My estranged father called me every week for years

A WOMAN has revealed how she found out the reason her only relationship with her estranged father was a weekly phone call was because he was actually in jail serving time on murder charges.

Renee McBryde from Sydney, Australia, who only spoke to her father a few times on the phone, discovered the dark family secret when she was in high school.

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Renee only spoke to her father, Michael Caldwell, unbeknownst to her mother, and was led to believe he worked at Cottee’s Cordial factory.

When she was just six years old, her father made a secret phone call saying he was in prison.

She told Mamamia, “He said, ‘I can’t see you, not because I work on a farm/factory, but because I’m in prison.

“I thought he was doing ‘important’ things and working so far away.

“I was wondering why I don’t have a father around like everyone else” and “where is he”.

But it wasn’t until she was 16 that she discovered her father’s crimes while working on a school project.

While researching at the local library, Renee stumbled across a newspaper clipping with her father on the front page.

The article explained that Caldwell was serving life in prison after being convicted of the October 1981 murders of two gay men, Greek Consul General Constantine Giannaris and schoolteacher Peter Parkes, at Kings Cross.

Caldwell, then 19, a sex worker, was sentenced to life behind bars along with a 16-year-old boy.

Renne’s mother, then 16, was just a few months pregnant when Caldwell was arrested.

The teen also read that the presiding judge on the case had labeled her father a “cold-blooded killer.”

Earlier this year, Renee released a book called Unraveling Us about growing up as the daughter of a convicted murderer. and admitted that she has not spoken to her father since.

She added, “After the book came out, he wrote to me on the author page of my website and said, ‘I’m really proud of you for writing this book and I’m glad you had a normal life and were doing well look happy’.

“And that was a great relief for me.”

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