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Growing up, Australian teenager Renee McBryde found it strange her mother never mentioned her dad.
For 16 years, her father, Michael Caldwell, was shrouded in mystery, aside from the occasional sneaky phone call she had with him without her mother's knowledge.
It wasn't until she was in a Sydney highschool completing a legal studies assignment that she found out why she'd never met her dad.
There, in the NSW State Library, she found a newspaper clipping that featured her dad on the front page.
It revealed Michael Caldwell was serving a life sentence for murdering two gay men, Greek Consul General Constantine Giannaris and school teacher Peter Parkes, in Kings Cross in October 1981.
Caldwell – 19 years old and a sex worker when he committed the crimes – was sentenced to life in prison for the murders, alongside a 16-year-old male accomplice.
McBryde's mother gave birth to her when she was just 16. She'd been just a few months pregnant when police bashed down their door and arrested Caldwell for the murders.
As she raised their daughter alone, Caldwell sat behind bars – and she chose to never mention him to Renee.
"I thought he [Caldwell] was doing 'important' things and that he worked so far away," she told Australian website Mamamia earlier this month.
"I did wonder 'why don't I have a dad around like everyone else' and 'where is he'."
Renee McBryde now, all grown up.
Renee when she was just 9 years old, blissfully unaware of her family's dark secret.
As McBryde continued to read the article, she also learned the judge overseeing the court case had called her father a "cold-blooded murderer".
Years earlier, when she was 6, her father used to call her furtively every week, with her grandmother — her father's mum — also in the call.
At the time, she was told it was imperative her mother didn't find out about their calls.
In hindsight, she realised it was because he was calling from jail.
She was led to believe that Caldwell worked at Cottee's Cordial factory, which was why she hadn't seen him for a very long time.
But on one call, rather than discussing the usual things they did like a normal father and daughter, he dropped a bombshell on her.
"He said 'I can't see you not because I'm working at a farm/factory, but because I'm in jail. And from there it just kind of imploded," she told the publication.
Another relative even went as far to say that her dad was a "crusader" and he was in jail because he had acted in self-defence, she revealed in a sit-down with Nine's 60 Minutes in 2017.
Renee McBryde has written a book about her experiences.
It was only when she was 16 in the state library that everything clicked into place and she learned the hard truth.
Caldwell was released on parole many years ago and he never got in touch with his daughter.
McBryde suspects the whole reason for the calls when she was younger was a gambit to get back together with her mother. It didn't pay off.
McBryde released a book earlier this year, Unravelling Us, about her experiences growing up as the daughter of a convicted murderer.
Now a mum-of-three and happily married, she hasn't spoken to her father for 20 years.
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