Deadline: Double payoff in big week for Melbourne’s ace investigators
Missing persons investigators face huge obstacles in virtually every case they tackle but while they were marking the verdict in the missing campers case, their hard work was revealed in another good result in the courts.
Police & Courts
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It’s been a big week for missing persons investigators, a group of police who face huge obstacles in virtually every case they tackle. They could be forgiven for almost overlooking another good result in the courts while marking the verdict in the Wonnangatta campers case with a drink or three.
While still digesting Tuesday’s verdict against murdering wife beater and former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn, ace investigators caught up with news that another woman killer, Brighton man Toby Loughnane, was convicted on Friday of murdering his estranged girlfriend Maryam Hamka in 2021.
The Hamka case was a mystery for two years after she was last seen in a supermarket in Brunswick on April 10, 2021. It wasn’t until her body was found buried in bushland at Cape Schanck more than two years later that the case proceeded.
Loughnane pleaded not guilty to murder, insisting Ms Hamka died of a drug overdose and not as a result of a beating he inflicted, the final fatal instalment of a history of escalating violence.
Like Wonnangatta accused Greg Lynn, Loughnane tried to exploit the fact that his destruction of the crime scene and the body meant that forensic evidence was scarce.
Knowing that a precise cause of death would be difficult to prove scientifically, he offered to plead guilty to the lesser charge of negligent manslaughter, saying he had failed in a “duty of care” to take the injured woman to hospital after the supposed drug overdose which he claimed caused her death.
But the circumstantial evidence was compelling.
On the night of his girlfriend’s death, Loughnane filmed and mocked her while she was possibly drug-affected and partially naked at his Brighton address.
Loughnane’s friend, Oscar Newman, came to the property hours later and found the beaten woman dead in the shower. Instead of calling an ambulance or police, Loughnane bought bleach from the supermarket and Newman purchased a steam cleaner from Gumtree as the pair tried to remove blood from the crime scene.
Loughnane put the dead woman into the boot of Newman’s car, drove to Cape Schanck and buried her, covered in lime.
It took two years before Loughnane revealed where the body was. By the time police located the remains, they were too decomposed for the precise cause of death to be determined — but skull fractures overwhelmingly indicated murder.
“His actions after her death are so extreme and disproportionate that they could not be remotely consistent with Maryam Hamka succumbing to an overdose,” Crown prosecutor Kristie Churchill told the jury.
Which is exactly the same logic the other jury used to convict Lynn for the murder of Carol Clay at Wonnangatta. Both Lynn and Loughnane insisted they were guilty ... of behaving badly when cleaning up after terrible accidents.
Too bad.
White privilege
The son of a former high-profile Victorian recently distinguished himself at a Melbourne party.
The teenager and other visitors had a pretty big night at a friend’s home in our affluent inner-eastern suburbs, becoming over-refreshed as the evening wore on.
The said young fellow started to feel quite at home and went to the fridge to see what else was available to drink.
He found a bottle containing a white liquid, which he proceeded to skol. Unfortunately, it turned out he had drained an expressed breast milk supply intended for the baby of the house.
We wonder what the child’s mother would have made of that.
And we wonder what the teen’s lawyer dad — a one-time darling of the progressive set — might make of such a lapse in manners.
Loose lips sink ships
Friends of a fellow recently locked up over a heavy drug operation should not expect to hear from him via his favoured communications method any time soon.
This bloke was unfortunate enough to be inside years ago when a mate in his unit was transferred to another prison.
The departing crook, a most resourceful and well-connected inmate, decided not to risk smuggling out the phone he had quietly been using for some time under cover of darkness.
Our man inherited the phone and a charger but, as is so often the case, just couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“He was using it non-stop,” a source said.
Phone Man ended up lending it out to others in the unit so they could keep in touch with the outside world.
One of those users decided it would be a good idea to phone his ex-girlfriend one night, disregarding the fact she had an intervention order against him.
Naturally, she had some questions about how the rocket surgeon in jail was contacting her at 2am in breach of a court order.
It wasn’t too long before the unit was searched top to bottom and the phone recovered.
Tea-leaf trousers whisky
Deadline had no idea until last week that you could pay $62,000 for a bottle of grog.
Then again, most of us are probably unlikely to visit the kind of boutique bottleg selling such expensive booze.
Police are hunting one sneaky chap who didn’t fancy the prices at a boutique liquor outlet in Whiteman St, Southbank, a few weeks back.
He asked a staff member if he could inspect some high-end bottles in the outlet, which is clearly favoured by a particularly wealthy demographic such as Crown casino high rollers.
After the worker was briefly distracted, he quickly grabbed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Masters and jammed it into the front of his pants.
Johnnie Walker’s motto is Keep Walking. And he did exactly that.
Smokey the bandit hits drawback
A cigarette burglary suspect proved a little slow on the draw last week.
When police arrived at a home on the Nepean Highway at Mount Eliza, the target quickly got jumpy about the situation.
He is alleged to have reached into his puffer jacket and thrown a loaded pistol over the fence into the next-door property.
Investigators were on to it though and found the gun a little later.
They are also alleged to have seized a dirty big box-cutter from another pocket of the jacket.
It’s no wonder the 48-year-old was a little skittish.
The raid was part of a Cardinia CIU investigation into a spate of cigarette burglaries through the southeast suburbs stretching back to 2022.
Ammunition, methylamphetamine, ecstasy, 1-4 Butanediol, cannabis and a samurai sword were also recovered.
Police later charged the arrested man with being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, three counts of possessing a prohibited weapon, drug offences, seven counts of burglary and six of theft.
A 39-year-old man from Thornhill Park and another man, 51, of Langwarrin were arrested and charged over the same operation.
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