In December 2016, John Edwards hired a private investigator to follow his estranged wife, Olga. They were to track her at home and at work, to establish if she was seeing anyone new.

Edwards had met Olga in Russia when he was 50 and she was 19. They had two children together in Australia but their marriage broke down as he became increasingly controlling and angry. He had a “propensity for domestic violence and a history of psychological and physical assaults stretching back to the early 1990s”, a coronial inquest would later hear, and apprehended violence orders dating back to 1993.

A year and a half after he paid for his wife to be surveilled, the 68-year-old retired financial planner entered Olga’s home in Sydney’s Hills district and murdered their son and daughter – Jack, 15, and Jennifer, 13. Afterwards, he killed himself.

He died with a piece of paper in his top left pocket that appeared to describe Jennifer’s afternoon movements from her high school to her Pennant Hills home.

It emerged during the inquest into the deaths of Jack and Jennifer that Edwards had a history of using private investigators. He also hired one in 2010 to track down the current name and address of his older daughter, according to the coroner’s report. They had been estranged since she was a teenager after he subjected her mother, a previous partner, to a terrifying campaign of abuse.

He then showed up at an open house at the daughter’s home, giving a fake name to the real estate agent.

“[She] felt scared and physically ill after she realised her father had been in her home and took to leaving the house during the day, until her husband came home from work,” the report states. Edwards later approached her at her daughter’s preschool, and she reported him to the police.

Lack of scrutiny on PIs and family violence

In the years since the Edwards inquest concluded in 2021, the use of private investigators in situations where there might be family violence and stalking concerns or where there are AVOs in place has gone largely unscrutinised – in an industry with few obligations to screen clients or targets for such concerns, meaning investigators may operate unaware of these risks.

There are 1,769 private investigator licences active in New South Wales, according to NSW police, but no requirement to check clients for AVOs or any mandated training around family violence risks.

Eighteen licences have been revoked since 2019, according to NSW police answers to a question on notice from the NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson. These include 13 for convictions related to an indictable offence (which could include crimes such as assault, theft, fraud and drug offences) and two due to breaches of the Surveillance Devices Act.

Separately, there were 32 complaints about private investigators in that period, but none had their licence removed after an investigation.

Guardian Australia has identified cases around Australia where private investigators were used to track down addresses when there have been family violence orders.

There is the paternal grandmother who hired a private investigator to track down her daughter-in-law’s address, per a 2024 family court judgment, despite the existence of an apprehended domestic violence order between the parents for the mother’s protection.

And the man with a 12-month apprehended domestic violence order who hired a PI to locate his former partner’s new residence – behaviour he later acknowledged, according to a 2021 family court judgment, was “inappropriate and caused the mother distress”.

In Queensland a man was convicted in 2018 of the attempted murder of a baby after he tracked down a woman he was obsessed with, broke into her home and used a knife to attack her and her 10-month-old son. He also pleaded guilty to wounding, grievous bodily harm and break and enter.

The man used a private investigator to track down the victim. “He engaged one such investigator under the ruse that she had allegedly defrauded him of about $200,000 and he needed her address so his lawyers could pursue her,” according to court documents.

Most Australian states don’t have a requirement for private investigators to check clients’ domestic violence histories – although Queensland’s laws are set to change in 2025 to address this issue.

‘Why aren’t we training investigators?’
Some private investigators advertising online specifically promote their expertise online in tracking down “cheating spouses” and providing “peace of mind” for those worried about whether their partner is seeing other people.

Several of these companies also sell spyware, including hidden cameras and trackers. A 2024 investigation into the criminal use of tracking and surveillance devices by the NSW Crime Commission examined the sale of almost 6,000 devices over about 12 months. It found that 25% of customers had a recorded history of domestic violence.

More than 120 of the 3,147 customers it examined were apprehended violence order defendants when they made the purchase, including some who bought a tracking device in the days after an AVO was enforced. It identified one instance where a tracking device was sold to a customer who had been charged on 13 occasions with contravening an AVO.

The NSW Crime Commission’s report particularly noted the potential risk of the private investigation and “spy store” industries, and that PIs have no requirement to do due diligence on customers before providing services or selling spyware. “In fact, it is likely some private investigators remain wilfully blind to their client’s criminal involvement and intentions,” it concluded.

NSW’s crime commissioner, Michael Barnes, said he personally found the marketing of spyware as a means to track romantic partners “abhorrent”.

“We were shocked to find that the high proportion of those who had purchased [spyware devices] were also in those databases as serious DV offenders,” he said. “That’s why our recommendations make suggestions to tighten up that industry, [and] to license the sale of the devices.”

Stephen Wilson, the chief executive of Protective Group, said it was “unethical” for investigators to also be selling spyware. He’s worked with family violence victim-survivors to assess their risk and find devices – from car trackers and smartphone spyware to hidden cameras. On occasions, the use of physical surveillance has also been a likely threat.

“We’re now teaching hairdressers around the risk,” he said. “Why aren’t we training investigators? Why aren’t we training them on family violence, how to identify it, how to respond to it?”

“We know that abusers are systematically looking for ways to thwart the system, and we urge police and magistrates to be aware of this,” said Karen Bentley, the chief executive of Wesnet, a peak body for family violence services. “Any regulation of [private investigators] should consider the safety-first principle we need to prioritise the safety of victim-survivors.

“There’s no legitimate reason to be selling spyware in the domestic market. There is none.”

The state coroner Teresa O’Sullivan, who investigated the deaths of Jack and Jennifer, described their deaths as “preventable” at the conclusion of her inquiry in 2021, noting errors made by firearms registry staff, police and the family court.

“It is difficult to imagine the pain that Olga felt when she returned home from work on 5 July 2018 to find police at her home and [realise] her two children who she loved dearly had been killed,” O’Sullivan said at the time.

Olga, who had taken to sleeping in her son’s bed, would kill herself five months after the deaths of her children