A woman has revealed she had been invited to sleepover at a home in Cairns on the same night eight children were killed.
Their bodies were found at the Murray Street address just before 11.30am on December 19, 2014.
Mother Raina Thaiday, 34, was also found at the home with self-inflicted stab wounds.
Thaiday had drugged and slaughtered seven of her children, aged between two and 14, and also killed her teenage niece.
Cairns Mayor Amy Eden lived across the street and remembers that day vividly.
“This is meant to be the time where families get together and celebrate and there is joy but it was just completely very solemn, overwhelming deep sadness,” she said.
Jade Atkinson was 14 years old at the time and friends with one of the victims.
She had been invited for a sleepover the very night of the murders but her mother had said no.
“I believe she saved my life, I really do,” she said.
Atkinson was left to mourn not just the loss of her friend but her innocence.
“I thought it meant my own mum would kill me too,” she said.
Atkinson is now a mother herself, to two-year-old Poppy, and wonders how someone could have committed such a crime.
Thaiday was never held criminally responsible for the massacre.
A judge ruled she was of unsound mind and committed her to a psychiatric hospital in Brisbane, where she is unlikely to ever be released.
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