The unsolved crimes of the eastern suburbs of Sydney
From financial adviser Melissa Caddick to a suspected serial rapist who prowled the streets, these are the cases that still have eastern suburbs’ detectives stumped.
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The disappearance of Melissa Caddick
The Daily Telegraph revealed this week that police may never be able to solve the mystery of how businesswoman Melissa Caddick met her end.
Mystery still surrounds what happened to her and nobody knows what led to her foot washing up on a south coast beach earlier this year.
The local financial adviser’s disappearance has baffled investigators after it was revealed she vanished the morning after ASIC raided her eastern suburbs home on November 11.
The decomposing foot was found in a sports shoe on February 21 at Bournda Beach near Tathra, about three months after she was last seen at her Dover Heights mansion, and about 400 km away.
The police initially treated the 49-year-olds disappearance as a homicide investigation but it is being dealt with as a missing persons case.
Retired bus driver’s brutal end
The sad case of Peter Hofmann remains a mystery after two brothers were cleared of murder.
Hofmann had been sleeping rough in a car in Maroubra when he met his end in June 2017.
It is alleged he was dragged from his car, bashed and fatally stabbed.
Jacksun Travers, 20, and Ray Travers, 22, were charged with murdering the 68-year-old retired bus driver.
But they were found not guilty of murder and the alternative charge of manslaughter in the NSW Supreme Court.
The Hofmann case remains a mystery.
Missing model Revelle Balmain
Young and beautiful, with her whole life ahead of her, Revelle Balmain was about to travel to Japan on a six-month cabaret dance tour.
But on November 5, 1994, sometime after 7pm, the 22-year-old vanished, never to be found.
The only trace of Balmain – a model, dancer and, unbeknown to many loved ones, an escort – were her shoes, wallet and keys found across Kingsford.
Earlier this month, a $1m reward was offered up to help solve the mystery.
Police are hoping this will encourage people to come forward with information.
In 1999, a coroner found Ms Balmain had been murdered.
No one has ever been charged in relation to her disappearance and suspected murder.
Two murders, 15 years apart
The murders of Eva Webel and Denise Govendir are often talked about together although they happened 15 years apart, due to their similarities.
Both mothers were murdered in their homes in the eastern suburbs; both originally appeared to be robberies gone wrong; both women lived a short walk from each other; their husbands had been friends for more than a decade; and, both women were finalising a divorce.
Eva Webel was found dead – beaten, bruised and strangled – in her family home on O’Donnell St, North Bondi on October 26, 1983.
In 1985, her husband George Webel went on trial for his wife’s murder and was found not guilty.
George and Eva had been living separately at the time and seeing other people.
Mrs Govendir was found dead just before 2am on March 10, 1998, having been bashed to death at her home on Dover Rd, Dover Heights.
Both murders remain unsolved.
Eastern suburbs serial rapist
Police believe one man could be responsible for 27 unsolved, historic sexual assaults in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, which even included a 14-year-old girl.
In 2016, detectives began an international manhunt for a man who attacked multiple women and girls across the eastern suburbs between 1985 and 2001.
He targeted women at the Bondi to Bronte walkway and even the Waverley Cemetery.
The women ranged from 14 to 55 years old.
He always carried a knife and covered his face.
The offender, who has never been caught, would now be in his 50s or 60s.
Suspected gay hate murders
Ross Warren, John Russell and Gilles Mattaini all went missing from the Bondi-Tamarama cliffs in the late 1980s.
The cliffs were a well-known spot for gay men to meet up for casual sex.
After inadequate investigations into their deaths, which found the men probably fell or were the victims of “misadventure”, a coroner found the men were likely murdered.
Ross Warren was a beloved WIN Television newsreader in Wollongong.
He was seen driving along Oxford Street, Darlinghurst on July 22, 1989.
Two days later, a friend found his car keys on a rock ledge down a cliff at Marks Park, Tamarama.
John Russell was a barman whose body was found at the base of the Marks Park cliffs a few months later on November 23, 1989.
Gilles Mattaini was last seen by a neighbour walking the Bondi to Tamarama coastal track in September 1985.
The 27-year-old French national living in Bondi had been out the night before drinking with some friends in Bondi.
According to police, he was not reported missing until 2002.
A friend claimed he had reported it earlier but a police report was never found.
A Kings Cross mystery
Alternative newspaper publisher, journalist and Mark Foy heiress Juanita Nielsen was never seen again after she visited a Kings Cross nightclub in July 1975.
The Carousel Club was one of the bars and strip clubs in the Cross owned by infamous crime figure Abe Saffron and managed by James Anderson.
The former Ravenswood high school student had been invited to the club by an employee to discuss advertising in her newspaper.
There are numerous theories about why Neilsen might have been killed including her opposition to an apartment complex development in Victoria St tied up with Saffron and Anderson, and an expose she was working on about corruption in the Cross.
A coroner’s inquest in 1983 found that police corruption might have hindered the investigation.
Nielsen’s body has never been found.
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