A young sports coach had been dead for an hour when her worried father received text messages suggesting she was in trouble.

The badly beaten body of water polo coach Lilie James was found inside a gym bathroom at St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney’s city centre before midnight on October 25, 2023.

As she lay dead in a pool of blood after being bludgeoned to death by her ex-boyfriend Paul Thijssen, someone messaged the 21-year-old’s father Jamie from her phone.

“Don’t ask why or call. Please come to the school now and pick me up,” the text read.

Her father replied “are you OK?” and checked the location of her phone. It registered as the school where she worked alongside 24-year-old Thijssen.

Mr James called his daughter’s phone twice but no one picked up.

Instead, he received a text saying: “All good just came trouble (sic).”

Counsel assisting the coroner Jennifer Single SC told an inquest into the pair’s deaths on Wednesday that Thijssen was the only person who could have sent the messages to Mr James.

Doing so caused the young woman’s family to suffer as they frantically tried to get in touch with her without any success, Single said.

Mr James rushed to the school and tried to contact his daughter, but his messages went unanswered and he was not able to search the site.

The extensive injuries to James’ body and amount of blood in her hair meant she was unrecognisable when she was discovered by police in the gym bathroom before midnight.

Police were able to identify the 21-year-old only after looking at CCTV footage from the school, which was earlier shown at the inquest.

The chilling footage showed an unsuspecting James smiling and chatting casually with Thijssen before walking to the bathroom carrying her bathers.

The pair had previously been involved in a casual, two-month relationship, but James ended it five days before she was killed.

She looked at a sign blocking off one of the bathrooms – put there earlier by Thijssen – before entering the disabled bathroom.

Thijssen stood briefly outside the bathroom with a hammer in his right hand. He appeared to look directly at the CCTV camera before lunging into the bathroom two minutes later.

Thijssen bludgeoned James to death with the hammer in a premeditated attack. Hours later, he was found dead at the base of a cliff in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

One of the issues for the inquest to consider is whether his death was self-inflicted.

Single noted James interacted happily with Thijssen before her death and appeared to have no indication of what he would do.

“No matter how many times you see that footage, it is not easy to watch,” she said as her voice broke.

Security footage from earlier in the night showed Thijssen alternating the hammer in each hand while practising the murder outside the bathroom.

He was also seen disabling the automatic sliding doors – a move Single said was designed to prevent school cleaners from disturbing his attack on James.

As well as assessing the circumstances surrounding the deaths of James and Thijssen, the inquest will examine coercive control and unacceptable behaviour in relationships, in an attempt to prevent similar deaths.

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-AAP