‘I will never forgive you for what you have done’: Doctor’s sister confronts his murderer

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Natalie Gordon’s arm is a tribute to her brother, Ashley Gordon.

Tattooed on her forearm is his smiling portrait. The Hawks logo, his favourite footy team, is etched beside it. A stethoscope, representing the 33-year-old’s passion for his job as a GP, adorns the skin near her shoulder.

Natalie Gordon shows her brother’s face tattooed on her arm.

The tattoos are also a painful reminder of the day he was murdered, and her world became “dark, silent, and broken”.

Gordon was stabbed to death in the early hours of January 13, 2024, after he chased a group of teens who had broken into his Doncaster house twice in one night.

A Supreme Court trial earlier heard the doctor eventually chased one of the boys, who was then 16, into the driveway of a house and told him: “There’s no point in running, the cops are on their way”, before trying to restrain him. However, the teenager pulled out a knife and slashed and stabbed Gordon 11 times, fatally penetrating his aorta and injuring his heart and lung.

The teen, who cannot be identified as he was a minor at the time of the killing, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated burglary but not guilty to murder, claiming he was acting in self-defence. A Supreme Court jury found the teenager guilty of murder following two days of deliberations in June.

In a series of emotional statements read out to the court during the teenager’s plea hearing on Thursday morning, Gordon’s heartbroken family members laid bare the pain of losing their loved one to “senseless” violence.

Struggling to fight back emotion, Natalie recounted the call from her father, Glen, on the morning of January 13, 2024, to tell her Gordon had been murdered.

“When I heard the words: ‘We’ve lost Ashley’, I fell to the floor. Then I had to get up, pull myself together, and pretend I was OK – so that my children wouldn’t see their mum’s heart breaking. So they wouldn’t feel their own hearts start to break too,” she told the court.

The pair loved summer and had spent over an hour on the phone the previous day planning to catch up for lunch the following Monday. Instead, Natalie told the court she spent that Monday in the coroner’s office, formally identifying her brother’s body.

“You didn’t just take Ashley’s life that day. You took mine too, you took my past,” she said.

“If you ever come looking for forgiveness, do not come to me. I will never forgive you for what you have done.”

Gordon’s older sister, Tammy, told the court the killing had shattered her sense of safety.

Turning around at times to stare directly at her brother’s killer, Tammy said she was unable to stop thinking about her brother’s final moments as he died alone, in pain and scared.

Ashley Gordon’s sister, Tammy Gordon, holds out a locket containing her brother’s hair.

“My heart has literally broken. I sometimes wonder if I am having a heart attack, as my grief is so physically painful,” she said.

Defence barrister Amelia Beech pointed to the teenager’s young age, lack of prior convictions, reasonable prospects of rehabilitation and the impulsive nature of the crime as mitigating factors.

Beech said that at the time, the boy had become detached from his family and was disillusioned with school. She asked for the teenager to be allowed to stay in youth detention for as long as possible.

But Crown prosecutor Kristie Churchill said the attack on Gordon was “ferocious” and constituted a serious example of murder.

Outside of court, Natalie told reporters nothing would heal the pain of losing her brother and called for greater accountability for young offenders.

“We need to start acting and give real consequences. We demand back respect because we’ve lost all respect,” she said.