Luke and his brother Daniel Mancuso with their next door yiayia. Credit:Joe Armao

Social media is in love with yiayia, the Greek grandmother who gives food across the fence to her young neighbours in Melbourne's northern suburbs. But their story is more than that: it's an amazing tale of love forged in tragedy.

Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size The videos are almost always the same. You never see the faces, or even the old woman’s hands because she’s a bit too short, just the food she has prepared for her neighbours. It could be a plate, or maybe a pot, or sometimes a platter. Peel back the foil or cling wrap to reveal fish, chicken or soup. You can hear her voice from the other side of the fence, sometimes she asks the young man if he has a girlfriend yet. “Thank you, Yiayia,” the neighbour says, using the Greek word for grandmother, and the clip ends. It’s these simple videos documenting the relationship between two young men who live in Melbourne’s northern suburbs and their sweet elderly Greek neighbour that have made the Instagram page ‘Yiayia Next Door’ a social media sensation with nearly 25,000 followers. On the surface, the story appears to be little more than that, an unlikely friendship built on food. But this neighbourly bond is far deeper than most could imagine: an amazing tale of love forged in tragedy. “It's kind of like that Home Improvement show with the neighbour next door,” says Daniel Mancuso.


“No one knows who we are or who yiayia is.” While the first video was posted about a year ago, the page has recently won a legion of fans after featuring on morning television and pop culture websites. The Greek newspaper, Neos Kosmos, beamed with pride, writing that “there’s nothing better than living next door to a Greek yiayia”. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video But for Nina, 73, living next door to Daniel, 28, and his brother Luke, 26, in Reservoir is about more than sharing her cooking. Melbourne’s most famous yiayia feels like she has a duty to look after them because they lost their mother in the most horrible circumstances. Nearly six years ago, on July 15, 2013, Nina heard what sounded like a scream for help from the other side of the fence. It was dark, about 9pm on a Monday night. Nina called Teresa Paulino, the mother of Luke and Daniel. After the breakdown of her unhappy marriage, Teresa had moved in with her ageing mother, who lived next door. But on that night she was alone.


When she didn’t pick up, Nina tried Teresa’s sister, who sent around her husband and a friend to investigate. All the lights had been left on in the house. The men walked down the concrete driveway through the side gate to the garage. The roller door was open. When they switched on the lights, they discovered Teresa’s bloodied body. She had been stabbed at least 16 times by her ex-husband, Fernando Paulino — the father of Luke and Daniel. Luke remembers everything about that night clearly. “We've been talking about it for the past five years,” he says. The last photo of Teresa taken with her sons Luke (left) and Daniel in early 2013. It happened just after the weekly family dinner. Normally, they would gather to eat on a Sunday at the house where their mother would be killed. But the plans had changed and the meal was at their aunty’s house just around the corner. About 7.30pm, the brothers went their separate ways. Daniel drove to the house in Taylors Lakes where the family had lived together before the separation. His father’s Mitsubishi Challenger four-wheel-drive was missing from the driveway. Two televisions blared in the brightly lit, empty house. He would later give evidence in court that this was strange. Their father, an electrician, had a thing about wasting power.


The brothers tried to call both their parents but the phones rang out. Luke, increasingly concerned, rang the aunty he had seen earlier that night. She was crying. “I don’t know what's going on,” she told him. “Nina just called me and said that she heard screaming next door.” Now frantic, Luke sped towards the house on Massey Avenue in Reservoir. Turning onto the street, he saw three police cars. Bewildered, he got out of the car before it came to a stop and ran to the house. He walked into a room full of police. His family was crying. He asked what was going on. They told him his mother had died. “You feel like you’ve had everything sucked out of you,” he says. Daniel and Luke still feel guilty about what happened, wondering what they could have done.


Their parents separated in 2010 after 23 years of marriage. Teresa was terrified of her ex-husband and had taken out intervention orders against him. Paulino began a campaign of intimidation: hang-up calls, stalking, threats. He spread rumours that she was promiscuous and even circulated a pornographic video. “She stuck in the family for us...Growing up we thought that was the normal thing when your parents are fighting all the time,” says Luke. “If you came here, the same as what Yiayia's doing, she’d be saying ‘How are you going, sit down, do you want this, do you want that’. But she'd also yell at you a little bit and tell you it's alright.” You feel like you’ve had everything sucked out of you. Luke Mancuso It took nearly two years for police to charge Paulino with murder after they broke down his alibi that he was collecting hard rubbish at the time. In June 2017, he was found guilty and later sentenced to 30 years in jail. At sentencing, a judge said the crime was “one of jealousy, hatred and rage by a male against a woman who just wanted to be equal, independent and free, or more simply just wanted to be”. Nina has nothing but fondness for Teresa, the woman she had known for many years.

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