One woman's mission to find out about her brother's brutal murder and his homeless life.

When Melbourne woke to hear one morning that a homeless man had been be killed, murdered by a young, drug-addled man who came from privilege and private education, we collectively and publicly mourned a man we didn’t know.

Easton Woodhead, a 19-year-old graduate from Melbourne Grammar brutally took Morgan Wayne Perry’s life in 2014.

At the time, much was written about the senseless murder of Morgan Wayne Perry, better known to those around him as Mouse. But as the years passed, the public slowly forgot.

Michelle Perry has not  forgotten. Because the day she lost her brother was a day she began a fight. A fight to not only find out what happened to her brother, but a fight to make sure that just because someone is displaced, and just because someone may not have a roof over their heads, does not mean their voice is any less worthy.

Watch Michelle meet some of Mouse’s friends on Australian Story. Post continues after video.

On Australian Story tonight, Michelle told of her pain at finding out her brother had been murdered in such a violent and abhorrent way.

“I thought I was going to get a call one day and someone would tell me that he’d died. But I never expected to hear that he’d been murdered,” she told the program.

Her story is one of unparalleled tragedy: How two siblings, growing up in the same house with same parents and living with the same DNA could find themselves on such paradoxical paths. Michelle, one of travel and family and work. And Mouse, one of drugs, alcohol and homelessness.

For Michelle, it was their troubled childhood, their schizophrenic mother and a “monster” of a stepdad that was the start of Mouse’s tragic youth. Mental illness marring the beginning of his life, and the end, in his murder.

“[Our stepdad] used to beat him with a cricket bat and torture him in horrible ways. He used to dress Morgan up in girls’ dresses and put makeup on him and lock him in the dog house,” Michelle recalled.

"I felt bad that I didn’t go in and help because I still see his face looking at me and just screaming and it was just horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible."

It was family abuse in it's most horrific form, stretching far further than the immediate vicinity of Mouse and Michelle's family home.

"If my stepfather’s abuse had been all that Morgan endured he may have got through it but then he was sexually abused by an uncle."

And then, by the time he had escaped the cycle of family violence, he lost his daughter.

"The icing on the cake for him was finding his three week old daughter in her cot dead so she – I think that she died of cot death or some horrible thing so he never got over that – never, ever, ever got over that," Michelle told the program.

"It’s hard to say whether he suffered from a mental illness. He was different."

"I had dreams of travelling so that’s all I wanted to do was travel," she said. Michelle moved to Sydney, tried to make good of her life but still kept in contact with the brother whose path she didn't quite understand, but loved regardless.

Major Brendan Nottle of the Salvation Army spoke about how staggering it was that two people, from the same upbringing, grew to have such different lives.

Listen to Meshel Laurie discuss homelessness on The Nitty Gritty Committee below (post continues...)

"I have to be honest and say the thing I really struggled with was she was so well spoken, she was so polite. It was very, very difficult to comprehend that two people who were so completely different to each other were related," he said.

It wasn't until that fateful day of his death that Michelle really began to understand her brother, and the life he lived. And she wasn't the only one who was shaken into a position of action. The rest of us had our eyes and our ears glued to the story. It was random violence in its most devastating form.

"It was almost like a shock wave through society. You know – what is happening here in the most liveable city in the world?" Major Sandra Nottle of the Salvation Army told the program.

The details of the murder we now know. Cannabis-smoking Easton Woodhead, then 19, had lost his motorbike. His behaviour was erratic. He believed Mouse was at fault, and so Mouse paid the ultimate price.

Michelle is determined to continue his story. Thanks to Major Nottle and the Salvation Army, she went back to where Mouse lived. She began to understand a little more about his world.

"Being here now- I just want to stay here all night and talk to everybody and just learn more about what it’s like to be here, maybe it’s because I feel close to Morgan here as well," she said

For Eva Foster, a close friend of Michelle's, her mission was simple.

"She wants people like her brother to be respected and to be understood better by other people in the community who would normally just walk past a homeless person, who would think that it’s just their choice to be here and who don't understand the complexity of reasons that brought them to that place."

Australian Story airs on the ABC on Monday 20th June at 8pm. You can also watch the episode on iView.