The fate of man who allegedly killed his mother for money looms as his trial draws to a close
The cryptocurrency day partner of a model didn’t immediately answer her angry texts on the day of his mum’s death for a chilling reason, a court has been told.
WA News
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A cryptocurrency day trader who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his mother for money when he was 24 years old will soon learn his fate as his murder trial nears its end.
Andre Zachary Rebelo, 28, is on trial for the murder of Colleen Rebelo, who was found dead in her Bicton home in Perth’s southwest on May 25, 2020.
Although Ms Rebelo died suddenly and unexpectedly, her death was not treated as suspicious by first responders who went to the home.
Police later discovered Mr Rebelo set up three life insurance policies against his mother in the week before she died in which he stood to gain $1.15m. One of the insurance companies suspected the claim was fraudulent and made a complaint.
It was discovered Mr Rebelo started the claims process against those policies three days after her death.
He pleaded guilty to attempts of fraud and forgery but has denied killing his mother.
DAY COLLEEN REBELO DIED
On the day Ms Rebelo died, she appeared happy and healthy to those who were closest to her.
During the trial, the court was told Ms Rebelo had not long completed a masters degree and was excited about starting a new job in health after studying for five years and working in part-time jobs to support her family.
She was a single mother of four children. Her marriage broke down about 10 years earlier and the family had no contact with her former husband.
On the morning of May 25, 2020, she dropped her youngest son Fabian off at work about 10am and told him she would pick him up when he finished at 2pm.
The court was shown a series of text messages and phone calls from Ms Rebelo’s children about the time she died.
Just after 11am, her son Andre was sent a bunch of “angry” text messages over a 20-minute period by his former partner, influencer Grace Piscopo.
“ANDWRR YOUR F. KING PHOME”, “WHERR ARE YOU”, “Omg I swear to god Andre”, “Do you not have a phone??? What is wrong with you”, some of the messages read.
“Answer for f. k sake” and “I’m fuming at you I’m so angry”, were also sent.
Andre answered his phone at 11.15am and spoke to Ms Piscopo for one minute, then sent his mum a text more than an hour later asking if she was free to watch his son that day or the next.
State prosecutor Brett Tooker told the court the timing of these calls and text messages were important because it revealed Andre missed 12 calls and failed to respond to six angry text messages.
“He didn’t answer his phone because he couldn’t,” he said.
“He was in the process of killing his mother or was in the aftermath to make it look like she had collapsed in the shower.”
When Fabian finished work at 2pm, his mother failed to pick him up. He tried calling her about 13 times and when she did not respond, he walked home.
Andre sent a text to Fabian at 2.08pm that read, “Yo there’s a bag of my old clothes in the hallway for you dropped them off this morning in case Mum didn’t see them.”
Fabian replied, “Easy cheers.”
Ms Rebelo’s daughter Monique also tried to call her mum about a bag of clothes a friend was going to pick up.
Monique had relocated to Kalgoorlie and was staying at the family home in Bicton while she completed a paramedics course at St John Ambulance in Perth.
She told the court a friend from Kalgoorlie asked her to bring a bag of clothes for her while she was in hospital in Perth and was going to pick them up that day.
“Are you all good? Kayla trying to contact you to get her bags,” Monique texted her mum.
When Fabian arrived home, he heard the shower running in his mum’s ensuite and called out to her, but she didn’t respond.
He went into the room and found his mother dead on her knees with a shoulder leaning against the shower wall.
“I walked into the bathroom and saw that she was obviously not well and leaned up against the bathroom wall,” Fabian told the court.
“I called triple-0 and performed CPR on her.”
Fabian recounted how he pulled his mum out of the shower and dragged her into the middle of the bathroom floor.
He performed CPR until paramedics arrived, telling the court her face was very blue and dark and she had “vomity” blood in her mouth.
When ambulance officers arrived, Ms Rebelo could not be revived.
Fabian sent a text to his sister saying: “It’s bad there’s ablunance here” and “Can you come home.”
Fabian tried to call Andre, then texted him, “C. t answer please mum is dead” and “Please c. t come home.”
Monique returned home and texted Andre at 3.05pm: “Have you answered Fabian’s calls DO IT NOW COME RIG NOW TO MUMS NOW”, “NOWW” and “NOW”.
Andre, Ms Piscopo and their son arrived at the Bicton home while first responders were still there.
Ms Rebelo’s sister Pearl Flemming, who also lived on Preston Point Rd in Bicton, told the court that she finished her shift as a bus driver and was returning home when she noticed a white Land Rover outside her sister’s home.
“On the way home, I drove past Colleen’s house and saw an unusual car,” she said.
“There was a white Land Rover Evoque, I hadn’t seen it before, it was parked out the front on the verge of my sister’s house.”
During her evidence, Ms Flemming told the court that she saw the same car parked out the front when she returned to work about 1.30pm and again at her sister’s funeral when she parked next to it and saw her nephew Andre, Ms Piscopo and their son get into the vehicle.
AUTOPSY
The court was told Ms Rebelo died suddenly and unexpectedly, but first responders who attended the home did not treat her death as suspicious.
An autopsy conducted on Ms Rebelo was unable to determine her cause of death despite auxiliary testing on her organs.
A forensic pathologist told the court that he could not rule out that Ms Rebelo died from asphyxia.
Dr Reimar Junckerstorff, who performed Ms Rebelo’s autopsy, told the court that it was possible for people to die from smothering without leaving any signs on the body or brain post-mortem.
However, the defence argued that traces of focal subendocardial interstitial fibrosis found on Ms Rebelo’s heart could have caused her to collapse and die suddenly from cardiac arrhythmia.
‘STRANGE’ BEHAVIOUR AFTER MUM DIES
Following Ms Rebelo’s death, her eldest son Julian was named the executor of her estate and told the court about the “strange” and “surprising” things his brother Andre did after their mother died.
Julian, who had relocated to Sydney for work, returned to Perth the day after his mother died and remained at the Bicton home for two months while he took care of her affairs.
Julian told the court that his mother’s driver’s licence went missing and Andre never told him he took it or that he had taken life insurance out against her.
But Andre mentioned to Julian their mother might have had a life insurance policy with ANZ OnePath.
Julian said he was surprised his brother was looking into his mother’s affairs because there was no need for him to do that.
On another occasion, Fabian told Julian the coroner’s office called Andre about their mother while they were getting a haircut.
Julian sent a text to Andre asking why he had contacted the coroner’s office, and his brother responded: “Checking to see what they can do to help with the insurance issue.”
Julian thought it was strange because they had no information about a policy with the company.
He also told the court that two notifications from Australia Post were sent to his mother’s house about redirecting the mail that he did not request and initially thought it was “fraudulent.”
Julian asked his siblings in a group message if anyone had requested the mail to be redirected, with Andre replying, “Yeah did yesterday thought it made sense in case there’s mail in few months and we need to sell the house.”
Monique told Julian about another notice that was sent to the house six weeks later when he had arrived back in Sydney.
Monique messaged Julian to ask if the notification was for him. He responded, “No ask Andre again.”
“Fk,” she replied.
Monique also received a call from a psychologist she shared with her mother who was concerned Andre had tried to use her name to find out information about her mum’s insurance.
Monique told the court that she called her brother who denied knowing anything about the claims and said the psychologist must have the wrong person.
“Andre eventually texted me later and said Narina had the wrong Colleen and made a mistake, it was a different Colleen the issue was regarding,” she said.
“He knew who Narina was and seemed to be aware.”
Monique told Julian about the phone call and he texted Andre about it. He replied it was a misunderstanding and the psychologist had gotten patients confused.
INSURANCE FRAUD
A few months after Ms Rebelo died an insurance company reported a suspected fraudulent claim for life insurance against her to police.
An investigation revealed Andre had set up three life insurance policies against his mother in the week before she died.
Three days after her death he started the claims process in which he stood to gain $1.15m.
Police learnt Andre had submitted fake copies of a medical report about his mother from her psychologist, her last will and testament and a coroner’s report to one of the insurers that claimed she had died from a subarachnoid haemorrhage due to a ruptured berry aneurysm.
He also left the insurer a fake voicemail message that sounded “robotic”, pretending to be his mother’s psychologist.
The state claimed Andre killed his mother to claim money from life insurance.
Mr Tooker told the jury that every time the insurer put up a roadblock against making a claim, Andre found a way of submitting a forged document.
Mr Tooker told the court that Andre and Ms Piscopo had portrayed a glamorous lifestyle on social media.
“To the outside world they were rich and beautiful, but the truth was different,” he said.
“Andre was in dire financial trouble, he had lived his life on credit, he had a personal loan and credit card debt of more than $40k, he was being pursued by debt collection agencies at the time of his mother’s death.
“Grace was a successful model, but he wasn’t keeping up with her and he had debts he couldn’t service.
“He was a cryptocurrency day trader … he had bankrolled his social media profile.
“By May 2020, he must have thought his world was closing in around him.”
The prosecution argued that when Andre had to pay for premiums on all three policies and when money started coming out of his account, he couldn’t keep up and needed to act.
“Which is why five days later he killed his mother, then three days later started pursuing policies,” Mr Tooker told the court.
“He had to.
“If he wasn’t successful then he had killed his mother for no reason, it could not be for nothing which is why he forged those records.”
Defence lawyer Anthony Elliott argued that there were many people in debt to a greater extent than Andre and questioned if it made a person guilty of murder.
He said Andre admitted to engaging in dodgy behaviour to pursue premiums from the life insurance policies and had tried to conceal those offences during a police interview that was not about the alleged murder.
“What do we know about how Colleen died or when she died or whether anyone let alone Andre was there at the time she died?” Mr Elliott said.
“What do we know about if or how someone caused her death and what do we know about whether Colleen Rebelo was alone when she died?”
POLICE INVESTIGATION
The jury was told Ms Piscopo was a successful model and social media influencer, but Mr Rebelo had lived beyond his means and was unable to repay his financial obligations.
Ms Piscopo is not accused of any wrongdoing.
WA Police financial crime squad investigator Darren Stammers investigated the couple’s financial records for a three-year period until June 2020.
The court was shown about a month after Ms Rebelo died, the couple had a combined debt of $121,000 and little money in their savings accounts.
Mr Rebelo was being pursued by debt collection agencies after he failed to make repayments on his credit card and personal loan.
The homicide squad were briefed about the case on August 31, 2020 and bugged Andre and Ms Piscopo’s home nine days later.
Former WA Police detective Warren Jacobs told the court that recording devices were installed in the bedroom and downstairs of the Beaconsfield home.
Police were listening to see if the couple discussed anything relevant to the fraud inquiry or with any other people at the home.
Police were instructed to listen out for any talk about death, murder, fraud, insurance, Ms Rebelo or anything that could be connected to those things.
On September 16, 2020, police swarmed the home, along with Ms Rebelo’s Bicton home where her son Fabian still lived.
Fabian and Ms Rebelo’s daughter Monique were both at the Bicton property when police knocked on the door.
They seized computers and mobile phones from the property and both her children gave a statement to police.
A video played to the court showed the moment police searched Andre’s home where he was with his 18-month old son.
The court was told police seized computers, mobile phones, modems, routers, hard drives, CCTV and any documentation or bank statements belonging to Ms Rebelo and Andre.
Included in the items was Mr Rebelo’s Gucci wallet, which held his mother’s driver’s licence.
A video of the search showed Andre asking Detective Sergeant Laurence Barron how long he would be without his computers and mobile phone.
“What about the ones that belong to my partner?” Andre asked.
“Do you take phones as well? How do I live my life now?
“How will it be examined? Is there a timeframe?”
Sergeant Barron told Andre that his phone has been seized by police and he could no longer answer it.
Andre was told all the items found at the property, including those that belonged to Ms Piscopo, were being seized, video played to the court showed.
“I know it is an imposition on your life, but it is part of our business,” Sergeant Barron told Andre.
“Anything that is in this house will be seized and will be examined.
“I can’t tell how long it will take because we don’t know what’s on them, whether it is a day or a month I have no idea.”
Andre was taken to the Fremantle Police Station and placed under arrest for attempted fraud and forgery offences.
A video of a police interview with Mr Rebelo and two investigating officers was played to the court.
Andre tells them about the “weird” role he played as an assistant manager in Ms Piscopo’s social media business.
“It is social media marketing and influencing, I guess you could say content creating,” he said.
“What do you actually do?” one of the officers asked.
“Work with brands promoting them and negotiating with brands that wish to promote stuff,” Andre said.
“That is Grace’s business, but you help?” an officer asked him.
“Yes, it is her business,” Andre replied
“It is on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok recently.
“Our target audience is fashion, make-up and accessories, and things of that nature. I would say my role is an assistant manager. I negotiate with deals and things and create content.
“It is a team effort I guess.”
Another police officer who gave evidence during the trial revealed what Andre googled after his mother’s death.
Detective Sergeant John Hutchinson examined the contents of computers that were seized from Andre.
He found activity from December 2019 to July 2020 had been removed, including internet search history, and there was no chrome history prior to June 2020.
Sergeant Hutchinson told the court that he found Google searches that were relevant to the case, including “coroner’s aneurysm causes”, “word doc assist” and “inquest”.
He also noted there were photographs of Andre, Ms Piscopo and their son that were taken about 8am on the morning Ms Rebelo was found dead.
At 10.24am and 2pm there were only photos of Ms Piscopo on the computer and no photos of Andre post 8.07am.
The trial continues.
Originally published as The fate of man who allegedly killed his mother for money looms as his trial draws to a close
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