The faces of NSW’s shocking domestic violence crisis
Dayna Isaac, Tatiana Dokhotaru, Lisa Fenwick, Anastasia Slastation and Drew Douglas.
These are the faces of the domestic violence crisis in NSW.
Within 48 hours the five men who killed them appeared in the NSW Supreme Court and were convicted of murder.
In all five cases, women were killed by their partners or ex-partners.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, it is estimated that one in four women in Australia has experienced domestic violence at the hands of a partner.
According to the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, there were 35 domestic violence homicides in NSW from October 2024 to September 2025.
This rate is on an upward trend, compared to 33 in the previous year and 23 in 2021-22.
Police Minister Yasmin Catley described domestic and family violence as “one of the most devastating crimes in our society”.
Ms Isaac said the examples of deaths such as Ms Dokhotaru, Ms Fenwick, Ms Slastation and Ms Douglas were “heartbreaking”.
“The Minn Labor government is treating domestic violence like a crisis,” he said.
“We are strengthening protections for victim survivors, holding perpetrators accountable, and investing in long-term solutions to stop violence before it happens.
“We introduced tenancy reforms so people could leave violent homes with impunity and launched the first strategy in NSW to focus on offender behaviour.
Every year police in NSW respond to more than 150,000 calls about domestic violence, demonstrating the magnitude of the problem.
These are the stories of those five women.
In all five cases, the women were at home and had the right to feel safe.
They were all with someone they had the right to feel safe around.
Dayna Isaac
Dayna Isaac was killed in her Penrith flat in January 2023 when a man she had been seeing for several months broke into her home, pushed her against a wall, dragged her into the bedroom, assaulted her and strangled her with two electrical cables.
Paul had known Sultana since 2018 and began an intimate relationship with her in late 2022.
But their relationship had not “dissolved”, as Judge Peter Garling said, and Garling had told him he did not want their relationship to continue.
On Monday, January 16, 2023, Ms. Isaac took a trial shift with a potential employer and returned home shortly after 1:00 p.m.
Around 9.30 in the morning, Sultana went to her apartment on a bicycle with rope and tape in her hand and waited for several hours.
When Ms Isaac opened the door for him he began his violent attack.
A neighbor heard Sultana shouting “shut up” and Ms Isaac begging “stop” and “don’t”.
The neighbor reported hearing “one of the worst screams I’ve ever heard in my life” before the apartment fell silent.
Judge Garling noted that the murder took place against the background of Sultana’s jealous, controlling and irrational behavior the previous week.
Sultana desperately tried to claim that Mrs Isaac was murdered by a mysterious third party who was inside at the time, but this was flatly rejected by Judge Garling.
After a judge-alone trial, Sultana was found guilty of Isaac’s murder and sentenced to 44 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 33 years.
Tatiana Dokhotaru
Tatiana Dokhotaru was murdered by her former partner Danny Zayat in her flat in Liverpool, west of Sydney, in May 2023.
On the night of her murder, Ms. Dokhotaru made a desperate triple-0 call, during which she told the operator “my ex-boyfriend is here and trying to kill me” and “my ex-husband is stealing my money from my house.”
However, before he could give the operator his full address and apartment number, the call was cut off and Zayat threw his phone from his balcony.
This meant that when police arrived at his apartment, they were unable to determine which unit he was in.
Three were found dead with head injuries inside the unit.
Zayat returned to the apartment three times the next day, and when he was finally able to get inside shortly before 8 p.m., he called Triple-0.
She pleaded not guilty to murder, and at the hearing her legal team argued that Ms Dokhotaru may have fallen accidentally due to prescription drug use and drunkenness; this is a version of events that was rejected by the jury.
The court was told he frequently subjected her to verbal abuse, threats and violence during their relationship.
Zayat was sentenced to 24 years in prison and will be released for the first time in 2049, after serving 18 years in prison.
Lisa Fenwick
Just hours before she was killed, Lisa Fenwick sent her partner Anthony Eriksen a link to a home-sharing website.
In April 2023, he asked Eriksen, who had been unemployed for several years, to move out of their shared Mascot flat.
He told his friends that he was afraid of Eriksen.
She had also told counselors that Eriksen was completely financially dependent on her, that she felt trapped in their relationship, that he was a burden to her, and that she wanted him to move out.
On the afternoon of the murder, he sent Eriksen a link to flatmates.com.au followed by a message that read: “Not sure if they’d want a 60-year-old man.”
CCTV captured Ms Fenwick, 59, walking her dogs and returning home at 5.24pm.
Forty minutes later, Eriksen called Triple-0 and confessed to stabbing his partner to death.
He told the operator “Oh, we had an argument” and “well I put a knife to it”.
Ms. Fenwick was found in a pool of blood on her bedroom floor, suffering from multiple stab wounds to her chest, abdomen and hip, as well as defensive wounds to her hands.
Eriksen later told police in an interaction captured on body-worn video: “It’s like living life is so stressful.
“I haven’t had a job for five years and… he’s always criticizing me and I want to have a job but I don’t have one.”
He also told police: “That’s life. I think I’m going to prison now.”
Eriksen was found guilty of murder by a jury after pleading not guilty.
While sentencing Eriksen to 26 years and eight months in prison, Judge Andrew Coleman described his actions as “cowardly and inexcusable”.
He faces a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison, meaning the 64-year-old will likely die in prison.
Anastasia Slastion
Anastasia Slastation was murdered by her partner Isaac Costa after a drunken night out at Greystanes bar in Sydney’s west.
The Latvian-born Russian citizen moved to Australia on a work visa in October 2022.
Before the murder, Ms Slastation and Costa, 32, had been together for six weeks after he approached her in a bar and began speaking Russian.
The court was told Costa was “needy”, “very possessive” and “emotionally dependent” from the beginning of their relationship.
The court was told their relationship was marked by heavy alcohol use and that “heavy drinking exacerbated the offender’s sense of possessiveness and brought instability to the relationship”.
Costa finished work on the evening of Friday, February 24, 2023, and on the way home, he drank $240 worth of alcohol before heading to the Greystanes Inn with Ms. Slastation.
The court was told Costa tried to “intervene” several times while Ms Slastation and her friend were dancing but was rebuffed.
On the Uber ride home, Ms. Slastation complained loudly about Costa and announced her intention to break up with him by saying: “Things aren’t going well between us. I’m going to break up with you.”
They returned to Costa’s grandmother’s house.
However, it is unknown what happened inside, and Costa later told a psychiatrist that he “fainted”.
Ms. Slastation was beaten and strangled by Costa.
Her body was discovered after Costa sent an alarming text message to a friend who arrived at his home.
Her friend found Ms. Slastation’s lifeless body on the bed.
Costa told his father: “(Ms. Slastation) started hitting me again, so I lost it and hit her back… I was trying to resuscitate her but I couldn’t. I didn’t mean to hit her, I just lost it and broke away.”
He pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 18 years in prison and could be released after 13.5 years.
Drew Douglas
Drew Douglas, a mother of four, was stabbed to death at the home she shared with her long-term partner Shaun Michael King in Sydney’s west after expressing her desire to leave him.
Ms Douglas, who was 31 at the time of the murder, had been in a de facto relationship since 2009 until August 2023, when King stabbed her with a kitchen knife.
In the days before she was killed, she told a nurse that she needed to leave King.
There was evidence that he was preparing to pack his bags on August 15, 2023 – the day before he was killed.
Before the murder, King complained to his mother that he was hearing voices and stated that he had stopped taking his antidepressant medication.
On the morning of August 16, King stabbed Mrs. Douglas in her bedroom.
He called out to King’s mother, who was also at home, and shouted repeatedly: “Maureen, help me, she’s stabbing me.”
As King left the room, got into his car and drove away, he lay on the floor saying, “I’m dying, I’m dying.”
Paramedics tried to resuscitate him, but he died at the scene from multiple stab wounds to his chest and neck.
King traveled 25 miles to Campbelltown Police Station, where he told the officer at reception: “I did a bad thing” and “I stabbed my lady.”
Judge Belinda Rigg found King lost control in a “weakened state” and the court was told he was probably in the middle of a drug-induced psychosis as a result of using ice in the few days before the murder.
The court was told King also has serious mental health problems including PTSD, major depressive disorder and ADHD.
He was sentenced to 16½ years in prison.
King could be released in 2035 after serving at least 11.5 years in prison.
