A Western Australian father allegedly removed CCTV cameras and pursued his daughter before smothering his two young children and dying by suicide at a villa in Bali, police say.

Maritime worker Damien John Shaw, 56, of Fremantle, was found dead with his Indonesian-born children, Archie, six, and Laura, four, in their Kuta bungalow at about 10.14am local time on Sunday.

The deaths occurred three days after Shaw’s Indonesian wife left the family home to visit Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, about 1,200km away.

Police said on Tuesday that Shaw and his wife had argued in 2022, around the time their daughter was born, and that their relationship had not been “really harmonious” since then.

“On September 10, the wife went to Jakarta to meet her parents. After noticing something unusual on the CCTV footage, she reported it to the local neighbourhood head and the owner of the bungalow,” Denpasar Police Chief Senior Commissioner Leonardo D Simatupang said.

“We observed that the husband intentionally took down the CCTV camera in the living room. The CCTV footage also clearly shows that the daughter was chased.

“At that time, the daughter was seen running away while being chased, repeatedly saying, ‘I love you, Daddy. I love you, Daddy.’

“Perhaps she was frightened because she may have seen her older brother being harmed by his father earlier.”

The devastating CCTV seen by police captured the events leading up to the children’s deaths.

‘There was initially the sound of a disturbance. It was the sound of the boy screaming,’ Senior Commissioner Simatupang said.

‘After that, the daughter came out and was chased by her father. The husband caught the child and took her back into the room.’

Following the deaths, all three bodies were taken to Professor Ngoerah Hospital in Denpasar, where autopsies had initially been planned. 

However, forensic investigators have now revealed that Shaw’s wife submitted a written statement requesting that no autopsy be conducted.

She had the bodies transferred from the morgue to a Muslim cemetery in Denpasar on Monday where they were buried immediately.

‘The family state that the perpetrators have already died,’ Balinese forensic investigator Dr Henky told media on Tuesday.

‘They think no one can be sued and no one can be brought to justice, so they decided to not perform the autopsy.’

Dr Henky said police could still seek a court order to exhume the bodies and conduct autopsies without the family’s consent if investigators believe it is necessary.

Police said there had been marital tension since 2022, but a statement the wife gave to officers said they had been ‘getting along well’ in the lead-up to the tragedy. 

‘According to the wife’s statement, they had not had any arguments recently and their relationship had been fine,’ Senior Commissioner Simatupang said. 

‘However, her husband was very emotional and had a high level of anxiety. For example, whenever the children had school homework, he would immediately become anxious. 

‘The wife also said that she was puzzled as to why he was unable to overcome or control his anxiety.’

Senior Commissioner Simatupang said the wife confirmed Shaw had experienced suicidal thoughts but ‘had never been evaluated or treated by a psychiatrist’.

A friend of Shaw, who asked not to be identified, said Shaw and Ms Yanuar met on a beach while he was holidaying in Bali, and had been together for several years before Archie was born in 2019.

The friend claimed the relationship later became strained and some friends told the couple to have a break, but Shaw wanted to remain with his family and work on it.

The friend said Shaw was a hands-on father who did school pick-ups and drop-offs.

Shaw had also just finished renovating a villa in Nusa Dua – a luxury resort enclave on Bali’s south-east coast – and he seemed happy with the project’s outcome.

They last saw Shaw a few months ago.

‘He was no different to any other time I saw him – we caught up and had a coffee,’ the friend said.

‘We were pretty good mates. Our boys are the same age, and Damien often came to stay with me with the children.’

The friend claimed Shaw, a former merchant seaman, had previously been a heavy drinker, but had stopped in recent years and begun exercising regularly.

Another friend earlier told the Mail that Shaw did not seem well when they met up in Kuta ten days before the tragedy.

During that meeting, Shaw told his friend he had been struggling with depression for the last six months after losing his life savings in a failed Japanese real estate deal.

Shaw had also complained about the 45-minute journey from the family’s Legian bungalow, about 4km from Kuta, to his children’s school.

‘I asked him how he was and he started telling me he was ready to pull the pin,’ the friend said, explaining that he understood Shaw to be suicidal.

The friend said he was angry at Shaw for his actions, and disappointed that Shaw had failed to contact him before he decided to kill himself and his children.

‘I begged him not to do anything silly. I told him I was there for him – one call away – and I would come straight to him and he could talk to me,’ the friend said.

‘I told him I didn’t care if he cried, if he needed a hug, he could count on me.’

Shaw’s eyes welled with tears before he left, the friend said. They never spoke again.

DO YOU KNOW MORE? Email charlotte.karp@dailymail.com.au

If you or someone you know needs support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636

Pauline Hanson has taken a step that may have caught both Anthony Albanese and Andrew Hastie off guard.

Her apology on Thursday was reluctant and carefully hedged, delivered only after a fierce public response. It was far from a full-throated expression of remorse.

Even so, Hanson’s decision to voice regret may blunt the most potent criticism of her growing political influence: not objections to One Nation’s platform, but doubts that its outspoken leader has the temperament to govern Australia.

That was the message at the heart of Albanese’s emotional reaction after Hanson attacked the years his late mother spent in public housing.

“Kindness isn’t weakness,” the Prime Minister said. “Tell you what’s weak: nastiness and spitefulness.” Hastie echoed that assessment, saying Hanson was not fit to serve as prime minister.

But Hanson is no longer operating solely as the figurehead of a protest movement. With One Nation attracting record levels of support, the party is positioning itself as a credible challenger to Australia’s increasingly fractured two-party system.

As the prospect of power becomes less remote, however, it is harder to dismiss every controversy as simply another case of Pauline being Pauline.

There is no doubt Hanson has spent decades being reflexively demonised. Issues she championed — including high immigration, failures in Indigenous policy, government spending and an out-of-touch political establishment — were often treated as unacceptable before the major parties eventually embraced softer versions of many of the same concerns.

That past helps explain why her supporters close ranks whenever journalists uncover another old recording. At times, the backlash is indeed unfair. Yet previous mistreatment does not automatically mean Hanson is right in the present moment.

Her comments about Albo’s mother were a classic example of a defensible policy argument being undermined by a badly chosen target.

Hanson’s broader point was that public housing should provide a hand up to people in need, rather than automatically becoming a home for life. She’s not wrong. With long waiting lists and Australians sleeping in cars, it is entirely reasonable to debate whether tenancies should be periodically reassessed so scarce homes go to those who need them most.

But Maryanne Albanese was the wrong person to target. She was a single mother with severe rheumatoid arthritis who relied on a disability pension much of her life. She wasn’t a politician and, having died in 2002, couldn’t answer back.

Whatever anyone thinks of the PM’s repeated references to his housing commission upbringing, Hanson using his late mother was unnecessary. Albo was entitled to defend her, and Hastie was right to say mothers should be left out of political combat, even if they get strategically deployed by a PM building a narrative.

Albo’s declaration that he’s ‘proud to be a houso’ was theatrical. Nobody should be ashamed of needing public housing, but needing it is not, in itself, a virtue. Presumably he meant he was proud of the community that raised him and what he overcame. 

Fair enough, it’s not a bad story. But it doesn’t answer the question Hanson clumsily raised about whether public housing should invariably amount to lifetime tenure. In a sense the way she worded her point helped him get around it.

Hanson’s response: ‘if he’s taken offence to that, well, I’m sorry’, was hardly a full throated apology. 

RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg's $300 Million Mega Yacht Arrives in the US as a 'Birthday Present' – Complete with Its Own $30 Million Support Boat – NewsFinale

It was similar to Albo’s apology for saying he’d like to shag Kylie Minogue. If offence was caused, he’s sorry, and now so is Pauline.

Her remarks about Indigenous Australians left less room for sympathy. Calling them the ‘most primitive race on Earth’ and saying they had ‘achieved nothing’ wasn’t plain speaking. It was unnecessarily cruel and dismissive. 

Hanson’s explanation is that she was comparing Indigenous societies at the time of British settlement with the industrial and technological development of Europe, rather than describing Aboriginal Australians today.

Indigenous Australians survived and adapted across a harsh continent, developing systems of kinship, land management, navigation and culture. To reduce all of that to ‘nothing’ is plainly wrong.

There was a legitimate argument Hanson could have made. Decades of spending haven’t eliminated appalling disadvantage in remote communities. Governments should be held accountable, and questions about school attendance, violence, incarceration, welfare dependency and whether assistance should be allocated according to race or need shouldn’t be declared off limits.

Many Australians support Hanson precisely because she refuses to look away from realities more polished politicians discuss in euphemisms. But that’s no excuse for what she said this time. Serious arguments lose their force when wrapped in contempt.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price proves that it’s possible to challenge the Indigenous policy establishment fiercely without dismissing an entire people and their history. Price described Hanson’s remarks as a display of ‘wilful ignorance’. That’s a criticism that can’t be dismissed as left wing political correctness.

Hanson now says she regrets the words used because she didn’t intend to hurt people, adding that she apologises if her language caused offence. Despite the caveat, it’s better than continuing to double down, but the problem was the sweeping judgement behind her words.

And it wasn’t an isolated lapse. One Nation’s recent cartoon branding Hastie a ‘traitor’ for giving evidence under subpoena was another example of combativeness tipping into something uglier. Satire isn’t a magic word that makes every accusation acceptable. 

Barnaby Joyce recognised the mistake and apologised. Hanson should have done the same.

Her political opponents will naturally overplay these controversies. Labor and the Coalition have an obvious interest in turning the contest with One Nation into a referendum on Hanson’s character rather than their own failures. An offensive remark (or three) doesn’t invalidate every argument the One Nation leader makes about immigration, housing or Indigenous policy. Nor does it make her millions of supporters awful people.

Hanson’s lack of polish is central to her authenticity, and Australians will forgive an imperfect phrase from someone they believe speaks honestly. But there are limits. What they won’t forgive indefinitely is an inability to distinguish toughness from cruelty, or conviction from a refusal to admit mistakes.

While it must understandably grate Hanson that her critics are allowed limitless scope to label and attack her, she can’t become a version of what they say she is.

If One Nation merely wants to collect protest votes, Hanson can continue bulldozing through every controversy. If it genuinely wants to displace one (or both) of the major parties and reshape Australian politics, its leader must meet a higher standard.

A man charged over the killings of two Australian brothers and their American friend allegedly later laughed about the victims crying and pleading for mercy before they were shot, a Mexican court has heard.

Jake Robinson, 30, and his brother Callum, 33, were travelling Mexico’s Pacific coastline on a surfing holiday with their US friend, Jack Carter Rhoad, 30, when they were allegedly murdered near an isolated campsite in Baja California in April 2024.

The friends’ bodies were recovered days later from the bottom of a well. Each had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, while their burned-out pick-up truck was found abandoned in the surrounding area.

Jesús Gerardo, Irineo Francisco and Ángel Jesús have each been charged with aggravated homicide and are now standing trial in the Mexican port city of Ensenada.

Prosecutors say the alleged attackers targeted the group to steal their mobile phones and the tyres from their vehicle.

Fresh and disturbing allegations emerged in court on Monday when Jesús Gerardo’s former girlfriend, 23-year-old Ari Gisell, took the stand.

Gisell is currently serving a 20-year jail term after admitting she instigated the robbery that prosecutors say ultimately led to the three men’s deaths.

She told the court she first encountered the Robinson brothers at the Punta San José coastal campsite after her then-boyfriend told her to approach them and ask for fuel.

The tourists were ‘kind’ and ‘friendly’ and agreed to share their fuel, she told the court.

‘I told El Kekas they had good tyres, and good phones,’ she recalled – as reported by the ABC, but insisted she was not encouraging him to rob the men.

Gisell said she and Jesús Gerardo later went to his mother’s house before he and his stepson returned to the beach.

According to her evidence, the stepson took clothing to disguise his identity because ‘it was going to be his first job’.

Gisell told the court she later heard the victims threw their keys and wallets from their tent while ‘begging not to be killed’.

‘Gerardo told me that he had shot one of them with a gun when they opened the tent door,’ Gisell told the court.

She said that Jesús Gerardo and his stepson later arrived at his mother’s house in the tourists’ vehicle, which had blood splattered inside.

When he returned, Jesús Gerardo had three phones in his pocket and two chain necklaces, Gisell told the court.

The court heard Gisell did not question him further because she feared him due to his reputation as a hit man and his violent tendencies.

Gisell said she later learned of the other accused men’s alleged involvement when her then-boyfriend boasted about how he had killed the trio.

The court heard he mocked his stepson for being too frightened to take part in the killings while joking that ‘without [his stepson’s] help, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything’.

She told the court that Jesús Gerardo joked that the victims cried when they realised they were in danger.

He said one of the men pleaded, ‘please don’t kill me because I have a wife’, Gisell recalled.

The court also heard Gisell describe Jesús Gerardo as a hit man who was always armed and kept a list of intended targets.

Gisell described the Robinson brothers and Mr Carter Rhoad as good people who deserved justice.

Jake and Callum’s parents, Debra and Martin Robinson, were in court on Monday to hear the harrowing evidence as the month-long trial entered its second week.

‘It’s about representing our sons, being here for them. I know they want us to be here,’ Mr Robinson told reporters before the trial.

‘We want to find out what happened. We want to find out why.’

The trial is now expected to run for longer than four weeks due to scheduling issues and a change of judge.

Callum Robinson played professional lacrosse in the US, while his younger brother was pursuing a career in medicine.

Their friend Mr Rhoad was killed just months before he was due to marry.

Baja California is one of Mexico’s most violent states and has long been plagued by organised crime and drug trafficking.