Parents of a son who have not “confronted” what he did and have tried to distance themselves, an expert has said.

Paul Thijssen, 24, bludgeoned Lilie James to death with a hammer in a horrific premeditated attack at St Andrew's Cathedral School in Sydney, in October 2023. His parents Esther and Stefan Thijssen have since scattered the ashes of their son in , where they moved in 2015.

The jealous former boyfriend killed Lilie by into using a disabled toilet. She had just returned after waiting for pupils from her water polo class to be collected by their parents, and went to use the gym's toilet.

But Thijssen, who had been a work colleague of Lilie, had laid a trap by putting a ‘cleaning in progress’ sign outside, forcing her to use a larger, disabled toilet where he launched the attack.

An inquest this week has heard that later Thijssen jumped or fell to his death at Diamond Bay Reserve in Vaucluse, New South Wales. A coroner is assessing whether his death was self-inflicted.

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His parents live in s-Hrtogenbosch, known as Den Bosch, which lies about 90km southeast of Amsterdam, and moved to Australia due to Stefan’s job. He is an executive manager of an automation company as well as being on the board of a Rotary Club while Esther runs her own communications business.

Paul attended St Andrew’s for two years before graduating in 2017 and returning to the Netherlands. But he returned to Sydney to work in St Andrew’s sports department. Since the horrific murder the parents have made no public statement or given an interview about the actions of their only child. They have not attended the inquest but they did provide a statement which was not read out publicly.

And criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro said the parents’ actions are not unusual. “It’s too confronting,” he told , “They are not the guilty party and my heart does go out to them. But for them to sit days of graphic material about their son’s behaviour, which was absolutely horrendous in nature, it would have a deleterious (effect), because at the end of the day, they loved and lost their son.”

He continued: “I think where murder is involved, it always comes as a shock to everyone. It is a terribly confronting dynamic.” Investigators tracing through CCTV footage found that Thijssen had acted out the killing several hours earlier. He was seen pacing the corridor outside the gym's bathroom, and testing the lock of the door to the disabled toilet.

Thijssen also used a school master key to lock automatic doors to gym, so as to stop his attack from being disturbed. Surveillance footage from a DIY shop a few days earlier meanwhile showed him weighing up multiple hammers, though these are not believed by police to have been used in the killing.

On Thursday, a recording of Thijssen's phonecall to emergency services on the evening reporting Ms James' death was released by New South Wales Coroner's Court. In the call, he told operators that he had found a woman's body, but claimed he didn't know who it was, and declined to provide his name or location.

He said: "If you go into the school there is a entrance on the left of the reception area, where there is a sports department. And there is a bathroom , on the right hand side, where there is a body." The operator asked "A body?", to which he replied "yep".

Thijssen then gave an exact description of the toilet's location within the building, but said he didn't "remember" if he was there at the time of her death. He said "no" when asked if he knew who the victim was, and "I'd rather not disclose" when prompted to give his name.

Ms James, 21, had ended her casual two-month relationship with Thijssen only five days before he killed her. The court was told how Thijssen stalked Ms James on at least seven occasions in the days that lead up to her death, and had hired a car to drive around her house multiple times.