kinds of treatments, especially when someone is serving such a long sentence, I think the medical professionals need to consider those.’
The Supreme Court of Victoria jury that convicted Schiller had heard a witness to the crime had gone to the house to collect methamphetamine, known as ice, from the victim.
Schiller and her supporters wept as the verdict was handed down. The young woman had pleaded not guilty to murder
He was watching the young mother weighing the drugs through her bedroom door when he saw Schiller jump on the bed, grab her by the hair and punch her repeatedly.
The punching action the witness saw was in fact the mother being fatally stabbed by her house guest.
Ms Evertsen-Mostert’s partner Jason Gentle cleared the room following the attack and said his dying partner asked him to call for help before he even realised she had been stabbed.
He told the court his partner said ‘you better ring an ambulance … she got me three good ones.’
His four-year-old son was by his side at the time.
Johanna Evertsen-Mostert, the victim’s mother, was ‘really happy with the result’ and said ‘justice has been served’ as she left the court after the verdict.
Schiller and her supporters wept as the verdict was handed down. She had pleaded not guilty to murder – her counsel insisting it was manslaughter as she did not intend to kill her victim.
