The Sydney Morning Herald
· collected 2026-09-18 · by Zach Hope, Karuni Rompies, Carla Hildebrandt
Story summary
Damien John Shaw, a 56-year-old Australian man from Fremantle, was found dead alongside his two young Indonesian-born children—Archie, 6 years old, and Laura, 4 years old—in their bungalow in Kuta, Bali on Sunday morning. The discovery occurred after the family's neighbor, Nur Khamid, received a call from Shaw’s wife, who was in Jakarta, unable to reach her husband or children. She had asked Khamid to check on them.
Police are treating it as a suspected murder-suicide and have reviewed CCTV footage showing Shaw removing cameras inside their home and chasing his daughter before the tragic events unfolded. The mother returned from Jakarta three days later after noticing unusual activity via remote CCTV monitoring, prompting her to alert local authorities. An autopsy was not performed on the children at the request of their mother.
Local Bali residents described Archie and Laura as happy and kind, with staff at their school, Blue Dolphin Playskool in Kuta, remembering them fondly. The community is struggling to come to terms with the shocking crime.
Written for “Bali Murder Suicide Investigation” on 2026-10-11,
grounded in this article and the 5 other(s) covering the same event.
Warning: This story contains graphic content
Denpasar:
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story → contain → content
At the Blue Dolphin Playskool in Kuta that Archie and Laura attended, staff remember the children as happy and kind.
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staff → attend → children
They are grieving for the six-year-old boy and his four-year-old sister, murdered by their Australian father, Damien John Shaw, this week.
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They → grieve → father
“We knew of what happened on Monday.
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what → know → Monday
The teachers cried,” one employee told this masthead.
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employee → cry → masthead
Occasionally, their mother would bring biscuits and drinks for the people who worked there.
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who → bring → people
The parents would take turns dropping off the kids, the worker said.
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worker → take → kids
Locals are struggling to understand the shocking crime in the family’s rented bungalow in Bali’s popular Legian neighbourhood.
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Locals → struggle → neighbourhood
Police believe Shaw took his own life soon after killing his children.
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Shaw → believe → children
Shaw has emerged as an anxious and unpredictable figure in a family under pressure.
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Shaw → emerge → pressure
The 56-year-old retired oil and gas worker from Western Australia liked to take his kids to a pub not far from their home.
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worker → like → home
Archie and Laura would splash in the pool – they didn’t have one at home – and Shaw would sit boozeless at the bar watching sports on the TV and speaking with the chain-smoking barflies.
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Shaw → splash → barflies
But the Australian had been particularly stressed lately, according to a fellow expat at the bar who knew Shaw, though not particularly well.
uncertain
who → accord → Shaw
No one, actually, in his off-strip neighbourhood of tight Bali laneways seemed to know him deeply, except a handful of Australians in the same bungalow complex who were reluctant to talk.
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who → seem → complex
Precisely what had been disturbing him lately was unclear, the man at the bar said, but it appeared to involve a foundering relationship with the children’s Indonesian mother.
uncertain
it → disturb → mother
She was in Jakarta on Sunday and was alerted to something deeply wrong when she heard one of the children crying during an otherwise routine phone call to Legian.
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one → alert → Legian
When the line went dead, she tried to call back.
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she → go → ?
When no one answered, she pulled up security camera footage of the home on her phone, catching some of her daughter’s final moments, police said.
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police → answer → moments
Shaw killed Archie first, investigators believe, then Laura.
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investigators → kill → Archie
When a construction worker next door later smashed off the locked front keyhole, he saw Laura and Archie’s bodies in one of the bedrooms.
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he → smash → bedrooms
The children’s mother told investigators Shaw suffered from severe and untreated anxiety – even helping with homework could make him panic.
uncertain
him → tell → homework
A spokesman for Bali’s provincial government, Putu Senapati, said he should have been taken for a mental health check.
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he → say → check
“The government cannot put a watch on everybody 24/7,” he said.
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he → put → everybody
“If someone with a mental illness relapses, it could be dangerous.
uncertain
it → relapse → illness
So I think the lesson learnt is that we have to have the trait of social sensitivity, all of us, not only the people of Bali but outsiders too, both Indonesians and foreigners.”
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we → think → Bali
Bali police, satisfied that Shaw was the perpetrator, are moving on without further examination.
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Shaw → satisfy → examination
So the expat grapevine is filling the gaps; part gossip, part giving the inexplicable a kind of structure with theories, “I heards” and rumours.
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grapevine → fill → theories
The only element the police corroborated was problems with the relationship.
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police → corroborate → relationship
“[Shaw] and his wife wanted to divorce in 2022, but then [he] changed his attitude for the better, so the wife did not want a divorce,” Gede Adi Saputra Jaya, spokesman for the Denpasar police, told this masthead.
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Jaya → want → masthead
“Then, about a month ago, [his] emotions began to get out of control so that the wife again said she wanted a divorce …
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she → begin → divorce
[Shaw] threatened to commit suicide.”
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Shaw → threaten → suicide
Monash University professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, an international expert in violence against women and children, said situations where parents killed their children rarely occurred in a vacuum.
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parents → say → vacuum
“Research in Australia and overseas identifies relationship separation or threatened separation as an important period of heightened risk in some cases, particularly where it intersects with controlling behaviour, threats, escalating violence, jealousy, deteriorating wellbeing or suicidal behaviour,” she said.
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she → identify → behaviour
Fitz-Gibbon said research showed “lethal family violence” perpetrators did not all follow the same trajectory, and efforts to prevent future tragedies must involve better recognition of the combinations of behaviours and circumstances that signalled escalating risk.
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that → say → risk
“Two young children have been killed.
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children → kill → ?
That is horrific,” she said.
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she → say → ?
“Archie and Laura must be kept at the centre of how we understand and respond to these deaths.
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we → keep → deaths
Their deaths are yet another reminder of the urgent need to improve how we identify and respond to children experiencing violence and abuse.”
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we → improve → violence
Unlike investigators, some in the neighbourhood believed they were already divorced, or at least separated.
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they → believe → neighbourhood
Shaw and the children were regularly seen on his motorbike after school pick-ups.
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Shaw → see → ups
…and 19 more, not listed.
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