It would be the last time she would see them alive.

Before the day was out, Kevin, 7, and Jamie, 5, and Ms Walsh’s mother, Jean, had been killed by her father, John Walsh, in his Cowra home.

Walsh bludgeoned his wife with a piece of wood and hammer and stabbed her in the neck, then battered Kevin to death and drowned Jamie in the bath.

The senseless crime made international headlines and Ms Walsh, a serving police officer who survived being struck by an axe during the frenzied attack, spiralled into a deep well of depression.

“In those few days after it happened, I wanted to take my own life,” Ms Walsh said.

“The support I received at that time was quite literally the difference between life and death.”

The emotional scars from the tragedy are burned onto Ms Walsh’s soul, but she now refuses to let the dark thoughts dominate her life.

There is one question that still haunts her though – why? – and it has propelled her to visit her father in jail twice to find an answer.

“I went in February 2009 and he couldn’t give me an answer so I went and visited him again recently,” Ms Walsh said.

“He still claims he doesn’t know why; he just shrugs his shoulders.”

Now an advocate for domestic violence awareness, Ms Walsh will be a guest speaker at the Regional Domestic and Family Violence Conference in Tamworth yesterday and today.

She said she believed her father’s undiagnosed depression is what sparked his murderous rampage.

“In that moment he was someone different,” she said.

“We watched him go downhill after my brother suicided in 2002 but we never could never approach him; Dad was all about power and control.

“If somebody is depressed and undiagnosed, they can go into the high-risk category of snapping and being violent.

“Maybe if we’d stepped up and done something earlier this wouldn't have happened.”

Ms Walsh is now an education development officer with NSW police, sharing her story with graduates at the Goulburn Police Academy. 

She said coping with the loss of her family was a day-to-day proposition.

“I get up every day trying to make that day the best day of my life,” she said.

“If I can do that he doesn't win; he doesn't get what he wanted.

“The more people I help means my family didn't die for nothing.”