In the eyes of Maria Cinque, former law student Anu Singh is a “monster” and “the devil”.
Two decades ago, Anu injected and sedated Maria’s son, Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Cinque, with a lethal dose of heroin.
Anu and Joe were dating at the time and shared a flat in Canberra. Anu insists the couple had made a suicide pact to both end their lives—but Joe had no idea about it.
For the first time on television, Anu will open up about the crime in an explosive interview on Sunday Night.
“There are many things people don’t understand,” she says in a promo for the show.
“I’d love to turn back the clock.”
As reported in the sensational trial that followed Anu’s arrest, the Canberra student held two dinner parties in October 1997 to tell her friends about the ‘pact’ and say goodbye. But Joe was never included in the plans.
And although Anu openly confessed to killing her boyfriend, she was found guilty of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. She served four years of her 10-year sentence and was released on parole in 2001.
In an interview with news.com.au last year, Anu told journalist Ginger Gorman that she would like to reconnect with Joe’s parents.
“Not [to] seek forgiveness or anything like that, just to be able to say, ‘Look, I’m deeply, deeply sorry for all this’,” she said.
She admitted that an apology was “not going to bring him back, and it’s not going to ease their pain,” but suggested, “restorative justice can be very healing”.
“I think that me just saying it to you and it being reported … it means kind of nothing,” she added.
Her story inspired Helen Garner’s critically-acclaimed novel, Joe Cinque’s Consolation, and a 2016 film of the same name.
But we can’t wait to hear the story — in Anu’s own words — on Sunday.
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