THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

When police declared Renae Marsden had committed suicide, her parents refused to believe it. As they tell Genevieve Gannon, their quest to uncover the truth revealed a darker force at play.

- Genevieve Gannon

During the last weeks of her life, 20-year-old Renae Marsden was looking at bridal websites and preparing to marry the man she loved. Her bedroom in Glenhaven in Sydney was lined with her favourite peep-toe shoes in every colour, and she would lie on her bed and scroll through pages of dresses and veils, and plan her perfect day. At just 152cm she was diminutive, but she always filled up a room with her loud laugh and bright personality.

“That laugh of hers …” her mother Teresa says, breaking off. “We’d go to awards nights at the school and she’d cheer for her brothers, and the principal would say, ‘Okay Renae, we know you’re here.’ That’s how vocal she was. She was proud of them.”

All Renae ever wanted was a family of her own. The evening she went missing, she had been babysitting her little sister Monique while Teresa took her boys, Jake and Luke, to their swimming lesson. Renae told her mother she was planning to have dinner with friends and would drop Monique at their grandfather’s house on her way out. The date was August 5, 2013. She was never seen again.

Later that night, Renae’s car was discovered abandoned at The Gap, a notorious suicide spot in eastern Sydney. Police determined she had taken her own life. But Teresa and her husband Mark sensed something darker was at play.

“We said from day one, ‘This is not normal’,” Teresa says. “We were ringing up everyone we could think of. We went to the police and said, ‘Something’s not right here.’ They thought I was stupid. ‘You’re just a mum. Go home.’”