Mum's fight after daughter's death

A Territory mother is fighting to prove her daughter did not kill herself, after police bungled the initial investigation.

Wilma McSkimming, 55, is bringing up her daughter Eva Pavlis's five young children after police found their mother dead inside a car in New South Wales.

A coronial inquiry is trying to determine how Ms Pavlis died, after doubts were raised about the police investigation.

Ms McSkimming has lost a marriage and the money for a house deposit travelling from Darwin to attend the coronial inquiry to find out what happened to her daughter. Ms Pavlis's body was found by two police officers in a car covered with a tarpaulin and wrapped in rope outside her home at Umina, on the NSW Central Coast, on June 2, 2003.

A hose ran inside the car from the exhaust pipe. The car was missing the ignition barrel and the screwdriver used to start the car was sitting next to Ms Pavlis, on the passenger seat.

Her six-month-old daughter was inside the house on her own.

A toxicology report revealed Ms Pavlis, a former methadone user, had three times the lethal dose of methadone in her system.

The coronial inquiry has heard the two police officers, who were investigating an anonymous phone call saying a woman had ``committed suicide in her front yard and a young child was alone inside the house'', disturbed the crime scene, jeopardising the forensic investigation.

Three scribbled suicide notes were found inside the house and despite the death being at first noted as suspicious, a NSW police investigation determined suicide as the cause.

An exhausted Ms McSkimming wants to know how her daughter was able to attach the hose from the exhaust to inside the car, cover the car with a tarpaulin, wrap it in rope and pull the screwdriver from the ignition and sit it on the seat, with such a lethal dose of methadone in her. She has endured a bitter struggle with her daughter's de facto, one of the last people to see Ms Pavlis alive, for her daughter's ashes after authorities assigned him as next of kin.

``What am I supposed to tell the kids?'' said Ms McSkimming, of Woodroffe in Palmerston.

``The system's let me down _ I know my daughter was murdered and the police can't tell me why her body was found in such suspicious circumstances ... it was physically impossible for her to do it on her own.

``There's no closure in sight and I want to know what really happened to my daughter.''

The coronial inquiry resumes in Sydney next month.

Newshawk: http://www.napnt.org
Pubdate: Tue, 19 April 2005
Source: Northern Territory News
Author: Greg McLean
Website: http://www.ntnews.com.au
Email: ntnmail@ntn.newsltd.com.au
Copyright: Northern Territory News 2005