Chilling CCTV footage shows a ‘cool and calm’ Paul Thijssen setting up the ambush to kill Lilie James in a school bathroom in the hours leading up to her brutal murder.
Before playing the footage at Ms James’ inquest, Counsel Assisting Jennifer Single gave a stern warning to the court.
‘I warn that it is chilling, disturbing footage. I will halt now so that anyone can leave the courtroom’, she said, noting that Thijssen appeared ‘calm and collected’.
‘Every step of that day, he didn’t conceal himself. And to all intents and purposes was… normal,’ Ms Single said.
The video captured inside St Andrews Cathedral School shows Thijssen, 24, repeatedly going to two different bathrooms – ‘bathroom one and bathroom three’ – near the school gym and on three occasions rehearsing his entry by forcing the door open.
He did that twice with his right hand and on the third occasion with his left hand – to practise as if he had a hammer in his right.
In the most calculated of all his moves, just before 5pm and only about two hours before he committed the murder, Thijssen went to the bathrooms carrying a yellow ‘cleaning in progress’ sign.
This was because by then, Thijssen had chosen the larger, disabled bathroom, called ‘bathroom one’ as the place he would commit the murder.
By placing the sign outside ‘bathroom three’, Ms James, 21, would be forced to use that bathroom later that evening.
CCTV footage also showed Thijssen buying a hammer and duct tape from a Mitre 10 hardware store near the school two days before the murder.
The inquest heard of the countdown to Ms James’ murder when unbeknownst to her, Thijssen was stalking her outside her home by hiring a GoGet car that he used on seven occasions between October 21, 2023 and the day of her death.
Thijssen drove to the street where she lived with her family to take photos without her knowledge.
He also set up a fake Snapchat account in the name of another woman he had been seeing at the same time, who knew nothing about Ms James, in order to pretend he was being stalked so that Ms James might become jealous.
On two occasions after being with her in the last week of her life, Thijssen made payments to OnlyFans, the pay-for-view sex site.
The inquest heard that Ms James had suffered ‘blunt force blows to the head’.
Describing the attack as ‘overkill’, Ms Single said: ‘It was not a momentary loss of control. It was premeditated.’
The inquest also played CCTV footage in which Thijssen cornered and shoved Ms James against a wall not far from where he would kill her the following week.
In the video, which has no sound, Thijssen grabbed her shoulder and waved his arms in an agitated manner at her as she stood with her arms folded against her chest.
Around five minutes into their heated discussion, he pushed her with both hands against a wall, effectively blocking her exit.
Colleagues in the staff room, who knew the pair had been involved in a sexual relationship, saw Ms James become angry and leave the room and then they heard raised voices.
Immediately before the fight, Thijssen had sent Ms James a message saying ‘this what I don’t want, this is relationship s***’.
After the argument, Ms James told her friend Marisa that she’d had a fight with Thijssen during which he told her he ‘only hung out with her because he was sleeping with her’.
Thijssen and Ms James had became friends after she broke up with her boyfriend Lachlan.
By early to mid-September it was clear to other staff at the school they were in a sexual relationship.
In the early stages, Thijssen told friends that he and Ms James ‘had amazing sexual chemistry and she was shocked at how good the sex was’.
But the inquest heard that on Friday October 20, 2023, the day after Ms James and Thijssen’s clash at the school, she went to a friends’ 21st birthday party with Lachlan and other friends.
While Ms James sat with Lachlan on the couch at the party, occasionally kissing, Thijssen was at a pizza restaurant with friends, keeping tabs on her location via Snapchat while becoming agitated, and was clearly ‘uneasy’ and ‘stressed’.
Counsel Assisting Ms Single said that at the birthday party, Ms James had told Lachlan that she ‘didn’t feel safe with [Thijssen] and a bit weirded out by him’ and said she ‘wanted to cut things off with him and make a complete break, not stay a friends with benefits type thing’.
Ms Single said Lachlan would later amend this to say he might have suggested that Ms James was ‘weirded out’, but that Lachlan and Ms James had both made plans to meet up the following Wednesday, October 25 after she finished coaching water polo.
Ms Single said that outside the 21st party, Thijssen had arrived to pick up Ms James and another friend and had waited outside the party for an hour until the friend, Angelina, went inside to collect her.
The court heard that while Angelina said she hadn’t know what Ms James was doing inside the party, another friend Jules had told Thijssen that Ms James was inside and ‘together’ with Lachlan.
When Ms James came out from the party she went home to Thijssen’s place in the Sydney suburb of Kensington and stayed there the night, but ‘slept on the couch’.
Lachlan’s planned meet up with Ms James the following Wednesday would never eventuate because that was the evening Thijssen murdered her with a hammer in the staff bathroom.
The inquest is also investigating the death of Thijssen, who the court heard was a compulsive liar who forged documents and stalked and threatened another girlfriend before Ms James.
A young woman identified only as Freya had a relationship with Thijssen which began in March 2021 but ended when he began stalking her social media accounts and turning up unannounced outside her work and home.
In December 2021, after returning to from his native Netherlands, Thijssen went straight to see Freya. They went to church and afterwards visited a park, where he punched a tree close to her head.
When asked why he did it, Thijssen said: ‘Because I can’t punch the one thing I want to.’
Days later, when Freya was at home and came downstairs at 6.25am, she looked outside a window and saw Thijssen in the laneway looking anxious, scared and angry.
Freya’s father Mark later told Thijssen to have no further contact with his daughter or they would take out an AVO against him.
The inquest also heard Thijssen’s lies about his studies and work.
He told everyone including his parents that he was studying a Masters of Teaching at Sydney University.
‘He was tight with money and blamed it on spending large sums on university study. None of this was true,’ Ms Single told the court. There was no record he was studying anywhere.
She also listed the forged documents that Thijssen made in his application for a third working holiday visa, which included a reference and payslips which purported to show his work at St Andrew’s.
He pretended he had worked as a ‘farmhand’ at Kirrikee, the school’s outdoor education facility in the Southern Highlands.
The visa application was successful but when he murdered Ms James, Thijssen was running out of options because his visa was due to expire in February 2024 and he would have to leave .
There was no option to apply for a fourth working visa, and his lie about studying for a Masters of Teaching was about to be exposed because he hadn’t studied and therefore wouldn’t be graduating.
Police discovered Ms James’ ‘unrecognisable’ body inside a gymnasium bathroom at the school on October 25, 2023. She had suffered serious head injuries.
The couple had agreed to meet to exchange belongings that evening after Ms James broke off their relationship.
Earlier, her father had received a text from Ms James’ phone requesting to be picked up from the school later that evening.
After her body was discovered, homicide detectives launched an immediate search for Thijssen along the coastline at Diamond Bay, Vaucluse and overlying cliffs.
Thijssen’s backpack was found in a rubbish bin on a street overlooking the bay at about 5pm that evening.
A hammer was discovered inside the backpack.
Police retrieved Thijssen’s body about midday on Friday, October 27 after a tradesman spotted it wedged in rocks below the cliffs.
The inquiry is also expected to consider whether Thijssen’s death was self-inflicted and whether it could have been prevented.
It is also likely to study the role of technology in modern relationships, coercive control and the public’s perception of what that means and what it looks like.
Daily Mail previously revealed St Andrew’s Cathedral School would play no official role as an ‘interested party’ at the coronial inquiry.
Principal Dr Julie McGonigle referred to the upcoming inquest in a Head of School newsletter late last year.
Dr McGonigle wrote that ‘at this stage, the State Coroner does not consider St Andrew’s Cathedral School to have sufficient interest in this matter to be considered an interested party, pursuant to the Coroners Act’.
The school confirmed at the time of Ms James’ death it knew of the relationship after both staff members from its sports department had made them aware of it.
Relationships were allowed between staff members, providing they followed protocol and notified the school.
In the wake of tragedy, the school made plans to create a permanent reminder of Ms James’ life in the form of a memorial or award which celebrated her memory.
The James family said in a statement: ‘We are devastated and heartbroken by the loss of our beautiful Lilie James.
‘She was vibrant, outgoing and very much loved by her friends and family.’
The school has demolished the bathroom where Ms James’ body was found.
It has since created a memorial of a framed wreath made from the ribbons attached to the mountains of flowers left outside the school.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 21, 2023
Paul Thijssen seems angry as he tells his flatmate Matthew he can’t understand why Lilie wanted to be with her ex-boyfriend Lachlan and not him.
On Saturday night he commits what Counsel Assisting Jennifer Single called his first committed act of stalking.
Between 9.55pm and 10.55pm he hires a GoGet car and drives to Lilie’s family home where she lived in Kogarah Bay, without telling her he was outside her house, and takes photographs in the street.
Saved in hidden folder on his iPhone, they are images of different cars that he later labels with identifiers including ‘Outside house w/ brother car’, ‘brother car’, ‘family car’, and ‘car 1 on other side’.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22
Thijssen hires another GoGet vehicle and drives ot the vicinity of Lilie’s house without telling her or messaging her.
That evening, after leaving the Willoughby Hotel where he had drinks with friends, he hires another GoGet car and drives to Lilie’s house and then back home again between 10.29pm and 11.36pm.
Ms Single said this was the second and third example of Thijssen stalking Ms James in the lead up to the murder.
MONDAY OCTOBER 23
At 2.41pm Thijssen is captured on CCTV at Mitre Ten in York Street in the Sydney CBD buying heavy duty Gorilla rand duct tape and a red and black handled hammer.
In the footage he can be seen feeling the weight of different hammers and trying one out by rapping it onto the hammer stand.
That afternoon Lilie and Paul are seen arguing outside the school and Lilie is crying. He is seen on CCTV going to the school storeroom with his Mitre Ten bag, then exiting the room with the bag looking as it is lighter or empty.
That evening, in his fourth act of stalking, Thijssen again hires a GoGet vehicle and drive’s to Lilie’s house at 9.58pm with no evidence of her being aware. He takes photos near her hose and puts them in his iPhone hidden folder and rteurns to his Kensington flat at 11.16pm.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 24
At 12.07pm he tells others at the school he is feeling sick and won’t attending his hockey match. At 4pm he hires a GoGet vehicle for three-days, booking it from that time until 4pm on October 27.
He accesses the vehicle near his Kensington home at 4.51pm, and drives to the Allawah train station, which is the stop Lilie James uses when travelling to and from work by public transport.
He parks outside and waits for Lilie to exit at 6.18pm. He then drives to her street and parks. Dressed in dark track pants, t-shirt and cap, he gets out of the car and then returns to it 20 minutes later.
Paul Thijssen makes a payment to Only Fans. Then at 10.36pm he drives the GoGet to Lilie’s street, stopping near her house between 11.08 and 11.26pm, and returning to Kensington at 11.54pm. This was the seventh incident of stalking.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 25
On the last day of her life, Lilie James’ father Jamie James sees her making toast in the kitchen of their home in her sports work uniform before she says goodbye and drives her car to work.
At around lunchtime at St Andrews school, a work colleague sees Lilie outside seated with Paul who is staring very intently at her, ignoring everyone else, and with his hand on Lilie’s knee. Thijssen is directing an ‘ice cold and angry’ look at Lilie,, who is crying. Alex feels scared.
Soon after this with a another sports coach Angelina, Lilie and Thijssen go out to buy Halloween costumes, her a red devil’s pitchfork and him a white cane.
Back at school, at 1.29pm Paul is seen leaving the staff room and walking to Bathrooms One and Three.
Paul practises entering Bathroom here, lunging for the door and pushing it open. He repeats his practising entering the room quickly.
At 3.30pm he leaves the school with his backpack and catches the Light Rail home to Kensington. He tells one person he’s picking up dress pants, and another he’ picking up a dress shirt.
Police later believe he’s really picking up his flatmate’s black handled 30cm long silver hammer which has never been found. Detectives believe this was the murder weapon rather than the hammer he bought at Mitre Ten.
Thijssen drives his GoGet vehicle back to the school at 4.32pm. Inside the school at 5.39pm, he walks to Bathroom Three and remains inside for four minutes and 36 seconds, then exists carrying his backpack.
At 5.46pm he exits the staff room without his backpack. He changes into a Patriots hoodie and enters Bathroom One.
At 5.50pm he goes to Bathroom One to practise his swift entry. This tie he has switched to forcing it open with his left hand, as if his right hand would be holding a hammer.
Thijssen goes back to the staff room. When he returns to the bathrooms he is carrying a yellow ‘Cleaning in progress’ sign which he places outside Bathroom Three. This indicates that ‘Paul by this stage had decided to force Lilie James into using Bathroom One.
At 7pm Ms James was last seen alive going into gymnasium toilet at her school with a man following behind her.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 26
Police investigation sparked after body of Ms James is found.