Chilling one-word post before Socceroo’s death comes to light

Former Socceroos star Stephen Laybutt posted a one-word message that had friends troubled the day before his death.

The 46-year-old is reported to have taken his own life after going missing earlier this month.

Authorities found Laybutt’s body in bushland on January 14. He had been visiting friends in Casuarina, in northern NSW.

More details have now emerged about his final days with one friend speaking out about the “chilling” final message he sent before friends filed a missing persons report on January 13 when they were unable to make contact with him.

The friend said Laybutt wrote “adios” on his Facebook page the morning he disappeared.

“Those messages were chilling,” he told The Daily Mail.

He said close friends knew about Laybutt’s battles with depression and mental health.

According to the friend, those close to Laybutt did reach out to help, but he only responded to a few of them. The same friend said those select few were told it was too late to help him.

“There was an appreciation that he was struggling and some of us wonder if we could have had that extra conversation... everyone is living with that guilt,” he said.

“Personally, think he made up his mind a long time ago.”

He tragically struggled with keeping his sexuality private throughout his career, and eventually came out as gay publicly when he retired.

“Nobody knew. It takes a fair bit of effort to hide like that,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2021. “Just lying to yourself all the time. That breaks you, and you head down a path of self-destruction.”

At the time, he recalled how he had “spiralled out of control” afterwards because he thought everything would get easier once he was honest about who he was. Things drastically improved for the