Westfield Bondi Junction stabbing: Crazy mall killer Joel Cauchi dated a teenager half his age as she reveals details of their five-month affair

Mass murderer Joel Cauchi dated an 18-year-old girl when he was more than twice her age at 37, as the young woman now gives a chilling insight into their relationship.

Josephine Everson first met Cauchi in mid-2019, around the time of her 18th birthday.

Five years on, Ms Everson was horrified to see her ex-boyfriend gunned down by police following his murderous rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction on Saturday.

He fatally stabbed five women and one man and wounded a further 12 during the frenzied killing spree before being shot dead by lone female police inspector Amy Scott.

But in 2019, Ms Everson and Ms Cauchi first met through a dating website in their hometown of Toowoomba in Queensland, 125km west of Brisbane.

Despite the age difference of almost 20 years, the pair met for coffee in Northpoint Shopping Center and immediately hit it off.

They continued to date for about five months, with Ms Everson saying he would take her to places of interest around the region on a series of day trips.

The odd couple had gone to the top of the Toowoomba Range and another excursion to a place outside nearby Highfields ‘with pumpkins on the fence’.

“He was a funny and kind person,” she told ABC on Wednesday.

Mrs Everson wept as she admitted she did not know Cauchi suffered from schizophrenia, which was diagnosed when he was 17.

‘He always had a big smile on his face. He was a happy person, she said.

The couple bonded over their love of photography with Cauchi teaching Ms. Everson how to properly use her camera.

She added that he was ‘always respectful’ throughout their relationship and had met her parents.

However, their relationship soured when Cauchi moved to Brisbane in October 2019, which is when his parents said he began coming off his anti-psychotic drugs.

The couple tried to stay in touch but eventually ended things due to the distance between them.

Cauchi’s terrified parents, Michele and Andrew Cauchi, desperately tried to reach the 40-year-old in the lead up to the Westfield Bondi Junction attack.

After losing contact with their son, they ended up contacting his bank to find out if he was alive and had used his account.

A moment of relief came just five weeks before the attack when Cauchi sent the couple a selfie from Sydney’s eastern suburbs coastline.

‘Mum I just want to show you how beautiful Coogee Beach (is),’ he wrote.

But the next time the couple saw their son was on TV as news of the Westfield stabbing spread.

‘I walked in and my wife said, “That looks like Joe”. I said, ‘It hurts,’ but he had his head down,” Mr Cauchi said.

Several other former romantic partners of Cauchi have come forward since the Bondi sting.

A Brisbane woman who claims she met Cauchi on Tinder in 2020 said she got the impression Cauchi was simply looking to connect with people.

A Gold Coast woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told TheWSTNews Australia about her brief relationship with a crazy knifeman.

The woman said she barely recognized the savage killer – who stabbed a nine-month-old baby girl in her pram – from the man she met on the Badoo dating app in April 2020.

‘I chatted to him for a while and then had a few drinks with him at his house in Brisbane. He lived there with flatmates,” she said.

‘He was a lovely guy when I met him, definitely quiet and reserved. I am just very shocked by what has happened.

‘It’s hard to believe that he killed these innocent people.’

She described Cauchi as a “true gentleman” but admitted they only met in person once as he was not her type.

Despite this, the couple continued their relationship into 2021.

‘He was a very nice guy. Well said. I only saw him once but we texted for a good year after that,’ she said.

‘He came across a bit too nerdy for me to be honest, but we still kept in touch. I live on the Gold Coast and he was living in Brisbane at the time.’

Despite Cauchi’s father previously telling TheWSTNews Australia that the 40-year-old lived a ‘backpacker’ lifestyle, which involved switching between sleeping in his car and cheap hostels, the Gold Coast woman did not remember Cauchi was interested in traveling.

‘He never mentioned traveling to me. That’s why I was surprised he was in Bondi,” she said.

Another woman who claims to have dated Cauchi said she stopped seeing him because of his strange behavior.

‘We went to church together. I went on a couple of coffee dates with him, but he had compulsions, she said.

‘It was a bit weird so I stopped messaging him then he said he was going away. I am in Chok.’

Another person who claimed to be in the knifeman’s ‘close circle of friends’ during high school in Toowoomba, south-east Queensland, provided some background to Cauchi’s reported strange behaviour.

“He was one of those at school who was shy, always a little on the odd side, but when he did something it was always full tilt,” they wrote.

“Looking back, he probably didn’t regulate that well.

‘Got off the radar after school, but as far as I know he didn’t maintain any friendships with his circle of schoolmates.’

They believe Cauchi was suffering from a mental health episode at the time of Saturday’s Westfield attack, a theory shared by police and suffered by his distraught parents.

Cauchi was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager, and his parents said he had gone off his medication, triggering his psychosis.

“It may seem like misplaced empathy, but the Joel that I knew would not have been himself, not in command of his actions while attacking these people,” the friend wrote.

‘If there’s a lesson, it’s that mental illness is absurd and we shouldn’t mess with it.

‘We shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves to get help when we need it, and when people reach out to us for connection, we should see it for what it is and not ignore them.

“Joel is definitely not the only one struggling.”

They also shared their sympathies with the loved ones of the six shoppers who were killed and those injured.

‘I know it’s no comfort to the victims, it’s all a bloody tragedy for them and their families, for Joel and his family, and for everyone associated with the event who doesn’t feel so safe shopping there now,’ they wrote.

The six people killed in Saturday’s vandalism have been identified as mother Ashlee Good, 38, advertising heiress Dawn Singleton, 25, architect Jade Young, 47, artist Pikria Darchia, 55, and security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, and Chinese student Yixuan Cheng, 27.

NSW Police do not believe the stabbing was a terrorist incident, pointing instead to Cauchi’s history of mental illness.

The attack is still under police investigation and will be the subject of a coronial inquest.