It is 30 years tomorrow (Saturday) since Janine Balding was abducted from a Sutherland car park, repeatedly raped and murdered.
Floral tributes will cover the memorial erected in Toronto Parade where the horrendous crime began in the late afternoon on September 8, 1988.
Ms Balding, a 20-year-old bank teller who lived at Cronulla and parked her car in the unsealed car park each day to catch the train to the city, was accosted on the way home by five homeless young people, including a girl.
The group hijacked her car and drove to Minchinbury in western Sydney, assaulting her along the way and later drowning her.
Ms Balding’s body, which was bound by rope, was found the next day in a dam near the road.
Three members of the group, Stephen “Shorty” Jamieson, who was 22 at the time, Bronson Blessington, 14, and Matthew James Elliott, 16, were sentenced to life in jail.
The judge recommended that, because the crime was “so grave”, they were “never to be released”.
Despite numerous appeals, the trio remind behind bars – and that’s exactly where Ms Balding’s father Kerry and brother David, who was 10 when his sister was murdered, will fight for them to remain.
David Baldwin said the 30th anniversary of Janine’s death would be little different to other days for him and his father, who live in Wagga Wagga, where they run the family’s joinery business.
“It’s always there, you think about it often enough,” he said.
“I will head out to the cemetery and dad probably will too.”
Earlier this year, during a rare visit to Sydney, they visited the memorial to Janine beneath the road overpass at Sutherland.
Mr Baldwin said they appreciated the fact the memorial kept Janine’s memory alive and that Olsens Funerals, across the road, frequently laid fresh flowers.
Mr Baldwin said government authorities had “guaranteed as much as they can” the three men serving life sentences would never be released.
“Governments and policies change, but hopefully these three will never see the light of day,” he said.
“If there is any move to let them out, we will fight it all the way.
“They are always trying something – you never know what’s coming around the corner.”
Mr Baldwin said, this year, they attended a parole hearing for another member of the gang, Wayne Lindsay Wilmot, who was given a lesser sentence and released in about 1998, but subsequently jailed again for kidnapping and sexually assaulting another woman.
“He got knocked back for parole,” Mr Baldwin said.
“He is due for release in July next year but we have been told there is a new law that will keep him in jail.”
The fifth member of the group, Carol Anne Arrow, also served a lesser sentence for her part in the crime.
Janine Balding’s mother Beverley died in 2013
In a 2003 ABC interview, Mrs Balding said, “It is very hard for any parent to lose a child, but to lose a child under the circumstances we lost Janine is so difficult”.
“There is no way in my heart I could ever see fit to forgive those people that took our daughter’s life.”
