What happened to Elly Rose? Dad haunted by daughter’s death in paradise
PAUL Warren is “tortured every day” by the belief 20-year-old Elly Rose was killed. Forensics experts from three countries haven’t given him answers so now he will travel to Africa to find the truth for himself.
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IF there was such a thing as heaven — and Paul Warren one day met his precious, forever 20 year-old daughter there — he would give her an earful for “running around alone” in a foreign country and winding up dead.
But not before giving her the hug he would have waited a lifetime to deliver, and not before finding out who, or what, killed Elly Rose in the sand behind a toilet block in Mozambique’s Tofo Beach in the early hours of November 9, 2016.
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More than a year-and-a-half after his daughter was discovered dead in the African coastal town, the Melbourne father says he remains certain Elly was attacked, but the grieving family is still waiting on an official Australian coroner’s report and is no closer to finding out in what circumstances, and why, Elly died.
“People say grief gets better with time but it never gets better for me,” Mr Warren said, shaking his head.
“I have an empty heart. It’s like being tortured every day.”
Photos of a beaming Elly Warren — from toddler to teenager — decorate the living room walls of Mr Warren’s Seaford unit.
“It was on this very couch that she sat down, just before she left for Mozambique, and promised me she’d be careful over there and never go off alone, but obviously, for whatever reason, that night she did,” he says.
Frustrated by what he believes is a less-than-thorough investigation by Mozambique police, followed by conflicting autopsy reports from Mozambique, South Africa and Melbourne, Mr Warren, a former industrial engineer, is convinced the only way he is going to solve the riddle of his daughter’s death is to travel to Tofo and investigate himself.
He plans to make the trip in November this year, on the two year anniversary of Elly’s death and will carry with him a list of names of people to talk to and places to visit.
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He’ll talk to staff at the Pariango backpacker hostel Elly was supposed to be staying on the night she died (but never officially checked into) and to workers at the idyllic Casa Barry Lodge she had just checked out of, having finished her six week volunteer stint on a marine conservation project.
If possible, he’ll also speak to people who were at the party Elly attended with her friends earlier in the evening of November 8, and with as many locals as he can.
Mr Warren, 57, has no way of knowing for sure how much alcohol his daughter drank that night but he points to a photo of Elly — taken at sunset on the 8th of November with her girlfriends on the bar deck of Casa Barry — with a large bottle of water.
It’s the last photo the family has of Elly alive.
But Victor’s bar, near the Tofo marketplace and public toilets, could be the last place Elly was seen alive.
The owner of the bar, who counted Elly as a friend, told News Corp she was alone when she came to the tiny road-front bar just after 11pm, searching for her mates.
The three friends, and Elly, had bought a case of beer from him earlier in the day and then gone to a party, he says.
When Elly couldn’t find her friends near the bar, she spent some time talking with a couple of backpackers from Israel, but at no stage appeared so drunk she seemed in danger of passing out.
The next day he heard Elly had been found dead.
A fisherman discovered her lifeless body at 5am, sprawled, face down in the sand behind the locked market place toilet, with her bikini bottoms around her knees.
Forensic examinations reveal Elly died from asphyxia, after inhaling sand into her lower airways, and that her bladder was still full when she died.
Abrasions were found on her neck, and also bruising on her mouth and in the muscles on the left-hand side of her neck, but there were no clear signs of a struggle, attack or sexual assault.
Exhaustive toxicology tests show there were no drugs in her system.
On these points, Mr Warren says, the three forensic examinations seemed to line up.
Where they differed was is in the likely cause of death, with the initial Mozambique police report into Elly’s death stating the autopsy in that country found her death was the result of a violent homicide.
Somewhat extraordinarily, no tests for semen or blood alcohol were conducted on Elly in Mozambique, and the view she had been murdered later changed, with the cause of death recorded as “unascertained”.
Her body was also embalmed in Mozambique, complicating further forensic examinations, including that conducted by Dr Patricia Klepp in South Africa several days later.
However, Mr Warren says the South African forensic pathologist told him she did manage to take, and test, Elly’s eye fluid, which showed she had a minimal amount of alcohol in her system at the time she died; seemingly contradicting theories that she passed out drunk in the sand and suffocated, while attempting to relieve herself behind the locked toilet.
Dr Klepp also told him she believed Elly had met with foul play, Mr Warren says.
In an email to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), forwarded to Mr Warren and seen by News Corp, Dr Klepp says Elly’s facial injuries — particularly bruising and abrasions around her mouth — had become more obvious over time and suggested Elly had been held face down in the sand, resulting in death by aspiration.
Asked by News Corp about her findings, Dr Klepp says she had nothing further to add.
“At the time, I communicated all that I knew to Elly’s father,” she says.
The most recent forensic examination, conducted in Melbourne by Dr Matthew Lynch and which will be considered by Victorian Coroner Sarah Hinchey shortly, says the cause of Elly’s death is undetermined.
“A possible mechanism of death in this instance is positional asphyxia as a result of Elly being face down in the sand, either due to her being in an intoxicated state, unconscious for some other reason, or as a result of her head being held forcibly in that position. My examination unfortunately does not assist in distinguishing between these possibilities,” Dr Lynch’s autopsy report states.
It’s a report Mr Warren takes issue with.
“Elly deserves more than an ‘undetermined’,” he says.
“She had no drugs and, according to Dr Klepp, a minimal amount of alcohol in her system. She was a fit, healthy girl who had been diving for six weeks. So how did she die?”
In a conversation with Dr Lynch, recorded by Mr Warren with the doctor’s knowledge and heard by News Corp Australia, Dr Lynch explains an undetermined cause of death is not uncommon, and that his autopsy report is just one part of the evidence Judge Hinchey will consider in coming to her own conclusion on a probable cause of death.
Mr Warren also takes issue with the string of delays he and Elly’s mother, Nicole Cafarella, have faced in having Elly’s case investigated by the Victorian State Coroner.
They were told a finding would be delivered in late-January this year but, as yet, there has been no result. There has also been little communication forthcoming from the coroner’s office.
A spokesperson for the Victorian Coroner’s Court told News Corp Australia Elly’s death was still being “actively investigated” and it was not yet known if an inquest would be held.
Australian Federal Police say it is also unable to provide comment on Elly’s death, because the matter is before the Coroner.
With a bar, restaurant and thatched hut accommodation on Tofo’s main swimming beach, Casa Barry Lodge bills itself as “a holiday in paradise you’ll never forget”, and by all accounts Elly loved her time there, and in Africa, which she had visited before.
She loved the people, the environment, and, most of all, she relished her time diving with the extraordinary marine life — including manta rays and whale sharks — in Mozambique’s warm, clear waters.
“She was just so full of life,” Mr Warren says.
“She loved nature and the outdoors and was about to start studying as a marine biologist. There was no way I could have stopped her going to Mozambique and diving, because she was just so determined to do it.”
Sceptical of the depth of the inquiry into Elly’s death by Mozambique police, and with Australian Federal Police limited in the extent to which they can investigate in Africa, Mr Warren says he had already spent a considerable amount of time trying to compile a timeline leading up to Elly’s death.
But there were inconsistencies in people’s accounts of the night, and obvious oversights and gaps in the Mozambique police investigation, which led him to believe important information could have been overlooked.
A report from an Australian embassy official with statements collected from Tofo locals shortly after Elly’s death — seen by News Corp Australia — raises more questions than it answers.
“Some witnesses report clear signs of violence, others claim none,” the report states.
The report also states there are concerns the local business community “seems to be more concerned in showing the death was not a murder/rape than actually discovering what happened”, but that some local women had revealed there had been a spike in the number of assaults in Tofo in the months leading up to Elly’s death.
A local restaurant owner claims Elly’s body was originally in ‘an almost crawling position’, before being covered by a papaya leaf, and later a sarong.
Some of the first people to arrive on the scene after news spread of Elly’s death, included the manager of Casa Barry Lodge, and Steve Mank Counsel, a lead diver with Peri Peri, the group Elly had been volunteering with.
In one document, viewed by News Corp, Mr Mank Counsel is reported as saying Elly’s mouth appeared “packed with sand”, and that police, on arrival, “bumbled through the scene, essentially removing all of the evidence which was there”.
“To me there is no question as to how she died, she was killed, and whoever killed Elly is out there still,” Mr Warren says.
“I think her head was pushed into the sand or someone pushed sand into her mouth because the autopsies show sand ended up all the way down her bronchial tubes.”
One of the friends Elly was looking for that night told Mr Warren she went to the toilet after midnight and did not see Elly’s body lying in the sand at that time, making it likely she died after Victor’s bar closed.
Another of the friends, who did not want to be named, told News Corp this week she also believed Elly had been pushed into the sand, and held facedown, leading to her death.
Elly had not been drinking heavily that night, and, in her view, was definitely not anywhere near drunk enough to fall and become unconscious, the friend says.
Victor thinks Mr Warren is right in believing a visit to the town could deliver vital clues as to the cause of Elly’s death.
“It’s complicated I think,” the barman says.
“Very complicated.”
The day after Elly died, the African beach paradise was struck by a huge storm, Mr Warren says.
The heavens opened over Tofo and the turquoise waters turned dark.
“If you believe in that sort of thing, you might say the Gods were angry,” he says.
“I’m not angry, because that won’t bring Elly back, but I do want answers.”
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