A top cop is ‘disgusted’ an Australian father is doing most of the investigating into his daughter’s murder on a Mozambique beach four years ago.
Melbourne woman Elly Warren, 20, was on a diving and volunteering program when she was killed during a night out with friends in Tofo in November 2016.
Ms Warren’s father Paul has spent at least $50,000 and made two trips to the African nation over the last four years after taking the investigation into his own hands.
He has been assisted by former Victorian Police detective Charlie Bezzina, who thinks it’s unconscionable Mr Warren has been left to conduct inquiries himself.
‘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 told The Australian.
Melbourne woman Elly Warren, 20, was on a diving and volunteering program when she was killed during a night out with friends in Tofo in November 2016
Mr Bezzina said the Australian government needs to use every bit of leverage available (Mr Warren with his daughter)
‘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.’
Mr Bezzina said the Australian government needs to use every bit of leverage available.
He believes there should be two Australian detectives on the ground, going through an entire investigation ‘with a fine-tooth comb’.
The comments come after Mr Warren was forced to translate an eight-page police report, written in Portuguese, into his daughter’s death.
On August 17 the Australian embassy in South Africa told the desperate father-of-three it would translate the document for him.
But in October Mr Warren was informed Australian officials reneged on the offer because they didn’t have the resources available.
Ms Warren’s body was found by the side of a toilet block near Tofo Beach in Mozambique
He was left with no other option than to use Google Translate to decipher 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 revelations come after Mr Warren claimed to have identified a suspect in his daughter’s murder after convincing a sex worker to infiltrate a crime gang.
‘He’s a bad man and is well-known and feared around Tofo. The locals think he can get away with anything because he pays off the police,’ he said.
‘What we know for sure is that he runs a prostitution ring, deals cocaine and is notorious for drugging tourists and robbing them.’
Mr Warren’s investigation into his daughter’s death has been assisted by former Victorian Police detective Charlie Bezzina, who thinks it’s unconscionable the father has been left to conduct inquiries himself
Mr Warren received a tip-off from ‘a very concerned South African mother’ in March and she warned him of a man who ‘spikes tourists’ drinks and steals from them’.
He then discussed the information with a German private investigator who had offered to work on the investigation into Ms Warren’s death pro-bono.
The pair spent a few months planning an undercover surveillance mission and put the plan into action in August after local authorities had still not made any arrests.
‘I felt I had no other choice but to run this operation… So we organised a prostitute to move to Tofo and befriend this gang leader over time to find out what we could about him and how he operates,’ Mr Warren said.
Ms Warren’s father Paul has spent at least $50,000 and made two trips to the African nation over the last four years after taking the investigation into his own hands
He explained the operation ran for about four weeks, ending when the sex worker began to fear for her life, and identified the crime boss as a key person of interest.
The sex worker obtained a number of covert recordings of the gang leader, who could be heard boasting about his criminal exploits and threatening a young woman.
Mr Warren now believes his daughter may have fallen victim to a bungled robbery attempt by the gang and been accidentally killed after she tried to resist.
He said they could have dumped her body, which was found by the side of a toilet block, because they knew the police would try to cover-up the rape and murder of a foreign tourist.
Pictured: Melbourne woman Elly Warren, who was murdered in Mozambique four years ago
