Detective demands action in Elly Warren murder case

A top homicide detective says he is disgusted with the way Elly Warren’s murder case in Mozambique has been handled.

Elly Warren was murdered in Mozambique in 2016.

One of the nation’s most celebrated homicide detectives says he is disgusted with the way Elly Warren’s murder case has been handled, and that Australia must insist on sending its own investigators into Mozambique to conduct a thorough re-examination. 

Charlie Bezzina, who investigated more than 300 suspicious deaths during his career with ­Victoria Police, has been helping Elly’s father, Paul Warren, investigate her murder after she was killed in Africa four years ago.

He said it was unconscionable Mr Warren had been forced to make his own inquiries into her mysterious death following an ­ineffective probe by local police. 

“One of our citizens has been murdered in another country and here you have her father having to do most of the investigating because the case is getting the political runaround,” Mr Bezzina said. 

“I know the Australian Federal Police can’t just waltz into ­another country and start poking around; they need to be invited. But we’re dealing with a murder in a third-world country where there have been some very serious anomalies in how it has been investigated.

“That’s why the Australian government needs to use every bit of leverage we have to say: ‘We want complete transparency. We want two of our detectives on the ground going through the entire investigation with a fine-tooth comb. And we want it to be up to the standards of Australia.’”

His comments come in the midst of revelations Mr Warren had to use Google to translate the latest Mozambique police report into his daughter’s death — written in Portuguese — after the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reneged on a promise to transcribe the eight-page document for him.

Mr Warren said he had been assured on August 17 that the Australian embassy in South Africa — which also has diplomatic oversight of neighbouring Mozambique — would translate the report for him, only to be told two months later that would no longer be happening because “our embassy currently does not have the resources to translate the document”.

“Once again, I just feel stupid for listening to them. I keep getting told to be patient and wait for the authorities to do things, and time and time again it turns out they’re not doing anything at all and I end up having to do it ­myself,” Mr Warren said. 

The Melbourne father of three has spent the past four years and more than $50,000 investigating Elly’s death during a night out with friends in the coastal tourism retreat of Tofo, on Mozambique’s south coast, on November 8, 2016.

A keen conservationist, Elly had been in the country for six weeks volunteering with marine research organisation Underwater Africa. She was out celebrating the end of the program at a popular nightspot in the heart of Tofo called Victor’s Bar when she was last seen heading off to get a drink at about 1am.

Her body was found dumped beside a nearby toilet block the next morning. Sand found in her lungs during a post-mortem examination suggest she was murdered on the town’s beach about 100m away before her body was moved to the toilet block.  

After learning police were still to identify any suspects despite a four-year investigation, Mr Warren conducted his own covert ­operation into Elly’s murder in August and September following a tip-off he received that a local gangster had been responsible. 

He recruited a sex worker to infiltrate the gang and now believes its leader — a notorious drug dealer, pimp and standover man — killed Elly during a bungled attempted robbery.

Mr Warren is now focused on trying to recover the clothes Elly was wearing the night she died in the hope they contain DNA evidence that could connect the gang leader to her murder. 

While the outfit disappeared during the initial investigation into Elly’s death, Mr Bezzina said there was still a chance it could be found despite the passing of time. 

An AFP spokesman said it had made a number of offers to assist Mozambique police with the investigation and continued to liaise with them through “police-to-police channels”. DFAT said it could not comment on the incident for privacy reasons but continued to provide Elly’s family with consular assistance.