Nine’s 60 Minutes will speak to the parents of murdered 21-year-old Lilie James this Sunday at 8:40 pm.
In October 2023, James, a water polo coach, was found murdered at St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney’s CBD. Her murderer was identified as Paul Thijssen, a university student who had split with James just days prior to the murder.
Thijssen committed suicide at Diamond Bay in Vaucluse on the same night he murdered James.
In the promo released by 60 Minutes, Peta James, Lilie’s mother tells Tara Brown: “If you knew what he did that night, I think you’d understand why we can’t forgive what he did.”
A crime that horrified Australia. SUNDAY on #60Mins, unmasking the truth about the monster who savagely beat an innocent young woman to death. pic.twitter.com/BJSzgdXPsH
— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) October 23, 2024
Her father Jamie tells Brown: “I don’t think you can wake up one day and do something that brutal.
“He can rot in hell.”
60 Minutes airs Sunday, 27 October at 8:40 pm on Nine and 9Now.
In November 2023, The Guardian accused Microsoft of damaging its journalistic reputation by publishing an AI-generated poll speculating on the cause of James’ death next to an article by the news publisher.
The poll, created by an AI program, asked: “What do you think is the reason behind the woman’s death?” Readers were then asked to choose from three options: murder, accident or suicide.
The chief executive of the Guardian Media Group, Anna Bateson, penned her concerns about the AI-generated poll in a letter to Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith.
She said the incident had caused “significant reputational damage” to the organisation as well as damaging the reputation of the journalists who wrote the story.
“This is clearly an inappropriate use of genAI [generative AI] by Microsoft on a potentially distressing public interest story, originally written and published by Guardian journalists,” she wrote.
A Microsoft spokesperson said: “We have deactivated Microsoft-generated polls for all news articles and we are investigating the cause of the inappropriate content. A poll should not have appeared alongside an article of this nature, and we are taking steps to help prevent this kind of error from reoccurring in the future.”