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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, I'm Annabel Crabb. Now, I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder exactly, but I do hang on to things. It's not just you and me. Australia's oldest library is crammed with stuff that isn't books. Terrible paintings, old menus, human hair. Is this history or hoarding? Come and have a rummage through the story of us told by our stuff.
Search for the History or Hoarding podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
What's it like to sit in court and hear the details of your grandmother's violent death and the excuses of the accused poured over in front of an audience? In this episode, we find out. I'm Stephen Stockwell. Welcome to episode 15 of The Case of the Two Intruders.
Irma Palacic's brutal murder rocked her family and has haunted them for 24 long years.
This wasn't the average robbery. The brutality of the attack shocked the community.
They were virtually tortured that night.
Violently assaulted before the two men ransacked the premises and stole cash and jewellery. My grandparents were beaten and my grandmother was left to die on the lounge room floor.
John Makita was in his 20s when his grandmother, Irma Palacix, was killed in 1999, and for decades after, he ran a campaign asking Canberrans who killed Irma. Now he knows, and after sitting in court for the trial which found two men guilty of Irma's manslaughter, I wanted to know what he thought of the process, the verdict, and also what his grandparents were like.
John Makita, welcome to The Case Of... Thank you. And as well as John, we're also joined by ABC court reporter, Elizabeth Byrne. Welcome, Liz.
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Chapter 2: What was the impact of Irma Palacic's murder on her family?
I listened to everything that she said. I took her advice and, you know, she really cared for everybody in the family. She was the matriarch of our family. And it was, yeah, it was terrible when suddenly she just disappeared from being that person for everybody in the family. They were generous. They loved their community. They loved going out.
You know, some of the fond memories that I have with my grandparents was, especially when I was there on school holidays, was when I was sick, when they lived in Red Hill. It was, we'd go down at lunchtime or in mid-morning to the local shops and my grandmother would buy myself and if my brother was with me something sweet to eat and we'd always get a toy or something.
But we always had to be back home at lunchtime for Bold and the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives. And she'd make us the big victory sandwich and sit us down and sort of like say, shh, okay, no talking now for the next hour and a half. And it doesn't matter if anybody rang on the telephone, they were all ignored because that was the time for Marlena and Stephen and the others.
So it's those sort of memories that you remember the most. And, of course, her cooking. My grandma was a five-star Michelin chef as far as I was concerned. And she'd make wonderful walnut cakes and lots of different Hungarian sweets and things. So, yeah, it was just... It's a lot of really great memories which came crashing to an end on that night.
It's so sad that you lost her and obviously such lovely memories. One of the things that struck me during the trial was that during the evidence, some people in the family had expressed concern about Irma's money storing practices. And it raised the question for me, Why was there so much money in the house?
And not just in 1999, but also in the other times, particularly 1997, when they lost over $100,000 in cash.
We have to remember, too, that back where my grandparents came from, so they came from Hungary during the revolution. And they left the country with basically the clothes on their back. My grandmother was cooking and cleaning, I think, for one of the Russian soldiers.
And she had learned a little bit of Russian and she had worked out one evening that the government was going to clamp down on Russia. the revolution and close the borders. So she literally went home, grabbed my auntie and my mum and my grandfather, and they walked across the border that night into Austria.
And so coming to Australia with nothing and starting from basically scratch, I think my grandmother had a bit of a fear of losing money and leaving things behind. And the best way of coping with that was just to keep it somewhere within close reach. Also, look, I've got to admit too, back in those days, it was a cash economy.
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Chapter 3: How did John Mikita feel about the verdict of the trial?
I'd never been to the house in McKellar after it had happened. I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So it was the hidey hole. I had no idea at all that there was such a thing.
We always used to joke as the family as if anything ever happened to them and they eventually passed away that we would have to literally leave no stone unturned in the house to find to make sure we're not just throwing valuables out.
So let's flip forward to 1998, the second burglary. where Irma was actually assaulted. What was life like for them after that? Because obviously that prompted them to move.
Yeah, look, they were very, very scared after that had happened. The first time obviously was a big jolt, especially losing so much. But to be physically attacked that my grandmother was in that second home invasion that they had or robbery, if we call it that, They felt very unsecure.
They did lock their doors more than they used to because my grandmother and grandfather always had this thing where you could essentially walk straight into the garage, which was underneath their house in Red Hill. The roller door sometimes was left open. I mean, they were just trusting of other people. But from that point, it all changed.
When they had bought the house in McKellar, they had basically turned it into Fort Knox. And I think that came out through the police investigation and the trial where, you know, they put up high fences. They basically refurbished the whole house. There was dead locks. There was large gates everywhere.
And unfortunately, in the end, the place that the two offenders got through was just somewhere which we would never thought somebody would fit through.
So after the 1999 incident, what was the family's feeling about who might have been responsible and what was the relationship with the Hungarian community like at that time? Did you suspect anyone from there?
Well, my grandparents were quite active in the Hungarian-Australian club and also in the Hungarian community, they were very well respected and widely known. And yeah, we obviously did think about that too. I mean, my grandparents had known so many people and, you know, especially in their carpentry business too. You know, it wasn't just the Hungarian community.
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Chapter 4: What memories does John have of his grandparents?
I'm not satisfied with where things are going because just there had been obviously no arrests and no progress in the case that I would get on board with the Who Killed Emma campaign and ensure that nobody in Canberra forgot what had happened on that night in November 1999.
How important do you think the campaign was in finally getting the result and in keeping it in the public's mind, keeping it in the police's mind, even though, of course, now we know that the people responsible were way out of the range of the campaign?
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's interesting because, yeah, I spent a phenomenal amount of time working in the Canberra community to get the message out, not knowing that it was all the way down the road in Melbourne where we should have been concentrating.
But I started to realise through just talking with police over the years that resources weren't available to continuously work on a lot of these cold cases, including ours, which was one of the most recent ones. And there were questions about people who had submitted evidence or leads to ACT policing, but there was no resources available to be following them up.
And that sort of like got me into the frame of mind that I really need to do something now about this, because if that is the case, then I want the police and I want the government to do everything they possibly can to be able to catch these people.
The arrests were quite spectacular and a bit of a surprise. How did you find out that someone had been arrested?
I was actually interstate for work and I had received a call from Craig Marriott to say that we've actually arrested, we're about to arrest somebody. So they had given us a 24 hours heads up just to let the family know. to prepare ourselves. And so I flew back to Canberra so that we could do some media straight away as soon as it had happened.
But that was essentially the first time that we had known that they were actually going to arrest somebody for the crime, the first person.
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