“EVIE Amati, the transgender axe attacker
convicted of three attempted murders, grew up in a comfortable central
Perth suburb, the child of West Australian trade union royalty.
Then
named Karl, Amati was gifted academically and would go on to top the
state in English, and become the highest achiever of Western Australia’s
top public school in English literature, ancient history and political
science.
In 2009, Karl no doubt made his parents swell with pride.
But last month, they were forced to hear about their child’s intelligence and academic achievements in a Sydney courtroom.
Evie Amati swings at Sharon Hacker for a second time, with Ben Rimmer (left) on the floor of the 7-Eleven bleeding.
Evie Amati transitioned from Karl Booth Amati in 2012.
Amati as drummer in the band, Everything I Own is Broken.
Amati is the child of respected WA union representatives, Melanie Booth and Michel Amati.
How the privileged son of union royalty became an attempted axe
murderer: experts said Amati feigned unconsciousness after the attacks.
In the dock of court 2.3 of the Downing Centre sat that once
brilliant child, now a 26-year-old transgender woman by the name of Evie
Amati.
Her father Michel Amati, mother Melanie Booth and sister
Chiara had to relive the horror of Amati’s enraged axe attack on two
convenience store customers innocently buying a pie and a carton of
milk.
Amati’s barrister Charles Waterstreet explained how his
client could have carried out “these horrible acts” by way of mental
illness.
A jury didn’t believe him.
So how did an intelligent young
person from a decent family come to face spending up to 25 years in
prison for such brutal crimes?
Michel was painted as a harsh disciplinarian by Mr Waterstreet during Amati’s trial before Judge Mark Williams.
This
included an allegation, made while Michel sat in court, that he once
kicked Karl in the rear end as Karl bothered his sister about being a
girl.
The privileged son of union representatives, Amati was publicly still Karl in the first half of 2012.
Evie Amati’s union connections scored her a job at the CPSU in Sydney where she worked for seven years until the axe attack.
Amati’s parents were well known in WA’s union movement, with Michel
being promoted to industrial advocate of the WA State School Teachers
Union, and a WA WorkCover agent.
Amati’s mother Melanie Booth
became WA organiser of the CSIRO Staff Association division of the CPSU,
and consulted with federal ministers on issues such as disability
services.
On graduating from Perth’s Shenton College, a
progressive coeducational school just 5km from home, Amati achieved a
score of 99.4 and was awarded a WA Government Certificate of Excellence.
Amati was in WA’s top 1 per cent of high school graduates, and the following year would head east to Sydney.
Through
family union connections, Amati obtained a job as a member service
centre organiser with the CPSU, based at Haymarket near Sydney’s
Chinatown.
Amati was also studying US foreign policy in Sydney.
For the first two years at the CPSU, Amati was known as Karl and worked to avert disputes between union members and management.
In
a union profile of Amati once she had transitioned, she said she fought
to “bring calm and clarity to members in moments of confusion and
vulnerability”.
“Delegates need to know that a proactive approach
to assisting members in trouble is essential to minimising the possible
harm that can be caused,” it said.
“Being adversarial may be necessary to secure positive outcomes for our members, but should be used as a last resort.
“We need to minimise the extent to which escalation and dispute is required.”
However, news.com.au has learned that as a union staffer, Amati was
known for her sense of entitlement, lack of sympathy with those who
didn’t share her outlook and frequent sick days.
The latter may be explained somewhat by Mr Waterstreet’s defence case for Amati.
He
told the court that Amati had been suicidal and at one point “took
stress leave for a couple of weeks after receiving a call about someone
else’s suicide”. He also said Amati had to go home twice a day for
physical reasons after her gender reassignment surgery.
A former union affiliate of Amati has, however, described her as “lazy”.
In
April 2012, Amati was still identifying publicly as Karl and posted on
Facebook: “EVERYONE! My phone is f***ed, pls Facebook me in the interim —
regards an irate-as-f*** Karl”.
Karl was also a drummer in the
band Everything I Have is Broken and performed gigs with the other male
members at pubs in Sydney’s inner city.
Friends were asked to
Karl’s birthday but on June 11, 2012, Amati declared on Facebook that
(Karl) “thinks he has wanted to be a girl for a while now and wants to
act more publicly feminine. Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Insults?”
Sharon Hack has lost 25kg and has nerve pain.
Ben Rimmer feared he would bleed out on the shop floor.
The post attracted a stream of positive responses from family, friends and colleagues.
A
union and LGBTI community member encouraged Amati, posting “Karl,
obviously the timing and the direction you choose to take this is up to
you, but please let us CPSU people know if there are any ways we can
support you … there is lots of love for you here”.
Amati replied she would do a “coming out” email at work.
She
began hormone therapy and joked on Facebook about growing breasts,
which her sister Chiara responded with, “Sorry, boobs don’t run in our
family. So don’t expect too much.”
Amati became something of a
transgender activist on Facebook, railing against violence meted out to
trans people and praising transgender rocker Laura Jane Grace as a role
model.
Physically, Amati seems to have mirrored the multiple
tattoos, black clothing and punk style of the American musician,
formerly Tom Gabel.
In 2014, Amati, her girlfriend, parents and sister flew to Thailand for her to have gender reassignment surgery.
What
happened there and afterwards was the subject of tortuous address by Mr
Waterstreet to Amati’s trial that had the accused’s head in her hands.
The lurid post-surgery description from Mr Waterstreet was meant to elicit sympathy for the accused’s pain and suffering.
Mr
Waterstreet said Amati started smoking more cannabis “for relief of
this excruciating pain” and took ecstasy but was “dead set against”
amphetamines.
Back in Sydney, the LGBTI community that lived in
the inner west suburbs had members that knew both Evie Amati and her
victim Sharon Hacker, who had a unique costume shop in Newtown.
Both Amati and Ms Hacker were drummers in a band.
Their worlds were about to collide in the most terrible way.
Ms
Hacker wouldn’t learn until later that some of her transgender friends
had social media encounters with Amati, who admonished them to undergo
surgery or they would not be properly trans.
“She would shame them online if they wouldn’t go through surgery,” Ms Hacker said.
“It’s not for everyone; everyone’s different.”
In 2015, Amati split up with her girlfriend and Mr Waterstreet told the court her “state of mind deteriorated”.
“She
started to present at hospitals and started to attempt suicide,” he
said, saying on two occasions “trying to jump on a train line”.
Crown prosecutor Daniel McMahon told Amati’s trial that she had fantasised about ending her life “in a blaze of violence”.
In March 2016, she had wanted to “twist people’s necks on a bus”.
In November 2016, Amati bought a long-handled axe weighing 2kg and tested it out on some furniture.
She
sent a Facebook message to a prospective female partner on December 3,
2016, saying “OMG I just destroyed an old couch with a new axe. It was
incredibly satisfying but gives me ideas haha”.
On January 3,
2017, Amati gave the woman an ultimatum about a meeting between the two
of them. Three days later, the woman updated her Facebook relationship
status indicating she was with a man.
Amati unfriended her on
Facebook. On the night of January 6, after going to Tinder, Amati met up
with two women, one her Tinder date.
They began drinking vodka and took a capsule, which they believed to be ecstasy or MDMA.
It was instead MDA, which a chemist would describe to the trial as “the love drug”.
Amati’s two companions felt “euphoric”.
On
the way out to a hotel, Amati decided to leave the two women after
believing her date found her “unattractive … on the basis she was
transgender”.
Over Facebook messenger, Amati would go on to say, “some people deserve to die, I hate people”.
At 1.13am she posted, “One day I am going to kill a lot of people”, and then at 1.31am, “I know where you live haha”.
[Click above link to view video of police interview]
At 1.55am, Amati changed her Facebook status to: “Humans are only able to destroy to hate so that is what I shall do.”
Amati left her home in Enmore, headphones on, listening to one of her favourite songs, Flatline by American rapper B.o.B.
She had the axe in her hand and a long knife in the back pocket of her black shorts.
At
2.19am, Amati can be seen on CCTV entering Enmore 7-Eleven, doing a lap
of the shop and coming up to Ben Rimmer, who is waiting to buy a pie.
Mr
Rimmer later said he thought Amati’s axe was part of a fancy dress
outfit, and in the video footage he can be seen smiling and touching it.
But
as Mr Rimmer said, Amati was too close to him and he felt a sense of
foreboding, “that something wasn’t quite right … I felt threatened”.
Amati
waited until Mr Rimmer turned to pay for his pie and then swung the axe
down on his face. After being struck, Mr Rimmer panicked and thought he
was going to “bleed out” on the floor of the 7-Eleven, so profusely was
blood streaming from his head
But Amati wasn’t finished. She then attacked the departing customer, Ms Hacker, who had just bought milk.
After
Ms Hacker fell to the ground, Amati swung the axe up a second time and
brought it down with such force that she surely would have killed Ms
Hacker, had she not narrowly missed her.
Amati then stepped over Ms Hacker, and swaggered off into the night.
On the street, homeless man Shane Redwood saw Amati approaching him.
Perhaps the instincts of the street told him, he would be next.
He saved himself from Amati’s first axe blow with his backpack, fell
to the ground with the second blow and then, despite his disability and
heart condition, managed to run away.
Amati walked up the road and into the front yard of a property, propped the axe up against the wall and lay on the ground.
When police and paramedics found her there, she feigned unconsciousness.
Taken to St Vincent’s Hospital, she ripped the cannula out of her arm and smirked when officers asked her name.
“I don’t have a name,” she said, licking her lips, “f**k me, f**k me, f**k me.”
Mr
Waterstreet would claim Amati was suffering mental illness exacerbated
by the alcohol, female hormones, antidepressants, cannabis and MDA
tablet she took that night, plus romantic rejection.
In a recorded
police interview about 13 hours after the attack, Amati looked composed
and repeatedly said, “I respectfully exercise my right to silence.”
Crown prosecutor Daniel McMahon told the court Amati was just angry with the world and went out to take her revenge.
The jury believed Mr McMahon.
In brief court hearings after
Amati’s arrest and in a failed bail application, the accused claimed she
had not been properly provided with hormones for transgender people.
She
also claimed she had been held in a male prison, although Cessnock
Correctional Centre has a female unit where other women prisoners are
housed.
Amati was moved to Mary Wade Correctional Centre, a maximum-security prison at Lidcombe in western Sydney.
Since
her encounter with Amati’s axe, Ms Hacker has lost 25kg, suffers
continuing nerve pain and her daughter has become agoraphobic and
fearful of going out after dark.
After the attack, Ms Hacker was
trolled online by people accusing her “of being a bad mother” because
she went to the shop to buy milk at 2am.
Ms Hacker says she hopes whatever sentence Amati receives “she uses it for rehabilitation purposes”.
After
Amati was convicted of three counts of attempted murder last week, she
sobbed in the dock and hugged both Mr Waterstreet and her mother.
NSW District Court Judge Mark Williams will sentence her in September.”
Even though trans identified males retain a male pattern of violence, huh?
why do those ppl care to protect this person
“Amati was known for her sense of entitlement, lack of sympathy with those who didn’t share her outlook and frequent sick days” breaking news, a TIM has a huge ego!!!!
Big Mean Sweaty Dyke 