Melissa Caddick inquest: Police thought missing woman was hiding in $15m mansion

Detectives investigating the conwoman’s disappearance searched her Sydney home, believing she could be hiding there, inquest told.

Anthony Koletti and wife Melissa Caddick.

Detectives investigating the disappearance of conwoman Melissa Caddick conducted a 14-minute search of the $15m five-bedroom mansion and at one point believed she could be hiding in the eastern suburbs Dover Heights home.

Police also failed to press inconsistencies in accounts given by her husband, Anthony Koletti, despite the part-time hairdresser being evasive, vague and inconsistent, the NSW State Coroner’s Court heard on Tuesday.

Detective Sergeant Michael Kyneur, who oversaw the investigation in its early days, said he didn’t cross-examine Mr Koletti on the conflicting accounts when taking his statement because his wife was missing.

Anthony Koletti outside Lidcombe Coroner’s Court on Tuesday. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gaye Gerard

“I was mindful of the sensitivities around the issue,” he said, adding he believed Mr Koletti was confused about the days on which events had occurred.

The inquest heard Mr Koletti was sweating profusely and extremely flustered and told police he didn’t have time to speak with detectives face to face because he had to go to work when he reported Caddick missing on November 13, 2020, some 30 hours after she had disappeared.

He gave several different accounts to investigators of when he last saw Caddick, who is accused of defrauding investors of up to $30m in an alleged Ponzi scheme.

Sergeant Kyneur said he held the view Caddick could be inside the house during the 14-minute search on November 20 and considered deploying PolAir, the police helicopter unit, to aerially survey the property.

He said people had begun wearing face masks by that stage of the pandemic, making it easier for people to conceal their identities. “I had a view, rightly or wrongly, that she might be in that home,” he said.

The mansion had been raided by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on Nov­ember 11, 2020.

Mr Koletti told an ASIC investigator that Caddick on November 12 had gone to see a lawyer in the city and planned to stay in a hotel. He told police he saw Caddick in bed about midnight on November 12 but then later told different investigators he’d seen his wife about 4am that night.

He also gave police conflicting accounts on where he found Caddick’s phone. In his first account, he said it was in the living room; in his second account, he said he found it in a walk-in wardrobe alongside a pair of earrings and a note that said “Melissa we’ve had everything taken from us this is a gift for you” in reference to the fraud raid.

Mr Koletti also called investigators to tell them to check the cliffs near Raleigh Reserve in Dover Heights and inform them of a photograph he’d taken of a footprint in the popular park, which Sergeant Kyneur described as “extraordinary”.

“That’s a dog park, it’s the same if I found a shoe print at Bondi Beach,” he said.

Caddick’s decomposing foot was found inside a designer sneaker that washed up on a beach on the NSW far South Coast on February 21, 2021.

The inquest into her disappearance is probing the police investigation into Caddick’s disappearance and likely death.

The inquest continues on Wednesday.