After 30 years, Anita Cobby’s husband John has broken his silence over the brutal rape and murder that shocked the nation.
Cobby, who was a prime suspect in the killing, says after all these years, he still feels responsible for his wife’s death.
“You don’t want to keep living… I feel responsible, I’m sorry I let her down,” Cobby tells journalist Steve Pennells in a special that will screen tonight on Channel Seven.
Seven News Investigates: Anita Cobby. You Thought You Knew It All is the first time Cobby has spoked to the media about the case.
“For 30 years I’ve been in hiding, blaming myself for her death. I was the husband of Anita Cobby,” he says in the special.
A 26-year-old nurse and former beauty queen, Anita Cobby disappeared on February 2, 1986, walking home in Blacktown in Sydney’s west.
She was dragged kicking and screaming into a stolen car by five men, including three brothers, and driven to nearby Prospect where she was gang-raped, tortured and killed.
Police initially suspected John Cobby was behind his wife’s murder, and forced a false confession out of him in an interrogation. In the days after the murder, Cobby changed his name and fled Australia, to escape the case.
It later emerged that the attack was the work of John Travers, Michael Murphy, Leslie Murphy, Gary Murphy and Michael Murdoch, who repeatedly raped Cobby, brutally bashed her and eventually slit her throat.
The severity of the attack shocked the community, and caused widespread outrage.
Cobby says he has never gotten over his wife’s murder and now he is speaking out.
“It destroyed my life. These men should have been executed.”
On tonight’s TV special a tape of a confession by Michael Murphy recorded secretly by a friend of the five men will be heard publicly for the first time.