The Story of Renee McBryde – daughter of a 'cold-blooded murderer'
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When Renee McBryde was a child, she always thought it was strange that her mother never brought up her father.
Her father, Michael Caldwell, remained a mystery for the majority of her first 16 years of life, with the exception of a few sneaky phone calls she made to him behind her mother's back.
She did not discover the reason why she had never met her father until she was in a high school in Sydney working on a project for a legal studies class.
There, in the New South Wales State Library, she discovered a newspaper clipping that displayed an image of her father on the front page of the article.
As it turned out, it wasn’t true (as her nan had claimed) that her father worked at Cottee's cordial factory. Nor had he simply been away for ‘business purposes’, either.
It was discovered that Michael Caldwell was serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of two gay men in the neighbourhood of Kings Cross. The victims were the Greek Consul General Constantine Giannaris and the school teacher Peter Parkes.
Renee went to the library to study for her high school assignment in legal studies. Instead, she had accidentally unearthed a gloomy family secret.
She was the daughter of a young, hardworking single mother, and her father was a cold-blooded killer. "I knew I had to keep this a secret," Renee recalled saying to herself.
Renee McBryde wondered as a child why her mother never mentioned her father. Credit: 7News.
Renee had been largely unaware of her father's dark past until her fateful visit to the State Library.
She was told as a child that her father worked at a Cottee's cordial factory. He would call her once a week after her nan had picked her up from school and she would patiently wait by the phone after dinner and a bath. When the phone rang, the six-year-old Renee would jump out of her chair in delight.
She and her father would talk about typical father-daughter topics like school and Renee's favourite playground activities.
However, Nan reminded her granddaughter after each call that she couldn't tell anyone about it, especially her mum. It was something that only the two of them knew.
But on one call, instead of discussing the usual things a father and daughter do, he dropped a bombshell on her.
"I can't see you because I'm in jail, not because I'm working at a factory," he explained. And then, according to Renee, everything just imploded.
Renee was only six years old at the time, and she didn't know how to process what she was hearing.
She and her father would have the typical conversations that fathers and daughters have. Credit: 7News.
After Renee asked her mother about Caldwell over and over again, her mother finally told her why he was in jail. She did, however, claim to have received a "watered-down" version of the story.
As Renee got older, her mother would tell her bits and pieces about her father's criminal behaviour, but it was never enough for her to get the full picture.
Renee remembers that when she was eight, she was taken to Long Bay Correctional Centre to meet her dad for the first time. Looking back, she mused that the institution was certainly "not a place for children."
While searching for a "normal" father, she came across a man she couldn't even begin to believe was her father. She was heartbroken.
Renee didn't put two and two together about her family until she was 16 years old, while she was doing her homework in the state library. At that point, everything made sense to her, and she learned the difficult truth about her parents.
Caldwell was finally freed after completing his sentence, at which point he was eligible for parole and released. However, he never spoke to his daughter again.
Renee suspects that the whole point of the calls when she was younger was a ruse to get back together with her mother, but it didn't work.
Renee is now a social worker, assisting other families who are going through similar circumstances. Credit: 7News.
Now, Renee is a mum to four children and happily married to her husband. She also noted that she hasn't had any contact with her father in the past two decades.
She also did not pursue a career in law later on in life. Instead, she found solace in the field of social work, where she assists children whose fathers are serving time in prison as well as helping the children's mothers.
Quite a story, eh folks? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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