Vinzent Tarantino not guilty of murdering Sydney schoolgirl Quanne Diec
The “shattered” family of schoolgirl Quanne Diec are struggling to come to terms with the not guilty verdict after former nightclub bouncer Vinzent Tarantino was acquitted of murdering the 12 year old.
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The “shattered” family of schoolgirl Quanne Diec are struggling to come to terms with the not guilty verdict after former nightclub bouncer Vinzent Tarantino was acquitted of murdering the 12 year old.
Mr Tarantino, accused of slaying a Sydney schoolgirl two decades ago, was acquitted of her murder on Wednesday morning.
Christine Woo, Quanne’s cousin, delivered a tearful statement following the NSW Supreme Court jury’s verdict.
“We’re still trying to process the words ‘not guilty’,” she said, breaking down outside Granville Police Station.
“We wanted justice for Quanne and we haven’t got that.”
Ms Woo said the Diec family had been unable to give their daughter the “dignity” of laying her to rest with her body still missing.
“Someone out there knows where she is and, to that person, you have shattered our family,” she said.
NSW Police, in a formal statement, declined to comment on the verdict but said “detectives remain committed to finding Quanne” and answers for her family.
Mr Tarantino denied killing 12-year-old Quanne, who vanished after leaving her Granville home on her way to class in 1998.
The Supreme Court jury found the 52-year-old not guilty after deliberating for nearly six days.
“Mr Tarantino, you are free to go,” Justice Robert Beech-Jones told him.
Mr Tarantino nodded repeatedly at the jury.
“Thank you, thank you,” he said softly.
The father of Quanne, Sam Diec, cried in the hallway outside court behind dark sunglasses while being comforted by detectives.
The location of his daughter’s body remains a mystery.
Mr Tarantino was lead from the dock back into the courthouse to collect his belongings.
Outside court Mr Tarantino’s only comment was directed against the media who had covered his case.
“As the media you guys have an obligation to seek and speak the truth and I haven’t always seen that in the last three years so maybe you should always look into the story a bit more,” he told the waiting pack.
Asked why he’d made a false confession, Mr Tarantino said: “Put a gun to someone’s head and you’ll do whatever they say.”
He and his partner quickly got into a waiting taxi and left.
During the seven-week trial, a neighbour told police she saw a girl get into a white van on the morning of July 27, 1998 and the Crown alleged Mr Tarantino was behind the wheel.
The former Kings Cross bouncer testified that he was driving that van through the area at the time but actually picked up a petite sex worker named Dee, which the Crown labelled a fake alibi.
Mr Tarantino dismissed evidence from his associate Geoffrey Maurer who said the ex-security guard revealed he’d murdered “a little Asian girl” during a botched kidnapping for ransom bid.
He said Dee was just one of the “party girls”, models, strippers, and some “working girls” he used to meet for morning dalliances because they worked night shifts.
Mr Tarantino said at the time he’d been in a love triangle with Dee and his then girlfriend Laila Faily, who were colleagues at Sydney’s famous brothel A Touch Of Class.
Ms Faily has testified that Mr Tarantino once told her he raped and killed Quanne, while he also picked her up in a white van at night before driving into bushland south of Sydney and offloading a wheelie bin.
Mr Tarantino labelled this a complete lie, saying rather than hiding Quanne’s body inside the garbage bin, he’d actually hidden three guns and a Tupperware container full of cocaine he needed to bury.
Mr Tarantino claims he initially confessed to Quanne’s cold case murder in 2016 because he was terrified of being assassinated by Rebels bikies and wanted to be locked up for protection after witnessing a triple murder at the Blackmarket Nightclub in 1997.
Experts told the court Mr Tarantino was probably suffering from psychotic delusions when he walked into Surry Hills police station in 2016 and made the admission.
At the time Mr Tarantino also called up his older brother and said he was about to turn himself in for a homicide, the court heard.
“I did a horrible thing that’s going to affect everyone,” he allegedly told his brother.
“I killed a kid Alan, I’m f***ed”.
Mr Tarantino’s theatrical, often rambling testimony had to be cut short multiple times by the judge and at one point he was ordered from the witness box after an outburst in which he exclaimed: “your Honour, they’ve perverted the course of justice!”
“You’re doing a good job of convicting yourself,” Justice Robert Beech-Jones told him after the jury was asked to leave the courtroom.
Mr Tarantino also told members of Quanne’s family sitting in the public gallery they had been “misled.”
Tarantino’s false confessions
Mr Tarantino was acquitted of murdering Quanne Diec despite numerous confessions to friends, girlfriends and police.
Transcripts of the police interviews played to the Supreme Court reveal how detailed and candid he was with detectives about a crime a NSW Supreme Court jury would ultimately find him not guilty of committing.
“I just got a feeling … can we get out?” Mr Tarantino told one detective as they drove, along with a photographer and NSW Corrective Services officer, through the forest where he said he buried the schoolgirl in 1998.
“How did you move her (body)?” the detective asked him.
“One of those wheelie bins,” Mr Tarantino responded.
The drive to the forest, south of Sydney in November 2016, found no evidence of Quanne’s remains.
Mr Tarantino lead police through disorienting bush for hours looking for familiar plants, rocks and markers.
He oscillated between seeming to remember trees and bends in the road and apologising for his foggy memory.
A jury ultimately agreed with Mr Tarantino’s lawyers that he made the confessions, perhaps while mentally disturbed, because he was scared bikies were trying to hunt him down after he witnessed a triple OMCG murder.
“I just drove, drove until I found somewhere quiet and left the body beside the road,” he told detectives days after the bush excursion.
He shared stomach-churning details about wrapping the girl up and placing her in the wheelie bin to contain her leaking body fluids.
“I thought about handing myself into police and I was distraught.”
“I was suicidal and … I’d seen her family on TV.”
The jury heard that Earlier that month Mr Tarantino had walked into a Sydney police station and confessed to the murder in detail.
The jury also heard He’d told his brother, Alan, a similar story.