True Crime Conversations · Mamamia Podcasts

Michelle Steck Found Her Ex Hiding In The Roof, Weeks Later Her Daughter Was Dead

·32 min·2 clips

Police told Michelle East documented Kelly's death to make it as awful as possible for her.

1. True Crime Conversations focuses on Michelle Steck’s relationship with Kevin East and the violence that followed after she left him. 2. Host Clare Murphy interviews Michelle Steck, whose account matters because she lived through East’s abuse and Kelly’s death. 3. The episode asks how coercive control, police inaction, and retaliatory filicide can turn a breakup into a fatal case. 4. Michelle says she met Kevin East at a Perth shopping centre in 1989 when she was 19 and he seemed like a successful older man. 5. She says the abuse began as a “very slow creep,” with daily calls, jealousy, and accusations that she was having affairs. 6. Michelle describes East cutting her off from friends and family, controlling finances, and making her ask for money for small purchases. 7. She says the first time she left, she packed quietly and went to her mother’s house before East could react. 8. Michelle says East later turned violent again, and that the relationship became more dangerous after they had a second child, Wesley. 9. She says East monitored her kilometres, questioned a visit to her sister in Subiaco, and made her whole day subject to approval. 10. Michelle says police eventually found East in her roof cavity, then let him shower before court and did not charge him with trespass. 11. She says East had bugged her phone, sat on the roof, and even lived in the ceiling for some time while items disappeared from the house. 12. Michelle says Kelly once told her that East put a pillow over her face with a biscuit on it so she could not breathe. 13. She says a solicitor dismissed Kelly’s disclosure as inadmissible because she was only a child, and Michelle says no one would help her. 14. Michelle says the worst part of sending Kelly on access visits was that she could not trust East to keep her safe. 15. She says East wrote nasty letters, threatened suicide on her doorstep, and used gifts and toys to keep contact after separation. 16. Michelle says detectives told her not to read Kevin East’s diary because it would damage her, and she says he documented Kelly’s final hours. 17. She says he had purchased hose, went to the beach, and wrote down the exact time Kelly died. 18. The episode is interview-led, emotionally direct, and framed by Clare Murphy’s questions and Michelle’s detailed recollections. 19. Listeners interested in domestic violence, coercive control, and Australian true crime would want this episode. 20. Listeners looking for light banter or a self-contained non-true-crime story should skip it.

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