A magistrate has issued a warrant for the arrest of former Struggle Street star Billie Jo Wilkie after she skipped a court sentencing on double knife-related charges.
Five years after she caused public outrage when she appeared smoking a bong while heavily pregnant on the SBS show, the now 27-year-old Wilkie is on the lam as she faces a possible return to prison.
On Tuesday, Magistrate James Gibson said Wilkie had been convicted of three charges and ordered the warrant after she failed to show and Legal Aid officers said they had been unable to locate her.
Wilkie was due to be sentenced on three charges, including stalking and intimidating her ex-boyfriend with two large kitchen knives.
She was released from prison last November after serving time on multiple charges relating to a shoplifting spree with a male friend at Westfield Mt Druitt last year.
Twelve days after her release, store detectives again caught her stealing from Kmart at Westfield Mt Druitt and she was banned from entering all Kmarts in NSW.
After the arrest warrant was issued yesterday, news.com.au visited both western Sydney addresses listed on Wilkie’s court documents, including the home of her mother Carlene who hadn’t seen her.
The second address she is officially listed as living at is an abandoned house in Willmot with boarded-up windows and multiple shopping trolleys stranded in long grass at the front.
Wilkie sent shockwaves around the country in May 2015 when she appeared, heavily pregnant and smoking a makeshift bong, during filming of the SBS series, Struggle Street.
She caused a storm of controversy with her TV debut getting high while sitting on a toilet chatting with her mother.
Wilkie, who also was seen breaking into a room “to get the cone piece for the bong,” featured on the show with her then boyfriend Bob Quinn.
SBS was accused of promoting “poverty porn” by filming residents in a ring of socially deprived suburbs which Wilkie has expressed a desire to escape, but in which she has continued to commit offences.
Last year a court heard Wilkie has been addicted to both heroin and ice and has never had a job, but wanted to get off drugs and seek employment.
Since appearing on Struggle Street with Mr Quinn, Wilkie has formed relationships with other men including George, the victim of her intimidation with knives.
In mid-2017, Wilkie posted an image of her left hand with a gold ring on Facebook and announced her engagement to George, a bike riding plasterer.
However, police facts seen by news.com.au reveal that by May 2019, the romance had soured.
Police say that the couple had been living together at Lethbridge Park until Wilkie “left … and failed to return”.
At 1.30pm on May 31 last year, George entered a house at Willmot where Wilkie had been staying with a friend.
Wilkie was in a bedroom of the premises and after a conversation she “told him to get out multiple times while pushing him out through the front door on to the front yard of the residence where he remained”.
They “continued arguing on the front lawn” before Wilkie “retreated back inside for a short time before coming back out with two large kitchen carving knives”.
George “was at the front of the property near the roadway when the accused chased the victim down the street with both knives”.
George “was fearful for his own personal safety and ran in a westerly direction down (the street) before the accused threw the knives on the roadway”.
When police arrived, they seized broken knife parts off the road and arrested and charged Wilkie.
Wilkie, who a court heard last year has a “pretty extensive record for larceny and shoplifting” was granted bail.
Wilkie also has “a long history of driving offences”.
This is despite the fact Wilkie’s court documents state “she does not hold nor ever has held a NSW driver’s licence” and is “disqualified from holding or obtaining a driver’s licence (until) 21 May 2036”.
Wilkie was first imprisoned five years ago, while she was making headlines for smoking the bong on Struggle Street.
Then aged 22, Wilkie was caught driving while disqualified twice in one day.
She was arrested less than 24 hours after Struggle Street aired, caught by Mt Druitt police driving an unregistered car at 3.30pm.
She was then pulled over six hours later charged with driving without a licence.
She was imprisoned at Silverwater Women’s correctional centre with Harriet Wran, daughter of late NSW Premier Neville Wran, who served two years for robbery in company and accessory to murder.
Although she later told news.com.au that she took the drugs ice and buprenorphine in jail, Wilkie got clean and spent time after her prison release off drugs.
After splitting up with George, Wilkie and a male friend she had moved in with at Bidwill, were caught on a string of shoplifting offences at Westfield Mt Druitt on the same day.
On the afternoon of Friday, July 26, 2019, Wilkie and her 43-year-old co-offender stole fishing gear from Kmart, and items from The Reject Shop, Coles and Priceline.
Police in the mall recognised the male as a previous offender and, when they studied the centre’s CCTV, “immediately recognised Billie Jo Wilkie”.
Police charged the pair, but released them both on bail.
Two days later, their next door neighbour at Bidwill noticed them acting strangely around her property and turned on her CCTV camera to record them.
She saw the male bending down on her veranda and then handing a vacuum cleaner and a Foxtel set-top box belonging to her over the fence to Billie Jo Wilkie.
When police arrived they arrested the pair, who they said had “worked collaboratively to steal items” they had no intention of returning.
Taken into custody by police, Wilkie “refused to speak to them or leave her cell”.
Sentenced last August to seven months’ prison for driving while disqualified, one count of shoplifting and three counts of shoplifting, joint commission, Wilkie was released early last November.
Mt Druitt Local Court is now waiting to sentence her on larceny of the vacuum cleaner and set-top box at Bidwill, larceny of the fishing gear at Kmart and stalk and intimidate, intend fear, physical harm.
Charges of wield knife in public place and common assault were dropped.
Carlene Wilkie told news.com.au it had been a mistake appearing on Struggle Street and that she blamed producers for talking her into it.
She said her daughter had been “naughty” and was under the bad influence of a new boyfriend.
“I’ve probably been a bad mother,” she said.
“I told her to smoke pot just to get her off the ice.”
If Billie Jo returns to jail, she risks ridicule for her brief TV fame.
She told news.com.au she had “copped it in jail” from women inmates would yell out “hey Struggle Street, there goes Struggle Street”.
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