Partner’s eleventh hour plea after Perth mum bashed with towel rail

Warning: This story contains graphic content. Indigenous readers are advised this story contains the name and images of a deceased person.

Tiffany Woodley was a mother of three children whose final moments were spent in her Bedford bathroom being violently beaten to death with a towel rail by her partner.

The 35-year-old’s injuries were so severe they were deemed too confronting for a jury to be exposed to and, on Monday, the man responsible for inflicting them pleaded guilty to Woodley’s murder, moments before he was due to stand trial.

Peter Damjanovic, 39, watched on from prison via video link in Perth’s District Court as the horrific and sickening details of how he took the life of the mother of his children were read out in court.

State prosecutors said Damjanovic and Woodley, who had been struggling with mental health issues, were in an on-again, off-again relationship when the pair travelled into Perth together on August 7, 2023.

They both had separate appointments, him in Fremantle and she at Royal Perth Hospital. After he was finished, he began consuming a bottle of port and, by the time he got home, he had drunk half.

Around 4pm the couple started arguing and then he “became angry and started to hit her”, the court was told.

He told her to go to the bathroom and get cleaned up because she was bleeding.

Then he started to beat her with a shower head and a towel rail. He took her mobile phone from her. He pushed her into the shower and continued to beat her.

After she stopped breathing, he called triple zero and told the operator he had killed her.

“Help me, help me,” he told police who arrived at the house shortly after.

“She needs help, please help her.”

Tiffany was lying in a pool of blood, badly beaten.

She had 42 soft tissue injuries to her head and face and missing and fractured teeth.

Eight of her injuries were circle shaped, matching the end of the towel rail that had been used “in a prodding type movement” on her head, the court heard.

Damjanovic told police, “yes, I am a murderer” and said he would burn in hell for what he had done to her.

“He said he just wanted her to be alive,” the prosecutor told the court.

He then told police he had injected speed that morning and that Tiffany had been smoking cannabis and had been “picking on him”.

He told them he had kicked her but that she had fallen and hit her head on a towel rail.

Damjanovic pleaded not guilty to Woodley’s murder, and was due to stand trial on Monday but moments prior, his defence team said he would be changing his plea and admitted causing the mother’s death.

At the time of her death, Woodley’s aunt Rosalie Miller-Kickett paid tribute to her niece, describing her as a loving mother and sister.

“She was never a violent person,” she said.

“She wasn’t a nobody. She was so gentle, everyone loved her.”

Woodley was a former Narrogin High School student who went on to work at a pharmacy in Morley.

On Monday her mother, Meretta Kickett sobbed quietly with other members of the family as the confronting details of her daughter’s violent death were read out in court.

Damjanovic will be sentenced in March next year.

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