A grieving son has described the disturbing events that preceded his mother’s murder, revealing how an Airbnb guest welcomed into her home as a favour became a terrifying presence.
Maree Vermont, 60, was killed by Timothy Loosemore, 62, after he developed an intense fixation on her despite her rejecting his advances.
Loosemore attacked her in a rage before setting the property alight. The fire left Maree’s remains so severely burned that forensic investigators could not determine the precise cause of death.
Her son, Darcy Vermont, has now spoken about the tragedy and the man who would not accept rejection in an interview with Daily Mail’s The Trial Australia podcast.
Maree worked as a surveyor and spent three decades turning an untouched stretch of wilderness into a striking stone home set deep within a remote Victorian valley.
Darcy told the podcast that his childhood was peaceful and deeply connected to the family’s rural surroundings.
He recalled growing up on a country farm, surrounded by nature and family, with Maree at home and closely involved in her children’s lives.
Darcy described his mother as exceptionally compassionate, generous and devoted, saying he remains profoundly thankful for everything she did for the family.
The property, called The Stone House, is located roughly an hour north of Melbourne in a valley on Mount William, close to the small settlement of Goldie.
Although the home feels far removed from the city, Darcy said it is still within a manageable drive of Melbourne.
For much of his childhood, the property had no internet, television or mobile phone coverage, creating the feeling of a secluded world hidden from everyday life.
Maree’s parents purchased the empty block in 1985. The family initially lived in a caravan and later a shed while they constructed fences, access roads and dams, and planted trees across the land.
Maree Vermont had treated her eventual killer with compassion and generosity
Maree Vermont, 60, was killed by Timothy Loosemore, 62, (pictured) after he became fixated on her despite her rejecting him
Maree Vermont’s former stone home was the result of decades spent shaping and improving the property
Darcy said he had watched the entire property change throughout his life, gradually becoming the beautiful home and landscape it is today.
But Maree was far more than a devoted mother.
She was a talented draftsperson and leadlighter who designed and created glass windows. Darcy also believes she may have been Victoria’s first female surveyor.
Building the family home was not easy. Darcy remembered workers challenging Maree by giving her heavy equipment in an apparent attempt to demonstrate that she was incapable of handling the work.
Yet she repeatedly disproved them, showing time after time that she was more than capable of completing the job.
After the stonework on the house was finished she threw herself into the fitout – glass, timber, painting – turning the home into a beautiful space she kept meticulously tidy and organised.
Darcy’s parents separated about six years earlier and were still sorting the final details while Maree kept the property and continued to chip away at the project.
Darcy had moved out for university but still kept a base there in a shed with his tools.
Money was tight, and Maree and her family offered a spare room for Airbnb guests as they looked for ways to make the land help pay for itself.
Timothy Loosemore was among her first guests when he arrived in mid-March 2023.
The 62-year-old, from Somerset in the UK, stayed briefly, left, then later returned wanting to stay even longer, and offered to work in exchange for food and a roof.
Timothy Loosemore could not handle rejection. When Maree Vermont suggested he get back on his bike, he killed her and torched her house and body beyond all recognition
Darcy Vermont’s gripping interview can be heard on The Daily Mail’s Trial Australia podcast
The gutted remains of Maree Vermont’s home after Timothy Loosemore torched it to hide his vile deed
Darcy saw no reason to worry, he said.
‘When I was growing up, we had a lot of people coming and helping,’ he told the podcast.
‘It was not uncommon that we’d have people come and stay to help out, I wasn’t concerned. It was good to see that more could be done without stressing mum out because she was financially stressed.’
But that relationship had clearly shifted when Darcy spotted his mother and Loosemore had become noticeably closer than a simple ‘helper’ arrangement.
His mother eventually told him they had ‘a bit of a thing sometimes’, but he said she was crystal clear about her boundaries.
‘After the years of her last marriage breakdown, she wanted her independence, she was happy with her independence and she was very strong in herself,’ Darcy said.
‘It was clear to me that it was something casual. It wasn’t a serious thing – a bit of a fling basically.’
While alarm bells weren’t ringing, Darcy could tell Loosemore had his demons.
‘He was insecure in the ways that he would not take rejection well. He didn’t like to be told that he wasn’t needed,’ he said.
When Maree told him she did not need him there, that he should only stay if he wanted to help, he pushed back.
And when she urged Loosemore to leave, he reacted badly.
Darcy returned to find him still there.
‘It was strange to see that he was still there. It felt like he’s lingering,’ he said.
‘I trusted mum would be fine to deal with him, to send him on his way … I wish I did.’
Darcy Vermont (left) and Harrison Vermont (right) hold a framed photograph of their mother Maree Vermont outside of the Supreme Court of Victoria on September 3
Loosemore had supposedly been on a cycling trip around Australia, initially with his son, but when he went back to England, Loosemore continued on alone.
Darcy’s reaction to Loosemore’s continued presence was blunt.
‘Get on your bike, mate,’ he told him. ‘You’ve been asked to leave, continue on your trip that you had planned.’
Instead, Loosemore talked his way back, insisting he needed nothing intimate – but that was all a lie.
By late July and early August, Maree was finding it hard to cope.
‘She would feel pretty guilty trying to push him away, trying to reject him, trying to get him out of here,’ Darcy said.
‘It was hard for her to properly just kick him out. She felt bad.’
Despite his misgivings, Darcy admits he could never have imagined what came next.
‘I think all insecure men are capable of hurting people and it happens all too often,’ he said.
‘This is another case of many cases where this happens where a seemingly normal, harmless guy acts out of insecurity and acts violent towards women.
‘But you don’t expect it from someone who’s been coming to help out, who mum had been so, so generous to. I definitely didn’t expect that.’
The home Maree had lovingly built over decades, the isolated valley that once felt idyllic and protected, became the setting for a tragedy that left her son with lasting regret.
Darcy sat through two trials watching the man who killed his mother walk a tightrope between murder and manslaughter.
The final verdict landed like another blow: guilty of manslaughter only. Not murder.
Loosemore maintains to this day he had nothing to do with the death of his Airbnb host and the destruction of her home.
Maree Vermont inside the stone house in happier times. She would be violently killed inside the property and incinerated
Three knives were found in the living room besdie Maree Vermont’s charred remains. A jury could not conclude Loosemore had murdered her in cold blood
However, a jury found he fatally assaulted Maree on the night of August 5, 2023 before torching the house.
The fire destroyed so much evidence that experts could never determine exactly how she died.
Two juries wrestled with that gap, with the first deliberating for weeks in 2025 before declaring they could not reach a verdict.
The second, in June this year, cleared Loosemore of murder but convicted him of manslaughter by unlawful and dangerous act.
It is a point of law Darcy struggles to reconcile with what happened to his mum.
‘It was an unlawful, violent assault that killed her, and then burning of the house meant there was not enough evidence to suffice intent of murder,’ he said.
‘We have to accept what we can get.’
Outside court after the verdict, he called it ‘upsetting and distressing’.
When the 17-year sentence, with a 13-year non-parole minimum, finally came down in September, he said it ‘definitely doesn’t represent what we’ve lost collectively … but it’s something’.
While the world was glued to Erin Patterson’s mushroom-poisoning trial, Maree Vermont’s case slipped into the shadows. The first Loosemore trial ran at the same time and barely registered.
Darcy and his brothers watched their mother’s death treated as a footnote while another Victorian tragedy dominated every headline.
Resources, attention, and momentum were elsewhere, but in Darcy’s eyes, the high-profile Patterson case denied them the full prosecution focus their mother’s killing deserved.
Court itself was a second trauma.
Darcy told the jury about his mother’s casual relationship with Loosemore and how he had become increasingly insecure and unwilling to leave.
The court heard how his mum had asked Darcy to keep an eye on the guest because the rejection was not being taken well.
He left the property the day before the fire – a fact the defence later used against the family narrative.
Sitting through the forensic detail of a body burned beyond recognition, the missing fuel containers he himself had noticed, and the scratches on Loosemore’s face that suggested a struggle, was relentless.
At the pre-sentence hearing Maree’s sons finally spoke.
Darcy told the court: ‘One of the big things mum always asked for was not to be cremated. Imagining her in the fire brings me so much more distress. Losing my mum in this horrific way has been the most heartbreaking, confusing … it has been the most life-changing thing that I could never have imagined.’
Outside afterwards he added: ‘It’s a very hard day. But it’s bringing some sense of closure to be able to get up in court and have our voices heard’.
Loosemore showed no remorse.
Maree Vermont’s life was taken and everything she owned was incinerated by Loosemore
Police found traces of petrol all over the stone house and Loosemore himself
Wayne Flower (right) talks to Darcy Vermont on Daily Mail’s The Trial Australia podcast
He maintained he remembered nothing – a claim the judge rejected as repeated lies.
Justice Andrew Tinney called the killing a repayment of kindness with violence, driven by resentment and anger after rejection.
For Darcy, the legal outcome is incomplete justice.
While manslaughter acknowledged the unlawful killing, it did not fully capture the intent he believes was there, nor the deliberate destruction of the home that was his mother’s pride and the family’s history.
The overshadowing by the Patterson trial left their case feeling secondary, under-resourced in the public eye and, in his view, stripped of the concentrated prosecutorial attention a murder charge of this nature should have commanded.
The stone house is gone. Maree Vermont is gone. The killer will serve years, but not a life sentence.
Her family is left carrying the weight of a verdict that feels like half a truth, delivered while the rest of the country was looking the other way.
For the full story, listen to The Trial Australia.
